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THE ‘ART OF POETRY’ UNFINISHED.
99
adds a curious chapter (xxv.) on Criticisms, and how to answer them, in which the spirit of the dialectician is very apparent. All this shows that Aristotle was only gradually feeling his way to the division of sciences. He wrote, as it were, under pressure, on one great subject after another, and the light only dawned on him as he went along. Could he have rewritten his works, probably all would have been brought into lucid order. But it is clear that the little treatise called ‘Poetic’ not only was never rewritten, but was never finished as its author intended it to be.
