of almost continuous tradition to set aside the Aristotelian character of this and other dialogues ascribed to Aristotle. Rose (Aris. Pseudepigraphus, p. 58) has indeed maintained that no dialogue whatever, least of all 'the puerile argument of Eudemus,' is worthy of Aristotle either in his earlier or his later years, and has regarded the ascription of such writings to the Stagyrite himself as due simply to the capricious judgment of Aristotelian Librarians. But though the fragments of the Eudemus which have been preserved for us contain little but what is more or less fantastic or commonplace, it must be remembered that we have but little of the main argument of the Dialogue itself, and that it is the introduction and setting of the discussion which has been particularly handed down. A dialogue on immortality would naturally touch upon, the supernatural and mythical: but it would probably also supply a real psychological foundation for the belief. And in one passage to which Bernays, as might be expected, attaches considerable importance, the dialogue (whoever was its author) follows the same line of argument as that of the main treatise on psychology, and seeks to shew that the explanation of the soul as 'harmony' cannot hold out on examination. But, as will be shewn in the note upon the passage, the similarity thus presented by no means necessitates a conclusion such as that which Bernays would extract. There are, it need scarcely be said, a great many other works of Aristotle which the student of Aristotelian psychology will find it necessary to consult. The part always implies the whole; and no section of Aristotelian thought can be understood without reference to the whole of which it is a fragment. The Metaphysics must be repeatedly consulted in order to elucidate the formulæ through which Aristotle explains the relations which subsist between the body and the mind. The Organon, as a system of logical analysis, often helps by the account it gives of the origin of knowledge to explain the work of reason in the formation of an intelligible world. Logic and Psychology, in short, interpenetrate one another in Aristotle just as they have always done in modern thought. The Rhetoric again forms as it were an appendix to the Psychology by means of that analysis of the emotions which is one of its most important features, and which helps to bring together psychology and ethics. The Ethics themselves too stand in close connection with the psychological doctrines of Aristotle: they may in fact be looked upon as a series of conclusions based upon the results of the Psychology. Still more striking is the connection on the part of the physical treatises. The distinctively biological and zoological works throw constant light upon the conditions under which animal organisms and, simultaneously, mental faculties come into existence, while the highly interesting chapters on the Parts of Animals supply us with the clearest statement of that teleological standpoint from which Aristotle continually holds problems of life and mind require to be considered. The chronological position which these various works occupy, firstly by themselves and secondly in relation to the Psychology, is a question on which it is impossible to arrive at any very definite results. A variety of circumstances makes it almost impossible to determine the precise order in which Aristotle actually composed the writings which have come down to us. We must, to begin with, remember that the way in which the works originally shaped themselves in rough drafts or only in the writer's mind may not at all correspond with the order in which they were written down for such 'publication' as we can assign to them. Besides, the wish to give a systematic appearance to his works may have led the writer frequently to employ a future in referring to a work which was already written, or a past in referring to one which in the order of thought preceded that with which he was for the moment occupied, but of which the composition was for the time deferred. At any one time Aristotle would probably be working simultaneously on different subjects, and thus two treatises will frequently create confusion to the student who is seeking for a chronological arrangement and who finds now A implying B, now B involving A. Another point to be considered is that what