ARISTOTLE.

BY GEORGE GROTE, F.R.S.,

D.C.L. OXFORD, AND LL.D. CAMBRIDGE;
LATE VICE-CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON;
PRESIDENT OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON;
AND FOREIGN MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE.

EDITED BY

ALEXANDER BAIN, LL.D.,

PROFESSOR OF LOGIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN,
AND

G. CROOM ROBERTSON, M.A.,

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY OF MIND AND LOGIC IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.

SECOND EDITION, WITH ADDITIONS.

LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1880.

The right of Translation is reserved.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS,
LONDON:
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

NOTICE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

This Edition is an exact reprint of the First Edition, with the addition of two important Essays on the Ethics and Politics of Aristotle, which were found among the author’s posthumous papers. They were originally published in 1876, in ‘Fragments on Ethical Subjects, by the late George Grote,’ but would have been included in the First Edition of this Work, had they been discovered in time. These Essays are the fruit of long and laborious study, and, so far as they extend, embody the writer’s matured views upon the Ethics and the Politics: the two treatises whose omission from his published exposition of the Aristotelian philosophy has been most regretted.

The Essay on ‘The Ethics of Aristotle’ falls naturally into two divisions; the first treats of Happiness; the second of what, according to Aristotle, is the chief ingredient of Happiness, namely. Virtue. On Aristotle’s own conception of Happiness, Mr. Grote dwells very minutely; turning it over on all sides, and looking at it from every point of view. While fully acknowledging its merits, he gives also the full measure of its defects. His criticisms on this head are in the author’s best style and are no less important as regards Ethical discussion than as a commentary on Aristotle.

His handling of Aristotle’s doctrine of Virtue is equally subtle and instructive. Particularly striking are the remarks on the Voluntary and the Involuntary, and on προαίρεσις, or deliberate preference.

The treatment of the Virtues in detail is, unhappily, more fragmentary; but what he does say regarding Justice and Equity has a permanent interest.

The Essay on ‘The Politics of Aristotle’ must be studied in connection with the preceding. Although but a brief sketch, it is remarkable for the insight which it affords us into the most consummate political ideal of the ancient world.

PREFACE BY THE EDITORS

TO THE FIRST EDITION.

The Historian of Greece, when closing his great narrative in the year 1856, promised to follow out in a separate work that speculative movement of the fourth century B.C. which upheld the supremacy of the Hellenic intellect long after the decline of Hellenic liberty. He had traced the beginnings of the movement in the famous chapter on Sokrates, but to do justice to its chief heroes — Plato and Aristotle — proved to be impossible within the limits of the History. When, however, the promised work appeared, after nine laborious years, it was found to compass only Plato and the other immediate companions of Sokrates, leaving a full half of the appointed task unperformed. Mr. Grote had already passed his 70th year, but saw in this only a reason for turning, without a moment’s pause, to the arduous labour still before him. Thenceforth, in spite of failing strength and the increasing distraction of public business, he held steadily on till death overtook him in the middle of the course. What he was able to accomplish, though not what study he had gone through towards the remainder of his design, these volumes will show. The office of preparing and superintending their publication was entrusted to the present editors by Mrs. Grote, in the exercise of her discretion as sole executrix under his last Will. As now printed, the work has its form determined by the author himself up to the end of Chapter XI. The first two chapters, containing a biography of Aristotle and a general account of his works, are followed by a critical analysis, in eight chapters, of all the treatises included under the title ‘Organon;’ and in the remaining chapter of the eleven the handling of the Physica and Metaphysica (taken together for the reasons given) is begun. What now stand as Chapters III., IV., &c., were marked, however, as Chapters VI., VII., &c., by the author; his design evidently being to interpolate before publication three other chapters of an introductory cast. Unfortunately no positive indication remains as to the subject of these; although there is reason to believe that, for one thing, he intended to prefix to the detailed consideration of the works a key to Aristotle’s perplexing terminology. Possibly also he designed to enter upon a more particular discussion of the Canon, after having viewed it externally in Chapter II.; citations and references bearing on such a discussion being found among his loose notes.

What might have been the course of the work from the point where it is broken off, is altogether matter of inference, beyond an indication of the subject of the chapter next to follow; but the remarks at the beginning of Chapter III. point to some likely conclusions. After the metaphysical discussions, which must have been prolonged through several chapters, there would probably have been taken in order the treatises De Cœlo, De Generatione et Corruptione, the Meteorologica, and next the various Biological works; though with what detail in each case it is impossible to guess. Then must have followed the De Animâ with the minor Psychological treatises summed up as Parva Naturalia, and next, without doubt, the Ethica and Politica; last of all, the Rhetorica and Poetica. That Mr. Grote had carefully mastered all these works is evident from his marginal annotations in the various copies which he read. With the Ethica and Politica in particular he had early been familiar, and most there is reason to regret that he has left nothing worked out upon this field so specially his own.[1] Fortunately it happens that on the psychological field next adjoining there is something considerable to show.

[1] It has been already stated that two important Essays on these subjects have been discovered among Mr. Grote’s posthumous papers since the publication of the First Edition. They are printed in this Edition after the chapter De Animâ. — Second Edition.

In the autumn of 1867 Mr. Grote undertook to write a short account of Aristotle’s striking recognition of the physical aspect of mental phenomena, to be appended to the third edition of the senior editor’s work, ‘The Senses and the Intellect;’ but, on following out the indications relative to that point, he was gradually led by his interest in the subject to elaborate a full abstract of the De Animâ and the other psychological treatises. Several months were spent on this task, and at the end he declared that it had greatly deepened his insight into Aristotle’s philosophy as a whole. He also expressed his satisfaction at having thus completed an exposition of the Psychology, fitted to stand as his contribution to that part of Aristotle, in case he should never reach the subject in the regular course of his general work. The exposition was printed in full at the time (1868), and drew the attention of students. It is now reprinted, with the prominence due to its literary finish and intrinsic value, as a chapter — the last — in the body of the present work.

The long Appendix coming after is composed of elements somewhat heterogeneous; but the different sections were all written in the period since 1865, and all, not excepting the last two (treating briefly of Epikurus and the Stoics), have a bearing upon the author’s general design.

The first section — an historical account of ancient theories of Universals — has already seen the light.[2] It brings together, as nowhere else, all the chief references to the doctrine of Realism in Plato, and exhibits the directly antagonistic position taken up by Aristotle towards his master. This it does so impressively that there could be no question of excluding it, even although it reproduces in part some of the matter of Chapter III., on the Categories. Being composed, in 1867, later than this Chapter, it is on that account written with all the firmer a grasp. On finishing it as it stands, Mr. Grote, in a private letter, expressed himself in terms that deserve to be quoted: — “I never saw before so clearly the extreme importance of Aristotle’s speculations as the guides and stimulants of mediæval philosophy. If I had time to carry the account further, I should have been able to show how much the improved views of the question of Universals depended on the fact that more and more of the works of Aristotle, and better texts, became known to Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and their successors. During the centuries immediately succeeding Boëthius, nothing of Aristotle except the Categories and the treatise De Interpretatione was known, and these in a Latin translation. Most fortunately the Categories was never put out of sight; and it is there that the doctrine of Substantia Prima stands clearly proclaimed.�

[2] In the Appendix to the senior editor’s ‘Manual of Mental and Moral Science’ (1867).

The second section, or, rather, the part therein treating of Aristotle’s doctrine of First Principles, is also a reprint. It was composed (in 1867) at the same time as the section on Universals, and was printed along with that; shorn, however, of the critical examination of Sir William Hamilton’s views on Aristotle, which is now prefixed to the statement of the Aristotelian doctrine. Hamilton having (in Note A, appended to his edition of Reid’s Works) claimed Aristotle as a supporter of the Philosophy of Common Sense, basing upon a long list of passages quoted, these were subjected by Mr. Grote to a searching criticism, the pointed vigour of which will be duly appreciated. The statement of his own view of Aristotle’s doctrine, though containing little that may not be found at more places than one in the body of the present work, is yet reprinted, because iteration was his favourite art for impressing anything to which he attached as much importance as he did attach to this conviction of his, regarding the very heart of Aristotle’s thought.

The long abstracts of six books of the Metaphysica and two books of the De Cœlo, next following in the Appendix, are sections of a character altogether different from the foregoing. Evidently not intended for publication, they have been included, partly as furnishing some indication of the labour the author underwent in seeking to lay hold of his subject, partly because of their inherent value. From the first motive, they are here reproduced as nearly as possible in the guise they wore as preliminary drafts, bestrewed with references. Their value consists in the fact that they give Mr. Grote’s interpretation of the text of treatises at once exceedingly difficult and important: difficult, as is proved by the great divergence, among commentators at many points; important, not more for the deeper aspects of Aristotle’s own system, than for the speculations of the earlier Greek philosophers on which they are the classical authority. What relation, in the case of each treatise, the books abstracted (often translated) hold to the other books left untouched, is specially indicated at the beginning of the third section and at the end of the fourth. Here let it suffice to mention that each abstract has a certain completeness in itself, and at the same time a bond of connection with the other. The abstract of the Metaphysica closes where Aristotle descends to speak of the concrete heavenly bodies, and just as much of the De Cœlo is given as treats specially of these. This connection, whether or not it was present to the author’s mind, enhances the value of the abstracts as here presented.[3]

[3] The author carried the abstract of De CÅ“lo a little farther, and then abruptly broke it off; probably finding himself borne too far away from the logical treatises with which he was at the time dealing.

In the remaining sections of the Appendix, not dealing with Aristotle, the short account of Epikurus aims at setting in its true light a much-maligned system of thought. On writing it, in 1867, Mr. Grote remarked that the last word had not yet been said on Epikurus. The ethical part of the sketch was printed at the time:[4] the whole is now given. More fragmentary is the notice of the Stoics, as merely replacing passages that he considered inadequate in a sketch submitted to him. Since it formed part of his entire design to add to the treatment of Aristotle a full exposition both of Stoic and Epikurean doctrines, considered as the outgrowth of the Cynic and Kyrenaic theories already handled at the end of the ‘Plato,’ the two fragments may not unfitly close the present work.

[4] Also in the ‘Manual of Mental and Moral Science,’ among ‘Ethical Systems.’

Taken altogether, the two volumes are undoubtedly a most important contribution to the history of ancient thought. As regards Aristotle, the author’s design must be gathered chiefly from the first eleven chapters, — begun as these were in 1865, and proceeded with in their order, till he was overtaken, in the act of composing the last, by the insidious malady which, after six months, finally carried him off. Perhaps the most striking feature in the exposition of the Organon, is the very full analysis given of the long treatise called Topica. While the other treatises have all, more or less, been drawn upon for the ordinary theory of Logic, the Topica, with its mixed logical and rhetorical bearings, has ceased to be embodied in modern schemes of discipline or study. Mr. Grote’s profound interest in everything pertaining to Dialectic drew him especially to this work, as the exhibition in detail of that habit of methodized discussion so deeply rooted in the Hellenic mind. And in the same connection it may be noted how the natural course of his work brought him, in the last months of his intellectual activity, to tread again old and familiar ground. A plea — this time against Aristotle — for the decried Sophists, and, once more, a picture of that dialectical mission of Sokrates which for him had an imperishable charm, were among the very last efforts of his pen.

Besides making up the Second Volume from the end of Chapter XI., the editors have, throughout the whole work, bestowed much attention on the notes and references set down by the author with his usual copious minuteness. It was deemed advisable to subject these everywhere to a detailed verification; and, though the editors speak on the matter with a diffidence best understood by those who may have undergone a similar labour, it is hoped that a result not unworthy of the author has been attained. In different places additional references have been supplied, either where there was an obvious omission on the author’s part, or in farther confirmation of his views given in the text: such references, mostly to the works of Aristotle himself, it has not been thought necessary to signalize. Where, as once or twice in the Appendix, a longer note in explanation seemed called for, this has been printed within square brackets.

From the text some passages, where the iterations seemed excessive, have been withheld, but only such as it was thought the author would himself have struck out upon revision: wherever there was evidence that revision had been made, the iterations, freely employed for emphasis, have been allowed to stand. On rare occasions, interpolations and verbal changes have been made with the view of bringing out more clearly the meaning sought to be conveyed. It is impossible to be more deeply sensible than the editors are, of the responsibility they have thus incurred; but they have been guided by their very respect for the venerable author, and they were fortunate in the many opportunities they enjoyed of learning from his own lips the cast of his views on Aristotle.[5]

[5] It is but due to the younger editor to state that the heaviest part of all the work here indicated has been done by him. — A. B.

An index has been drawn up with some care; as was needful, if meant to be of real service to the readers of so elaborate a work.

It only remains to add that in printing the Greek of the notes, &c., the text of Waitz has been followed for the Organon (everywhere short of the beginning); the text of Bonitz, for the Metaphysica; and for other works of Aristotle, generally the Berlin edition. Regard was had, as far as the editors’ knowledge went, to the author’s own preferences in his reading.

CONTENTS.

ARISTOTLE.

[CHAPTER I.]

LIFE OF ARISTOTLE.

In my preceding work, ‘Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates,’ I described a band of philosophers differing much from each other, but all emanating from Sokrates as common intellectual progenitor; all manifesting themselves wholly or principally in the composition of dialogues; and all living in an atmosphere of Hellenic freedom, as yet untroubled by any over-ruling imperial ascendancy from without. From that band, among whom Plato is facilè princeps, I now proceed to another, among whom the like pre-eminence belongs to Aristotle. This second band knew the Sokratic stimulus only as an historical tradition; they gradually passed, first from the Sokratic or Platonic dialogue — dramatic, colloquial, cross-examining — to the Aristotelian dialogue, semi-dramatic, rhetorical, counter-expository; and next to formal theorizing, ingenious solution and divination of special problems, historical criticism and abundant collections of detailed facts: moreover, they were witnesses of the extinction of freedom in Hellas, and of the rise of the Macedonian kingdom out of comparative nullity to the highest pinnacle of supremacy and mastership. Under the successors of Alexander, this extraneous supremacy, intermeddling and dictatorial, not only overruled the political movements of the Greeks, but also influenced powerfully the position and working of their philosophers; and would have become at once equally intermeddling even earlier, under Alexander himself, had not his whole time and personal energy been absorbed by insatiable thirst for eastern conquest, ending with an untimely death.

Aristotle was born at Stageira, an unimportant Hellenic colony in Thrace, which has obtained a lasting name in history from the fact of being his birthplace. It was situated in the Strymonic Gulf, a little north of the isthmus which terminates in the mountainous promontory of Athos; its founders were Greeks from the island of Andros, reinforced afterwards by additional immigrants from Chalkis in Eubœa. It was, like other Grecian cities, autonomous — a distinct, self-governing community; but it afterwards became incorporated in the confederacy of free cities under the presidency of Olynthus. The most material feature in its condition, at the period of Aristotle’s birth, was, that it lay near the frontier of Macedonia, and not far even from Pella, the residence of the Macedonian king Amyntas (father of Philip). Aristotle was born, not earlier than 392 B.C., nor later than 385-384 B.C. His father, Nikomachus, was a citizen of Stageira, distinguished as a physician, author of some medical works, and boasting of being descended from the heroic gens of the Asklepiads; his mother, Phaestis, was also of good civic family, descended from one of the first Chalkidian colonists.[1] Moreover, Nikomachus was not merely learned in his art, but was accepted as confidential physician and friend of Amyntas, with whom he passed much of his time — a circumstance of great moment to the future career of his son. We are told that among the Asklepiads the habit of physical observation, and even manual training in dissection, were imparted traditionally from father to son, from the earliest years, thus serving as preparation for medical practice when there were no written treatises to study.[2] The mind of Aristotle may thus have acquired that appetite for physiological study which so many of his treatises indicate.

[1] Diog. L. v. 10. This was probably among the reasons which induced Aristotle to prefer Chalkis as his place of temporary retirement, when he left Athens after the death of Alexander.

[2] Galen, De Anatomicis Administr. ii. 1. T. ii. pp. 280-281, ed. Kühn. παρὰ τοῖς γονεῦσιν ἐκ παίδων ἀσκουμένοις, ὥσπερ ἀναγινώσκειν καὶ γράφειν, οὕτως ἀνατέμνειν — (compare Plato — Protagoras, p. 328 A, p. 311 C).

Diog. L. v. 1. Ὁ δὲ Νικόμαχος ἦν ἀπὸ Νικομάχου τοῦ Μαχάνος τοῦ Ἀσκληπιοῦ, καθά φησιν Ἕρμιππος ἐν τῷ περὶ Ἀριστοτέλους καὶ συνεβίω Ἀμύντᾳ τῷ Μακεδόνων βασιλεῖ ἰατροῦ καὶ φίλου χρείᾳ.

We here learn that in the heroic genealogy of the Asklepiads, the son of Machaon himself bore the name of Nikomachus. I do not think that Will. v. Humboldt and Bernays are warranted in calling Aristotle “ein Halbgrieche,� “kein vollbürtiger Hellene� — (Die Dialoge des Aristoteles, pp. 2-56-134). An Hellenic family which migrated from Athens, Chalkis, Corinth, etc., to establish a colony on the coast of Thrace, or Asia Minor, did not necessarily lose its Hellenism. One cannot designate Demokritus, Xenokrates, Anaxagoras, Empedokles, &c., half Greeks.

Diogenes here especially cites Hermippus (B.C. 220-210), from whom several of his statements in this and other biographies appear to have been derived. The work of Hermippus seems to have been entitled “Lives of the Philosophers� (v. 2), among which lives that of Aristotle was one.

Hermippus mentioned, among other matters, communications made to Aristotle by Strœbus (a person engaged in the service of Kallisthenes as reader) respecting the condemnation and execution of Kallisthenes in Baktria, by order of Alexander (Plutarch, Alex. c. 54). From what source did Hermippus derive these statements made by Strœbus to Aristotle?

Respecting the character of his youth, there existed, even in antiquity, different accounts. We learn that he lost his father and mother while yet a youth, and that he came under the guardianship of Proxenus, a native of Atarneus who had settled at Stageira. According to one account, adopted apparently by the earliest witnesses preserved to us,[3] he was at first an extravagant youth, spent much of his paternal property, and then engaged himself to military service; of which he soon became weary, and went back to Stageira, turning to account the surgical building, apparatus, and medicines left by his father as a medical practitioner. After some time, we know not how long, he retired from this profession, shut up the building, and devoted himself to rhetoric and philosophy. He then went to Athens, and there entered himself in the school of Plato, at the age of thirty.[4] The philosophical life was thus (if this account be believed) a second choice, adopted comparatively late in life.[5] The other account, depending also upon good witnesses, represents him as having come to Athens and enlisted as pupil of Plato, at the early age of seventeen or eighteen: it omits all mention of an antecedent period, occupied by military service and a tentative of medical profession.[6] In both the two narratives, Aristotle appears as resident at Athens, and devoting himself to rhetoric and philosophy, from some period before 360 B.C. down to the death of Plato in 347 B.C.; though, according to the first of the two narratives, he begins his philosophical career at a later age, while his whole life occupied seventy years instead of sixty-two years.

[3] Epikurus and Timæus. Ἐπίκουρος ἐν τῇ περὶ ἐπιτηδευμάτων ἐπιστολῇ (Eusebius, Præp. Ev. xv. 5) — Diogen. L. x. 8; Ælian. V. H. v. 9.

[4] An author named Eumêlus (cited by Diogenes, v. 6, ἐν τῇ πέμπτῃ τῶν ἱστοριῶν, but not otherwise known) stated that Aristotle came to Plato at the age of thirty, and that he lived altogether to seventy years of age, instead of sixty-three, as Hermippus and Apollodorus affirmed. Eumêlus conceived Aristotle as born in 392 B.C., and coming to Plato in 362 B.C. His chronological data are in harmony with the statements of Epikurus and Timæus respecting the early life of Aristotle. The Βίος Ἀνώνυμος given by Ménage recognizes two distinct accounts as to the age at which Aristotle died: one assigning to him 70 years, the other only 63.

[5] See the Fragments of Timæus in Didot, Fragmenta Historicorum Græcorum, Fr. 70-74; also Aristokles, ap. Eusebium, Præp. Evang. xv. 2; Diogenes, L. x. 8; Athenæus, viii. p. 354. Timæus called Aristotle σοφιστὴν ὀψιμαθῆ καὶ μισητόν, καὶ τὸ πολυτίμητον ἰατρεῖον ἀρτίως ἀποκεκλεικότα. The speaker in Athenæus designates him as ὁ φαρμακοπώλης. The terms used by these writers are illtempered and unbecoming in regard to so great a man as Aristotle; but this is irrelevant to the question, whether they do not describe, in perverted colouring, some real features in his earlier life, or whether there was not, at least, a chronological basis of possibility for them. That no such features were noticed by other enemies of Aristotle, such as Eubulides and Kephisodôrus, is a reason as far as it goes for not believing them to be real, yet not at all a conclusive reason; nor is the speaker in Athenæus exact when he says that Epikurus is the only witness, for we find Timæus making the same statements. The ἰατρεῖον (see Antiphanes, apud Polluc. iv. 183 — Fragmenta Comic. cxxv., Meineke) of a Greek physician (more properly we should call the ἰατρὸς a general practitioner and chemist) was the repository of his materials and the scene of his important operations; for many of which instructions are given in the curious Hippokratic treatise entitled Κατ’ Ἰητρεῖον, vol. iii. pp. 262-337 of the edition of M. Littré, who in his preface to the treatise, p. 265, remarks about Aristotle:— “Il paraît qu’Aristote, qui était de famille médicale, avoit renoncé à une officine de ce genre, d’une grande valeur.â€� Stahr speaks of this ἰατρεῖον as if Aristotle had set up one at Athens (Aristotelia, p. 38), which the authorities do not assert; it was probably at Stageira. Ideler (Comm. ad Aristot. Meteorol. iv. 3, 16, p. 433) considers this story about Aristotle’s ἰατρεῖον to have been a fiction arising out of various expressions in his writings about the preparation of drugs — τὰ φάρμακα ἕψειν, &c. I think this is far-fetched. And when we find Aristokles rejecting the allegation about the ἰατρεῖον, by speaking of it as an ἄδοξον ἰατρεῖον, we can admit neither the justice of the epithet nor the ground of rejection.

[6] This account rested originally (so far as we know) upon the statement of Hermippus (B.C. 220), and was adopted by Apollodôrus in his Chronology (B.C. 150), both of them good authorities, yet neither of them so early as Epikurus and Timæus. Diogenes Laertius and Dionysius of Halikarnassus alike follow Hermippus. Both the life of Aristotle ascribed to Ammonius, and the Anonymous Life first edited by Robbe (Leyden, 1861, p. 2), include the same strange chronological blunder: they affirm Aristotle to have come to Athens at the age of seventeen, and to have frequented the society of Sokrates (who had been dead more than thirty years) for three years; then to have gone to Plato at the age of twenty. Zeller imagines, and I think it likely, that Aristotle may have been for a short time pupil with Isokrates, and that the story of his having been pupil with Sokrates has arisen from confusion of the two names, which confusion has been seen on several occasions (Zeller, Gesch. der Philos. der Griechen, ii. 2, p. 15.)

