Aristotle with an asterisk

Does it really matter who said it first?

Girard, Kansas is a small town, about 124 miles south of Kansas City. I’ve never been there, but here’s how Nicole Bradley described it in Kansas City magazine a few years ago:

“[J]ust a few churches, a Sonic Drive-In and a family-owned appliance store.

But believe it or not, this heartland mining town with a population under 3,000 was once a hotbed of American socialism and home to one of the largest publishing houses in the country.”

A hotbed of socialism? That sounds intriguing. But Girard’s former glory also spawned a surprising story of misattribution —something that gives me the chance now to explore and tell this whole story.

It unfolds like this. Girard was home to Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, who moved there after buying a newspaper, and later published a wildly popular series of pamphlets called Little Blue Books during the middle 50 years or so of the 20th century.

The best analogy I can think of today would be the “for Dummies” series.

The Little Blue Book topics were less “how to,” and also much edgier. Examples:

• Sex Life in Greece and Rome (1924)

• Is Hitler a Maniac? (1939)

• And, the one that prompts our attention today: The Story of Aristotle’s Philosophy(1922).

That short book was written by a struggling adult education teacher and philosopher named Will Durant, from New York City—a $150 opportunity he found after Haldeman-Julius happened to stop in briefly at a lecture he was giving on Plato, and commissioned him to turn his notes on the philosopher into a Little Blue Book.

Durant later recalled:

“Had he passed by 20 minutes earlier or later he probably would not have stopped. … But he did stop. … I could refuse neither his courage nor his check.

Sometime later he sent me another check for a booklet on Aristotle. Before long there were 11 such booklets.”

Ultimately, Simon & Schuster took notice, and contracted to combine the 11 short “Durant on Philosophy” books into a single volume called The Story of Philosophy, which came out in 1926.

This was massively successful, selling 3 million copies, and completely changing the course of Durant’s life.

We’ll get to that in a second, but first I want to focus on a short passage from the book. Tell me if you spot the issue. You can zero in on the bolded part if you like":

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, rather we have these because we have acted rightly; “these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions;” we are what we repeatedly do.

Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit: “the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life; … for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy.”

Those two sentences, which were apparently written by a nearly indigent teacher who had just landed a book deal in the 1920s, are usually—and apparently incorrectly—attributed to the philosopher Aristotle, who died 2,200 years earlier.

Now, if you write or read about leadership, or business, or anything kind of self-help-y now, you’ve come across the quote repeatedly.

Truthfully, it’s probably top 10 among my favorite quotes of all time—and you all know how I feel about inspirational quotes.

It’s still a great quote. Also, even if Aristotle never said this exactly, there are a lot of other things he did write or say that make the same point, maybe with a bit less rhetorical flourish and cadence when translated into English.

Plus, Durant got rich as a result of the book.

In fact, he made enough from The Story of Philosophy alone to cover him for life. That allowed him and his wife, Ariel Durant, to travel the world and write together for decades.

They went on to produce an 11-volume, 10,000-page, 4-million word book called The Story of Civilization, which was even more successful, and won a Pulitzer prize.

I suppose that’s the neat little bow with which I’d like to tie this all together.

I think it’s pretty cool that Durant came up with a pithy line about excellence and habit, and then lived up to it for the rest of his life.

Today, the quote lives on! At this point I think it has to be “Aristotle with an asterisk,” even if that’s a compromise on the truth.

We get to ride the Greek philosopher’s coattails, and it gives the whole thing more punch.

But remember Will and Ariel Durant!

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7 other things worth knowing today

For now, I’m going to try to put all the Trump-related things in one “thing” below. Give me a few weeks and I’ll have a new and improved format.

• Since Friday evening, President Trump: fired 17 independent inspectors general (AP), suggested eliminating FEMA (CNBC), proposed to "just clean out" the Gaza Strip by resettling Palestinians in Egypt and Jordan (AP), and reiterated that he wants the U.S. to take over Greenland (The Guardian). We're apparently sending thousands of troops to the Mexican border (Stars & Stripes). Trump also threatened — but then held off on — a 25% tariff on Colombia, after that country refused but later apparently accepted the idea of U.S. military aircraft repatriating Colombian migrants. (CBS News)

• Should California become an independent country? California Secretary of State Shirley Weber has approved a campaign to gather signatures petitioning for a referendum on the idea. Key thing to note: The results of the vote would not be legally binding, and the federal government would be under no obligation to respect its outcome. (Newsweek)

• A French woman has won a ruling from Europe’s top human rights court saying she should not have been blamed in her divorce for not having sex with her husband. The European Court of Human Rights judgment ruled that the woman suffered a violation of Article 8 under the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to respect for family and private life. (The Washington Post)

• Tax refunds have become a financial lifeline for many Americans, and according to a new report, half of millennials depend on their refunds to make ends meet. A recent Credit Karma survey found that 37 percent of taxpayers rely on their refund to get by, rising to 50 percent among millennials. (The Hill)

• Paul McCartney urged the British government not to make a change to copyright laws that he says could let artificial intelligence companies rip off artists. The government is consulting on whether to let tech firms use copyrighted material to help train artificial intelligence models unless the creators explicitly opt out. (AP)

• Dementia claims the lives of smarter people sooner, scientists have discovered. Research published in the BMJ, which analysed 261 studies including 36 relating to educational attainment, found life expectancy after a dementia diagnosis decreased for every extra year of education a person had received. (The Telegraph)

• "I drive a Cybertruck, and I'm sick of people flipping me off." (Business Insider)