ARISTOTLEFUNDAMENTALS OF THE

HISTORY OF HIS DEVELOPMENT

BY

WERNER JAEGER

Translated wzth the author's correctzonsand addztzons by

RICHARD ROBINSON

H rAP NOY ENEPrEIA ZWH

SECOND EDITION

OXFORDAT THE CLARENDON PRESS

Oxford UmverSlty Press, Ely House, London W IGl.ASGOW mw YOItIl: TORONTO MlUIOlJRNE WElliNGTON

CAPE TOWN SAUSBVRY IBADAN NAIROBI l.USAItA ADDIS ABABABOMBAY CALcunA MADRAS KAIIAOU l.AHORE DACCA

KUALA l.UMPUR HONG KONG TOKYO

FIRST PUBl.ISHED 1934SECOND EDITION 1948

REPRINTED l.ITHOGRAPHICAl.l.Y IN GREAT BRITAIN1950, 1955. 1960, 196:1, 196 8

THE TRANSLATOR'S PREFACETO THE SECOND EDITION

I N this edition I have made about a score of alterations. mostof them suggested by two reviewers of the first editIon,Professor BenedIct Emarson In ClassJcal Phzlology, 1935, andProfessor Harold Chermss m The AmencanJournal of Phzlology,1935 Of the two new appendIxes, the first comes from ThePhzlosophzcal Rev~ew, 1940, and was wntten In EnglIsh byProfessor Jaeger The second comes from Sztzungsbenchte deypreussJSchen Akademze dey Wzssenschaften, Phdosophlsch-hlstonsche Klasse, 1928, and IS translated by myself

The editIon has a new and more complete Index, the workof Mr James E Walsh of Harvard Umverslty, to whom theauthor has asked me to make thIS acknowledgement

R R

THE TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

T HIS IS a translatIon of Arzstoteles, Grundlegung emer Ge-sch~chte semer EntwJcklung, whIch was publIshed at BerhnIII 1923 by the Weldmannsche Buchhandlung I have consultedthe author on the meamng of numerous sentences, and he hasmade several alteratIons and additIons to the Gennan text asIt appeared ill 1923 The accuracy of the rendenng has beencntJclzed ill part by Dr Fntz C A KoHn The propnety of theEnglIsh has been cntIclZed almost throughout by Dr Jame5Hutton. I am very grateful to these gentlemen

ThIS translatIon IS mtellIglble to persons who know no GreekAll Greek IS rendered mto English, and the books of anCIentwntmgs are referred to not by Greek letters but by Romannumerals The only exceptIon to tlus rule IS Anstotlc's Meta-phys:cs, where a pecuhar SItuatIOn make:, any use of numeralsconfusmg

For ease of recogmtIon I have adopted standard translatIonsof Greek authors as far as possIble I thank the Trustees of theJowett Copynght Fund and the Delegatt's of the Oxford Ulll-ver

WJ.

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THEGERMAN EDITION

T HIS book, bemg at once treatIse and monograph, demands abnef word of e>..planatIonIt does not seek to give a systematic account, but to analyse

Anstotle's wntmgs so as to discover m them the half oblIteratedtraces of his mental progress Its bIOgraphical framework ISmtended merely to make more palpable the fact that hIS pre-VIOusly undifferentiated mass of composItIons falls mto threedIstInct penods of evolutIOn Owmg to the meagreness of thematenal the picture that we thus obtam IS of course fragmentary ,yet Its outhnes constItute a dlstmctly clearer VIew of Anstotle'smtellectual nature and of the forces that msplred hIS thmkmgPnmanly, thiS IS a gam to the hIstory of phIlosophICal problemsdnd ongms The author's mtentlOn IS, however, not to make acontrIbutIOn to systemJ.tlc phIlosophy, but to throw lIght on theportion of the hIstory of the Greek mmd that IS deSignated by thename of Aristotle

Smce 19J6 I have repeatedly given thf' results of these re-'>carches as lectures at the umversltIes of Klel and Berlm, eventhe lIterary form, With the exception of the conclUSIOn, was estab-lIshed III essentIals at that tIme The lIterature that has Sll1cedppearcd IS not very Important for Anstotle lllm!>elf anyhow, andI have noticed It only !>o far as I have learnt somethmg from Itor am oblIged to contradIct It The reader WIll look m vam ~rthe results even of earlIer researche~ so far as they concernmerely ummportant changes of opmlOn or of form, such mattershave nothmg to do WIth development StIll less has my purposebeen to analyse all ArIstotle's wntmgs for theIr own sake andto complete a microSCOpIC exammatlOn of all theIr stages Theann was solely to elUCidate m ItS concrete slgmficance, by mean~of eVIdent eMmples, the phenomenon of hIS mtellectual develop-ment as such

In conclUSIon I offer my profoundest thanks to the pubhsher,who, m spite of the unfavourableness of the tImes, boldly under-took the whole nsk of publlshmg thIS book.

BERLIN, Easte,., 1923

CONTENTSPAGE

Introduction THE PROBLEM

PART I

3

THE ACADEMYChapter I THE ACADEMY AT THE TIME OF ARISTOTLE'S

ENTRANCE IJChapter II EARLY WORKS 24Chapter III THE E UDEMUS 39Chapter IV THE PROTREPTICUS 54

PART II

TRAVELS 15

228

Chapter V ARISTOTLE IN ASSOS AND MACEDONIAChapter VI THE MANIFESTO ON PHILOSOPH"Y

VChapter VII THE EARLIEST METAPHYSICS -kbapter VIII THE GROWTH OF THE METAPHYSICS

Chapter IX THE ORIGINAL ETHICSChapter X THE ORIGINAL POLITICSChapter XI THE ORIGIN OF THE SPECULATIVE PHYSICS AND

COSMOLOGY

259

293

PART III

MATURITYChapter XII ARISTOTLE IN ATHENS )11Chapter XIII THE ORGANIZATION OF RESEARCH 324Chapter XIV THE REVISION OF THE THEORY OF THE PRIME

MOVER 342Chapter XV ARISTOTLE'S PLACE IN HISTORY 368

APPENDIXESI DIOCLES OF CARYSTUS A Nll.w PUPIL OF ARISTOTLE 407

II ON THE ORIGIN AND CYCLE OF THE PHILOSOPHIC IDEAL OF LIFE 426

INDEXES 463

THE PROBLEM

A RISTOTLE was the first thinker to set up along Wlth rusflphl.1osophya conceptIon of his own posItIon In history, hethereby created a new kind of phl.1osophlcal conSCIOusness, moreresponsible and Inwardly complex He was the Inventor of thenotIon of Intellectual development m time, and regards evenhiS own achievement as the result of an evolutIon dependentsolely on ItS own law Everywhere m hiS expositIOn he makeshiS own Ideas appear as the dIrect consequences of hiS cnticlsmof hiS predecessors, especially Plato and hiS school It was,therefore, both phl1osophlcal and Anstotehan when men fol-lowed him m thiS, and sought to understand hun by means ofthe presuppositions out of which he had constructed hiS owntheones

Such attempts, however, have not given us a vIvid insightInto the mdlvldual nature of hiS phl1osophy, and thiS cannotsurpnse the phl1ologlst, who IS not accustomed to use a writer'sown estimate of himself as an objective document, or to takehiS standards from It It was especially unprofitable to JudgeAnstotle, as was actually done, by hiS understandmg of hiSpredecessors, as If any phl1osopher could ever understand hiSpredecessors In thiS sense Surely there can be only one poSitivestandard for Anstotle's personal achievement, and that IS nothow he cntlclzes Plato but how he hlffiself Plat;)mzes (since

that IS what phllosophlZlng means to him) \\'hy he gavethiS partIcular dlrectlOn to knowledge cannot be explamedmerely from prevIous history, but onlyfrom hiS own phl1osophlcaldevelopment, Just as he himself does not slffiply denve Plato'sposItIon In the history of Greek thought from hiS predecessors,but explams It as the result of the meeting of those hlstoncalInfluences and Plato's own creative onglnahty In the treatmentof mtellectual progress, If we are to give full weight to thecreatIve and undenved element In great indiViduals, we mustsupplement the general tendency of the times With the orgamcdevelopment of the personal1ty concerned Anstotle himselfshows the close relation between development and fonn, the

4 ARISTOTLEfundamental conception of hIS phIlosophy IS 'embodied formthat hves and develops' (Goethe) The aim IS, he holds, to knowthe fonn and the entelechy by means of the stages of ItS growthThiS IS the only way In whIch the element of law In an Intellectualstructure' can be directly intUIted As he says at the begInmngof hiS lecture on the prehmInary stages of pohbcallIfe, here andelsewhere we shall not obtain the best insight Into things untIlwe actually see them growing from the begmmng'

It IS one of those almost incomprehensIble paradoxes m whichthe hIstory of human knowledge abounds, that the pnnclple oforgamc development ha'> never yet been apphed to ItS ongmator,If we exclude a few effort.. \\-hlch, though praIseworthy, havebeen qUIte partial and therefore Without mfluence It IS noexaggeration to say that, at a time when a whole lIterature hasbeen assembled about the development of Plato, scarcely anyone speaks of that of Anstotle and almost nobody knows any-thmg about It In fact, our failure to apply the evolutionarypomt of view to hIm has finally come to be taken for anindication of hi'> objective difference from Plato' WhIle thehistory of the latter'!> development threaten" gradually tobhnd us to the constructIve Impulse that form ... one of thefundamental clements of hIS thought, we have become accustomed to regard It as almo!>t a !>Ign of phllo'>ophlCal stupidityto inqUIre Into the chronology and development of Anstotle'sdoctnne and Its sources For, '"c thmk, the monad, carrYingtimelessly wlthm Itself the germ of all partIcular!>, ~s preCl,>elythe system

'The main reason why no attempt has yet been made todescnbe An!>totle'!> development IS, bnefly, the !>chola!>tIc nohonof hiS phIlosop~y as a static system of conceptIOn!> HIS inter-preters were past masters of hiS dIalectical apparatu!>, but theyhad no personal expenence of the forces that prompted hiSmethod of mqUIry, or of hiS charactenstIc mterplay of keenand abstract apodIctIc \Hth a VIVid and orgamc sense of form.Anstotle's e;pmtuahsm IS saturated WIth an mtUltIve vIsion ofreahty The stnct ngour of hie; demon!>tratIons I'> only thesalutary cham WIth whIch the fourth century restrained ItSoverflowmg energies The faIlure to reahze thiS goes back to theseparation of the more speCIfically philosophIcal parts of hi'>

