Plato’s Symposium— in which Aristophanes has a place at the side of Socrates—shows that Plato bore no more ill-will than his master would have borne to the author of the Clouds. At the end of that banquet, “Aristodêmus said that Eryximachus, Phaedrus, and others went away; he himself fell asleep, and as the nights were long, took a good rest; he was awakened towards daybreak by a crowing of cocks, and when he awoke, the others were either asleep or had gone away; there remained awake only Aristophanes, Socrates, and Agathon, who were drinking out of a large goblet -which they passed round, and Socrates was discoursing to them. Aristodêmus did not hear the beginning of the discourse, and he was only half awake; but the chief thing which he remembered was Socrates insisting to the other two that the genius of comedy was the same as that of tragedy, and that the writer of tragedy ought to be a writer of comedy also. To this they were compelled to assent, being sleepy, and not quite understanding his meaning. And first of all Aristophanes fell asleep; and then, when the day was already dawning, Agathon.”

Although tragedy and comedy had their common origin in the festivals of Dionysus, the regular establishment of tragedy at Athens preceded by half a century that of comedy. The Old Comedy may be said to have lasted about 80 years (470-390 B.C.), and to have flourished about 56 (4G0-404 b.c. ) Of the forty poets who are named as having illustrated it the chief were Cratinus, Eupolis, and Aristophanes. The Middle Comedy covers a period of about 70 years (390-320 b.c.), its chief poets being Antiphanes, Alexis, Plato Comicus, Theopompus, and Strattis. The New Comedy was in vigour for about 70 years (320-250 b.c.), having for its foremost representatives Menander Philemon, and Diphilus. The Old Comedy was possible only for a thorough democracy. Its essence was a satirical censorship, unsparing in personalities, of public and of private life—of morality, of statesmanship, of education, of literature, of social usage— in a word, of everything which had an interest for the city or which could amuse the citizens. Preserving all the freedom of banter and of riotous fun to which its origin gave it an historical right, it aimed at associating with this a strong practical purpose—the expression of a democratic public opinion in such a form that no misconduct or folly could altogether disregard it. That licentiousness, that grossness of allusion which too often disfigures it, was, it should be remembered, exacted by the sentiment of the Dionysiae festivals, as much as a decorous cheerfulness is expected at the holiday times of other worships. This was the popular element. Without this the entertainment would have been found flat and unseasonable. But for a comic poet of the higher calibre the consciousness of a recognised power which he could exert, and the desire to use this power for the good of the city, must always have been the uppermost feelings. At Athens the poet of the Old Comedy had an influence analogous, perhaps, rather to that of the journalist than to that of the modern dramatist. But the established type of Dionysiae Comedy gave him an instrument such as no public satirist has ever wielded. When Molière wished to brand hypocrisy he could only make his Tartuffe the central figure of a regular drama, developed by a regular process to a just catastrophe. He had no choice between touching too lightly, and using sustained force to make a profound impression. The Athenian dramatist of the Old Comedy worked under no such limitations of form. The wildest flights of extravagance were permitted to him. Nothing bound him to a dangerous emphasis or a wearisome insistence. He could deal the keenest thrust, or make the most earnest appeal, and at the next moment—if his instinct told him that it was time to change the subject— vary the serious strain by burlesque. He had, in short, an incomparable scope for trenchant satire directed by sure tact.

Aristophanes is for us the representative of the Old Comedy. But it is important to notice that his genius, while it includes, also transcends the genius of the Old Comedy. He can denounce the frauds of a Cleon, he can vindicate the duty of Athens to herself and to her allies, with a stinging scorn and a force of patriotic indignation which make the poet almost forgotten in the citizen. He can banter Euripides with an ingenuity of light mockery which makes it seem for the time as if the leading Aristo-phanic trait was the art of seeing all things from their prosaic side. Yet it is neither in the denunciation nor in the mockery that he is most individual. His truest and highest faculty is revealed by those wonderful bits of lyric writing in which he soars above everything that can move laughter or tears, and makes the clear air thrill with the notes of a song as free, as musical, and as wild as that of the nightingale invoked by his own chorus in the Birds. The speech of Dikaios Logos in the Clouds, the praises of country life in the Peace, the serenade in the Eccleziazusοe, the songs of the Spartan and Athenian maidens in the Lysistrata, above all, perhaps, the chorus in the Frogs, the beautiful chant of the Initiated,—these passages, and such as these, are the true glories of Aristophanes. They are the strains, not of an artist, but of one who warbles for pure gladness of heart in some place made bright by the presence of a god. Nothing else in Greek poetry haβ quite this wild sweetness of the woods. Of modern poets Shakespeare alone, perhaps, has it in combination with a like richness and fertility of fancy.

