All the souls had now chosen their lives, and they went in the order of their choice to Lachesis, who sent with them the genius whom they had severally chosen, to be the guardian of their lives and the fulfiller of the choice: this genius led the souls first to Clōtho, and drew them within the revolution of the spindle impelled by her hand, thus ratifying the destiny of each; and then, when they were fastened to this, carried them to Atropos, who spun the threads and made them irreversible, whence without turning round they passed beneath the throne of Necessity; and when they had all passed, they marched on in a scorching heat to the plain of Forgetfulness, which was a barren waste destitute of trees and verdure; and then towards evening they encamped by the river of Unmindfulness, whose water no vessel can hold ; of this they were all obliged to drink a certain quantity, and those who were not saved by wisdom drank more than was necessary; and each one as he drank forgot all things. Now after they had gone to rest, about the middle of the night there was a thunderstorm and earthquake, and then in an instant they were driven upwards in all manner of ways to their birth, like stars shooting. He himself was hindered from drinking the water. But in what manner or by what means he returned to the body he could not say; only, in the morning, awaking suddenly, he found himself lying on the pyre.

And thus, Glaucon, the tale has been saved and has not perished, and will save us if we are obedient to the word spoken ; and we shall pass safely over the river of Forgetfulness and our soul will not be defiled. Wherefore my counsel is, that we hold fast ever to the heavenly way and follow after justice and virtue always, considering that the soul is immortal and able to endure every sort of good and every sort of evil. Thus shall we live dear to one another and to the gods, both while remaining here and when we receive our reward. And it shall be well with us both in this life and in the pilgrimage of a thousand years which we have been describing.

XI

PHILOSOPHY: ARISTOTLE

Aristotle penetrated into the whole universe of things and subjected its scattered wealth to intelligence: to him the greater number of the philosophical sciences owe their origin and differentiation.-HEGEL.

ARISTOTLE was born about 385. of a medical family in the small town of Stagira in Macedonia, on the fringe of Greek civilization. From his eighteenth to his thirty-eighth year he was a student in Plato's school at Athens. On Plato's death he joined a fellow student, who from a slave had become banker, and from banker prince of Assos in Northern Asia Minor, where he maintained Macedonian interests against the Persian king till he met a violent end. On his death Aristotle fled, and in 343 became tutor of the Macedonian prince, who was to conquer Persia and carry Hellenism to the East. These were his two contacts with practical life and the outside world. In 335 he retired to Athens, to found his famous school or university at the Lyceum, and spend his last years in teaching and research. He died in 322. His will, like Shakespeare's, shows a nature practical, considerate, affectionate.

Aristotle is a different type from his two great predecessors, and had neither the personality of the one nor the vision and imagination of the other. His achievement is indicated by the fact that no modern book on him treats satisfactorily alike his scientific and his philosophical and political works. Aristotle covers a field wider than the modern writer can command. He belongs to that finest and rarest type of human intellect in which the great humanist and the great man of science meet. On logic, moral philosophy, politics, metaphysics, psychology, physics, zoology (including embryology), poetry, the technique of speaking and writing, he wrote epoch-making works, which governed thought for more than a thousand years, and some of which serve as text-books to the present day. Neither before or since has any human being covered so many fields of knowledge. Nor was his study superficial. We know, for instance, some of his studies preparatory to his writing his work on politics; they include a

collection of 158 constitutions, works On Government by Princes, On the Laws of Non-Greek States, On the Territorial Claims of States, On Monarchy, On Colonies, On the Statesman, On Justice, On Economics.

It is a feature of Greek Literature that its writers are often complementary to each other, one exhibiting the features that another lacks. This is so with Thucydides and Herodotus, as with Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; and it is so with Plato and Aristotle. They have points of resemblance. Both founded schools for teaching and research; both were scientific by temperament, though Plato inclined to mathematics and the more abstract subjects, Aristotle to the natural sciences. The first difference which strikes the reader is between the easy and brilliant style of Plato and the dry, abrupt, ill-arranged sentences of Aristotle; this unlikeness is due to the accident that, though both published works written in attractive style for the public, and both lectured privately to their pupils, it is the lecture notes of Aristotle and the published works of Plato which have survived. Yet the differences between the two men are fundamental.. Plato stood to Aristotle somewhat as Ruskin stood to J. S. Mill. Plato has a poet's impetuous and soaring temperament which, impatient of anything less than the ideal, breaks through the fetters of fact and re-shapes the world to the lines of his vision. Aristotle in the temper of natural science starts in politics or morals, as in biology, from the world of observed phenomena, collects, classifies, and analyses facts, never losing sight of earth. Thus he commences in his Ethics and Politics with the views generally held in his day, in his Poetics with the drama of the fifth and fourth centuries, building up his theories from these. He accepts things as he finds them, sometimes too contentedly, for he defends slavery, conceives no other state than the Greek 'city', and has no eyes for the new world, which, even as he wrote, Alexander was bringing to birth. A comparison of the Republic with the Politics illustrates the difference between the two men. Aristotle has the defects and the merits of the practical man and the scientific observer; his vision is precise and accurate, but it has a narrower range than Plato's. The politician will go to Plato for inspiration, to Aristotle for practical advice.

Of Aristotle's science we shall see something later (p. 424). His writings on Physics, deep as is the mark which they have set on thought, have cramped as much as forwarded it, and are probably his least successful work. His metaphysical and