ESSAYS

AND ADDRESSES
*By

JOHN BURNET
F£tLO\V OF THE BRITISH ACAPEM\

With a Memoir by
Lord Charnwood

LONDON

CHATTO WINDUS
MCMXXIX
 ARISTOTLE
Annual Lecture on a Master Utnd Read to the British Academs
July 2 1924
.

There is hard!) any philosopher but Aristotle of whom

It IS so true to sa) that he is hard to interpret just
because he insists on discussing all the side issues of
not very fundamental points, while what strike us as
the real problems are dismissed in an oracular sentence
Nevertheless, one cannot help feeling that this is due,
at least to some extent, to the curious way in which
his teaching has been handed down to us As we
shall see, his whole career as an independent philo-
sopher was exceptionally short What are now called
the works of Aristotle are, in the main, his own personal
manuscripts which he used as a foundation for his
lectures It is not, therefore, surprising that those
points of which he most sure should only be
felt
briefly indicated, while minor difficulties are discussed
with great minuteness Moreover, it is of the first
importance to notice that what we call the works of
Aristotle were entirely unknown for more than two
hundred years after his death, and were then recovered
almost by accident On the other hand, the numerous
works which he published during his lifetime, and by
which alone he was known after his death, have almost
entirely disappeared That is the problem with which
I have been occupied for some years now, and indeed
It has been obvious for some time that it was one which

had to be solved before anything else could be done

I was not therefore surprised to find that it formed the
subject of a new book by Professor Werner Jaeger of
Berlin which only came into my hands in the present
277
278 ARISTOTLE
year.^ The great merit of this work is that it abandons
the untenable idea that the published works of Aristotle
are all to be referied to his earlier life, while the un-
published lectures which we have belong to the time
when he was at the head of the Lyceum at Athens. I
venture to think, howevei, that Jaeger has not allowed
sufficiently for the shortness of this Athenian period
nor for the sudden way in which it was brought to an
end. To me it seems rather that Aristotle’s work was
quite unfinished when he died in exile at the com-
paratively early age of sixty-two. I shall come back

to that point later ; for the present I shall confine

myself to what we know of the first two periods of his
life. But first it will be necessary to consider carefully
the evidence for the distinction I have drawn between
the published works and the manuscripts of the lectures
which were not recovered till the first century b c.

Let us consider the histoiy of the works we

first
still have. Strabo tells us that Aristotle’s successor
Theophrastus had left them to Neleus of Scepsis the m
Troad, and that he bequeathed them to his successors,
who were not philosophers, though they knew the
value of the manuscripts very well. Indeed, they kept
them locked up in a cellar to preserve them from the
kings of Pergamus, who were searching for books in
order to rival the collection at Alexandria. Ulti-
mately they were sold to Apellicon of Teos for a large
sum, and he edited them in a very imperfect manner.
Soon 87 b c., Sulla took Athens and carried
after, in
the library of Apellicon to Rome, where Tyranmo en-
^ Anstoteles, Grtmdlegung einer Geschchte seiner EnHmcMung (Berlin,
1923)-
 ARISTOTLE 279

deavoured to produce a more correct edition Ulti-

mately, the manuscripts passed into the hands of
Andronicus of Rhodes, and were published by him
towards the end of the first century b c ^
Now, there is not the slightest reason to doubt this
very definite statement It will be noted that it docs
not in the least suggest that the manuscripts in question
were unknown to Theophrastus Indeed, it is dis-
tinctly implied that they were not, since we are told
that the lectures of Theophrastus himself formed part
of his bequest to Neleus of Scepsis Moreover,
Strabo had exceptional opportunities of being well
informed on the point He was a native of Pontus
and, on his mother s side, related to its kings , he was
also a pupil of Tyrannio, no doubt at Rome, so he
could hardly have been ignorant of the discovery of
what we call the works of Aristotle We
cannot really
doubt, then, that these works were quite unknown
from the time of Theophrastus till the first century
B c 2
This does not mean, of course, that no works of
Aristotle were known during that period, but only
that the treatises which make up our texts were never
intended for publication, and were not in fact published
In one place,® Cicero speaks of the golden stream of
*