During the interval, 367-360 B.C., Plato was much absent from Athens, having paid two separate visits to Dionysius the younger at Syracuse. The time which he spent there at each visit is not explicitly given; but as far as we can conjecture from indirect allusions, it cannot have been less than a year at each, and may possibly have been longer. If, therefore, Aristotle reached Athens in 367 B.C. (as Hermippus represents) he cannot have enjoyed continuous instructions from Plato for the three or four years next ensuing.

However the facts may stand as to Aristotle’s early life, there is no doubt that in or before the year 362 B.C. he became resident at Athens, and that he remained there, profiting by the society and lectures of Plato, until the death of the latter in 347 B.C. Shortly after the loss of his master, he quitted Athens, along with his fellow-pupil Xenokrates, and went to Atarneus, which was at that time ruled by the despot Hermeias. That despot was a remarkable man, who being a eunuch through bodily hurt when a child, and having become slave of a prior despot named Eubulus, had contrived to succeed him in the supreme power, and governed the towns of Atarneus and Assos with firmness and energy. Hermeias had been at Athens, had heard Plato’s lectures, and had contracted friendship with Aristotle; which friendship became farther cemented by the marriage of Aristotle, during his residence at Atarneus, with Pythias the niece of Hermeias.[7] For three years Aristotle and Xenokrates remained at Assos or Atarneus, whence they were then forced to escape by reason of the despot’s death; for Mentor the Rhodian, general of the Persians in those regions, decoyed Hermeias out of the town under pretence of a diplomatic negociation, then perfidiously seized him, and sent him up as prisoner to the Persian king, by whose order he was hanged. Mentor at the same time seized the two towns and other possessions of Hermeias,[8] while Aristotle with his wife retired to Mitylene. His deep grief for the fate of Hermeias was testified in a noble hymn or pæan which he composed, and which still remains, as well as by an epigram inscribed on the statue of Hermeias at Delphi. We do not hear of his going elsewhere, until, two or three years afterwards (the exact date is differently reported), he was invited by Philip into Macedonia, to become preceptor to the young prince Alexander, then thirteen or fourteen years old. The reputation, which Aristotle himself had by this time established, doubtless coincided with the recollection of his father Nikomachus as physician and friend of Amyntas, in determining Philip to such a choice. Aristotle performed the duties required from him,[9] enjoying the confidence and favour both of Philip and Alexander, until the assassination of the former and the accession of the latter in 336 B.C. His principle residence during this period was in Macedonia, but he paid occasional visits to Athens, and allusion is made to certain diplomatic services which he rendered to the Athenians at the court of Philip; moreover he must have spent some time at his native city Stageira,[10] which had been among the many Greek cities captured and ruined by Philip during the Olynthian war of 349-347 B.C. Having obtained the consent and authority of Philip, Aristotle repaired to Stageira for the purpose of directing the re-establishment of the city. Recalling such of its dispersed inhabitants as could be collected, either out of the neighbouring villages or from more distant parts, he is said to have drawn up laws, or framed regulations for the returned citizens, and new comers. He had reason to complain of various rivals who intrigued against him, gave him much trouble, and obstructed the complete renovation of the city; but, notwithstanding, his services were such that an annual festival was instituted to commemorate them.[11] It is farther stated, that at some time during this period he had a school (analogous to the Academy at Athens) in the Nymphæum of the place called Mieza; where stone seats and shady walks, ennobled by the name of Aristotle, were still shown even in the days of Plutarch.[12]

[7] Strabo, xiii. 610; Diodor. xvi. 52. It appears that Aristotle incurred censure, even from contemporary rivals, for this marriage with Pythias. On what ground we cannot exactly make out (Aristokles ap. Eusebium Præp. Ev. xv. 2), unless it be from her relationship to Hermeias. She died long before Aristotle, but he mentions her in his will in terms attesting the constant affection which had reigned between them until her death. Aristotle thought it right to reply to the censure in one of his letters to Antipater.

Aristokles (ap. Euseb. Præp. Ev. xv. 2) says that Aristotle did not marry Pythias until after the death of Hermeias, when she was compelled to save herself by flight, and was in distress and poverty.

Mr. Blakesley (Life of Aristotle, p. 36) and Oncken (Die Staatslehre des Aristoteles, p. 158) concur in thinking that the departure of Aristotle from Athens had nothing to do with the death of Plato, but was determined by the capture of Olynthus, and by the fear and dislike of Philip which that event engendered at Athens.

But the fact that Xenokrates left Athens along with Aristotle disproves this supposition, and proves that the death of Plato was the real cause.

[8] Diog. Laert. v. 7-8. Diodorus ascribes this proceeding to Mentor the Rhodian: Strabo, to his brother Memnon. I think Diodorus is right. A remarkable passage in the Magna Moralia (genuine or spurious) of Aristotle, seems to me to identify the proceeding with Mentor (Aristot. Magn. Mor. i. 35, p. 1197, b. 21; as also the spurious second book of the Å’konomica, p. 1351, a. 33).

[9] It was probably during this period that Aristotle introduced to Alexander his friend the rhetor Theodektês of Phasêlis. Alexander took delight in the society of Theodektês, and testified this feeling, when he conquered Phasêlis, by demonstrations of affection and respect towards the statue of the rhetor, who had died during the intervening years — ἀποδιδοὺς τιμὴν τῇ γενομένῃ δι’ Ἀριστοτέλην καὶ φιλοσοφίαν ὁμιλίᾳ πρὸς τὸν ἄνδρα (Plutarch, Alex. c. 17).

[10] It is to this period of Aristotle’s life that the passage extracted from his letters in Demetrius (so-called περὶ Ἑρμηνείας) refers. ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης φησίν — ἐγὼ ἐκ μὲν Ἀθηνῶν εἰς Στάγειρα ἦλθον διὰ τὸν βασιλέα τὸν μέγαν, ἐκ δὲ Σταγείρων εἰς Ἀθήνας διὰ τὸν χειμῶνα τὸν μέγαν — s. 29.

We shall hardly consider this double employment of the epithet μέγαν as an instance of that success in epistolary style, which Demetrius ascribes to Aristotle (s. 239); but the passage proves Aristotle’s visits both to Stageira and to Athens. The very cold winters of the Chalkidic peninsula were severely felt by the Greeks (Plato — Symposion, p. 220), and may well have served as motive to Aristotle for going from Stageira to Athens.

[11] Ammonius, Vit. Aristot. See the curious statements given by Dion Chrysostom, out of the epistles of Aristotle; Orat. ii. p. 100, xlvii. p. 225, Reiske.

Respecting the allusions made in these statements to various persons who were reluctant to return out of the separate villages into the restored city, compare what Xenophon says about the διοίκισις, and subsequent restitution, of Mantineia; Hellenica, v. 2, 1-8, vi. 5, 3-6.

[12] Plutarch, Alexander, c. 7. What Plutarch calls the Nymphæum, is considered by Stahr (Aristotelia, i. p. 93 n.) to be probably the same as what Pliny denominates the Museum at Stageira (N. H. xvi. c. 23); but Zeller (p. 23, n.), after Geier, holds that Mieza lay S.W. of Pella, in Emathia, far from Stageira. Plutarch seems to imply that Aristotle was established along with Alexander at Meiza by Philip.

Compare, for these facts of the biography of Aristotle, Stahr, Aristotelia, Part I., pp. 86-94, 103-106.

I conceive that it was during this residence in Macedonia and at Pella, that Aristotle erected the cenotaph in honour of Hermeias, which is so contemptuously derided by the Chian poet Theokritus in his epigram, Diog. L. v. 11. The epigram is very severe on Aristotle, for preferring Pella to the Academy as a residence; ascribing such preference to the exigencies of an ungovernable stomach.

In 336 B.C. Alexander became king of Macedonia, and his vast projects for conquest, first of Persia, next of other peoples known and unknown, left him no leisure for anything but military and imperial occupations. It was in the ensuing year (335 B.C. when the preparations for the Persian expedition were being completed, ready for its execution in the following spring, that Aristotle transferred his residence to Athens. The Platonic philosophical school in which he had studied was now conducted by Xenokrates as Scholarch, having passed at the death of Plato, in 347 B.C., to his nephew Speusippus, and from the latter to Xenokrates in 339 B.C. Aristotle established for himself a new and rival school on the eastern side of Athens, in the gymnasium attached to the temple of Apollo Lykeius, and deriving from thence the name by which it was commonly known — the Lykeium. In that school, and in the garden adjoining, he continued to lecture or teach, during the succeeding twelve years, comprising the life and the brilliant conquests of Alexander. Much of his instruction is said to have been given while walking in the garden, from whence the students and the sect derived the title of Peripatetics. In the business of his school and the composition of his works all his time was occupied; and his scholars soon became so numerous that he found it convenient to desire them to elect from themselves every ten days a rector to maintain order, as Xenokrates had already done at the Academy.[13] Aristotle farther maintained correspondence, not merely with Alexander and Antipater but also with Themison, one of the princes of Cyprus, as Isokrates had corresponded with Nikokles, and Plato with Dionysius of Syracuse.[14]

[13] Diog. L. v. 4. Brandis notes it as a feature in Aristotle’s character (p. 65), that he abstained from meddling with public affairs at Athens. But we must remember, that, not being a citizen of Athens, Aristotle was not competent to meddle personally. His great and respected philosophical competitor, Xenokrates (a non-citizen or metic as well as he), was so far from being in a condition to meddle with public affairs, that he was once even arrested for not having paid in due season his μετοίκιον, or capitation-tax imposed upon metics. He was liberated, according to one story, by Lykurgus (Plutarch, Vit. x. Oratt. p. 842); according to another story (seemingly more probable), by Demetrius Phalereus (Diog. La. iv. 14). The anonymous life of Aristotle published by Robbe (Leyden, 1861, p. 3), takes due notice of Aristotle’s position at Athens as a metic.

[14] Aristotle addressed to Themison a composition now lost, but well known in antiquity, called Προτρεπτικός. It was probably a dialogue; and was intended as an encouragement to the study of philosophy. See Rose, Aristot. Pseud. pp. 69-72, who gives a very interesting fragment of it out of Stobæus.

We have the titles of two lost works of Aristotle — Περὶ Βασιλείας, and Ἀλέξανδρος, ἢ ὑπὲρ ἀποίκων (or ἀποικιῶν). Both seem to have been dialogues. In one, or in both, he gave advice to Alexander respecting the manner of ruling his newly acquired empire in Asia; and respecting the relations proper to be established between Hellenes and native Asiatics (see Rose, Arist. Pseud. pp. 92-96; Bernays, Die Dialoge des Aristot. pp. 51-57).

In June, 323 B.C., occurred the premature and unexpected decease of the great Macedonian conqueror, aged 32 years and 8 months, by a violent fever at Babylon. So vast was his power, and so unmeasured his ambition, that the sudden removal of such a man operated as a shock to the hopes and fears of almost every one, both in Greece and Asia. It produced an entire change in the position of Aristotle at Athens.

To understand what that position really was, we must look at it in connection with his Macedonian sympathies, and with the contemporaneous political sentiment at Athens. It was in the middle of the year 335 B.C., that Alexander put down by force the revolt of the Thebans, took their city by assault, demolished it altogether (leaving nothing but the citadel called Kadmeia, occupied by a Macedonian garrison), and divided its territory between two other BÅ“otian towns. Immediately after that terror-striking act, he demanded from the Athenians (who had sympathized warmly with Thebes, though without overt acts of assistance) the surrender of their principal anti-Macedonian politicians. That demand having been refused, he at first prepared to extort compliance at the point of the sword, but was persuaded, not without difficulty, to renounce such intention, and to be content with the voluntary exile of Ephialtes and Charidemus from Athens. Though the unanimous vote of the Grecian Synod at Corinth constituted him Imperator, there can be no doubt that the prevalent sentiment in Greece towards him was that of fear and dislike; especially among the Athenians, whose dignity was most deeply mortified, and to whom the restriction of free speech was the most painful.[15]

[15] See History of Greece, chap. xci. pp. 18, 41, 64.

Now it was just at this moment (in 335 B.C.) that Aristotle came to Athens and opened his school. We cannot doubt that he was already known and esteemed as the author of various published writings. But the prominent mark by which every one now distinguished him, was, that he had been for several years confidential preceptor of Alexander, and was still more or less consulted by that prince, as well as sustained by the friendship of Antipater, viceroy of Macedonia during the king’s absence. Aristotle was regarded as philo-Macedonian, and to a certain extent, anti-Hellenic — the sentiment expressed towards him in the unfriendly epigram of the contemporary Chian poet Theokritus.[16] His new school, originally opened under the protection and patronage of Alexander and Antipater, continued to be associated with their names, by that large proportion of Athenian citizens who held anti-Macedonian sentiments. Alexander caused the statue of Aristotle to be erected in Athens,[17] and sent to him continual presents of money, usefully employed by the philosopher in the prosecution of his physical and zoological researches,[18] as well as in the purchase of books. Moreover, Aristotle remained in constant and friendly correspondence with Antipater, the resident viceroy at Pella,[19] during the absence of Alexander in Asia. Letters of recommendation from Aristotle to the Macedonian rulers were often given and found useful: several of them were preserved and published afterwards. There is even reason to believe that the son of Antipater — Kassander, afterwards viceroy or king of Macedonia, was among his pupils.[20]

[16] Diog. L. v. 11.

Cf. Plutarch, De Exilio, p. 603.

[17] Stahr, Aristotelia, vol. ii. p. 290.

[18] Athenæus, ix. 398; Pliny, H. N. viii. c. 16. Athenæus alludes to 800 talents as having been given by Alexander to Aristotle for this purpose. Pliny tells us that Alexander put thousands of men at his service for enquiry and investigation. The general fact is all that we can state with confidence, without pretending to verify amounts.

[19] Vit. Aristotelis, Leyden, 1861, Robbe, pp. 4-6; Aristokles ap. Eusebium Præp. Evang. xv. 2. Respecting the Epistles of Aristotle, and the collection thereof by Artemon, see Rose, Aristoteles Pseudepigr. pp. 594-598.

[20] We may infer this fact from the insulting reply made by Alexander, not long before his death, to Kassander, who had just then joined him for the first time at Babylon, having been sent by Antipater at the head of a reinforcement. Some recent comers from Greece complained to Alexander of having been ill-used by Antipater. Kassander being present at the complaint, endeavoured to justify his father and to invalidate their testimony, upon which Alexander silenced him by the remark that he was giving a specimen of sophistical duplicity learnt from Aristotle. Ταῦτα ἐκεῖνα σοφίσματα τῶν Ἀριστοτέλους εἰς ἑκάτερον τῶν λόγων, οἰμωξομένων, ἂν καὶ μικρὸν ἀδικοῦντες τοὺς ἀνθρώπους φανῆτε (Plutarch, Alex. 74).

I have recounted elsewhere how the character of Alexander became gradually corrupted by unexampled success and Asiatic influences;[21] how he thus came to feel less affection and esteem for Aristotle, to whom he well knew that his newly acquired imperial and semi-divine pretensions were not likely to be acceptable; how, on occasion of the cruel sentence passed on Kallisthenes, he threatened even to punish Aristotle himself, as having recommended Kallisthenes, and as sympathizing with the same free spirit; lastly, how Alexander became more or less alienated, not only from the society of Hellenic citizens, but even from his faithful viceroy, the Macedonian Antipater. But these changed relations between Aristotle and Alexander did not come before the notice of the Athenians, nor alter the point of view in which they regarded the philosopher; the rather, since the relations of Aristotle with Antipater continued as intimate as ever.

[21] Histor. of Greece, ch. xciv. pp. 291, 301, 341; Plutarch, Alexand. c. lv.; Dion Chrysostom. Orat. 64, p. 338, Reiske.

It will thus appear, that though all the preserved writings of Aristotle are imbued with a thoroughly independent spirit of theorizing contemplation and lettered industry, uncorrupted by any servility or political bias — yet his position during the twelve years between 335-323 B.C. inevitably presented him to the Athenians as the macedonizing philosopher, parallel with Phokion as the macedonizing politician, and in pointed antithesis to Xenokrates at the Academy, who was attached to the democratical constitution, and refused kingly presents. Besides that enmity which he was sure to incur, as an acute and self-thinking philosopher, from theology and the other anti-philosophical veins in the minds of ordinary men, Aristotle thus became the object of unfriendly sentiment from many Athenian patriots,[22] who considered the school of Plato generally as hostile to popular liberty, and who had before their eyes examples of individual Platonists, ruling their respective cities with a sceptre forcibly usurped.[23]

[22] The statement of Aristokles (ap. Eusebium, Præp. Ev. xv. 2) is doubtless just — φανερὸν οὖν, ὅτι καθάπερ πολλοῖς καὶ ἄλλοις, οὕτω καὶ Ἀριστοτέλει συνέβη, διά τε τὰς πρὸς τοὺς βασιλεῖς φιλίας καὶ διὰ τὴν ἐν τοῖς λόγοις ὑπεροχήν, ὑπὸ τῶν τότε σοφιστῶν φθονεῖσθαι. The like is said by the rhetor Aristeides — Or. xii. p. 144, Dindorf.

I have already observed that the phrase of “Halbgrieche� applied by Bernays and W. v. Humboldt to Aristotle (Bernays, Die Dialoge des Aristoteles, p. 2, p. 134) is not accurate literally, unless we choose to treat all the Hellenic colonies as half-Greek. His ancestry was on both sides fully Hellenic. But it is true of him, in the same metaphorical sense in which it is true of Phokion. Aristotle was semi-Macedonian in his sympathies. He had no attachment to Hellas as an organized system autonomous, self-acting, with an Hellenic city as president: which attachment would have been considered, by Perikles, Archidamus, and Epameinondas, as one among the constituents indispensable to Hellenic patriotism.

[23] Quintilian — Declamat. 268. “Quis ignorat, ex ipsâ Socratis (quo velut fonte omnis philosophia manasse creditur) scholâ evasisse tyrannos et hostes patriæ suæ?� Compare Athenæus, xi. 508-509.

Such sentiment was probably aggravated by the unparalleled and offensive Macedonian demonstration at the Olympic festival of 324 B.C. It was on that occasion that Alexander, about one year prior to his decease, sent down a formal rescript, which was read publicly to the assembled crowd by a herald with loud voice; ordering every Grecian city to recall all exiles who had been banished by judicial sentence, and intimating, that if the rescript were not obeyed spontaneously, Antipater would be instructed to compel the execution of it by force. A large number of the exiles whose restitution was thus ordered, were present on the plain of Olympia, and heard the order proclaimed, doubtless with undisguised triumph and exultation. So much the keener must have been the disgust and humiliation among the other Grecian hearers, who saw the autonomy of each separate city violently trampled down, without even the pretence of enquiry, by this high-handed sentence of the Macedonian conqueror. Among the Athenians especially, the resentment felt was profound; and a vote was passed appointing deputies to visit Alexander in person, for the purpose of remonstrating against it. The orator Demosthenes, who happened to be named Archi-Theôrus of Athens (chief of the solemn legation sent to represent Athens) at this Olympic festival, incurred severe reproach from his accuser Deinarchus, for having even been seen in personal conversation with the Macedonian officer who had arrived from Asia as bearer of this odious rescript.[24]

[24] See the description of this event in History of Greece, ch. xcv. p. 416.

There is reason for supposing that Hypereides also (as well as Deinarchus) inveighed against Demosthenes for having publicly sought the company of Nikanor at this Olympic festival. At least we know that Hypereides, in his oration against Demosthenes, made express allusion to Nikanor. See Harpokration v. Νικάνωρ.

The exordium prefixed to the Pseud-Aristotelian Rhetorica ad Alexandrum, announces that discourse to have been composed pursuant to the desire of Alexander; and notices especially one message transmitted by him to Aristotle through Nikanor (p. 1420 a. 6, 1421 a. 26-38, καθάπερ ἡμῖν ἐδήλωσε Νικάνωρ, &c.).

Now it happened that this officer, the bearer of the rescript, was Nikanor of Stageira;[25] son of Proxenus who had been Aristotle’s early guardian, and himself the cherished friend or ward, ultimately the son-in-law, of the philosopher. We may be certain that Aristotle would gladly embrace the opportunity of seeing again this attached friend, returning after a long absence on service in Asia; that he would be present with him at the Olympic festival, perhaps receive a visit from him at Athens also. And the unpopularity of Aristotle at Athens, as identified with Macedonian imperial authority, would thus be aggravated by his notorious personal alliance with his fellow-citizen Nikanor, the bearer of that rescript in which such authority had been most odiously manifested.

[25] Diodor. xviii. 8. διόπερ ὑπογύων ὄντων τῶν Ὀλυμπίων ἐξέπεμψεν (Alexander) εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα Νικάνορα τὸν Σταγειρίτην, δοὺς ἐπιστολὴν περὶ τῆς καθόδου.

Antipater, when re-distributing the satrapies of the Macedonian empire, after the death both of Alexander and of Perdikkas, appointed Nikanor prefect or satrap of Kappadokia (Arrian, Τὰ μετὰ Ἀλέξανδρον, apud Photium, cod. 92, s.37, Didot).

Ammonius, in the life of Aristotle, mentions Nikanor as son of Proxenus of Atarneus. Sextus Empiricus alludes to Nikanor as son-in-law of Aristotle (adv. Mathematicos, sect. 258. p. 271, Fabr.). See Ménage ad Diogen. Laert. v. 12. Robbe’s Life of Aristotle also (Leyden, 1861, p. 2) mentions Nikanor as son of Proxenus.

Nikanor was appointed afterwards (in 318 B.C., five years later than the death of Aristotle) by Kassander, son of Antipater, to be commander of the Macedonian garrison which occupied Munychia, as a controlling force over Athens (Diodor. xviii. 64). It will be seen in my History of Greece (ch. xcvi. p. 458) that Kassander was at that moment playing a difficult game, his father Antipater being just dead; that he could only get possession of Munychia by artifice, and that it was important for him to entrust the mission to an officer who already had connections at Athens; that Nikanor, as adopted son of Aristotle, possessed probably beforehand acquaintance with Phokion and the other macedonizing leaders at Athens; so that the ready way in which Phokion now fell into co-operation with him is the more easily explained.

Nikanor, however, was put to death by Kassander himself, some months afterwards.

During the twelve or thirteen years[26] of Aristotle’s teaching and Alexander’s reign, Athens was administered by macedonizing citizens, with Phokion and Demades at their head. Under such circumstances, the enmity of those who hated the imperial philosopher could not pass into act; nor was it within the contemplation of any one, that only one year after that rescript which insulted the great Pan-Hellenic festival, the illustrious conqueror who issued it would die of fever, in the vigour of his age and at the height of his power (June, 323 B.C.). But as soon as the news of his decease, coming by surprise both on friends and enemies, became confirmed, the suppressed anti-Macedonian sentiment burst forth in powerful tide, not merely at Athens, but also throughout other parts of Greece. There resulted that struggle against Antipater, known as the Lamian war:[27] a gallant struggle, at first promising well, but too soon put down by superior force, and ending in the occupation of Athens by Antipater with a Macedonian garrison in September, 322 B.C., as well as in the extinction of free speech and free citizenship by the suicide of Demosthenes and the execution of Hypereides.

