Note 4 — I. INTRODUCTION.

Let us take here as our first example “the Book of the Apple”4, wherein Aristotle plays the same part as Socrates in the Phaedo of Plato. As his end draws near, the Philosopher is visited by some of his disciples who find him in a cheerful frame of mind. This leads them to request their departing Master to give them some instruction about the Essence and Immortality of the Soul. Thereupon he discourses somewhat as follows:—“The Essence of the Soul consists in knowing,—in fact, in Philosophy, which is the highest form of knowing. A perfect knowledge of the truth constitutes therefore the blessedness which after death awaits the soul which is devoted to knowing. And just as knowing is rewarded with a higher knowledge,—so the punishment for not-knowing consists in a deeper ignorance. And really, there is nothing in Heaven or Earth, after all, except knowing and not-knowing, and the recompence which these two severally bring with them. Farther,—virtue is not essentially different from knowing; nor does vice differ essentially from not-knowing. The relation of virtue to knowing, or of vice to not-knowing, is like that of water to ice: i.e. it is the same thing in a different form.