Aristotle/Chapter 2

by Alexander Grant

CHAPTER II.

THE WORKS OF ARISTOTLE.

A catalogue of the works of Aristotle has been handed down to us, which was made by the librarian of the great Library at Alexandria about the year 220 b.c.—that is to say, a century after the death of the philosopher—and which gives the titles of all the books, contained in the Library, which were attributed to the authorship of Aristotle. These titles amount to 146 in number, but it is at first sight a most astonishing circumstance that they do not in the least answer to the writings which we now possess under the name of the “works of Aristotle.” All the books mentioned in the Alexandrian catalogue are now lost; only a few fragments of them have been preserved in the shape of extracts and quotations from them made by other writers; but everything tends to show that they were quite a different set, and different altogether in character, from the forty treatises which stand collectively on our bookshelves labelled ‘Aristotelis Opera.’ Under the circumstances it would be natural to conjecture that so (comparatively speaking) short a time after the death of Aristotle, the learned keepers of the Alexandrian Library must have known what he really wrote, and therefore that in losing the books mentioned in the Alexandrian catalogue we have lost the true works of Aristotle, as they existed 100 years after his death, and that what has come down to us under his name, be it what it may, cannot be the genuine article. Other facts, however, and criticism of the whole question, show that this natural supposition is incorrect, and that something like the contradictory of it is true. It is a curious story, and needs some little explanation.

The life of Aristotle after his boyhood fell, as we have seen, into three broad divisions—namely, his first residence at Athens, from his eighteenth to his thirty-eighth year; his residence away from Athens, at Atarneus, Mitylene, Pella, and Stageira, from his thirty-eighth to his fiftieth year; and his second residence at Athens, from his fiftieth to his sixty-third year. During the first period, after studying under Plato, he commenced authorship by writing dialogues, which appear to have been published at the time. They differed from the Platonic dialogues in not being dramatic, but merely expository, like the dialogues of Bishop Berkeley, the principal rôle in each being assigned to Aristotle himself. They were somewhat rhetorical in style, and quite adapted for popular reading. In them Aristotle attacked Plato’s doctrine of Ideas, and set forth views on philosophy, the chief good, the arts of government, moral virtue, and other topics. Then came the second period of his life, when he had definitely broken with the school of Plato, and was away from all the schools of Athens, enjoying much leisure and positions of dignity. In this period it is probable that he not only prosecuted his researches and independent speculations in many branches of thought and science, but that he learned to know his own mission in the world, which was to stick to the matter of knowledge, abandoning all regard for the artistic adornment of truth. During this period we may believe that he thoroughly developed the individual character of his own mind in relation to philosophy, so that when he came back to Athens he had quite established his own peculiar style of writing, crabbed indeed and inelegant, but full of an exact phraseology which he had himself constructed, and on the whole not unsuited as a vehicle for the exposition of science. We are not able, however, to say for certain whether in his second period he actually composed any works, though he must constantly have been compiling notes and memoranda, to serve either as the materials or the ground-plans for future treatises. The third period of Aristotle’s life was the rich fruit-time of his genius. We have already mentioned how he set himself to the construction of an entire encyclopædia of science and philosophy. What we possess as his works contain the unfinished, but much advanced, working out of that project. There is every reason to believe that the great bulk of this series of writings was composed by Aristotle during the last thirteen years of his life. He was doubtless assisted by his school, and he must have had many treatises on hand at one time, or rather he had them all in his head, and when anything caused him to drop one for a time he could go on with another. Hardly any of the treatises are finished, still less is there any trace of careful revision and “the last hand.” It is certain that many of these works were never published during Aristotle’s lifetime, and it is even a question whether any of them were so published.

