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ARISTOCRACY AND EVOLUTION 



Book I 

 Chapter 4 



also in the 

 progress of 

 philosophy. 



And yet in 

 each case the 

 intended 

 elements equal 

 or are greater 

 than the 

 unintended. 



crude guesses of Thales to the elaborate system of 

 Aristotle. We hear of the evolution of the Greek 

 drama from the exhibitions of Thespis with his cart 

 to the tragedies of yEschylus and of Sophocles ; 

 and similarly we hear of the evolution of the English 

 drama from such exhibitions as miracle plays or 

 Gammer Gurtoris Needle to tragedies such as 

 Hamlet and comedies such as As You Like It. And 

 to all such examples of development the word 

 evolution is applied with perfect accuracy ; for there 

 is in each an obvious and orderly sequence of the 

 unintended. Aristotle's philosophy was in part 

 derived from that of his predecessors. He employed 

 existing materials so as to produce a result which 

 was not intended, indeed was not even imagined, 

 by those who originally got them together and 

 fashioned them, and which would never have been 

 reached by Aristotle himself, if his predecessors had 

 not thus unintentionally assisted him. None the 

 less, however, does the Aristotelian philosophy, as 

 its author gave it to the world, embody the deliberate 

 intention of his profound and unrivalled genius ; 

 and it is only because it embodies this intended 

 element that it constitutes an advance on the 

 philosophies that went before it. Similarly, though 

 Sophocles and Shakespeare, in constructing their 

 dramas, each profited by the achievements of the 

 dramatists who had gone before them, and though 

 the art of each would doubtless have been more 

 crude and imperfect had he come into the world a 

 generation or two before he did, yet the part played 



