about such natural pleasures as that of gain is only modified incontinence, a sign (as causa cognoscendi) of which is that it is not so bad as incontinence about carnal pleasures, and then argues that, because (as causa essendi) it is only modified incontinence, therefore it is not so bad. Or he might return again and again to the same point with a difference: there is a good instance in his conclusion that the speculative life is the highest happiness; which he first infers because it is the life of man’s highest and divine faculty, intelligence (1176 b-1178 a 8), then after an interval infers a second time because our speculative life is an imitation of that of God (1178 b 7-32), and finally after another interval infers a third time, because it will make man most dear to God (1179 a 22-32). Or, extending himself as it were still more, he might write two drafts, or double versions of his own, on the same subject; e.g. Physics, vii. and De Anima, ii. Or he might, going still further, in his long literary career write two or more treatises on the same subject, different and even more or less inconsistent with each other, as we shall find in the sequel. Finally, having a great number of discourses and treatises, containing all those small blemishes, around him in his library, and determined to collect, consolidate and connect them into a philosophical system, he would naturally be often taking them down from their places to consult and compare one with another, and as naturally enter in them references one to the other, and cross-references between one another. Thus he would enter in the Metaphysics a reference to the Physics, and in the Physics a reference to the Metaphysics, precisely because both were manuscripts in his library. For the same purpose of connexion he would be tempted to add a preface to a book like the Meteorologica. In order to refer back to the Physics, the De Coelo, and the De Generatione, this work begins by stating that the first causes of all nature and all natural motion, the stars ordered according to celestial motion and the bodily elements with their transmutations, and generation and corruption have all been discussed; and by adding that there remains to complete this investigation, what previous investigators called meteorology. To suppose this preface, presupposing many sciences, to have been written in 356, when the Meteorologica had been already commenced, would be absurd; but equally absurd would it be to reject that date on account of the preface, which even a modern author often writes long after his book. Nor is it at all absurd to suppose that, long after he began the Meteorologica, Aristotle himself added the preface in the process of gathering his general treatises on natural science into a system. So he might afterwards add the preface to the De Interpretatione, in order to connect it with the De Anima, though written afterwards, in order to connect his treatises on mind and on its expression. So also he might add the appendix to the Sophistical Elenchi, long after he had written that book, and perhaps, to judge from its being a general claim to have discovered the syllogism, when the founder of logic had more or less realized that he had written a number of connected treatises on reasoning.
The Question of Publication.—There is still another point which would facilitate Aristotle’s gradual composition of discourses into treatises and treatises into a system; there was no occasion for him to publish his manuscripts beyond his school. Printing has accustomed us to publication, and misled us into applying to ancient times the modern method of bringing out one book after another at definite dates by the same author. But Greek authors contemplated works rather than books. Some of the greatest authors were not even writers: Homer, Aesop, Thales, Socrates. Some who were writers were driven to publish by the occasion; and after the orders of government, which were occasionally published to be obeyed, occasional poems, such as the poems of Solon, the odes of Pindar and the plays of the dramatists, which all had a political significance, were probably the first writings to be published or, rather, recited and acted, from written copies. With them came philosophical poems, such as those of Xenophanes and Empedocles; the epical history of Herodotus; the dramatic philosophy of Plato. On a larger scale speeches written by orators to be delivered by litigants were published and encouraged publication; and, as the Attic orators were his contemporaries, publication had become pretty common in the time of Aristotle, who speaks of many bundles (δέσμας) of judicial speeches by Isocrates being hawked about by the booksellers (Fragm. 140).
No doubt then Aristotle’s library contained published copies of the works of other authors, as well as the autographs of his own. It does not follow that his own works went beyond his library and his school. Publication to the world is designed for readers, who at all times have demanded popular literature rather than serious philosophy such as that of Aristotle. Accordingly it becomes a difficult question, how far Aristotle’s works were published in his lifetime. In answering it we must be careful to exclude any evidence which refers to Aristotle as a man, not as a writer, or refers to him as a writer but does not prove publication while he was alive.
Beginning then with his early writings, which are now lost, the dialogues On Poetry and the Eudemus were probably the published discourses to which Aristotle himself refers (Poetics, 15; De Anima, i. 4); and the dialogue Protrepticus was known to the Cynic Crates, pupil of Diogenes and master of Zeno (Fragm. 50), but not necessarily in Aristotle’s lifetime, as Crates was still alive in 307. Again, Aristotle’s early rhetorical instructions and perhaps writings, as well as his opinion that a collection of proverbs is not worth while, must have been known outside Aristotle’s rhetorical school to the orator Cephisodorus, pupil of Isocrates and master of Demosthenes, for him to be able to write in his Replies to Aristotle (ἐν ταῖς πρὸς Ἀριστοτέλην ἀντιγραφαῖς) an admired defence of Isocrates (Dionys. H. De Isoc. 18). But this early dialectic and rhetoric, being popular, would tend to be published. History comes nearer to philosophy; and Aristotle’s Constitutions were known to his enemy Timaeus, who attacked him for disparaging the descent of the Locrians of Italy, according to Polybius (xii.), who defended Aristotle. But as Timaeus brought his history down to 264 B.C. (Polyb. i. 5), and therefore might have got his information after Aristotle’s death, we cannot be sure that any of the Constitutions were published in the author’s lifetime. We are equally at a loss to prove that Aristotle published his philosophy. He had, like all the great, many enemies, personal and philosophical; but in his lifetime they attacked the man, not his philosophy. In the Megarian school, first Eubulides quarrelled with him and calumniated him (Diog. Laert. ii. 109) in his lifetime; but the attack was on his life, not on his writings: afterwards Stilpo wrote a dialogue (Ἀριστοτέλης), which may have been a criticism of the Aristotelian philosophy from the Megarian point of view; but he outlived Aristotle thirty years. In the absence of any confirmation, “the current philosophemata” (τὰ ἐγκύκλια φιλοσοφήματα), mentioned in the De Coela (i. 9, 279 a 30), are sometimes supposed to be Aristotle’s published philosophy, to which he is referring his readers. But the example there given, that the divine is unchangeable, is precisely such a religious commonplace as might easily be a current philosopheme of Aristotle’s day, not of Aristotle; and this interpretation suits the parallel passage in the Nic. Ethics (i. 5, 1096 a 3) where opinions about the happiness of political life are said to have been sufficiently treated “even in current discussions” (καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἐγκυκλίοις).
There is therefore no contemporary proof that Aristotle published any part of his mature philosophical system in his lifetime. It is true that a book of Andronicus, as reported by Aulus Gellius (xx. 5), contained a correspondence between Alexander and Aristotle in which the pupil complained that his master had published his “acroatic discourses” (τοὺς ἀκροατικοὺς τῶν λόγων). But ancient letters are proverbially forgeries, and in the three hundred years which elapsed between the supposed correspondence and the time of Andronicus there was plenty of time for the forgery of these letters. But even if the correspondence is genuine, “acroatic discourses” must be taken to mean what Alexander would mean by them in the time of Aristotle, and not what they had come to mean by the time of Andronicus. Alexander meant those discourses which Aristotle, when he was his tutor, intended for the ears of himself and his fellow-pupils; such as the early political works on Monarchy and on Colonies, and the early rhetorical works, the Theodectea, the Collection of
