had curbed their hatred of the invulnerable monarch, and had acceded to any demands he pleased to make.

But when his foot was removed from their neck, when their roaring lion was a helpless carcase, they at once recovered their boldness. They would have no more of the upstart nor of his friends. Above all, no more of his tutor Aristotle; and they looked round for a means to get rid of him at once and for ever.

Men in power consulted with the priests. The result of their conference was that an indictment for impiety was preferred against Aristotle; they could not do better than follow the example of their predecessors, whose plan this had been to silence Socrates.

The indictment was based upon a hymn of praise Aristotle had written in honour of Hermias, the adopted father of his wife. The fact that Aristotle had erected a statue of Hermias at Delphi was construed into his having accorded him divine honours." The accusers also found out passages in his works which they declared to be impious, notably one in which he stated prayer and sacrifices to the gods to be a superstition.

But Aristotle did not meekly submit to be murdered. He said he "would not allow the Athenians a second chance of committing sacrilege," and leaving Athens, took up his abode in Chalcis, the chief town of the isle of Euboea, in the Egean Sea.

When in safety he wrote a defence of his conduct.

But the enraged Athenians would not accept it. First they summoned him to appear and make a personal defence in the Areopagus. Then, when he wisely declined, they not only deprived him of all his rights of citizenship, but passed the sentence of death upon him which they were powerless to execute.

This prevented his return, which he seemed to have considered not impossible; for, instead of installing a successor to his philosophical chair at the Lyceum, he had merely left his school and the library under the care

of Theophrastus, a pupil who had commenced his studies. with Plato, and who then gave promise of a greatness which he afterwards attained.

Before this Aristotle had married a second time—a beautiful slave, Herpyllis. Although he had adored his first wife, the gentle Pythias, he was deeply attached to Herpyllis, the mother of his only son, Nicomachus. Herpyllis nursed him when he fell into ill-health, which, although he outwardly disdained and professed entire indifference to the course events had taken, was probably augmented by the trouble and annoyance caused by the shameful behaviour of the Athenians. Besides being naturally delicate and slightly made—indeed, biographers with their accounts of the thin, elegantly clad man with the fragile limbs and weak eyes who "spoke with a lisp," suggest an effeminate presence-Aristotle was highly nervous and sensitive, a temperament which would suffer from over-study. He was ageing, and his constitution was weakened. The indigestion he had suffered from all his life became severe, and in September, 322 B.C., he died, at about sixty-two years of age.

How tenderly affectionate he was in all relations of life is shown by his will.

He directed that he should be buried in the same grave as his first wife, Pythias.

His wishes for his only daughter, Pythias, are, that she shall marry Nicanor, his adopted son, the son of Proxenus, Aristotle's guardian. Should Nicanor die before or after the marriage, he suggests his clever and greatly trusted pupil Theophrastus as a possible husband and protector for his much-loved child.

His only son, Nicomachus, then evidently still very young, he places under the guardianship of Nicanor.

For his widow, Herpyllis, he makes the most thoughtful provision. She may live where she pleases, and his executors are to see that she is comfortably housed as befits her condition. Should she wish to marry again, he has no

objection, provided the man of her choice be one worthy of her and likely to make her happy.

The philosopher even thinks of his slaves. Some are to be liberated and dowered. None of the young slaves are to be sold; they are to be brought up and cared for till maturity, when, if they show themselves worthy of freedom, it is to be accorded them.

Such a will is a better record than any epitaph. But the epitaph of Aristotle was writ with his own hands in his works. We have seen what Aristotle was in himself; we have now to see what he did.

CHAPTER XIV.

ARISTOTLE: HIS PHILOSOPHY AND HIS WORKS.

THERE are two roads to truth or the actual. One is by the ideas conceived by minds, comparing, measuring them one against the other-which is called in philosophy the "subjective method." The other is close examination with the aid of the senses of what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch, and reasoning from these appearances as to what the object or thing outside us which produces these sensations is in itself. And this is the "objective method," the method adopted by all who placed science, or the actual truth about the unknown, first and foremost.

Aristotle, discontented, disgusted even with the efforts of his predecessors, his clear mind at once detecting the false steps made by each, embraced and held fast the Objective Method.

The Objective Method was, at this era, a bold innovation. That it was such is proved by the fact that after hundreds of years scientific researchers fell into the same errors, and blundered as miserably as did the one mind of Aristotle in its frantic but abortive efforts to grasp and hold everything at once. The errors of Aristotle with regard to physical facts, and the like errors in the works of Bacon, show that the progress of science in eighteen or more centuries had been infinitesimal.

The method called the Inductive, of which Aristotle may be considered the generator-the method which begins with the outside, the many appearances, and penetrates cautiously, step by step, to the centre or mainspring

of whatever subject it considers-was here in its infancy. The method was there; but it was rude, rough, and incomplete.

The first step in the method of reasoning started by Aristotle was observation-observation, acute and close, of each and every appearance to the senses. The second was to reason, carefully and steadily, upon these appearances (induction). The third step was to deduce a result from the first two (deduction).

The result was obtained. An idea, supposed to be a fact, had come out from the observations and the reasonings upon those observations; just as a certain sum total would appear at the bottom of the slate of a boy who was adding up columns of figures. But the boy would not consider his sum finished unless he put it to the test of a "proof."

The proof, the "verification" that the result of the observation and the reasoning was true, was the fourth and most important step of all; and this step was omitted, not only by Aristotle, but afterwards by Bacon, the Aristotle of the seventeenth century.

Plato, who had without doubt tested the evidence of the senses for if he had found their testimony valid he would have enlisted them in his service-discarded the impressions made upon the mind through the body as utterly useless, as too partial and imperfect to be trusted. Mental abstractions, ideas, were alone to be depended upon.

Aristotle, considering mental "intuitions" vague and delusive, pinned his faith upon the senses. He relied upon experience and the reasonings formed upon that which experience taught him. He struck the right chord, as the gradual unearthing of scientific facts by the great minds of succeeding centuries has satisfactorily proved. Had his observations been more vigilant, closer, and had he considered proof or verification necessary, the absurdities into which he was occasionally drawn would have been impossible.