[26] There remain small fragments of an oration of Demades in defence of his administration, or political activity, for twelve years — ὑπὲρ τῆς δωδεκαετίας (Demad. Fragm. 179, 32). The twelve years of Demades, however, seem to be counted from the battle of Chæroneia in 338 B.C.; so that they end in B.C. 326. See Clinton, Fast. Hellen. B.C. 326.

[27] For the account of the Lamian war, see History of Greece, ch. xcv. pp. 420-440. As to the anti-Macedonian sentiment prevalent at Athens, see Diodorus, xviii. 10.

During the year immediately succeeding the death of Alexander, the anti-Macedonian sentiment continued so vehemently preponderant at Athens, that several of the leading citizens, friends of Phokion, left the city to join Antipater, though Phokion himself remained, opposing ineffectually the movement. It was during this period that the enemies of Aristotle found a favourable opportunity for assailing him. An indictment on the score of impiety was preferred against him by Eurymedon the Hierophant (chief priest of the Eleusinian Demeter), aided by Demophilus, son of the historian Ephorus. The Hymn or Pæan (still existing), which Aristotle had composed in commemoration of the death, and in praise of the character, of the eunuch Hermeias,[28] was arraigned as a mark of impiety; besides which Aristotle had erected at Delphi a statue of Hermeias with an honorific inscription, and was even alleged to have offered sacrifices to him as to a god. In the published writings of Aristotle, too, the accusers found various heretical doctrines, suitable for sustaining their indictment; as, for example, the declaration that prayer and sacrifices to the gods were of no avail.[29] But there can be little doubt that the Hymn, Ode, or Pæan, in honour of Hermeias, would be more offensive to the feelings of an ordinary Athenian than any philosophical dogma extracted from the cautious prose compositions of Aristotle. It is a hymn, of noble thought and dignified measure, addressed to Virtue (Ἀρετὴ — masculine or military Virtue), in which are extolled the semi-divine or heroic persons who had fought, endured, and perished in her service. The name and exploits of Hermeias are here introduced as the closing parallel and example in a list beginning with Hêraklês, the Dioskûri, Achilles, and Ajax. Now the poet Kallistratus, in his memorable Skolion, offers a like compliment to Harmodius and Aristogeiton; and Pindar, to several free Greeks of noble family, who paid highly for his epinician Odes now remaining. But all the persons thus complimented were such as had gained prizes at the sacred festivals, or had distinguished themselves in other ways which the public were predisposed to honour; whereas Hermeias was a eunuch, who began by being a slave, and ended by becoming despot over a free Grecian community, without any exploit conspicuous to the eye. To many of the Athenian public it would seem insult, and even impiety, to couple Hermeias with the greatest personages of Hellenic mythology, as a successful competitor for heroic honours. We need only read the invective of Claudian against Eutropius, to appreciate the incredible bitterness of indignation and contempt, which was suggested by the spectacle of a eunuch and a slave exercising high public functions.[30] And the character of a despot was, to the anti-macedonizing Athenians, hardly less odious than either of the others combined with it in Hermeias.

[28] Diogen. L. v. 5; Athenæus, xv. 696. The name of Demophilus was mentioned by Favorinus as also subscribed to the indictment: this Demophilus was probably son of the historian Ephorus. See Val. Rose, Aristoteles Pseudepigraphus, p. 582. He took part afterwards in the indictment against Phokion. As an historian, he completed the narrative of the Sacred War, which his father Ephorus had left unfinished (Diodor. xvi. 14). The words of Athenæus, as far as I can understand them, seem to imply that he composed a speech for the Hierophant Eurymedon.

[29] See the passages from Origen advers. Celsum, cited in Stahr’s Aristotelia, vol. i. p. 146.

Among the titles of the lost works of Aristotle (No. 14 in the Catalogue of Diogenes Laertius, No. 9 in that of the Anonymous; see Rose, Aristoteles Pseudepigraphus, pp. 12-18), one is Περὶ Εὐχῆς. From its position in the Catalogue, it seems plainly to have been a dialogue; and the dialogues were the most popular and best-known writings of Aristotle. Now we know from the Nikomach. Ethica (x. 8, 1178, b. 6-32) that Aristotle declared all constructive effort, and all action with a view to external ends, to be inconsistent with the Divine Nature, which was blest exclusively in theorizing and contemplation. If he advocated the same doctrine in the dialogue Περὶ Εὐχῆς, he must have contended that persons praying could have no additional chance of obtaining the benefits which they prayed for; and this would have placed him in conflict with the received opinions.

Respecting the dialogue Περὶ Εὐχῆς, see Bernays, Die Dialoge des Aristoteles, pp. 120-122; and Rose, Arist. Pseudepigr. pp. 67, 68.

[30] “Omnia cesserunt, eunucho consule, monstra:� this is among the bitter lines of Claudian, too numerous to cite; but they well deserve to be read in the original. Compare also, about the ancient sentiment towards eunuchs, Herodotus, viii. 106; Xenophon, Cyropæd. viii. 3. 15.

Apellikon thought it worth while to compose a special treatise, for the purpose of vindicating Aristotle from the aspersions circulated in regard to his relations with Hermeias. Aristokles speaks of the vindication as successful (ap. Euseb. P. E. xv. 2).

Taking these particulars into account, we shall see that a charge thus sustained, when preferred by a venerable priest, during the prevalence of strong anti-Macedonian feeling, against a notorious friend of Antipater and Nikanor, was quite sufficient to alarm the prudence of the accused. Aristotle bowed to the storm (if indeed he had not already left Athens, along with other philo-Macedonians) and retired to Chalkis (in Eubœa),[31] then under garrison by Antipater. An accused person at Athens had always the option of leaving the city, at any time before the day of trial; Sokrates might have retired, and obtained personal security in the same manner, if he had chosen to do so. Aristotle must have been served, of course, with due notice: and according to Athenian custom, the indictment would be brought into court in his absence, as if he had been present; various accusers, among them Demochares,[32] the nephew of Demosthenes, would probably speak in support of it; and Aristotle must been found guilty in his absence. But there is no ground for believing that he intended to abandon Athens, and live at Chalkis, permanently; the rather, inasmuch as he seems to have left not only his school, but his library, at Athens under the charge of Theophrastus. Aristotle knew that the Macedonian chiefs would not forego supremacy over Greece without a struggle; and, being in personal correspondence with Antipater himself, he would receive direct assurance of this resolution, if assurance were needed. In a question of military force, Aristotle probably felt satisfied that Macedonian arms must prevail; after which the affairs of Athens would be again administered, at least in the same spirit, as they had been before Alexander’s death, if not with more complete servility. He would then have returned thither to resume his school, in competition with that of Plato under Xenokrates at the Academy; for he must have been well aware that the reputation of Athens, as central hearth of Hellenic letters and philosophy, could not be transferred to Chalkis or to any other city.[33]

[31] That Chalkis was among the Grecian towns then occupied by a Macedonian garrison is the statement of Brandis (Entwickelungen der Griechischen Philosophie, i. p. 391, 1862). Though I find no direct authority for this statement, I adopt it as probable in the highest degree.

[32] Aristokles (ap. Eusebium Præp. Ev. xv. 2) takes notice of the allegations of Demochares against Aristotle: That letters of Aristotle had been detected or captured (ἁλῶναι), giving information injurious to Athens: That Aristotle had betrayed Stageira to Philip: That when Philip, after the capture of Olynthus, was selling into slavery the Olynthian prisoners, Aristotle was present at the auction (ἐπὶ τοῦ λαφυροπωλείου), and pointed out to him which among the prisoners were men of the largest property.

We do not know upon what foundation of fact (if upon any) these allegations were advanced by a contemporary orator. But they are curious, as illustrating the view taken of Aristotle by his enemies. They must have been delivered as parts of one of the accusatory speeches on Aristotle’s trial par contumace: for this was the earliest occasion on which Aristotle’s enemies had the opportunity of publicly proclaiming their antipathy against him, and they would hardly omit to avail themselves of it. The Hierophant, the principal accuser, would be supported by other speakers following him; just as Melêtus, the accuser of Sokrates, was supported by Anytus and Lykon. The ἱστορίαι of Demochares were not composed until seventeen years after this epoch — certainly not earlier than 306 B.C. — sixteen years after the death of Aristotle, when his character was not prominently before the public. Nevertheless Demochares may possibly have included these accusatory allegations against the philosopher in his ἱστορίαι, as well as in his published speech. His invectives against Antipater, and the friends of Antipater, were numerous and bitter:— Polybius. xii. 13, 9; Cicero, Brutus, 83; compare Democharis Fragmenta, in Didot’s Fragm. Historicorum Græcorum, vol. ii. p. 448. Philôn, who indicted Sophokles (under the γραφὴ παρανόμων) for the law which the latter had proposed in 306 B.C. against the philosophers at Athens, had been a friend of Aristotle, Ἀριστοτέλους γνώριμος. Athenæus, xiii. 610.

[33] We may apply here the same remark that Dionysius makes about Deinarchus as a speech-maker; when Deinarchus retired to Chalkis, no one would send to Chalkis for a speech: Οὐ γὰρ εἰς Χαλκίδα ἄν τινες ἔπλεον λόγων χάριν, ἢ ἰδίων, ἢ δημοσίων· οὐ γὰρ τέλεον ἠπόρουν οὕτω λόγων. Dionys. Halic. Dinar. p. 639.

This is what would probably have occurred, when the Lamian war was finished and the Macedonian garrison installed at Athens, in Sept. 322 B.C. — had Aristotle’s life lasted longer. But in or about that very period, a little before the death of Demosthenes, he died at Chalkis of illness; having for some time been troubled with indigestion and weakness of stomach.[34] The assertion of Eumêlus and others that he took poison, appears a mere fiction suggested by the analogy of Sokrates.[35] One of his latest compositions was a defence of himself against the charge of impiety, and against the allegations of his accusers (as reported to him, or published) in support of it. A sentence of this defence remains,[36] wherein he points out the inconsistency of his accusers in affirming that he intended to honour Hermeias as an immortal, while he had notoriously erected a tomb, and had celebrated funeral ceremonies to him as a mortal. And in a letter to Antipater, he said (among other things) that Athens was a desirable residence, but that the prevalence of sycophancy or false accusation was a sad drawback to its value; moreover that he had retired to Chalkis, in order that the Athenians might not have the opportunity of sinning a second time against philosophy, as they had already done once, in the person of Sokrates.[37] In the same or another letter to Antipater, he adverted to an honorific tribute which had been voted to him at Delphi before the death of Alexander, but the vote for which had been since rescinded. He intimated that this disappointment was not indifferent to him, yet at the same time no serious annoyance.[38]

[34] Censorinus, De Die Natali — Ménage ad Diogen. Laert. v. 16.

[35] Diogenes L. however (v. 8) gave credit to this story, as we may see by his Epigram.

[36] Athenæus xv. p. 696, 697. Probably this reply of Aristotle (though Zeller, p. 33, declares it to be spurious, in my judgment very gratuitously), may have been suited to the words of the speech (not preserved to us) which it was intended to answer. But the reply does not meet what I conceive to have been the real feeling in the minds of those who originated the charge. The logical inconsistency which he points out did not appear an inconsistency to Greeks generally. Aristotle had rendered to the deceased Hermeias the same honours (though less magnificent in degree) as Alexander to the deceased Hephæstion, and the Amphipolitans to the deceased Brasidas (Thucyd. v. 11; Aristotel. Ethic. Nikom. v. 7. 1). In both these cases a tomb was erected to the deceased, implying mortality; and permanent sacrifices were offered to him, implying immortality: yet these two proceedings did not appear to involve any logical contradiction, in the eyes of the worshippers. That which offended the Athenians, really, in the case of Aristotle, was the worthlessness of Hermeias, to whom he rendered these prodigious honours — eunuch, slave, and despot; an assemblage of what they considered mean attributes. The solemn measure and character of a Pæan was disgraced by being applied to such a vile person.

[37] Ammonius, Vit. Aristotelis, p. 48, in Buhle’s Aristot. vol. i.; Ménage ad Diog. Laert. v. 5, with the passage from Origen (adv. Celsum) there cited; Ælian, V. H. iii. 36.

We learn from Diogenes that Theophrastus was indicted for impiety by Agnonides; but such was the esteem in which Theophrastus was held, that the indictment utterly failed; and Agnonides was very near incurring the fine which every accuser had to pay, if he did not obtain one-fifth of the suffrages of the Dikasts (Diog. L. v. 37). Now Agnonides comes forward principally as the vehement accuser of Phokion four years after the death of Aristotle, during the few months of democratical reaction brought about by the edicts and interference of Polysperchon (318 B.C.) after the death of Antipater (History of Greece, ch. xcvi. p. 477). Agnonides must have felt himself encouraged by what had happened five years before with Aristotle, to think that he would succeed in a similar charge against Theophrastus. But Theophrastus was personally esteemed; he was not intimately allied with Antipater, or directly protected by him; moreover, he had composed no hymn to a person like Hermeias. Accordingly, the indictment recoiled upon the accuser himself.

[38] Ælian, V. H. xiv. 1. Ἀριστοτέλης, ἐπεί τις αὐτοῦ ἀφείλετο τὰς ψηφισθείσας ἐν Δελφοῖς τιμάς, ἐπιστέλλων πρὸς Ἀντίπατρον περὶ τούτων, φησίν — Ὑπὲρ τῶν ἐν Δελφοῖς ψηφισθέντων μοι, καὶ ὧν ἀφῄρημαι νῦν, οὕτως ἔχω ὡς μήτε μοι σφόδρα μέλειν αὐτῶν, μήτε μοι μηδὲν μέλειν. The statue of Aristotle at Athens was before the eyes of Alexander of Aphrodisias about A.D. 200. See Zumpt, Scholarchen zu Athen, p. 74.

In regard to the person and habits of Aristotle, we are informed that he had thin legs and small eyes; that in speech he was somewhat lisping; that his attire was elegant and even showy; that his table was well-served — according to his enemies, luxurious above the measure of philosophy. His pleasing and persuasive manners are especially attested by Antipater, in a letter, apparently of marked sympathy and esteem, written shortly after the philosopher’s death.[39] He was deeply attached to his wife Pythias, by whom he had a daughter who bore the same name. His wife having died after some years, he then re-married with a woman of Stageira, named Herpyllis, who bore him a son called Nikomachus. Herpyllis lived with him until his death; and the constant as well as reciprocal attachment between them is attested by his last will.[40] At the time of his death, his daughter Pythias had not yet attained marriageable age; Nikomachus was probably a child.

[39] Plutarch — Alkibiad. et Coriolan. Comp. c. 3; Aristeid. cum Caton. maj. Comp. c. 2. The accusation of luxury and dainty feeding was urged against him by his contemporary assailant Kephisodorus (Eusebius, Pr. Ev. xv. 2); according to some statements, by Plato also, Ælian, V. H. iii. 19. Contrast the epigram of the contemporary poet Theokritus of Chios, who censures Aristotle διὰ τὴν ἀκρατῆ γαστρὸς φύσιν, with the satirical drama of the poet Lykophron (ap. Athenæum, ii. p. 55), in which he derided the suppers of philosophers, for their coarse and unattractive food: compare the verses of Antiphanes, ap. Athenæ. iii. p. 98 F.; and Diog. L. vii. 27; Timæus ap. Athenæum, viii. 342. The lines of Antiphanes ap. Athenæ. iv. 1346, seem to apply to Aristotle, notwithstanding Meineke’s remarks, p. 59.

[40] Diog. L. v. 1, 13; Aristokles ap. Euseb. Pr. Ev. xv. 2.

The will or testament of the philosopher is preserved.[41] Its first words constitute Antipater his general executor in the most comprehensive terms,[42] words well calculated to ensure that his directions should be really carried into effect; since not only was Antipater now the supreme potentate, but Nikanor, the chief beneficiary under the will, was in his service and dependent on his orders. Aristotle then proceeds to declare that Nikanor shall become his son-in-law, by marriage with his daughter Pythias as soon as she shall attain suitable age; also, his general heir, subject to certain particular bequests and directions, and the guardian of his infant son Nikomachus. Nikanor being at that time on service, and perhaps in Asia, Aristotle directs that four friends (named Aristomenes, Timarchus, Hipparchus, Diotelês) shall take provisional care of Herpyllis, his two children, and his effects, until Nikanor can appear and act: Theophrastus is to be conjoined with these four if he chooses, and if circumstances permit him.[43] The daughter Pythias, when she attains suitable age, is to become the wife of Nikanor, who will take the best care both of her and her son Nikomachus, being in the joint relation of father and brother to them.[44] If Pythias shall die, either before the marriage or after it, but without leaving offspring, Nikanor shall have discretion to make such arrangements as may be honourable both for himself and for the testator respecting Nikomachus and the estate generally. In case of the death of Nikanor himself, either before the marriage or without offspring, any directions given by him shall be observed; but Theophrastus shall be entitled, if he chooses, to become the husband of Pythias, and if Theophrastus does not choose, then the executors along with Antipater shall determine what they think best both for her and for Nikomachus.[45] The will then proceeds as follows:— “The executors (here Antipater is not called in to co-operate) with Nikanor, in faithful memory of me and of the steady affection of Herpyllis towards me, shall take good care of her in every way, but especially if she desires to be married, in giving her away to one not unworthy of me. They shall assign to her, besides what she has already received, a talent of silver, and three female slaves chosen by herself, out of the property, together with the young girl and the Pyrrhæan slave now attached to her person. If she prefers to reside at Chalkis, she may occupy the lodging near the garden; if at Stageira, she may live at my paternal house. Whichever of the two she may prefer, the executors shall provide it with all such articles of furniture as they deem sufficient for her comfort and dignity.�[46]

[41] Diog. L. v. 11. Ἔσται μεν εὖ· ἐὰν δέ τι συμβαίνῃ, τάδε διέθετο Ἀριστοτέλης· ἐπίτροπον μὲν εἶναι πάντων καὶ διὰ παντὸς Ἀντίπατρον, &c. The testament of Aristotle was known to Hermippus (Athenæus, xiii. p. 589) about a century later than Aristotle, and the most ancient known authority respecting the facts of his life. Stahr (Aristotelia, vol. i. 159) and Brandis (Arist. p. 62) suppose that what Diogenes gives is only an extract from the will; since nothing is said about the library, and Aristotle would not omit to direct what should be done with a library which he so much valued. But to this I reply, that there was no necessity for his making any provision about the library; he had left it at Athens along with his school, in the care of Theophrastus. He wished it to remain there, and probably considered it as an appendage to the school; and it naturally would remain there, if he said nothing about it in his testament. We must remember (as I have already intimated) that when Aristotle left Athens, he only contemplated being absent for a time; and intended to come back and resume his school, when Macedonian supremacy should be re-established.

[42] Pausanias (vi. 4, 5) describes a statue of Aristotle which he saw at Olympia: the fact by which Aristotle was best known both to him and to the guides, seems to have been the friendship first of Alexander, next of Antipater.

[43] Diog. L. v. 12. ἕως δ’ ἂν Νικάνωρ καταλάβῃ, ἐπιμελεῖσθαι Ἀριστομένην, Τίμαρχον, Ἵππαρχον, Διοτέλην, Θεόφραστον, ἐὰν βούληται καὶ ἐνδέχηται αὐτῷ, τῶν τε παιδίων καὶ Ἑρπυλλίδος καὶ τῶν καταλελειμμένων. The four persons here named were probably present at Chalkis, so that Aristotle could count upon them; but at the time when this will was made, Theophrastus was at Athens, conducting the Aristotelian school; and in the critical condition of Grecian politics, there was room for doubt how far he could securely or prudently act in this matter.

The words of Diogenes — ἕως δ’ ἂν Νικάνωρ καταλάβῃ — are rendered in the improved translation of the edition by Firmin Didot, “quoad vero Nicanor adolescat,â€� &c. I cannot think this a correct understanding, either of the words or of the fact. Nikanor was not a minor under age, but an officer on active service. The translation given by Ménage appears to me more true — “tantisper dum redux sit Nicanor:â€� (ad. D. L. v. 12.)

[44] Diog. L. v. 12. ὡς καὶ πατὴρ ὢν καὶ ἀδελφός.

[45] Diog. L. v. 13. In following the phraseology of this testament, we remark that when Aristotle makes allusion to these inauspicious possibilities — the death of Nikanor or of Pythias, he annexes to them a deprecatory phrase: ἐὰν δὲ τῇ παιδὶ συμβῇ — ὃ μὴ γένοιτο οὐδὲ ἔσται, &c.

[46] Diog. L. v. 14. καὶ ἐὰν μὲν ἐν Χαλκίδι βούληται οἰκεῖν, τὸν ξενῶνα τὸν πρὸς τῷ κήπῳ· ἐὰν δὲ ἐν Σταγείροις, τὴν πατρῴαν οἰκίαν. The “lodging near the gardenâ€� may probably have been the residence occupied by Aristotle himself, during his temporary residence at Chalkis. The mention of his paternal house, which he still possessed at Stageira, seems to imply that Philip, when he destroyed that town, respected the house therein which had belonged to his father’s physician.

We find in the will of Theophrastus (Diog. L. v. 52) mention made of a property (χωρίον) at Stageira belonging to Theophrastus, which he bequeaths to Kallinus. Probably this is the same property which had once belonged to Aristotle; for I do not see how else Theophrastus (who was a native of Eresus in Lesbos) could have become possessed of property at Stageira.

Aristotle proceeds to direct that Nikanor shall make comfortable provision for several persons mentioned by name, male and female, most of them slaves, but one (Myrmex), seemingly, a free boarder or pupil, whose property he had undertaken to manage. Two or three of these slaves are ordered to be liberated, and to receive presents, as soon as his daughter Pythias shall be married. He strictly enjoins that not one of the youthful slaves who attended him shall be sold. They are to be brought up and kept in employment; when of mature age, they are to be liberated according as they shew themselves worthy.[47]

[47] Diog. L. v. 15. μὴ πωλεῖν δὲ τῶν παίδων μηδένα τῶν ἐμὲ θεραπευόντων, ἀλλὰ χρῆσθαι αὐτοῖς· ὅταν δ’ ἐν ἡλικίᾳ γένωνται, ἐλευθέρους ἀφεῖναι κατ’ ἀξίαν.

Aristotle had in his lifetime ordered, from a sculptor named Gryllion, busts of Nikanor and of the mother of Nikanor; he intended farther to order from the same sculptor a bust of Proxenus, Nikanor’s father. Nikanor is instructed by the will to complete these orders, and to dedicate the busts properly when brought in. A bust of the mother of Aristotle is to be dedicated to Demeter at Nemea, or in any other place which Nikanor may prefer; another bust of Arimnêstus (brother of Aristotle) is to be dedicated as a memento of the same, since he has died childless.[48]

[48] Diog. L. v. 15.