THE PROBLEM 5doctnne, the logic and the metaphysIcs. from the studies of em-plfll.al realIty, a separatIOn which was accomplished by the hmeof the third generation In the Penpatos The servIce done laterby the lme of commentators begmnmg With Andromcus (firstcentury Be), to whom we owe the preservatIon of the treatIses,was very great By chngmg to the letter of the tradition they farsurpassed the pitIable successors of Theophrastus and Strato Ine},.actness of plulo~ophlcal comprehenSIOn But even they couldnot restore the ongmal spmt There was no 'iteady advance ofnatural and mental SCIence to 'ierve as breedmg-ground, andtherefore none of that frUItful mteractIOn between expenenceand conceptIOn flOm \\hlch ATlstotle's speculatlve notlons haddrawn theIr fleXibIlIty and theIr adaptlve power Smce thenthere has been no break m the contmUIty of our Idea of AnstotleWithout a gap the Onental tradItion follows that of the com-mentators, and OCCIdental ArIstotehamsm follo\\s the OrIentalEach of them had an educatIOnal effect on ItS age that cannotbe overestlmated, but their peculIar characterIstlc IS Just thatpurely conceptual scholastlclsm which had already barred theanCIent world from a hvmg under:>tandmg of Anstotle Menwere unable to apprehend hIS phIlo~ophy as the product of hiSspeCIal gemus workmg on the problems set him by hIS age, andso they confined theIr attentIOn to the form m whIch It wasexpressed, WIthout havmg any notion ho\\ It had grown to bewhat It was In the meantlme one of the mam sources for hiSdevelopment, the dIalogues and letters, had been lost, and thetradItIonal attItude alone was to blame ThIS prevented aJlaccess to hiS personahty So It came about that the new lovewhIch the humamsts aroused for antlql1lty dId not make anydIfference to An

6 ARISTOTLEgot lus rules from the Pol,e~cs, the French cntIcs and poets themfrom the Poehcs MorallSts dnd Junsts have drawn on the EthlCS,and all phLlosophers down to Kant and far beyond on the lOgIC

As to the phlloiogists, what has prevented them from pene-tratmg to the mner form of Anstotle's thoughts 15 not so muchan excesslVely strong mterest m the content as the narrow andsuperficIal conceptIon of anCIent hterary prose remtroduced bythe humamsts They have made acute studIes of the wntmgsthat remam, and attempted to determme the text But wIth thenew feehng for style the unfimshed state m whIch these workshave come down to us was aesthetically dlspleasmg They wereJudged by the standard of hterary wntmg, whIch they constantlyflouted and whIch IS wholly alIen to theIr nature Men naivelycompared the' style' of the treatises WIth Plato's dIalogues, andthen lost themselves m enthUSIasm for the marvellous art of thelatter By all kmds of ratIonalIzmg mterference, by declanngdlsturbmg passages spunous and transposmg sentences or wholebooks, they tned to force the AnstotelIan wntmgs mto the shapeof readable handbooks The reason for thIS sort of cnhCIsm wasthe fallure to understand that provlSlonal fonn whIch, bemgthoroughly charactenstIc of Anstotle's phllosophy, conshtutesthe mevltable startmg-pomt for every hlstoncal understandmgof It Even m the case of Plato, the Importance of the form forthe understandmg of hIS pecuhar thought has often been over-looked for long penods , departmental phllosophers and studentsof lIterature, m particular, are always prone to conSider It as.;>ometlung lIterary, whIch had no matenal sIgmficance forPlato, m spIte of the fact that It IS umque m the history ofphIlosophy By now, however, most persons know that thestudy of the development of the form of hIS wnhngs IS one ofthe mam keys to a phIlosophIcal understandmg of hIm WIthAnstotle, on the other hand, they still devote themselves ex-clusIvely to the content, all the more so because they supposethat he 'has no form whatever' The HellemstIc rhetoncians'narrow notIOn of what constItutes lIterary form almost lost uslus treatises, and IS actually responsIble for the dlSappearance ofthe StOIC and EpIcurean wntmgs As soon as we abandon Itthe questIon of lustoncal development naturally anses, for It ISabsolutely ImpoSSIble to explam the peculIar state of the extant

THE PROBLEM 7writIngs wIthout the SupposItion that they contam the traces ofdIfferent stages 10 hIS evolutIOn AnalysIs of the treatises wouldlead us of Itself to thIS conclusIOn, and the fragments of hlS lostlIterary works confirm It The mam purpose of thIS book mustbe, therefore, to show for the first hme, by means of the frag-ments of the lost works and through the analysIs of the moreImportant treatIses, that at the root of them there IS a process ofdevelopment It IS 10 fact out of the 1OterpretatIon of thf'sedocuments, for an edItIon of the Metaphys"cs, that the presentwork arose PhIlologIcal cntIclsm, however, IS here drrectlysubc;erVlent to phIlosophIcal 1Oqurry, smce we are concerned notmerely WIth the outward condItIon of the wntmgs as such, butalso WIth the revelatIon whIch thIS condItIon glVes us of thednvIng energy of Anstotle'~ thought

PART ONE

THE ACADEMY

CHAPTER I

THE ACADEMY AT THE TIME OF ARISTOTLE'SENTRANCE

ACCORDING to the eVIdence of hIS bIOgrapher, whIch IS re_-f'l.l1able, Aristotle wrote to Kmg Ph!!!!> of _Macedon thathehad sj5eiif1wenty years wIth Plato . Smce he wasa meml>er ofthe Academy down t~ !...he timeof t!!.e latter'Sdeath (:348/7), hemust nave-entered It dunng 368/7- At that time hewasa youthof about 17 years I Whenlie~t he was approachmglilsTOrtles

These acknowledged facts have aroused far too httle remarkThat a man of such profoundly ongInal talent should haveremaIned for so long a penod under the mfluence of an out-standmg gemus of a totally dIfferent compleXIOn, and shouldhave grown up wholly m hiS shadow, IS a fact WIthout parallelIn the hIstory of great thInkers, and perhaps of all mdependentand creative natures whatever There IS no safer mdex to adiSCIple's powers of asslmtlatIon, and at the same time to thestrength and sureness of hiS creative InstInct, than hIS relation toa great master to whom he dedIcates hiS youthful affectIonsThe Impersonal spmtual force that works through such a masterfrees the pUpil'S powers by constraInmg them, and npens himuntil he IS ready to stand alone Such was Anstotle's mtellectualdevelopment It was hiS expenence of Plato's world thate~edhlffi to break through mto hISow~as thetwo togl~ther th'at

"- _ w __ _ _ __ _

gave hiS mtellect the marvellous tautness, speed, and elaStiCIty,by m~nsof wi;~h he reached a hIgher level than Plato had-:-Tnspite of the defimte difference between Plato's unlwuted and !tEiown hmltec!Be_mus Thereafter, to retreat from that level wouldhave been to turn the wheel of fate backwards

Right down to the present day, Anstotle's .e.hllosopblCaJrelation to Plato ha,s fr.tquentljC been SUpPOs.ed to be hke that Qf

---a modem ac_~~~~!~ ]?htlosopher to Kant That IS to say, In aI The letter IS mentjoned In the VIta Marclana (Rose. Ap'ulotelu Pp'agmenla.

P '427,1 18. see also PlI Ammon, Ibid. P 4]8,1 13. and the Latin trans, p 443,I 12) The figure 17 does not appear In thiS passage, but had been !Joked upWith It at least as early as the Alexandnan bIOgrapher, cf Dlonys Hal adAmm. S (R 728)

I2 THE ACADEMYmechanical way, he accepted certaIn bits of his master'~~..Ectnneand reJected- oth~rs...,..tPlato's unIqueness, and hl~ pictorIal wayof phIlosophlzmg, naturally gave nse to the SusplclOn thatAnstotle faJ.1ed to understand his archetype It was supposedthat he missed the mythical, the plastIc, and the IntUItIve InPlato, and, because they omitted these fundamental aspects,his cnticlsms seemed almost entIrely beSIde the pomt Bemgthoroughly abstract, they really Involved a transItIon _to anothergenus (~6:l3cxalS' elS' aAAo yEVos-J /

What a shortSighted and pettIfoggmg charge '",it IS clear fromseveral passages that Anstotle w'!s well aware of thiS featur!..mPlato's thought before he ever began to cntIClze h)m_ Howcould the founder of psychology, and of ItS applIcatIon toIntellectual and aesthetIc processes, pOSSibly have been Ig1!.!?rantof It ;I It was preCisely Anstotle who first described, In shortand tellmg words, the poetIc and prophetIc elements which themodems suppose they were the first to dIscover In Plato, andhiS definitIon of the aesthetIc nature of the dIalogues~etterthan !!!ost-of theirs He never for a moment Imagmed that indescnbmg the lOgIcal and ontological dIfficultIes of Plato'.,theory he had disposed either of ItS hlstoncal Significance or ofthe absolute value of ItS content~ ThIS assertlOn does not needto be supported by quotatlOn It IS self-eVIdent to anyone whoknows that Anstotle did not approach Plato's VIews In a coldand cntIcal SpInt, but was at first spellbound for many years bythe overwhelmmg personal ImpresslOn that they made on him

~s a wholeIt IS, however, one thing to understand, and qUIte another to

want to Imitate and perpetuate In ItS entIrety, such a complI-cated world as Plato's, so manifold In Its mtellectual tendenCIesand so mdlvldual In ItS presentatlOn \ Here IS where profitableand unprofitable PlatOnIsm part companyv' IS unprofitableto cultIvate an 'aesthetIc' and InSmcere apmg of the PlatOniCspmt, makmg great play With ItS favounte Images and expres-SlOns It IS profitable to work at Its problems, and this, whIchPlato himself recognIzes as the most Important thmg, necessanlyleads beyond hun It IS also profitable to realIze the onesldednessof our modem thought, IneVitable though thIS onesldedness IS,by surveymg With Anstotle the contrast between our sCIences

AT THE TIME OF ARISTOTLE'S ENTRANCE 13dnd Plato's Irrecoverable spmtual umty/Aristotle's attItude tothis problem was different at different times Begmmng bynaively trymg to Imitate and contInue the Platomc manner, hecame to (:lstmgUlsh between the abidIng essence and the out-ward formulation, the latter of which IS either detemuned bythe aCCidents of the age or umque and so Inumtable He thensought to remove the form while retammg the essence Frombemg a perfected form the Platomc phIlosophy became to hunthe matter or VAT) for somethIng new and higher~ hadaccepted Plato's doctrines With his whole soul, and the effo-~0-discover his own relation to them occupied all hIs-life, and IS theclue to hl development It IS possible -to discern a gradualprogress, In the vanous stages of which we can clearly recogmzethe unfoldIng of hiS own essential nature Even hiS latestproductions retaIn c;;ome trace of the PlatOnIC spmt, but It ISweaker than In the earher one~ HIS own notion of developmentcan be applIed to hImself however strong the mdividualIty ofthe' matter', the new form finally overcomes Its resistance/Itgrows untIl It ha~ ~haped the matter from WithIn m accordancewith Its own law, and Imposed ItS own shape upon It Just astragedy attaInS It, so Anstotle made hImself out of the Platomc philosophyThe history of hiS development-and the order of the documentsfor thl