speech that Aristotle poured forth,* which certainly

does not strike us as a natural description of our Aris-
totle, especially if we remember that Cicero s literary
taste was distinctly more florid than ours The truth
is rather that Aristotle published many works which,
of course, escaped the fate of the cellar at Scepsis, and
* Strabo xiu 608 Plutarch Sulla a 6 r
* Zeller {Bng Trans vol
1 pp 147 sqq ) is very anxious to disprove this
but he really only succeeds m showing that Theophrastus and Eudemus
knew the lectures of Aristotle which is perfectly consistent with what Strabo
says
^ Acad 11 38
28 o ARISTOTLE
Itwas of them that Cicero was speaking. No doubt
he knew something of our Aristotle too for he was
;

the patron of Tyrannio, but it is hardly probable that

he had read much of him. When he speaks of Aris-
totle, he means chiefly the works Aristotle himself
had published in his lifetime, and these have in large
measure disappeared Those, on the other hand,
which were recovered from the cellar at Scepsis in
Cicero’s day were ultimately seen to give a truer view
of Aristotle’s philosophy in its developed form than the
published works which had alone been hitherto known,
and these have, therefore, failed to survive. Un-
fortunately, this has made it far more difficult for us to
give an intelligible account of Aristotle’s philosophical
development, and that is what is of most interest to-
day. It IS the case, however, that very considerable
portions of Aristotle’s published works have only been
identified in recent years, and this has made the
problem a little easier.
The contrast between Plato and Aristotle in this
respect is in many ways striking. We
know now that
the best known works of Plato were published when
he was a young man and long before the foundation
of the Academy, and it becomes more and more im-
possible to doubt that their chief purpose was to
preserve the memory of the teaching of Socrates.
The dialogues which he published after the foundation
of the Academy are different in this respect, and, in
particular, in the place assigned to Socrates, who more
and more takes a secondary place until, in the Laws.y
he disappears altogether. It does not seem probable
that Plato ever wrote his lectures for the Academy
;

remained faithful to its founder’s memory, and there

is no reason to doubt that we still possess every word

that Plato ever wrote. With Aristotle the case is very

different. He too wrote a large number of works for
 ARISTOTLE
the pubhC) and it was by these alone he was known for

several generations He also gave lectures for over

twenty years j and the manuscripts of these lectut^s
it is

that were discovered m

the first century b c
The result has been, on the whole, unfortunate
Certainly, we may be glad that Aristotle found
it

necessary to write his lectures , for otherwise we

should have known as little of his most intimate
ue do of Plato’s The earliest com-
convictions as
mentators knew, of course, that the collection of
treatises called the Metaphystcs was by Aristotle, but
were quite at a loss to account for the serious differences
between that and the published works which had long
been known Indeed, before long the view was held
that these published works were merely exercises m
Platonic philosophy, and could not be regarded as
evidence tor the beliefs of Aristotle himself On the
other hand, the unpublished manuscripts which had
been recovered from the cellar at Scepsis were the
manuscripts from which Aristotle had lectured, and
were therefore the only authority for his actual teach-
ing If we had only the lectures given by Plato m
the Academy and the published works of Aristotle,
we should stiH, no doubt, be able to see that Plato was
a born writer, while Aristotle was not, but we should
have a far more mathematical Plato and a considerably
more popular Aristotle As it is, we have only so
much of Plato s philosophy as he thought it well to
publish, while what we now have of Aristotle is almost
entirely the lectures given in his school Most of his
published work has only a shadowy existence to-day
and has to be reconstructed by inference The only
fairly complete specimen we possess is the
Constitution
of Athens discovered about a generation ago, which
certainly belongs to Aristotle’s later years,
and must,
in fact, have been written between
329/8 and 327/6
282 ARISTOTLE
B c.’-This shows that Aristotle continued to publish
all through his life, and the manuscripts discovered at
Scepsis are also of various dates and have not been
finally revised. That, as has been said, is Professor
Jaeger’s chief contribution to the subject. It would
of course be impossible to discuss here in detail the
chronological arrangement which he adopts, though
I have no doubt that he is right in refusing to assign
all these works, as is generally done, to the last thirteen
years of Aristotle’s life, when he was at the head of the
Lyceum at Athens. According to him, they belong
largely to the intermediate period, shortly after Plato’s
death,when Aristotle had left Athens, and are therefore
contemporary with, or even earlier than, a good many of
his published works. be best to go
It will therefore
through the three well-marked periods of Aristotle’s
life, membership of the Academy, that of his
that of his
absence in Asia Minor ana Macedonia, and that of his
return to Athens, and to see, at least in broad outline,
how much of his work is to be referred to each of these.
This makes it necessary to consider what we know of
Aristotle’s life.

