August 19, 2025 • 15 mins
In this engaging little Blue Book No. 39, renowned author Will Durant explores the life and teachings of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.), a brilliant Macedonian thinker who was once a student of Plato and later became the mentor of Alexander the Great. While Alexander set out to conquer the world, Aristotle returned to Athens to establish the Lyceum, where he made groundbreaking contributions to biology, logic, literary theory, ethics, and political science. Rejecting the abstract ideals of his teacher Plato, Aristotle focused on the natural world, famously studying the development of the chick embryo. He viewed the universe as a dynamic interplay of matter in motion, with God as its initial driving force. Contrary to the belief that social evils stem from private property, Aristotle argued they arise from the inherent flaws of human nature. He believed that while we find catharsis in tragic theater, real life necessitates a pursuit of balance, reason, dignity, and the golden mean in all aspects. (Pamela Nagami, M.D.)
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Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section nine of the Story of Aristotle's Philosophy by will Durant.
This librovox recording is in the public domain recording by
Pamel and Nagami. Chapter eight Politics, Part two, number two,
Marriage and Education. Woman is to man as the slave
(00:22):
to the master, the manual to the mental worker, the
barbarian to the Greek. Woman is an unfinished man, left
standing on a lower step in the scale of development.
The male is by nature's superior and the female inferior.
The one rules, the other is ruled, and this principle
(00:44):
extends of necessity to all mankind. Woman is weak of
will and therefore incapable of independence of character or position.
Her best condition is a quiet home life, in which,
while ruled by the man in her external relations, she
may be in domestic affairs supreme. Women should not be
made more like men, as in Plato's Republic. Rather, the
(01:08):
dissimilarity should be increased. Nothing is so attractive as the different.
The courage of a man and that of a woman
are not, as Socrates supposed, the same. The courage of
a man is shown in commanding that of a woman
in obeying. As the poet says, silence is a woman's glory.
(01:30):
Aristotle seems to suspect that this ideal enslavement of woman
is a rare achievement for man, and that as often
as not, this scepter is with the tongue rather than
with the arm. As if to give the male an
indispensable advantage, he advises him to defer marriage till the
vicinity of thirty seven, and then to marry a lass
(01:52):
of some twenty years. A girl who is rounding the
twenties is usually the equal of a man of thirty,
but may perhaps be man by a seasoned warrior of
thirty seven. What attracts Aristotle to this matrimonial mathematics is
a consideration that two such disparate persons will lose their
reproductive power and passions at approximately the same time. If
(02:16):
the man is still able to beget children while the
woman is unable to bear them, or vice versa, quarrels
and differences will arise. Since the time of generation is
commonly limited within the age of seventy years to the
man and fifty in the woman, the commencement of their
union should conform to these periods. The union of male
(02:38):
and female when too young is bad for the creation
of children. In all animals, the offspring of the young
are small and ill developed, and generally female health is
more important than love. Further, it conduces to temperance not
to marry too soon, for women who marry early are
apt to be wanton, and in men too, where the
(03:00):
bodily frame is stunted if they marry while they are growing.
These matters should not be left to youthful caprice. They
should be under state supervision and control. The state should
determine the minimum and maximum ages of marriages for each sex,
the best seasons for conception, and the rate of increase
(03:20):
in population. If the natural rate of increase is too high,
the cruel practice of infanticide may be replaced by abortion,
and let abortion be procured before sense in life have begun.
There is an ideal number of population for every state,
varying with its position and resources. A state, when composed
(03:42):
of too few, is not as the state should be
self sufficing, while if it has too many, it becomes
a nation and not a state, and is almost incapable
of constitutional government or of ethnic or political unity. Probably
anything in excess of a population of ten thousand is undesirable.
(04:04):
Education two should be in the hands of the state.
That which most contributes to the permanence of constitutions is
the adaptation of education to the form of government. The
citizen should be molded to the form of government under
which he lives. By state control of schools, we might
divert men from industry and trade to agriculture. And we
(04:27):
may train men, while keeping property private, to open their
possessions to discriminately common use among good men. With respect
to the use of property, the proverb will hold that
friends should have all things in common. But above all,
the growing citizen must be taught obedience to law, else
(04:48):
a state is impossible. It has been well said that
he who has never learned to obey cannot be a
good commander. The good citizen should be capable of bolth.