we speak of as a single work was probably to Aristotle a series of single works which he had gradually accumulated in his lifetime. Both the Ethics and the Metaphysics were probably writings of this character, and it is perfectly consistent that we should find in them marks of priority to some other writing, side by side with equally definite marks of posteriority. Lastly we must remember that everything points to the fact that Aristotle's works are in great part lecture notes, written perhaps in great part by himself, but supplemented by the editors from the notes which pupils had taken at his lectures. This and like considerations should make it evident that we have not really the data for settling with any accuracy the composition of Aristotle's works'. Supposing the different treatises to have formed distinct courses of lectures, we can easily understand how the writer might from time to time, vary the order in which his courses were delivered, and might to one set of students speak of the Topics as prior to the Analytics, to another might reverse this order; and how in this manner what had been merely an accidental reference, relative to special circumstances, would become fixed as an integral part of the discussion2. Such considerations would seem to make it almost hopeless to attempt to fix the order of the works of Aristotle. But there are some general results which may be accepted as at least extremely probable. It would appear for instance that Aristotle commenced by composing works of a mixed logical and rhetorical character; and Rose is most probably correct in viewing the 1 Cp. Susemihl in his Introduction to the Poetics, who compares the probable origin of Aristotle's writings with the way in which Hegel's works were supplemented by the notes of pupils. 2 For the way in which the Analytics and Topics thus reciprocally seem to involve each other, contrast Anal. Pr. I. 1, 24b12 (kaláπep ¿v тoîs Tояiкоîs elpηтai): c. 30 46*30 (δι' ἀκριβείας δὲ διεληλύθαμεν ἐν τῇ πραγματείᾳ τῇ περὶ τὴν διαλεκτικήν): 11. 15, 6437 and II. 17. 65b17 with Topics, VIII. 11. 162a11 (pavepòv d' EK Tŵv ȧvaλUTIKŵv): and VIII. 13. 16232, τὸ δ' ἐν ἀρχῇ...κατ' ἀλήθειαν μὲν ἐν τοῖς ̓Αναλυτικοῖς εἴρηται, karà đóžav dè vûv Xektéov. [Cf. Ritter, III. 29.] For other instances see Zeller, Phil. d. Griechen 11. 2 (2 Aufl.) p. 105, n. 2. Topics as the earliest work which Aristotle wrote1. This was followed by the Analytics, and probably at no long interval by the treatise on Rhetoric. These works on method would appear to have been followed by the ethical and political writings as Rose supposes, rather than by the physical as Zeller holds, although it is not unlikely that part of the Ethics followed on the physical investigations. To the Ethics, Politics and Poetics (as a combination of the educational scheme enunciated in the 1 Cp. Rose, De Aris. Libr. Ordine, p. 119. Zeller, P. d. G. II. 2. 105, regards the Categories as the first work Aristotle wrote, but as the Categories makes no reference to any other works it is extremely difficult to decide its place in chronological sequence, and Rose regards it as spurious. The Categories (if really Aristotle's) seems to have been composed after the De Anima: at least in 168 the writer, speaking about words as signs of thoughts, says περὶ μὲν οὖν τούτων εἴρηται ἐν τοῖς Tepi yuxĥs. But the reference fits neither de An. 111. 6 (Waitz) nor de An. II. 5 (Bonitz), and is more probably added by an editor or pupil. So at least Rose thinks. Zeller, because the Rhetoric at its beginning (1356*26) describes itself as an offshoot (rapapués) of politics and because in I. 11. 1372a1 the writer says of γελοία, διώρισται δὲ περὶ γελοίων χωρὶς ἐν τοῖς περὶ ποιητικῆς, holds that the Rhetoric was compiled after the Ethics and Physics, and occupies about the last place chronologically among the works of Aristotle. But he fails to notice that Aristotle no less speaks of Rhetoric as equally the mapaqués of Dialectic (the Topics), and the reference to the Poetics counts for little, as the Poetics, as we have it, contains no such passage. Zeller allows himself that in Rhetoric III. I. 140422, Aristotle speaks of Theodorus the actor as if he were still alive, while in Polit. VIII. 17. 