Fifty-four comedies were ascribed to Aristophanes. Forty-three of these are allowed as genuine by Bergk. Eleven only are extant. These eleven form a running commentary on the outer and the inner life of Athens during 36 years. We will notice them briefly in the order of their dates. They may be ranged under three periods. The first of these periods, extending to 420 b.c., includes those plays in which Aristophanes uses an absolutely unrestrained freedom of political satire. The second period ends with the year 405. Its productions are distinguished from those of the earlier time by a certain degree of reticence and caution. The third period, down to 388 b.c., comprises two plays in which the transition to the character of the Middle Comedy is well marked, not merely by disuse of the parabasis, but by general self-restraint.

I. First Period.

(1.) 425 b.c. TheAcharnians.— Since the defeat in Boeotia the peace party at Athens had gained ground, and in this play Aristophanes seeks to strengthen their hands. Dicaeo-polis, an honest countryman, is determined to make peace with Sparta on his own account, not deterred by the angry men of Acharnae, who crave vengeance for the devastation of their vineyards. He sends to Sparta for samples of peace; and he is so much pleased with the flavour of the Thirty Years’ sample that he at once concludes a treaty for himself and his family. All the blessings of life descend on him; while Lamachus, the leader of the war party, is smarting from cold, snow, and wounds.

(2.) 424 b.c. The Knights.— Three years before, in his Babylonians, Aristophanes had assailed Cleon as the typical demagogue. In this play he continues the attack. The Demos, or State, is represented by an old man who has put himself and his household into the hands of a rascally Paphlagonian steward. Nicias and Demosthenes, slaves of Demos, contrive that the Paphlagonian shall be supplanted in their master’s favour by a sausage-seller. No sooner has Demos been thus rescued than his youthfulness and his good sense return together.

(3.) 423 b.c. The Clouds (the first edition; a second edition was brought out in 422 b.c. )—This play would be correctly described as an attack on the new spirit of intellectual inquiry and culture rather than on a school or class. Two classes of thinkers or teachers are, however, specially satirised under the general name of “Sophist” (v. 331)— 1. The Physical Philosophers—indicated by allusions to the doctrines of Anaxagoras, Hêracleitus, and Diogenes of Apollonia. 2. The professed teachers of rhetoric, belles lettres, <fcc., such as Protagoras and Prodicus. Socrates is taken as the type of the entire tendency. A youth named Pheidippides—obviously meant for Alcibiades—is sent by his father to Socrates to be cured of his dissolute propensities. Under the discipline of Socrates the youth becomes accomplished in dishonesty and impiety. The conclusion of the play shows the indignant father preparing to burn up the philosopher and his hall of contemplation.

(4.) 422.B.C. The Wasps.— This comedy, which suggested Les Plaideurs to Racine, is a satire on the Athenian love of litigation. The strength of demagogy, while it lay chiefly in the ecclêsia, lay partly also in the paid dica-steries. From this point of view the Wasps may be regarded as supplementing the Knights. Philocleon (admirer of Cleon), an old man, has a passion for lawsuits, —a passion which his son, Bdelucleon (detester of Cleon) fails to check, until he hits upon the device of turning the house into a law-court, and paying his father for absence from the public suits. The house-dog steals a Sicilian cheese; the old man is enabled to gratify his taste by trying the case, and, by an oversight, acquits the defendant. In the second half of the play a change comes over the dream of Philocleon; from litigation he turns to literature and music, and is congratulated by the chorus on his happy conversion.

(5.) 421 b.c. (Curtius, Hist, of Greece, vol. iii. p. 275, transL Ward.) The Peace.— In its advocacy of peace with Sparta, this play, acted at the Great Dionysia shortly before the conclusion of the treaty, continues the purpose of the Acharnions. Trygaeus, a distressed Athenian, soars to the sky on a beetle’s back. There he finds the gods engaged in pounding the Greek States in a mortar. In order to stop this, he frees the goddess Peace from a well in which she is imprisoned. The pestle and mortar are laid aside by the gods; and Trygaeus marries one of the handmaids of Peace.

II. Second Period.

(6.) 414 b.c. The Birds.— Peisthetaerus, an enterprising Athenian, and his friend Euelpides persuade the birds to build a city—“Cloud-Cuckoo-borough”—in mid air, so as to cut off the gods from men. The plan succeeds; the gods send envoys to treat with the birds; and Peisthetaerus marries Basileia, daughter of Zeus. Some have found in the Birds a complete historical allegory of the Sicilian expedition; others, a general satire on the prevalence at Athens of headstrong caprice over law and order; others, merely an aspiration towards a new and purified Athens— a dream to which the poet had turned from his hope for a revival of the Athens of the past. In another view, the piece is mainly a protest against the religious fanaticism which the incident of the Hermae had called forth. It can hardly be doubted that both this fanaticism and the part taken by Alcibiades in promoting the Sicilian expedition were present to the mind of Aristophanes; but in what proportions, and tempered with what other elements, the very form of the comedy makes it idle to inquire.

(7.) 411 b.c. The Lysιstrata.— This play was brought out during the earlier stages of those intrigues which led to the Revolution of the Four Hundred. It appeared shortly before Peisander had arrived in Athens from the camp at Samos for the purpose of organising the oligarchic policy. The Lysistrata expresses the popular desire for peace at any cost. As the men can do nothing, the women take the question into their own hands, occupy the citadel, and bring the citizens to surrender.

