xiv SOLIPSISM 253 



beyond the flow of appearances ; but this difficulty is 

 common to nearly all philosophies, so that we should be 

 ill-advised to press the point. 



3. Aristotle on the other hand is clearly a crypto- 

 solipsist, and if Aristotelians took their master seriously 

 and tried to live up to his precepts, they should all be 

 solipsists. For though at first sight Aristotle seems a 

 perfect type of common-place realism, he has a queer 

 streak of romance at the bottom of his mind, which 

 nearly always in the end transfigures his conclusions. 

 And so it ought not to surprise us that he has put 

 up Solipsism as his supreme ideal. He makes his 

 God into an incorrigible solipsist. For he is completely 

 wrapped up in the contemplation of his own experience 

 (1/0770-69 vorja-ews), in the ecstatic enjoyment of his own 

 eternal perfection. God thinks only of himself, not of 

 the world ; avrov apa voei, Aristotle gleefully declares, 

 and the rest of the world does not exist for him. Unlike 

 Olympian Zeus, he is non-social, and leads a /3to? yitoi/am;?, 

 like a beast. Nevertheless Aristotle thinks we ought to 

 imitate and emulate his God ; he insists that such imita 

 tion is not futile flattery, but the best and highest thing 

 we can do. Thus the Theoretic Life and the injunction 

 O TT&X? fjia\icrra adavari^eiv mean be as solipsistic as 

 you can, as your imperfect v\t] will allow. The con 

 cluding romance of the Nicomachean Ethics^ therefore, 

 means that Solipsism is the highest truth. 



4. If it is permissible to consult the opinions of the 

 young and to accept them as omens of the future, we 

 shall have to say that most of the historically famous 

 philosophies are logically solipsisms, or at least will 

 hereafter be treated as such. For the answers to the 

 Greats question mentioned at the outset unequivocally 

 teach that the ranks of the Solipsists include Berkeley 

 (without a scruple), Hume (despite his annihilation of 

 the self), Locke (despite his belief in external reality), 

 Descartes (because he is supposed to have started that 

 pernicious falling away from Aristotle which is called 



1 Book x, ch. 7 and 8. 



