The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
practical is divided into ethical and political, under which last head
are comprised considerations affecting not only the state, but also the
management, of a single house. The theoretical part, too, is subdivided
into physics and logic; the latter forming not a single division,
turning on one special point, but being rather an instrument for every
art brought to a high degree of accuracy. And he has laid down two
separate objects as what it is conversant about, the persuasive and the
true. And he has used two means with reference to each end; dialectics
and rhetoric, with reference to persuasion; analytical examination and
philosophy, with reference to truth; omitting nothing which can bear
upon discovery, or judgment, or use. Accordingly, with reference to
discovery, he has furnished us with topics and works on method, which
form a complete armoury of propositions, from which it is easy to provide
one’s self with an abundance of probable arguments for every kind of
question. And with reference to judgment, he has given us the former and
posterior analytics; and by means of the former analytics, we may arrive
at a critical examination of principles; by means of the posterior, we
may examine the conclusions which are deduced from them. With reference
to the use or application of his rules, he has given us works on
discussion, on question, on disputation, on sophistical refutation, on
syllogism, and on things of that sort.
He has also furnished us with a double criterion of truth. One, on the
perception of those effects, which are according to imagination; the
other, the intelligence of those things which are ethical, and which
concern politics, and economy, and laws. The chief good he has defined
to be the exercise of virtue in a perfect life. He used also to say,
that happiness was a thing made up of three kinds of goods. First of
all, the goods of the soul, which he also calls the principal goods in
respect of their power; secondly, the goods of the body, such as health,
strength, beauty, and things of that sort; thirdly, external goods, such
as wealth, nobility of birth, glory, and things like those. And he taught
that virtue was not sufficient of itself to confer happiness; for that
it had need besides of the goods of the body, and of the external goods,
for that a wise man would be miserable if he were surrounded by distress,
and poverty, and circumstances of that kind. But, on the other hand, he
said, that vice was sufficient of itself to cause unhappiness, even if
the goods of the body and the external goods were present in the greatest
possible degree. He also asserted that the virtues did not reciprocally
follow one another, for that it was possible for a prudent, and just,
and impartial man, to be incontinent and intemperate; and he said, that
the wise man was not destitute of passions, but endowed with moderate
passions.
He also used to define friendship as an equality of mutual benevolence.
And he divided it into the friendship of kindred, and of love, and of
those connected by ties of hospitality. And he said, that love was
divided into sensual and philosophical love. And that the wise man would
feel the influence of love, and would occupy himself in affairs of state,
and would marry a wife, and would live with a king. And as there were
three kinds of life, the speculative, the practical, and the voluptuous,
he preferred the speculative. He also considered the acquisition of
general knowledge serviceable to the acquisition of virtue. As a natural
philosopher, he was the most ingenious man that ever lived in tracing
effects back to their causes, so that he could explain the principles of
the most trifling circumstances; on which account he wrote a great many
books of commentaries on physical questions.
He used to teach that God was incorporeal, as Plato also asserted, and
that his providence extends over all the heavenly bodies; also, that he
is incapable of motion. And that he governs all things upon earth with
reference to their sympathy with the heavenly bodies. Another of his
doctrines was, that besides the four elements there is one other, making
the fifth, of which all the heavenly bodies are composed; and that this
one possesses a motion peculiar to itself, for it is a circular one.
That the soul is incorporeal, being the first ἐντελέχεια; for it is
the ἐντελέχεια of a physical and organic body, having an existence in
consequence of a capacity for existence. And this is, according to him,
of a twofold nature. By the word ἐντελέχεια, he means something which
has an incorporeal species, either in capacity, as a figure of Mercury
in wax, which has a capacity for assuming any shape; or a statue in
brass; and so the perfection of the Mercury or of the statue is called
ἐντελέχεια, with reference to its habit. But when he speaks of the
ἐντελέχεια[47] of a natural body, he does so because, of bodies some are
wrought by the hands, as for instance, those which are made by artists,
for instance, a tower, or a ship; and some exist by nature, as the bodies
of plants and animals. He has also used the term with reference to an
organic body, that is to say, with reference to something that is made,
as the faculty of sight for seeing, or the faculty of hearing for the
purpose of hearing. The capacity of having life must exist in the thing
itself. But the capacity is twofold, either in habit or in operation. In
operation, as a man, when awake, is said to have a soul; in habit, as the
same is said of a man when asleep. That, therefore, he may come under his
definition, he has added the word capacity.
He has also given other definitions on a great many subjects, which it
would be tedious to enumerate here. For he was in every thing a man of
the greatest industry and ingenuity, as is plain from all his works which
I have lately given a list of; which are in number nearly four hundred,
the genuineness of which is undoubted. There are, also, a great many
other works attributed to him, and a number of apophthegms which he never
committed to paper.
