This
conception of the political or royal science as, from another point of
view, the science of sciences, which holds sway over the rest, is not
originally found in Aristotle, but in Plato.
The doctrine that virtue and art are in a mean, which is familiarized to us
by the study of the Nicomachean Ethics, is also first distinctly asserted
in the Statesman of Plato. The too much and the too little are in restless
motion: they must be fixed by a mean, which is also a standard external to
them. The art of measuring or finding a mean between excess and defect,
like the principle of division in the Phaedrus, receives a particular
application to the art of discourse. The excessive length of a discourse
may be blamed; but who can say what is excess, unless he is furnished with
a measure or standard? Measure is the life of the arts, and may some day
be discovered to be the single ultimate principle in which all the sciences
are contained. Other forms of thought may be noted--the distinction
between causal and co-operative arts, which may be compared with the
distinction between primary and co-operative causes in the Timaeus; or
between cause and condition in the Phaedo; the passing mention of
economical science; the opposition of rest and motion, which is found in
all nature; the general conception of two great arts of composition and
division, in which are contained weaving, politics, dialectic; and in
connexion with the conception of a mean, the two arts of measuring.
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