During some past danger of Nikanor (we do not know what) Aristotle had made a vow of four marble animal figures, in case the danger were averted, to Zeus the Preserver and Athênê the Preserver. Nikanor is directed to fulfil this vow and to dedicate the figures in Stageira.[49]

[49] Diog. L. v. 16. ἀναθεῖναι δὲ καὶ Νικάνορα σωθέντα, ἣν εὐχὴν ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ ηὐξάμην, ζῷα λίθινα τετραπήχη Διῒ Σώτηρι καὶ Ἀθήνᾳ Σωτείρᾳ ἐν Σταγείροις.

Here is a vow, made by Aristotle to the gods under some unknown previous emergency, which he orders his executor to fulfil. I presume that the last words of direction given by Sokrates before his death to Kriton were of the same nature: “We owe a cock to Æsculapius: pay the debt, and do not fail.� (See my preceding work, Plato and the other Companions of Sokrates, [vol. ii. ch. 23, p. 195].)

Lastly, wherever Aristotle is buried, the bones of his deceased wife Pythias are to be collected and brought to the same spot, as she had commanded during her lifetime.[50]

[50] Diog. L. v. 16.

This testament is interesting, as it illustrates the personal circumstances and sentiments of the philosopher, evincing an affectionate forethought and solicitude for those who were in domestic relations with him. As far as we can judge, the establishment and property which he left must have been an ample one.[51] How the provisions of the will were executed, or what became of most persons named in it, we do not know, except that Pythias the daughter of Aristotle was married three times: first, to Nikanor (according to the will); secondly, to Proklês, descendant of Demaratus (the king of Sparta formerly banished to Asia) by whom she had two sons, Proklês and Demaratus, afterwards pupils in the school of Theophrastus; thirdly, to a physician named Metrodôrus, by whom she had a son named Aristotle.[52]

[51] The elder Pliny (H. N. xxxv. 12, 46; compare also Diogen. L. v. 1, 16) mentions that in the sale of Aristotle’s effects by his heirs there were included seventy dishes or pans (patinas, earthenware). Pliny considered this as a mark of luxurious living; since (according to Fenestella) “tripatinium appellabatur summam cœnarum lautitia.�

[52] Sextus Empiric. adv. Mathematicos, i. p. 271 F. sect. 258. About the banishment, or rather voluntary exile, of Demaratus to Asia, in the reign of Darius I. king of Persia, see Herodot. vi. 70. Some towns and lands were assigned to him in Æolis, where Xenophon found his descendant Prokles settled, after the conclusion of the Cyreian expedition (Xen. Anab. vii. 8, 17).

Respecting this younger Aristotle — son of Metrodorus and grandson of the great philosopher — mention is made in the testament of Theophrastus, and directions are given for promoting his improvement in philosophy (Diog. La. v. 53). Nikomachus was brought up chiefly by Theophrastus, but perished young in battle (Aristokles ap. Euseb. Præp. Ev. xv. 2).

There existed in antiquity several works, partly by contemporaries like the Megaric Eubulides, partly by subsequent Platonists, in which Aristotle was reproached with ingratitude to Plato,[53] servility to the Macedonian power, love of costly display and indulgences, &c. What proportion of truth may lie at the bottom of these charges we do not know enough to determine confidently; but we know that he had many enemies, philosophical as well as political;[54] and controversy on those grounds (then as now) was rarely kept free from personal slander and invective.

[53] Euseb. Præp. Ev. xv. 2; Diog. La. ii. 109.

[54] The remarkable passage of Themistius (Orat. xxiii. p. 346) attests the number and vehemence of these opponents. Κηφισοδῶρους τε καὶ Εὐβουλίδας καὶ Τιμαίους καὶ Δικαιάρχους, καὶ στράτον ὅλον τῶν ἐπιθεμένων Ἀριστοτέλει τῷ Σταγειρίτῃ, πότ’ ἂν καταλέξαιμι εὐπετῶς, ὧν καὶ λόγοι ἐξικνοῦνται εἰς τόνδε τὸν χρόνον, διατηροῦντες τὴν ἀπέχθειαν καὶ φιλονεικίαν;

The accusation of ingratitude or unbecoming behaviour to Plato is no way proved by any evidence now remaining. It seems to have been suggested to the Platonists mainly, if not wholly, by the direct rivalry of Aristotle in setting up a second philosophical school at Athens, alongside of the Academy; by his independent, self-working, philosophical speculation; and by the often-repeated opposition which he made to some capital doctrines of Plato, especially to the so-called Platonic Ideas.[55] Such opposition was indeed expressed, as far as we can judge, in terms of respectful courtesy, and sometimes even of affectionate regret; examples of which we shall have to notice in going through the Aristotelian writings. Yet some Platonists seem to have thought that direct attack on the master’s doctrines was undutiful and ungrateful in the pupil, however unexceptionable the language might be. They also thought, probably, that the critic misrepresented what he sought to refute. Whether Aristotle really believed that he had superior claims to be made Scholarch of the Platonic school at the death of Plato in 347 B.C., or at the death of Speusippus in 339 B.C., is a point which we can neither affirm nor deny. But we can easily understand that the act of setting up a new philosophical school at Athens, though perfectly fair and admissible on his part, was a hostile competition sure both to damage and offend the pre-established school, and likely enough to be resented with unbecoming asperity. Ingratitude towards the great common master Plato, with arrogant claims of superiority over fellow-pupils, were the allegations which this resentment would suggest, and which many Platonists in the Academy would not scruple to advance against their macedonizing rival at the Lykeium.

[55] This is what lies at the bottom of the charges advanced by Eubulides, probably derived from the Platonists, καὶ Εὐβουλίδης προδήλως ἐν τῷ κατ’ αὐτοῦ βιβλίῳ ψεύδεται, φάσκων, τελευτῶντι Πλάτωνι μὴ παραγενέσφαι, τά τε βίβλια αὐτοῦ διαφθεῖραι (Aristokles ap. Euseb. Præp. Ev. xv. 2). There can be no possible basis for this last charge — destroying or corrupting the books of Plato — except that Aristotle had sharply criticized them, and was supposed to have mis-stated or unfairly discredited them.

The frequently recurring protest of Aristotle against the Platonic doctrine of Ideas may be read now in the Analytica, Topica, Metaphysica, and Ethica Nikomachea, but was introduced even in the lost Dialogues. See Plutarch adv. Kolôten, c. 14; and Proklus adv. Joann. Philoponum ap. Bernays, Die Dialoge des Aristoteles, not. 22, p. 151.

Such allegations moreover would find easy credence from other men of letters, whose enmity Aristotle had incurred, and to a certain extent even provoked — Isokrates and his numerous disciples.

This celebrated rhetor was an elderly man at the zenith of his glory and influence, during those earlier years which Aristotle passed at Athens before the decease of Plato. The Isokratean school was then the first in Greece, frequented by the most promising pupils from cities near and far, perhaps even by Aristotle himself. The political views and handling, as well as the rhetorical style of which the master set the example, found many imitators. Illustrious statesmen, speakers, and writers traced their improvement to this teaching. So many of the pupils, indeed, acquired celebrity — among them Theodektês, Theopompus, Ephorus, Naukrates, Philiskus, Kephisodôrus, and others — that Hermippus[56] thought it worth his while to draw up a catalogue of them: many must have been persons of opulent family, highly valuing the benefit received from Isokrates, since each of them was required to pay to him a fee of 1000 drachmæ.[57] During the first sojourn of Aristotle in Athens (362-347 B.C.), while he was still attached to and receiving instruction from Plato, he appears to have devoted himself more to rhetoric than to philosophy, and even to have given public lessons or lectures on rhetoric. He thus entered into rivalry with Isokrates, for whom, as a teacher and author, he contracted dislike or contempt.

[56] Athenæus x. p. 451; Dionys. Hal., De Isæo Judic. pp. 588, 625. οὐδὲ γὰρ ὁ τοὺς Ἰσοκράτους μαθητὰς ἀναγράφας Ἕρμιππος, ἀκριβὴς ἐν τοῖς ἄλλοις γενόμενος, ὑπὲρ τοῦδε τοῦ ῥήτορος οὐδὲν εἴρηκεν, ἔξω δυοῖν τούτοιν, ὅτι διήκουσε μὲν Ἰσοκράτους, καθηγήσατο δὲ Δημοσθένους, συνεγένετο δὲ τοῖς ἀρίστοις τῶν φιλοσόφων. See Hermippi Fragmenta ed. Lozinski, Bonn, 1832, pp. 42-43.

Cicero, De Oratore, ii. 22, 94. “Ecce tibi exortus est Isocrates, magister istorum omnium, cujus è ludo, tanquam ex equo Trojano, meri principes exierunt: sed eorum partim in pompâ, partim in acie, illustres esse voluerunt. Atqui et illi — Theopompi, Ephori, Philiski, Naucratæ, multique alii — ingeniis differunt,â€� &c. Compare also Cicero, Brutus, 8, 32; and Dionys. Hal., De Isocrate Judicium, p. 536. ἐπιφανέστατος δὲ γενόμενος τῶν κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν ἀκμασάντων χρόνον, καὶ τοὺς κρατίστους τῶν ἐν Ἀθήνῃσί τε καὶ ἐν τῇ ἄλλῃ Ἑλλάδι νέων παιδεύσας· ὧν οἱ μὲν ἐν τοῖς δικανικοῖς ἐγένοντο ἄριστοι λόγοις, οἱ δ’ ἐν τῷ πολιτεύεσθαι καὶ τὰ κοινὰ πράττειν διήνεγκαν, καὶ ἄλλοι δὲ τὰς κοινὰς τῶν ἑλλήνων τε καὶ βαρβάρων πράξεις ἀνέγραψαν, &c.

[57] See Demosthenes, adv. Lakritum, pp. 928, 938. Lakritus was a citizen of Phasêlis — μέγα πρᾶγμα, Ἰσοκράτους μαθητής. To have gone through a course of teaching from Isokrates, was evidently considered as a distinction of some importance.

The composition of Isokrates was extremely elegant: his structure of sentences was elaborate even to excess, his arrangement of words rhythmical, his phrases nicely balanced in antithetical equipoise, like those of his master Gorgias; the recital of his discourses proved highly captivating to the ear.[58] Moreover, he had composed a book of rhetorical precepts known and esteemed by Cicero and Quintilian. Besides such technical excellence, Isokrates strove to attain, and to a certain extent actually attained, a higher order of merit. He familiarized his pupils with thoughts and arguments of lofty bearing and comprehensive interest; not assisting them to gain victory either in any real issue tried before the Dikasts, or in any express motion about to be voted on by the public assembly, but predisposing their minds to prize above all things the great Pan-hellenic aggregate — its independence in regard to external force, and internal harmony among its constituent cities, with a reasonable recognition of presidential authority, equitably divided between Athens and Sparta, and exercised with moderation by both. He inculcated sober habits and deference to legal authority on the part of the democrats of Athens; he impressed upon princes, like Philip and Nikokles, the importance of just and mild bearing towards subjects.[59] Such is the general strain of the discourses which we now possess from Isokrates; though he appears to have adopted it only in middle life, having begun at first in the more usual track of the logographer — composing speeches to be delivered before the Dikastery by actual plaintiffs or defendants,[60] and acquiring thus both reputation and profit. His reputation as a teacher was not only maintained but even increased when he altered his style; and he made himself peculiarly attractive to foreign pupils who desired to acquire a command of graceful expressions, without special reference to the Athenian Assembly and Dikastery. But his new style being midway between Demosthenes and Plato — between the practical advocate and politician on one side, and the generalizing or speculative philosopher on the other — he incurred as a semi-philosopher, professing to have discovered the juste milieu, more or less of disparagement from both extremes;[61] and Aristotle, while yet a young man in the Platonic school, raised an ardent controversy against his works, on the ground both of composition and teaching. Though the whole controversy is now lost, there is good ground for believing that Aristotle must have displayed no small acrimony. He appears to have impugned the Isokratean discourses, partly as containing improper dogmas, partly as specimens of mere unimpressive elegance, intended for show, pomp, and immediate admiration from the hearer — ad implendas aures — but destitute both of comprehensive theory and of applicability to any useful purpose.[62] Kephisodôrus, an intimate friend and pupil of Isokrates, defended him in an express reply, attacking both Aristotle the scholar and Plato the master. This reply was in four books, and Dionysius characterizes it by an epithet of the highest praise.[63]

[58] Dionysius, while admiring Isocrates, complains of him, and complains still more of his imitators, as somewhat monotonous, wanting in flexibility and variety (De Compos. Verborum, p. 134). Yet he pronounces Isokrates and Lysias to be more natural, shewing less of craft and art than Isæus and Demosthenes (De Isæo Judicium, p. 592). Isokrates τὸν ὄγκον τῆς ποιητικῆς κατασκευῆς ἐπὶ λόγους ἤγαγε φιλοσόφους, ζηλώσας τοὺς περὶ Γοργίαν. (Dionys. Hal. ad Pompeium de Platone, p. 764; also De Isæo Judicium, p. 592; besides the special chapter, p. 534, seq., which he has devoted to Isokrates.)

Cicero, De Oratore, iii. 44, 173: “Idque princeps Isocrates instituisse fertur, ut inconditam antiquorum dicendi consuetudinem delectationis atque aurium causâ, quemadmodum scribit discipulus ejus Naucrates, numeris adstringeret.� Compare Cicero, Orator. 52, 175, 176.

The reference to Naucrates (whose works have not been preserved, though Dionysius commends his Λόγος Ἐπιτάφιος, Ars. Rhet. p. 259) is interesting, as it shews what was said of Isokrates by his own disciples. Cicero says of the doctrines in his own dialogue De Oratore (Epist. ad Famil. i. 9, 23), “Abhorrent a communibus præceptis, et omnem antiquorum, et Aristoteleam et Isocrateam, rationem oratoriam complectuntur.â€� About the Τέχνη of Isokrates, see Spengel, Συναγωγὴ Τεχνῶν (Munich), pp. 155-170.

[59] Dionysius Hal. dwells emphatically on the lofty morality inculcated in the discourses of Isokrates, and recommends them as most improving study to all politicians (De Isocrate Judic. pp. 536, 544, 555, seq.) — more improving than the writers purely theoretical, among whom he probably numbered Plato and Aristotle.

[60] Dionysius Hal. De Isocrate Judicium, pp. 576, 577, Reiske: δέσμας πάνυ πολλὰς δικανικῶν λόγων Ἰσοκρατείων περιφέρεσθαί φησιν ὑπὸ τῶν βιβλιοπωλῶν Ἀριστοτέλης. It appears that Aphareus, the adopted son of Isokrates, denied that Isokrates had ever written any judicial orations; while Kephisodôrus, the disciple of Isokrates, in his reply to Aristotle’s accusations, admitted that Isokrates had composed a few, but only a few. Dionysius accepts the allegation of Kephisodôrus and discredits that of Aristotle: I, for my part, believe the allegation of Aristotle, upon a matter of fact which he had the means of knowing. Cicero also affirms (Brutus, xii. 46-48), on the authority of Aristotle, that Isokrates distinguished himself at first as a composer of speeches intended to be delivered by actual pleaders in the Dikastery or Ekklesia; and that he afterwards altered his style. And this is what Aristotle says (respecting Isokrates) in Rhetoric. i. 9, 1368, a. 20, ὅπερ Ἰσοκράτης ἐποίει διὰ τὴν συνήθειαν τοῦ δικολογεῖν, where Bekker has altered the substantive to τὴν ἀσυνήθειαν; in my judgment, not wisely. I do not perceive the meaning or pertinence of ἀσυνήθειαν in that sentence.

[61] See Plato, Euthydemus, p. 305; also ‘Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates,’ [vol. i. ch. xix. pp. 557-563].

It is exactly this juste milieu which Dionysius Hal. extols as the most worthy of being followed, as being ἡ ἀληθινὴ φιλοσοφία. De Isocrate Jud. pp. 543, 558.

[62] Cicero, De Oratore, iii. 35, 141. “Itaque ipse Aristoteles quum florere Isocratem nobilitate discipulorum videret, quod ipse suas disputationes a causis forensibus et civilibus ad inanem sermonis elegantiam transtulisset, mutavit repente totam formam prope disciplinæ suæ, versumque quendam Philoctetæ paulo secus dixit. Ille enim ‘turpe sibi ait esse tacere, quum barbaros’ — hic autem, ‘quum Isocratem’ — ‘pateretur dicere’â€� See Quintilian, Inst. Or. iv. 2, 196; and Cicero, Orator. 19, 62: “Aristoteles Isocratem ipsum lacessivit.â€� Also, ib. 51, 172: “Omitto Isocratem discipulosque ejus Ephorum et Naucratem; quanquam orationis faciendæ et ornandæ auctores locupletissimi summi ipsi oratores esse debebant. Sed quis omnium doctior, quis acutior, quis in rebus vel inveniendis vel judicandis acrior Aristotele fuit? Quis porro Isocrati adversatus est infensius?â€� That Aristotle was the first to assail Isokrates, and that Kephisodôrus wrote only in reply, is expressly stated by Numenius, ap. Euseb. Pr. Ev. xiv. 6: ὁ Κηφισόδωρος, ἐπειδὴ ὑπ’ Ἀριστοτέλους βαλλόμενον ἑαυτῷ τὸν διδάσκαλον Ἰσοκράτην ἑώρα, &c. Quintilian also says, Inst. Or. iii. 1, p. 126: “Nam et Isocratis præstantissimi discipuli fuerunt in omni studiorum genere; eoque jam seniore (octavum enim et nonagesimum implevit annum) pomeridianis scholis Aristoteles præcipere artem oratoriam cÅ“pit; noto quidem illo (ut traditur) versu ex Philoctetâ frequenter usus: Αἰσχρὸν σιωπᾷν μέν, καὶ Ἰσοκράτην ἐᾷν λέγειν.â€�

Diogenes La. (v. 3) maintains that Aristotle turned the parody not against Isokrates, but against Xenokrates: Αἰσχρὸν σιωπᾷν, Ξενοκράτην δ’ ἐᾷν λέγειν. But the authority of Cicero and Quintilian is decidedly preferable. When we recollect that the parody was employed by a young man, as yet little known, against a teacher advanced in age, and greatly frequented as well as admired by pupils, it will appear sufficiently offensive. Moreover, it does not seem at all pertinent; for the defects of Isokrates, however great they may have been, were not those of analogy with βάρβαροι, but the direct reverse. Dionysius must have been forcibly struck with the bitter animus displayed by Aristotle against Isokrates, when he makes it a reason for rejecting the explicit averment of Aristotle as to a matter of fact: καὶ οὔτ’ Ἀριστοτέλει πείθομαι ῥυπαίνειν τὸν ἄνδρα βουλομένῳ (De Isocr. Jud. p. 577).

Mr. Cope, in his Introduction to Aristotle’s Rhetoric (p. 39, seq.), gives a just representation of the probable relations between Aristotle and Isokrates; though I do not concur in the unfavourable opinion which he expresses about “the malignant influence exercised by Isokrates upon education in general� (p. 40). Mr. Cope at the same time remarks, that “Aristotle in the Rhetorica draws a greater number of illustrations of excellences of style from Isokrates than from any other author� (p. 41); and he adds, very truly, that the absence of any evidence of ill feeling towards Isokrates in Aristotle’s later work, and the existence of such ill feeling as an actual fact at an earlier period, are perfectly reconcileable in themselves (p. 42).

That the Rhetorica of Aristotle which we now possess is a work of his later age, certainly published, perhaps composed, during his second residence at Athens, I hold with Mr. Cope and other antecedent critics.

[63] Athenæus, ii. 60, iii. 122; Euseb. Pr. E. xiv. 6; Dionys. H. de Isocrate Judic. p. 577: ἱκανὸν ἡγησάμενος εἶναι τῆς ἀληθείας βεβαιωτὴν τὸν Ἀθηναῖον Κηφισόδωρον, ὃς καὶ συνεβίωσεν Ἰσοκράτει, καὶ γνησιώτατος ἀκουστὴς ἐγένετο, καὶ τὴν ἀπολογίαν τὴν πάνυ θαυμαστὴν ἐν ταῖς πρὸς Ἀριστοτέλη ἀντιγραφαῖς ἐποιήσατο, &c. Kephisodôrus, in this defence, contended that you might pick out, even from the very best poets and sophists, ἓν ἢ δύο πονηρῶς εἰρημένα. This implies that Aristotle, in attacking Isokrates, had cited various extracts which he denounced as exceptionable.

These polemics of Aristotle were begun during his first residence at Athens, prior to 347 B.C., the year of Plato’s decease, and at the time when he was still accounted a member of the Platonic school. They exemplify the rivalry between that school and the Isokratean, which were then the two competing places of education at Athens: and we learn that Aristotle, at that time only a half-fledged Platonist, opened on his own account not a new philosophical school in competition with Plato, as some state, but a new rhetorical school in opposition to Isokrates.[64] But the case was different at the latter epoch, 335 B.C., when Aristotle came to reside at Athens for the second time. Isokrates was then dead, leaving no successor, so that his rhetorical school expired with him. Aristotle preferred philosophy to rhetoric: he was no longer trammelled by the living presence and authority of Plato. The Platonic school at the Academy stood at that time alone, under Xenokrates, who, though an earnest and dignified philosopher, was deficient in grace and in persuasiveness, and had been criticized for this defect even by Plato himself. Aristotle possessed those gifts in large measure, as we know from the testimony of Antipater. By these circumstances, coupled with his own established reputation and well-grounded self-esteem, he was encouraged to commence a new philosophical school; a school, in which philosophy formed the express subject of the morning lecture, while rhetoric was included as one among the subjects of more varied and popular instruction given in the afternoon.[65] During the twelve ensuing years, Aristotle’s rivalry was mainly against the Platonists or Xenokrateans at the Academy; embittered on both sides by acrimonious feelings, which these expressed by complaining of his ingratitude and unfairness towards the common master, Plato.

[64] That Aristotle had a school at Athens before the death of Plato we may see by what Strabo (xiii. 610) says about Hermeias: γενόμενος δ’ Ἀθήνῃσιν ἠκροάσατο καὶ Πλάτωνος καὶ Ἀριστοτέλους. Compare Cicero, Orator. 46; also Michelet, Essai sur la Métaphys. d’Aristote, p. 227. The statement that Aristotle during Plato’s lifetime tried to set up a rival school against him, is repeated by all the biographers, who do not however believe it to be true, though they cite Aristoxenus as its warrant. I conceive that they have mistaken what Aristoxenus said; and that they have confounded the school which Aristotle first set up as a rhetor, against Isokrates, with that which he afterwards set up as a philosopher, against Xenokrates.

[65] Aulus Gellius, N. A. xx. 5. Quintilian (see [note] on p. 24) puts the rhetorical “pomeridianæ scholæ� within the lifetime of Isokrates; but Aristotle did not then lecture on philosophy in the morning.