XIV. There were eight persons of the name of Aristotle. First of all, the
philosopher of whom we have been speaking; the second was an Athenian
statesman, some of whose forensic orations, of great elegance, are
still extant; the third was a man who wrote a treatise on the Iliad;
the fourth, a Siciliot orator, who wrote a reply to the Panegyric of
Isocrates; the fifth was the man who was surnamed Myth, a friend of
Æschines, the pupil of Socrates; the sixth was a Cyrenean, who wrote a
treatise on Poetry; the seventh was a schoolmaster, who is mentioned by
Aristoxenus in his Life of Plato; the eighth, was an obscure grammarian,
to whom a treatise on Pleonasm is attributed.
XV. And the Stagirite had many friends, the most eminent of whom was
Theophrastus, whom we must proceed to speak of.
LIFE OF THEOPHRASTUS.
I. Theophrastus was a native of Eresus, the son of Melantas, a fuller,
as we are told by Athenodorus in the eighth book of his Philosophical
Conversations.
II. He was originally a pupil of Leucippus, his fellow citizen, in his
own country; and subsequently, after having attended the lectures of
Plato, he went over to Aristotle. And when he withdrew to Chalcis, he
succeeded him as president of his school, in the hundred and fourteenth
olympiad.
III. It is also said that a slave of his, by name Pomphylus, was a
philosopher, as we are told by Myronianus of Amastra, in the first book
of Similar Historical Chapters.
IV. Theophrastus was a man of great acuteness and industry, and, as
Pamphila asserts in the thirty-second book of her Commentaries, he was
the tutor of Menander, the comic poet. He was also a most benevolent man,
and very affable.
V. Accordingly Cassander received him as a friend; and Ptolemy sent to
invite him to his court. And he was thought so very highly of at Athens,
that when Agonides ventured to impeach him on a charge of impiety, he
was very nearly fined for his hardihood. And there thronged to his school
a crowd of disciples to the number of two thousand. In his letter to
Phanias, the Peripatetic, among other subjects he speaks of the court
of justice in the following terms: “It is not only out of the question
to find an assembly (πανήγυρις), but it is not easy to find even a
company (συνέδριον) such as one would like; but yet recitations produce
corrections of the judgment. And my age does not allow me to put off
everything and to feel indifference on such a subject.” In this letter he
speaks of himself as one who devotes his whole leisure to learning.
And though he was of this disposition, he nevertheless went away for a
short time, both he and all the rest of the philosophers, in consequence
of Sophocles, the son of Amphiclides, having brought forward and carried
a law that no one of the philosophers should preside over a school unless
the council and the people had passed a resolution to sanction their
doing so; if they did, death was to be the penalty. But they returned
again the next year, when Philion had impeached Sophocles for illegal
conduct; when the Athenians abrogated his law, and fined Sophocles five
talents, and voted that the philosophers should have leave to return,
that Theophrastus might return and preside over his school as before.
VI. His name had originally been Tyrtamus, but Aristotle changed it to
Theophrastus, from the divine character of his eloquence.[48]
VII. He is said also to have been very much attached to Aristotle’s son,
Nicomachus, although he was his master; at least, this is stated by
Aristippus in the fourth book of his treatise on the Ancient Luxury.
VIII. It is also related that Aristotle used the same expression about
him and Callisthenes, which Plato, as I have previously mentioned,
employed about Xenocrates and Aristotle himself. For he is reported to
have said, since Theophrastus was a man of extraordinary acuteness,
who could both comprehend and explain everything, and as the other was
somewhat slow in his natural character, that Theophrastus required a
bridle, and Callisthenes a spur.
IX. It is said, too, that he had a garden of his own after the death of
Aristotle, by the assistance of Demetrius Phalereus, who was an intimate
friend of his.
X. The following very practical apophthegms of his are quoted. He used
to say that it was better to trust to a horse without a bridle than to a
discourse without arrangement. And once, when a man preserved a strict
silence during the whole of a banquet, he said to him, “If you are an
ignorant man, you are acting wisely; but if you have had any education,
you are behaving like a fool.” And a very favourite expression of his
was, that time was the most valuable thing that a man could spend.
XI. He died when he was of a great age, having lived eighty-five years,
when he had only rested from his labours a short time. And we have
composed the following epigram on him:—
The proverb then is not completely false,
That wisdom’s bow unbent is quickly broken;
While Theophrastus laboured, he kept sound,
When he relaxed, he lost his strength and died.
They say that on one occasion, when dying, he was asked by his disciples
whether he had any charge to give them; and he replied, that he had none
but that they should “remember that life holds out many pleasing deceits
to us by the vanity of glory; for that when we are beginning to live,
then we are dying. There is, therefore, nothing more profitless than
ambition. But may you all be fortunate, and either abandon philosophy
(for it is a great labour), or else cling to it diligently, for then the
credit of it is great; but the vanities of life exceed the advantage of
it. However, it is not requisite for me now to advise you what you should