14 THE ACADEMYhIS early works. the central figure of the philosopher SocratesIn content and method It was now far beyond the SocratIc fieldof problems It was only by readmg, and not through any lIvmgpresence of the SocratIc spmt m the Academy of the slXtIes, thatArIStotle learnt what Socrates had meant to Plato and hIS earlydisciples The Phaedo and the GorgJas, the Repubhc and theSymposJum, were now the eVidences, already classical. of aclosed chapter In the master's lIfe, and they towered above thebusy realItIes of the school lIke motionless Gods Anyone whomthese dIalogues had drawn from distant places to enJoy Plato'sactual presence must surely have been surpnsed to find nomystenes celebrated among the phdosophers They certamlyradIated a revolutIOnIZIng force and a new senousness, and theseAnstotle found m the Academy also, but theIr claSSIc doctnnesabout the Ideas, about umty and multiplICIty, about pleasureand pam, about the state. about the !>oul and virtue, were by nomeans mVlOlable sanctuanes In the dlscusc;lOns of the studentsThey were constantly bemg tested, defended, and altered, m thelIght of acute dlstmctlOns and labonous exammatlOns of theIrlogIcal valIdIty The dlst10ctlve feature was that the learnersthemselves took part In thIs common effort The Images andmyths of the dIalogues remamed Plato's mo~t charactenshc andurecapturable work. but. on the other hand, the dlscusc;lon ofconceptIons became along WIth the Academy's relIgIOus tendencythe essentIal pnnclple of the school These were the onlytwo elements In Plato's thought that were transferable, andthe more students he attracted the more they preponderatedover the artIstIc sIde of hIs nature Where the opposing forcesof poetry and dIalectic are mIxed In a SIngle mInd It IS naturalfor the former to be progressIvely stIfled by the latter, but 10Plato's case the school carrIed hIm Irre,>l

AT THE TIME OF ARISTOTLE'S ENTRANCE 1.5the death 10 369 of the famous mathematIcIan whose memory Ithonours I It IS the more charactenstic of the Academy at thetime of An~tot1e's entrance because 10 thIS and the follow1Ogdialogues (Sophtst and Statesman) the work of the school, whIchhad been almost entIrely concealed 10 the wnt10gs of the claSSIcalpenod, begms to press Plato's whole hterary actIVIty IOta ItSserVIce, and has thus left a pIcture of Itself that lacks no essentIalfeature 2. Jon order to understand Anstotle and hIS relatIOn toPlato It IS unportant not to set out from the vague nohon ofPlato' as a whole, but to substItute the preCIse conception ofhIS last penod, the abstract and methodologIcal penod thatbegan about 369 ThIs gave Anstotle a defimte dIrectIOn, andopened up a field of work SUitable to hIS particular dIsposItionJSocratlc thought always kept close to real hfe, and the early

Plato was a reformer and an artist In contrast to thIS, Anstotle'sthought was abstract, and hI

16 THE ACADEMYceptIon of the theoretical' hfe has helped to determ10e Itsfeatures Socrates had concerned himself solely wIth man, andnot with that whIch IS above the heaven or under the earthThe Theaetetus, on the other hand, speaks of the phIlo!>ophlcalsoul as .geometnz1Og' and . a!>tronomlz1Og' 1 She IS mdlfferentto what IS near at hand, she despIses precIsely those practicalactIvItIes that occupIed the hves of Socrates' favounte hearers.and she roams m lofty dl!>tances, a., IS solemnly quoted fromPmdar

The Tlzeaetefus unmistakably refers to the forthcom1Ogappearance of the Parmcmdes The latter wa!> pretty certamlywntten before the formcr\ .,equeb, the Sophtst and the States-man; hence It was probably fimshed when Anstotle entered theschool, and cannot 10 any case be much later Those who suggestthat Anstotle was the author of the ObjectIOns whIch thISdIalogue raISt'S to the theory of Ideas, are makmg the unhkelysupposItIon that he took the InltIatlve In a rt'voluhonary mannerwhile he was shll extremely young .md had only Just entered thesociety The dIalogue shows that before Amtotle the Academyhad already gone far 10 cnhclz10g the hybnd character of theIdeas, half substances and half abstractIOns It could not belong before the two ""ere separated Plato himself, mdeed,thought that he could overcome the dJfncultIe." nevertheless heprepared the way for what happened when he recogmzed It as mpnnclple correct to make labonou,> logical and ontological exam-mations of the Ideas, as I!> done m thiS dialogue and m later onesAnstotle's speculatIon'> cannot be hnked up With the Phaedoor the Repubhc and the Idea-theory as It appears 10 them

In the Theaetetus Theaetetus and Theodorus are opposItetypes One represents the young generatIOn of mathematICIans,who are mterested In phJ.1osophy , the other the old, who will nothear of It, though they are c;xperts In theIr own subject It wasnot an accIdent that Plato's relations to famous mathematlcIansfound expreSSIOn m a dialogue preCIsely at thIS tIme For aboutthe year 367 Eudoxus of CyZlcuS brought hIS school to Athens,In order to dISCUSS With Plato and hiS followers the problems thatmterested both partIes ~

I Theaet 173 E-I74 A, Tannery's cODJecture (liJsto~,e de Z'ast,onomu. p ~96, n 4) IS confirmed by

AT THE TIME OF ARISTOTLE'S ENTRANCE 17ThIS event attracted a good deal of attention, and from that

time on we constantly find members of thIs school of mathematI-Cians and astronomers 10 commumcatIon wIth the AcademyHehcon and Athenaeus are examples As early as the RepublICwe can observe the effects of Theaetetus' dIscovery of solIdgeometry After thell" 1Otercourse wIth Eudoxus, Plato and hlsfollowers took a very great 10terest 10 the attempts of the CyZI-ceman school to explam the Irregular movements of the planetsby sImple mathematical SupposItions ThIS was not the onlyway 10 whIch Eudoxus stimulated them He tremendouslyenlarged theIr notiOns of geography and human culture bybnngmg exact reports of ASia and Egypt, and by descnb10g fromextended personal expenence the status of astronomy 10 thoseparts HIS contnbutIon to ethical questIons was also ImportantThe problem of the nature and meamng of pleasure and pam,which was to be so central 10 Anstotle's ethiCS, led to one moregreat debate wlthm the Academy 10 Plato's later years Xeno-crates, SpeusippuS, and Anstotle contnbuted works On Pleasureto It, Plato contnbuted the Phtlebus Many years afterwardsAnstotle, who met Eudoxus nght at the beg10mng of hIS stay 10the Academy, could stIll speak of hiS personal ImpreSSiOn WIthreal warmth, when he was recalhng the stImulus that Eudoxusgave Eudoxus also raIsed difficulties about the Ideas andsuggested an alteratiOn of the theory I In every field Plato'sschool began to attract more and more strangers, some of themof the most dIverse types HIS travel., had brought hIm mtoclose connexiOn \-\lth the Pythagoreans gathered rour,d Archytasat Tarentum TheIr mfluence reached as far as SIcIly, and 10SIcily at thIS tIme there flounshed the medIcal school ofPhillstIon, whose Importance wa., so great that we must reckonthe LIfe (Rose, p 429, I 1) accordmg to which Anstotle entered the Academyunder Eudoxus Some excerptor must have misunderstood the statement andtaken Eudoxus for an archon What hiS authonty told him was Simply thatAnstotle's entry comclded With Eudoxus presf'nce Cf Eva Sachs (whofollows F Jacoby). op cit. P 17 n 2

I For Anstotleon Eudoxus' character and theory of pleasure see Eth Nac X 2For the latter's proposed reform illation of the Idea-theory see Metaph A 9,991& 17, and at greater length In the second book On Ideas (Rose, frg 18g),which has been preserved by Alexander m hiS commentary on the pa.ssageEndoxus proposes to regard participation as the Immanence of the Ideas In thethmgs, and to thiS Anstotle strongly objects That partiCipatIOn was the mostdebated problem of the time IS clear from Plato s later dialogues

18 THE ACADEMYamong Its spmtual members such an author and physIcIan asDIOcles of Carystus In Euboea, Plato must have had relationswIth PhlhstIon The author of the spunous second letter appearsto know that Plato VISIted Phlhshon, and even seemIngly thatthe latter was InvIted to Athens If not PhuIst!on hImself, atany rate some real member of hIS school IS concealed behInd theunnamed 'SIcIhan doctor' whose ImpatIence at the 10glcal haIr-splIttmgs of the Academy IS descnbed by a contemporary comicpoet I IncIdentally thIS story shows that, although Plato wasaccustomed to converse WIth speciahsts In all fields, the resultwas often merely to reveal the unbndgeable gulf between IOniCor SIClhan SCIence and what Plato understood by that wordThe fact that he makes COpiOUS use of the latest researches InmedICine, mathematIcs, and astronomy, In order to constructhIS story of creation In the T~maeus,must not blmd us to theIndependent manner In which he handles thIS matenalfihe Academy of Plato's later days dId Indeed get through agreat mass of matenal. and thIS enVIronment no doubt madeIt possIble for an Anstotle to learn by hiS own efforts theSignificance of empIrIcal facts, which later became so Integralto hiS researches, but the present universal custom of speak-Ing of an .organization of the sCIences' In the Academy ISwrong Z Modem academIes and umversltIes cannot claim Platoas theIr model The notIon of a systematic umty of all SCIenceswas totally foreign to hIm, and stIll more so was ItS reahzatIonm an encyclopaedic orgamzatIon of all subjects for purposes'of teachIng and research MediCIne, mathematIcs, astronomy,geography, and anthropology, the whole system of historIcalSCiences, and that of the rhetoncal and dIalectIcal arts, tomentlOn only the mam channels of Greek thought, arose each byItself, though several were sometImes combIned In one person,and went each on Its own way undisturbed To a Theodorus ora Theaetetus It would have seemed a very peculIar notIon tocombme mto one universal system of SCIences theIr mathematIcsand the researches that some SOphIStS were makmg mto Greek

I Eplcrates frg 287 (Kock) SeealsoM Wellmann's Fragm~llt~d~r slkBI~sch~flArm (Berhn, 1907), p 68, and my artIcle 'Das Pneuma 1m LykelOn' (H"m~s,vol 48), P 51, n 3

It has been unIversal SlOce H Usener's now famous article In vol 53 (1884)of the Pr~usSischBJahrbUcll~r, repnnted 10 Vorlr4ge ufld Aufs4tz~, p 69

AT THE TIME OF ARISTOTLE'S ENTRANCE 19culture or archaeology The physIcians also stood qUIte aloneDemocntus, and after him Eudoxus, who to some extentantIcipates the type that Anstotle represented, are abnormalphenomena Eudoxus was marvellously manysided TomathematIcs and astronomy he Jomed geography, anthropology,medlcme, and philosophy, and was himself productive m thefirst four fields

