Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers Part 5

Aristo was taken in charge by Proxenus, a near kinsman. The lad was so active at climbing, so full of life and energy and good spirits, that when the King came the next year to Stagira, he asked for Aristo. With the King was his son Philip, a lad about the age of Aristo, but not so tall nor so active. The boys became fast friends, and once when a stranger saw them together he complimented the King on his fine, intelligent boys, and the King had to explain, "The other boy is mine--but I wish they both were."

Aristo knew where the wild boars fed in gulches, and where the stunted oaks grew close and thick. Higher up in the mountains there were bears, which occasionally came down and made the wild pigs scamper. You could always tell when the bears were around, for then the little pigs would run out into the open. The bears had a liking for little pigs, and the bears had a liking for the honey in the bee-trees, too. Aristo could find the bee-trees better than the bears--all you had to do was to watch the flight of the bees as they left the clover.

Then there were deer--you could see their tracks any time around the mountain marshes where the springs gushed forth and the watercress grew lush. Still higher up the mountains, beyond where bears ever traveled, there were mountain-sheep, and still higher up were goats. The goats were so wild that hardly any one but Aristo had ever seen them, but he knew they were there.

The King was delighted to have such a lad as companion for his son, and insisted that he should go back to the capital with them and become a member of the Court.

Not he--there were other ambitions. He wanted to go to Athens and study at the school of Plato--Plato, the pupil of the great Socrates.

The King laughed--he had never heard of Plato. That a youth should refuse to become part of the Macedonian Court, preferring the company of an unknown school-master, was amusing--he laughed.

The next year when the King came back to Stagira, Aristo was still there. "And you haven't gone to Athens yet?" said the King.

"No, but I am going," was the firm reply.

"We will send him," said the King to Proxenus, Aristo's guardian.

And so we find Aristo, aged seventeen, tall and straight and bronzed, starting off for Athens, his worldly goods rolled up in a bearskin, tied about with thongs. There is a legend to the effect that Philip went with Aristo, and that for a time they were together at Plato's school. But, anyway, Philip did not remain long. Aristo--or Aristotle, we had better call him--remained with Plato just twenty years.

At Plato's school Aristotle was called by the boys, "the Stagirite," a name that was to last him through life--and longer. In Winter he wore his bearskin, caught over one shoulder, for a robe, and his mountain grace and native beauty of mind and body must have been a joy to Plato from the first. Such a youth could not be overlooked.

To him that hath shall be given. The pupil that wants to learn is the teacher's favorite--which is just as it should not be. Plato proved his humanity by giving his all to the young mountaineer. Plato was then a little over sixty years of age--about the same age that Socrates was when Plato became his pupil. But the years had touched Plato lightly--unlike Socrates, he had endured no Thracian winters in bare feet, neither had he lived on cold snacks picked up here and there, as Providence provided. Plato was a bachelor. He still wore the purple robe, proud, dignified, yet gentle, and his back was straight as that of a youth. Lowell once said, "When I hear Plato's name mentioned, I always think of George William Curtis--a combination of pride and intellect, a man's strength fused with a woman's gentleness."

Plato was an aristocrat. He accepted only such pupils as he invited, or those that were sent by royalty. Like Franz Liszt, he charged no tuition, which plan, by the way, is a good scheme for getting more money than could otherwise be obtained, although no such selfish charge should be brought against either Plato or Liszt. Yet every benefit must be paid for, and whether you use the word fee or honorarium, matters little. I hear there be lecturers who accept invitations to banquets and accept an honorarium mysteriously placed on the mantel, when they would scorn a fee.

Plato's Garden School, where the pupils reclined under the trees on marble benches, and read and talked, or listened to lectures by the Master, was almost an ideal place. Not the ideal for us, because we believe that the mental and the manual must go hand in hand. The world of intellect should not be separated from the world of work. It was too much to expect that in a time when slavery was everywhere, Plato would see the fallacy of having one set of men to do the thinking, and another do the work. We haven't got far from that yet; only free men can see the whole truth, and a free man is one who lives in a country where there are no slaves. To own slaves is to be one, and to live in a land of slavery is to share in the bondage--a partaker in the infamy and the profits.

Plato and Aristotle became fast friends--comrades. With thinking men years do not count--only those grow old who think by proxy. Plato had no sons after the flesh, and the love of his heart went out to the Stagirite: in him he saw his own life projected.

