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In this passage, as so often elsewhere, Montesquieu is quite Aristotelian, for Aristotle wrote: "It is evident that at times certain laws must be changed, but this requires great circumspection for, when there is little to be gained thereby, inasmuch as it is dangerous that citizens should be accustomed to find it easy to change the law, it is better to leave a few errors in our magisterial and legislative arrangements than to accustom the people to constant change.
The only part completed was The Advancement of Learning, which served as an introduction. Novum Organum, or the "new instrument," that is, the use of reason and experiment instead of the old Aristotelian logic.
The English renaissance never entirely evacuated this position. Consequently the Aristotelian doctrine that the essence of poetry is imitation was either entertained simultaneously, as in Sidney, or interpreted to mean the same thing, as in Jonson.
But indeed, the Mussulmans did not so much wish to discover truth, as to cultivate their own intellects. For that purpose a sharp and subtle systematist, like Aristotle, was the very man whom they required; and from the destruction of Alexandria may date the rise of the Aristotelian philosophy.
In his doctrine of creation in time, Maimonides endeavored to defend God's personality and voluntary and purposeful activity. For the same reason he defended the institution of miracles. Aristotle's authority was now supreme, and the Bible had to yield to Aristotelian interpretations, as we have seen abundantly.
He is an Aristotelian of the fifteenth century, born out of due season. We have here an elaborate treatise on Government, from which, but for two or three passing allusions, it would not appear that the author was aware that any governments actually existed among men. Certain propensities of human nature are assumed; and from these premises the whole science of politics is synthetically deduced!
Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas furnished some material to men like Hillel of Verona in the thirteenth century and Don Isaac Abarbanel in the fifteenth. Maimonides was limited to the Aristotelian expositions of Alfarabi and Avicenna. The works of Averroes, his contemporary, he did not read until toward the end of his life.
Alike in respect to Aristotle as in reference to Plotinus, the Jewish philosophers found their models in Islamic writers. The "Theology of Aristotle" which, as we have seen, is really Plotinian rather than Aristotelian, was translated into Arabic in the ninth century and exerted its influence on the Brethren of Purity, a Mohammedan secret order of the tenth century.
If the highest good in itself is God, the highest human good is love to God. This is attained by way of virtue, which is a good Will consolidated into a habit. On the influence of habit on action his view is Aristotelian. All actions, he says, are in themselves indifferent, and not to be called good or evil except from the intention of the doer.
The author begins by deprecating the idea that he has anything new to impart. His trick is rather subtle; he concentrates our attention on the sayings of an ancient Aristotelian philosopher, and then, as if to fill up the time, he ventures to repeat a few reflexions of his own.
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