When Aristotle died, all the MSS of his later compositions, together with the considerable library of other men’s writings which he had got together, were under charge of his chief disciple Theophrastus at the school in the Lyceum. After his decease, the Peripatetics appear to have worked to some extent at editing the uncompleted treatises, and at patching together those which existed as yet only in disjointed fragments. But there does not seem to have been any multiplication of copies, or what we should call “publication.” On the death of Theophrastus (which took place thirty-five years later than that of Aristotle), the whole Peripatetic school-library went by his bequest to a favourite pupil named Neleus, who took all the rolls away with him to his home at a place called Scepsis, in the Troad. Included among them were the MSS, many of them unique, of Aristotle’s most important works, which were thus removed from Europe. Not only was this the case, but a few years later the kings of Pergamus began seizing the books of private individuals in order to fill their own royal library, and the family of Neleus, afraid of losing the treasures they possessed,—which, however, they could little appreciate,—hid away the Peripatetic rolls and the precious MSS of Aristotle in a subterranean vault, where they remained for 150 years forgotten by the world. At the end of that interval, the dynasty of the kings of Pergamus having passed away, the books were brought out of their hiding-place and sold to one Apellicon, a wealthy Peripatetic and book-collector, who resided at Athens. They were said to have been by this time a good deal damaged by worms and damp; yet still it was a great thing that, after 187 years’ absence, the best productions of Aristotle should be restored, about 100 b.c., to the West.

The termination of this “strange eventful history” was that in 86 b.c. Athens was taken by Sylla, and the library of Apellicon was seized and brought to Rome, where it was placed under the custody of a librarian, and several literary Greeks, resident in Rome, had access to it. Tyrannion, the learned friend of Cicero, got permission to arrange the MSS, and Andronicus of Rhodes, applying himself with earnestness to the task of obtaining a correct text and furnishing a complete edition of the philosophical works of Aristotle, arranged the different treatises and scattered fragments under their proper heads, and getting numerous transcripts made, gave publicity to a generally received text of Aristotle. There seems to be good reason for believing that “Our Aristotle,” as Grote calls it, in contradistinction to the Aristotle of the Alexandrian Library,—is none other than this recension of Andronicus. And this being the case, we may well reflect how great was the risk which these works incurred of being consigned to perpetual oblivion. A few more years in the cellar at Scepsis, or any one of a hundred other accidents which might have prevented these writings from getting into the appreciative and competent hands of Tyrannion and Andronicus, would in all probability have made them as if they had never been. And thus that which was actually the chief intellectual food of men in the middle ages would have been withheld. Whether for better or worse, men’s thoughts would have had a different exercise and taken a different direction. Much of ecclesiastical history would have been changed. And many of the modes in which we habitually think and speak at the present day would have been different from what they are.

But we must return to the Alexandrian catalogue. If the MSS of all Aristotle’s most important works were carried off in the year 287 b.c., to be buried in Asia Minor for a century and a half, what means this list of 146 books bearing the name of Aristotle, which in 220 b.c. were stored up in the Alexandrian Library? Were these also all really written by Aristotle? Was he so voluminous a composer, as this would imply, as well as a profound thinker and an original explorer of nature in many departments? Or were the books supplied to the Alexandrian collection, as the works of Aristotle, mere forgeries, got up for the market, to supply the place of the genuine writings, which for the time had been lost to the world? The only answer that can be given to these questions must be a conjectural one, and probability seems to dictate an answer lying between the two extreme hypotheses. Several of the names appearing in the catalogue remind us of the titles of Plato’s dialogues,—for instance ‘Nerinthus’ ‘Gryllus; or, On Rhetoric,’ ‘Sophist,’ ‘Menexenus,’ ‘Symposium,’ ‘The Lover,’ ‘Alexander; or, On Colonies,’ &c. And the natural supposition is that these books, or some of them, were none other than these early dialogues which Aristotle composed during his first residence in Athens. Strabo says distinctly that when, by the bequest of Theophrastus, the Aristotelian MSS were taken away, the Peripatetic school had none of his works left except a few of the more popular ones. His dialogues had been published, and were available, and no doubt copies of them formed the nucleus of the books professing to be his in the Alexandrian Library. Others of the collection may have been excerpts from his greater works which had been made by his scholars, and were so kept before the world when the entire works themselves were hidden in Asia Minor. Many others were probably monographs and papers by members of the Peripatetic school, drawn up in Aristotle’s manner, perhaps containing his ideas, and from a sort of reverential feeling attributed to him and inscribed with his name. The residue must have been forgeries pure and simple: imitations of his dialogues, and of such parts of his treatises as were known. All the books in the Alexandrian list, though they were numerous, appear to have been short, treating generally of isolated questions, and quite unlike the long methodical setting forth of entire sciences, such as we find in the writings of Aristotle that have came down to us.

