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In the fourth and fifth chapters of my work on Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, I investigated the question of the Platonic Canon, and attempted to determine, upon the best grounds open to us, the question, What are the real works of Plato? I now propose to discuss the like question respecting Aristotle.

But the premisses for such a discussion are much less simple in regard to Aristotle than in regard to Plato. As far as the testimony of antiquity goes, we learn that the Canon of Thrasyllus, dating at least from the time of the Byzantine Aristophanes, and probably from an earlier time, was believed by all readers to contain the authentic works of Plato and none others; an assemblage of dialogues, some unfinished, but each undivided and unbroken. The only exception to unanimity in regard to the Platonic Canon, applies to ten dialogues, which were received by some (we do not know by how many, or by whom) as Platonic, but which, as Diogenes informs us, were rejected by agreement of the most known and competent critics. This is as near to unanimity as can be expected. The doubts, now so multiplied, respecting the authenticity of various dialogues included in the Canon of Thrasyllus, have all originated with modern scholars since the beginning of the present century, or at least since the earlier compositions of Wyttenbach. It was my task to appreciate the value of those doubts; and, in declining to be guided by them, I was at least able to consider myself as adhering to the views of all known ancient critics.

Very different is the case when we attempt to frame an Aristotelian Canon, comprising all the works of Aristotle and none others. We find the problem far more complicated, and the matters of evidence at once more defective, more uncertain, and more contradictory.

The different works now remaining, and published in the Berlin edition of Aristotle, are forty-six in number. But, among these, several were disallowed or suspected even by some ancient critics, while modern critics have extended the like judgment yet farther. Of several others again, the component sections (either the books, in our present phraseology, or portions thereof) appear to have existed once as detached rolls, to have become disjointed or even to have parted company, and to have been re-arranged or put together into aggregates, according to the judgment of critics and librarians. Examples of such doubtful aggregates, or doubtful arrangements, will appear when we review the separate Aristotelian compositions (the Metaphysica, Politica, &c.). It is, however, by one or more of these forty-six titles that Aristotle is known to modern students, and was known to medićval students.

But the case was very different with ancient literati, such as Eratosthenes, Polybius, Cicero, Strabo, Plutarch, &c., down to the time of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Athenćus, Diogenes Laertius, &c., towards the close of the second century after the Christian era. It is certain that these ancients perused many works of Aristotle, or generally recognized as his, which we do not now possess; and among those which we do now possess, there are many which it is not certain that they perused, or even knew.

Diogenes Laertius, after affirming generally that Aristotle had composed a prodigious number of books (πάμπλειστα βίβλια), proceeds to say, that, in consequence of the excellence of the author in every variety of composition, he thinks it proper to indicate them briefly.1 He then enumerates one hundred and forty-six distinct titles of works, with the number of books or sections contained in each work. The subjects are exceedingly heterogeneous, and the form of composition likewise very different; those which come first in the list being Dialogues,2 while those which come last are Epistles, Hexameters, and Elegies. At the close of the list we read: All of them together are 445,270 lines, and this is the number of books (works) composed by Aristotle.3 A little farther on, Diogenes adds, as an evidence of the extraordinary diligence and inventive force of Aristotle, that the books (works) enumerated in the preceding list were nearly four hundred in number, and that these were not contested by any one; but that there were many other writings, and dicta besides, ascribed to Aristotle ascribed (we must understand him to mean) erroneously, or at least so as to leave much doubt.4

1 Diog. La. v. 21. Συνέγραψε δὲ πάμπλειστα βίβλια, ἅπερ ἀκόλουθον ἡγησάμην ὑπογράψαι, διὰ τὴν περὶ πάντας λόγους τἀνδρὸς ἀρετήν.

2 Bernays has pointed out (in his valuable treatise, Die Dialoge des Aristoteles, p. 133) that the first in order, nineteen in number, among the titles enumerated by Diogenes, designate Dialogues. The longest of them, those which included more than one book or section, are enumerated first of all. Some of the dialogues appear to have coincided, either in title or in subject, with some of the Platonic: Περὶ Δικαιοσύνης, in four books (comparable with Platos Republic); Πολιτικοῦ, in two books; Σοφιστὴς, Μενέξενος, Συμπόσιον, each in one book; all similar in title to works of Plato; perhaps also another, Περὶ ῥητορικῆς ἢ Γρύλλος, the analogue of Platos Gorgias.

