THE RECOVERED ARISTOTLE. ANOTHER EGYPTIAN QUESTION NOT THE MAHDI THIS TIME, ONLY A PAPY RUS. From The Leisure Hour. of one hundred and fifty-eight, and that leaves one hundred and fifty-seven to follow. But we forget; it is generally underStood that Aristotle never really did become a mummy till comparatively recent times, when he got into the schools at Oxford. He had been drying during the Middle Ages, but then only did he become thoroughly high and dry. - the THE GREATEST LITERARY FIND OF THE - a THE tide of time, says Lord Bacon, is wont to carry down trifles while it lets things of solid weight sink beneath the flood. A comedy survives, while a treatise on physiology is engulphed. All the more joy, therefore, is there among the learned when the ocean of time casts upon the shore some of its weightier treasures. THE manuscript before us dates from The date is fixed Aristotle's "Constitution of Athens" the first century A.D. emerged from the deep last Christmas. by the fact that it is written on the back Our own British Museum is the happy Greek bailiff of a farm in the Delta, enof an old ledger, in which Didymus, the possessor of this treasure-trove greatest piece of literary flotsam and jet-have an entry as to the payment for matered his accounts. On the one side you sam that this century has yet seen. There in Bloomsbury, it rests, after no one knows nure, on the other as to the payment of what adventures. One of a consignment the one side it is a runaway slave, on the the jurors in the Athenian assemblies; on of manuscripts from Egypt, its turn came at last. Unrolled tenderly, bit by bit de- other the return of the Alcmæonidæ ciphered, at last it dawned upon the quaint mixture. Papyrus was valuable, delighted mind of its scholarly transcriber and when the master of Didymus, himself that this time a genuine antique was be- a Greek, wanted a copy of a well-known fore him, and, as the work proceeded, no work for his library, he used the clean side doubt was left that this was the celebrated of the old roll, unsoiled with all ignoble treatise on the "Constitution of Athens,' Did not Burns himself, when he so much quoted by ancient writers. Its wanted a commonplace book, purchase an genuineness is beyond dispute. This is old ledger, because it was strongly bound, no sequel to the "Women of Salamis" by This old ledger was not a book, it was a the paper good, and the whole cheap? Xavier Balderdike. It was printed and roll. The reader unrolled it till he had a published with a most learned commentary last Christmas, and is at present occupying page before him, and when that was read with delight the brethren of the scholastic he rolled it up with the one hand, unrollguild throughout Europe. Dryasdustius, ing another page with the other hand; and Heavysternius, Hairsplitterius are hard at so on, he rolled his way through the manit, emending, reconciling, and illustrating. uscript. But a glance at the papyrus itself Think of the delight of building a magnifiwill tell more than pages of description. cent sentence out of such fragments as: Thou gr... bushel of ... "He. ... "" use. mayest I fear thee, Ancient Manuscript! And thou art long, and lank, and brown It is written on rolls of papyrus, and looks as if it might have formed part of the wrappages of a mummy. Could Aristotle have become a mummy in Egypt, and were his own manuscripts made his cerement? If so, the learned world may have enough to do before the play is played out, for the Athenian Constitution was but one till he feels his heart burn within him and We tramp of his legions is everywhere heard. Where, on the Ægean shore, a city stands, We cast a delighted eye around, linger without parts, and indivisible, yet moving all things, a man whose whole theory of life was to enter by contemplation into the thoughts of the divine mind- to find such a one accused of impiety by those who had but lately offered divine honors to his pupil is indeed strange. Yet how little has religion had to do with most religious persecutions! Aristotle quitted Athens, lest, as he said, "through him the Athenians might again sin against philosophy, as they had done in the case of Socrates." The life of Aristotle is contemporaneous with a brilliant, or a sad, epoch in Greek history, according as we choose to regard it. It is interwoven with the brilliant con quest of the East, with the diffusion of Greek language and manners over subject races; while it witnessed the quenching of that which was distinctively Greek the free life of the citizen. With Alexander the essentially human ceased for ages to be a factor in politics. We are handed over to conqueror after conqueror, to centralized administration after centralized administration, to the reign of brute force wedded to superstition. About the time of Aristotle's birth the Gauls were pouring down into Italy for the sack of Rome; the year before his death the Roman legions had passed under the yoke on the Caudine Forks. Little was there to indicate that in the school of adversity was being trained a mightier engine of war than the Macedonian phalanx, and those civic virtues were being formed which would give new masters to the world and a new organization to political life. The constitution of Rome was not one of those included in Aristotle's list. ARISTOTLE was a Greek, but not an Athenian. He was a native of Stageira, on the coast of Thrace; hence his sobriquet of the Stageirite. His family cultivated