XI. OF THE SCHOLAS LOSOPHY. soul, the principle of thought and life, is something CHAP. distinct from the material world, is so just a sentiment, that Aristotle seems to be reasonable in re- HISTORY quiring, that more elements should be taken into our consideration, than those which our five senses feel. TIC PHIMoses, from divine authority, has declared the spirit of man to be the breath of God." The most distinguished nations of antiquity had traditions of this sort, which their greatest reasoners favored; and Solomon has given us a distinction on this subject which there is no benefit in rejecting." The writings of Aristotle appear to have been beyond the taste, and probably, the comprehension of his contemporaries and country. Theophrastus, his favorite disciple, to whom he left them, may have understood and valued them; but that this elegant and acute Athenian should, in his disposal of them, pass by all his ingenious countrymen, and even all the cultivated states of Greece, and bequeath them to Neleus, an obscure inhabitant of an obscure city of Pergamus, in Asia, whose heirs locked them up in a chest, seems to imply, that they were compositions not suited to his own times and nation, tho destined to interest a remote posterity. They remained in this chest till the Pergamenian kings searching every where for books, then only manuscripts, to form a great library in their metropolis, the descendants of Neleus, fearing to be deprived of what, tho useless to them, they supposed to be valuable, at least as property, hid them from human sight and knowlege in a vault under ground. Here they lay unknown and untouched for 130 years. By that time the possessors of this buried treasure wanting 51 Gen. c. 2. v. 7. 52 Eccles. c. 12. v. 7. BOOK money, and finding that Apellico, a rich citizen of VI. Athens, was giving large prices for rare works to LITERARY put in his library, they brought Aristotle out of his sepulchre, and sold them to the wealthy book colENGLAND. lector. He found them so rotten, from damp and age, HISTORY OF that they would scarcely hang together, and were, in many parts, illegible; he had them copied, and the chasms made by the moisture and worms supplied, as well as the ability of the day would allow, by conjectural insertions, which have generally made the difficult parts more difficult than before. But here they slept undisturbed upon his shelves, till Sylla, about 85 years before the Christian era, coming to Athens, and seizing this library, transported these, with their bibliothecal companions, to Rome; not to study them, but to make them a part of that library which he wished also to be a portion of his popular reputation. 53 But fortunately for Aristotle and for the world, so far as he has benefited it, there was a man at Rome, Tyrannion, who having been carried there a prisoner from Pontus, was, under the patronage of Cicero, reading lectures in that city. This expatriated student was intimate with Sylla's librarian, was himself a great book collector, and revered the memory of Aristotle. Seeing the copy of this philosopher's works in Sylla's library, he obtained permission from his friend to transcribe it; he communicated his labors to Andronicus Rhodius, who from this MS. first made the works of Aristotle known to the public; nearly 250 years after the hand which composed them had moul 63 Prideaux Connect. 4. p. 528. Strabo, l. 13. p. 609. Plutarch Sylla. Stanley, Hist. Phil. p. 6. Ib. Aristot. c. 16. XI. OF THE SCHOLAS LOSOPHY. dered into dust.54 From this time they began slowly CHAP. to creep on the attention of the learned. One Grecian after another, under the emperors, commented upon HISTORY some of them." A Peripatetic school flourished in great celebrity at Alexandria; and altho Caracalla, TIC PHIbelieving the story, that Aristotle prepared or suggested the poison that was thought by some to have caused Alexander's death, drove the Peripatetics from Alexandria, and ordered their books to be burnt,56 the reputation of Aristotle continued to increase, until his writings interested the Gothic nations, and became the passionate admiration of the Arabian philosophers." yet The dominion of Aristotle arose and continued, from the persuasion, that he was the superior intellect among the ancients, and that his works contained a greater quantity of truth and information than those of any other author. This conviction prevailed among the Arabians, and over all Europe, as well as in England. His philosophy was not adopted here or elsewhere, because schoolmen taught it, or because the Spanish Arabs pursued it; its predominance was founded on the general belief, and that upon the practical experience, of its real superiority. This common feeling, and its basis, were expressed by the student consulted at Pisa, by Montaigne, whose general thesis says, was, "that the touchstone and standard of all solid imaginations and of all truths were, their conformity to the doctrine of Aristotle; all besides he 54 Prid. p. 529. Strab. 609. Cicero, Ep. 1. 2. and 1. 4. Suidas, voc. Tyran. Plut. Lucullo. 55 Buble has given an elaborate alphabetical list of his Grecian commentators, I. p. 186-315, 56 Xiphilin in Carac. 329. 57 On his Arabian translators and their commentaries, see Buble, 315-327. A List of the Latin ones follows, 327-348. HISTORYOF ENGLAND. BOOK was vain and chimerical, for that he had seen all and VI. said all."58 To us this character sounds extravagant, LITERARY and we justly deem it to be so, because it is no longer applicable and proper; but it was neither untrue nor foolish in the middle ages. No other man could then stand in competition with Aristotle, for mind, knowlege, acuteness, judgment and utility. His books actually combined more intellectual excellence and serviceable treasures of all sorts than those of any other which had then survived; and they created a mental ability and affluence in the world, which without them would not have then existed. He certainly kept natural philosophy united with religion, and with the belief of a soul, or immaterial principle; and thus, being the antagonist of atheism and of materialism, and being an indefatigable searcher after intellectual causation, he was perfectly unitable with christianity; but when, as the progress of knowlege, the activity of ingenious curiosity, and its successful researches on all sides brought to the world's perception and use, larger stores of information, new truths, and a flood of light on every subject, which no preceding age had witnessed; then, the same correct judgment of mankind which had given to Aristotle his throne, dispossessed him of it. The ancient intellectual Saturn was deposed by his offspring, the new mental Jupiter. Friar Bacon, who first saw the beams of the new day, and was the great herald of the new sovereignty, yet did justice to the old monarch who was still governing, and always speaks of Aristotle with grateful veneration: but by the time that his namesake lord Bacon lived, the useful revolution 58 V. 1. c. 25. p. 164. XI. OF THE LOSOPHY. could be deferred no longer; the new power and CHAP. proficiency of mind which had arisen, the new mines of knowlege which had been opened, the new pro- HISTORY perty which had been drawn out and manufactured into great and beautiful objects and conveniences TIC PHIfrom them, and the better rules of thinking and philosophizing which all these had suggested, led the first enlarged and congenial mind that could accomplish the adventure, and that deserved the triumph, to assume without usurping the sceptre. Lord Bacon was a commanding and capacious intellect of this description; and what many in his day, and before him, had felt to be necessary, discerned to be practicable, desired to be done, and began to attempt, he advanced forward singly to achieve and complete. He shewed the world that the time had arrived for the substitution of a system of study, thought and information, superior to that of Aristotle; he proved its greater excellence to the conviction of the sound reasoner and candid observer; he appealed to their impartial judgment, and he was soon made the Agamemnon of the new philosophy, which after many years hard-fought siege, and continual battle, destroyed the prevailing empire of the venerable Peripatetic. We will subjoin some of Aristotle's opinions on the most important subjects of the human thought. ARISTOTLE'S OPINIONS. TO live well and to act well, are but other expressions for being happy; but to live well, rests in this--that we live virtuously. This is the object and the happiness, and the optimum of life. Mag. Mor. 1. c. 4. On the Deity. You would not wish any one to be so fearless as not to fear the Deity; because such a person would not be a brave man, but a |