THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

42
THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
gather together a library; and the foundation of the principles .of library
classification was among his many contributions to scholarship. Therefore
Plato spoke of Aristotle's home as "the house of the reader/' and seems
to have meant the sincerest compliment; but some ancient gossip will have
it that the Master intended a sly but vigorous dig at a certain book-
wormishness in Aristotle. A more authentic quarrel seems to have arisen
towards the end of Plato's life. Our ambitious youth apparently developed
an "QBdipus complex" against
his spiritual father for the favors and
affections of philosophy, and began to hint that wisdom would not die
with Plato; while the old sage spoke of his pupil as a foal that kicks his
2
mother after draining her dry. The learned Zeller, 3 in whose pages
Aristotle almost achieves the Nirvana of respectability, would have us
reject these stories; but we may presume that where there is still so much
smoke there was once a flame.
The other incidents of this Athenian period are still more problematical*
Some tell biographers us that Aristotle founded a school of oratory to
rival Isocrates; and that he had among his pupils in this school the
wealthy Hermias, who was soon to become autocrat of the city-state of
Atarneus. After reaching this elevation Hermias invited Aristotle to his
court; and in the year 344 B. c. he rewarded his teacher for past favors
by bestowing upon him a sister (or a niece) in marriage. One might
suspect this as a Greek gift; but the historians hasten to assure us that
Aristotle, despite his genius, lived happily enough with his wife, and spoke
of her most affectionately in his will. It was just a year later that Philip,
King of Macedon, called Aristotle to the court at Pella to undertake the
education of Alexander. It bespeaks the rising repute of our philosopher
that the greatest monarch of the time, looking about for the greatest
teacher, should single out Aristotle to be the tutor of the future master
of the world.
Philip was determined that his son should have every educational advantage,
for he had made for him illimitable designs. His conquest of
Thrace in 356 B. c. had given him command of gold mines which at
once began to yield him precious metal to ten times the amount then
coming to Athens from the failing silver of Laurium; his people were
vigorous peasants and warriors, as yet unspoiled by city luxury and vice:
here was the combination that would make possible the subjugation of
a hundred petty city-states and the political unification of Greece. Philip
had no sympathy with the individualism that had fostered the art and
intellect of Greece but had at the same time disintegrated her social
order; in all these little capitals he saw not the exhilarating culture and
the unsurpassable art, but the commercial corruption and the political
chaos; he saw insatiable merchants and bankers absorbing the vital re-
*Benn, The Greek Philosophers, London, 1883, vol. i, p. 283.
VoL ip. n-