the art of healing as an hereditary profession. His father was physician to the Macedonian court, hence the connection which led to Aristotle's being appointed tutor to Alexander. The relations between tutor and scholar seem to have been friendly throughout. Aristotle made a special recension of the text of Homer, There is often a touch of irony in the which the imitator of Achilles slept with philosopher's position. He is engaged in under his pillow; and Alexander gave di- summing up the achievements of his time, rections that every means should be placed in generalizing and systematizing knowl at the disposal of the sage in pursuing his edge, in analyzing, ordering, and arrangenquiries into the nature of plants and ing; but while he is doing so the world animals. The conqueror of Persia may has not stopped; changes are taking perhaps have sneered at Aristotle's polit-place, new facts are already modifying ical theories, as a German emperor may conclusions; while he is dipping his have done at those of Hegel and Fichte, but he regarded him as harmless. Aristotle never seems to have taken any part in practical politics. He was banished from Athens, nominally on account of impiety, really on account of his close connection with the Macedonian party. Of course, this was after Alexander's death. It is strange to find a man who could define God as an infinite, eternal, and unchangeable being, separate from sensible things, void of corporeal quantity, | bucket into the water, the stream has already flowed past him. The philosopher is thus often slightly behind his age; while he pauses to think up into unity the results of the past, the present slips through his fingers. Aristotle, busy with his municipal institutions and political ideal, sees not the shadow creeping up behind, is quite unconscious of his own part in polishing the instrument of destruction; the educator of Alexander does not seem to have had the least idea that the Macedo. 66 nian conquests had given the death-blow | world of Europe. Albertus Magnus, and to the constitutional development of the the Angel of the Schools,' "Thomas Greek city, and that his collection of civic Aquinas, spent their lives in expounding institutions might take its place in the him and in pouring Christian doctrine into museum of historical curiosities. Aris- the forms of philosophic thought which totle and his speculations are much; but had been elaborated by the pagan thinker. they, too, were somewhat, who, with tongue The Church of Rome still feeds her acoand sword, defended the liberties of lytes on Christian truths poured from Greece - Demosthenes, whose voice still Aristotelian vessels. It was a hint given resounds through the ages, and the un- by Aristotle, in the statement that the known men who bled on "that disastrous world was small and that there was only day fatal to freedom." Was Choroneia one sea between the Pillars of Hercules all in vain? Was Senlac? and India, that set Columbus thinking about the discovery of America. ARISTOTLE ESSENTIALLY AN INDUCTIVE But not in the West alone was the Greek sage a mighty name. His greatest THE "Constitution of Athens "is proba- triumphs, perhaps, were gained in the bly the most important of those preliminary East. For five hundred years he ruled studies which were made by or for Aris- the schools in Bagdad and Cairo, and it totle as materials for his 66 Politics." was by way of Cordova, through the He collected, as far as he could, accounts Moors that he re-entered Europe, to dissiof the different political institutions in the pate the intellectual darkness of the Midcities and States around him, thus basing dle Ages. In the East he is still known his speculations on the firm groundwork as a mighty wizard. Professor Eastwick, of observed facts. Such was ever his when endeavoring to explain to an eastern method, relatively to his epoch and the cook what an Irish stew was, was told by means at his disposal. The Greek philos- the Oriental that he knew very well about opher laid as much stress on observation "Aristo." It would not be difficult to and experiment as Lord Bacon himself show that no one has more profoundly did. It was ignorance of the real Aris- influenced the world of thought than Aristotle which led to his methods being mis-totle; but we must return to the Constituapprehended. In the Middle Ages, when tion of Athens. knowledge was at a low ebb, the recovery of his writings seemed like the dawn of a new revelation, and Aristotle became one of the authorities of the Church. Histotle. A few reflections that rise to the conclusions in astronomy and physics shrewd enough guesses considering his opportunities became dogmas to dissent from which was heresy. His methods of patient investigation into the realities of things were forgotten, his half-understood words became laws of thought. Galileo felt what it was to contradict the "prince of philosophers." As late as 1629 an act of the French Parliament was passed forbidding attacks upon Aristotle. Chaucer testifies to his influence when he says of the Oxford scholar: This is not the place for, nor would our powers be equal to the task of, thoroughly examining the political philosophy of Aris surface, some glimpses at the obvious are all that we can present to our readers, content if by any means we may awake in them some sympathy with the past, without weakening their resolution to realize their ideal in the present. The recovered "Constitution