BY WILLIAM C. WILKINSON.

Philosopher, though he by eminence is ranked, Aristotle was, too, something of an encyclopedist. He traversed almost the whole circle of the sciences, as that circle existed for the ancient world. But he was not simply first a learner, and then a teacher, of what others had found out before him. He was also an explorer and discoverer. Inventor also he was, if between discovery and invention we are to make a difference. He was a great methodizer and systematizer of knowledge. He bore to Plato the personal relation of pupil.

The history of Aristotle’s intellectual influence is remarkable. That influence has suffered several phases of wax and wane, several alternate occultations and renewals of brightness. During a certain period of time, covering several hundred years, he was, perhaps beyond the fortune of any other man that ever lived, the lord of human thought. We mean the time of the schoolmen[1] so called. From near the close of the thirteenth century, until the era of the Reformation, Aristotle reigned supreme in the schools of Christian theology, which is the same thing as to say that he was acknowledged universal monarch of the European mind. The business of the schoolmen may be said to have been to state the dogmas of the church in the forms of the Aristotelian logic, and then to reconcile those dogmas so stated, with the teachings of the Aristotelian philosophy.

Curiously enough, the introduction of Aristotle to the doctors of the church was through the Mohammedan Arabs. These men had, during a term of centuries, been the continuers of the intellectual life of the race. While through the long night of those ages of darkness the Christian mind slept, the Arabian mind, waking, gave itself largely to the study of Aristotle. The Greek philosopher was posthumously naturalized a barbarian; for Aristotle’s writings were now translated from their original tongue into Arabic. In this Arabic version, the celebrated Ibn Roshd (chiefly famous under his latinized name A-ver'roËs) knew Aristotle and commented on him. The Arabic commentaries of Averroes were translated into Latin, and the thought of Aristotle thus became once more accessible to European students. Averroes (A. D. 1149-1198) himself was of the Moors of Spain.

For centuries previous to the time when the son and successor of good Haroun al Raschid,[2] known at least by name to the readers and lovers of Tennyson, collected at Bagdad all the scattered volumes of Greek letters that his agents could find in Armenia, Syria and Egypt—for centuries, we say, previous to this, Aristotle suffered an almost complete arrest and suspension of intellectual influence. That man would have been a bold prophet who should then have predicted what a resurrection to power awaited the slumbering philosopher.

Still earlier, however, than this, that is, during the interval between the third Christian century and the sixth, Aristotle enjoyed a great vogue. He was studied and commented on as if all human wisdom was summed up in him. The spirit of independent and original philosophy had perished, and whatever philosophic aptitude survived was well content to exhaust itself in expounding Aristotle. Aristotle’s works became a kind of common Bible to the universal mind of the Roman empire. This was the period of the Greek scholiasts, so-called—in more ordinary language, commentators.

Taking the reverse or regressive direction of history, we have thus run back to a point of time some six or seven centuries subsequent to the personal life and activity of Aristotle. During the latter half of these centuries, Aristotle’s fame was gradually growing, from total obscurity to its great culmination in splendor under the scholiasts.

Before that growth began, the productions of Aristotle had experienced a fortune that is one of the romances of literary history. The great pupil of Plato had himself no great pupil to continue after his death the illustrious succession of Grecian philosophy. His writings, unduplicated manuscripts they seem to have been, fell into the hands of a disciple, who, dying, bequeathed them to a disciple of his own, residing in the Troad. To the Troad accordingly they went. Here, with a view to save them from the grasp of a ruthless royal collector of valuable parchments, the family having these works in possession hid them in an underground vault, in which they lay moldering and forgotten one hundred and fifty years! It was thus in all nearly two hundred years that Aristotle’s thoughts were lost to the world. When at last it was deemed safe, the precious documents were brought out and sold to a rich and cultivated Athenian. This gentleman, let us name him for honor, it was A-pel'li-con, had unawares purchased his prize for a rapacious Roman collector. Sylla seized it, on his capture of Athens, and sent it to Rome. At Rome it had the good fortune to be appreciated. One An-dro-ni'cus edited the collection, and gave to the world that, probably, which is now the accepted text of Aristotle.

But, romantic as has been the succession of vicissitudes befalling his productions and his fame, Aristotle is, in his extant writings, anything but a romantic author. A less adorned, a less succulent style, than the style in which the Stagirite (he was of Stag'i-rus, in Macedonia) wrote, it would be difficult to find. Still it is a style invested at least with the charm of evident severe intentness, in the writer, on his chosen aim. Cicero, it is true, speaks of Aristotle’s style in language of praise that would well befit a characterization of Plato. But Cicero must have had in view works of the philosopher other than those which we possess, works written perhaps in the author’s more florid youth. With this conjecture agrees the fact that a list of Aristotle’s works, made by the authorities of the renowned Alexandrian library, contains numerous titles not appearing in the writings that remain to us attributed to Aristotle.