3 Diog. La. v. 27. γίγνονται αἱ πᾶσαι μυριάδες στίχων τέτταρες καὶ τετταράκοντα πρὸς τοῖς πεντακισχιλίοις καὶ διακοσίοις ἑβδομήκοντα. Καὶ τοσαῦτα μὲν αὐτῷ πεπραγμάτευται βίβλια.

4 Diog. La. v. 34. Heitz (Die Verlorenen Schriften des Aristoteles, p. 17) notices, as a fact invalidating the trustworthiness of the catalogue given by Diogenes, that Diogenes, in other places, alludes to Aristotelian compositions which are not mentioned in his own catalogue. For example, though Diogenes, in the catalogue, allows only five books to the Ethica, yet he himself alludes (v. 21) to the seventh book of the Ethica. But this example can hardly be relied upon, because ἐν τῷ ἑβδόμῳ τῶν ἠθικῶν is only a conjecture of H. Stephens or Ménage. The only case which Heitz really finds to sustain his remark, is the passage of the Promium (i. 8), where Diogenes cites Aristotle ἐν τῷ Μαγικῷ, that work not being named in his catalogue. But there is another case (not noticed by Heitz) which appears to me still stronger. Diogenes cites at length the Hymn or Pćan composed by Aristotle in honour of Hermeias. Now there is no general head of his catalogue under which this hymn could fall. Here Anonymus (to be presently mentioned) has a superiority over Diogenes; for he introduces, towards the close of his catalogue, one general head ἐγκώμια ἢ ὕμνους, which is not to be found in Diogenes.

We have another distinct enumeration of the titles of Aristotles works, prepared by an anonymous biographer cited in the notes of Ménage to Diogenes Laertius.5 This anonymous list contains only one hundred and twenty-seven titles, being nineteen less than the list in Diogenes. The greater number of titles are the same in both; but Anonymus has eight titles which are not found in Diogenes, while Diogenes has twenty-seven titles which are not given by Anonymus. There are therefore thirty-five titles which rest on the evidence of one alone out of the two lists. Anonymus does not specify any total number of lines; nevertheless he gives the total number of books composed by Aristotle as being nearly four hundred the same as Diogenes. This total number cannot be elicited out of the items enumerated by Anonymus; but it may be made to coincide pretty nearly with the items in Diogenes,6 provided we understand by books, sections or subdivisions of one and the same title or work.

5 Ménage ad Diog. tom. ii. p. 201. See the very instructive treatise of Professor Heitz, Die Verlorenen Schriften des Aristoteles, p. 15 (Leipzig, 1865).

6 Heitz, Die Verl. Schrift. des Aristot. p. 51. Such coincidence assumes that we reckon the Πολιτεῖαι and the Epistles each as one book.

I think it unnecessary to transcribe these catalogues of the titles of works mostly lost. The reader will find them clearly printed in the learned work of Val. Rose, Aristoteles Pseudepigraphus, pp. 12–20.

The two catalogues just mentioned, agreeing as they do in the total number of books and in the greater part of the items, may probably be considered not as original and copy, but as inaccurate transcripts from the same original authority. Yet neither of the two transcribers tells us what that original authority was. We may, however, be certain that each of them considered his catalogue to comprehend all that Aristotle could be affirmed on good authority to have published; Diogenes plainly signifies thus much, when he gives not only the total number of books, but the total number of lines. Such being the case, we expect to find in it, of course, the titles of the forty-six works composing the Berlin edition of Aristotle now before us. But this expectation is disappointed. The far greater number of the Aristotelian works which we now peruse are not specified either in the list of Diogenes, or in that of Anonymus.7 Moreover, the lists also fail to specify the titles of various works which are not now extant, but which we know from Aristotle himself that he really composed.8

7 Heitz, Verl. Schr. Aristot. p. 18, remarks that In diesem Verzeichnisse (that of Diogenes) die bei weitem grösste Zahl derjenigen Schriften fehlt, welche wir heute noch besitzen, und die wir als den eigentlichen Kern der aristotelischen Lehre enthaltend zu betrachten gewohnt sind. Cf. p. 32. Brandis expresses himself substantially to the same effect (Aristoteles, Berlin, 1853, pp. 77, 78, 96); and Zeller also (Gesch. der Phil. 2nd ed. Aristot. Schriften, p. 43).