Plato was concerned exclUSively with Bemg' If we are togIve hIm hIs place m the traditIon of Greek thought, he IS one ofthe representatIves of the speculation about substance (ovalo)WIth his theory of Ideas he gave It a new tum, m fact, he reallyrestored It to life Startmg from the Ideas, and bemg concernedsolely with umty and the supersenslble, he does not at first touchthe mamfold and empIrIcal world at any pomt The dIrectionof hi'> mqUlnes IS away from phenomena towards somethmghigher' The sheer necessities of his speculatIOn about conceptsdid mdeed lead him to develop the method of divIsIOn, whIchlatcr became enormously Important for Anstotle's attempt toget an empIrIcal grasp of plants and ammals, as well as of themental world But Plato himself was not concerned to reducemdlvlduals to a system They lay bclow the realm of Ideas,ami, bemg completely mfimte (c5:rrElpOV), were unknowable HISnotion of the mdlvIdual (6:TOlJ.ov) was that of the lowest Form,which IS not further dIVI,>lble and he~ on the border betweenphenomena and Platomc ,>clence and reahty The many claSSI-ficatIOns of plants, &c , that Eplcrates speaks of, which wereg-enerally felt to be the most charactenstIc and pecuhar occu-pation followed m the Academy (even Speuslppus' great Re-semblances was apparently concerned solely thereWIth), \\-erepursued not from mterest m the objects themselves, but m orderto learn the logical relatIOns of conceptJOns, thiS IS Illustrated bythe quantIty of books put forward m the school at thiS timeWith the title of Cla!>stficattons In classIfymg plants the membersno more aimed at producmg a real botamcal system than Platom the Sophtst alms at a hlstoncal study of the real SOphlStS,1

I In the fragment preVIOusly referred to Eplcrates does not Imply that thePlatomsts pursued botamcal mqumes In a posItive spmt What he IS laughmgat IS the enthUSIasm for clasSIficatIon that led them to hold relations betweenconceptIOns more Important than the thmgs themselves 'They were definmgthe world of nature and dllnd'ng the hfe (~lov) of ammals and the nature of trees

20 THE ACADEMYIt IS no great distance from such classificatIOns of the real to

the notIon of a smgle sCience embracmg as many departmentalsCiences as there are departments of realIty (6v) And although

, the artIculatIOn of the pO~lhve 'iClences was not effected unhlAnstotle's nohon of realIty hdd replaced Plato's transcendentalbemg,l It remams d remarkable fact that the Idea of a systemati-zatIon of the departmental suences, each of whIch had ansenmdependently, was an afterthought due to the Attic phllo'>ophyof conceptIOns and Its enthUSiasm for classIfic,ltJon It IS almosttoo late now to estimate the advantage'> and disadvantage~ofcarrymg thiS systemdtIzatlOn through In dt-tail Presumablyboth have been pretty Idrge At no perIod when research wa"truly fiounshmg has the general ~PJrlt of a Pdrticular phIlosophyever thoroughly penneated all the "uence", dnd thiS IS naturalsmce each sCience has Ib own 'ipmt and ItPI]OV ]v T' CPU"'V ~CI)(6:vc.>v TO ylvT}.K,p' Iv To\rrOIS T'l'iv KO~OKVVTTJV

1~"'Ta:lOV "vos ICTTI ylvov

AT THE TIME OF ARISTOTLE'S ENTRANCE 21elements of Empedocles, whIch he regarded as mere phasesHIS only other mterests m phenomena lay m the sphere ofmedlcme and m that of ethics and pohtlcs In the latter hecolJected, especIally for the Laws, exten.,lve matenal on cnmmallaw and the hIstory of Clvlhzatlon It was thus dunng the pf'nodwhen,Anstotle was a member of the school that he turned hISattentlOn to partlculars And the stlmulus that hIS collectIon ofnew hlstoncal and pohtlcal matter gave to Anstotle IS clear fromthe numerous comcldences between the Laws and the PohtusOn the other hand, Anstotle lacked the temperament and theablhty for anyth10g more than an elementary acquamtance wIththe Academy's chIef preoccupatIon, mathematIcs, while theAcademy, contranwlse, could not stImulate hIm 10 the field ofblOloglcal sCIence m whIch hIS own true gemus lay

FruItful and congemal as was the youthful Anstotle's expen-ence of the stnct and methodIcal procedure of the vanousSCIences, the ImpresslOn made upon hIm by Plato's personahtywas the strongest of all Plato surveyed J.ll those fertl1e plamsfrom the hIgh vantage-pomt of hI" o\\,n creatIve spmt and m-ward VlSlOn, and Anstotle was wholly preoccupIed wIth hIm

It IS not our purpose here to dISCUSS the 10fluence of Plato'spersonahty on hIS contemporanes, or to reduce hIS posItIon mthe hIstory of knowledge to a formula, although to a man hkeAn!>totle thIS latter que!>tIon was naturJ.lly the kernel of hiSwhole attItude to Plato The elements out of whIch hIS workarose dId not mclude elthcr lomc lO"Topla (1Oqmry) or theratIonahz1Og Enhghtenment of the sophists, although these two,m spIte of theIr dlspanty. together constItuted the forms ofknowledge par excellence at thc tIme The first of these elementswas (1) the phroneszs or wIsdom of Socrates ThIS bore onlya superficial resemblance to the fatlOnahsm of the sophIstsEssentIally It was rooted 10 the realm, hItherto undIscovered byGreek sCience and plulosophy, of an ethIcal conSClOusness ofabsolute standards It demanded a new and superempmcalconceptIon of mtellectual mtmtlOn The .,econd and thIrdelements, which were also foreIgn to contemporary thought,were two new addItIon., to the SocratIc philosophy, produced byglvmg phronesJs a !>upersenslblc object and mak10g thiS a .form .These were (2) the Idea, which was the result of a long process

22 THE ACADEMYof vlSual and aesthetic development m the Greek mmd, and(3) the long-neglected study of ovala or substance, to whIch Platogave new matenal by the problem of the one and the many, andhvmg and tangIble content by the InventIon of the Ideas Thelast element was (4) the duahsm of the OrphIC myth of the soul,to whIch hIS whole constItutIOn mclmed hun, and whIch, wateredby hIS fertIle ImagmatIon, took firm root m the new conceptionof bemg

When we consIder these four elements It IS not dIfficult tosuppose that he affected the ordmary educated person as amIxture of poet, reformer, cntlc, and prophet (The stnctnessWIth whIch he Imposed hIS new method on hImself would not atfirst make any dIfference to thIs ImpressIon) Hence It IS notsurpnsmg that, m vIew of the gulf between hIm and all otherSCIence, both anCIent and modern, he has been called a mystIcand expelled from the hIstory of thought If thIs sImple solutIonwere nght, however, It would be very hard to understand whyhe has had such a great Influence on the destimes of humanknowledge, and the fact that he was the sun around whIchrevolved persons hke Theaetetus, Eudoxus, and Anstotle, thatIS to say, the most talented pIOneers of sCIentIfic research thatthe fourth century produced, IS suffiCIent to condemn the cheapWIsdom whose notIon of the complexIty of mtellectual currentsIS so madequate that It would stnke the most revolutIonary ofall phIlosophers out of the hIstory of knowledge, because hedIscovered not merely new facts but also new dImenSIOnS

Anstotle saw as clearly ac; Eudoxus that Plato, In hIS phIlo-sophIcal work, had welded together sCIentIfic dIscoverIes,elements of myth, and mysterIous spmtual realms to whIch theeye of knowledge had never penetrated ThIS weld was by nomeans the mere result of the creator's subjective mclmatIon, Itwas necessarIly deternlmed by the hlstoncal SItuatIon, theelements In whIch were later analysed by Anstotle WIth aprofound understandmg alIke of the creatIon and of ItS creatorAt first, however, he abandoned hunself WIthout reserve tothiS mcomparable and IndiVISible world, as is shown by thefragments of hIS early wntmgs, and It was preCIsely thenon-SCIentIfic elements In Plato's phIlosophy, that IS, the meta-phYS1Cal and rellgJ.ous parts of 1t, that left the most lastmg

AT THE TIME OF ARISTOTLE'S ENTRANCE 23Imprmt on hIS mmd He must have been unusually receptIvefor such unpresslOns It was theIr confhct WIth hIS own sCIentIficand methodIcal tendenCIes that later gave nse to most of lusproblems, and theIr strength IS beautIfully shown by the factthat he never sacnficed them, although m SCIentIfic matters hewent beyond Plato at every pomt ~n Plato he sought and foundd. man to lead hun m a new hie, Just as m hIS dIalogue Nermthushe makes the sImple CorInthIan countryman, enthralled by the

Gorg~as, abandon hIS plough to seek and follow the masterPlato explams the conneXlOn between knowmg the good and

followmg It m hIS seventh letter The knowledge whIch accordmgto Socrates makes men good, and that whIch IS commonly calledSCIentific knowledge, are dlstmct The former 15 creatIve, and canonly be attamed by souls that have a fundamental affinIty tothe obJect to be known, namely, the good, the Just, and thebeautIful There 15 nothIng to whIch Plato nght down to the endof hIS hfe was more passlOnately opposed than the statementthat the soul can know what IS Just WIthout bemg Just I ThIS,and not the systematIzatlOn of knowledge, was hIS amI In found-mg the Academy It remamed hIS aIm to the end, as IS shownby thIS letter that he wrote In hIS old age Let there be acommUnIon (01.J3i\V) of the elect. of those who, once theIr soulshave grown up m the atmosphere of good, are able by vIrtue oftheIr supenor eqUipment to share at last III the knowledge thatIS 'hke a hght kmdled by leapmg fire' It seems to hun, Platosays, that the search after thIS knowledge IS a thIng not for themass of mankmd. but only for the few who WIth a shght hmt canfind It for themselves 2

I Ep VII 3HA Ibid 3iI C-R

CHAPTER II

EARLY WORKS

I\. RISTOTLE wrote a series of \\ Clrks m dIalogue form Then.fragments that remam of them are not studIed as much asthey should be, partly because It IS pleasanter to leave suchtroublesome work to phIlologIst,>, but dlso because of the con-vIctIon, whIch has always obtamed In the PenpatetIc school,that the true Anstotle IS to be found m the treatIses Even]f weonly WIsh to understand the treatises, however, the fragments ofthe lost dIalogues can teach us a great deal If we knew nothmgelse about the relatIOn between the two kmds of wntmg, Itwould be hIghly !>lgmficant to be ablE' to determme that thedIalogues, modelled on those of Plato, belong almost entirely toAnstotle's early year!>, and that m hIS later penod he practIcallyabandoned lIterary actIVIty (smce the treatise,> are merely thcwntten baSIS of hIS very extenSIve dctIvltIe~ as teacher andlecturer) There are mdeed exceptIons to thIS statementAlexander or Colomzatwn mu,>t, to Judge from It!> title, have beena dIalogue belongmg to the tIme when Alexander's raCIal polIcym ASia oblIged Anstotle to make publIc announcement of hISdIsapproval to the Greek-readmg world ThIS

EARLY WORKS 25his own heart, for the spmt of Plato's phIlosophy necessarilycolhded with all these forces ~ordIng to his anginal view ofIt, philosophy IS not a sphere of theoretIcal dlscovenes but areorgamzatlOn of all the fundamental elements of hfe Consider,for example, the paradOXical picture of the phIlosopher In theTheaetetus, or the duel between the Socrates of the Gorgfas andCalhcles, who represents the egOIstical, mlght-ls-nght view ofstate and SOCIety These dialogue!> have nothIng but the name10 common wlth,the didactic conversations of GIOrdano Bruno,Hume, or Schopenhauer Plato was wntIng the phIlosopher'stragedy Unhke hIS Imitators he never gave mere theoreticaldifferences of opinIOn under a styh!>bc veneer

