presumably impatient of schooling. Aristotle thought no State should have as many as one
hundred thousand citizens, * and preached the doctrine of the golden mean. I cannot imagine
his pupil regarding him as anything but a prosy old pedant, set over him by his father to keep
him out of mischief. Alexander, it is true, had a certain snobbish respect for Athenian
civilization, but this was common to his whole dynasty, who wished to prove that they were not
barbarians. It was analogous to the feeling of nineteenth-century Russian aristocrats for Paris.
This, therefore, was not attributable to Aristotle's influence. And I do not see anything else in
Alexander that could possibly have come from this source.
It is more surprising that Alexander had so little influence on Aristotle, whose speculations on
politics were blandly oblivious of the fact that the era of City States had given way to the era of
empires. I suspect that Aristotle, to the end, thought of him as "that idle and headstrong boy,
who never could understand anything of philosophy." On the whole, the contacts of these two
great men seem to have been as unfruitful as if they had lived in different worlds.
From 335 B.C. to 323 B.C. (in which latter year Alexander died), Aristotle lived at Athens. It
was during these twelve years that he founded his school and wrote most of his books. At the
death of Alexander, the Athenians rebelled, and turned on his friends, including Aristotle, who
was indicted for impiety, but, unlike Socrates, fled to avoid punishment. In the next year ( 322)
he died.
Aristotle, as a philosopher, is in many ways very different from all his predecessors. He is the
first to write like a professor: his treatises are systematic, his discussions are divided into heads,
he is a professional teacher, not an inspired prophet. His work is critical, careful, pedestrian,
without any trace of Bacchic enthusiasm. The Orphic elements in Plato are watered down in
Aristotle, and mixed with a strong dose of common sense; where he is Platonic, one feels that
his natural temperament has been overpowered by the teaching to which he has been subjected.
He is not passionate, or in any profound sense religious. The errors of his predecessors were the
glorious errors of youth attempting the impossible; his errors are those of age which cannot free
itself of habitual prejudices. He is best in
* Ethics, 1170b.