22 HEREDITY. 



16. If we could raise the average standard of civil- 

 ization one grade, in both its moral and its intellec- 

 tual departments, extraordinary changes would occur. 

 The cause of events is to be found very largely in 

 the thought of a few illustrious men. 



17. Natural law is now what it always has been. 



18. Standing here on the Acropolis, we have the 

 right, therefore, to proclaim on the authority of his- 

 tory and science, that once, by purity and power at 

 their best, the number of illustrious men born has 

 been one in five thousand, and that it can be this 

 again through the operation of the same unvarying 

 causes. 



Do you doubt this ? and are you more or less scep- 

 tical concerning the operation of the law of heredi- 

 tary descent in modern and even in ancient days ? 



Who was Aristotle ? He was the founder of the 

 Peripatetic school. He has been the teacher of 

 twenty-two centuries. Who was his father? Nico- 

 machus, a friend and physician to Amyntas II., king 

 of Macedonia. He was the author of works on 

 medicine and science. We have lost his manu- 

 scripts; but the father of Aristotle was a man of 

 extraordinary ability and remarkable culture. Who 

 was Aristotle's grandson ? Nicomachus again. the 

 name recurs, and, according to Cicero, this grand- 

 son was the author of the book we call the Nicoma- 

 chian ethics, a work generally attributed to Aris- 

 totle. Who was Aristotle's cousin? Callisthenes, 

 the philosopher who accompanied Alexander the 

 Great to the East. The mother of that Callisthenes 

 was Hero, a near relative of Aristotle. 