There were thus, at Athens, three distinct parties inspired with unfriendly sentiment towards Aristotle: first, the Isokrateans; afterwards, the Platonists; along with both, the anti-Macedonian politicians. Hence we can account for what Themistius entitles the “army of assailantsâ€� (στράτον ὅλον) that fastened upon him, for the unfavourable colouring with which his domestic circumstances are presented, and for the necessity under which he lay of Macedonian protection; so that when such protection was nullified, giving place to a reactionary fervour, his residence at Athens became both disagreeable and insecure.

[CHAPTER II.]

ARISTOTELIAN CANON.

In the fourth and fifth chapters of my work on ‘Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates,’ I investigated the question of the Platonic Canon, and attempted to determine, upon the best grounds open to us, the question, What are the real works of Plato? I now propose to discuss the like question respecting Aristotle.

But the premisses for such a discussion are much less simple in regard to Aristotle than in regard to Plato. As far as the testimony of antiquity goes, we learn that the Canon of Thrasyllus, dating at least from the time of the Byzantine Aristophanes, and probably from an earlier time, was believed by all readers to contain the authentic works of Plato and none others; an assemblage of dialogues, some unfinished, but each undivided and unbroken. The only exception to unanimity in regard to the Platonic Canon, applies to ten dialogues, which were received by some (we do not know by how many, or by whom) as Platonic, but which, as Diogenes informs us, were rejected by agreement of the most known and competent critics. This is as near to unanimity as can be expected. The doubts, now so multiplied, respecting the authenticity of various dialogues included in the Canon of Thrasyllus, have all originated with modern scholars since the beginning of the present century, or at least since the earlier compositions of Wyttenbach. It was my task to appreciate the value of those doubts; and, in declining to be guided by them, I was at least able to consider myself as adhering to the views of all known ancient critics.

Very different is the case when we attempt to frame an Aristotelian Canon, comprising all the works of Aristotle and none others. We find the problem far more complicated, and the matters of evidence at once more defective, more uncertain, and more contradictory.

The different works now remaining, and published in the Berlin edition of Aristotle, are forty-six in number. But, among these, several were disallowed or suspected even by some ancient critics, while modern critics have extended the like judgment yet farther. Of several others again, the component sections (either the books, in our present phraseology, or portions thereof) appear to have existed once as detached rolls, to have become disjointed or even to have parted company, and to have been re-arranged or put together into aggregates, according to the judgment of critics and librarians. Examples of such doubtful aggregates, or doubtful arrangements, will appear when we review the separate Aristotelian compositions (the Metaphysica, Politica, &c.). It is, however, by one or more of these forty-six titles that Aristotle is known to modern students, and was known to mediæval students.

But the case was very different with ancient literati, such as Eratosthenes, Polybius, Cicero, Strabo, Plutarch, &c., down to the time of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Athenæus, Diogenes Laertius, &c., towards the close of the second century after the Christian era. It is certain that these ancients perused many works of Aristotle, or generally recognized as his, which we do not now possess; and among those which we do now possess, there are many which it is not certain that they perused, or even knew.

Diogenes Laertius, after affirming generally that Aristotle had composed a prodigious number of books (πάμπλειστα βίβλια), proceeds to say, that, in consequence of the excellence of the author in every variety of composition, he thinks it proper to indicate them briefly.[1] He then enumerates one hundred and forty-six distinct titles of works, with the number of books or sections contained in each work. The subjects are exceedingly heterogeneous, and the form of composition likewise very different; those which come first in the list being Dialogues,[2] while those which come last are Epistles, Hexameters, and Elegies. At the close of the list we read: “All of them together are 445,270 lines, and this is the number of books (works) composed by Aristotle.â€�[3] A little farther on, Diogenes adds, as an evidence of the extraordinary diligence and inventive force of Aristotle, that the books (works) enumerated in the preceding list were nearly four hundred in number, and that these were not contested by any one; but that there were many other writings, and dicta besides, ascribed to Aristotle — ascribed (we must understand him to mean) erroneously, or at least so as to leave much doubt.[4]

[1] Diog. La. v. 21. Συνέγραψε δὲ πάμπλειστα βίβλια, ἅπερ ἀκόλουθον ἡγησάμην ὑπογράψαι, διὰ τὴν περὶ πάντας λόγους τἀνδρὸς ἀρετήν.

[2] Bernays has pointed out (in his valuable treatise, Die Dialoge des Aristoteles, p. 133) that the first in order, nineteen in number, among the titles enumerated by Diogenes, designate Dialogues. The longest of them, those which included more than one book or section, are enumerated first of all. Some of the dialogues appear to have coincided, either in title or in subject, with some of the Platonic:— Περὶ Δικαιοσύνης, in four books (comparable with Plato’s Republic); Πολιτικοῦ, in two books; Σοφιστὴς, Μενέξενος, Συμπόσιον, each in one book; all similar in title to works of Plato; perhaps also another, Περὶ ῥητορικῆς ἢ Γρύλλος, the analogue of Plato’s Gorgias.

[3] Diog. La. v. 27. γίγνονται αἱ πᾶσαι μυριάδες στίχων τέτταρες καὶ τετταράκοντα πρὸς τοῖς πεντακισχιλίοις καὶ διακοσίοις ἑβδομήκοντα. Καὶ τοσαῦτα μὲν αὐτῷ πεπραγμάτευται βίβλια.

[4] Diog. La. v. 34. Heitz (Die Verlorenen Schriften des Aristoteles, p. 17) notices, as a fact invalidating the trustworthiness of the catalogue given by Diogenes, that Diogenes, in other places, alludes to Aristotelian compositions which are not mentioned in his own catalogue. For example, though Diogenes, in the catalogue, allows only five books to the Ethica, yet he himself alludes (v. 21) to the seventh book of the Ethica. But this example can hardly be relied upon, because ἐν τῷ ἑβδόμῳ τῶν ἠθικῶν is only a conjecture of H. Stephens or Ménage. The only case which Heitz really finds to sustain his remark, is the passage of the ProÅ“mium (i. 8), where Diogenes cites Aristotle ἐν τῷ Μαγικῷ, that work not being named in his catalogue. But there is another case (not noticed by Heitz) which appears to me still stronger. Diogenes cites at length the Hymn or Pæan composed by Aristotle in honour of Hermeias. Now there is no general head of his catalogue under which this hymn could fall. Here Anonymus (to be presently mentioned) has a superiority over Diogenes; for he introduces, towards the close of his catalogue, one general head — ἐγκώμια ἢ ὕμνους, which is not to be found in Diogenes.

We have another distinct enumeration of the titles of Aristotle’s works, prepared by an anonymous biographer cited in the notes of Ménage to Diogenes Laertius.[5] This anonymous list contains only one hundred and twenty-seven titles, being nineteen less than the list in Diogenes. The greater number of titles are the same in both; but Anonymus has eight titles which are not found in Diogenes, while Diogenes has twenty-seven titles which are not given by Anonymus. There are therefore thirty-five titles which rest on the evidence of one alone out of the two lists. Anonymus does not specify any total number of lines; nevertheless he gives the total number of books composed by Aristotle as being nearly four hundred — the same as Diogenes. This total number cannot be elicited out of the items enumerated by Anonymus; but it may be made to coincide pretty nearly with the items in Diogenes,[6] provided we understand by books, sections or subdivisions of one and the same title or work.

[5] Ménage ad Diog. tom. ii. p. 201. See the very instructive treatise of Professor Heitz, Die Verlorenen Schriften des Aristoteles, p. 15 (Leipzig, 1865).

[6] Heitz, Die Verl. Schrift. des Aristot. p. 51. Such coincidence assumes that we reckon the Πολιτεῖαι and the Epistles each as one book.

I think it unnecessary to transcribe these catalogues of the titles of works mostly lost. The reader will find them clearly printed in the learned work of Val. Rose, Aristoteles Pseudepigraphus, pp. 12-20.

The two catalogues just mentioned, agreeing as they do in the total number of books and in the greater part of the items, may probably be considered not as original and copy, but as inaccurate transcripts from the same original authority. Yet neither of the two transcribers tells us what that original authority was. We may, however, be certain that each of them considered his catalogue to comprehend all that Aristotle could be affirmed on good authority to have published; Diogenes plainly signifies thus much, when he gives not only the total number of books, but the total number of lines. Such being the case, we expect to find in it, of course, the titles of the forty-six works composing the Berlin edition of Aristotle now before us. But this expectation is disappointed. The far greater number of the Aristotelian works which we now peruse are not specified either in the list of Diogenes, or in that of Anonymus.[7] Moreover, the lists also fail to specify the titles of various works which are not now extant, but which we know from Aristotle himself that he really composed.[8]

[7] Heitz, Verl. Schr. Aristot. p. 18, remarks that “In diesem Verzeichnisse (that of Diogenes) die bei weitem grösste Zahl derjenigen Schriften fehlt, welche wir heute noch besitzen, und die wir als den eigentlichen Kern der aristotelischen Lehre enthaltend zu betrachten gewohnt sind.� Cf. p. 32. Brandis expresses himself substantially to the same effect (Aristoteles, Berlin, 1853, pp. 77, 78, 96); and Zeller also (Gesch. der Phil. 2nd ed. Aristot. Schriften, p. 43).

[8] Heitz, Verl. Schr. des Aristoteles, p. 56, seq.

The last-mentioned fact is in itself sufficiently strange and difficult to explain, and our difficulty becomes aggravated when we combine it with another fact hardly less surprising. Both Cicero, and other writers of the century subsequent to him (Dionysius Hal., Quintilian, &c.), make reference to Aristotle, and especially to his dialogues, of which none have been preserved, though the titles of several are given in the two catalogues mentioned above. These writers bestow much encomium on the style of Aristotle; but what is remarkable is, that they ascribe to it attributes which even his warmest admirers will hardly find in the Aristotelian works now remaining. Cicero extols the sweetness, the abundance, the variety, the rhetorical force which he discovered in Aristotle’s writings: he even goes so far as to employ the phrase “flumen orationis aureum� (a golden stream of speech), in characterizing the Aristotelian style.[9] Such predicates may have been correct, indeed were doubtless correct, in regard to the dialogues, and perhaps other lost works of Aristotle; but they describe exactly the opposite[10] of what we find in all the works preserved. With most of these (except the History of Animals) Cicero manifests no acquaintance; and some of the best modern critics declare him to have been ignorant of them.[11] Nor do other ancient authors, Plutarch, Athenæus, Diogenes Laertius, &c., give evidence of having been acquainted with the principal works of Aristotle known to us. They make reference only to works enumerated in the Catalogue of Diogenes Laertius.[12]

[9] Cicero, Acad. Prior. ii. 38, 119: “Quum enim tuus iste Stoicus sapiens syllabatim tibi ista dixerit, veniet flumen orationis aureum fundens Aristoteles, qui illum desipere dicat.â€� Also Topica, i. 3. “Quibus (i.e. those who were ignorant of Aristotle) eo minus ignoscendum est, quod non modo rebus iis, quæ ab illo dictæ et inventæ sunt, adlici debuerunt, sed dicendi quoque incredibili quâdam quum copiâ, tum suavitate.â€� Also De Oratore, i. 11, 49; Brutus, 31, 121; De Nat. Deor. ii. 37; De Inventione, ii. 2; De Finibus, i. 5, 14; Epistol. ad Atticum, ii. 1, where he speaks of the “Aristotelia pigmenta,â€� along with the μυροθήκιον of Isokrates. Dionysius Hal. recommends the style of Aristotle in equal terms of admiration: παραληπτέον δὲ καὶ Ἀριστοτέλη εἰς μίμησιν τῆς τε περὶ τὴν ἑρμηνείαν δεινότητος καὶ τῆς σαφηνείας, καὶ τοῦ ἡδέος καὶ πολυμαθοῦς (De Veter. Script. Censurâ, p. 430, R.; De Verb. Copiâ, p. 187). Quintilian extols the “eloquendi suavitasâ€� among Aristotle’s excellences (Inst. Or. X. i. p. 510). Demetrius Phalereus (or the author who bears that title), De Eloquentiâ, s. 128, commends αἱ Ἀριστοτέλους χάριτες. David the Armenian, who speaks of him (having reference to the dialogue) as Ἀφροδίτης ἐννόμου γέμων (the correction of Bernays, Dial. des Arist. p. 137) καὶ χαρίτων ἀνάμεστος, probably copies the judgment of predecessors (Scholia ad Categor. p. 26, b. 36, Brandis).

Bernays (Die Dialoge des Aristoteles, pp. 3-5) points out how little justice has been done by modern critics to the literary merits, exhibited in the dialogues and other works now lost, of one whom we know only as a “dornichten und wortkargen Systematiker.�

[10] This opinion is insisted on by Ravaisson, Essai sur la Métaphysique d’Aristote, pp. 210, 211.

[11] Valentine Rose, Aristoteles Pseudepigraphus, p. 23: “Cicero philosophicis certe ipsius Aristotelis libris nunquam usus est.â€� Heitz, Die Verlor. Schrift. des Aristot. pp. 31, 158, 187: “Cicero, dessen Unbekanntschaft mit beinahe sämmtlichen heute vorhandenen Werken des Aristoteles eine unstreitige Thatsache bildet, deren Bedeutung man sich umsonst bemüht hat abzuschwächen.â€� Madvig, Excursus VII. ad Ciceron. De Finibus, p. 855: “Non dubito profiteri, Ciceronem mihi videri dialogos Aristotelis populariter scriptos, et Rhetorica (quibus hic Topica adnumero) tum πολιτείας legisse; difficiliora vero, quibus omnis interior philosophia continebatur, aut omnino non attigisse, aut si aliquando attigerit, non longe progressum esse, ut ipse de subtilioribus Aristotelis sententiis aliquid habere possit explorati.â€� The language here used by Madvig is more precise than that of the other two; for Cicero must be allowed to have known, and even to have had in his library, the Topica of Aristotle.

[12] See this point enforced by Heitz, pp. 29-31. Athenæus (xiv. 656) refers to a passage of Philochorus, in which Philochorus alludes to Aristotle, that is, as critics have hitherto supposed, to Aristot. Meteorol. iv. 3, 21. Bussemaker (in his Præfat. ad Aristot. Didot, vol. iv. p. xix.) has shewn that this supposition is unfounded, and that the passage more probably refers to one of the Problemata Inedita (iii. 43) which Bussemaker has first published in Didot’s edition of Aristotle.

Here, then, we find several embarrassing facts in regard to the Aristotelian Canon. Most of the works now accepted and known as belonging to Aristotle, are neither included in the full Aristotelian Catalogue given by Diogenes, nor were they known to Cicero; who, moreover, ascribes to Aristotle attributes of style not only different, but opposite, to those which our Aristotle presents. Besides, more than twenty of the compositions entered in the Catalogue are dialogues, of which form our Aristotle affords not a single specimen: while others relate to matters of ancient exploit or personal history; collected proverbs; accounts of the actual constitution of many Hellenic cities; lists of the Pythian victors and of the scenic representations; erotic discourses; legendary narratives, embodied in a miscellaneous work called ‘Peplus’ — a title perhaps borrowed from the Peplus or robe of Athênê at the Panathenaic festival, embroidered with various figures by Athenian women; a symposion or banquet-colloquy; and remarks on intoxication. All these subjects are foreign in character to those which our Aristotle treats.[13]

[13] Brandis and Zeller, moreover, remark, that among the allusions made by Aristotle in the works which we possess to other works of his own, the majority relate to other works actually extant, and very few to any of the lost works enumerated in the Catalogue (Brand. Aristoteles, pp. 97-101; Zeller, Phil. der Griech. ii. 2, p. 79, ed. 2nd). This however is not always the case: we find (e.g.) in Aristotle’s notice of the Pythagorean tenets (Metaphys. A. p. 986, a. 12) the remark, διώρισται δὲ περὶ τούτων ἐν ἑτέροις ἡμῖν ἀκριβέστερον; where he probably means to indicate his special treatises, Περὶ τῶν Πυθαγορείων and Πρὸς τοὺς Πυθαγορείους, enumerated by Diog. L. v. 25, and mentioned by Alexander, Porphyry, and Simplikius. See Alexander, Schol. ad Metaphys. p. 542, b. 5, 560, b. 25, Br.; and the note of Schwegler on Metaphys. i. 5, p. 47.

The difficulty of harmonizing our Aristotle with the Aristotle of the Catalogue is thus considerable. It has been so strongly felt in recent years, that one of the ablest modern critics altogether dissevers the two, and pronounces the works enumerated in the Catalogue not to belong to our Aristotle. I allude to Valentine Rose, who in his very learned and instructive volume, ‘Aristoteles Pseudepigraphus,’ has collected and illustrated the fragments which remain of these works. He considers them all pseudo-Aristotelian, composed by various unknown members of the Peripatetic school, during the century or two immediately succeeding the death of Aristotle, and inscribed with the illustrious name of the master, partly through fraud of the sellers, partly through carelessness of purchasers and librarians.[14] Emil Heitz, on the other hand, has argued more recently, that upon the external evidence as it stands, a more correct conclusion to draw would be (the opposite of that drawn by Rose, viz.): That the works enumerated in the Catalogue are the true and genuine; and that those which we possess, or most of them, are not really composed by Aristotle.[15] Heitz thinks this conclusion better sustained than that of Rose, though he himself takes a different view, which I shall presently mention.

[14] Valent. Rose, Aristoteles Pseudepigr. pp. 4-10. The same opinion is declared also in the earlier work of the same author, De Aristotelis Librorum Ordine et Auctoritate.

[15] Heitz, Die Verlor. Schrift. des Ar. pp. 29, 30.

It will be seen from the foregoing observations how much more difficult it is to settle a genuine Canon for Aristotle than for Plato. I do not assent to either of the two conclusions just indicated; but I contend that, if we applied to this question the same principles of judgment as those which modern Platonic critics often apply, when they allow or disallow dialogues of Plato, we should be obliged to embrace one or other of them, or at least something nearly approaching thereto. If a critic, after attentively studying the principal compositions now extant of our Aristotle, thinks himself entitled, on the faith of his acquired “Aristotelisches Gefühl,� to declare that no works differing materially from them (either in subject handled, or in manner of handling, or in degree of excellence), can have been composed by Aristotle — he will assuredly be forced to include in such rejection a large proportion of those indicated in the Catalogue of Diogenes. Especially he will be forced to reject the Dialogues — the very compositions by which Aristotle was best known to Cicero and his contemporaries. For the difference between them and the known compositions of Aristotle, not merely in form but in style (the style being known from the epithets applied to them by Cicero), must have been more marked and decisive than that between the Alkibiades, Hippias, Theages, Erastæ, Leges, &c. — which most Platonic critics now set aside as spurious — and the Republic, Protagoras, Gorgias, Philêbus, &c., which they treat as indisputably genuine.[16]

[16] Thus (for example) in Bernays, who has displayed great acuteness and learning in investigating the Aristotelian Canon, and in collecting what can be known respecting the lost dialogues of Aristotle, we read the following observations:— “In der That mangelt es auch nicht an den bestimmtesten Nachrichten über die vormalige Existenz einer grossen aristotelischen Schriftenreihe, die von der jetzt erhaltenen durch die tiefste formale Verschiedenheit getrennt war. Das Verzeichniss aristotelischer Werke führt an seiner Spitze sieben und zwanzig Bände jetzt verlorener Schriften auf, die alle in der künstlerischen Gesprächsform abgefasst waren,� &c. (Bernays, Die Dialoge des Aristoteles, p. 2; compare ibid. p. 30).

If, as Bernays justly contends, we are to admit these various writings, notwithstanding “the profound difference of form,� as having emanated from the same philosopher Aristotle, how are we to trust the Platonic critics when they reject about one-third of the preserved dialogues of Plato, though there is no difference of form to proceed upon, but only a difference of style, merit, and, to a certain extent, doctrine?

Zeller (Die Phil. der Griechen, ii. 2, pp. 45, 46, 2nd ed.) remarks that the dialogues composed by Aristotle are probably to be ascribed to the earlier part of his literary life, when he was still (or had recently been) Plato’s scholar.

In discussing the Platonic Canon, I have already declared that I consider these grounds of rejection to be unsafe and misleading. Such judgment is farther confirmed, when we observe the consequences to which they would conduct in regard to the Aristotelian Canon. In fact, we must learn to admit among genuine works, both of Plato and Aristotle, great diversity in subject, in style, and in excellence.

I see no ground for distrusting the Catalogue given by Diogenes, as being in general an enumeration of works really composed by Aristotle. These works must have been lodged in some great library — probably the Alexandrine — where they were seen and counted, and the titles of them enrolled by some one or more among the literati, with a specification of the sum total obtained on adding together the lines contained in each.[17] I do not deny the probability, that, in regard to some, the librarians may have been imposed upon, and that pseudo-Aristotelian works may have been admitted; but whether such was partially the fact or not, the general goodness of the Catalogue seems to me unimpeachable. As to the author of it, the most admissible conjecture seems that of Brandis and others, recently adopted and advocated by Heitz: that the Catalogue owes its origin to one of the Alexandrine literati; probably to Hermippus of Smyrna, a lettered man and a pupil of Kallimachus at Alexandria, between 240-210 B.C.. Diogenes does not indeed tell us from whom he borrowed the Catalogue; but in his life of Aristotle, he more than once cites Hermippus, as having treated of Aristotle and his biography in a work of some extent; and we know from other sources that Hermippus had devoted much attention to Aristotle as well as to other philosophers. If Hermippus be the author of this Catalogue, it must have been drawn up about the same time that the Byzantine Aristophanes arranged the dialogues of Plato. Probably, indeed, Kallimachus the chief librarian, had prepared the way for both of them. We know that he had drawn up comprehensive tables, including, not only the principal orators and dramatists, with an enumeration of their discourses and dramas, but also various miscellaneous authors, with the titles of their works. We know, farther, that he noticed Demokritus and Eudoxus, and we may feel assured that, in a scheme thus large, he would not omit Plato or Aristotle, the two great founders of the first philosophical schools, nor the specification of the works of each contained in the Alexandrine library.[18] Heitz supposes that Hermippus was the author of most of the catalogues (not merely of Aristotle, but also of other philosophers) given by Diogenes;[19] yet that nevertheless Diogenes himself had no direct acquaintance with the works of Hermippus, but copied these catalogues at second-hand from some later author, probably Favorinus. This last supposition is noway made out.

[17] Stahr, who in the first volume of his work Aristotelia (p. 194), had expressed an opinion that the Catalogue given by Diogenes is the Catalogue “der eigenen Schritten des Stageiriten, wie sie sich in seinem Nachlasse befanden,� retracts that opinion in the second volume of the same work (pp. 68-70), and declares the Catalogue to be an enumeration of the Aristotelian works in the library of Alexandria. Trendelenburg concurs in this later opinion (Proœmium ad Commentar. in Aristot. De Animâ, p. 123).

[18] Ἕρμιππος ὁ Καλλιμάχειος ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ περὶ Ἀριστοτέλους, is cited by Athenæus, xv. 696; also v. 213.