(8.) 411 B.σ. The Thesrnophoriazusae.— This came out three months later than the Lysistrata, during the reign of terror established by the oligarchic conspirators, but before their blow had been struck. The political meaning of the play lies in the absence of political allusion. Fear silences even comedy. Only women and Euripides are satirised. Euripides is accused and condemned at the female festival of the Thesmophoria.

(9.) 405 b.c. The Frogs.— This piece was brought out just when Athens had made her last effort in the Peloponnesian war, eight months before the battle of Aegospotami, and about fifteen months before the taking of Athens by Lysander. It may be considered as an attempt to distract men’s minds from public affairs. It is a literary criticism. Aeschylus and Euripides were both lately dead. Athens is beggared of poets; and Dionysus goes down to Hades to bring back a poet. Aeschylus and Euripides contend in the under-world for the throne of tragedy; and the victory is at last awarded to Aeschylus.

III. Third Period.

(10.) 393 b.c. The Ecclesiazusoe. — The women, disguised a≡ men, steal into the ecclesia, and succeed in decreeing a new constitution. At this time the demagogue Agyrrhius led the assembly; and the play is, in fact, a satire on the general demoralisation of public life.

(11.) 388 b.c. ThePlutus.— The first edition of the play had appeared in 408 b.c., being a symbolical representation of the fact that the victories won by Alcibiades in the Hellespont had brought back the god of wealth to the treasure-chamber of the Parthenon. In its extant form the Plutus is simply a moral allegory. Chremylus, a worthy but poor man, falls in with a blind and aged wanderer, who proves to be the god of wealth. Asclêpius restores eyesight to Plutus; whereupon all the just are made rich, and all the unjust are reduced to poverty.

Among the lost plays, the following are the chief of which anything is known :—

1. The Banqueters (∆αtταλ∈⅛), 427 b.c. — A satire on young Athens. A father haβ two sons; one is brought up in the good old school, another in the tricky subtleties of the new; and the contrast of results is the chief theme.

2. The Babylonians, 426 B.c.—Under this name the subject-allies of Athens are represented as “Babylonians” —barbarian slaves, employed to grind in the mill. The oppression of the allies by the demagogues—a topic often touched elsewhere—was, then, the main subject of the piece, in which Aristophanes is said to have attacked especially the system of appointing to offices by lot. The comedy is memorable as opening that Aristophanic war upon Cleon which was continued in the Knights and the Wasps. The Merchantmen, The Farmers, The Preliminary Contest (Proagôn), and possibly the Old Age (Geras), belonged to the First Period. The Geras is assigned by Süvern to 422 B.C., and is supposed to have been a picture of dotage similar to that in the Knights. A comedy called The Islands is conjectured to have dealt with the sufferings imposed by the war on the insular tributaries. The Triphales was probably a satire on Alcibiades; the Storks, on the tragic poet Patrocles.

In the Aeolosicôn — produced by his son Arârôs in 387 B.c.—Aristophanes probably parodied the Aeolus of Euripides. The Côcalus is thought to have been a parody of the legend, according to which a Sicilian king of that name slew Minôs.

A sympathetic reader of Aristophanes can hardly fail to perceive that, while his political and intellectual tendencies are well marked, his opinions, in so far as they colour his comedies, are too indefinite to reward, or indeed to tolerate, analysis. Aristophanes was a natural conservative. His ideal was the Athens of the Persian wars. He disapproved the policy which had made Athenian empire irksome to the allies and formidable to Greece; he detested the vulgarity and the violence of mob-rule; he clave to the old worship of the gods; he regarded the new ideas of education as a tissue of imposture and impiety. How far he was from clearness or precision of view in regard to the intellectual revolution which was going forward, appears from the Clouds, in which thinkers and literary workers who had absolutely nothing in common are treated with sweeping ridicule as prophets of a common heresy. Aristophanes is one of the men for whom opinion is mainly a matter of feeling, not of reason. His imaginative susceptibility gave him a warm and loyal love for the traditional glories of Athens, however dim the past to which they belonged; a horror of what was ugly or ignoble in the present; a keen perception of what was offensive or absurd in pretension. The broad preferences and dislikes thus generated were enough not only to point the moral of comedy, but to make lιim, in many cases, a really useful censor for the city. The service which he could render in this way was, however, only negative. He could hardly be, in any positive sense, a political or a moral teacher for Athens. His rooted antipathy to intellectual progress, while it affords easy and wide scope for his wit, must, after all, lower his intellectual rank. The great minds are not the enemies of ideas. But as a mocker—to use the word which seems most closely to describe him on this side—he is incomparable for the union of subtlety with riot of the comic imagination. As a poet, he is immortal. And, among Athenian poets, he has it for his distinctive characteristic that he is inspired less by that Greek genius which never allows fancy to escape from the control of defining, though spiritualising, reason, than by such ethereal rapture of the unfettered fancy as lifts Shakespeare or Shelley above it,— “Pouring his full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.”

