Page:The religion of Plutarch, a pagan creed of apostolic times; an essay (IA religionofplutar00oakeiala).pdf/64

 criticism, to emphasize that predilection for the practical concerns of daily life, as not only the proper sphere of Ethics, but their foundation and material, which is conspicuous in the general character of his work. Over and over again he insists that happiness depends upon action, not contemplation; and so convinced is he that Ethics, like every other science, must start from knowledge of actual facts, that he denies the claim of those to be students of Moral Philosophy who are inexperienced in the actions of life. And it is, surely, in allusion to the demand of the Platonic Philosophy that the multitude shall permit themselves to be moulded by the Platonist potter even into that inferior form of virtue of which alone they are capable, that Aristotle reverts to the famous saying of Hesiod that he is second best only who "obeys one who speaks well," while assigning the moral supremacy to the man who makes his own practical experience of life the basis of his ethical theories and the mainspring of his moral progress.

Thus it seems that Aristotle is the true successor of Socrates, inasmuch as Philosophy, which under the spells of Platonism had withdrawn again to the empyrean, is charmed down once more by the Stageirite to the business and bosoms of mankind. To use the expressive metaphor of Aristotle himself, though not, of course, in this connexion, if the creator of the "Republic" shines as one of "the most beautiful and the