Among the Tables prepared by Kallimachus, one was Παντοδάπων Συγγραμμάτων Πίναξ; and in it were included the Πλακουντοποιϊκὰ συγγράμματα Αἰγιμίου, καὶ Ἡγησίππου, καὶ Μητροβίου, ἔτι δὲ Φαίτου (Athenæus, xiv. 644). If Kallimachus carried down his catalogue of the contents of the library to works so unimportant as these, we may surely believe that he would not omit to catalogue such works of Aristotle as were in it. He appears to have made a list of the works of Demokritus (i.e. such as were in the library) with a glossary. See Brandis (Aristoteles, Berlin, 1853, p. 74); also Suidas v. Καλλίμαχος, Diogen. Laert. viii. 86; Dionys. Hal. De Dinarcho, pp. 630, 652 R.; Athenæus, viii. 336, xv. 669.

[19] Heitz, Die Verl. Schr. des Aristot. pp. 45-48.

Patricius, in his Discuss. Peripatetic. (t. i. pp. 13-18), had previously considered Hermippus as having prepared a Catalogue of the works of Aristotle, partly on the authority of the Scholion annexed to the conclusion of the Metaphysica of Theophrastus. Hermippus recited the testament of Aristotle (Athenæus, xiii. 589).

Both Valentine Rose and Bernays regard Andronikus as author of the Catalogue of Aristotle in Diogenes. But I think that very sufficient reasons to refute this supposition have been shown by Heitz, pp. 49-52.

The opinion given by Christ, respecting the Catalogue which we find in Diogenes Laertius — “illum catalogum non Alexandrinæ bibliothecæ, sed exemplarium Aristotelis ab Apelliconte Athenas translatorum fuisse equidem censeo� — is in substance the same as that of Rose and Bernays. I do not concur in it. (Christ, Studia in Aristotelis Libros Metaphysicos, Berlin, 1853, p. 105).

It seems thus probable that the Catalogue given by Diogenes derives its origin from Hermippus or Kallimachus, enumerating the titles of such works of Aristotle as were contained in the Alexandrine library. But the aggregate of works composing our Aristotle is noway in harmony with that Catalogue. It proceeds from a source independent and totally different, viz., the edition and classification first published by the Rhodian Andronikus, in the generation between the death of Cicero and the Christian era. To explain the existence of these two distinct and independent sources and channels, we must have recourse to the remarkable narrative (already noticed in my [chapter] on the Platonic Canon), delivered mainly by Strabo and less fully by Plutarch, respecting the fate of the Aristotelian library after Aristotle’s death.

At the decease of Aristotle, his library and MSS. came to Theophrastus, who continued chief of the Peripatetic school at Athens for thirty-five years, until his death in 287 B.C. Both Aristotle and Theophrastus not only composed many works of their own, but also laid out much money in purchasing or copying the works of others;[20] especially we are told that Aristotle, after the death of Speusippus, expended three talents in purchasing his books. The entire library of Theophrastus, thus enriched from two sources, was bequeathed by his testament to a philosophical friend and pupil, Neleus;[21] who left Athens, and carried away the library with him to his residence at the town of Skêpsis, in the Asiatic region known as Æolis, near Troad. At Skêpsis the library remained for the greater part of two centuries, in possession of the descendants of Neleus, men of no accomplishments and no taste for philosophy. It was about thirty or forty years after the death of Theophrastus that the kings of Pergamus began to occupy themselves in collecting their royal library, which presently reached a magnitude second only to that of Alexandria. Now Skêpsis was under their dominion, and it would seem that the kings seized the books belonging to their subjects for the use of the royal library; for we are told that the heirs of Neleus were forced to conceal their literary treasures in a cellar, subject to great injury, partly from damp, partly from worms. In this ruinous hiding-place the manuscripts remained for nearly a century and a half — “blattarum ac tinearum epulæ,� — until the Attalid dynasty at Pergamus became extinct. The last of these kings, Attalus, died in 133 B.C., bequeathing his kingdom to the Romans. All fear of requisitions for the royal library being thus at end, the manuscripts were in course of time withdrawn by their proprietors from concealment, and sold for a large sum to Apellikon, a native of Teos, a very rich resident at Athens, and attached to the Peripatetic sect. Probably this wealthy Peripatetic already possessed a library of his own, with some Aristotelian works; but the new acquisitions from Skêpsis, though not his whole stock, formed the most rare and precious ingredients in it. Here, then, the manuscripts and library both of Aristotle and Theophrastus became, for the first time since 287 B.C., open to the inspection of the Athenian Peripatetics of the time (about 100 B.C.), as well as of other learned men. Among the stock were contained many compositions which the Scholarchs, successors of Theophrastus at Athens, had neither possessed nor known.[22] But the manuscripts were found imperfect, seriously damaged, and in a state of disorder. Apellikon did his best to remedy that mischief, by causing new copies to be taken, correcting what had become worm-eaten, and supplying what was defective or illegible. He appears to have been an erudite man, and had published a biography of Aristotle, refuting various calumnies advanced by other biographers; but being (in the words of Strabo) a lover of books rather than a philosopher, he performed the work of correction so unskilfully, that the copies which he published were found full of errors.[23] In the year 86 B.C., Sylla besieged Athens, and captured it by storm; not long after which he took to himself as a perquisite the library of Apellikon, and transported it to Rome.[24] It was there preserved under custody of a librarian, and various literary Greeks resident at Rome obtained access to it, especially Tyrannion, the friend of Cicero and a warm admirer of Aristotle, who took peculiar pains to gain the favour of the librarian.[25] It was there also that the Rhodian Andronikus obtained access to the Aristotelian works.[26] He classified them to a great degree anew, putting in juxtaposition the treatises most analogous in subject;[27] moreover, he corrected the text, and published a new edition of the manuscripts, with a tabulated list. This was all the more necessary, because some booksellers at Rome, aiming only at sale and profit, had employed bad writers, and circulated inaccurate copies, not collated with the originals.[28] These originals, however, were so damaged, and the restitutions made by Apellikon were so injudicious, that the more careful critics who now studied them were often driven to proceed on mere probable evidence.

[20] Diog. L. iv. 5; Aulus Gellius, N. A. iii. 17.

[21] From a passage of Lucian (De Parasito, c. xxxv.) we learn that Aristoxenus spoke of himself as friend and guest of Neleus: καὶ τίς περὶ τούτου λέγει; Πολλοὶ μὲν καὶ ἄλλοι, Ἀριστόξενος δὲ ὁ μουσικός, πολλοῦ λόγου ἄξιος καὶ αὐτὸς δὲ παράσιτος Νήλεως ἦν.

[22] Strabo, xiii. 608, 609; Athenæus, v. 214. The narrative of Strabo has been often misunderstood and impugned, as if he had asserted that none of the main works of Aristotle had ever been published until they were thus exhumed by Apellikon. This is the supposed allegation which Stahr, Zeller, and others have taken so much pains to refute. But in reality Strabo says no such thing. His words affirm or imply the direct contrary, viz., that many works of Aristotle, not merely the exoteric works but others besides, had been published earlier than the purchase made by Apellikon. What Strabo says is, that few of these works were in possession of the Peripatetic Scholarchs at Athens before the time of that purchase; and he explains thus how it was that these Scholarchs, during the century intervening, had paid little attention to the profound and abstruse speculations of Aristotle; how it was that they had confined themselves to dialectic and rhetorical debate on special problems. I see no ground for calling in question the fact affirmed by Strabo — the poverty of the Peripatetic school-library at Athens; though he may perhaps have assigned a greater importance to that fact than it deserves, as a means of explaining the intellectual working of the Peripatetic Scholarchs from Lykon to Kritolaus. The philosophical impulse of that intervening century seems to have turned chiefly towards ethics and the Summum Bonum, with the conflicting theories of Platonists, Peripatetics, Stoics, and Epikureans thereupon.

[23] Strabo, xiii. 609. ἦν δὲ ὁ Ἀπελλικῶν φιλόβιβλος μᾶλλον ἢ φιλόσοφος, διὸ καὶ ζητῶν ἐπανόοθωσιν τῶν διαβρωμάτων, εἰς ἀντίγραφα καινὰ μετήνεγκε τὴν γραφὴν ἀναπληρῶν οὐκ εὖ, καὶ ἐξέδωκεν ἁμαρτάδων πλήρη τὰ βίβλια.

[24] Strabo, xiii. 609; Plutarch, Sylla, c. xxvi.

[25] Strabo, xiii. 609. Τυραννίων, ὁ γραμματικὸς διεχειρίσατο φιλαριστοτέλης ὤν, θεραπεύσας τὸν ἐπὶ τῆς βιβλοθήκης. Tyrannion had been the preceptor of Strabo (xii. 548); and Boêthus, who studied Aristotle along with Strabo, was a disciple of the Rhodian Andronikus. See Ammonius ad Categorias, f. 8; and Ravaisson, Essai sur la Métaphysique d’Aristote, Introduction, p. 10.

[26] Plutarch, Sylla, c. xxvi.

[27] The testimony of Porphyry in respect to Andronikus, and to the real service performed by Andronikus, is highly valuable. Porphyry was the devoted disciple and friend, as well as the literary executor, of Plotinus; whose writings were left in an incorrect and disorderly condition. Porphyry undertook to put them in order and publish them; and he tells us that, in fulfilling this promise, he followed the example of what Andronikus had done for the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus. Ἐπεὶ δὲ αὐτὸς (Plotinus) τὴν διόρθωσιν καὶ τὴν διάταξιν τῶν βιβλίων ποιεῖσθαι ἡμῖν ἐπέτρεψεν, ἐγὼ δὲ ἐκείνῳ ζῶντι ὑπεσχόμην καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἑταίροις ἐπηγγειλάμην ποιῆσαι τοῦτο, πρῶτον μὲν τὰ βίβλια οὐ κατὰ χρόνους ἐᾶσαι φύρδην ἐκδεδομένα ἐδικαίωσα, μιμησάμενος δ’ Ἀπολλόδωρον τὸν Ἀθηναῖον καὶ Ἀνδρόνικον τὸν Περιπατητικόν, ὧν ὁ μὲν Ἐπίχαρμον τὸν κωμῳδιογράφον εἰς δέκα τόμους φέρων συνήγαγεν, ὁ δὲ τὰ Ἀριστοτέλους καὶ Θεοφράστου εἰς πραγματείας διεῖλε, τὰς οἰκείας ὑποθέσεις εἰς ταὐτὸν συναγαγών, οὕτω δὴ καὶ ἐγὼ πεντήκοντα τέσσαραὔντα ἔχων τὰ τοῦ Πλωτίνου βίβλια διεῖλον μὲν εἰς ἓξ ἐννεάδας, τῇ τελειότητι τοῦ ἓξ ἀριθμοῦ καὶ ταῖς ἐννεάσιν ἀσμένως ἐπιτυχών, ἑκάστῃ δὲ ἐννεάδι τὰ οἰκεῖα φέρων συνεφόρησα, δοὺς καὶ τάξιν πρώτην τοῖς ἐλαφροτέροις προβλήμασιν. (Porphyry, Vita Plotini, p. 117, Didot.) Porphyry here distinctly affirms that Andronikus rendered this valuable service not merely to the works of Aristotle, but also to those of Theophrastus. This is important, as connecting him with the library conveyed by Sylla to Rome; which library we know to have contained the manuscripts of both these philosophers. And in the Scholion appended to the Metaphysica of Theophrastus (p. 323, Brandis) we are told that Andronikus and Hermippus had made a catalogue of the works of Theophrastus, in which the Metaphysics was not included.

[28] Strabo, xiii. 609: βιβλιοπῶλαί τινες γραφεῦσι φαύλοις χρώμενοι καὶ οὐκ ἀντιβάλλοντες, &c.

This interesting narrative — delivered by Strabo, the junior contemporary of Andronikus, and probably derived by him either from Tyrannion his preceptor or from the Sidonian Boêthus[29] and other philosophical companions jointly, with whom he had prosecuted the study of Aristotle — appears fully worthy of trust. The proceedings both of Apellikon and of Sylla prove, what indeed we might have presumed without proof, that the recovery of these long-lost original manuscripts of Aristotle and Theophrastus excited great sensation in the philosophical world of Athens and of Rome. With such newly-acquired materials, a new epoch began for the study of these authors. The more abstruse philosophical works of Aristotle now came into the foreground under the auspices of a new Scholarch; whereas Aristotle had hitherto been chiefly known by his more popular and readable compositions. Of these last, probably, copies may have been acquired to a certain extent by the previous Peripatetic Scholarchs or School at Athens; but the School had been irreparably impoverished, so far as regarded the deeper speculations of philosophy, by the loss of those original manuscripts which had been transported from Athens to Skêpsis. What Aristotelian Scholarchs, prior to Andronikus, chiefly possessed and studied, of the productions of their illustrious founder, were chiefly the exoteric or extra-philosophical and comparatively popular:— such as the dialogues; the legendary and historical collections; the facts respecting constitutional history of various Hellenic cities; the variety of miscellaneous problems respecting Homer and a number of diverse matters; the treatises on animals and on anatomy, &c.[30] In the Alexandrine library (as we see by the Catalogue of Diogenes) there existed all these and several philosophical works also; but that library was not easily available for the use of the Scholarchs at Athens, who worked upon their own stock, confining themselves mainly to smooth and elegant discourses on particular questions, and especially to discussions, with the Platonists, Stoics, and Epikureans, on the principia of Ethics, without any attempt either to follow up or to elucidate the more profound speculations (logical, physical, metaphysical, cosmical) of Aristotle himself. A material change took place when the library of Apellikon came to be laid open and studied, not merely by lecturers in the professorial chair at Athens, but also by critics like Tyrannion and Andronikus at Rome. These critics found therein the most profound and difficult philosophical works of Aristotle in the handwriting of the philosopher himself; some probably, of which copies may have already existed in the Alexandrine library, but some also as yet unpublished. The purpose of Andronikus, who is described as Peripatetic Scholarch, eleventh in succession from Aristotle, was not simply to make a Catalogue (as Hermippus had made at Alexandria), but to render a much greater service, which no critic could render without having access to original MSS., namely, to obtain a correct text of the books actually before him, to arrange these books in proper order, and then to publish and explain them,[31] but to take no account of other Aristotelian works in the Alexandrine library or elsewhere. The Aristotelian philosophy thus passed into a new phase. Our editions of Aristotle may be considered as taking their date from this critical effort of Andronikus, with or without subsequent modifications by others, as the case may be.

[29] Strabo, xvi. 757. Stahr, in his minor work, Aristoteles unter den Römern, p. 32, considers that this circumstance lessens the credibility of Strabo. I think the contrary. No one was so likely to have studied the previous history of the MSS. as the editors of a new edition.

[30] Strabo, xiii. 609: συνέβη δὲ τοῖς ἐκ τῶν περιπάτων τοῖς μὲν πάλαι τοῖς μετὰ Θεόφραστον, ὅλως οὐκ ἔχουσι τὰ βίβλια πλὴν ὀλίγων καὶ μάλιστα τῶν ἐξωτερικῶν, μηδὲν ἔχειν φιλοσοφεῖν πραγματικῶς, ἀλλὰ θέσεις ληκυθίζειν· τοῖς δ’ ὕστερον, ἀφ’ οὖ τὰ βίβλια ταῦτα προῆλθεν, ἄμεινον μὲν ἐκείνων φιλοσοφεῖν καὶ ἀριστοτελίζειν, ἀναγκάζεσθαι μέντοι τὰ πολλὰ εἰκότα λέγειν διὰ τὸ πλῆθος τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν. Also Plutarch, Sylla, c. xxvi.

The passage of Strabo is so perspicuous and detailed, that it has all the air of having been derived from the best critics who frequented the library at Rome, where Strabo was when he wrote (καὶ ἔνθαδε καὶ ἐν Ἀλεξανδρείᾳ, xiii. 609). The Peripatetic Andronikus, whom he names among the celebrated Rhodians (xiv. 655), may have been among his informants. His statements about the bad state of the manuscripts; the unskilful emendations of Apellikon; the contrast between the vein of Peripatetic study, as it had stood before the revelation of the manuscripts, and as it came to stand afterwards; the uncertain evidences upon which careful students, even with the manuscripts before them, were compelled to proceed; the tone of depreciation in which he speaks of the carelessness of booksellers who sought only for profit, — all these points of information appear to me to indicate that Strabo’s informants were acute and diligent critics, familiar with the library, and anxious both for the real understanding of these documents, and for philosophy as an end.

[31] Plutarch, Sylla, c. xxvi. Spengel (“Ueber die Reihenfolge der naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften des Aristoteles,� München. philol. Abhandl. 1848,) remarks justly that the critical arrangement of Aristotle’s writings, for collective publication, begins from the library of Apellikon at Rome, not from that of Alexandria. See p. 146: “Mehr als zweihundert Jahre lang fehlt uns alle nähere Kunde über die peripatetische Schule. Erst mit der viel besprochenen Auffindung der Bibliothek des Aristoteles in Athen und deren Wegführung nach Rom durch Sulla wird ein regeres Studium für die Schriften des Philosophen bemerkbar — und zwar jetzt eigentlich der Schriften, weniger der Lehre und Philosophie im Allgemeinen, welche früher allein beachtet worden ist. Wir möchten sagen, von jetzt an beginne das philologische Studium mit den Werken des Aristoteles, die kritische und exegetische Behandlung dieser durch Tyrannion, Andronikus, Adrastus und viele andre nachlfolgende,� &c.

The explanation just given, coinciding on many points with Brandis and Heitz, affords the most probable elucidation of that obscurity which arises about the Aristotelian Canon, when we compare our Aristotle with the Catalogue of Diogenes — the partial likeness, but still greater discrepancy, between the two. It is certain that neither Cicero[32] nor the great Alexandrine literati, anterior to and contemporary with him, knew Aristotle from most of the works which we now possess. They knew him chiefly from the dialogues, the matters of history and legend, some zoological books, and the problems; the dialogues, and the historical collections respecting the constitutions of Hellenic cities,[33] being more popular and better known than any other works. While the Republic of Plato is familiar to them, they exhibit no knowledge of our Aristotelian Politica, in which treatise the criticism upon the Platonic Republic is among the most interesting parts. When we look through the contents of our editions of Aristotle the style and manner of handling is indeed pretty much the same throughout, but the subjects will appear extremely diverse and multifarious; and the encyclopedical character of the author, as to science and its applications, will strike us forcibly. The entire and real Aristotle, however, was not only more encyclopedical as to subjects handled, but also more variable as to style and manner of handling; passing from the smooth, sweet, and flowing style — which Cicero extols as characterizing the Aristotelian dialogues — to the elliptical brevity and obscurity which we now find so puzzling in the De Animâ and the Metaphysica.[34]

[32] This is certain, from the remarks addressed by Cicero to Trebatius at the beginning of the Ciceronian Topica, that in his time Aristotle was little known and little studied at Rome, even by philosophical students. Trebatius knew nothing of the Topica, until he saw the work by chance in Cicero’s library, and asked information about the contents. The reply of Cicero illustrates the little notice taken of Aristotle by Roman readers. “Cum autem ego te, non tam vitandi laboris mei causâ, quam quia tua id interesse arbitrarer, vel ut eos per te ipse legeres, vel ut totam rationem a doctissimo quodam rhetore acciperes, hortatus essem, utrumque ut ex te audiebam, es expertus. Sed a libris te obscuritas rejecit: rhetor autem ille magnus, ut opinor, Aristotelia se ignorare respondit. Quod quidem minime sum admiratus, eum philosophum rhetori non esse cognitum, qui ab ipsis philosophis, præter admodum paucos, ignoraretur.� Compare also Cicero, Academ. Post. i. 3, 10.

[33] Even the philosophical commentators on Aristotle, such as David the Armenian, seem to have known the lost work of Aristotle called Πολιτεῖαι (the history of the constitutions of 250 Hellenic cities), better than the theoretical work which we possess, called the Politica; though they doubtless knew both. (See Scholia ad Categorias, Brandis, p. 16, b. 20; p. 24, a. 25; p. 25, b. 5.) — We read in Schneider’s Preface to the Aristotelian Politica (p. x.): “Altum et mirabile silentium est apud antiquitatem Græcam et Romanam de novâ Aristotelis Republicâ, cum omnes ferè scriptores Græci et Romani, mentione Reipublicæ Platonicæ pleni, vel laudibus vel vituperiis ejus abundant.â€� — There is no clear reference to the Aristotelian Politica earlier than Alexander of Aphrodisias. Both Hildenbrand (Geschichte der Staats- und Rechts-Philosophen, t. i. pp. 358-361), and Oncken (Staatslehre des Aristot. pp. 65-66), think that the Aristotelian Politica was not published until after the purchase of the library by Apellikon.

[34] What Strabo asserts about the Peripatetic Scholarchs succeeding Theophrastus (viz., μηδὲν ἔχειν φιλοσοφεῖν πραγματικῶς, ἀλλὰ θέσεις ληκυθίζειν: that they could not handle philosophy in a businesslike way — with those high generalities and that subtle analysis which was supposed to belong to philosophy — but gave smooth and ornate discourses on set problems or theses) is fully borne out by what we read in Cicero about these same Peripatetics. The Stoics (immediate successors and rivals) accused their Peripatetic contemporaries even of being ignorant of Dialectic: which their founder, Aristotle, in his works that we now possess, had been the first to raise into something like a science. Cicero says (De Finibus, iii. 12, 41): “His igitur ita positis (inquit Cato) sequitur magna contentio: quam tractatam à Peripateticis mollius (est enim eorum consuetudo dicendi non satis acuta, propter ignorationem Dialecticæ), Carneades tuus, egregiâ quâdam exercitatione in dialecticis summâque eloquentiâ, rem in summum discrimen adduxit.â€� Also Cicero, in Tuscul. Disput. iv. 5. 9: “Quia Chrysippus et Stoici, quum de animi perturbationibus disputant, magnam partem in iis partiendis et definiendis occupati sunt, illa eorum perexigua oratio est, quâ medeantur animis nec eos turbulentos esse patiantur. Peripatetici autem ad placandos animos multa afferunt, spinas partiendi et definiendi prætermittunt.â€� This last sentence is almost an exact equivalent of the words of Strabo: μηδὲν ἔχειν φιλοσοφεῖν πραγματικῶς, ἀλλὰ θέσεις ληκυθίζειν. Aristotle himself, in the works which we possess, might pass as father of the Stoics rather than of the Peripatetics; for he abounds in classification and subdivision (spinas partiendi et dividendi), and is even derided on this very ground by opponents (see Atticus ap. Euseb. Præp. Ev. xv. 4); but he has nothing of the polished amplification ascribed to the later Peripatetics by Strabo and Cicero. Compare, about the Peripatetics from Lykon to Kritolaus, Cicero, De Finibus, v. 5: “Lyco, oratione locuples, rebus ipsis jejunior.â€� Plutarch (Sylla, c. xxvi.) calls these later Peripatetics χαριέντες καὶ φιλόλογοι, &c.