8 Heitz, Verl. Schr. des Aristoteles, p. 56, seq.

The last-mentioned fact is in itself sufficiently strange and difficult to explain, and our difficulty becomes aggravated when we combine it with another fact hardly less surprising. Both Cicero, and other writers of the century subsequent to him (Dionysius Hal., Quintilian, &c.), make reference to Aristotle, and especially to his dialogues, of which none have been preserved, though the titles of several are given in the two catalogues mentioned above. These writers bestow much encomium on the style of Aristotle; but what is remarkable is, that they ascribe to it attributes which even his warmest admirers will hardly find in the Aristotelian works now remaining. Cicero extols the sweetness, the abundance, the variety, the rhetorical force which he discovered in Aristotles writings: he even goes so far as to employ the phrase flumen orationis aureum (a golden stream of speech), in characterizing the Aristotelian style.9 Such predicates may have been correct, indeed were doubtless correct, in regard to the dialogues, and perhaps other lost works of Aristotle; but they describe exactly the opposite10 of what we find in all the works preserved. With most of these (except the History of Animals) Cicero manifests no acquaintance; and some of the best modern critics declare him to have been ignorant of them.11 Nor do other ancient authors, Plutarch, Athenćus, Diogenes Laertius, &c., give evidence of having been acquainted with the principal works of Aristotle known to us. They make reference only to works enumerated in the Catalogue of Diogenes Laertius.12

9 Cicero, Acad. Prior. ii. 38, 119: Quum enim tuus iste Stoicus sapiens syllabatim tibi ista dixerit, veniet flumen orationis aureum fundens Aristoteles, qui illum desipere dicat. Also Topica, i. 3. Quibus (i.e. those who were ignorant of Aristotle) eo minus ignoscendum est, quod non modo rebus iis, quć ab illo dictć et inventć sunt, adlici debuerunt, sed dicendi quoque incredibili quâdam quum copiâ, tum suavitate. Also De Oratore, i. 11, 49; Brutus, 31, 121; De Nat. Deor. ii. 37; De Inventione, ii. 2; De Finibus, i. 5, 14; Epistol. ad Atticum, ii. 1, where he speaks of the Aristotelia pigmenta, along with the μυροθήκιον of Isokrates. Dionysius Hal. recommends the style of Aristotle in equal terms of admiration: παραληπτέον δὲ καὶ Ἀριστοτέλη εἰς μίμησιν τῆς τε περὶ τὴν ἑρμηνείαν δεινότητος καὶ τῆς σαφηνείας, καὶ τοῦ ἡδέος καὶ πολυμαθοῦς (De Veter. Script. Censurâ, p. 430, R.; De Verb. Copiâ, p. 187). Quintilian extols the eloquendi suavitas among Aristotles excellences (Inst. Or. X. i. p. 510). Demetrius Phalereus (or the author who bears that title), De Eloquentiâ, s. 128, commends αἱ Ἀριστοτέλους χάριτες. David the Armenian, who speaks of him (having reference to the dialogue) as Ἀφροδίτης ἐννόμου γέμων (the correction of Bernays, Dial. des Arist. p. 137) καὶ χαρίτων ἀνάμεστος, probably copies the judgment of predecessors (Scholia ad Categor. p. 26, b. 36, Brandis).

Bernays (Die Dialoge des Aristoteles, pp. 3–5) points out how little justice has been done by modern critics to the literary merits, exhibited in the dialogues and other works now lost, of one whom we know only as a dornichten und wortkargen Systematiker.

10 This opinion is insisted on by Ravaisson, Essai sur la Métaphysique dAristote, pp. 210, 211.

11 Valentine Rose, Aristoteles Pseudepigraphus, p. 23: Cicero philosophicis certe ipsius Aristotelis libris nunquam usus est. Heitz, Die Verlor. Schrift. des Aristot. pp. 31, 158, 187: Cicero, dessen Unbekanntschaft mit beinahe sämmtlichen heute vorhandenen Werken des Aristoteles eine unstreitige Thatsache bildet, deren Bedeutung man sich umsonst bemüht hat abzuschwächen. Madvig, Excursus VII. ad Ciceron. De Finibus, p. 855: Non dubito profiteri, Ciceronem mihi videri dialogos Aristotelis populariter scriptos, et Rhetorica (quibus hic Topica adnumero) tum πολιτείας legisse; difficiliora vero, quibus omnis interior philosophia continebatur, aut omnino non attigisse, aut si aliquando attigerit, non longe progressum esse, ut ipse de subtilioribus Aristotelis sententiis aliquid habere possit explorati. The language here used by Madvig is more precise than that of the other two; for Cicero must be allowed to have known, and even to have had in his library, the Topica of Aristotle.