Best recent editions, &c.—(1.) Text.— Bergk, 2 vols., Teubner, 1867; Holden (expurgated edition), Bell, 1868. (2.) Commentaries. —Achamenses, Equites, Nubes, Vespae, W. C. Green, in the Catena Classicorum, Rivingtons, 1870; Nubes and Ranae, A. Sidgwick (for beginners),Rivingtons, 1872. (3.) Translations.— Mitchell(Acharn., Knights, Clouds, Wasps), 2 vols., 1822; J. H. Frere (Acharo., Knights, Birds, Frogs, Peace) being 2d vol. of his works, Pickering, 1871; B. H. Kennedy, The Birds (with an excellent introduction), Macmillan, 1874.

ARISTOTLE

IN the history of European thought and knowledge, down to the period of the revival of letters,, the name of Aristotle was, without a rival, supreme; and this supremacy arose from no false estimate or unwarranted preference. Aristotle, speaking generally, treated of every subject which came within the range of ancient thought, and if we regard matter, and not form or literary style, he treated of each of these subjects better than any one else. He also initiated many new branches of inquiry, dependent on observation and induction, and thus not only represented in himself the culmination of Greek speculative philosophy, but was also, as far as possible, the forerunner of modern science. Therefore, the sense of mankind recognised him gradually (after many vicissitudes of appreciation) as the strongest of the ancients. It even came to pass that, for a long period, all secular writings but those of Aristotle had dropped out of notice in Europe. His works may almost have the credit of having saved men from relapsing into barbarism. All sought in Aristotle the basis of knowledge. Universities and grammar schools were founded in Aristotle. Dante only justly expresses this predominance, when he speaks of Aristotle as “the master of those that know,” and depicts him as centre and head of the philosophic family. Of the influence which he has exercised over the minds of men we have evidence, not only in the vast literatures connected with his system, which exist in all great libraries, but also in the traces which that system has left in all the modern languages of Europe. The number of Aristotelian “fossils” existing in our everyday language is quite remarkable. If it had not been for the system of Aristotle, we should have had to express many of our ordinary thoughts differently.

The thought of Aristotle takes its start out of two separate sets of elements previously existing in Greece: the one purely philosophical, the other scientific. In Plato were summed up and remoulded all the former results of logical, metaphysical, psychological, ethical, and political speculation in Greece. And Aristotle was, in the first place, thoroughly imbued with Plato, and all the purely philosophical side of his writings was conceived in close relation to Plato’s works, the results of which he may be said to have codified, reducing into expository form what Plato had left scattered up and down, rather as hints and suggestions, in his brilliant dramatic dialogues. Partly, then, Aristotle adopted the results of Plato, and made them available for the world in general; partly he dissented from some of the Platonic doctrines, and carried on a polemic against them. To compare the Platonic dialogues with the works of Aristotle, and to trace the agreements and disagreements between them, forms an interesting study in the history of philosophy. But on the whole, the difference between Aristotle and Plato is one of aims rather than of doctrines. Aristotle’s aim, almost from first to last, is to be scientific, and to reduce even philosophy to science. He wishes to deal with what can be known for certain, and to express this in exact language. Plato’s aim was, in one sense, greater than this; in another sense it was inferior to it. Plato stood apart from dogmatic systematising; he seems to have regarded truth as too great and many-sided to be capable of being submitted to such a process; he was content to develop various aspects of the truth, on all the highest questions, as they appeared to different minds, or to the same mind at different periods. To do this he chose the vehicle of the dramatic dialogue, in which nothing was positively announced beyond the views arrived at for the moment by the particular speakers. He was a poet at the same time that he was a philosopher, and his works exhibit that true note of poetry which consists in constant attention to form, so that no part is a mere means to a final result; but each part is treated as an end in itself, and contains its own beauty and perfection. His dialogues are thus masterpieces of consummate literary art, though somewhat indefinite in their conclusions, and not without a tinge of imaginative mysticism. To all these Platonic tendencies in the treatment of philosophy Aristotle was totally opposed. He disregarded form in all his extant works; he thought of matter alone, and his main care was to be definite and exhaustive. In adopting results from Plato he first stripped them of the poetry with which they had been surrounded. We shall revert below to some of the points on which he controverts Plato, but the real contrast between them is in their attitude; the one is essentially a dialectician, though of the highest and noblest type, the other more and more tends to be a man of science. Following out his proper bent, Aristotle, in many of his works, strikes on a path in which Plato had not been his precursor. In these works he lays the foundation for the sciences of Natural Philosophy, Mechanics, Physiology, and Natural History. In these branches of thought he stands related, not to Plato, but to the early Greek writers on physical subjects, the inquirers on special questions, the medical writers, and the travellers, whose works he often mentions, though they are all now lost. If we possessed them, we should probably only see how meagre had been these beginnings of science, and what great things Aristotle achieved in the accumulation and systematising of knowledge, and in preparing the way for its future development.

