these three stages of education there is a
higher mood of thought, wherein the soul, purified, chastened,
enlightened, in communing with itself through _Dialectic_ (the Socratic
art of questioning transfigured) communes also with the Divine, and in
thinking out its own deepest thoughts, thinks out the thoughts of the
great Creator Himself, becomes one with Him, finds its final
realisation through absorption into Him, and in His light sees light.

{172}

CHAPTER XVIII

ARISTOTLE

_An unruly pupil--The philosopher's library--The predominance of
Aristotle--Relation to Plato--The highest philosophy--Ideas and
things--The true realism_

Plato before his death bequeathed his Academy to his nephew Speusippus,
who continued its president for eight years; and on his death the
office passed to Xenocrates, who held it for twenty-five years. From
him it passed in succession to Polemo, Crates, Crantor, and others.
Plato was thus the founder of a school or sect of teachers who busied
themselves with commenting, expanding, modifying here and there the
doctrines of the master. Little of their works beyond the names has
been preserved, and indeed we can hardly regret the loss. These men no
doubt did much to popularise the thoughts of their master, and in this
way largely influenced the later development of philosophy; but they
had nothing substantial to add, and so the stern pruning-hook of time
has cut them off from remembrance.

[297]

Aristotle was the son of a Greek physician, member of the colony of
Stagira in Thrace. His father, Nicomachus by name, was a man of such
{173} eminence in his profession as to hold the post of physician to
Amyntas, king of Macedonia, father of Philip the subverter of Greek
freedom. Not only was his father an expert physician, he was also a
student of natural history, and wrote several works on the subject. We
shall find that the fresh element which Aristotle brought to the
Academic philosophy was in a very great measure just that minute
attention to details and keen apprehension of vital phenomena which we
may consider he inherited from his father. He was born 384 B.C., and
on the death of his father, in his eighteenth year, he came to Athens,
and became a student of philosophy under Plato, whose pupil he
continued to be for twenty years,--indeed till the death of the master.
That he, undoubtedly a far greater man than Speusippus or Xenocrates,
should not have been nominated to