Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/94

 68 STATESMEN AND SAGES he to refuse it, Diogenes would level his wit against him. He took the fig, therefore, and with a smile said, " Diogenes has at once lost his fig and the use he intended to make of it." He said there were three things very necessary to children : Genius, exercise, and instruction. When asked the difference between the learned and the igno- rant, he replied : "The same as between the living and the dead." " Knowledge," he said, " is an ornament in prosperity, and in adversity a refuge. Those who give children a good education, are much more their fathers than those who have begotten them ; the latter communicate mere life to them ; the former put it in their power to spend it comfortably." " Beauty," said he, " is a recommen- dation infinitely stronger than any kind of learning." He was one day asked, What pupils should do to turn their instructions to the greatest advantage? "They must," said he, "always keep in view those before them, and never look back to those behind them." A certain person was one day boasting of being the citizen of an illustrious state. "Do not value yourself upon that," said Aristotle; "rather ask yourself whether you deserve to be so ? " Reflecting on human life, he sometimes said : " There are some who amass riches with as much avidity as if they were to live forever ; others are as careless about their possessions as if they were to die to-morrow." When asked, what is a friend ? he replied, " One soul animating two bodies." "How," said one to him, "ought we to act to our friends?" "As we would have them to act toward us," replied Aristotle. He used frequently to exclaim, " Ah ! my friends, there is not a friend in the world ! " He was one day asked, " How it comes that we prefer beautiful women to those who are ugly ?" " You now ask a blind man's question," returned Aristotle. He was asked what advantage he had derived from philosophy ? " To do voluntarily," replied he, "what others do through fear of the laws." It is said that during his stay at Athens he was intimate with an able Jew, by whom he was accurately instructed in the science and religion of the Egyptians, for the acquisition of which everyone at that time used to go to Egypt itself. Having taught in the Lyceum for thirteen years with great reputation, Aris- totle was accused of impiety by Eurimedon, priest of Ceres. He was so over- whelmed with the recollection of what Socrates had suffered that he hastily left Athens and retired to Chalcis in Euboea. It is said by some that he there died J of vexation because he could not .discover the cause of the flux and reflux of the Euripus. By others it is added that he threw himself into that sea, and when falling said, " Let the Euripus receive me since I cannot comprehend it." And lastly, it is affirmed by others that he died of a colic in the sixty-third year of his age, two years after the death of his pupil, Alexander the Great. By the Stagirites, altars were erected to him as a god. Aristotle made a will, of which Antipater was appointed the executor. He left a son called Nicomachus, and a daughter who was married to a grandson of Demaratus, king of Lacedaemonia.