II

In the first place,was not an Athenian but

Aristotle
an Ionian. It is, indeed, one of the most remarkable
facts about Greek philosophy that it was hardly
Athenian at all. It began at Miletus in Ionia but, ;

from the time of Pythagoras, it had an independent

centre in the Ionian and Achaean cities of southern
Italy and Sicily. It was not till the age of Pericles
that it was brought to Athens by Anaxagoras from the
east and by Parmenides and Zeno from the west, and
^ See Jaeger, o/> af,p 35on i He adopts Mr Torr’s date for reasons
which seem to be conclusive
 ARISTOTLE 283
was there given a fresh start by Socrates, whose work
we know at first hand from Plato alone These two
are, no doubt, the greatest names m the history of
Greek philosophy, but we should never forget that
theirs are the only Athenian names of the first rank
By the time Plato founded the Academy, the great days
of Athens were at an end, and he had already to look
abroad for the realization of his political views When,
more than a generation later, Aristotle founded his
school in the Lyceum, he did so under Macedonian
patronage, and more because Athens was the natural
meeting-place for lonians than for any other reason
The number of born Athenians in the Academy had
been small, so far as we know, and in the Lyceum it
was smaller still Nevertheless, it was to Athens that
men came from all parts of the Greek world to study
philosophy, though they knew little, and cared little,
for Athenian politics Aristotle, who was the con-
temporary of JDemosthenes, only mentions him twice
or thrice in his Rhetoric Indeed, now that Aristotle s
treatise on the Athenian Constitution, a work which
belongs to the last period of his life, has been re-
covered, we can see for ourselves how little he really
understood Athenian politics
Aristotle was born at Stagirus (or, as it came to be
called, Stagira), on the east of the peninsula of Chal-
cidice, in 384/3 b c His father, Nicomachus, was a
medical man and had been court physician to the king
of Macedon Aristotle s son, who was born in his
later years, was called after his grandfather in accord-
ance with Greek custom, but that is practically all we
know about the family His father must have died
when Aristotle was quite young for the next thing we
hear about him is that his guardian, Proxenus, sent
him to study at Athens in 367/6 b c when he was
seventeen years old It was certainly not to study
284 ARISTOTLE
medicine that he went there, but simply because it
was the natural place for an Ionian youth of intel-
lectual ambition to go. At that time the Platonic
Academy was really the only centre of higher study
in Greece. It is important to note that Eudoxus, the
astronomer, seems to have come to Athens about the
same time, and to have brought his pupils with him.
From the Nicomachemt Ethics^ which was written long
afterwards, we can see that Aristotle still looked up to
Eudoxus with reverence. What is of even more
importance is that, when Aristotle first joined the
Academy, Plato was apparently not there. It was just
about this time (368/7 b.c.) that Dionysius i., tyrant
of Syracuse, died and that Plato, on the urgent recom-
mendation of Dio, went to Syracuse to look after the
education of Dionysius ii. His second visit to Sicily
took place in 361 b.c., and he did not return to Athens
till the next year. Even then, he was not done with
Syracuse. In 357 b.c. Dio returned to Sicily from
exile and made himself master of Syracuse. Plato
(who was seventy years old) did not accompany him,
but several members of the Academy did, in particular
his nephew Speusippus and Eudemus of Cyprus, and a
period of troubles began. Callippus, who was also a
member of the Academy, murdered Dio, and Plato
wrote two long letters, which still exist,^ to the friends
and partisans of Dio, in which he defended himself and
gave them advice. We can see from all this that, for
the first ten years of Aristotle’s membership, the
personal influence of the head of the Academy on him
must have been slight and intermittent, and even when
he came back to Athens, Plato was chiefly occupied in
writing the Laws^ a work which was not published till
after his death, and in delivering lectures which were
largely mathematical. It is not easy to see how
^ Epp , VI and vu
 ARISTOTLE 285
Aristotle could followhim in this direction There is
no evidence that he was ever capable of appreciating
the strictly mathematical point of view Above all,
wc kno^\ no'w that the Plato to whose school Aristotle
belonged for twentj jears was no longer the Plato who
wrote the Republic That great work was probably
finished before he founded the Academy, and certainly
a good many years before Aristotle joined it Even
the Parmenides and the Theaetetus were, to all appear-
ance, written before Aristotle came to Athens, and
there is a gap m Plato’s literary work about this time
Nevertheless, there can be no doubt at all that the
influence of Plato on Aristotle was very great indeed
That follows at once from the fact that he remained a
member of the Academy until Plato s death, that is,
for a period of tventy years There is no doubt, in
particular, that he read all Plato s earlier writings and,
in particular, the Phaedoy which made a deep impression
upon him To him, of course, Socrates was little but
a name It is improbable that, in his time, any member
of the Academy remembered him or knew him other-
wise than as he did, that is, as the chief figure m the
works of Plato s youth When Aristotle joined the
Academy, it was more than a generation since Socrates
had been put to death, and there were very few
Athenian members left The memory of a teacher
who wrote nothing is soon forgotten What is certain
is that Aristotle found in Plato’s earlier works some-
thing new and, from his point of view, of the first
importance It would hardly be going too far to say
that during the first period of his membership of the
Academy, Aristotle was more of a Socratic than a
Platonist, or at least that he held views which were
certainly to be found in Plato s Socratic dialogues,
but which were hardly of first-rate importance in his
later teaching
 ,

