Part 10

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The offer that had been made twenty-four years before, by Philip's father, was now accepted. Aristotle was forty-two years old, in the prime of his power. Time had tempered his passions, but not subdued his zest in life. He had the curious, receptive, alert and eager mind of a child. His intellect was at its ripest and best. He was a lover of animals, and all outdoor life appealed to him as it does to a growing boy. He was a daring horseman, and we hear of his riding off into the desert and sleeping on the sands, his horse untethered watching over him. Aristotle was the first man to make a scientific study of the horse, and with the help of Alexander he set up a skeleton, fastening the bones in place, to the mighty astonishment of the natives, who mistook the feat for an attempt to make a living animal; and when the beast was not at last saddled and bridled there were subdued chuckles of satisfaction among the "hoi polloi" at the failure of the scheme, and murmurs of "I told you so!"

Eighteen hundred years were to pass before another man was to take up the horse as a serious scientific study; and this was Leonardo da Vinci, a man in many ways very much like Aristotle. The distinguishing feature in these men--the thing that differentiates them from other men--was the great outpouring sympathy with every living creature. Everything they saw was related to themselves--it came very close to them--they wanted to know more about it. This is essentially the child-mind, and the calamity of life is to lose it.

Leonardo became interested in Aristotle's essay on the horse, and continued the subject further, dissecting the animal in minutest detail and illustrating his discoveries with painstaking drawings. His work is so complete and exhaustive that nobody nowadays has time to more than read the title-page. Leonardo's bent was natural science, and his first attempts at drawing were done to illustrate his books. Art was beautiful, of course--it brought in an income, made friends and brought him close to people who saw nothing unless you made a picture of it. He made pictures for recreation and to amuse folks, and his threat to put the peeping Prior into the "Last Supper," posed as Judas, revealed his contempt for the person to whom a picture was just a picture. The marvel to Leonardo was the mind that could imagine, the hand that could execute, and the soul that could see.

And the curious part is that Leonardo lives for us through his play and not through his serious work. His science has been superseded, but his art is immortal.

This expectant mental attitude, this attitude of worship, belongs to all great scientists. The man divines the thing first and then looks for it, just as the Herschels knew where the star ought to be and then patiently waited for it. The Bishop of London said that if Darwin had spent one-half as much time in reading his Bible as in studying earthworms, he would have really benefited the world, and saved his soul alive. To Walt Whitman, a hair on the back of his hand was just as curious and wonderful as the stars in the sky, or God's revelation to man through a printed book.

Aristotle loved animals as a boy loves them--his house was a regular menagerie of pets, and into this world of life Alexander was very early introduced. We hear of young Alexander breaking the wild horse, Bucephalus, and beyond a doubt Aristotle was seated on the top rail of the paddock when he threw the lariat.

Aristotle and his pupil had the first circus of which we know, and they also inaugurated the first Zoological Garden mentioned in history, barring Noah, of course.

So much was Alexander bound up in this menagerie, and in his old teacher as well, that in after-life, in all of his travels, he was continually sending back to Aristotle specimens of every sort of bird, beast and fish to be found in the countries through which he traveled.

When Philip was laid low by the assassin's thrust, it was Aristotle who backed up Alexander, aged twenty--but a man--in his prompt suppression of the revolution. The will that had been used to subdue man-eating stallions and to train wild animals, now came in to repress riot, and the systematic classification of things was a preparation for the forming of an army out of a mob. Aristotle said, "An army is a huge animal with a million claws--it must have only one brain, and that the commander's."

Alexander gave credit again and again to Aristotle for those elements in his character that went to make up success: steadiness of purpose, self-reliance, systematic effort, mathematical calculation, attention to details, and a broad and generous policy that sees the end.

When Aristotle argued with Philip, years before, that horse-breaking should be included in the educational curriculum of all young men, he evidently divined football and was endeavoring to supplant it.

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I think history has been a trifle severe on Alexander. He was elected Captain-General of Greece, and ordered to repel the Persian invasion. And he did the business once for all. War is not all fighting--Providence is on the side of the strongest commissariat. Alexander had to train, arm, clothe and feed a million men, and march them long miles across a desert country. The real foe of a man is in his own heart, and the foe of an army is in its own camp--disease takes more prisoners than the enemy. Fever sniped more of our boys in blue than did the hostile Filipinos.

Alexander's losses were principally from men slain in battle; from this, I take it that Alexander knew a deal of sanitary science, and had a knowledge of practical mathematics, in order to systematize that mob of restless, turbulent helots. We hear of Aristotle cautioning him that safety lies in keeping his men busy--they must not have too much time to think, otherwise mutiny is to be feared. Still, they must not be over-worked, or they will be in no condition to fight when the eventful time occurs. And we are amazed to see this: "Do not let your men drink out of stagnant pools--Athenians, city-born, know no better. And when you carry water on the desert marches, it should be first boiled to prevent its getting sour."

Concerning the Jews, Alexander writes to his teacher and says, "They are apt to be in sullen rebellion against their governors, receiving orders only from their high priests, and this leads to severe measures, which are construed as persecution"; all of which might have been written yesterday by the Czar in a message to The Hague Convention.

Alexander captured the East, and was taken captive by the East. Like the male bee that never lives to tell the tale of its wooing, he succeeded and died. Yet he vitalized all Asia with the seeds of Greek philosophy, turned back the hungry barbaric tide, and made a new map of the Eastern world. He built far more cities than he destroyed. He set Andrew Carnegie an example at Alexandria, such as the world had never up to that time seen. At the entrance to the harbor of the same city he erected a lighthouse, surpassing far the one at Minot's Ledge, or Race Rock. This structure endured for two centuries, and when at last wind and weather had their way, there was no Hopkinson Smith who could erect another.

At Thebes, Alexander paid a compliment to letters, by destroying every building in the city except the house of the poet, Pindar. At Corinth, when the great, the wise, the noble, came to pay homage, one great man did not appear. In vain did Alexander look for his card among all those handed in at the door--Diogenes, the Philosopher, oft quoted by Aristotle, was not to be seen.

Alexander went out to hunt him up, and found him sunning himself, propped up against the wall in the Public Square, busy doing nothing.

The philosopher did not arise to greet the conqueror; he did not even offer a nod of recognition.

"I am Alexander--is there not something I can do for you?" modestly asked the descendant of Hercules.

"Just stand out from between me and the sun," replied the philosopher, and went on with his meditations.

Alexander enjoyed the reply so much that he said to his companions, and afterward wrote to Aristotle, "If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes," and thus did strenuosity pay its tribute to self-sufficiency.

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Aristotle might have assumed important affairs of State, but practical politics were not to his liking. "What Aristotle is in the world of thought I will be in the world of action," said Alexander.

On all of his journeys Alexander found time to keep in touch with his old teacher at home; and we find the ruler of Asia voicing that old request, "Send me something to read," and again, "I live alone with my thoughts, amidst a throng of men, but without companions."

Plutarch gives a copy of a letter sent by Alexander wherein Aristotle is chided for publishing his lecture on oratory. "Now all the world will know what formerly belonged to you and me alone," plaintively cries the young man who sighed for more worlds to conquer, and therein shows he was the victim of a fallacy that will never die--the idea that truth can be embodied in a book. When will we ever learn that inspired books demand inspired readers!

There are no secrets. A book may stimulate thought, but it can never impart it.