Aristotle was not, as Plato was, properly a man of letters. Or, if he did bear this character, the evidence of it has perished. What we possess of his intellectual productions exhibits the author in the perfectly dry and colorless light of a man of science. Even in those treatises of his in which he comes nearest to the confines of pure and proper literature, his interest is rather scientific than literary. He discusses in two separate books the art of rhetoric and the art of poetry; but he conducts his discussion without enthusiasm, without imagination, in the severely strict spirit of the analyst and philosopher. The text of the two treatises now referred to survives in a state of great imperfection. Indeed, the same is the case generally with Aristotle’s works. Critics have even surmised that, in some instances, notes of lectures, taken by pupils while the master according to his wont was walking about and extemporizing discourse, have done duty in place of authentic autograph originals supplied by the hand of Aristotle himself. The title “Peripatetic” (walk-about), given to the Aristotelian philosophy, was suggested by the great teacher’s habit, thus alluded to, of doing his work as teacher under the stimulus of exercise on his feet in the open air.

The non-literary character of Aristotle’s works has to a great extent excluded him from the course of Greek reading adopted by colleges—this, and moreover the fact that he occupies a position at the extreme hither limit, if not quite outside the extreme limit, of the Greek classic age. Still he is now and then read in college; and at any rate he is too redoubtable a name among those names which in their motions were

not to be an interesting object of knowledge to the readers of The Chautauquan.

The productions of Aristotle are numerous. The Alexandrian bibliography of him gives one hundred and forty-six titles of his works. Of the books thus catalogued not a vestige remains, except in an occasional quotation from them at the hands of some other ancient writer. The works commonly printed as Aristotle’s form an entirely different list. We give a few of the leading titles or subjects: “Organon,” a collective name for various writings that made up a system of logic; “Rhetoric,” “Po-et'ics” (art of poetry), “Ethics,” “Politics,” “Natural Philosophy,” “Biology,” “Metaphysics.” [This last word, which has acquired in modern use a very distinct meaning of its own, was originally a mere meaningless designation of certain investigations or discussions entered into by Aristotle after his physical researches. The preposition meta (after), and physica (physics), give the etymology of the term.] The comprehensive or, as we before said, encyclopÆdic range of Aristotle’s intellectual activity will to the observant reader be sufficiently indicated by this list of titles.

For his work in natural history, Aristotle was powerfully supported by one of the most resplendent military geniuses that the world has ever seen, Alexander the Great. To this prince and warrior, when he was a lad, the philosopher had discharged the office of private teacher. It would appear that either Aristotle was courtier enough, or young Alexander was man enough, to make this relation a pleasant one to the boy. For, in later years, the conqueror of the world presented to his former teacher a round million of dollars to make himself comfortable withal. But who can tell which it was, gratitude for benefit received, or remorse for trouble occasioned, that prompted the ex post facto[3] royal munificence? Perhaps it was both—a tardy gratitude quickened by a generous remorse.

The chief glory of Aristotle is to have at once invented and finished the science of logic. For this is an achievement which may justly be credited to the philosopher of Stagirus. It would generally be conceded that, since Aristotle’s day, little or nothing substantial has been added to the results of his labor in the field of pure logic. The name Or'ga-non (instrument) is not Aristotle’s word, but that of some ancient editor of his works. It is a noteworthy name, as having dictated to Bacon the title to his epoch-making work, the Novum Organum (the new method or instrument).

It would not be easy to give an exhaustive account of Aristotle’s productions, and make the account attractive reading. We shall not undertake so impracticable a task. Let our readers accept our word for it that Aristotle, though a justly renowned name in the history of thought, is not fitted to be a popular author.

From his “History of Animals” we present a specimen extract that will perhaps with some readers go far toward confuting what we just now said. There are, we confess, some things in this treatise that read almost as if they might belong to that truly fascinating book, “Goldsmith’s Animated Nature:”

This morsel, our readers must consider, is not a very characteristic specimen of the feast that, take all his works together, Aristotle spreads for his students. But it is as toothsome as any we could offer. If it makes our readers wish for more, that is as friendly a feeling as we could possibly hope to inspire in them toward Aristotle. We shall now let them, in that mood, bid the great philosopher farewell.