I shall assume this variety, both of subject and of handling, as a feature to be admitted and allowed for in Aristotle, when I come to discuss the objections of some critics against the authenticity of certain treatises among the forty-six which now pass under his name. But in canvassing the Aristotelian Canon I am unable to take the same ground as I took in my former work, when reviewing the Platonic Canon. In regard to Plato, I pointed out a strong antecedent presumption in favour of the Canon of Thrasyllus — a canon derived originally from the Alexandrine librarians, and sustained by the unanimous adhesion of antiquity. In regard to Aristotle, there are no similar grounds of presumption to stand upon. We have good reason for believing that the works both of Plato and Aristotle — if not all the works, at least many of them, and those the most generally interesting — were copied and transmitted early to the Alexandrine library. Now our Plato represents that which was possessed and accredited as Platonic by the Byzantine Aristophanes and the other Alexandrine librarians; but our Aristotle does not, in my judgment, represent what these librarians possessed and accredited as Aristotelian. That which they thus accredited stands recorded in the Catalogue given by Diogenes, probably the work of Hermippus, as I have already stated; while our Aristotle is traceable to the collection at Athens, including that of Apellikon, with that which he bought from the heirs of Neleus, and to the sifting, correction, and classification, applied thereto by able critics of the first century B.C. and subsequently; among whom Andronikus is best known. We may easily believe that the library of Apellikon contained various compositions of Aristotle, which had never been copied for the Alexandrine library — perhaps never prepared for publication at all, so that the task of arranging detached sections or morsels into a whole, with one separate title, still remained to be performed. This was most likely to be the case with abstruser speculations, like the component books of the Metaphysica, which Theophrastus may not have been forward to tender, and which the library might not be very eager to acquire, having already near four hundred other volumes by the same author. These reserved works would therefore remain in the library of Theophrastus, not copied and circulated (or at least circulated only to a few private philosophical brethren, such as Eudêmus), so that they never became fully published until the days of Apellikon.[35]

[35] The two Peripatetic Scholarchs at Athens, Straton and Lykon, who succeeded (after the death of Theophrastus and the transfer of his library to Skêpsis) in the conduct of the school, left at their decease collections of books, of which each disposes by his will (Diogen. L. v. 62; v. 73). The library of Apellikon, when sent by Sylla to Rome, contained probably many other Aristotelian MSS., besides those purchased from Skêpsis.

Michelet, in his Commentary on the Nikomachean Ethica, advances a theory somewhat analogous but bolder, respecting the relation between the Catalogue given by Diogenes, and the works contained in our Aristotle. Comm. p. 2. “Id solum addam, hoc Aristotelis opus (the Nikomachean Ethica), ut reliqua omnia, ex brevioribus commentationibus consarcinatum fuisse, quæ quidem vivo Aristotele in lucem prodierint, cum unaquæque disciplina, e quâ excerpta fuerint in admirabilem illum quem habemus ordinem jam ab ipso Aristotele sive quodam ejus discipulo redacta, in libris Aristotelis manu scriptis latitaverit, qui hereditate ad Nelei prolem, ut notum est, transmissi, in cellâ illâ subterraneâ Scepsiâ absconditi fuerunt, donec Apellicon Teius et Rhodius Andronicus eos ediderint. Leguntur autem commentationum illarum de Moribus tituli in elencho librorum Aristotelis apud Diogenem (v. 22-26): περὶ ἀρετῶν (Lib. ii., iii. c. 6-fin. iv. nostrorum Ethicorum); περὶ ἑκουσίου (Lib. iii. c. 1-5); &c. Plerumque enim non integra volumina, sed singulos libros vel singula volumina diversarum disciplinarum, Diogenes in elencho suo enumeravit.â€�

In his other work (Essai sur la Métaphysique d’Aristote, pp. 202, 205, 225) Michelet has carried this theory still farther, and has endeavoured to identify separate fragments of the Aristotelian works now extant, with various titles in the Catalogue given by Diogenes. The identification is not convincing.

But though the edition published by Andronikus would thus contain many genuine works of Aristotle not previously known or edited, we cannot be sure that it would not also include some which were spurious. Reflect what the library of Apellikon, transported to Rome by Sylla, really was. There was in it the entire library of Theophrastus; probably, also, that of Neleus, who must have had some books of his own, besides what he inherited from Theophrastus. It included all the numerous manuscript works composed by Aristotle and Theophrastus, and many other manuscript works purchased or acquired by them, but composed by others — the whole in very bad order and condition; and, moreover, the books which Apellikon possessed before, doubtless as many Aristotelian books as he could purchase. To distinguish, among this heterogeneous mass of manuscripts, which of them were the manuscripts composed by Aristotle; to separate these from the writings of Theophrastus, Eudêmus, or other authors, who composed various works of their own upon the same subjects and with the same titles as those of Aristotle — required extreme critical discernment and caution; the rather, since there was no living companion of Aristotle or Theophrastus to guide or advise, more than a century and a half having elapsed since the death of Theophrastus, and two centuries since that of Aristotle. Such were the difficulties amidst which Apellikon, Tyrannion, and Andronikus had to decide, when they singled out the manuscripts of Aristotle to be published. I will not say that they decided wrongly; yet neither can I contend (as I argued in the case of the Platonic dialogues) that the presumption is very powerful in favour of that Canon which their decision made legal. The case is much more open to argument, if any grounds against the decision can be urged.

Andronikus put in, arranged, and published the treatises of Aristotle (or those which he regarded as composed by Aristotle) included in the library conveyed by Sylla to Rome. I have already observed, that among these treatises there were some, of which copies existed in the Alexandrine library (as represented by the Catalogue of Diogenes), but a still greater number which cannot be identified with the titles remaining of works there preserved. As to the works common to both libraries, we must remember that Andronikus introduced a classification of his own, analogous to the Enneads applied by Porphyry to the works of Plotinus, and to the Tetralogies adopted by Thrasyllus in regard to the Dialogues of Plato; so that even these works might not be distributed in the same partitions under each of the two arrangements. And this is what we actually see when we compare the Catalogue of Diogenes with our Aristotle. Rhetoric, Ethics, Physics, Problems, &c., appear in both as titles or subjects, but distributed into a different number of books or sections in one and in the other; perhaps, indeed, the compositions are not always the same.

Before I proceed to deal with the preserved works of Aristotle — those by which alone he is known to us, and was known to mediæval readers, I shall say a few words respecting the import of a distinction which has been much canvassed, conveyed in the word exoteric and its opposite. This term, used on various occasions by Aristotle himself, has been also employed by many ancient critics, from Cicero downwards; while by mediæval and modern critics, it has not merely been employed, but also analysed and elucidated. According to Cicero (the earliest writer subsequent to Aristotle in whom we find the term), it designates one among two classes of works composed by Aristotle: exoteric works were those composed in a popular style and intended for a large, indiscriminate circle of readers: being contrasted with other works of elaborated philosophical reasoning, which were not prepared for the public taste, but left in the condition of memorials for the instruction of a more select class of studious men. Two points are to be observed respecting Cicero’s declaration. First, he applies it to the writings not of Aristotle exclusively, but also to those of Theophrastus, and even of succeeding Peripatetics; secondly, he applies it directly to such of their writings only as related to the discussion of the Summum Bonum.[36] Furthermore, Cicero describes the works which Aristotle called exoteric, as having proems or introductory prefaces.[37]

[36] Cicero, De Finibus, v. 5, 12. “De summo autem bono, quia duo genera librorum sunt, unum populariter scriptum, quod ἐξωτερικὸν appellabant, alterum limatius, quod in commentariis reliquerunt, non semper idem dicere videntur: nec in summâ tamen ipsâ aut varietas est ulla, apud hos quidem quos nominavi, aut inter ipsos dissensio.â€�

The word limatius here cannot allude to high polish and ornament of style (nitor orationis), but must be equivalent to ἀκριβέστερον, doctius, subtilius, &c. (as Buhle and others have already remarked, Buhle, De Libris Aristot. Exoter. et Acroam. p. 115; Madvig, ad Cicero de Finib. v. 12; Heitz, p. 134), applied to profound reasoning, with distinctions of unusual precision, which it required a careful preparatory training to apprehend. This employment of the word limatius appears to me singular, but it cannot mean anything else here. The commentarii are the general heads — plain unadorned statements of facts or reasoning — which the orator or historian is to employ his genius in setting forth and decorating, so that it may be heard or read with pleasure and admiration by a general audience. Cicero, in that remarkable letter wherein he entreats Lucceius to narrate his (Cicero’s) consulship in an historical work, undertakes to compose “commentarios rerum omniumâ€� as materials for the use of Lucceius (Ep. ad Famil. v. 12. 10). His expression, “in commentariis reliquerunt,â€� shows that he considered the exoteric books to have been prepared by working up some naked preliminary materials into an ornate and interesting form.

[37] Cicero, Ep. ad Att. iv. 16.

In the main, the distinction here drawn by Cicero, understood in a very general sense, has been accepted by most following critics as intended by the term exoteric: something addressed to a wide, indiscriminate circle of general readers or hearers, and intelligible or interesting to them without any special study or training — as contrasted with that which is reserved for a smaller circle of students assumed to be specially qualified. But among those who agree in this general admission, many differences have prevailed. Some have thought that the term was not used by Aristotle to designate any writings either of his own or of others, but only in allusion to informal oral dialogues or debates. Others again, feeling assured that Aristotle intended by the term to signify some writings of his own, have searched among the works preserved, as well as among the titles of the works lost, to discriminate such as the author considered to be exoteric: though this search has certainly not ended in unanimity; nor do I think it has been successful. Again, there have not been wanting critics (among them, Thomas Aquinas and Sepulveda), who assign to the term a meaning still more vague and undefined; contending that when Aristotle alludes to “exoteric discourses,� he indicates simply some other treatise of his own, distinct from that in which the allusion occurs, without meaning to imply anything respecting its character.[38]

[38] Sepulveda, p. 125 (cited by Bernays, Dialoge des Aristoteles, p. 41): “Externos sermones sive exotericos solet Aristoteles libros eos appellare, quicunque sunt extra id opus in quo tunc versatur, ut jure pontificio periti consueverunt: non enim exoterici sermones seu libri certo aliquo genere continentur, ut est publicus error.�

Zeller lends his high authority to an explanation of exoteric very similar to the above. (Gesch. der Philos. ii. 2, p. 100, seq.:— �dass unter exoterischen Reden nicht eine eigene Klasse populär geschriebener Bücher, sondern nur überhaupt solche Erörterungen verstanden werden, welche nicht in den Bereich der vorliegenden Untersuchung gehören.�) He discusses the point at some length; but the very passages which he cites, especially Physica, iv. 10, appear to me less favourable to his view than to that which I have stated in the text, according to which the word means dialectic as contrasted with didactic.

To me it appears that this last explanation is untenable, and that the term exoteric designates matter of a certain character, assignable to some extent by positive marks, but still more by negative; matter, in part, analogous to that defined by Cicero and other critics. But to conceive clearly or fully what its character is, we must turn to Aristotle himself, who is of course the final authority, wherever he can be found to speak in a decisive manner. His preserved works afford altogether eight passages (two of them indeed in the Eudemian Ethics, which, for the present at least, I shall assume to be his work), wherein the phrase “exoteric discoursesâ€� (ἐξωτερικοὶ λόγοι) occurs. Out of these eight passages, there are seven which present the phrase as designating some unknown matter, not farther specified, but distinct from the work in which the phrase occurs: “Enough has been said (or is said, Aristotle intimates) about this subject, even in the exoteric discourses.â€� To what it is that he here alludes — whether to other writings of his own or oral discussions of his own, or writing and speech of a particular sort by others — we are left to interpret as we best may, by probable reason or conjecture. But there is one among the eight passages, in which Aristotle uses the term exoteric as describing, not what is to be looked for elsewhere, but what he is himself about to give in the treatise in hand. In the fourth book of the Physica, he discusses the three high abstractions, Place, Vacuum, Time. After making an end of the first two, he enters upon the third, beginning with the following words:— “It follows naturally on what has been said, that we should treat respecting Time. But first it is convenient to advert to the difficulties involved in it, by exoteric discourse also — whether Time be included among entities or among non-entities; then afterwards, what is its nature. Now a man might suspect, from the following reasons, that Time either absolutely does not exist, or exists scarcely and dimly,â€� &c. Aristotle then gives a string of dialectic reasons, lasting through one of the columns of the Berlin edition, for doubting whether Time really exists. He afterwards proceeds thus, through two farther columns:— “Let these be enumerated as the difficulties accompanying the attributes of Time. What Time is, and what is its nature, is obscure, as well from what has been handed down to us by others, as from what we ourselves have just gone through;â€�[39] and this question also he first discusses dialectically, and then brings to a solution.

[39] Aristot. Physic. iv. 10, p. 217, b. 29. Ἐχόμενον δὲ τῶν εἰρημένων ἐστὶν ἐπελθεῖν περὶ χρόνου· πρῶτον δὲ καλῶς ἔχει διαπορῆσαι περὶ αὐτοῦ καὶ διὰ τῶν ἐξωτερικῶν λόγων, πότερον τῶν ὄντων ἐστὶν ἢ τῶν μὴ ὄντων, εἶτα τίς ἡ φύσις αὐτοῦ. Ὅτι μὲν οὖν ἢ ὅλως ἔστιν, ἢ μόλις καὶ ἀμυδρῶς, ἐκ τῶνδέ τις ἂν ὑποπτεύσειεν. Then, after a column of text urging various ἀπορίας as to whether Time is or is not, he goes on, p. 218, a. 31:— Περὶ μὲν οὖν τῶν ὑπαρχόντων αὐτῷ τοσαῦτ’ ἔστω διηπορημένα. Τί δ’ ἐστὶν ὁ χρόνος, καὶ τίς αὐτοῦ ἡ φύσις, ὁμοίως ἔκ τε τῶν παραδεδομένων ἄδηλόν ἐστι, καὶ περὶ ὧν τυγχάνομεν διεληλυθότες πρότερον — thus taking up the questions, What Time is? What is the nature of Time? Upon this he goes through another column of ἀπορίαι, difficulties and counter-difficulties, until p. 219, a. 1, when he approaches to a positive determination, as the sequel of various negatives — ὅτι μὲν οὖν οὔτε κίνησις οὔτ’ ἄνευ κινήσεως ὁ χρόνος ἐστί, φανερόν. ληπτέον δέ, ἐπεὶ ζητοῦμεν τί ἐστιν ὁ χρόνος, ἐντεῦθεν ἀρχομένοις, τί τῆς κινήσεώς ἐστιν. He pursues this positive determination throughout two farther columns (see ὑποκείσθω, a. 30), until at length he arrives at his final definition of Time — ἀριθμὸς κινήσεως κατὰ τὸ πρότερον καὶ ὕστερον, καὶ συνεχής (συνεχοῦς γὰρ) — which he declares to be φανερόν, p. 220, a. 25.

It is plain that the phrase ἐξωτερικοὶ λόγοι here designates the preliminary dialectic tentative process, before the final affirmative is directly attempted, as we read in De Gener. et Corr. i. 3, p. 317, b. 13: περὶ μὲν οὖν τούτων ἐν ἄλλοις τε διηπόρηται καὶ διώρισται τοῖς λόγοις ἐπὶ πλεῖον — first, τὸ διαπορεῖν, next, τὸ διορίζειν.

Now what is it that Aristotle here means by “exoteric discourse?â€� We may discover by reading the matter comprised between the two foregoing citations. We find a string of perplexing difficulties connected with the supposition that Time exists: such as, “That all Time is either past or future, of which the former no longer exists, and the latter does not yet exist; that the Now is no part of Time, for every Whole is composed of its Parts, and Time is not composed of Nows,â€� &c. I do not go farther here into these subtle suggestions, because my present purpose is only to illustrate what Aristotle calls “exoteric discourse,â€� by exhibiting what he himself announces to be a specimen thereof. It is the process of noticing and tracing out all the doubts and difficulties (ἀπορίας) which beset the enquiry in hand, along with the different opinions entertained about it either by the vulgar, or by individual philosophers, and the various reasons whereby such opinions may be sustained or impugned. It is in fact the same process as that which, when performed (as it was habitually and actively in his age) between two disputants, he calls dialectic debate; and which he seeks to encourage as well as to regulate in his treatise entitled Topica. He contrasts it with philosophy, or with the strictly didactic and demonstrative procedure: wherein the teacher lays down principles which he requires the learner to admit, and then deduces from them, by syllogisms constructed in regular form, consequences indisputably binding on all who have admitted the principles. But though Aristotle thus distinguishes Dialectic from Philosophy, he at the same time declares it to be valuable as an auxiliary towards the purpose of philosophy, and as an introductory exercise before the didactic stage begins. The philosopher ought to show his competence as a dialectician, by indicating and handling those various difficulties and controversies bearing on his subject, which have already been made known, either in writings or in oral debate.[40]

[40] See Aristot. Topic. i. p. 100, b. 21, p. 101, a. 25, 34-36, b. 2. Πρὸς δὲ τὰς κατὰ φιλοσοφίαν ἐπιστήμας (χρήσιμος ἡ πραγματεία), ὅτι δυνάμενοι πρὸς ἀμφότερα διαπορῆσαι ῥᾷον ἐν ἑκάστοις κατοψόμεθα τἀληθές τε καὶ τὸ ψεῦδος, p. 105, b. 30. Πρὸς μὲν οὖν φιλοσοφίαν κατ’ ἀληθειαν περὶ αὐτῶν πραγματευέον, διαλεκτικῶς δὲ πρὸς δόξαν.

Compare also the commencement of book B. in the Metaphysica, p. 995, a. 28 seq., and, indeed, the whole of book B., which contains a dialectic discussion of numerous ἀπορίαι. Aristotle himself refers to it afterwards (Γ. p. 1004, a. 32) in the words ὕπερ ἐν ταῖς ἀπορίαις ἐλεχθη.

The Scholia of Alexander on the beginning of the Topica (pp. 251, 252, Brandis) are instructive; also his Scholia on p. 105, b. 30, p. 260, a. 24. διαλεκτικῶς δὲ πρὸς δόξαν, ὡς ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ πραγματείᾳ (i.e. the Topica) καὶ ἐν τοῖς ῥητορικοῖς, καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἐξωτερικοῖς. καὶ γὰρ ἐν ἐκείνοις πλεῖστα καὶ περὶ τῶν ἠθικῶν καὶ περὶ τῶν φυσικῶν ἐνδόξως λέγεται.

We see here that Alexander understands by the exoteric the dialectic handling of opinions on physics and ethics.

In the Eudemian Ethica also (i. 8, p. 1217, b. 16) we find ἐπέσκεπται δὲ πολλοῖς περὶ αὐτοῦ τρόποις, καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἐξωτερικοῖς λόγοις καὶ ἐν τοῖς κατὰ φιλοσοφίαν, where we have the same antithesis in other words — Exoteric or Dialectic versus Philosophical or Didactic. Compare a clear statement in Simplikius (Schol. ad Physic. p. 364, b. 19). Πρῶτον μὲν λογικῶς ἐπιχειρεῖ, τούτεστι πιθανῶς καὶ ἐνδόξως, καὶ ἔτι κοινότερόν πως καὶ διαλεκτικώτερον. Ἡ γὰρ διαλεκτικὴ ἡ Ἀριστοτέλους κοινή ἐστι μέθοδος περὶ παντὸς τοῦ προτεθέντος ἐξ ἐνδόξων συλλογιζομένη — τὸ γὰρ λογικὸν ὡς κοινὸν εἴωθεν ἀντιδιαστέλλειν τᾳ οἰκείῳ καὶ κατὰ φύσιν τοῦ πράγματος καὶ ἀποδεικτικῷ.

We thus learn, from the example furnished by Aristotle himself, what he means by “exoteric discourses.� The epithet means literally, extraneous to, lying on the outside of; in the present case, on the outside of philosophy, considered in its special didactic and demonstrative march.[41] Yet what thus lies outside philosophy, is nevertheless useful as an accompaniment and preparation for philosophy. We shall find Aristotle insisting upon this in his Topica and Analytica; and we shall also find him introducing the exoteric treatment into his most abstruse philosophical treatises (the Physica is one of the most abstruse) as an accompaniment and auxiliary — a dialectic survey of opinions, puzzles, and controverted points, before he begins to lay down and follow out affirmative principles of his own. He does this not only throughout the Physica (in several other passages besides that which I have just cited),[42] but also in the Metaphysica, the treatises De Animâ, De Generatione et Corruptione, &c.

[41] We find the epithet ἐξωτερικὸς used once by Aristotle, not in conjunction with λόγοι, but with πράξεις, designating those acts which are performed with a view to some ulterior and extraneous end (τῶν ἀποβαινόντων χάριν, as contrasted with πράξεις αὐτοτελεῖς — οἰκεῖαι): Polit. vii. p. 1325, b. 22-29. σχολῇ γὰρ ἂν ὁ θεὸς ἔχοι καλῶς καὶ πᾶς ὁ κόσμος, οἷς οὐκ εἰσὶν ἐξωτερικαὶ πράξεις παρὰ τὰς οἰκείας τὰς αὐτῶν. In the Eudemian Ethics the phrase τοῖς ἀλλοτρίοις λόγοις σοφίζονται is used much in the same sense as τοῖς ἐξωτερικοῖς λόγοις: i.e. opposed to τοῖς οἰκείοις — to that which belongs specially to the scientific determination of the problem (Ethic. Eudem. i. p. 1218, b. 18).

The phrase διὰ τῶν ἐξωτερικῶν λόγων, in Aristot. Physic. iv. 10, p. 217, b. 31, and the different phrase ἐκ τῶν εἰωθότων λόγων λέγεσθαι, in Phys. vi. 2, p. 233, a. 13, appear to have the same meaning and reference. Compare Prantl not. ad Arist. Phys. p. 501.

[42] If we turn to the beginning of book iv. of the Physica, where Aristotle undertakes to examine Τόπος, Place, we shall see that he begins by a dialectic handling of ἀπορίαι, exactly analogous to that which he himself calls ἐξωτερικοὶ λόγοι, when he proceeds to examine Χρόνος, Time: see Physica, iv. pp. 208, a. 32-35, 209, a. 30; 210, a. 12, b. 31. He does the like also about Κενόν, Vacuum, p. 213, a. 20, b. 28, and about Ἄπειρον, Infinitum, iii. p. 204, b. 4 (with the Scholia of Simplikius, p. 364, b. 20, Br.).

Compare the Scholion of Simplikius ad Physica (i. p. 329, b. 1, Br.) — ἴσως δὲ (Simplikius uses this indecisive word ἴσως) ὅτι ἡ ἐφ’ ἑκάτερα ἀπορία τοῦ λόγου ἐξωτερική τις ἦν, ὡς Εὔδημός φησι, διαλεκτικὴ μᾶλλον οὖσα, with this last Scholion, on p. 364, b. 20, which describes the same dialectic handling, though without directly calling it exoteric.

