[Sidenote: Aristotle supplied its natural basis.]

Beyond this point no rendering of the Life of Reason has ever been
carried, Aristotle improved the detail, and gave breadth and precision
to many a part. If Plato possessed greater imaginative splendour and
more enthusiasm in austerity, Aristotle had perfect sobriety and
adequacy, with greater fidelity to the common sentiments of his race.
Plato, by virtue of his scope and plasticity, together with a certain
prophetic zeal, outran at times the limits of the Hellenic and the
rational; he saw human virtue so surrounded and oppressed by physical
dangers that he wished to give it mythical sanctions, and his fondness
for transmigration and nether punishments was somewhat more than
playful. If as a work of imagination his philosophy holds the first
place, Aristotle's has the decisive advantage of being the unalloyed
expression of reason. In Aristotle the conception of human nature is
perfectly sound; everything ideal has a natural basis and everything
natural an ideal development. His ethics, when thoroughly digested and
weighed, especially when the meagre outlines are filled in with Plato's
more discursive expositions, will seem therefore entirely final. The
Life of Reason finds there its classic explication.

[Sidenote: Philosophy thus complete, yet in need of restatement.]

As it is improbable that there will soon be another people so free from
preoccupations, so gifted, and so fortunate as the Greeks, or capable in
consequence of so well exemplifying humanity, so also it is improbable
that a philosopher will soon arise with Aristotle's scope, judgment, or
authority, one knowing so well how to be both reasonable and exalted. It
might seem vain, therefore, to try to do afresh what has been done