one can ever say that he has reached. In this passage we find ourselves rather in the region of Metaphysics than of logic, and it is remarkable that here the phrase “first substances” is used, not, as in the ‘Categories,’ to denote ordinary individual existences on the earth, but as a term to denote the eternal, primeval substances which have never not been, such as, in Aristotle’s view, were the stars, and sun, and planets.
The treatise ‘On Interpretation’ was evidently not written at the same time with the ‘Categories,’ or is by a different author, and on a different plane of thought. It is more philosophical and more Aristotelian; it quotes both the ‘Analytics’ and the work ‘On the Soul,’ and therefore cannot be an early production of the Stagirite’s. There is a tradition that Andronicus of Ehodes held that this treatise was not written by Aristotle at all, while Ammonius, a great commentator, argued in favour of its genuineness. Their arguments, which have been preserved, do not seem conclusive one way or the other. Perhaps the only reason against considering this to have been the writing of Aristotle himself is, that while it obviously is as late as the period of his great treatises, it is not in the manner of those treatises. On the whole, it seems safest to conclude that this little book must consist of the notes of Aristotle’s oral teaching upon the elementary bases of Logic, faithfully recording his ideas, and often the very words which he had used.
We may set aside, then, the ‘Categories’ and the ‘Interpretation’ as of doubtful origin, and as at all events not having been originally intended for the