12 See this point enforced by Heitz, pp. 29–31. Athenćus (xiv. 656) refers to a passage of Philochorus, in which Philochorus alludes to Aristotle, that is, as critics have hitherto supposed, to Aristot. Meteorol. iv. 3, 21. Bussemaker (in his Prćfat. ad Aristot. Didot, vol. iv. p. xix.) has shewn that this supposition is unfounded, and that the passage more probably refers to one of the Problemata Inedita (iii. 43) which Bussemaker has first published in Didots edition of Aristotle.

Here, then, we find several embarrassing facts in regard to the Aristotelian Canon. Most of the works now accepted and known as belonging to Aristotle, are neither included in the full Aristotelian Catalogue given by Diogenes, nor were they known to Cicero; who, moreover, ascribes to Aristotle attributes of style not only different, but opposite, to those which our Aristotle presents. Besides, more than twenty of the compositions entered in the Catalogue are dialogues, of which form our Aristotle affords not a single specimen: while others relate to matters of ancient exploit or personal history; collected proverbs; accounts of the actual constitution of many Hellenic cities; lists of the Pythian victors and of the scenic representations; erotic discourses; legendary narratives, embodied in a miscellaneous work called Peplus a title perhaps borrowed from the Peplus or robe of Athęnę at the Panathenaic festival, embroidered with various figures by Athenian women; a symposion or banquet-colloquy; and remarks on intoxication. All these subjects are foreign in character to those which our Aristotle treats.13

13 Brandis and Zeller, moreover, remark, that among the allusions made by Aristotle in the works which we possess to other works of his own, the majority relate to other works actually extant, and very few to any of the lost works enumerated in the Catalogue (Brand. Aristoteles, pp. 97–101; Zeller, Phil. der Griech. ii. 2, p. 79, ed. 2nd). This however is not always the case: we find (e.g.) in Aristotles notice of the Pythagorean tenets (Metaphys. A. p. 986, a. 12) the remark, διώρισται δὲ περὶ τούτων ἐν ἑτέροις ἡμῖν ἀκριβέστερον; where he probably means to indicate his special treatises, Περὶ τῶν Πυθαγορείων and Πρὸς τοὺς Πυθαγορείους, enumerated by Diog. L. v. 25, and mentioned by Alexander, Porphyry, and Simplikius. See Alexander, Schol. ad Metaphys. p. 542, b. 5, 560, b. 25, Br.; and the note of Schwegler on Metaphys. i. 5, p. 47.

The difficulty of harmonizing our Aristotle with the Aristotle of the Catalogue is thus considerable. It has been so strongly felt in recent years, that one of the ablest modern critics altogether dissevers the two, and pronounces the works enumerated in the Catalogue not to belong to our Aristotle. I allude to Valentine Rose, who in his very learned and instructive volume, Aristoteles Pseudepigraphus, has collected and illustrated the fragments which remain of these works. He considers them all pseudo-Aristotelian, composed by various unknown members of the Peripatetic school, during the century or two immediately succeeding the death of Aristotle, and inscribed with the illustrious name of the master, partly through fraud of the sellers, partly through carelessness of purchasers and librarians.14 Emil Heitz, on the other hand, has argued more recently, that upon the external evidence as it stands, a more correct conclusion to draw would be (the opposite of that drawn by Rose, viz.): That the works enumerated in the Catalogue are the true and genuine; and that those which we possess, or most of them, are not really composed by Aristotle.15 Heitz thinks this conclusion better sustained than that of Rose, though he himself takes a different view, which I shall presently mention.

14 Valent. Rose, Aristoteles Pseudepigr. pp. 4–10. The same opinion is declared also in the earlier work of the same author, De Aristotelis Librorum Ordine et Auctoritate.

15 Heitz, Die Verlor. Schrift. des Ar. pp. 29, 30.

It will be seen from the foregoing observations how much more difficult it is to settle a genuine Canon for Aristotle than for Plato. I do not assent to either of the two conclusions just indicated; but I contend that, if we applied to this question the same principles of judgment as those which modern Platonic critics often apply, when they allow or disallow dialogues of Plato, we should be obliged to embrace one or other of them, or at least something nearly approaching thereto. If a critic, after attentively studying the principal compositions now extant of our Aristotle, thinks himself entitled, on the faith of his acquired Aristotelisches Gefühl, to declare that no works differing materially from them (either in subject handled, or in manner of handling, or in degree of excellence), can have been composed by Aristotle he will assuredly be forced to include in such rejection a large proportion of those indicated in the Catalogue of Diogenes. Especially he will be forced to reject the Dialogues the very compositions by which Aristotle was best known to Cicero and his contemporaries. For the difference between them and the known compositions of Aristotle, not merely in form but in style (the style being known from the epithets applied to them by Cicero), must have been more marked and decisive than that between the Alkibiades, Hippias, Theages, Erastć, Leges, &c. which most Platonic critics now set aside as spurious and the Republic, Protagoras, Gorgias, Philębus, &c., which they treat as indisputably genuine.16