of Athens," while giving much food for the specialist in the shape of details, which supplement, or have to be reconciled with, other authorities, adds but little to our general conception of the course of Athenian development. It gives us, however, one good story, which comes like a cup of For him was lever han at his bed's hed refreshing in the wilderness. Pisistratus, Twentie bookes clad with black or red the tyrant of Athens, who, for a tyrant, Of Aristotle, and of his philosophy Than robes riche, or fiddle, or gay sautrie. seems to have been a very good fellow, kept his government going by a tax of Dante sees Aristotle sitting on the con- a tenth. Walking one day among the fines of hell, at the head of the philosophic rugged hills of the western part of Attica, family master of those that know. We he found a countryman toiling away among find him in the "Lay of the Last Min- stones and gravel. "What crop," he instrel; the mighty book of the wizard quired, "do you expect to raise there?" Michael Scott was neither more nor less "Aches and rheumatism," was the reply; than a translation of Aristotle. For cen- "and may Pisistratus take his tithe of turies Aristotle dominated the intellectual | them!" This surely smacks of Dean Ramsay. At all events, there are Scotch | life there is no narrow-mindedness; our neigh THE MODERN STANDPOINT. THERE are two things which we miss in this sketch of the Athenian Constitution; two points of view which are not taken, probably because they are modern. There is no attempt to describe social conditions, and no necessary connection is shown between the different stages of political development. We have lists of changes in the political arrangements, just as we have lists of magistrates. The Constitution at any particular time is evidently judged on its merits, in the light of certain ideas as to the proper end of government; that its existence just in that way and at that time was the outcome of certain necessary conditions is not realized. There is no political perspective in Aristotle, any more than in Plutarch; Draco and Solon are neither more nor less historical than Pericles. It is, no doubt, the difference of standpoint. We in modern times are looking back over three thousand years of recorded history. Aristotle had not much more than three hundred behind him. We are familiar with the decline and fall of nations. Aristotle may have seen the destruction by violence of small communities, but Nineveh he knew not; Egypt and Babylon were still living realities. He could not see, as we do, that the brightest period of Greek life was over. That period was the age of Pericles. Just before the outbreak of that disastrous war, which for nearly thirty years raged like a conflagration over Greece, and ruined Athens materially and Sparta morally, was one of those halcyon seasons so rare in the history of the human race, when there is a perfect equilibrium of opposing forces, when moral and physical well-being go hand-in-hand, and a nation is clothed with happiness as with a garment. Listen to the description which Pericles gives in the celebrated funeral oration in the second book of Thucydides: bor may do what he likes, so long as it is harmless, without being frowned upon. Our private intercourse is free and hearty, but liberty does not degenerate into license. While we respect authority and the laws in a reverent regulated by those unwritten laws, whose seat spirit, our conduct to each other is especially is in the heart and whose sanction is the general sentiment of humanity. If our public life is busy, our private life affords us many relaxations. Our home life is simple and elegant; we love the beautiful, but without ostentation, and we pursue intellectual pleas Our wealth ures without loss of manliness. we employ for real use and enjoyment, not for display and vainglory. And so on. The whole passage is remarkable as representing the highest level of present English life. We ask ourselves as we read-What has the world been about during the vast gap of time which intervenes? We seem to have been wandering about through strange and desert places full of tombs and dead men's bones. The death of an individual is sad enough, but sadder still is the gradual wasting away of a noble civilization. No enquiry can be more useful than that which seeks to disentangle the causes of the decline of States, the pathological branch of history. None is more fascinating. CAUSES OF ATHENIAN DECAY. ARISTOTLE finds the cause of the decay of Athens in the corruption of the democracy. When Pericles was gone, who, by the force of his character and abilities, had imposed upon the republic something of the character of a constitutional monarchy, Athens was left, like a ship deprived of its steersman, to weather the storm of the Peloponnesian War. The plague which carried off Pericles seems to have been fatal to his party. His whole circle the men to whom he trusted to carry out his ideas - seem to have been swept away. The calamity was unforeseen, and is a striking example of the danger of depending too much on great men, of involving political questions with the personal character of statesmen. Pericles had been the mind and conscience of Athens. He was elevated above the mass as an ideal figure, as the personification of what was noblest and best in the Athenian democracy. He was at once a guide and We do not copy our neighbors; we are an example to them. We are called a democracy