And only a state system of schools can achieve social
unity amid ethnic heterogeneity. The state is a plurality which
(05:09):
must be made into a unity and a community by education.
Let youth be taught to the great boon it has
in the state, the unappreciated security which comes of social organization.
The freedom that comes of law man, when perfected, is
the best of animals, But when isolated, he is the
(05:30):
worst of all, for injustice is more dangerous when armed,
and man is equipped at birth with the weapon of
intelligence and with qualities of character, which he may use
for the vilest ends. Wherefore, if he have not virtue,
he is the most unholy and savage of animals, full
of gluttony and lust, and only social control can give
(05:53):
him virtue. Through speech, man evolves society through society, intelligence,
through intelligence, order, and through orders civilization. In such an
ordered state, the individual has a thousand opportunities and avenues
of development open to him, which a solitary life will
never give. To live alone, then one must be either
(06:17):
an animal or a god. Hence revolution is almost always unwise.
It may achieve some good, but at the cost of
many evils, the chief of which is the disturbance and
perhaps the dissolution of that social order and structure on
which every political good depends. The direct consequences of revolutionary
(06:39):
innovations may be calculable and salutary, but the indirect are
generally incalculable and not seldom disastrous. They who take only
a few points into account find it easy to pronounce judgment,
and a man can make up his mind quickly if
he has only a little to make up. Young men
(07:00):
are easily deceived, for they are quick to hope. The
suppression of long established habits brings the overthrow of innovating government.
Because the old habits persist among the people. Characters are
not as easily changed as laws. If a constitution is
to be permanent, all the parts of a society must
(07:22):
desire it to be maintained. Therefore, a ruler who would
avoid revolution should prevent extremes of poverty and wealth, a
condition which is most often the result of war. He should,
like the English, encourage colonization as an outlet for a
dangerously congested population. And he should foster and practice religion.
(07:45):
An autocratic ruler particularly should appear to be earnest in
the worship of the gods. For if men think that
a ruler is religious and revers the gods, they are
less afraid of suffering injustice at his hands, and are
less disposed to conspire against him, since they believe that
the gods themselves are fighting on his side. Three. Democracy
(08:10):
and aristocracy. With such safeguards in religion and education, and
in the ordering of family life, almost any of the
traditional forms of government will serve. All forms have good
and bad commingled in them, and are severally adapted to
various conditions. Theoretically, the ideal form of government would be
(08:32):
the centralization of all political power in the one best man.
Homer's right. Bad is the lordship of many. Let one
be your ruler and master. For such a man, law
would be rather an instrument than a limit. For men
of eminent ability, there is no law. They are themselves
(08:52):
a law. Any One would be ridiculous. Who should attempt
to make laws for them? They would probably retort what
in the fable of Antisthenes, the lions said to the heirs,
when in the council of beasts, the latter began haranguing
and claiming equality for all? Where are your clause? But
(09:14):
in practice monarchy is usually the worst form of government,
for great strength and great virtue are not near allied. Hence,
the best practicable polity is aristocracy, the rule of the
informed and capable few. Government is too complex a thing
to have its issues decided by number, when lesser issues
(09:37):
are reserved for knowledge and ability. As the physician ought
to be judged by the physician, so ought men in
general to be judged by their peers. Now does not
this same principle apply to elections, For a right election
can only be made by those who have knowledge. A geometrician,
for example, will choose rightly in matters of geeometry, or
(10:01):
a pilot in matters of navigation, So that neither the
election of magistrates nor the calling of them to account
should be entrusted to the many. The difficulty with hereditary
aristocracy is that it has no permanent economic base. The
eternal recurrence of the nuvoreche puts political office sooner or
(10:24):
later at the disposal of the highest bidder. It is
surely a bad thing that the greatest offices should be bought.
The law which permits this abuse makes wealth of more
account than nobility, and the whole state becomes avaricious. For
whenever the chiefs of the state deem anything honorable, the
(10:44):
other citizens are sure to follow their example. The prestige
imitation of modern social psychology and wearability has not the
first place, there is no real aristocracy. Democracy is usually
the re result of a revolution against plutocracy. Love of
gain in the ruling classes tends constantly to diminish their number.
(11:08):
Marx's elimination of the middle class, and so to strengthen
the masses, who in the end set upon their masters
and established democracies. This rule by the poor has some advantages.
