Aristotle[63] must have harped on the theme that "man is naturally a city-dwelling animal and that one who is not a native of a city, if the cause of his isolation be natural and not accidental, is either a superhuman being or low in the scale of civilization, as he stands alone like a 'blot' on the backgammon board. The 'clanless, lawless, hearthless' man so bitterly described by Homer is a case in point; for he is naturally a native of no city and a lover of war." We can imagine the philosopher insisting that just as city life was synonymous with civilized life, so city was synonymous with state; that the highest of all human activities, the exercise of political functions, was destroyed the moment a city became dependent upon an outside power; that subjects could not exist permanently unless the conquered were natural inferiors like the Asiatics; that it was, however, to the interest of such persons that they should be ruled by their superiors, in the case of Asiatics, by the Greeks. Such were the oft-repeated maxims of the political philosopher in whose age Philip rejoiced, it is said,[64] "that his son was born, since his teaching would make him worthy of his father and equal to the position to which he was to succeed." Such was the literary and political education of Alexander: his military training and his knowledge of affairs he got in the unrivaled school of his father; but in this connection it is well to remember the admission of Napoleon:[65] "War is a singular art; I can assure you that fighting sixty battles taught me nothing I did not know at the first one. The essential quality of the general is firmness, and that is a gift from heaven." It is not my purpose to give a biographical sketch of Alexander, nor yet to tell the story of his marvelous conquests, or to estimate the consequences of his work on the later course of history. I have had in mind while preparing this chapter first to emphasize such features in his family and education as help to explain his political thinking, and then, somewhat in Plutarch's fashion, to pick up such incidents in his career as show concretely how precisely he aimed to organize his world empire. * * * * * Where the political sagacity of Alexander stood forth most conspicuously, according to Napoleon, was in the skill with which he appealed to the imagination of men. Love of symbolism was ingrained in his nature. By an act which he went deliberately out of his way to perform he contrived again and again to illumine an entire situation, to drive home a lesson, to reveal a policy. In a way it was a kind of advertising; a means of conveying to the world at large in an unmistakable manner the will and attitude of the monarch. But it was more than that. It was the application in the world of politics of a mode of expression with which the Greeks were familiar in the world of the plastic arts.