Aristotle’s complete neglect of artistic form (in his extant works), and his adherence “to essential naked truth,” induced Wilhelm von Humboldt to say that Aristotle was un-Greek in the character of his mind; that he was deeper and more earnest than the Greeks, but wa3 wanting in Greek fancy and grace, and spiritual freedom of treatment. This may be so; but in point of descent Aristotle was purely Hellenic. His family, however, had been settled for some generations on the Macedonian frontier, and it was there that Aristotle was born, at the town of Stageira, a Greek colony, on the Strymonie gulf. This place was not far from Pella, the residence of the Macedonian king, Amyntas, whose physician Nicomachus, the father of Aristotle, became. Intercourse with the Macedonians may have, to some extent, influenced the manners of this family. But it is to be remembered that they belonged to the race of the Asclepiads, or supposed descendants of Aesculapius, and it is more natural to attribute the scientific tendencies of Aristotle’s mind to the inherited character and traditions of this race than to any influence which he can have received from the Macedonians. Among those traditions it is said to· have been one, that “from father to son they learned the art of dissection, as regularly as others learn to read and write.” The best biography of Aristotle, hitherto written, is that given by Grote in his posthumous work referred to in note 3. The chief ancient authority on the subject is Diogenes Laertius, a compiler ® and anecdotemonger, perhaps of the 3d or 4th century a.d. His life of Aristotle contains, amid many worthless, gossiping statements, two fragments of antiquity which are of the greatest value. One of these is an extract from the chronology (χρονικά) of Apollodorus (140 b.c.), giving the dates of the chief events of Aristotle’s career; the other is a catalogue of “the books which he left behind him,” to the number of 146. The following are the statements of Apollodorus:—That Aristotle was born 384 b.c. That he joined Plato and passed twenty years with him, thirteen of them consecutively, and that he came to Mitylene 345 b.c. That in the first year after the death of Plato he went to Hermeas, and abode with him three years; that he came to Philip 343 B.C., when Alexander was fifteen years old; that he came to Athens 335 b.c. That he held a school in the Lyceum thirteen years, and then went to Chalcis 322 b.c., where he died of a disease, about sixty-three years old. This skeleton of the life of Aristotle is probably authentic; and if so, we know as much about him as could possibly be expected. It is easy to fill up, to some extent, the details: he must have been in his seventeenth year when he came to Athens to put himself under Plato; twenty years afterwards, when Plato died, he was, on account of his great divergencies of mind from Plato, not appointed head of the school, and he, therefore, retreated to the court of his philosophical friend, Hermeas, ruler of Atarneas, in Asia Minor; he married the niece of Hermeas, who was a eunuch, and had been a slave. On his death Aristotle went to live in retirement in Mitylene, whence, in his forty-second year, he was summoned by Philip of Macedon to undertake the tuition of Alexander the Great, then fifteen years old. Seven years later Philip was assassinated and Alexander became king of Macedonia, and was immediately absorbed in plans for the conquest of the East. Aristotle now came to Athens and spent the last thirteen years of his life there, and it is these years which have the most interest for us, for in them, in all probability, he composed all those of his works which still remain. In rivalry to the Platonic school which had been established in the gardens of the “Academia” on the west side of Athens, he set up his own school in the covered “walks” (περίπατοι) round the temple of the Lycean Apollo, on the east side of the city, and from this circumstance his philosophy got the appellation of “Peripatetic.” His mind and the general features of his system were now mature; he had before him the task, on the one hand, of reducing to writing for the world the results of his reflections in philosophy, on the other hand, of accumulating fresh materials for those sciences of observation of which he was laying the foundation. He set himself simultaneously to writing and to teaching, and there is reason to believe that he employed his school to some extent, in co-operation with himself, to work out details, and to assist in a subordinate way in the construction of the great philosophical and scientific edifice which he had in view. The period of the zenith of Aristotle was coeval with the astonishing career of his pupil, Alexander. There is a tradition that Alexander furnished him with funds for his physical and zoological researches. However this may have been, it appears certain that Aristotle was identified in Athens with the Macedonian cause, and that when, in the summer of 323 b.c., the startling news of the sudden death of Alexander was spread through Greece, Aristotle was involved in the temporary fall of a political party, and those who, from different causes, were his enemies, made an attack upon him which caused him to fly from Athens. Grote has well drawn out the various elements of enmity existing against Aristotle, and to his account we refer. Aristotle retired to Chalcis in Euboea, a place garrisoned by the Macedonians, and there shortly afterwards closed, in an illness, his life of unsurpassed activity and achievement. His will, preserved by Diogenes, would seem to indicate a kind, just, and generous disposition; of the genuineness of this document we cannot be sure, but there is nothing recorded of Aristotle with any certainty which would lead us to think of him personally otherwise than with respect.