The Theaetetus, whIch IS contemporary With Anstotle'sentrance Into the Academy, IS the first of a group of dialoguesthat are radically different from the earher ones both m formand m content, and It ushers m the transference of Plato'smaIn phIlosophical Interests to methodologIcal, analytical, andabstract studies I In thiS group the eqUlhbnum between theaesthetic and the philo able to detect rever

26 THE ACADEMYmethod of wntmg dIalogues, and announces slmphficatlons theaim of whIch 15 to glVe greater sCIentific lUCIdIty and dll"ectnessto the exposItion 1

The SopJu,st and the Statesman show more clearly the dIfficultythat Plato now has wIth the dIalogue form The apphcatIon ofthe method of dIvIsIon to a partIcular conceptIOn, descendmgstep by step from the universal to the parhcular, IS such anundramatic and monotonous procedure that at the begmnmg ofthe Sophtst the leader of the dISCUSSIon IS obhged to tell hISmterlocutors not to mterrupt him too often, or preferably toIlSten to a contmuous speech z ThIs amounts to openly abandon-109 Socrates' r obstetnc' method of dIScussIon, and announcIngthat from now on the dIalogue form IS nothmg but an unessentialstyhstIc ornament The Ttmaeus and the Phtlebus are notexceptIOns, what they offer to the reader as dialogue IS merely atransparent vell of style thrown over a purely doctnnal contentIt IS not any VIvaCIty 10 the conversation that gIves the TunaeusIts tremendous effectIveness The Pkdebus could be transformedWithout dIfficulty mto a methodIcal and umfied treatise muchlIke Anstotle's Ethtcs In the Laws the last trace of scemcllltlSIOn IS gone The delmeahon of character (Tj601Totla) ISconscIOusly renounced, and the whole 15 a solemn address orproclamatIOn, not by Socrates but by Plato hImself, the strangerfrom Athens J

As was logIcal, the figure of Socrates, after havmg been rele-I Theaet 143 B The Theaetetus retams the outward form of a SocratIc

dialogue, and frequently makes express reference to Socrates' IIIldWlfery Buttlus very selfCOIlSCIOUS reflection on the nature and hmlts of the Socraticmethod, wluch 15 strongly emphaslZed, shows that Plato IS now purposely uSIngthe old form of cross-examinatIon (~os) merely to clear the ground for Iusquestion about the de.fimtIon of knowledge Stenzel I1ghtly POlOtS out the closeconnexlon between the Theaetetus and the Soph.st, the latter solves theproblems raISed by the former. and It does not use' midwifery' Cf Socrates'.final words at Theaet 210 c 'These are the hmlts of Illy art, I can no farther go

a Saph 217 D It 19 true that they are stilI gomg to gIve remark for remark(~ 'I1"pO; mos), It beIng assumed that the answerer Wlll always say yes, but thatIS something qUite different from the old 'obstetnc' conversation 'by questxonand answer', where the questIoner puts forward no VIewS hut only gets theanswerer to do so

The author of the Ep.?lomls Judges the real state of aflalr9 correctly In980 D He makes the Athemall relDlnd the two others of a. famous passage ofthe Laws In words that absolutely abandon all dralDatlc reahty 'If youremelDber, for, to be sure, you made notes (Vrro\lVl\l!OTa) at the tu:ne' Here weare suddenly 10 the middle of a lecture

EARLY WORKS 27gated to mmor roles from the Soph~stonwards, IS finally droppedIn the Laws In the Ph~lebus he appears once more, for the lasttIme, because thIS dIalogue dIscusses questions that had beenraised by the real Socrates (The answers are obtamed, however,by means of methods that would never have occurred to hun )In thIS last perIod the separation between the histOrIcal Socratesand Plato's own philosophlZmg IS complete And that IS anotherSign that hIS general tendency towards SCIence, lOgIC, and dogmaIS seekmg self-expressIOn The last fruit of the theory of Formswas the methods of classification and abstractlOn, WhICh arewhat Plato means by dIalectic In the narrow sense of hIS laterworks These methods had revolutIonIZed the form of thecontroversIal dialogue that arose out of the SocratIc cross-exarnmatlOn They had made It psychologIcally meamngless andalmost turned It 1Oto a treatIse No further progress was pOSSIblem thiS dIrectIon It was only a question of tune before the greatart of the claSSIcal Platomc dramas died out, for ItS root wasdead ThiS was the moment at which the young Anstotle beganto take a hand I "

All members of the Academy wrote dialogues, though nonewrote more and weIghtIer ones than ArIstotle ThIS fact ISSignIficant for the relatIon of the new generatIOn to Plato Theyall used the dialogue as a ready-made form, WIthout askmgthemselves how far such an ImltatlOn was pOSSible The Greeksnaturally tended to Imitate everythmg once It was ' dIscovered' ,and they had not yet reahzed that Plato's dIalogue m ItSclaSSIcal perfechon was somethmg absolutely Immltable, theflower of a umque combmation of hIstOrIcal neceSSIty, mdlvldualcreatIve power, and partIcular expenence HIS pupils regardedthe dIalogue as the estabhshed vehIcle for gIvmg hvmg form toesotenc philosophy, and hence every one deSired to see themaster's effect on himself reproduced 10 such a medIUm Butthe more they realIZed that, because of the 10tunate umtyof hiS personality, hfe, and works, Plato was an mdlvlSlble

I No one has yet tned to connect Anstotle's dialogue WIth the developmentof Plato's form R Hirzel (Der DJQlog p 275) does not even put the questionUsmg a merely general Impression of Plato's dialogues, he can only 6ee theAnstotehan type as opposed to It He regards the two kinds as due Simply tothe difference In the characters of the two authors, and does not do Justice tothe factors mherent In the SituatIon

28 THE ACADEMYmagmtude that could not be taken over as a whole WIthoutproducIng either a dead scholasticism or a literary duettantlsm,the more they conscIOusly set themselves to find fundamentallynew forms for that which was sCientIfic and objective In hlIDand so could be detached These attempts properly took therrdeparture not from the dialogues but from Plato's oral teachIngIt IS slgtuficant both of the youthful Anstotle's natural affimtyto Plato and of his InabIlIty to view him objectIvely that he dIdnot at once take thiS WoiY, but began by contInuIng the dialogueClearly he found the es!:>entlal Plato more ahve, more powerful.and more obJectIve, 111 the dialogue than In any other fonn

The remammg fragments of hiS dialogues, together WIth thereports of antIqUity and the ImItatIOns of later wnters (he hadan especially powerful mfluence on CIcero), enable us to mferthat AnstotIe Invented a ne\\. kmd of lIterary dialogue, namelythe dialogue of sCIentIfic diSCUSSIOn He nghtly saw that theshadow-eAlstence of the' obstetnc' questIOn and answer mustbe done away, smce It had lost Its real function by becommg amere cloak for' long speeches' , but, while Plato In hiS later dayswas tendmg to replace dIalogue by dogmatIc lecture, Anstotleset speech agamst speech, thus reproducmg the actual hfe of re-search 111 the later Academy One of the speakers took the lead,gave the subject, and summed up the result!> at the end ThiSnaturally put narrow lImIts to the delIneatIOn of personahtyThe art of wntmg the speeches was taken over from rhetOrIC anddeveloped m accordance With the precepts of Plato's PhaedrusThe dIalogue now depended for ItS eftect more on ItS character(i'i6os) as a whole than on the ethopoe~aof particular person'>, and,whl1e It 10'>1 In ae had Its root Insteadof the arena of arguments, WIth the dramatIc thrust and counter-thrutratlOns, conducted d.ccordmg to stnct methodThe change meL} be deplored, but it was mevitable. a!> Pl.lto had

EARLY WORKS 29recognIzed when he abandoned' obstetnc ' conversation and thedehneatIon of character The hlstonans of hterature, who donot see what mner forces were at work, suppose themselves tohave estabhshed that Anstotle brought about the declme of thedIalogue On the contrary, he merely perfonned the mevltabletransltlOn to another stage The dialogue of dIScussIon IS sImplyan expreSSIOn of the fact that the sClentIfic element m Platofinally burst ItS form and remoulded It to SUIt Itself It was nota mere matter of aesthetics, It was a development of thephilosophIc mmd, WhICh necessanly produced ItS own newform

It IS customary to apply the casual remarb of later WrItersabout the charactenstics of Anstotle's dIalogue to all of them,but the mere titles ~how that that IS Impos

30 THE ACADEMYprevent us from supposmg that Aristotle had a fixed fonn whIchhe never changed As a matter of fact, hIS development as awriter of dIalogue mcludes all stages from 'obstetriC' conversa-bon to the pure treatise It runs parallel to hIS development as aphilosopher, or rather IS ItS orgamc expressIOn

It 15 often poSSIble to show that parbcular AristotelIandIalogues are modelled on particular PlatonIc ones, especIally mthelI' contents The Eudemus IS related m thIS way to thePhaedo, the GTyllus to the Gorgtas, and the books On Justtce tothe Republtc I The Sophtst and the Statesman, lIke the Sympo-stum and the Menexenus, were naturally suggested by Plato'sdIalogues of the same name The Protrepttcus, WhICh was not adIalogue, reveals the mfluence of the protreptic passages mPlato's Euthydemus, even to verbal echoes Plato may haveappeared as a speaker m the dIalogues

The style also shows very clo

EARLY WORKS 31dialogues Rhetoncal affectations are entIrely absent, clear andexact In thought, fine and movmg In character, these wntmgsappealed to the best men of later antIqmty It IS eVIdence oftheIr Intellectual breadth that Crates the Cymc and Phlhscus thecobbler read the Protrept1,cus together m the shop, that Zenoand Chryslppus, Cleanthes, Posldomus, Cicero, and Philo, werestrongly Influenced In relIgIOus considerations by these works ofAnstotle's youth, and that AugustIne, who came to know theProtrept1,cus through Cicero's Hortens1,us, was led by It to relIglOnand ChnstIamty I The Neo-Platomsts lIved by Anstotle'sdialogues as much a~ by Plato's, and the Consolat1,o of BoethlUssounds the last medieval echo of the relIgious element m themAs works of art antiqUIty did not mention them In the samebreath With Plato's, though It valued them greatly, but theIrrelIgIOUS Influence on the HellemstIc age was almo')t moreImportant than Plato's thoroughly dIstant, obJective, and non-InspIrational art

But what was Anstotle's phtlosophtcal relatlOn to Plato mthose works ~ It would be strange If the Influence of hie; modelhad been confined to the chOice of subject-matter, and to detailsof style and content, whIle the general attitude to Plato was oneof reJection, as It later became Sympostum, M enexenus, Sophtst,Statesman-were they really wntten to outdo Plato's dialoguesof the same names, and to show how the questions discussed Inthem ought to have been handled ~ Did the diSCiple obstInatelyand pedantically dog the master's footsteps In order to reduceeach one of hiS works to shreds In tum ~ Before ascnbIng to himsuch a malady of taste and tact men should have glVen moresenousattentlOn tothe other posslbulty that the purpose of thesedialogues was Simply and solely to follow Plato, In phIlosophy aswell as In all other respects