When Aristotle had turned twenty he was acquainted with all the leading thinkers of his time; he read constantly, wrote, studied and conversed.

The little property his father left had come to him; the King of Macedon sent him presents; and he taught various pupils from wealthy families--finances were easy. But success did not spoil him. The brightest scholars do not make the greatest success in life, because alma mater usually catches them for teachers. Sometimes this is well, but more often it is not. Plato would not hear of Aristotle's leaving him, and so he remained, the chief ornament and practical leader of the school.

He became rich, owned the largest private library at Athens, and was universally regarded as the most learned man of his time.

In many ways he had surpa.s.sed Plato. He delved into natural history, collected plants, rocks, animals, and made studies of the practical workings of economic schemes. He sought to divest the Platonic teaching of its poetry, discarded rhetoric, and tried to get at the simple truth of all subjects.

Toward the last of Plato's career this repudiation by Aristotle of poetry, rhetoric, elocution and the polite accomplishments caused a schism to break out in the Garden School. Plato's head was in the clouds at times; Aristotle's was, too, but his feet were always on the earth.

When Plato died, Aristotle was his natural successor as leader of the school, but there was opposition to him, both on account of his st.u.r.dy, independent ways and because he was a foreigner.

He left Athens to become a member of the Court of Hermias, a former pupil, now King of Atarneus.

He remained here long enough to marry the niece of his patron, and doubtless saw himself settled for life--a kingly crown within his reach should his student-sovereign pa.s.s away.

And the royal friend did pa.s.s away, by the dagger's route. As life-insurance risks I am told that Kings have to pay double premium.

Revolution broke out, and as Aristotle was debating in his mind what course to pursue, a messenger with soldiers arrived from King Philip of Macedon, offering safe convoy, enclosing transportation, and asking that Aristotle come and take charge of the education of his son, Alexander, aged thirteen.

Aristotle did not wait to parley: he accepted the invitation. Horses were saddled, camels packed and that night, before the moon arose, the cavalcade silently moved out into the desert.

The offer that had been made twenty-four years before, by Philip's father, was now accepted. Aristotle was forty-two years old, in the prime of his power. Time had tempered his pa.s.sions, but not subdued his zest in life. He had the curious, receptive, alert and eager mind of a child. His intellect was at its ripest and best. He was a lover of animals, and all outdoor life appealed to him as it does to a growing boy. He was a daring horseman, and we hear of his riding off into the desert and sleeping on the sands, his horse untethered watching over him. Aristotle was the first man to make a scientific study of the horse, and with the help of Alexander he set up a skeleton, fastening the bones in place, to the mighty astonishment of the natives, who mistook the feat for an attempt to make a living animal; and when the beast was not at last saddled and bridled there were subdued chuckles of satisfaction among the "hoi polloi" at the failure of the scheme, and murmurs of "I told you so!"

Eighteen hundred years were to pa.s.s before another man was to take up the horse as a serious scientific study; and this was Leonardo da Vinci, a man in many ways very much like Aristotle. The distinguishing feature in these men--the thing that differentiates them from other men--was the great outpouring sympathy with every living creature. Everything they saw was related to themselves--it came very close to them--they wanted to know more about it. This is essentially the child-mind, and the calamity of life is to lose it.

Leonardo became interested in Aristotle's essay on the horse, and continued the subject further, dissecting the animal in minutest detail and ill.u.s.trating his discoveries with painstaking drawings. His work is so complete and exhaustive that n.o.body nowadays has time to more than read the t.i.tle-page. Leonardo's bent was natural science, and his first attempts at drawing were done to ill.u.s.trate his books. Art was beautiful, of course--it brought in an income, made friends and brought him close to people who saw nothing unless you made a picture of it. He made pictures for recreation and to amuse folks, and his threat to put the peeping Prior into the "Last Supper," posed as Judas, revealed his contempt for the person to whom a picture was just a picture. The marvel to Leonardo was the mind that could imagine, the hand that could execute, and the soul that could see.

And the curious part is that Leonardo lives for us through his play and not through his serious work. His science has been superseded, but his art is immortal.

This expectant mental att.i.tude, this att.i.tude of worship, belongs to all great scientists. The man divines the thing first and then looks for it, just as the Herschels knew where the star ought to be and then patiently waited for it. The Bishop of London said that if Darwin had spent one-half as much time in reading his Bible as in studying earthworms, he would have really benefited the world, and saved his soul alive. To Walt Whitman, a hair on the back of his hand was just as curious and wonderful as the stars in the sky, or G.o.d's revelation to man through a printed book.

