The other mention of Aristotle is in _Troilus and Cressida_, and raises points of greater interest. Hector scornfully likens his brothers Troilus and Paris, when they urge persistence in the strife with Greece, to "young men whom Aristotle thought unfit to hear _moral_ philosophy" (II., ii., 166). The words present the meaning, but not the language, of a sentence in Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics" (i. 8). Aristotle there declares passionate youth to be unfitted to study _political_ philosophy; he makes no mention of _moral_ philosophy. The change of epithet does, however, no injustice to Aristotle's argument. His context makes it plain, that by _political_ philosophy he means the ethics of civil society, which are hardly distinguishable from what is commonly called "morals." The maxim, in the slightly irregular shape which Shakespeare adopted, enjoyed proverbial currency before the dramatist was born. Erasmus introduced it in this form into his far-famed _Colloquies_. In France and Italy the warning against instructing youth in _moral_ philosophy was popularly accepted as an Aristotelian injunction. Sceptics about the obvious Shakespearean tradition have made much of the circumstance that Bacon, who cited the aphorism from Aristotle in his _Advancement of Learning_, substituted, like Shakespeare in _Troilus and Cressida_, the epithet "moral" for "political." The proverbial currency of the emendation deprives the coincidence of point. The repetition of a proverbial phrase, indirectly drawn from Aristotle, combined with the absence of other references to the Greek philosopher, renders improbable Shakespeare's personal acquaintance with his work. In any case, the bare mention of the name of Aristotle implies nothing in this connection. It was a popular synonym for ancient learning. It was as often on the lips of Elizabethans as Bacon's name is on the lips of men and women of to-day, and it would be rash to infer that those who carelessly and casually mentioned Bacon's name to-day knew his writings or philosophic theories at first hand. No evidence is forthcoming that Shakespeare knew in any solid sense aught of philosophy of the formal scientific kind. On scientific philosophy, and on natural science, Shakespeare probably looked with suspicion. He expressed no high opinion of astronomers, who pursue the most imposing of all branches of scientific speculation. Small have continual plodders ever won, Save base authority from others' books. These earthly godfathers of heaven's light, That give a name to every fixed star, Have no more profit of their shining nights Than those that walk, and wot not what they are. (_Love's Labour's Lost_, I., i., 86-91.)