286 ARISTOTLE
From this point of view extremely significant
it is

that one of his earliest woiks was the dialogue entitled

Etidemus^ which was substantially based on the Phaedo,
The theme of this dialogue leaves little doubt as to its
date. Eudemus of Cyprus (who must be carefully
distinguished fiom Aristotle’s disciple Eudemus of
Rhodes) died before Syracuse in 354 b c., when
Aristotle was about thirty and had been a member
of the Academy for some thirteen years. The theme
of the dialogue was that the death of Eudemus was the
true fulfilment of the dream that had promised him a
safe return to his home within five years, a promise
which was fulfilled by his death. The argument for
the soul’s immortality was clearly based on the Phaedo^
and, in particular, on the doctrine that the soul was not
an attunement (apiiovta) of the body (fr. 45 Rose).
We can also see the influence of Plato’s earlier works
in the myth of Silenus, which was plainly composed
on the model of the speech of Lachesis in the tenth
book of the Republic. We may infer with certainty
that, at the age of thirty, Aristotle was still a Platonist
and, what is more, a Platonist of an early type.
Another, and a more important work which must be
referred to much the same date, is the Protrepticus^
which was an exhortation to the philosophic life
addressed to a certain Themison or Cyprus. We
know something of this work from what we can learn
of the Hortenstus of Cicero, which had so much in-
fluence on St. Augustine at a later date It is here
that we have the first instance of Bywatei’s work on
the exoteric treatises of Aristotle
‘ ’
for he was able
,

to restore large portions of the Protreptictis from the

similarly entitled work of lamblichus.^ That is an
extraordinary compilation. The greater part of it
consists of extracts from Plato, but this is broken in the
^ y Phi u (1869),
55 sqq
 ARISTOTLE 287
middle by a senes of extracts from Aristotle, which
Byavater was the first to identify as coming from the
Protrepttcus
The most striking feature of the work was that it
recommended m the strongest manner the contem-
plative life as the highest possible for those that arc
capable of it, and we shall see that this remained

Aristotle s conviction throughout his life He

had no
city,or none of any importance, and it was natural for
an Ionian to take that view Plato s attitude had been
different With Athenian politics he had little to do,
but he had the foresight to see that the great struggle
ahead was the preservation of the west for Greek
civilization With such ideas Aristotle had little
sympath), and the Protrepttcus is chiefly interesting as
showing how little he was influenced by them In
this work he upheld the claim of to be the
leader of men, but it was still (jjpovrja-i^ in the Platonic
sense of the term, and not in that which he was to give
It long afterwards himself