The understandIng of the dialogues has had a CUrIouslyunfortunate destIny ever sInce the recovery of the treatisesthrough Andromcus In the time of Sulla At that tIme they

I For the Pro/rep/letts In the cobbler's shop see frg 50 For Augustine's con-version by the Hcwtens.us see Confess III 4. 7 'HIe vero hber mutavlt affe-ctum meum et ad te Ipsum, domme, mutavlt prcces meas et vota ac desldcnamea fecit aha Vl1Ult mJhl repente omDIS vana spes et IrnmortalItatem saplenbaeconcupiscebam aestu cordiS lDcredlbl1l et surgere coeperam, ut ad te redU'em'(c1 also VIII, 7, 17)

3% THE ACADEMYwere still much read and hIghly thought of , but they soon beganto lose ground, when the learned PerIpatetIcs undertook theexact InterpretatIon of the long-neglected treatIses and wrotecommentary after commentary upon them The Neo-Platomstsmade some use of them, In contrast to the treatIses, as sources ofuncontamInated Platomsm ,but a strIctly PerIpatetIc InterpreterlIke the acute Alexander of AphrodlSlas does not know what tomake of them, though he must have read most of them Morenaive In phIlologIcal matters than was nece'>sary at that tIme,he explamed the relatIon between them and the treatIses bysayIng that the latter contaIned Anstotle's true VIews, and thefanner the false opInIOns of other persons II It was thereforerecognIzed at that tIme that there were contradIctions betweenthe two kmds The unsucce'isful efforts of the later PerIpatetIcsto explam thIS puzzhng state of affaIrs can be detected m thenotOrIOUS tradItIon about the dIfference between the exotenc andthe esotenc wntIngs Students naturally looked for an explana-tIOn of the dIalogues In the treatIse~ They found It In the phrase'exotenc dIscourses', whIch occurs several times and m someInstances can eaSIly be referred to the publIshed dIalogues InoppOSItion to these exotenc dIscourses, WhICh were Intended forthe outSIde world, they then set up the treatises as a body ofsecret esotenc doctnne, although there IS no hmt of any suchnotion or expreSSIOn m Anstotle Thus the relatIOn between thecontents of the dIalogues and those of the treatIses appeared tobe lIke that of oplmon to truth In ,;orne pa~sages, Indeed,Anstotle must have been purposely desertmg the truth, becausehe thought that the masses were Incapable of graspIng It Eventhe dIfficulty of the techmcal tenns m the treatises, WhICh gavelater scholars many headache'>, was pressed mto the serVIce ofthIS my~tIcal Interpretation, and a letter \\-as forged in whIchAnstotle wrote to Alexander that the terms were purposelymade obscure m order to mIslead the ummtIated

I Ehas III Anst Categ 24b 33 Alexander explainS the dIfference betweenthe lecture-notes and the dIalogues dIfferently, namely that 10 the lecture-notes he gives hIS own opinIOns and the truth. whJ1e In the dIalogues he gIvesthe opinions of othus. whIch are false' In spite of the nawetr! of the expres-SIOn the commentator surely represents the essence of Alexander's view cor-rectly Contradlcbons between the two k10ds of wntmg were noted as early asCicero (De Fm V 5, 12) In those days they were ascnbed to the literary formof popular wnbng

EARLY WORKS 33Modern cnticism has been sceptical about thIS mystIfication.

whIch IS ObvIously a late 1Ovention ong1Oatmg 10 the SpIrIt ofNeo-Pythagoreamsm I Nevertheless It has not got nd of theprejUdICe agamst the dIalogues ~ ThIS IS. of course, more dlfficultfor the moderns than It was for the anCIents, because we now haveonly fragments to work wIth Rather, therefore, than behevethese few but preCIOUS remnants, scholars have relIed on . theauthontIes. and espeCIally on two statements. one 10 Plutarchand one In Proclus, both com1Og from the same source, whIchspeak of the cntIcisms of the Idea-theory that Anstotle madem hIS EthfCS. PhYSfCS. and Metaphysfcs, and m hIS exotencdIalogues' 3 These passages seemed to prOVIde unshakable proofthat 10 the dIalogues Anstotle had already adopted the posItionIII whICh he stands In the cntical \\Iorks It was thereforenecessary eIther to put hIS' defection' from Plato early dunnghIS stay In the Academy or to put the dialogues later It was notdIfficult to find another' authonty' for the first SupposItionDlOgene

34 THE ACADEMYPlatonIc tum in the fragments as an outburst of lyrical feelmgContranWISe. Valentm Rose fastened upon them eagerly asproofs of his fantastical view that all the lost dialogues wereSpuriOUS 1 \Vhat both scholars had m common was sunply theIrrational conVIction that a man of such stnct and systematicmmd as Anstotle would never abandon opmlOns once formedThey supposed that from the very begmmng hiS own wnhngswere sharply cntIcal of Plato. and the Idea that he went througha Platomc phase seemed to them an mtolerable contradiction ofthe sober. cool, and cntIcal nature of hiS own understandmg

The conclUSIOn IS obVIOUS If thiS mwardly consistent view ISuntenable as a whole, U Anstotle began by gomg through aPlatomc penod that lasted a score of years, If he wrote works mPlato's spmt and supported hiS view of the umverse, then ourwhole prevIOus notIOn of the man's nature IS destroyed. and wemust hammer out a new conceptIon both of hiS personalIty andIts history and of the forces that moulded hiS philosophy Infact, thIS myth of a cool, static, unchangmg, and purely cntIcalAnstotle, without illUSIOns, expenence~, or hl!ltory. breaks topieces under the weIght of the facts which up to now have beenartIfiCially suppressed for ItS sake It IS not really surpnsmgthat the ancient Anstotehans did not know what to make of thedIalogues, espeCIally as It was to theIr mterest to draw a cleardlstmctlOn between Plato and ArIstotle and make the latter'sdoctnne as much of a umty as pOSSIble To them the collectionof treatises was a smgle systematic umty WIthout chronologicaldlStmctlOns They had not yet learnt to apply the nohon ofdevelopment, whIch Anstotle himself could have gIven them, tothe hIStOry of a philosophy or an mdIvIdual So there wasnothmg for It but to dismISS the dialogues as gwmg un-AnstotelIan VIews, and to explam them as a pIece of popularlIterary hackwork In any case. even before we begm to mter-pret them, It IS certain that the dIalogues contradIct the treatisesWhere theIr affimtIes he IS shown by the fact that the Neo-Platomsts and other adnurers of Plato's rehglOn and phIlosophyvalued them and ranked them equal to Plato's own wntmgs

I J Bemays, Die Dlaloge des Anstoteles In Ihrem Verh41tnls IU sementUw.gen Werken, Berlln, 1863. Valenbn Rose, Arutoteles Pseudep.graphus.LeipZig, 1863

EARLY WORKS 35Examples of thIs will be gIven later It only remams to consIderthe eVIdence of Plutarch and Proc1us, WhICh made Bemaysfeel obliged to deny a prMrt all traces of PlatonIsm In thedIalogues

ThIS argument also gIves way as soon as we examme It closelyIn the first place, It IS not two dIfferent pIeces of eVIdence, thecorrespondence In the expressIOn makes It certaIn that bothauthors were followmg the same authonty, smce Proclus doesnot seem to have followed Plutarch What the passage says ISthat ArIstotle opposed Plato's theory of Forms not merely InhiS Ethtcs, Phystcs, and Mdaphystcs, but also In the exotencdialogues As eVIdence for this Plutarch and Proc1us quote, bothfrom the same source, a passage from one of the dtalogues whereAnstotle represents himself as sayIng that he cannot sympathIzeWIth the dogma of Forms, even If he should be suspected ofdIsagreeIng out of contentIousness I ThiS shows that bothaccounts are founded on a concrete hlstoncal situatIOn In aparticular dialogue (most probably that On Phtlosophy, mwhIch we know that Anstotle attacked other parts of Plato's

I Frg 8 Proclus (m hIS work Examlnat,on of ArlOtotle's ObjectIOns to Plato'sT,maeus m Joannes Phl!oponus De Mund, Aetern II 2, P 31, 17 Rabe)'There 15 none of Plato's doctnnes that that man [I e Anstotle] rejected moredeCidedly th,tn the theory of Ideas Not merely does hL call the Forms soundsm the logIcal works, but m the Eth,cs ht> attacks the good-ID-Itsdf and In thephySical works he demes that commg-to-bt. Call be explamcd by the IdeasThiS he says In the work On Commg-to-be and PassIng-away, ,md much moreso In the Metaphysus, for there he JS concuned With first ?rmclples, and hemakes long objections to the Idea~ both In the beglOnmg and In the middle andIn the end of that work In tM dtalogues also he exclaIms unmistakably that hecannot sympathJze WI th thiS dogma, even If he should be suspeded of d,sagreeingout oj contentlou,n,ss (K6v TIS ClVTOV OITlTal :lila qnAoVlIKlav avnMY"w) ,

Plutarch adu Colot 14 (I IJj 0) 'ArIstotle IS alwdys hafJllng on the Ideas,With regard to which he objects to Plato. and he raises all sorts of difficultyabout them In hiS etrucal (In hiS metaphYSical,) and In hiS phySICal notes, andalso by means oj hIS exoter,C dialogues ro that SO"" thought hIm contentIousrather than philosophical these dogmas as If he were proposIng to under-mine Plato s phllosophy' ("AoVlIKrnpov !V(OIS (Ao~.v) The onglnal source,which both follow, and which the later author, Proclus reproduces moreaccurately, hsted separately all the places In ArIstotle's works that attack thetheory of Forms Thus three passages are mentioned from the MetaphySICS,Books A, Z and MN The mention of Post Anal I 22, 83a 33, hk.. that ofN,c Eth I 4. recalls the actual words of the ongInal It IS the same WIth thepassage that I have pnnted In ltahcs (which comes from the dialogue 0"PJlIlosophy) ThIS was the only passage that the author could discover 1D thedialogues although hiS hst IS obViously very careful and complete ThiScatalogue IS thus direct proof that thIS polemlL was unique In the dIalogues

36 THE ACADEMYmetaphYSICS) To umversalize this and apply 1tto all the dialoguesIS J.1legItImate All It proves IS, what we already knew, that therewere one or two dIalogues m WhICh Anstotle opposed PlatoThIs gIves us no JustIficatIon whatever for explaInIng away thePlatomc VIews that we find In other dIalogues Rather we mustrecogmze that these works eVInce a development 10 philosophIcalmatters, preCisely as we demonstrated that they do In form

As a matter of fact, Plutarch hunself, although he has hIthertobeen supposed to show that Anstotle was completely opposed toPlato even In hIS dialogues, gIves us explICIt and ummstakableproof of the fact of Anstotle's phIlosophIcal development In apassage that has been entIrely neglected I he actually mentionsAristotle as the outstandIng example of the fact that the truephJ.1osopher WIll alter hIS VIews WIthout regret, and Indeed WIthJOY, as soon as he perceives hIS error ArIstotle, DemocrItus, andChrysippuS all changed theIr earlIer phIlosophical OpInIOnS In thIS.... ay, and theword that Plutarchuses for the change (lJFTcrrI6ecrl}ol)proves that he cannot be refernng to que