Aristotle loved animals as a boy loves them--his house was a regular menagerie of pets, and into this world of life Alexander was very early introduced. We hear of young Alexander breaking the wild horse, Bucephalus, and beyond a doubt Aristotle was seated on the top rail of the paddock when he threw the lariat.

Aristotle and his pupil had the first circus of which we know, and they also inaugurated the first Zoological Garden mentioned in history, barring Noah, of course.

So much was Alexander bound up in this menagerie, and in his old teacher as well, that in after-life, in all of his travels, he was continually sending back to Aristotle specimens of every sort of bird, beast and fish to be found in the countries through which he traveled.

When Philip was laid low by the a.s.sa.s.sin's thrust, it was Aristotle who backed up Alexander, aged twenty--but a man--in his prompt suppression of the revolution. The will that had been used to subdue man-eating stallions and to train wild animals, now came in to repress riot, and the systematic cla.s.sification of things was a preparation for the forming of an army out of a mob. Aristotle said, "An army is a huge animal with a million claws--it must have only one brain, and that the commander's."

Alexander gave credit again and again to Aristotle for those elements in his character that went to make up success: steadiness of purpose, self-reliance, systematic effort, mathematical calculation, attention to details, and a broad and generous policy that sees the end.

When Aristotle argued with Philip, years before, that horse-breaking should be included in the educational curriculum of all young men, he evidently divined football and was endeavoring to supplant it.

I think history has been a trifle severe on Alexander. He was elected Captain-General of Greece, and ordered to repel the Persian invasion.

And he did the business once for all. War is not all fighting--Providence is on the side of the strongest commissariat.

Alexander had to train, arm, clothe and feed a million men, and march them long miles across a desert country. The real foe of a man is in his own heart, and the foe of an army is in its own camp--disease takes more prisoners than the enemy. Fever sniped more of our boys in blue than did the hostile Filipinos.

Alexander's losses were princ.i.p.ally from men slain in battle; from this, I take it that Alexander knew a deal of sanitary science, and had a knowledge of practical mathematics, in order to systematize that mob of restless, turbulent helots. We hear of Aristotle cautioning him that safety lies in keeping his men busy--they must not have too much time to think, otherwise mutiny is to be feared. Still, they must not be over-worked, or they will be in no condition to fight when the eventful time occurs. And we are amazed to see this: "Do not let your men drink out of stagnant pools--Athenians, city-born, know no better. And when you carry water on the desert marches, it should be first boiled to prevent its getting sour."

Concerning the Jews, Alexander writes to his teacher and says, "They are apt to be in sullen rebellion against their governors, receiving orders only from their high priests, and this leads to severe measures, which are construed as persecution"; all of which might have been written yesterday by the Czar in a message to The Hague Convention.

Alexander captured the East, and was taken captive by the East. Like the male bee that never lives to tell the tale of its wooing, he succeeded and died. Yet he vitalized all Asia with the seeds of Greek philosophy, turned back the hungry barbaric tide, and made a new map of the Eastern world. He built far more cities than he destroyed. He set Andrew Carnegie an example at Alexandria, such as the world had never up to that time seen. At the entrance to the harbor of the same city he erected a lighthouse, surpa.s.sing far the one at Minot's Ledge, or Race Rock. This structure endured for two centuries, and when at last wind and weather had their way, there was no Hopkinson Smith who could erect another.

At Thebes, Alexander paid a compliment to letters, by destroying every building in the city except the house of the poet, Pindar. At Corinth, when the great, the wise, the n.o.ble, came to pay homage, one great man did not appear. In vain did Alexander look for his card among all those handed in at the door--Diogenes, the Philosopher, oft quoted by Aristotle, was not to be seen.

Alexander went out to hunt him up, and found him sunning himself, propped up against the wall in the Public Square, busy doing nothing.

The philosopher did not arise to greet the conqueror; he did not even offer a nod of recognition.

"I am Alexander--is there not something I can do for you?" modestly asked the descendant of Hercules.

"Just stand out from between me and the sun," replied the philosopher, and went on with his meditations.

Alexander enjoyed the reply so much that he said to his companions, and afterward wrote to Aristotle, "If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes," and thus did strenuosity pay its tribute to self-sufficiency.