Polıteía 57
ions dear.” In their early years, “they take delight in living together and do not
yet judge anything with an eye to advantage [not even their friends].”
The blunders characteristic of young men are linked with vehemence and
excess. “They do everything in excess,” the peripatetic observes. “They love too
much, and they hate too much, and they do all things in a similar fashion.”
This quality he attributes to the passionate attachment which the young ex-
hibit for their own opinions. They think they know everything. Accordingly,
when young men “treat others unjustly, they do so out of arrogance [húbrıs],
not wickedness.” In similar fashion, the young like to laugh, and they are par-
ticularly fond of jesting, which Aristotle calls “the húbrıs of the educated man.”
This arrogance would be intolerable were it not balanced by pity. According
to Aristotle, the young measure those about them by their own lack of malice,
and they quite naturally assume that men unjustly suffer all that they have to
endure.^63
Aristotle structures his description of elderly Greek men in much the
same fashion, contrasting their tendencies with those of the young. “Because
the old have lived through many years,” he observes, “they have often been
deceived and have made many more blunders than the young.” Most matters
involving mankind turn out badly, so that their experience of the world causes
the aged to be hesitant.
They “suppose” only; nothing do they “know.” And being of two minds,
they always add a “possibly” or a “perhaps.” They speak of everything in
this fashion and say nothing without reservations. The old are, in addition,
ill-disposed—for this trait is grounded in the assumption that all things
tend to get worse. They are suspicious because of mistrust and mistrustful
because of experience. And because of these things, they neither love nor
hate with any vehemence, but... they are always loving in the expectation
of hating and hating in the expectation of someday loving again. They are,
in fact, pusillanimous [mıkrópsuchoı]. Life has laid them low, and they
desire nothing great or out of the ordinary but, rather, only those things
which support staying alive. As a consequence, the old are anything but
liberal with their substance: property is a necessity and experience has
taught them that wealth is difficult to get and easy to lose. They are also
cowardly and foresee danger from everything—for they are in tempera-
ment opposed to the young. Where the latter are hot-blooded, the former
are cold-blooded—so that old age has paved the way for their becoming
cowards (cowardice being a certain coldness of blood).This cowardice has deep roots. Sensing that they are near death, “old men hold
life dear,” and they tend also “to be fonder of themselves than is proper.” Be-