other departments. Had his life been prolonged to the age attained by Plato or Alexander von Humboldt, he might possibly have undertaken the setting forth of the philosophy of Mathematics. Physics, on the other hand—that is to say, the Physical and Natural Sciences—occupy 1447 pages, or fully one half, of the writings which are undoubtedly Aristotle’s. In his physical treatises one mind may be seen grappling, at first hand, with the provinces of almost all the different “Sections” of the British Association. Natural Philosophy, Astronomy, Physiology, and Natural History, are all marvellously founded in these treatises, by masterly analysis and classification of existing knowledge on the different subjects, and by the arrangement of facts, or supposed facts, under leading scientific ideas. Twelve books on Metaphysics occupy about one-tenth of the genuine remains of Aristotle. These books are obviously patched together out of the fragments of two or three unfinished treatises. How far this was done by the earlier Peripatetics, and how far by Andronicus, we cannot tell. But we here possess probably some of Aristotle’s latest thoughts. And the name “Metaphysics,” or “the things which follow after Physics,” was given to these books when they were put together, after Aristotle’s death, to indicate both chronological sequence in the order of composition, and also that the subject treated of lay beyond and above all physical inquiry.
In briefly grouping out the works of Aristotle, we have hitherto omitted to mention a class of writings, very important, and amounting to one-seventh of the