III

In 348/7 B c Plato died, about eighty years old, and

his nephew Speusippus succeeded him as head of the
Academy There was nothing now to keep Aristotle
at Athens He went to Asia Minor with Xenocrates,
and the second period of his life begins Once more
we see a split between east and west which only the
personality of Plato had been able to avert There is
no need to dwell upon the anecdotes about the succes-
sion to the Academy Speusippus was an Adienian
citizen, while Xenocrates and Aristotle were not, and
It may well have seemed necessary at this time that the
head of the Academy should be m
Athenian who was
288 ARISTOTLE
legally capable of holding the property. At a later
date, some way out of the difficulty must have been
found, no doubt under Macedonian influence ; for
we find Xenocrates back at Athens as head of the
Academy in 339, while Aristotle founded the Lyceum
there in 335 b.c. For the present the interesting
point IS that the two leading men of Plato’s school left
Athens together for Asia Minor, where theic was
what may be fairly called a colony of the Academy
under Coriscus and Erastus, who were settled at Assos
and enjoyed the patronage of Hermias, tyrant of
Atarneus, whom they had converted to Platonism.
That is certainly significant, for it shows there was a
real possibility of founding an Asiatic branch of the
Academy in these regions. We know the circle of
friends to whom Xenocrates and Aristotle went much
better than we did, now that it is generally allowed that
Plato’s sixth epistle is genuine. The school had been
founded by Coriscus and Erastus, who had been
members of the Academy, and the epistle is addressed
to them along with Hermias, whom Plato docs
not appear to know personally. Aristotle remained
at Assos for three years, but, on the execution of
Hermias by the Persians, he removed to Mitylene in
Lesbos, where he married Pythia, the daughter of
Hermias.
This raises one or two interesting points. In the
first book of the Metaphysics Aristotle has occasion to
criticize Plato’s theory of Forms in a very curious way.
He speaks of it throughout as a doctrine which we ‘
’

hold, even when he is criticizing it, and that can only

mean that he still regarded himself as a member of the
Academy. If so, the book must belong to the time
when he was at Assos. The same thing seems to follow
from the frequent references to Coriscus in certain works
of Aristotle. They seem to imply that he was present
 ARISTOTLE 289
at the lectures, and that is, of course, of the greatest
importance m
determining their date
It may
well be that Aristotle's call to superintend
the education of Alexander m
342 b c was due to his
intimacy with Hermias, who was certainly a Mace-
donian agent, as well as to his father's professional
connexion with the Macedonian Lings Next to
nothing IS really known of Aristotle s work with
Alexander He says very little about him in his
writings, and we do not really know how long they
were together , but it is clear at least that Aristotle
never understood hiS distinguished pupil By 335
B c he was back at Athens, where he opened his school
under the protection of the Macedonian governor
Antipater
Now this means was away from
that Aristotle
Athens for about twelve years,from the age of thirty-
seven to that of forty-nine, and we can hardly be
wrong in holding that these were the most important
years of his life At first, no doubt, he only thought of
continuing Plato s work, but it is evident that the
change came soon For twenty }ears he had been
overshadowed by the personality of his master , now
It was high time for his native genius to show itself,
if he had any The Greeks were never m
a hurr)
Plato must have been forty when he founded the
Academy, and the writings by which he is most
familiar to us were all written before that, and had for
their chief object to make Socrates known Aristotle
too was at first completely absorbed in his master, and
there seems to be little doubt that it was Plato who
started him on the lines he was to follow It seems
certain that, towards the end of his life, Plato had
determined to direct the attention of his disciples to the
study of animals and plants That seems to follow
from the fact that not only Aristotle, who had a natural
T
290 ARISTOTLE
bent in that direction, but also Plato’s nephew,
Speusippus, had turned their attention to biology.
The achievements of Speusippus in this may not have
amounted to much, though he wrote a work entitled
'’Oyxota, in which he made an attempt to found a
classificationof animals. The comic poets too made
fun, in their own way, of the efforts of the Academy to
establish a classification of animals and vegetables.
But to Aristotle this new branch of inquiry seems to
have come almost as a revelation. colleague, My
Professor D’Arcy Thompson, has pointed out^ that
most of the species described by Aristotle belong to
Asia Minor, and, in particular, to Lesbos, and, if that
is so, it would settle the matter. On this point, it

would appear that Professor Jaeger is wrong, and it

may be noted that Coriscus appears not only in the

logical treatises, but also in certain of the biological
lectures.
In the clue to the
fact, if this is right, it is, I take it,

whole development of Aristotle. He was not a mathe-

matician like Plato, but he found himself when Plato
turned his attention to biology. Plato had never said
anything of the doctrine of Forms (tSeat, eeSr}) in
any work that he wrote after the foundation of the
Academy, except once in the Tt77weuSi where it is
mentioned by a professed Pythagorean, but Aristotle,
of course, knew all about it from the Phaedo and the
Republic^ where it is expounded by Socrates. Of
course he also knew, so far as that was possible for him,
the mathematical form in which the doctrine was
expounded by Plato in his later years. To Aristotle,
when once he had become interested in biology,
the mathematical form in which Plato had presented
the theory ceased to have any meaning, and here
^ On Aristotle as a Biologist (Herbert Spencer Lecture, Clarendon Press,
1913).
 ARISTOTLE 291
once more we find Aristotle s Ionic nature assertine
Itself
It IS m the dialogue entitled On Philosophy that we
find the open breach with the Ideal Theory of
first
Plato, and it was from this source alone that the Stoics
and Epicureans of the next few generations knew what
they knew about it It was, m fact, a public announce-
ment that Aristotle had a philosophy of his own to
teach From that point of view, it is, of course, a most
serious loss, and we may be glad that it is gradually
being repaired ^ It is signi&ant that the Platonic
theory criticized is not that with which we are familiar
in the Phaedo and the Republic^ but that of what
are called ideal numbers (ctSijrifcot a
'