The “fate of Aristotle’s works” is a romantic episode in the history of literature. But we must observe that what in the first place rendered this train of circumstances possible was the rapid decay of genius in Greece. When Aristotle died, none of his scholars was worthy to succeed him and carry on his work. His school do not seem to have appreciated what was great and valuable in his philosophy. They went off either into rhetorical sermonising on moral questions, or else into isolated inquiries, the solution of problems, or the drawing up of “papers” like those read before the Royal Society. It was perhaps a feeling of contempt for the Peripatetic school which induced Theophrastus, a generation after the death of Aristotle, to give away their whole library, including the great works of their master, to a foreign student. But for their apathy those great works would never have been left in unique copies, and ultimately exposed to such extreme peril. There must, however, have been a corresponding apathy in the external public, else curiosity would have demanded, and the love of science would have preserved, the results of Aristotle’s later years. But the reading world of the third century b.c. seems to have been quite content to be put off with that which was really un-Aristotelian, though it bore the name of Aristotle—with immature, rhetorical dialogues, the work of his youth, or spurious imitations of that work, with excerpts, epitomes, “papers,” and the sweepings of the Peripatetic school.

We may take Cicero, though living two centuries later, as a good specimen of the attitude towards Aristotle of a cultivated man of literature, not devoid of a certain taste for philosophy, of those times. Cicero often mentions; praises, and quotes Aristotle, but it is not, “our Aristotle,” but the Aristotle of Alexandria, the writer of dialogues. Several passages of these dialogues have been translated and preserved by Cicero, who extols the “golden flow of their language,” using terms which are as far as possible from being applicable to the harsh, compressed, and difficult style of Aristotle’s scientific treatises. The latter were, indeed, too difficult and too repulsive for Cicero, as is plain from the story which he himself relates: Cicero had in his Tusculan villa some of the works of Aristotle, as we at present possess them, probably copies of the recension of Andronicus; when asked by his friend Trebatius what the ‘Topics’ of Aristotle were about, he advised him “for his own interest” to study the book for himself, or else to consult a certain learned rhetorician. Trebatius, however, was repelled by the obscurity of the writing, and the rhetorician, when consulted, confessed his total ignorance of Aristotle. Cicero thinks this no wonder, since even the philosophers know hardly anything about him, though they “ought to have been attracted by the incredible flow and sweetness of the diction.” He then proceeds to give Trebatius a summary of the first few pages of the ‘Topics’ of Aristotle, which he had apparently read up for the occasion. From facts like this, it may be concluded that in the two last centuries before the Christian era, it was only the lighter and less valuable compositions of Aristotle that were generally known and admired. His more serious and really valuable contributions to thought and knowledge were left out of sight, ignored, and forgotten. For the moment it seemed as if the favourite dictum of Lord Bacon had come to pass—that “Time, like a river, bringing down to us things which are lighter and more inflated, lets what is more weighty and solid sink.” But the result of that concatenation of accidents which we have narrated, was completely to reverse this sentence; so that now it may be said that all the lighter part of Aristotle’s work has been swept away by the stream of Time, while only that which was weighty and solid has been suffered to remain in existence. Owing to the wealth of the Roman empire, it is likely that numerous copies were made of the entire works of Aristotle, as edited by Andronicus—both for public libraries and for individuals. This gave him a better chance of survival in a collective form during the wreck and destruction of the barbarian invasions; and afterwards he was early taken into the protection of the Church. The dialogues, in the meantime, and other shorter productions, which had figured in the Alexandrian catalogue, had no coherence with each other, and thus were not reproduced by the copyists and librarians, as a whole. Again, they did not attract, as the greater works of Aristotle did, the attention of successive scholiasts and commentators. In short, they fell into the neglect which, comparatively speaking, they deserved, and disappeared, all but a few scattered quotations. But now we can thank the Providence of history that we possess a large portion of the best of all that Aristotle thought and wrote. We possess it, indeed, incomplete as he left it, and not only so, but also edited and re-edited, transposed occasionally, interpolated, and eked out, by the earlier Peripatetics, by Andronicus, and perhaps by subsequent hands. Yet still the individuality of the Stagirite shines out through the greater part of these remains, and in studying them we feel that we are brought into contact with his mind.