After his death his works had a strange and remarkable history. His library, containing all his own autographs, many of them being MSS. of unpublished and unfinished treatises, was bequeathed to Theophrastus, his chie j f disciple, who, dying thirty-five years later, bequeathed them in turn, together with his own books and writings, to Neleus, a Peripatetic scholar. Neleus took the whole precious collection with him to his home at Scepsis, in Asia Minor, and his heirs concealed it in a vault to prevent its being seized by the king of Pergamus, who was then levying contributions for his royal library. The Aristotelian MSS. were thus lost to the world for 187 years. About the year 100 b.c. they were brought out of their hiding-place and sold to a wealthy book-collector, named Apellicon, who carried them back to Athens. In the year 86 B.C., on the taking of Athens by Sulla, the library of Apellicon was seized and brought to Rome. There some learned Greeks obtained access to it; Tyrannion, the friend of Cicero, arranged the MSS.; and Andronicus of Rhodes undertook the task of furnishing a correct text, and a complete edition of the philosophical works of Aristotle, out of the materials at his disposal. He arranged the different treatises and scattered fragments under their proper heads, and published what was henceforth received as the authorised edition of the works of Aristotle. It seems reasonable to believe with Grote that “our Aristotle,” that is, the collection of writings which under this name has come down to modern times, is none other than the edition of Andronicus, and thus dates from about the year 50 b.c. For the first generation after the death of Aristotle, his scholars, Theophrastus, Eudemus, Phanias, Straton, &c.,were engaged partly in editing, partly in paraphrasing, sometimes in endeavouring to improve upon his mostly unfinished works. But the Peripatetic school very rapidly declined; all the philosophic ability round the shores of the Aegean threw itself into one or other of the two new rival schools which had arisen, the Stoic and the Epicurean. The Peripatetics could not keep up to their master’s level; they soon lost interest in the higher parts of his system ; they took to writing monographs on small separate questions, and moral platitudes dressed up in rhetorical form. We may hesitate to affirm that, during 187 years, there were absolutely no copies of Aristotle’s greatest works extant besides those hidden in the vault of Scepsis, for the Stoical ethics and logic both bear traces of a knowledge of Aristotle. But, at all events, for the time, the world had lost its interest in all that we most prize in Aristotle’s thought. Strabo says expressly that “all his writings, except a few of a more popular character,” had been lost; and in accordance with this, Cicero says that “even philosophers know nothing of Aristotle, though they ought to have been attracted by the incredible sweetness of his diction.” The latter part of this remark may seem surprising, for it is not in the least applicable to any of the works of Aristotle which have come down to us. But Cicero is evidently referring to the Dialogues, which were read, admired, and attributed to Aristotle in the days before the edition of Andronicus became known. The question has been raised, especially by Valentine Rose, whether these dialogues, and other short, unsystematic works which passed under the name of Aristotle, were all forgeries, or were in any case genuine. On the one hand it is urged that the dialogic, or artistic, mode of exposition, was alien from Aristotle’s turn of mind. On the other hand, it may be said that Aristotle in his youth may very probably have tried his hand at imitating the Platonic dialogues. And, indeed, unless he had done so, it is difficult to understand how even the forgers could have ventured to publish dialogues bearing his name. Very likely, after his death and the loss of the main bulk of his works by their removal to a vault in Asia Minor, a crop of forged Aristotelian writings sprung up, and imitations of his earlier and more popular works were among the number. But still, it appears safest to believe that Aristotle did at one time endeavour to make the dialogue his vehicle for philosophy. In the years that followed the death of Plato, he probably felt within himself a reaction and repugnance against this mode of writing, and when he returned to Athens as the leader of a school, he utterly renounced it, and set himself henceforth to the statement of the naked truth in the directest and most scientific terms which ho could find. Whether the dialogues which Cicero and his contemporaries read and admired were early works of Aristotle himself, or were forgeries, there is no means of knowing. But the fragments of these works, which a search of all ancient literature has brought together, show us nothing worthy of Aristotle in his best days, nothing that contributes any light to his philosophy. And it is remarkable that all works of this kind seem to have been excluded from the edition of Andronicus. Owing to that exclusion they are all now lost, and thus the tables are turned, for whereas before the edition of Andronicus the world had forgotten all about Aristotle, except so far as he was represented by his own youthful and lighter productions, or by spurious imitations of these, it came to pass later that all except his solid and great philosophical treatises passed into oblivion.