theory which we have to reconstruct as well as we can

from what Aristotle tells us about it , for it finds no
place in Plato’s published works In this dialogue
Aristotle spoke in person, and we possess a fragment of
It (fr 8 Rose), m
which he said that he could not
sympathize with the doctrine even if it is supposed
that his opposition is due to a spirit of contentiousness
That IS a definite declaration enough It is evident
that this dialogue must be later than the first book of
the Metaphysics^ in which also the Platonic doctrine of
Forms is criticized, but is spoken of throughout as a
doctrine which we ’ hold The only difference Is
that the dialogue On Philosophy was a public manifesto,
while the criticism of the Metaphysics was intended for
the school alone, and only saw the light long after-
wards It seems most natural to suppose that this
breach with Platonism is connected with Aristotle’s
biological studies, though this is a point which I think
Jaeger has missed Yet surely it is here that we ought
* A comparison of Bywater s paper my Phi vii 64 with the accoant
of this dialogue guen by Jaeger pp 125 sqq will show how far this has

proceeded
292 ARISTOTLE
to look for the origin of the divergence between Plato
and Aristotle. Even to-day we can see that mathe-
maticians have comparatively little difficulty in appre-
ciating Platonism, while biologists are apt to be annoyed
by what strikes them as a certain unfairness to the
objects of their own study. That was natural enough
until last century, and it was perfectly intelligible in
the fourth century b.c., but I should like to raise the
question whether it is quite so natural to-day. I am

neither a biologist nor a mathematician, but I cannot

help wondering whether there is not, in the twentieth
century, a tendency for their opposite points of view
to come together. In the fourth century b.c. this no
doubt seemed impossible, but I cannot help asking
whether, if Aristotle had known the modern theory of
evolution, he would have felt obliged to reject the
Platonic theory so decidedly as he does. However
that may be, there can be no doubt of this, that it was
mainly Aristotle’s passionate interest m biology that
led him to drop the theory of Ideas altogether, though
‘ ’

it must never be forgotten that, evenm his unpublished

lectures, he always speaks of Plato with reverence, even
when he feels obliged to differ from him. In later
days, it was the Platonic Academy that commented
laboriously on his works, and it is to its members that
we owe most for the preservation and interpretation of
them. It is possible, indeed, that the Neoplatomsts
ignored too much the radical differences between the
two men ; but it is a fact that they devoted themselves
to the interpretation of Aristotle more than to that of
Plato. They were at least dimly aware of the fact that
Aristotle was the only source of our knowledge of
Plato’s later and more personal teaching.
Therecan, however, be no doubt that Aristotle’s
return to his Ionian predecessors had a wholly un-
fortunate effect on his general view of the world, and
 ARISTOTLE 293
this hashad unfortunate results The Pkystcs^ the Le
CaelOi and the De Generattone et Corrupttone do not by
any means represent such an advance on the Academy
as his biological works do In them everything
depends upon the spherical earth being at rest in the
centre of the universe while the starry heavens go
round it once in twenty-four hours There can be no
doubt that the Academy had gone far beyond this, and
that, under its influence, even the heliocentric theory
had been evolved It was just this that made Aristotle
unacceptable to the great men of the Renaissance, and
has stood in the way of a proper appreciation of him
ever since Aristotle in these matters was not Aris-
totle at his best, and his real greatness was as a
biologist
It would, however, take us too far to discuss these
points m detail here, though I feel that I must say
something more about what is often regarded as
Aristotle s chief work, the Metaphysics The very title
of that work is of later date, and the word ‘ meta-
physics is never used by Aristotle himself We
have
seen that Book i was certainly composed when he was
lecturing to his school at Assos, and that implies that
Books II and nr belong to the same period, when
Aristotle still felt that he was a member of the Academy,
though he had abandoned its principal doctrine, the
theory of Forms But at this point all connexion
apparently ceases, and with Book iv we come to a
discussion of philosophical terminolog) , which appears
to be an independent work, while the last two books
contain a discussion, or rather two discussions, of the
theory of ideal numbers held m the Academy, which
does not appear to have any connexion with the rest
of the work Books v -vii seem to be of far later
date than these , for they deal with 3 more important
subject and seem to embody views which Aristotle
294 ARISTOTLE
held later in life. Book an entiiely independent
x. is
treatise, which appears to give an account of Aristotle’s
views on what he calls First Philosophy. The crux
of the problem is certainly to be found here ; but un-
happily It must remain a ciux. We do not know in
the least whether the Metaphysics was ever intended by
its author to be regarded as a single work, no doubt to
be revised, or whether it simply consists of those parts
of his writings which did not appear to his editors to
find a natural place elsewhere. We can only say that
the title it bears has given rise to the later term meta-
‘