133627 he is treated as dead. Besides, as Rose points out (p. 122), the treatment of moral questions in the Rhetoric is only intelligible on the assumption that it was written before the Ethics. So, for instance, is it with the discussion of the good (1. 6, 7), of the virtues (1. 9, 1. 8), of pleasure (1. 4), and of similar topics. The probability in fact is that the Rhetoric was quite one of the earliest works which Aristotle sketched out; and that in his early lectures against the false theories of Isocrates he already conceived the ideas which were to develop into his Logical and Ethical Theory. 3 Zeller (p. 107) has maintained the priority of the Physical to the Ethical writings on the ground that a writer who felt so strongly as Aristotle that a moralist must have a knowledge of the soul (Eth. Nic. I. 13) would not be likely to investigate questions of Ethics before he had elaborated a psychology: and he finds traces of such reference to the Ethics in the wтepikol λóyoι of 1. 13 and the Térаprov μópiov of VI. 13. 11449. But any unprejudiced reader will find in the reference to the wrepikol Móyoɩ a reference not to the de Anima but to the popular psychology which is criticised in the de An., and the Téтaprov μópiov of Bk. VI. may mean that that particular book was written subsequently to the Psychology, but is also perfectly explicable from the double twofold division of the yuxǹ in Bk. 1. Bk. x. however, which refers to chapters on kívnous in discussing pleasure, would seem to have been composed at a later period than the remainder of the work. last chapters of the Politics) must have followed, not, as Rose so learnedly maintains, the Metaphysics, but the works on what may briefly be described as Natural Philosophy'. Among these works on Natural Philosophy, the Physics, as we usually call it, occupied the foremost place. This, as is clearly indicated in the first lines of the Meteorology, was followed by the Treatise on the Heavens (De Colo), the dissertation which we commonly designate De Generatione et Corruptione, and lastly the Meteorology itself. Thus far the order of the physical investigations is not difficult to trace. But whether the Meteorology was followed by the History of Animals, or by the Psychology, is a question which cannot be easily resolved. Perhaps we may best hold with Zeller that the History of Animals was begun before the Psychology, but that on the other hand it was not completed till the last-named work had seen the light. But whatever be the true 1 That the Metaphysics did not as Rose thinks (p. 136) precede but succeed the physical writings is already indicated by Physics 1. 9, 192a34, wepì dè tŷs katà tÒ εἶδος ἀρχῆς...δι ̓ ἀκριβείας τῆς πρώτης φιλοσοφίας ἔργον ἔστι διορίσαι, ὥστε εἰς ἐκεῖνον τὸν καιρὸν ἀποκείσθω. But this does not preclude us from supposing that the metaphysical system of Aristotle was gradually elaborating itself in the writer's mind and probably forming repeatedly the subject of his lectures so that its distinctive doctrines would be continually implied in what Aristotle wrote. 2 Meteorolog. I. I, 338120, περὶ μὲν οὖν τῶν πρώτων αἰτίων τῆς φύσεως καὶ περὶ πάσης κινήσεως φυσικῆς, ἔτι δὲ περὶ τῶν κατὰ τὴν ἄνω φορὰν διακεκοσμημένων ἄστρων καὶ περὶ τῶν στοιχείων τῶν σωματικῶν πόσα τε καὶ ποῖα.....καὶ περὶ γενέσεως καὶ φθορᾶς τῆς κοινῆς εἴρηται πρότερον. 3 See Zeller, p. 106, n. 5. Rose (p. 212) concludes from VIII. 9 and II. 5 of the Hist. Anim. that it must have been composed some time after the battle of Arbela, at which elephants were seen for the first time by the Macedonians.-The passages in which the Psychology makes reference to other works are the following: Bk. 1. c. 3, 4063, ὅτι μὲν οὖν οὐκ ἀναγκαῖον τὸ κινοῦν καὶ αὐτὸ κινεῖσθαι πρότερον elpηra where the reference is probably not to 403b29 but to Physics VIII. 5. Bk. II. c. 4, 416030, διασαφητέον δ ̓ ἐστὶν ὕστερον περὶ αὐτῆς ἐν τοῖς οἰκείοις λόγοις (where the writer may refer to a lost treatise #epi тpops or to De Gen.). 11. 5, 4171, τοῦτο δὲ πῶς δυνατὸν ἢ ἀδύνατον εἰρήκαμεν ἐν τοῖς καθόλου λόγοις Tepi Toû Toleîv kal máσxew: the reference being to De Gen. Bk. 1. c. 7. 11. 5, 41717, ἔστιν ἡ κίνησις ἐνέργειά τις, ἀτελὴς μέντοι, καθάπερ ἐν ἑτέροις εἴρηται, refers to Phys. III. 2, 20131. II. 5, 417 29, περὶ μὲν τούτων διασαφῆσαι καιρὸς γένοιτ ̓ ἂν καὶ εἰσαὖθις, refers most probably to De An. 111. cc. 4 and 5. 11. 7, 4197, δι ̓ ἂν μὲν οὖν αἰτίαν ταῦτα ὁρᾶται ἄλλος λόγος, refers to De Sensu 2, 4375. |