If the supposition be correct that what we now possess is substantially the edition of Andronicus, it is clear in the first place that he did not mean this to be what we should call a “complete edition of the collective works of Aristotle,” else he would have included in it the dialogues that Cicero quotes, the hymn in honour of Hermeias, and we know not what beside. His object appears to have been to give to the world the philosophy of Aristotle, hitherto virtually unknown, as he found it in the documents contained in the library of Apellicon. He dealt, it must be remembered, not only with that collection of rolls which had been buried in the Troad, but also with all the books which had been got together by a wealthy bibliophilist. The edition of Andronicus, if it corresponds with ours, contained a body of Aristotelian science and all Aristotle’s greatest works; but on the one hand it excluded his less important writings, and on the other hand it admitted works which Aristotle certainly never wrote, though they are full of his ideas. Andronicus may have doubted as to the authorship of these treatises, which modern criticism pronounces to be by later Peripatetic hands;^[1] or he may have thought that they represented or explained Aristotle, and might advantageously be preserved as part of his system. However it came about, we find included within the Aristotelian canon a treatise ‘On the Universe,’ neatly epitomising his views, but quite later than his time; one ‘On the Motion of Animals’ of which the same may be said; two treatises on morals, the ‘Eudemian Ethics,’ and the ‘Great Ethics,’ which are mere paraphrases of the ‘Ethics’ of Aristotle; a large book of ‘Problems,’ with their solutions, evidently of mixed authorship; a set of ‘Opuscula,’ or minor works, which belong to the class of Peripatetic monographs, — e.g. ‘On Colom’s,’ ‘On Indivisible Lines,’ ‘On Strange Stories,’ ‘Physiognomies,’ &c.; a treatise on ‘Rhetoric,’ quite different in principles from that of Aristotle’s, and only suggested to be his by a fictitious dedication to Alexander, which has been stuck on to it. One or two other suspicious books might be mentioned, but even if everything were deducted against which the most sceptical criticism can make objection, less than one-fourth would be taken away from the entire mass which is in use to be labelled “Aristotle.” The whole works in Bekker’s octavo edition fill 3786 pages, and out of these the books, about whose genuineness any question has been raised, occupy only 925 pages. A solid residue remains, which may now be briefly characterised, merely in regard to its external form, a few remarks being added as to the chronological order in which it seems probable that Aristotle composed the various parts.

The remains of Aristotle come before us as a torso,—an incomplete and somewhat mutilated group from antiquity. Yet they constitute a whole, and the different treatises have an organic connection with each other. On the one hand, these works constitute an encyclopaedia, for they contain a résumé and reconstruction of the sciences so far as was possible in the fourth century b.c. But on the other hand, they are more than an encyclopædia, because they are a philosophy, in which the universe is explained from the point of view and according to the system of one individual thinker. In them thought and knowledge are mapped out in broad and lucid outlines, with the details sometimes very fully worked in, sometimes barely indicated and left to be supplied by subsequent workers. The key to their arrangement is to be sought from Aristotle himself. From him we learn that science is divided into Practical, Constructive, and Theoretical. Practical science deals with man and human action, and this branch is copiously developed by Aristotle in his ‘Ethics’ and ‘Politics.’ Constructive science treats of art and the laws by which it is to be governed. Towards this branch Aristotle has made but a brief, though valuable, contribution, in his unfinished or mutilated treatise ‘On Poetry.’ Theoretical science has three great subdivisions. Physics, Mathematics, and Theology, otherwise called First Philosophy or Metaphysics. For the section of Mathematics nothing appears done in these remains. Aristotle speaks often of Mathematics as a great and interesting science, capable of affording high mental delight; but he seems to have regarded it as something tolerably finished and settled in his own time, and therefore less requiring his attention than other departments. Had his life been prolonged to the age attained by Plato or Alexander von Humboldt, he might possibly have undertaken the setting forth of the philosophy of Mathematics. Physics, on the other hand—that is to say, the Physical and Natural Sciences—occupy 1447 pages, or fully one half, of the writings which are undoubtedly Aristotle’s. In his physical treatises one mind may be seen grappling, at first hand, with the provinces of almost all the different “Sections” of the British Association. Natural Philosophy, Astronomy, Physiology, and Natural History, are all marvellously founded in these treatises, by masterly analysis and classification of existing knowledge on the different subjects, and by the arrangement of facts, or supposed facts, under leading scientific ideas. Twelve books on Metaphysics occupy about one-tenth of the genuine remains of Aristotle. These books are obviously patched together out of the fragments of two or three unfinished treatises. How far this was done by the earlier Peripatetics, and how far by Andronicus, we cannot tell. But we here possess probably some of Aristotle’s latest thoughts. And the name “Metaphysics,” or “the things which follow after Physics,” was given to these books when they were put together, after Aristotle’s death, to indicate both chronological sequence in the order of composition, and also that the subject treated of lay beyond and above all physical inquiry.