The people, though individually may be worse judges than those
who have special knowledge, are collectively as good. Moreover, there
(11:30):
are some artists whose works are best judged not by
themselves alone, but by those who do not possess the art.
For example, the user or master of a house will
be a better judge of it than the builder, and
the guests will be a better judge of a feast
than the cook. And the many are more incorruptible than
(11:50):
the few. They are like the greater quantity of water,
which is less easily spoiled than a little. The individual
is liable to be overcome by anger or by some
other passion, and then as judgment is necessarily perverted. But
it is hardly to be supposed that a greater number
of persons will all get into a passion and go
(12:13):
wrong at the same moment. Yet democracy is on the
whole inferior to aristocracy, for it is based on a
false assumption of equality. It arises out of the notion
that those who are equal in one respect, for example,
in respect of the law, are equal in all respects.
(12:34):
Because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.
The upshot is that ability is sacrificed to number, while
numbers are manipulated by trickery. Because the people are so
easily misled and so fickle in their views, the ballot
should be limited to the intelligent. What we need is
(12:56):
a combination of aristocracy and democracy. Constitutional government offers this
happy union. It is not the best conceivable government, that
would be an aristocracy of education, but it is the
best possible state. We must ask, what is the best
(13:16):
constitution for most states and the best life for most men?
Neither assuming a standard of excellence which will be above
ordinary persons, nor an education exceptionally favored by nature or circumstance,
nor yet an ideal state which will be only an inspiration,
but having in mind such a life as the majority
(13:38):
will be able to share, and a form of government
to which states in general can attain. It is necessary
to begin by assuming a principle of general application, namely
that that part of the state which desires the continuance
of the government must be stronger than that which does not,
(13:59):
and strength consists neither in number alone, nor in property alone,
nor in military or political ability alone, but in a
combination of these, so that regard has to be taken
of freedom, wealth, culture, and noble birth, as well as
of mere numerical superiority. Now, where shall we find such
(14:21):
an economic majority to support our constitutional government? Perhaps best
in the middle class. Here again we have the golden mean.
Just as constitutional government itself would be a mean between
democracy and aristocracy. Our state will be sufficiently democratic if
the road to every office is open to all, and
(14:43):
sufficiently aristocratic if the offices themselves are closed except to
those who have traveled the road and arrived fully prepared.
From whatever angle we approach our eternal political problem, we
monotonously reach the same conclusion that the community should determine
the ends to be pursued, but that only experts should
(15:05):
select and apply the means. That choice should be democratically spread,
but that office should be rigidly reserved for the equipped
and winnowed best. End of Section nine.
Section nine of the Story of Aristotle's Philosophy by will Durant.
This librovox recording is in the public domain recording by
Pamel and Nagami. Chapter eight Politics, Part two, number two,
Marriage and Education. Woman is to man as the slave
(00:22):
to the master, the manual to the mental worker, the
barbarian to the Greek. Woman is an unfinished man, left
standing on a lower step in the scale of development.
The male is by nature's superior and the female inferior.
The one rules, the other is ruled, and this principle
(00:44):
extends of necessity to all mankind. Woman is weak of
will and therefore incapable of independence of character or position.
Her best condition is a quiet home life, in which,
while ruled by the man in her external relations, she
may be in domestic affairs supreme. Women should not be
made more like men, as in Plato's Republic. Rather, the
(01:08):
dissimilarity should be increased. Nothing is so attractive as the different.
The courage of a man and that of a woman
are not, as Socrates supposed, the same. The courage of
a man is shown in commanding that of a woman
in obeying. As the poet says, silence is a woman's glory.
(01:30):
Aristotle seems to suspect that this ideal enslavement of woman
is a rare achievement for man, and that as often
as not, this scepter is with the tongue rather than
with the arm. As if to give the male an
indispensable advantage, he advises him to defer marriage till the
vicinity of thirty seven, and then to marry a lass
(01:52):
of some twenty years. A girl who is rounding the
twenties is usually the equal of a man of thirty,
but may perhaps be man by a seasoned warrior of
thirty seven. What attracts Aristotle to this matrimonial mathematics is
a consideration that two such disparate persons will lose their
reproductive power and passions at approximately the same time. If
(02:16):
the man is still able to beget children while the
woman is unable to bear them, or vice versa, quarrels
and differences will arise. Since the time of generation is
commonly limited within the age of seventy years to the
man and fifty in the woman, the commencement of their
union should conform to these periods. The union of male
(02:38):
and female when too young is bad for the creation
of children. In all animals, the offspring of the young
are small and ill developed, and generally female health is
more important than love. Further, it conduces to temperance not
to marry too soon, for women who marry early are
apt to be wanton, and in men too, where the
(03:00):
bodily frame is stunted if they marry while they are growing.
