ARISTOTLE AND THE EARLIER PERIPATETICS vol.I by Eduard Zeller, B.F.C.Costelloe 1897

THE LIFE OF ARISTOTLE 43
been bidding against each, other ever since the Peloponnesian
War, and hoped that he would give the
Hellenes the only thing they lacked to become the
rulers of the world—a political unity ? l
As for the charge of jealousy of others' fame,, it is
true that his philosophical polemics are often cutting and
sometimes unfair.
But they never take on any personal
colour, and it would be impossible to prove that they ever
rest on any other motive than the desire to make his point
as sharply, and establish it as completely as possible.
If he does sometimes give us the impression of insisting
on his own discoveries, we ought to set off against this
the conscientiousness with which he seeks out every
seed of truth, even the remotest, in the work of his
predecessors ;
and remembering this, we shall find that
all that remains is but a very intelligible and very
pardonable self-appreciation.
Still less—to pass over minor matters 2 —need we
attach any importance to the allegation that Aristotle
hoped soon to see philosophy completed. 3
If he did, it
would have been only the same self-deception of which
many other thinkers have been guilty, including some
who have not been, as he was, the teachers of mankind
Polit. vii. 7, 1327 b, 29, standing of the RJiet. ad Alex.
1
reckoning the merits of the c. \fin. (cf. Bhet.iii. 9,1410b, 2).
Greek race : SiSirep ZhfiQepiv te 3
CiC. Tusc. iii. 28, 69 : Aristo-
SiareKei KaX PeXrurra wo\iT€v6/i.e- teles veteres philosophos accusams
vov ku\ Swdfizvov &px elv infa" "" - J"* existimavissent pMlosophiam
/uas Tvyx&vov mXmias. suis ingeniis esse perfectam, ait
2
Like the tale told by Valer. eos out stultissimos aut glariosissi-
Max. viii. ' 14, 3, as a proof of mos fuisse : sed se videre, qriod
Aristotle's sitis m capessenda paueis annis magna aoeessio facta
laude, which is plainly an idle esset, brevi tempore pMlosophiam
invention based on a misunder- plane absohita/mfore.
44 ARISTOTLE
for tens of centuries. In fact, the" remark seems to
have occurred in an early work of Aristotle's, 1 and to
have related not to his own system but to Plato s,
which professed to open out a prospect of an early completion
of all science. 2
So far as Aristotle's philosophical writings, the
scanty fragments of his letters, the provisions of his
will, and our incomplete accounts of his life afford
us any picture of his personality, we cannot but
honour him. Nobility of principles, a just moral
sense, a keen judgment, a susceptibility to all beauty,
a warm and lively feeling for family life
and friendship,
gratitude towards benefactors, affection for relatives,
benevolence to slaves and those in need, 3 a loyal love for
his wife, and a lofty conception of marriage far
transcending
the traditional theories of Greece—such are
the traits that we can see. They all carry us back to
that faculty of moral tact to which in his Ethics he
reduced all virtue, backed as it was in him by a wide
knowledge of men and by deep reflection. We are
bound to suppose that the principles he asserts in his
Ethics were the guides of his own life, 4 the recoil from
all manner of one-sidedness and excess, and the orderly
1
In the dialogue n>p! ^>i\o- personally served him should be
atxpias, to which it is rightly sold, and that several should be
referred by Rose (Ar, Fr. No. 1) freed and even started in life,
and Heitz (Ar. Fr. p. 33). As to the latter, cf. his saying,
2
As Bywater (Jowrn. of ap. DlOG. 17, ov -rbv rp6irov, &A\&
Philol. vii. 69) also says. In -rbv &v8pairov itXi-qaa.
4
Aristotle's extant works he often Cf. his expressions in the
refers to the need of further Letter to Antipater, ap. JElian,
investigation. V. H. xiv. 1 and ap. Diog. 18.
3
As to the former, cf. his In the former fragment he says
will, which provides inter alia as to the withdrawal of former
that none of those who had honours (de a. v. p. 36, u. 3,