Having thus learnt to understand, from one distinct passage of Aristotle himself, what he means by “exoteric discourses,� we must interpret by the light of this analogy the other indistinct passages in which the phrase occurs. We see clearly that in using the phrase, he does not of necessity intend to refer to any other writings of his own — nor even to any other writings at all. He may possibly mean this; but we cannot be sure of it. He means by the phrase, a dialectic process of turning over and criticizing diverse opinions and probabilities: whether in his own writings, or in those of others, or in no writings at all, but simply in those oral debates which his treatise called Topica presupposes — this is a point which the phrase itself does not determine. He may mean to allude, in some cases where he uses the phrase, to his own lost dialogues; but he may also allude to Platonic and other dialogues, or to colloquies carried on orally by himself with his pupils, or to oral debates on intellectual topics between other active-minded men. When Bernays refers “exoteric discourse� to the lost Aristotelian Dialogues; when Madvig, Zeller, Torstrick, Forchhammer, and others, refer it to the contemporary oral dialectic[43] — I think that neither of these explanations is in itself inadmissible. The context of each particular passage must decide which of the two is the more probable. We cannot go farther, in explaining the seven doubtful passages where Aristotle alludes to the “exoteric discourses,� than to understand the general character and scope of the reasonings which he thus designates. Extra-philosophical, double-sided, dialectic, is in general (he holds) insufficient by itself, and valuable only as a preparation and auxiliary to the didactic process. But there are some particular points on which such dialectic leaves a result sufficient and satisfactory, which can be safely accepted as the basis of future deduction. These points he indicates in the passages above cited; without informing us more particularly whether the dialectic was written or spoken, and whether by himself or by others.[44]

[43] Ueberweg (Geschichte der Philos. des Alterthums, vol. i. § 46, p. 127, 2nd ed.) gives a just and accurate view of ἐξωτερικοὶ λόγοι, as conceived by Aristotle. See also the dissertation of Buhle, prefixed to his unfinished edition of Aristotle, De Aristotelis Libris Exotericis et Acroamaticis, pp. 107-152 — which discusses this subject copiously, and gives a collection both of the passages and comments which bear upon it. It is instructive, though his opinion leans too much towards the supposition of a double doctrine. Bernays, in his dissertation, Die Dialoge des Aristoteles, maintains that by exoteric books are always meant the lost dialogues of Aristotle; and he employs much reasoning to refute the supposition of Madvig (Excurs. VII. ad Cicero, de Fin. p. 861), of Torstrick (ad Aristotel. de Animâ, p. 123), and also of Zeller, that by exoteric discourses are not meant any writings at all, but simply the colloquies and debates of cultivated men, apart from the philosophical schools. On the other hand, Forchhammer has espoused this last-mentioned opinion, and has defended it against the objections of Bernays (Forchhammer, Aristoteles und die exoterischen Reden, p. 16, seq.). The question is thus fully argued on both sides. To me it seems that each of these two opinions is partially right, and neither of them exclusively right. “Exoteric discourse,â€� as I understand it, might be found both in the Aristotelian dialogues, and in the debates of cultivated men out of the schools, and also in parts of the Aristotelian akroamatic works. The argument of Bernays (p. 36, seq.), that the points which Aristotle alludes to as having been debated and settled in exoteric discourses, were too abstruse and subtle to have been much handled by cultivated men out of the schools, or (as he expresses it) in the salons or coffee-houses (or what corresponded thereto) at Athens — this argument seems to me untenable. We know well, from the Topica of Aristotle, that the most abstruse subjects were handled dialectically, in a manner which he called extra-philosophical; and that this was a frequent occupation of active-minded men at Athens. To discuss these matters in the way which he calls πρὸς δόξαν, was more frequent than to discuss them πρὸς ἀλήθειαν.

Zell remarks (ad Ethica Nikom. i. 13), after referring to the passage in Aristotle’s Physica, iv. 10 (to which I have called attention in a [previous note]), “quo loco, à Buhlio neglecto, ἐξωτερικοὶ λόγοι idem significant quod alibi κοιναὶ δόξαι, εἰωθότες λόγοι, vel τὰ λεγόμενα: quæ semper, priusquam suas rationes in disputando proponat, disquirere solet Aristoteles. Vide supra, ad cap. viii. 1.â€� I find also in Weisse (Translation of and Comment on the Physica of Aristotle, p. 517) a fair explanation of what Aristotle really means by exoteric; an explanation, however, which Ritter sets aside, in my judgment erroneously (Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. iii. p. 23).

[44] Thus, for example, the passage in the Ethica Nikom. i. 13, p. 1102, a. 26. λέγεται δὲ περὶ αὐτῶν καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἐξωτερικοῖς λόγοις ἀρκούντως ἔνια, καὶ χρηστέον αὐτοῖς, is explained in the Paraphrase of the Pseudo-Andronikus as referring to oral colloquy of Aristotle himself with pupils or interlocutors; and this may possibly be a correct explanation.

From the time of Cicero downward, a distinction has been drawn between some books of Aristotle which were exoteric, and others that were not so; these last being occasionally designated as akroamatic. Some modern critics have farther tried to point out which, among the preserved works of Aristotle, belonged to each of these heads. Now there existed, doubtless, in the days of Cicero, Strabo, Plutarch, and Gellius, books of Aristotle properly called exoteric, i.e. consisting almost entirely of exoteric discourse and debate; though whether Aristotle himself would have spoken of an exoteric book, I have some doubt. Of such a character were his Dialogues. But all the works designated as akroamatic (or non-exoteric) must probably have contained a certain admixture of “exoteric discourseâ€�; as the Physica (Φυσικὴ Ἀκρόασις) and the Metaphysica are seen to contain now. The distinction indicated by Cicero would thus be really between one class of works, wherein “exoteric discourseâ€� was exclusive or paramount, — and another, in which it was partially introduced, subordinate to some specified didactic purpose.[45] To this last class belong all the works of Aristotle that we possess at present. Cicero would have found none of them corresponding to his notion of an exoteric book.

[45] To this extent I go along with the opinion expressed by Weisse in his translation of the Physica of Aristotle, p. 517: “Dass dieser Gegensatz kein absoluter von zwei durchaus getrennten Bücherclassen ist, sondern dass ein und dasselbe Werk zugleich exoterisch und esoterisch sein konnte; und zweitens, dass exoterisch überhaupt dasjenige heisst, was nicht in den positiv-dogmatischen Zusammenhang der Lehre des Philosophen unmittelbar als Glied eintritt.â€� But Weisse goes on afterwards to give a different opinion (about the meaning of exoteric books), conformable to what I have cited in a previous note from Sepulveda; and in that I do not concur. However, he remarks that the manner in which Aristotle handled the Abstracta, Place and Infinite, is just the same as that which he declares to be exoteric in the case of Time. The distinction drawn by Aulus Gellius (xx. 5) is not accurate: “Ἐξωτερικὰ dicebantur, quæ ad rhetoricas meditationes, facultatem argutiarum, civiliumque rerum notitiam conducebant. Ἀκροατικὰ autem vocabantur, in quibus philosophia remotior subtiliorque agitabatur; quæque ad naturæ contemplationes, disceptationesque dialecticas pertinebant.â€� It appears to me that disceptationes dialecticæ ought to be transferred to the department ἐξωτερικά, and that civilium rerum notitia belongs as much to ἀκροατικὰ as to ἐξωτερικά. M. Ravaisson has discussed this question very ably and instructively, Essai sur la Métaphysique d’Aristote, pp. 224-244. He professes indeed to defend the opinion which I have cited from Sepulveda, and which I think erroneous; but his reasonings go really to the support of the opinion given in my text. He remarks, justly, that the dialogues of Plato (at least all the dialogues of Search) are specimens of exoteric handling; of which attribute Forchhammer speaks as if it were peculiar to the Charmides (Aristot. Exot. Reden. p. 22). Brandis (Aristoteles, p. 105) thinks that when Aristotle says in the Politica, vii. 1, p. 1323, a. 21: νομίσαντας οὖν ἱκανῶς πολλὰ λέγεσθαι καὶ τῶν ἐν τοῖς ἐξωτερικοῖς λόγοις περὶ τῆς ἀρίστης ζώης, καὶ νῦν χρηστέον αὐτοῖς, he intends to designate the Ethica. It may be so; yet the Politica seems a continuation of the Ethica: moreover, even in the Ethica, we find reference made to previous discussions, ἐν τοῖς ἐξωτερικῶς λόγοις (Eth. N. I. 13).

To understand fully the extent comprehended by the word exoteric, we must recollect that its direct and immediate meaning is negative — extraneous to philosophy, and suitable to an audience not specially taught or prepared for philosophy. Now this negative characteristic belongs not merely to dialectic (as we see it in the example above cited from the Aristotelian Physica), but also to rhetoric or rhetorical argument. We know that, in Aristotle’s mind, the rhetorical handling and the dialectical handling, are placed both of them under the same head, as dealing with opinions rather than with truth.[46] Both the one and the other are parted off from the didactic or demonstrative march which leads to philosophical truth; though dialectic has a distant affinity with that march, and is indeed available as an auxiliary skirmisher. The term exoteric will thus comprehend both rhetorical argument and dialectical argument.[47] Of the latter, we have just seen a specimen extracted from the Physica; of the former, I know no specimen remaining, but there probably were many of them in the Aristotelian dialogues now lost — that which was called ‘Eudemus,’ and others. With these dialogues Cicero was probably more familiar than with any other composition of Aristotle. I think it highly probable that Aristotle alludes to the dialogues in some of the passages where he refers to “exoteric discourses.� To that extent I agree with Bernays; but I see no reason to believe (as he does) that the case is the same with all the passages, or that the epithet is to be understood always as implying one of these lost Aristotelian dialogues.[48]

[46] See the first two chapters of Aristotle’s Rhetorica, especially pp. 1355 a. 24-35, 1358 a. 5, 11, 25, also p. 1404 a. 1.: ὅλως οὔσης πρὸς δόξαν τῆς πραγματείας τῆς περὶ τὴν ῥητορικήν, which is exactly what he says also about Dialectic, in the commencement of the Topica.

[47] Octavianus Ferrarius observes, in his treatise De Sermonibus Exotericis (Venet. 1575), p. 24: “Quod si Dialecticus et Rhetor inter se mutant, ut aiunt, ita ut Dialecticus Rhetorem et Rhetor Dialecticum vicissim induat — de his ipsis veteribus Dialecticis minime nobis dubitandum est, quin iidem dialectice simul et rhetorice loqui in utramque partem potuerint. Nec valde mirum debet hoc videri; libros enim exotericos prope solos habuerunt: qui cum scripti essent (ut posterius planum faciam) dialectico more, illorum lectio cum libris peperit philosophos congruentesâ€� — Ferrari adverts well to the distinction between the philosopher and the dialectician (sensu Aristotelico), handling often the same subjects, but in a different way: between the οἰκεῖαι ἀρχαί, upon which didactic method rested, and the δόξαι or diverse opinions, each countenanced by more or less authority, from which dialectic took its departure (pp. 36, 86, 89).

[48] I agree very much with the manner in which Bernays puts his case, pp. 79, 80, 92, 93: though there is a contradiction between p. 80 and p. 92, in respect to the taste and aptitude of the exterior public for dialectic debate; which is affirmed in the former page, denied in the latter. But the doctrine asserted in the pages just indicated amounts only to this — that the dialogues were included in Aristotle’s phrase, ἐξωτερικοὶ λόγοι; which appears to me true.

There grew up, in the minds of some commentators, a supposition of “exoteric doctrine� as denoting what Aristotle promulgated to the public, contrasted with another secret or mystic doctrine reserved for a special few, and denoted by the term esoteric; though this term is not found in use before the days of Lucian.[49] I believe the supposition of a double doctrine to be mistaken in regard to Aristotle; but it is true as to the Pythagoreans, and is not without some colour of truth even as to Plato. That Aristotle employed one manner of explanation and illustration, when discussing with advanced pupils, and another, more or less different, when addressing an unprepared audience, we may hold as certain and even unavoidable; but this does not amount to a double positive doctrine. Properly speaking, indeed, the term “exoteric� (as I have just explained it out of Aristotle himself) does not designate, or even imply, any positive doctrine at all. It denotes a many-sided controversial debate, in which numerous points are canvassed and few settled; the express purpose being to bring into full daylight the perplexing aspects of each. There are indeed a few exceptional cases, in which “exoteric discourse� will itself have thrown up a tolerably trustworthy result: these few (as I have above shown) Aristotle occasionally singles out and appeals to. But as a general rule, there is no doctrine which can properly be called exoteric: the “exoteric discourse� suggests many new puzzles, but terminates without any solution at all. The doctrine, whenever any such is proved, emerges out of the didactic process which follows.

[49] Luc. Vit. Auct. 26.

[CHAPTER III.]

CATEGORIÆ.

Of the prodigious total of works composed by Aristotle, I have already mentioned that the larger number have perished. But there still remain about forty treatises, of authenticity not open to any reasonable suspicion, which attest the grandeur of his intelligence, in respect of speculative force, positive as well as negative, systematizing patience, comprehensive curiosity as to matters of fact, and diversified applications of detail. In taking account of these treatises, we perceive some in which the order of sequence is determined by assignable reasons; as regards others, no similar grounds of preference appear. The works called 1. De Cœlo; 2. De Generatione et Corruptione; 3. Meteorologica, — are marked out as intended to be studied in immediate succession, and the various Zoological treatises after them. The cluster entitled Parva Naturalia is complementary to the treatise De Animâ. The Physica Auscultatio is referred to in the Metaphysica, and discusses many questions identical or analogous, standing in the relation of prior to a posterior, as the titles indicate; though the title ‘Metaphysica’ is not affixed or recognized by Aristotle himself, and the treatise so called includes much that goes beyond the reach of the Physica. As to the treatises on Logic, Rhetoric, Ethics, Politics, Poetics, Mechanics, &c., we are left to fix for ourselves the most convenient order of study. Of no one among them can we assign the date of composition or publication. There are indeed in the Rhetorica, Politics, and Meteorologica, various allusions which must have been written later than some given events of known date; but these allusions may have been later additions, and cannot be considered as conclusively proving, though they certainly raise a presumption, that the entire work was written subsequently to those events.

The proper order in which the works of Aristotle ought to be studied (like the order proper for studying the Platonic dialogues),[1] was matter of debate from the time of his earliest editors and commentators, in the century immediately preceding the Christian era. Boêthus the Sidonian (Strabo’s contemporary and fellow-student) recommended that the works on natural philosophy and physiology should be perused first; contending that these were the easiest, the most interesting, and, on the whole, the most successful among all the Aristotelian productions. Some Platonists advised that the ethical treatises should be put in the front rank, on the ground of their superior importance for correcting bad habits and character; others assigned the first place to the mathematics, as exhibiting superior firmness in the demonstrations. But Andronikus himself, the earliest known editor of Aristotle’s works, arranged them in a different order, placing the logical treatises at the commencement of his edition. He considered these treatises, taken collectively, to be not so much a part of philosophy as an Organon or instrument, the use of which must be acquired by the reader before he became competent to grasp or comprehend philosophy; as an exposition of method rather than of doctrine.[2] From the time of Andronikus downward, the logical treatises have always stood first among the written or printed works of Aristotle. They have been known under the collective title of the ‘Organon,’ and as such it will be convenient still to regard them.[3]

[1] Scholia, p. 25, b. 37, seq. Br.; p. 321, b. 30; Diogen. L. iii. 62. The order in which the forty-six Aristotelian treatises stand printed in the Berlin edition, and in other preceding editions, corresponds to the tripartite division, set forth by Aristotle himself, of sciences or cognitions generally: 1. Theoretical; θεωρητικαί 2. Practical; πρακτικαί. 3. Constructive or Technical; ποιητικαί.

Patricius, in his Discussiones Peripateticæ, published in 1581 (tom. i. lib. xiii. p. 173), proclaims himself to be the first author who will undertake to give an account of Aristotle’s philosophy from Aristotle himself (instead of taking it, as others before him had done, from the Aristotelian expositors, Andronikus, Alexander, Porphyry, or Averroes); likewise, to be the first author who will consult all the works of Aristotle, instead of confining himself, as his predecessors had done, to a select few of the works. Patricius then proceeds to enumerate those works upon which alone the professors “in Italicis scholis� lectured, and to which the attention of all readers was restricted. 1. The Predicabilia, or Eisagoge of Porphyry. 2. The Categoriæ. 3. The De Interpretatione. 4. The Analytica Priora; but only the four first chapters of the first book. 5. The Analytica Posteriora; but only a few chapters of the first book; nothing of the second. 6. The Physica; books first and second; then parts of the third and fourth; lastly, the eighth book. 7. The De Cœlo; books first and second. 8. The De Generatione et Corruptione; books first and second. 9. The De Animâ; all the three books. 10. The Metaphysica; books Alpha major, Alpha minor, third, sixth, and eleventh. “Idque, quadriennio integro, quadruplicis ordinis Philosophi perlegunt auditoribus. De reliquis omnibus tot libris, mirum silentium.�

Patricius expressly remarks that neither the Topica nor the De Sophisticis Elenchis was touched in this full course of four years. But he does not remark — what to a modern reader will seem more surprising — that neither the Ethica, nor the Politica, nor the Rhetorica, is included in the course.

[2] Aristot. Topica, i. p. 104, b. 1, with the Scholia of Alexander, p. 259, a. 48 Br.; Scholia ad Analyt. Prior. p. 140, a. 47, p. 141, a. 25; also Schol. ad Categor. p. 36, a., p. 40, a., 8. This conception of the Organon is not explicitly announced by Aristotle, but seems quite in harmony with his views. The contemptuous terms in which Prantl speaks of it (Gesch. der Logik, i. 136), as a silly innovation of the Stoics, are unwarranted.

Aristotle (Metaph. E. i. p. 1025, b. 26) classifies the sciences as θεωρητικαί, πρακτικαί, ποιητικαί; next he subdivides the first of the three into φυσική, μαθηματική, πρώτη φιλοσοφία. Brentano, after remarking that no place in this distribution is expressly provided for Logic, explains the omission as follows: “Diese auffallende Erscheinung erklärt sich daraus, dass diese [the three above-named theoretical sciences] allein das reelle Sein betrachten, und nach den drei Graden der Abstraktion in ihrer Betrachtungsweise verschieden, geschieden werden; während die Logik das bloss rationelle Sein, das ὃν ὡς ἀληθές, behandelt.â€� (Ueber die Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles, p. 39.) — Investigations περὶ τῆς ἀληθείας, ὃν τρόπον δεῖ ἀποδέχεσθαι are considered by Aristotle as belonging to τὰ Ἀναλυκτικά; enquiries into method in the first instance, and into doctrine chiefly with a view to method (Metaphys. Γ. p. 1005, b. 2. In Metaphys. Γ. 1005, b. 7, he declares that these enquiries into method, or analysis of the principia of syllogistic reasoning, belong to the Philosophia Prima (compare Metaphys. Z. 12, p. 1037, b. 8). Schwegler in his Commentary (p. 161) remarks that this is one of the few passages in which Aristotle indicates the relation in which Logic stands to Metaphysics, or First Philosophy. The question has been started among his Ἀπορίαι, Metaph. B. 2, p. 999, b. 30.

[3] Respecting the title of Organon which was sometimes applied to the Analytica Posteriora only, see Waitz ad Organ. ii. p. 294.

These treatises are six in number:— 1. Categoriæ;[4] 2. De Interpretatione, or De Enunciatione; 3. Analytica Priora; 4. Analytica Posteriora; 5. Topica; 6. De Sophisticis Elenchis. This last short treatise — De Sophisticis Elenchis — belongs naturally to the Topica which precedes it, and of which it ought to be ranked as the ninth or concluding book. Waitz has printed it as such in his edition of the Organon; but as it has been generally known with a separate place and title, I shall not depart from the received understanding.

[4] Some eminent critics, Prantl and Bonitz among them, consider the treatise Categoriæ not to be the work of Aristotle. The arguments on which this opinion rests are not convincing to me; and even if they were, the treatise could not be left out of consideration, since the doctrine of the Ten Categories is indisputably Aristotelian. See Zeller, Die Phil. der Griech. ii. 2, pp. 50, 51, 2nd ed.

Aristotle himself does not announce these six treatises as forming a distinct aggregate, nor as belonging to one and the same department, nor as bearing one comprehensive name. We find indeed in the Topica references to the Analytica, and in the Analytica references to the Topica. In both of them, the ten Categories are assumed and presupposed, though the treatise describing them is not expressly mentioned: to both also, the contents of the treatise De Interpretatione or Enunciatione, though it is not named, are indispensable. The affinity and interdependence of the six is evident, and justifies the practice of the commentators in treating them as belonging to one and the same department. To that department there belonged also several other treatises of Aristotle, not now preserved, but specified in the catalogue of his lost works; and these his disciples Theophrastus, Eudemus, and Phanias, had before them. As all these three disciples composed treatises of their own on the same or similar topics,[5] amplifying, elucidating, or controverting the views of their master, the Peripatetics immediately succeeding them must have possessed a copious logical literature, in which the six treatises now constituting the Organon appeared as portions, but not as a special aggregate in themselves.

[5] Ammonius ap. Schol. p. 28, a. 41; p. 33, b. 27, Br.

Of the two treatises which stand first in the Aristotelian Organon — the Categoriæ and the De Interpretatione — each forms in a certain sense the complement of the other. The treatise De Interpretatione handles Propositions (combinations of terms in the way of Subject and Predicate), with prominent reference to the specific attribute of a Proposition — the being true or false, the object of belief or disbelief; the treatise Categoriæ deals with these same Terms (to use Aristotle’s own phrase) pronounced without or apart from such combination. In his definition of the simple Term, the Proposition is at the same time assumed to be foreknown as the correlate or antithesis to it.[6]

[6] Τὰ ἄνευ συμπλοκῆς λεγόμενα — τῶν κατὰ μηδεμίαν συμπλοκὴν λεγομένωνα (Categ. p. 1, a. 16, b. 25). See Schol. ad Aristot. Physica, p. 323, b. 25, Br.; and Bonitz ad Aristotel. Metaph. (A. p. 987) p. 90.

The Categories of Aristotle appear to formed one of the most prominent topics of the teaching of Themistius: rebutting the charge, advanced both against himself, and, in earlier days, against Sokrates and the Sophists, of rendering his pupils presumptuous and conceited, he asks, ἠκούσατε δὲ αὖ τινος τῶν ἐμῶν ἐπιτηδείων ὑψηλογουμένου καὶ βρενθυομένου ἐπὶ τοῖς συνωνύμοις ἢ ὁμωνύμοῖς ἢ παρωνύμοις; (Orat. xxiii. p. 351.)

Reference is made (in the Scholia on the Categoriæ, p. 43, b. 19) to a classification of names made by Speusippus, which must have been at least as early as that of Aristotle; perhaps earlier, since Speusippus died in 339 B.C. We do not hear enough of this to understand clearly what it was. Boêthus remarked that Aristotle had omitted to notice some distinctions drawn by Speusippus on this matter, Schol. p. 43, a. 29. Compare a remark in Aristot. De Cœlo, i. p. 280, b. 2.

The first distinction pointed out by Aristotle among simple, uncombined Terms, or the things denoted thereby, is the Homonymous, the Synonymous, and the Paronymous. Homonymous are those which are called by the same name, used in a different sense or with a different definition or rational explanation. Synonymous are those called by the same name in the same sense. Paronymous are those called by two names, of which the one is derived from the other by varying the inflexion or termination.[7]