physics,’ and that shows the importance of the matters

It treats But, as we have it, it is certainly not a
coherent whole ; it consists of fragments of very
different date, and it shows more than anything else that
Aristotle’s philosophy was never completed. It would
be out of place to say more of it here.
I do, however, feel bound before concluding to say
something about the Ethics Every one knows that
there are three works which bear this title in the
Aristotelian corpus^ the Niconiachean Ethics, the Eude-
mian Ethics, and the Magna Moralia, The last of these
may be left out of account for the present, but the two
first present a very real problem. During the nine-
teenth century most editors (including myself) ac-
quiesced in the view that the Nicomachean Ethics was
Aristotle’s, while the Etidemian Ethics was ascribed to
Eudemus, but of late this has been questioned, and it
has, in my opinion, been finally disproved by Jaeger.
According to him there are three well-marked stages
in Aristotle’s moral philosophy, represented by (i) the
Protrepticus, which was published and represents the
advanced Platonic period,
(2) the Eitdemian Ethics,
which belongs to the intermediate stage, and the
(3)
Nicomachean^ Ethics, which is one of Aristotle’s latest
works. This, he holds, is clear from the agreement
 ARISTOTLE 29s

of the Eudemtan Ethics with the Protrepticus^ especially

as thatwork can now be supplemented fromlamblichus
Even apart from that, the reference (B i, 1218'’, 34)
to cfwrcptAcot \oyoi proves that the work is genuinely
Aristotelian That it was written during his residence
in Asia Minor seems to follow from the appearance in
itofCoriscus(i22o , 19, and 1240*', 25)
That the Eudemtan Ethics comes between the Fro-
trepttcus and the Ntcomachean Ethics appears, Jaeger
holds, from many things, above all, perhaps, from the
way in which the three lives, the theoretic, the
*

practical, and the apolaustic, arc shown to be denved

from wisdom ((l>poinj(ri^)j goodness (apenj), and
pleasure (rjBomi]) quite in the Platonic manner It is
obvious that this could find no place in the Ntco-
machean Ethics, where the old Platonic use of ^povriiri^
as equivalent to o-o(^ia is given up and replaced by a
distinction between speculative a-otfua and practical
<j}povy)(Ti^ It is to be observed, however, that the
Ntcomachean Ethics takes a much higher view of cro^ia
or intellectual wisdom than the other It is not, in
fact, an adequate account of the matter to say, as Jaeger
does (p 250), that the theoretic life is only brought in
at the end of the Ntcomachean Ethics without ethical
goodness being made dependent upon it That is
true, no doubt, but it is very far from being the whole
truth It IS quite in accordance with the philosophical
method which Ansfot/e had /eamt from Phto to keep
the main purpose of a discussion to the end , and,
when the contemplative life is discussed in the
Ntcomachean Ethics, that is done with an ardour and
intensity which cannot be paralleled in any other
part of the work That, too, I take it, is whv
fjipovTjori^ or practical wisdom* is given only a
secondary importance in the sixth book The whole
treatise is intended to lead up to the assertion of
296 ARISTOTLE
the unique pre-eminence of speculative wisdom or
(TO(^Ca
In the last few pages of the Ntcomachean
fact, if
Ethics are genuine
—
—
and no one has suggested that they
are not ^we find that the ultimate good for man is just
’
the exercise of the theoretic or contemplative ‘ part
of the soul. The degradation of (f)p6vr]cn<; or
practical wisdom m Book vi. seems intended to exalt
the position of crocfiCa or theoretical wisdom, and its
activity even higher than before.
Oecopiay If, then,