In briefly grouping out the works of Aristotle, we have hitherto omitted to mention a class of writings, very important, and amounting to one-seventh of the whole mass, and yet which do not belong to either Practical, Constructive, or Theoretic science,—which are not part of Philosophy, but treat of the method of thought and the laws of reasoning, and which thus constitute the instrument or “organ” of Philosophy—that is to say, the logical writings, which were collectively named by the Peripatetic school “the Organon” or instrument. These books stand first in modern editions of Aristotle, and, speaking generally, they appear to have been written first of all his extant works.

The chronological sequence of composition among Aristotle’s treatises is determined by critics, conjecturally and approximately, entirely on internal evidence. There are frequent references from one treatise to another, but these cannot always be relied on. Often they are mere interpolations, not having been made by the original writer, but stuck in by the meddlesomeness of some editor or copyist; in other cases they are genuine, and indicate truly the order of composition. Another piece of evidence, more strictly internal and more to be depended on, is the greater or less development of doctrine contained in the different works respectively. Aristotle in the earlier, and still more in the second period of his life, had doubtless made great preparation for the writing of all his great works. Still, as he successively took up each subject and concentrated his attention upon it, he did not fail to develop and push further his previous thought upon it. Thus, for instance, the ‘Rhetoric’ is full of ethical remarks and ethical doctrine, but when we come to read the ‘Ethics’ we find the same ethical questions repeated and treated with far greater depth and precision; and we may reasonably conclude that the ‘Ethics’ was the later-written treatise of the two.

Following out indications of this kind, we arrive at the conclusion that Aristotle first took in hand the, science of method, and that, of all his extant works, the ‘Topics’ (or Logic of Probability), were first written, all but the eighth book; next the ‘Analytics’ (or Logic of Demonstration); next the eighth book of the ‘Topics;’ next Books I. and II. of the ‘Rhetoric’ (which has to do with the setting forth of truth); and then the ‘Sophistical Refutations’ (or treatise on Fallacies), which belongs to logic, yet still has a connection with the art of rhetoric. After thus far treating of the method of knowledge and expression, Aristotle appears to have gone on to treat of the matter of knowledge, and to have commenced with the practical sciences. First he wrote his ‘Ethics,’ though these were not quite finished, and afterwards his ‘Politics,’ and then he was led on to take up constructive science, and to write his small work ‘On Poetry,’ after which he reverted to his ‘Rhetoric,’ which was a cognate subject, and added a third book to that treatise. He now proceeded, though leaving much that was unfinished behind him, to the composition of his great series of physical treatises. The first of these to be written was probably the ‘Physical Discourse,’ which unfolded the general notions of natural philosophy, and gave an account of what Aristotle conceived under the terms “Nature,” “Motion,” “Time,” “Space,” “Causation,” and the like. After these prolegomena to physics, he went on to treat of the universe in orderly sequence, beginning with the divinest part, the circumference of the whole, or outer heaven, which, according to his views, bounded the world, being composed of ether, a substance distinct from that of the four elements. This region was the sphere of the stars; and below it, in the Aristotelian system, was the planetary sphere, with the seven planets (the sun and moon being reckoned among the number) moving in it. Both stars and planets he seems to have regarded as conscious, happy beings, moving in fixed orbits, and inhabiting regions free from all change and chance; and these regions formed the subject of his treatise ‘On the Heavens.’ Next to this he is thought to have composed his work ‘On Generation and Corruption,’ in order to expound those principles of physical change (dependent on the hot, the cold, the wet, and the dry), which in the higher parts of the universe had no existence. This treatise formed the transition to the sublunary sphere, immediately round the earth, in which the meteors and comets moved, and which was characterised by incessant change, and by the passing of things into and out of existence, and which became the subject of his next treatise—the ‘Meteorologies.’ The last book of this work brings us down to the earth itself, and indeed beneath its surface, for it discusses, in a curious theory, the formation of rocks and metals.