16 Thus (for example) in Bernays, who has displayed great acuteness and learning in investigating the Aristotelian Canon, and in collecting what can be known respecting the lost dialogues of Aristotle, we read the following observations: In der That mangelt es auch nicht an den bestimmtesten Nachrichten über die vormalige Existenz einer grossen aristotelischen Schriftenreihe, die von der jetzt erhaltenen durch die tiefste formale Verschiedenheit getrennt war. Das Verzeichniss aristotelischer Werke führt an seiner Spitze sieben und zwanzig Bände jetzt verlorener Schriften auf, die alle in der künstlerischen Gesprächsform abgefasst waren, &c. (Bernays, Die Dialoge des Aristoteles, p. 2; compare ibid. p. 30).

If, as Bernays justly contends, we are to admit these various writings, notwithstanding the profound difference of form, as having emanated from the same philosopher Aristotle, how are we to trust the Platonic critics when they reject about one-third of the preserved dialogues of Plato, though there is no difference of form to proceed upon, but only a difference of style, merit, and, to a certain extent, doctrine?

Zeller (Die Phil. der Griechen, ii. 2, pp. 45, 46, 2nd ed.) remarks that the dialogues composed by Aristotle are probably to be ascribed to the earlier part of his literary life, when he was still (or had recently been) Platos scholar.

In discussing the Platonic Canon, I have already declared that I consider these grounds of rejection to be unsafe and misleading. Such judgment is farther confirmed, when we observe the consequences to which they would conduct in regard to the Aristotelian Canon. In fact, we must learn to admit among genuine works, both of Plato and Aristotle, great diversity in subject, in style, and in excellence.

I see no ground for distrusting the Catalogue given by Diogenes, as being in general an enumeration of works really composed by Aristotle. These works must have been lodged in some great library probably the Alexandrine where they were seen and counted, and the titles of them enrolled by some one or more among the literati, with a specification of the sum total obtained on adding together the lines contained in each.17 I do not deny the probability, that, in regard to some, the librarians may have been imposed upon, and that pseudo-Aristotelian works may have been admitted; but whether such was partially the fact or not, the general goodness of the Catalogue seems to me unimpeachable. As to the author of it, the most admissible conjecture seems that of Brandis and others, recently adopted and advocated by Heitz: that the Catalogue owes its origin to one of the Alexandrine literati; probably to Hermippus of Smyrna, a lettered man and a pupil of Kallimachus at Alexandria, between 240–210 B.C.. Diogenes does not indeed tell us from whom he borrowed the Catalogue; but in his life of Aristotle, he more than once cites Hermippus, as having treated of Aristotle and his biography in a work of some extent; and we know from other sources that Hermippus had devoted much attention to Aristotle as well as to other philosophers. If Hermippus be the author of this Catalogue, it must have been drawn up about the same time that the Byzantine Aristophanes arranged the dialogues of Plato. Probably, indeed, Kallimachus the chief librarian, had prepared the way for both of them. We know that he had drawn up comprehensive tables, including, not only the principal orators and dramatists, with an enumeration of their discourses and dramas, but also various miscellaneous authors, with the titles of their works. We know, farther, that he noticed Demokritus and Eudoxus, and we may feel assured that, in a scheme thus large, he would not omit Plato or Aristotle, the two great founders of the first philosophical schools, nor the specification of the works of each contained in the Alexandrine library.18 Heitz supposes that Hermippus was the author of most of the catalogues (not merely of Aristotle, but also of other philosophers) given by Diogenes;19 yet that nevertheless Diogenes himself had no direct acquaintance with the works of Hermippus, but copied these catalogues at second-hand from some later author, probably Favorinus. This last supposition is noway made out.

17 Stahr, who in the first volume of his work Aristotelia (p. 194), had expressed an opinion that the Catalogue given by Diogenes is the Catalogue der eigenen Schritten des Stageiriten, wie sie sich in seinem Nachlasse befanden, retracts that opinion in the second volume of the same work (pp. 68–70), and declares the Catalogue to be an enumeration of the Aristotelian works in the library of Alexandria. Trendelenburg concurs in this later opinion (Promium ad Commentar. in Aristot. De Animâ, p. 123).