n of mythology and of anthropomorphism;
his resolute attempt to combine religion and science, not by sacrificing
one to the other but by building the highest spiritual aspirations on
ascertained truth and the probable conclusions to which it pointed; his
splendid imaginative conception of the Divine Being or First Cause as
unmoved itself while moving all the universe 'as the beloved moves the
lover'; all these are high services to religious speculation, and
justify the position he held, even when known only through a distorting
Arabic translation, in medieval Christianity. If he had not written his
other books he might well be famous now as a great religious teacher.
But his theology is dwarfed by the magnificence and mass of his other
work. And as a philosopher and man of science he does not belong to our
present subject.

He is only mentioned here as a standard of that characteristic quality
in Hellenism from which the rest of this book records a downfall. One
variant of a well-known story tells how a certain philosopher, after
frequenting the Peripatetic School, went to hear Chrysippus, the Stoic,
and was transfixed. 'It was like turning from men to Gods.' It was
really turning from Greeks to Semites, from philosophy to religion, from
a school of very sober professions and high performance to one whose
professions dazzled the reason. 'Come unto me,' cried the Stoic, 'all ye
who are in storm or delusion; I will show you the truth and the world
will never grieve you more.'

Aristotle made no such profession. He merely thought and worked and
taught better than other men. Aristotle is always surprising us not
merely by the immense volume of clear thinking and co-ordinated
knowledge of which he was master, but by the steady _Sophrosyne_ of his
temper. Son of the court physician of Philip, tutor for some years to
Alexander the Great, he never throughout his extant writings utters one
syllable of flattery to his royal and world-conquering employers; nor
yet one syllable which suggests a grievance. He saw, at close quarters
and from the winning side, the conquest of the Greek city states by the
Macedonian _ethnos_ or nation; but he judges dispassionately that the
city is the higher social form.

It seems characteristic that in his will, which is extant, after
providing a dowry for his widow, Herpyllis, to facilitate her getting a
second husband, and thanking her for her goodness to him, he directs
that his bones are to be