Turning now to the catalogue of the works of Aristotle which has been preserved by Diogenes Laertius, we find that it contains 146 different names, not one of which seems to correspond with any of the forty works which make up “our Aristotle.” This is very striking, and suggests the question, Did Aristotle really write all these works enumerated in the catalogue, and if so, how is it that they are all lost! Did he really write over and over again on the same subject, as the catalogue, taken together with our edition, would indicate 1 Or is the catalogue virtually a list of forgeries, published under the name of Aristotle at the time when the unique MSS. of many of his greatest works were shut up underground and forgotten? Neither hypothesis can be accepted absolutely, but the last mentioned contains, probably, by far the nearest approximation to the truth. It seems credible that the catalogue in question was taken from the backs of rolls in the Alexandrian library, and that it was made by Hermippus, pupil of Callimachus, the chief librarian, between the years 240 and 210 b,c. It found its way into some biography, and was thence mechanically copied by Diogenes. If this be so, it represents the kind of books which were being received by the world as Aristotle’s at a time when the real Aristotle was buried out of sight. The books enumerated in the catalogue strike us at once as peculiar in character: first we meet with the names of several dialogues (such as “Nerinthus,” “Gryllus, or on Rhetoric,” “Menexenus,” “Symposium,” “the Lover,” &c.); afterwards there are the names of apparently short treatises or monographs on separate subjects, without any trace of that organic unity of each of the great branches of philosophy which we find in Aristotle as we know him. This organic unity has not been superinduced by the editorial labours of Andronicus, for we see by the openings of the Metaphysics, Ethics, Politics, and other existing works, taken in connection with their succeeding parts, that Aristotle conceived a grand and comprehensive plan for each main branch of philosophy and science; that he proposed to follow this out so as to produce in each case a complete whole, but that most of his multifarious designs were arrested by death, so that much that he has left bears the character of a mighty fragment. But the Peripatetic school seem to have abandoned his comprehensive views, and to have only followed him in that other side of his method which consisted in working out the details of special and subordinate questions. This tendency resulted in the production of small separate treatises and essays, and it is the names of such as these that are recorded in the catalogue. The Peripatetic school seem to have worked on a sort of co-operative principle. Aristotle, during his own lifetime, probably encouraged them to work up separate points for incorporation into his philosophy; and if so, they would have less scruple in affixing his name to works written after his death, but which they conceived to represent, or, perhaps, a little to improve upon, his views. Whatever may have been the literary morality of this procedure, we can hardly doubt that it existed as a fact. Even the works of Aristotle, as we possess them, show clear traces of it. Take, for instance, the four different ethical treatises which are found among these works. Of these the first is the Nicomachean Ethics, i the main bulk of which is the genuine -writing of Aristotle. It is conceived on a comprehensive plan, and the beginning and end are complete, but the middle part was probably never written. The name of this treatise was, perhaps, given to it for the sake of distinguishing it from the other ethical works in the Peripatetic school library, the MS. cf this having been to some extent revised and edited by Nicomachus, the son of Aristotle. The second is the Eudemian Ethics, a paraphrase of the work of Aristotle, written by Eudemus, one of his scholars, with a slight divergence in some points from the original doctrines. Three books from the Eudemian treatise, on Justice, on the Relation of the Intellect to Morality, and on Weakness of the Will, were afterwards incorporated by some editor into the Nicomachean Ethics, so that in modern times they have always formed part of both treatises, and their authorship has been much disputed. The third is called the Great Ethics, and is the work of a later Peripatetic; it is a résumé of morals, made up chiefly out of the work of Eudemus, but with some of its conclusions taken directly from that of Aristotle, and with some matter introduced from another source, perhaps the ethical writings of Theophrastus. The fourth is a little tract On Virtues and Vices, which is not even Aristotelian in doctrine, though it shows an acquaintance with the Aristotelian system. It is chiefly characterised by some small points of physiognomical observation, such as are found in the characters of Theophrastus. These four works well illustrate the growth of an ungenuine Aristotelian literature. We begin with a genuine work of Aristotle himself, though even into this a spurious element has been introduced; we go on to a paraphase, and then to the paraphrase of that paraphrase; we end with a light essay written for the sake of one or two observations on character which the writer had made; and yet all stands under the name of Aristotle. This instance which we have before our eyes, and the proportion of the ungenuine to the genuine which it presents, may enable us to form a conception of the nature of those works, the 146 names of which make up the catalogue of Diogenes. Far be it from us to say that none of the works so enumerated -were written by Aristotle himself, but probably much the greater portion of them were not written by him. And without denying that many works of Aristotle, and even some works by him of interest and value, have been lost, we may say with confidence that the “lost works” of Aristotle were of no importance in comparison with what has been preserved, and that the greatest and most valuable of his achievements, incomplete as he left them, but subsequently edited to some extent and touched up, remain for us, and contain the essence of his thought