These matters should not be left to youthful caprice. They
should be under state supervision and control. The state should
determine the minimum and maximum ages of marriages for each sex,
the best seasons for conception, and the rate of increase
(03:20):
in population. If the natural rate of increase is too high,
the cruel practice of infanticide may be replaced by abortion,
and let abortion be procured before sense in life have begun.
There is an ideal number of population for every state,
varying with its position and resources. A state, when composed
(03:42):
of too few, is not as the state should be
self sufficing, while if it has too many, it becomes
a nation and not a state, and is almost incapable
of constitutional government or of ethnic or political unity. Probably
anything in excess of a population of ten thousand is undesirable.
(04:04):
Education two should be in the hands of the state.
That which most contributes to the permanence of constitutions is
the adaptation of education to the form of government. The
citizen should be molded to the form of government under
which he lives. By state control of schools, we might
divert men from industry and trade to agriculture. And we
(04:27):
may train men, while keeping property private, to open their
possessions to discriminately common use among good men. With respect
to the use of property, the proverb will hold that
friends should have all things in common. But above all,
the growing citizen must be taught obedience to law, else
(04:48):
a state is impossible. It has been well said that
he who has never learned to obey cannot be a
good commander. The good citizen should be capable of bolth.
And only a state system of schools can achieve social
unity amid ethnic heterogeneity. The state is a plurality which
(05:09):
must be made into a unity and a community by education.
Let youth be taught to the great boon it has
in the state, the unappreciated security which comes of social organization.
The freedom that comes of law man, when perfected, is
the best of animals, But when isolated, he is the
(05:30):
worst of all, for injustice is more dangerous when armed,
and man is equipped at birth with the weapon of
intelligence and with qualities of character, which he may use
for the vilest ends. Wherefore, if he have not virtue,
he is the most unholy and savage of animals, full
of gluttony and lust, and only social control can give
(05:53):
him virtue. Through speech, man evolves society through society, intelligence,
through intelligence, order, and through orders civilization. In such an
ordered state, the individual has a thousand opportunities and avenues
of development open to him, which a solitary life will
never give. To live alone, then one must be either
(06:17):
an animal or a god. Hence revolution is almost always unwise.
It may achieve some good, but at the cost of
many evils, the chief of which is the disturbance and
perhaps the dissolution of that social order and structure on
which every political good depends. The direct consequences of revolutionary
(06:39):
innovations may be calculable and salutary, but the indirect are
generally incalculable and not seldom disastrous. They who take only
a few points into account find it easy to pronounce judgment,
and a man can make up his mind quickly if
he has only a little to make up. Young men
(07:00):
are easily deceived, for they are quick to hope. The
suppression of long established habits brings the overthrow of innovating government.
Because the old habits persist among the people. Characters are
not as easily changed as laws. If a constitution is
to be permanent, all the parts of a society must
(07:22):
desire it to be maintained. Therefore, a ruler who would
avoid revolution should prevent extremes of poverty and wealth, a
condition which is most often the result of war. He should,
like the English, encourage colonization as an outlet for a
dangerously congested population. And he should foster and practice religion.
(07:45):
An autocratic ruler particularly should appear to be earnest in
the worship of the gods. For if men think that
a ruler is religious and revers the gods, they are
less afraid of suffering injustice at his hands, and are
less disposed to conspire against him, since they believe that
the gods themselves are fighting on his side. Three. Democracy
(08:10):
and aristocracy. With such safeguards in religion and education, and
in the ordering of family life, almost any of the
traditional forms of government will serve. All forms have good
and bad commingled in them, and are severally adapted to
various conditions. Theoretically, the ideal form of government would be
(08:32):
the centralization of all political power in the one best man.
