morals, while it is like dialectical and sophistic arguments (i. 4, 1359 b 2-17).
As then Aristotle himself regarded rhetoric as partly science and partly dialectic, perhaps he would have said that his works on reasoning are some science and others not, and that, while the investigation of syllogism with a view to scientific syllogism in the Analytics is analytic science, the investigation of dialectical syllogism, in the Topics, with its abuse, eristical syllogism, in the Sophistici Elenchi, is dialectic. At any rate, these miscellaneous works on reasoning have no right to stand first in Aristotle’s writings under any one name, logic or Organon. As he neither put them together, nor on any one definite plan, we are left to convenience; and the most convenient place is with the psychology of the De Anima.
As for dialectic itself, it would have been represented by Aristotle’s early dialogues, had they not been lost except a few fragments. But none of his extant writings is so much dialectic, like a Platonic dialogue. They contain however many relics of dialectic. The Rhetoric is declared by him to be partly dialectic. The Topics is at least an investigation of dialectic, which has had an immense influence on the method of argument. The Magna Moralia almost runs into dialogue. Besides, all the extant works, though apparently didactic, are full of dialectical matter in the way of opinions (λεγόμενα), difficulties and doubts (ἀπορήματα, ἀπορίαι), solutions (λύσεις), and of dialectical style in the way of conversational expressions. It is probable also that the “extraneous discourses” (οἱ ἐξωτερικοὶ λόγοι) sometimes mentioned in them here mean dialectical discussions of a subject from opinions extraneous to its nature, as opposed to scientific deduction from its appropriate principles. From the eight passages, which refer to the extraneous discourses, we find (1) that Platonic forms were made by them matters of common talk (τεθρύληται, Met. Μ 1, 1076 a 28); (2) that time was made by them matter of doubts, which in this case are Aristotle’s own doubts (Phys. iv. 10, 217 b 31-218 a 30); (3) that the discussions of Platonic forms in them and in philosophical discourses were different (E.E. i. 8, 1217 b 22); (4) that the ordinary distinction between goods of mind, body and estate is one which we make (διαιρούμεθα) in them (E.E. ii. 1, 1218 b 34); (5) that in them appeared the division of soul into irrational and rational, used by Aristotle (E.N. i. 13, 1102 a 26), and attributed to Plato; (6) that the distinction between action and production accepted by Aristotle appeared in them (E.N. vi. 4, 1140 a 3); (7) that a distinction between certain kinds of rule is one which we make often (διοριζόμεθα ... πολλάκις) in them (Pol. Γ 6, 1278 b 31); (8) that a discussion about the best life, used by Aristotle, was made in them (Pol. Η 1, 1323 a 22). On the whole, the interpretation which best suits all the passages is that extraneous discourses mean any extra-scientific dialectical discussions, oral or written, occurring in dialogues by Plato, or by Aristotle, or by anybody else, or in ordinary conversation, on any subject under the sun.
Among all the eight passages mentioned above, the most valuable is that from the Eudemian Ethics (Α 8), which discriminates extraneous discourses and philosophical (καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἐξωτερικοῖς λόγοις καὶ ἐν τοῖς κατὰ φιλοσοφίαν, 1217 b 22-23); and it is preceded (Α 6, 1216 b 35-37 a 17), by a similar distinction between foreign discourses (ἀλλοτρίοι λόγοι) and discourses appropriate to the thing (οἰκεῖοι λόγοι τοῦ πράγματος), which marks even better the opposition intended between dialectic and philosophy. Now, as in all eight passages Aristotle speaks, somewhat disparagingly, of “even (καί) extraneous discourses,” and as these include his own early dialogues, they must be taken to mean that though he might quote them, he no longer wished to be judged by his early views, and therefore drew a strong line of demarcation between his early dialogues and the mature treatises of his later philosophical system. Now, both were in the hands of his readers in the time of Andronicus. Therefore his contemporary, Cicero, who knew the early dialogues on Philosophy, the Eudemus and the Protrepticus, and also among the mature scientific writings the Topics, Rhetoric, Politics, Physics and De Coelo, to some extent, was justified by Aristotle’s example and precept in drawing the line between two kinds of books, one written popularly, called exoteric, the other more accurately (Cic. De Finibus, v. 5). But there was no doubt a tendency to extend the term “exoteric” from the dialectical to the more popular of the scientific writings of Aristotle, to make a new distinction between exoteric and acroamatic or esoteric, and even to make out that Aristotle was in the habit of teaching both exoterically and acroamatically day by day as head of the Peripatetic school at Athens. Aulus Gellius in the 2nd century A.D. supplies the best proof of this growth of tradition in his Noctes Atticae (xx. 5). He says that Aristotle (1) divided his commentationes and arts taught to his pupils into ἐξωτερικά and ἀκροατικά; (2) taught the latter in the morning walk (ἐωθινὸν περίπατον), the former in the evening walk (δειλινὸν περίπατον); (3) divided his books in the same manner; (4) defended himself against Alexander’s letter, complaining that it was not right to his pupils to have published his acroamatic works, by replying in a letter that they were published and not published, because they are intelligible only to those who heard them. Gellius then quotes this correspondence, also given by Plutarch, and quotes it ex Andronici philosophi libro. The answer to the first three points is that Aristotle did not make any distinction between exoteric and acroamatic, and was not likely to have any longer taught his exoteric dialogues when he was teaching his mature philosophy at Athens, but may have alternated the teaching of the latter between the more abstruse and the more popular parts which had gradually come to be called “exoteric.” As regards the last point, the authority of Andronicus proves that he at all events did not exaggerate his own share in publishing Aristotle’s works; but it does not prove either that this correspondence between Alexander and Aristotle took place, or that Aristotle called his philosophical writings acroamatic, or that he had published them wholesale to the world.
