Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/457

 The fourth book Of the courtier tokens that Alexander gave him of good will, the king ordered the rebuilding of his native city, Stagira, which had been de- stroyed ;*"" and besides directing Alexander to that most glorious aim, — which was the desire to make the world as one single universal country, and all men as a single people to live in amity and mutual concord under a single government and a single law, which should shine equally on all like the light of the sun,*"' — Aristotle so instructed him in the natural sciences and in the virtues of the mind as to make him most wise, brave, continent, and a true moral philosopher, not only in words but in deeds; for a nobler philosophy cannot be imagined than to bring into civilized living such savage people as those who inhabited Bac- tria and Caucasia, India, Scythia;*™ and to teach them marriage, agriculture, honour to their fathers, abstention from rapine, murder and other evil ways ; to build so many very noble cities in distant lands; — so that countless men were by his laws reduced from savage life to civilization. And of these achievements of Alexander the author was Aristotle, using the means of a good Courtier: which Callisthenes knew not how to do, although Aristotle showed him ; *" for in his wish to be a pure philosopher and austere minister of naked truth, without mingling Courtier- ship therewith, he lost his life and brought not help but rather infamy to Alexander. "By these same means of Courtiership, Plato schooled Dio of Syracuse;*'' and having afterwards found tire tyrant Dionysius like a book all full of faults and errours and in need of complete erasure rather than of any change or correction (since it was not possible to remove from him that tinge of tyranny wherewith he had so long been stained), Plato was unwilling to practise the ways of Courtiership upon him, thinking that they all would surely be in vain. Which our Courtier also ought to do, if by chance he finds himself in the service of a prince of so evil a dis- position as to be inveterate in vice, like consumptives in their mal- ady; for in such case he ought to escape that bondage, in order not to receive blame for his lord's evil deeds, and in order not to feel that distress which all good men feel who serve the wicked." 48.— Here my lord Ottaviano having ceased speaking, my lord Caspar said: 285