From this point Aristotle would seem to have started afresh with his array of physiological treatises, the first written of which may very likely have been that ‘On the Parts of Animals,’ as containing general principles of anatomy and physiology. Next it seems probable that the work ‘On the Soul’ was produced, which was a physiological account of the vital principle as manifested in plants, animals, and men. A set of Appendices, as we should now call them, on various functions connected with life in general, such as sensation, memory, sleep, dreaming, longevity, death, &c., were added by Aristotle to his work ‘On the Soul.’ Afterwards, the ten books of ‘Researches on Animals,’ and the five books ‘On the Generation of Animals,’ together with a minor treatise ‘On the Progression of Animals,’ and with a collection of ‘Problems,’ which Aristotle probably kept by him, and added to from time to time, made up the series of his physical and physiological writings, so far as he lived to complete them. Treatises ‘On the Physiology of Plants,’ and ‘On Health and Disease,’ had been promised by him, but were never achieved. Simultaneously with some of the works now mentioned, but in idea last of his writings, and intended to be the crown of them all, the ‘Metaphysics’ were probably in course of composition when the death of Aristotle occurred.

It has been generally fancied that Aristotle was a very voluminous writer, and Diogenes Laertius, in transcribing the ‘Alexandrian Catalogue,’ remarks of him that “he wrote exceedingly many books.” We, however, have no reason for joining in this opinion. His genuine works that have come down to us, fill altogether less than 3000 pages, and this amount in mere point of quantity is not anything unusual or surprising. Even if these works were composed, as we suppose them for the most part to have been, during the last thirteen years of his life, still, so far as quantity alone is concerned, that does not imply more than the exercise of a persistent industry. Many another man besides Aristotle has written as much as 200 pages a-year for thirteen years successively. Nor is it necessary to credit Aristotle with any great bulk of writings beyond what we possess. The writings of his early life, the dialogues, sketches, memoranda, and first efforts of his philosophic pen, which got to Alexandria, need not be highly estimated, even as to mass. They were probably eked out, as we have seen, by Peripatetic imitators, and were thus made to assume larger proportions. One important piece of Aristotle’s labour has perished, namely, his ‘Collection of the Constitutions of Greek Cities.’ This would have been of the utmost interest as contributing to our knowledge of ancient history; but it was merely a compilation of facts, and probably would not have filled more than 400 or 500 pages. On the whole, it is not for voluminousness that Aristotle is to be wondered at. The marvel begins when we come to contemplate the solid and compressed contents of his writings, their vast and various scope, and the amount of original thought given through them to the world. It would have been enough for any one man’s lasting reputation to have created the science of Logic, as Aristotle did; but in addition to this he wrote as a specialist, a discoverer, and an organiser, on at least a dozen other of the greatest subjects, and on each of them he was for many centuries accepted as the one authority. Such a position it is of course impossible for any modern to attain, but it was given to the powerful mind of Aristotle to attain it, owing to the peculiar circumstances of his epoch, and to the course of succeeding history.

1. One of the doubtful treatises—the ‘Rhetoric dedicated to Alexander’—is supposed to be the work of Anaximenes, a writer contemporary with Aristotle.