The literary career of Aristotle falls into three periods, (1) The early period; when he was writing and publishing exoteric dialogues, but also tending to write didactic works, and beginning his scientific writings, e.g. the Politics in 357, the Meteorologica in 356. (2) The immature period; when he was continuing his didactic and scientific works, and composing first drafts, e.g. the Categories, the Eudemian Ethics, the Magna Moralia, the Rhetoric to Alexander. (3) The mature period; when he was finishing his scientific works, completing his system, and not publishing it but teaching it in the Peripatetic school; when he would teach not his early dialogues, nor his immature writings and first drafts, but mature works, e.g. the Metaphysics, the Nicomachean Ethics, the Rhetoric; and above all teach his whole system as far as possible in the real order of his classification of science.
VI. The Aristotelian Philosophy
We have now (1) sketched the life of Aristotle as a reader and a writer from early manhood; (2) have watched him as a Platonist, partly imitating but gradually emancipating himself from his master to form a philosophy of his own; (3) have traced the gradual composition of his writings from Plato’s time onwards; (4) have distinguished earlier, more Platonic and rudimentary, from later, more independent and mature, writings; (5) have founded the real order of his writings, not on chronology, nor on tradition, but on his classification of science and learning. It remains to answer the final question:—What is the Aristotelian philosophy, which its author gradually formed with so much labour? Here we have only room for its spirit, which we shall try to give as if he were himself speaking to us, as head of the Peripatetic school at Athens, and holding no longer the early views of his dialogues, or the immature views of such treatises as the Categories, but only his mature views, such as he expresses in the Metaphysics. Aristotle was primarily a metaphysician, a philosopher of things, who uses the objective method of proceeding from being to thinking. We shall begin therefore with that primary philosophy which is the real basis of his philosophy, and proceed in the order of his classification of science to give his chief doctrines on:—
- (1) Speculative philosophy, metaphysical and physical, including his psychology, and with it his logic.
- (2) Practical philosophy, ethics and politics.
- (3) Productive science, or art.
Things are substances (οὐσίαι), each of which is a separate individual (χωριστόν, τόδε τι, καθ᾽ ἕκαστον) and is variously affected as quantified, qualified, related, active, passive and so forth, in categories of things which are attributes (συμβεβηκότα), different from the category of substance, but real only as predicates belonging to some substance, and are in fact only the substance itself affected (αὐτὸ πεπονθός). The essence of each substance, being what it is (τὸ τί ἐστι, τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι), is that substance; e.g. this rational animal, Socrates. Substances are so similar that the individuals of a species are even the same in essence or substance, e.g. Callias and Socrates differ in matter but are the same in essence, as rational animals. The universal (τὸ καθόλου) is real only as one predicate belonging to many individual substances: it is therefore not a substance. There are then no separate universal forms, as Plato supposed. There are attributes and universals, real as belonging to individual substances, whose being is their being. The mind, especially in mathematics, abstracts numbers, motions, relations, causes, essences, ends, kinds; and it over-abstracts things mentally separate into things really separate. But reality consists only of individual substances, numerous, moving, related, active as efficient causes, passive as material causes, essences as formal causes, ends as final causes, and in classes which are real