EARLY WORKS 37As we saw above, these facts were not so clear to everybody

10 later antlqUlty as they were to Plutarch ThIS IS shown byan unportant statement of Eusebms' about the great polemIcalwork wntten agamst Anstotle by Isocrates' pupil CephlSodorus IThis work must have been a product of the competItion betweenthe Academy and the school of Isocrates, belongIng to the timewhen Anstotle, then a youthful member of Plato's school, wasIntroducmg the study of rhetonc there and thus causmg thelatent nvalry of the two InstItutIOns to break out mto the openEusebms tells us that Cephlsodorus took up arms agamst Plato'stheory of Ideas and all hIS other doctnnes m turn, and he ex-presses surprIse that Cephlsodorus should have saddled ArIstotleWIth these OpInIOnS In accordance \Hth the prevailmg notionEusebms thought of Anstotle as the natural antipode of PlatuHe (or hIS authonty Numemus) did not know, and hardly couldhave known at that late date, that the Anstotle ",horn Cephlso-dams had In mInd was entirely dIfferent from the one that thetreatises, not publIshed untl1 centunes later, made faml1Iar toreaders of Impenal times Cephlsodorus knew Anstotle onlythrough hIS lIterary publIcatIOns, that IS to say, through thedIalogues that he wrote while stIll a member of the Academy,and SInce when he wntes a book agamst Anstotle he attacks thetheory of Ideas, we have SImply got to learn that up to that time

on Plato, but If, as IS hkely the phrase' the PlatoniC "'arks had become anestabhshed name for the whole group of dialogues, there was nothmg to preventthat On Phtlosophy fTOm bemg also descnbed m thIS way The maJonty ofthese wntmgs were really PlatOniC not merely m form but also 1Il doctrme

I Euseb Praep Evang XIV 6 (he tells us that he IS here followmg Nume-mus) 'Now tl1ls Cephlsodorus, when he saw hiS teacher IsocratLs bemgcntlclzed by Anstotle, was tgnorant of and unfatmhar wdh Aristotle hlrn 'elf ,but since he saw that Plato's views were celebrated, and "nce he thought thatAr.stotle ph.losophtzed after the manner of Plato he attacked A Tlstotle wtthcTtltnsms that apphed 10 Plato, and argued agamst htm begmmng ultth the Form,and endzng With the rest about which he lumself kncw nothmg but merelyguessed at the common opmIOn about them At the fnd of thiS section there ISanother passagL to the same effect 'This Cephlsodorus argued not agamst theperson he was attackmg [I e Anstotle], but agamst some one he did not wI~hto attack' [I e Plato] As to the ..xplanathJn here gnen of why Cephlsodorus mhiS polemiC agalDst Anstotle attacked the doctrme not of Aristotle but of Plato,It IS a threadbare IDventIOn ad hoc, and cannot be taken senou~ly for an mstantTo say that he was not acqUaInted WIth Anstotle's own phtlosophy, andattacked Plato's Instead because It ",as more famons IS a solution that couldoccur only to some one who had not the famtest notIOn of the rcal situationtlunng Anstotle's stay 10 the Academy

38 THE ACADEMYall of Anstotle's wTltmgs had been based entIrely on thephIlosophy of Plato

Our mterpretatlOn of the sUrviVing fragments of the dlalogue!!must defend thIS VIew 10 detaIl, and the questIons that we ralsemust concern the fragments that actually remam, and not bemerely general As startmg-pomt we must take whateverchronological and phIlosophIcal matters can be defimtely fixedby means of the fragments. Even the earlmess of the dIaloguescan be adequately proved only by the mterpretatIOn of eachone separately

CHAPTER III

THE EUDEMUS

T HE date of the DIalogue Eudemus, whIch IS named afterAnstotle's Cypnan fnend, IS giVen by the motive for ItScomposItion, whIch can easLly be reconstructed from CIcero'saccount of the dream of Eudemus 1

ThIS pupLl of Plato's, bamshed from hIS country, becamegravely Lli durmg a Journey through Thessaly The physIcIansof Pherae, where he lay, had desparred of hIS hfe, when thereappeared to hun In a dream a beautiful young man whopromIsed hun that he would shortly get well, that soon after-wards the tyrant Alexander of Pherae would meet hIS death,and that when five years had elapsed Eudemus would return tohIS country Anstotle related, obvlOusly In hIS mtroductlOn,how the first and second promiSes qwckly came true, Eudemusrecovered, and soon afterwards the tyrant was assassmated byhIS WIfe's brothers (359) All the more fervent was the exLle'shope that five years would see the thrrd promIse fulfilled andhImself back In Cyprus Dunng the Interval DlOn, who had beenbamshed from Syracuse, was at Athens WIth the support ofthe Academy he assembled a company of resolute volunteers.prepared to nsk therr hves for the lIberation of hIS CIty Out ofenthusIasm for Plato's pohticalldeals, whIch DlOn was supposedto be gomg to realIze, some of the young phLlosophers )'Jilled theexpedItion Among them was Eudemus, but he was killed illone of the engagements outsIde Syracuse, preciSely five yearsafter the dream (354) ThIS unexpected fulfilment of the VISIonwas mterpreted In the Academy to mean that what the God hadforetold was the return of the soul not to ItS earthly but to It:.eternal home

In thIS dIalogue Anstotle unmortallZed the memory of hISbeloved fnend and sought comfort for hIS sorrow He began byrelating the story of the dream of Eudemus, ill order to show

I Anst frg 37 (CIC De Dill I 25 53) The Eudemus IS mentioned as ade&1deratum In a catalogue of the Hurd century A D (papyrus). edited by MedeaNona In Agyptus, vol 11(1921), P 16 Undoubtedly, therefore It was still readat that date

40 THE ACADEMYthat by Its fulfilment the deIty Itself confirmed the truth ofPlato's doctrme of the heavenly ongm of the soul and Its futurereturn thither ThIS provIded the startmg-pomt for a meta-phySIcal conver5atIon ' on the soul', the central portIon of whIchwas the questiOn of unmortahty The conception" of the Phaedo,asceticIsm and the practIce of death, lIve agam In thIS earlywork of ArIStotle's The earthly hfe of the soul 10 the chams ofcorporeahty, which the Phaedo lIken" to a pnson, becomes forhim a penod of exile from an eternal home In the pIcture ofthe fugItive In a foreIgn country, gazrng toward'S the home fromwhich he has been driven, there lIes a fervour of longmg for thepeace and secunty of the heavenly plams The Eudemus was abook of consolation Not a word need be wasted on the s10gularInsensIbilIty that cannot see In It anythrng but a fngid stylIsticexerCIse m the manner of the Phaedo The only thmg that couldgwe genume comfort \\'~s a hvmg faith m that reversal of thevalues of hfe and death which Plato had accomphshed m thePhaedo The author of the Eudemus had surrendered hImselfabsolutely to this behef m another lIfe, and to the correspondmgVIews of the world and the soul Hence the Neo-Pld.tomsts usethe Eudemus and the Phaedo as equally valuable 'iources forPlato's doctnne of Immortahty We shall examme the frag-ments of Anstotle's work In the lIght of that doctnne

LIke Plato 10 the Phaedo, Anstotle 10 the Eudemus attackedthe matenalIstIc view that IS opposed to the doctnne of Im-mortalIty And he attacked It m the same form as It has m thePhaedo, namely that the soul IS nothmg but the hannony of thebody, that IS to say, while different from the sum of the body'selements, It IS the product of the nght arrangement of them-thiS IS also the modern matenahst's account of the soul Out ofthe cntICism of thiS view m the Eudemus two counter-argumentsremam The first runs thus 'Harmony has a contrary, namelydisharmony But the soul has no contrary Therefore the soulIS not a hannony 'I

Here we have the non-IdentIty of two conceptIOns provedfrom the non-Identity of theIr marks Hence Anstotle I!:l pre-supposmg knowledge of the Important fact that the Identityof objects depends on the Identity of theIr attnbutes The

I Anst frg 45

THE EUDEMUS 41attnbute that he here takes as a means of companson IS onebelongmg to formal lOgic-the possibility of produclOg a con-trary opposite to the conceptIons that are to be exammed,namely soul and harmony This IS found to be possible wlthharmony, but the soul has no such opposite Anstotle formulateshis syllogIsm tersely and trenchantly, and IS obvIOusly pleased atIts laconIc cogency It IS not ImmedIately obvIOus what led hlffito choose precisely this hne of argument m order to demonstratethe non-IdentIty of the two conceptIons and theu contents, butthis becomes clear as soon as we conSider the followlOg propo-

42 THE ACADEMYAnstotehan doctnne of the categones thus 'substance (oua{a)does not appear to admIt of vanatIon of degree (TO IJQhAOV KalTO f)TTOV) I do not mean by thIS that one substance cannotbe more or less truly substance than another, but that nosubstance can be more or less that whIch It IS For eXaJl7.ple, aman cannot now be man In a hIgher degree than he was, but hecan well be paler than he was The category of qUalIty by itsnature admIts a more or less, but that of substance does not '.It follows from thIS law, 1 one belIeves WIth Plato that the soulIS a substance, that there cannot be vanations of degree 10 thesoul, whIle there can be m harmony and m dIsharmony, as mall relatives that have contranes, for example VIrtue and VIceor knowledge and Ignorance Z Thus Plato also mfers the non-IdentIty of soul and harmony from the ImpossIbIlIty of applyingone and the same logIcal pnnclple to both conceptIons, or, 10Anstotehan terms, from theIr belonging to dIfferent categories

We can now see clearly why Anstotle altered the argument ofthe Phaedo as he dId On Plato's VIew a 'more or less', a vana-tIon of degree, can occur only 10 the mdetermInate (Ci:TTelpov),never In anyth10g absolutely determmed (nepas) Now we havea 'more or less', a vanable scale of degrees, an mtermedlatebetween two extremes, wherever we have contrary OpposItesThus the proposItion that the Phaedo employs, namely thatsubstance admIts no more or less, IS referred by the Eudemus tothe pnor proposItIon on WhICh It depends, namely that substanceadmIts no contrary OpposIte Hence the reductIOn of the proofto a s1Ogle, sunple syllogIsm, WIth WhICh Anstotle achIeves thesame result

At the same tune he gets a second counter-argument out ofwhat IS left of Plato's proof after the extractIOn of ItS kernelHe sets thIS out m the followmg way Opposed to the harmonyof the body IS the disharmony of the body, but the dIsharmonyof the hvmg body IS dIsease and weakness and ughness Of these

I [AnstJ Caleg 3b 33-4" 9 [AnstJ Caleg 6b 15 'It IS possible for relatives to have contranes Thus

VIrtue bas a contrary, Vice, these both bemg relatives. knowledge, too, has acontrary, Ignorance' From tlus It follows In 6b20 that 'It also appears thatrelatives can admit of vanatlon of degree', just as the Incompatibility of sub-stance With the' more and less' follows from Its Incompatibility With contraryopposition (lvcwnbnlsl