Homer's right. Bad is the lordship of many. Let one
be your ruler and master. For such a man, law
would be rather an instrument than a limit. For men
of eminent ability, there is no law. They are themselves
(08:52):
a law. Any One would be ridiculous. Who should attempt
to make laws for them? They would probably retort what
in the fable of Antisthenes, the lions said to the heirs,
when in the council of beasts, the latter began haranguing
and claiming equality for all? Where are your clause? But
(09:14):
in practice monarchy is usually the worst form of government,
for great strength and great virtue are not near allied. Hence,
the best practicable polity is aristocracy, the rule of the
informed and capable few. Government is too complex a thing
to have its issues decided by number, when lesser issues
(09:37):
are reserved for knowledge and ability. As the physician ought
to be judged by the physician, so ought men in
general to be judged by their peers. Now does not
this same principle apply to elections, For a right election
can only be made by those who have knowledge. A geometrician,
for example, will choose rightly in matters of geeometry, or
(10:01):
a pilot in matters of navigation, So that neither the
election of magistrates nor the calling of them to account
should be entrusted to the many. The difficulty with hereditary
aristocracy is that it has no permanent economic base. The
eternal recurrence of the nuvoreche puts political office sooner or
(10:24):
later at the disposal of the highest bidder. It is
surely a bad thing that the greatest offices should be bought.
The law which permits this abuse makes wealth of more
account than nobility, and the whole state becomes avaricious. For
whenever the chiefs of the state deem anything honorable, the
(10:44):
other citizens are sure to follow their example. The prestige
imitation of modern social psychology and wearability has not the
first place, there is no real aristocracy. Democracy is usually
the re result of a revolution against plutocracy. Love of
gain in the ruling classes tends constantly to diminish their number.
(11:08):
Marx's elimination of the middle class, and so to strengthen
the masses, who in the end set upon their masters
and established democracies. This rule by the poor has some advantages.
The people, though individually may be worse judges than those
who have special knowledge, are collectively as good. Moreover, there
(11:30):
are some artists whose works are best judged not by
themselves alone, but by those who do not possess the art.
For example, the user or master of a house will
be a better judge of it than the builder, and
the guests will be a better judge of a feast
than the cook. And the many are more incorruptible than
(11:50):
the few. They are like the greater quantity of water,
which is less easily spoiled than a little. The individual
is liable to be overcome by anger or by some
other passion, and then as judgment is necessarily perverted. But
it is hardly to be supposed that a greater number
of persons will all get into a passion and go
(12:13):
wrong at the same moment. Yet democracy is on the
whole inferior to aristocracy, for it is based on a
false assumption of equality. It arises out of the notion
that those who are equal in one respect, for example,
in respect of the law, are equal in all respects.
(12:34):
Because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.
The upshot is that ability is sacrificed to number, while
numbers are manipulated by trickery. Because the people are so
easily misled and so fickle in their views, the ballot
should be limited to the intelligent. What we need is
(12:56):
a combination of aristocracy and democracy. Constitutional government offers this
happy union. It is not the best conceivable government, that
would be an aristocracy of education, but it is the
best possible state. We must ask, what is the best
(13:16):
constitution for most states and the best life for most men?
Neither assuming a standard of excellence which will be above
ordinary persons, nor an education exceptionally favored by nature or circumstance,
nor yet an ideal state which will be only an inspiration,
but having in mind such a life as the majority
(13:38):
will be able to share, and a form of government
to which states in general can attain. It is necessary
to begin by assuming a principle of general application, namely
that that part of the state which desires the continuance
of the government must be stronger than that which does not,
(13:59):
and strength consists neither in number alone, nor in property alone,
nor in military or political ability alone, but in a
combination of these, so that regard has to be taken
of freedom, wealth, culture, and noble birth, as well as
of mere numerical superiority. Now, where shall we find such
(14:21):
an economic majority to support our constitutional government? Perhaps best
in the middle class. Here again we have the golden mean.
Just as constitutional government itself would be a mean between
democracy and aristocracy. Our state will be sufficiently democratic if
the road to every office is open to all, and
(14:43):
sufficiently aristocratic if the offices themselves are closed except to
those who have traveled the road and arrived fully prepared.
From whatever angle we approach our eternal political problem, we
monotonously reach the same conclusion that the community should determine
the ends to be pursued, but that only experts should
(15:05):
select and apply the means. That choice should be democratically spread,
but that office should be rigidly reserved for the equipped
and winnowed best. End of Section nine.
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