the Ntcomachean Ethics belongs to the last years of

Aristotle’s life, as Jaeger holds it does, we shall be
driven to conclude that, at the time of his death,
Aristotle was on the point of teaching a system in
which everything was to be subordinated to the
theoretic or contemplative life I would suggest that
the same idea may be used to interpret the account of
vovs in the third book of the De Anima. That has
led to endless controversy, but I venture to think that
the apparent discrepancy between this and the earlier
books IS due to the same cause. The apparent de-
gradation of our psychical faculties which impresses
us in the first two books of the E)e Amma is like the
apparent degradation of (jipovrjcris in the sixth book
of the Ethics^ and is meant to prepare the way for the
exaltation of Mind (vovs), just as the lowei position
assigned to practical wisdom (^povrjcrL?) in the other
case is intended to prepare the way for the exaltation
of theoretical wisdom (cro^ta). It is very certainly
characteristic of Greek philosophical writings to keep
the main point till the end or near it and, if we argue
;

from the neglect of certain ideas in the earlier portion

of such works, we are very apt to go wrong. On the
other hand, if we read on to the end and then look back,
we shall often find things which have appeared difficult
to understand at first appear in a new light.
 ARISTOTLE 297

Only we must remember all the time that, in trying

to understand these works of Aristotle, we are not
dealing with published works, but with lectures If
we remember that, we not be at all clear that
shall
Jaeger is right m saying that, for the average Greek
of that time, the method of these works was strange
and repellent (p 360) Though the average Athenian
might no doubt find them so, we must alwajs re-
member that Aristotle was not an Athenian, and that
his hearers were even less so We
have only to glance
at the Ionic scientific literature of a century earlier,
such as the treatise of Hippocrates, Xlepi aepwv ySarav
ToTTcov, to feel that he is carrying on the traditional
Ionic scientific style and the traditional Ionic attitude
to the world I cannot feel that Jaeger is right in
saying (p 360) that there was anything fundamentally
new in Aristotle’s attitude to such things He seems
more nearly right in saying (p 434) that Aristotle had
also the world-horizon of the Ionian, of which no
Athenian ever dreamt^ though 1 should certainly
except Plato, who was an Athenian, and y et combined
an even wider sympathy than Aristotle s with an
interest in practical matters which Aristotle showed
himself incapable of feeling Here, too, Aristotle
IS a tjpical Ionian, though he had lived for twenty

}ears under the influence of an Athenian of pan-

Hellenic sympathies

IV
Nowhere does appear more clearly than at the
this
end of his life He had been the tutor of Alexander
the Great, but he seldom mentions him He does not
seem to have been conscious of the fact that his
position at Athens during the last thirteen years of his
life depended on Antipater And yet, when Antipater
298 ARISTOTLE
leftAthens and Alexander died (323 b.c.), he had to
leave Athens at once, and went to Chalcis m Euboea,
where he too died soon afterwards in his sixty-third
year. It is worthy of notice that Plato had been head
of the Academy till he was eighty, while Socrates was
just over seventy when he was put to death at the
height of his powers. The Greeks of this time lived
to great ages, and there can be no doubt at all that
Aristotle’s comparatively early death has deprived us
of that final revision of his system which he would
certainly have undertaken, and of which, as has been
indicated, some traces can be discovered even now.
Most of the best of what we have belongs to the time
when he was not at Athens, and the last thirteen years
of his life represent an incomplete period which was
brought to an end by political events with which he had
nothing to do, and in which, surprising as it may seem,
he took no interest. I venture to think that what is
most wanted is a study of his thought in these last
years, for which, as I have tried to show, there are
really certain data which Professor Jaeger has ignored.
According to him, it would seem that Aristotle spent
his last years in anticipating the learning and science of
Alexandria, and in some respects that is certainly
true. I feel convinced, however, that it is not the
whole truth, or even the most important part of it. I
believe, on the contrary, that it is still possible to
ascertain more than has yet been found out as to the
chronological order of his works. That has been
successfully done in the case of Plato, and, though it
may be more difficult in that of Aristotle, I have little
doubt that it could be done here too. Then, I believe,
we should see that the latest stage of Aristotle’s philo-
sophy was rather different from what it appears to be in
the valuable work which Professor Jaeger has already
given us. No doubt he is the first writer who has
 ARISTOTLE 299

attempted to follow up his development, but there is

still, I think, something to be done if we could only

determine what were his latest writings It is certain

at least that the man who wrote the last pages of the
Ntcomachean Ethics had still something more to say
when his work was prematurely interrupted