because the many, not the few, govern. But, if all are equal in the sight of the law and entitled to the same protection, this does not preclude special merit from being specially recognized. There is an eagerness amongst A very different kind of polius to honor those who by their abilities ben- tician succeeded him. In Cleon we have efit the State. Poverty or obscurity is no bar a statesman of a lower type. Cleon was to the advancement of talent. In our public not consciously dishonest; he seems life there is no exclusiveness, in our private | rather to have posed as the good, straight a reprover. forward, bluff friend of the people. No subtleties or far-reaching schemes for him. He takes no broad general view of policy as a whole, but goes from step to step, dealing with particulars. His ideal he finds in the wants of a party, which often in themselves seem reasonable enough as directed to some immediate good. Two often the immediate good is purchased by a reversion of calamity. The inherent dishonesty of a politician of this stamp is, that instead of directing he follows; his ideal is to find out what the majority want, not to educate the people to desire the best things. He is like a man crossing a stream on stepping-stones or climbing a crag, who looks no farther ahead than from stone to stone or step to step, and thus finds himself at last, by a perfectly cautious and careful procedure, in a position where there is no going forward or turning back without extreme peril. the case of any other city with weaker resources and less recuperative energy, and which did, in effect, cripple Athens seriously, and in removing Pericles prepared the way for the fatal blunder of the Sicilian expedition. This was the one danger which Pericles foresaw. He was well aware of the defects of the Athenian qualities, and he dreaded that his countrymen would give themselves away to their enemies through their light-hearted rushing into distant and speculative expeditions. Had the Athenians been successful instead of the Spartans, it does not seem likely that the result as regards the development of the Greek race as a whole would have been much different. The Greek city had reached that stage of development when it must either stand still, which in politics is the first step backwards, or allow itself to be modified by new principles. Looking back, we can see that the Cleon was succeeded by worse men, and real problem was, how could the Greek in this gradual deterioration of the tone of race obtain political unity, so as to pre public life Aristotle finds one of the great sent a united front and organized resources causes of the downfall of Athens. It is, against the surrounding barbarism? The no doubt, a serious matter when the men little Greek cities were like so many canwho by their culture and wealth are raised dles which could be blown out one by one, above sordid motives, withdraw from pub-as the Persian did by the Greek cities of lic life; but this in a free State is often Asia Minor. If Pericles could have permuch more apparent than real. Where suaded Greece to accept his notion of there is work to be done good men and common action, or federation, it would true will step forward and do it. In the have been more than to succeed against case of our own country, where representa- Sparta. But such ideas were probably tive bodies seem sometimes to degenerate regarded as outside the pale of practical in quality, it will usually be found that the politics. The narrow exclusiveness of work has settled into routine, burning Greek citizenship rendered political questions are quiescent, and the old lead-growth impossible. The stranger who ers are turning their energies into other quarters, where fighting has to be done. The fact is mob-orators and paid committee men did not destroy Athens. Nor was there in Athens anything like a permanent loss of moral tone. We can see this better than Aristotle could. We see the whole circle of which he only saw an arc, and we look at Greek life free from Greek prejudices. The magnificent patience with which the people of Athens, the ochlocracy as Aristotle calls them, bore up under their calamities, contrasts splendidly with the self-seeking and cruelty of the more aristocratic party. The advantage is on the side of the mass. It is the men of culture and wealth who are the cravens. Athens lost in the game of war owing to two causes chiefly, both material and both obvious the one an unavoidable calamity, the other a deliberate blunder. The first was the great plague, which would have settled the struggle at once in came to Athens to reside remained out- The This is Aristotle's ideal. Individual excellence in the citizen is his aim. Such excellence can only be obtained in the best State, and it is to be the aim of the practical politician to organize the State in such a way as to produce the best qualities in the citizen. Hence the State must be small, so that all the citizens may know each other. Slaves are necessary in order that the citizens may have leisure and may not be soiled with ignoble toil. His ideal city must not be on the seashore, lest a coarse seafaring population might spoil the amenity, or foreign habits creep too easily in. Nor yet must it be too far from the sea, but should have a port at a few miles distant, so that it may have the ad vantages arising from the importation of foreign commodities a picture very evidently drawn from Athens and the Piræus |