In eight passages of the works which we possess under his name, there is a reference to “exoteric discourses” (eξωτepLκdi λόγοι). This phrase has attracted a wonderful amount of notice, and a whole literature has been composed in support of the different meanings which have been attributed to it. But the question is now reduced to a very small one. The word “exoteric” suggests the opposite term “esoteric,” in the sense of secret; and the writers of the later empire, who were accustomed to the idea of mystical and hierophantic teachings, as professed by the neo-Pythagorean and neo-Platonic schools, took up the notion that Aristotle had two forms of doctrine: the one “esoteric,”—containing his real opinions, and confined to the circle of his initiated scholars,—the other “exoteric,” containing superficial truth with which the profane vulgar might be put off and satisfied. After the Renaissance the idea of a double doctrine in Aristotle was exploded, and it was acknowledged that “exoteric” in the passages above mentioned is not opposed to “esoteric” or “secret,” but denotes the external, non-philosophical, non-scientific treatment of a subject, as opposed to the strictly scientific treatment of it (oικ∈7os λόγος). The only question, then, which remained is this,—Does Aristotle, when he refers to “the exoteric discourses,” mean to refer directly to his own more popular writings, or does he make general reference to popular discussions on philosophical subjects, including not only his own and other people’s popular writings, but also the ordinary debates and discussions on such subjects, rife enough in Athenian society, and, of course, unscientifically conducted I Powerful supporters are to be found for either view, and Bernays especially, in an elegant and learned monograph, has endeavoured to prove that each of the passages in which “the exoteric discourses” are mentioned refers especially to some one of the lost dialogues of Aristotle, the character and contents of which Bernays seeks to gather from the scanty fragments of them preserved by the ancients. It appears to us, however, that this attempt is infelicitous in its results, and that there are many reasons for thinking that Aristotle did not appeal to his own popular writings for conclusions in philosophy, but merely said, occasionally, that the popular views on some questions of philosophy were sufficiently accurate and might be accepted.

Of the works that have come down to us as Aristotle’s, the following are undoubtedly genuine :—1. Topics. 2. Prior Analytics. 3. Posterior Analytics. 4. On Sophistical Refutations. 5. Art of Rhetoric. 6. Nicomachean Ethics ? 7. Politics. 8. On the Art of Poetry. 9. A Physical Discourse. . On the Heavens. 11. On Generation and Destruction. 12. Meteorologies. 13. Researche about Animals. 14. On Soul. 15. Appendices to the preceding work—(a.) On Sense and Sensible Things, (b.)

On Memory and Recollection, (c.) On Sleep and Waking. (d. ) On Dreams and Prophesying in Sleep, (e.) On Longevity and Shortlivedness, (f.) On Youth and Old Age. (g.) On Life and Death, (h.) On Respiration. 16. On Parts of Animals. 17. On Locomotion ofAnimals. 18. On Generation of Animals. 19. The Metapthysics.

The following works attributed to Aristotle are almost undoubtedly spurious :—1. On Rhetoric; addressed to Alexander. 2. Eudemian Ethics. 3. Great Ethics. 4. On Virtues and Vices. 5. Economics. 6. On Colours. 7. Physiognomies. 8. On Plants. 9. On Strange Statements. 10. Mechanics. 11. On Indivisible Lines. 12. On Xenophanes, Zeno, and Gorgias. 13. On the Universe; addressed to Alexander. 14. On Motion of Animals. 15. On Breath. 16. Problems.

The following two works are of doubtful genuineness

1. Categories; 2. On Interpretation. None, however, of the so-called works of Aristotle have been more commented on or studied than these two. They stand as the two first of the six logical treatises, or Organon, of Aristotle, and thus had particular attention directed to them in the Middle Ages, when the logical writings were solely or chiefly studied. The separate way in which these two short treatises are written, without any preface or other connection with the main body of analytic (f.c., demonstrative logic), seems peculiar and unlike Aristotle. We may safely say that they were not composed at the same time as the Analytics, to which they have been prefixed. Either they were earlier works written before the time of Aristotle’s final residence in Athens, or else they are the productions of unknown and probably later Peripatetics. There is an important difference of doctrine between the Categories and works known to be by Aristotle. For in the Categories it is laid down that “the first essence” (πρώτη ουσία) is the individual, and that the class, genius, or species, is a “second essence,” that is, that it has an existence derived from and secondary to the individuals of which it is composed. In the Metaphysics, Μetaph., vi. 7, 4; 11, 18, &c. 13 on the other hand, we are told that the “first essences” are universals, genera, or species. The former is the doctrine of nominalism, the latter that of realism. If Aristotle wrote the Categories long prior to the Metaphysics (which, if he wrote the book at all, he must have done), then we must suppose that at the outset of his independent career as a philosopher he began with an externe reaction against the realism of Plato, and that in later life he returned from this to approximation towards Plato’s views. The other hypothesis possible is, that a bias towards physical research and experiment and the collection of facts naturally led the Peripatetic school in the direction of nominalism, till at last some member of that school gave expression to this tendency by writing this little treatise called the Categories, derived, indeed, mainly from Aristotle’s doctrines and teaching, but laying it down far more dogmatically than he would have done that the concrete individual is the unit of knowledge. Considerations of style are insufficient to enable us to pronounce in favour of one hypothesis or the other. For the school of Aristotle copied, and obtained a close resemblance to, their master’s style. But whether this treatise was written by Aristotle or not, it has had a great influence. It led the world not only to think that Aristotle was a decided nominalist, but also that he classified existence under ten “categories” or summa genera. But this doctrine would hardly have been gathered from the undoubted writings of Aristotle. In his logical researches he naturally much busied himself with the different relations which the predicate of a sentence can bear to the subject. And in the earliest of his extant works (Topics, i. 9), he enumerates “the classes of predications” (τά yen; τωv κα∙∏7y0pιωv) as te