THE EUDEMUS 43disease IS a lack of symmetry m the elements, weakness a lackof symmetry In the homogeneous parts (OIJ010IJEp;;). and ughnessd. lack of symmetry In the members If, therefore, disharmonyIS disease and weakness and ughness, harmony IS health andstrength and beauty But I say that the soul IS none of these,neither health nor strength nor beauty For even Thersltes hada soul In spite of all hiS uglmess Therefore the soul IS not aharmony 'I

ThiS argument follows directly from Plato's anthropologyPlato distingUIshes virtues of the soul and of the body Thoseof the soul are Wisdom, courage, Justice, and temperance, thoseof the body health, strength, and beauty Parallel to these ISthe senes of opposite qualIties, the VICes of body and soul Thevirtues depend on the harmony (symmetry), the vices on thedisharmony (lack of symmetry), of the soul or body as the casemay be ThiS explanation of disease, weakness, and uglmess, a3lack of symmetry In the body and ItS parts or their relatIOns,was taken over by Plato from contemporary mediCIne, on whichhe based hiS whole SCIence of ethiCS or therapy of the soul, and Inwhich he saw the pattern of true sCience and stnct method HISdoctnne of virtue IS a doctnne of the Illness and health of thesoul, modelled on mediCIne and havmg for pnnclple the con-ception of measure (lJhpov) and of symmetry or harmony ButIf It IS estabhshed that harmony IS the pnnCIple of the bodilyVirtues, health, strength. and beauty, It IS not poscilble at thesame tune to explaIn the soul as a harmony of the body ThiSargument has the advantage of attackIng the rna tenahstopponent on hiS own ground The explanatIOn of health as thec;ymmetry of the body, and of disease as the lack of It, mightbe expected to meet With approval from the representatives ofnatural SCience, not so the explanatIOn of virtue as the sym-metry of the soul, which was the startIng-poInt of the PhaedoThiS Platomc doctnne of the VlTtues of soul and body, whIchAnstotle here follows and develops In detail, IS wholly foreign tothe treatises It IS In the spmt of Pythagorean mathematicsAccordIng to Plato the correct ethical state of the soul, Just hkethe normal and natural state of the body, IS only a speCial caseof the umversal cosmic law of symmetry, as that IS developed

'ArIat frg 45 (Rose, p 50, I 13)

44 THE ACADEMYm the Phtlebus as a part of Plato's lat~r VIew of the nature ofthings I

The analysIs of these two arguments has yIelded a doubleresult In the first place, It has shown us that 10 the EudemusAnstotle IS still completely dependent on Plato In metaphysIcs,not only In the rejection of matenalIsm, but also In posItivematters It has not Indeed been prevIously recognIZed that hISproofs rest on the same basIs as Plato's metaphysIcs and doctnneof ImmortalIty, namely Plato's conceptIOn of substance and thesoul, but thIS IS to be ascnbed merely to the lack of thoroughmterpretatIOn That Anstotle here still regards the soul as an ab-solute substance IS clear from hIS later ImItators For example,OlymplOdorus gIves the first mference m thIS form 'harmonyhas an oppoSIte, but the soul has not, for It IS a substance'(Anst frg 45) The assertIOn that there IS a pettttO pnnetptt InthiS fonnulatIOn IS true, but It IS equally true of the angInalform, where the peittto IS qUIetly presupposed Z It goes back toPlato hImself, as we have shown, for the same presuppositlOn ISmade In the Phaedo The dogmatic character of the proof ISbrought out stIU more clearly by PlotInus, when he says SImply, the soul IS a substance but harmony IS not' J

I For the doctnne of the three virtues of the body see Plato, Rep IX 591 B,Laws, I 631 C, and PhIl 25 D ff (espeCially 26 B) el passIm He IS fond ofdrawmg the parallel bet",eLn them and the vutUf'S of the ~oul In PhIl 26 Bthey are reduced to a numencally determmed relation between certamopposites, the ongm of thiS theory IS clearly revealed by the Eudemus ThiSdialogue also shows that the ethlc~ of measure or utTpov rest on a transferencemto the mental sphere of contemporary mathematical views In mediCine lhf'Anstotehan mean (1.IE0-6"'1I) IS a conscIOus return to thiS pomt of departure, andcarnes the analogy through still more stnctly The phySICians' mf'asurc or..npov was Itself a correct mean that had to be determmed subJeclwely, and tobe aimed at' (a-roX0:3Ea&a,) , thiS was me

THE EUDEMUS 4SAnstotle's later doctnne lIes midway between the matenalIstic

View that the soul IS the harmony of the body, and the Platonicview of the Eudemus that It IS a substance of ItS own The soulIS substance only as being . the entelechy of a natural bodypotentially possessing hfe' I It IS not separable from the body,and therefore not Immortal, but In conneXlOn with the body It ISthe formulatlve pnnclple of the organism To the soul In theEudemus, on the contrary, can be apphed the remarks thatPlotlnus makes In his rejection of Anstotle's entelechy-soul fromthe PlatOniC POint of view .The soul does not possess beingbecause It IS the form ofsometh~ng, on the contrary, It is absolutereahty (ovalo) It does not take ItS eXistence from the fact thatIt IS In a body, It eXISts before ever It belongs to a body'Z Now,smce we find the doctnne of pre-existence In the Eudemus, thiSalone IS enough to show that the soul IS there a substance(ovalo), and hence It IS not surpnslng that Plotlnus, whocombats the Anstotehan conceptiOn of the soul, can neverthelessmake the argument In the Eudemus completely hIS own, whIlecontranwIse thIS syllogIsm IS attacked by the supporters ofthe 'genume' Anstotle, such as Alexander and follOWing himPhIloponus Accordmg to these latter the soul has an OppOSIte,namely pnvatIOn, and so the argument falls to the ground ThiSview pre

46 THE ACADEMYsomethmg of the nature of an Idea We are expressly told thiS,and It IS now for the first bme possible really to understand It IAnstotle hlIDself has left us an Important piece of eVidence thatthrows lIght on the facts of his development When attackmgthe theory of harmony in his work on the soul he quotes hISearher wntmg. He takes from the Eudemus the second andsClentmc argument, whIch he develops somewhat, but he sIlentlyabandons the argument from the substantIalIty of the soul 2

The second fact that we dIscover by our analYSIS IS that theyoung Anstotle was completely mdependent of Plato m thesphere of logiC and methodology Though dependent on hIm forhIS VIew of the world, he 15 here qUIte free, and perhaps even has aslIght feelIng of supenonty HIS reductIOn of Plato's proof to ItSelements, and the techmcal excellence of the two proofs that heconstructs out of them, reveal long expenence m these thmgs,and the knowledge embodied m the doctnne of the categonesforms the presupposItIon of hIS correctIons It IS nothmg agamstthiS that the work which we have on the categones cannot havebeen wntten before the days of the Lyceum, and IS not byAnstotle himself at all (It IS charactenstIc of the penod ofnaturalIsm and empmcIsm, which arose m rus school after hiSdeath) The fundamental attItude embodied In the doctnne ofthe categones, and the mam portIons of the doctnne Itself, hadbeen developed before Anstotle dared to shake the metaphYSicalfoundatIons of Plato's philosophy J

I Anst frg 46 (Rose, p '12,1 19) 'And In the Eudemus he shows that the soulIS a Form '(E1J.6sTI) The Important pOInt IS the absence of any genItIve such as' ofa body' or 'of somethIng' , and we must not follow Bernays (op CIt, p 25) InsupplyIng one and then explaInIng that the expressIOn was purposely madeambIguous In order to conceal a secret opposItIOn to Pldto Slmphclus thoughtIt contrary to Anstotle's usual vIew

Anst De An I 4. 408" I ff The Categol'us cannot be an early work because the Lyceum IS gIven as an

example of the category of place and thIS undoubtedly refers to the school,WhICh also prOVIded several other example~ of logIcal conceptIOns One needonly thInk of Conscus the pomt of the frequent use of hiS namc as an examplebecomes clear when one ImagInes the lectures In Assos, at whIch he was presentIn the Catego7'>es Anstotle's doctnne of first and second substdnce IS madenommahsttc, thlq cannot be removed or explamed away. and the very form ISun-Anstotellan The Importance of these qllght and unmtentIonal verbalmdlcatlOns must not be underestImated Moreover the author assumes thatthe doctnne of the categones IS already known he takes up only a few ques-bons All thIS, however, does not prevent us from seemg that most of thedetaIls are Anstoteh"n m content, the Ludemus show~ how early III hIS develop-

THE EUDEMUS 47ThIS shows how weak was the ongInal conneXIOn between

10glc and metaphysIcs In Anstotle's mInd, as opposed to Plato'sHe IS the real father of lOgIc and devoted an unmense amount ofacute thInkIng to It But he never recognized It as a part ofphJ.1osophy and as havIng ItS own proper obJect, he alwaystreated It merely as an art or faculty (2l\Jvaj..lIS) With specialfonnal rules, more or less lIke rhetonc He had already becomethe first specialIst In lOgIC before he deduced from his new doc-tnne of abstractIon consequences that ran counter to the theoryof Ideas

The Influence of his studIes In logic can also be seen m someof the other fragments of the argument for ImmortalIty 10 theEudemus, and espeCIally m hIS fondness for what he calleddIalectIc By thiS word Anstotle means, m contra!>t to Plato, alltho'>e arguments that rest on merely probable premIsses andhave only subjectIve cogency Plato hImself makes extensIveuse of them m his dIalogues AlongSIde the stnctly apodlctIcarguments they serve to support the proof as peltast'5 servealongSide hophtes (The enstIc SIde of Plato's and Anstotle's logIcmust always be kept m mmd) They do not posscethe weight of the arguments for an after-hfe that Anstotle makesout of the rehgIOus behefs of natIOns, the customs of ntual, andthe most anCIent myths ~I Even m hIS treatIses he usually start"from the general VIew or from the opmlOns of great men Hetnes to combme ratIonal and purely phJ.1osophical knowledge\'Ilth the kernel of truth that hes hIdden m thos( sourcesBecause of thIS he has been accused of a tendency towards'common sense' by those who love the radIcal and the extreme(and SInCP the RomantIc revolutIOn we have generally reckoned!>uch persons as the most profound thInkers, at any rate m theIntellectual sphere) As a matter of fact thIS dialectIc concealsa pecuhar theory of expenence, m the histoncal and concretesense of the word In gIVmg a hpanng not merely to his own

ment they must be placed Ernst Hambruch shows m hl~ Loglsche Regeln derplat SchUll" In der anst Toplk' that a large number of Important Items oflOgIcal knOWledge contamed m the TOpics were discovered dunng Anstotle'stIme 10 the Academy (Wlssenschaflhche Betlage .rum Jah,.esbencht des Aska-ntschen GymnaStums, Berlin, 1904)

I Anst frg 44 (Rose, P 48, 11 11-22)

48 THE ACADEMYreason, but also to what has hlstoncally been beheved, to thecollectIve expenence of men or to the Ideas of famous persons,Anstotle IS not so much lazily relymg upon the general opmlOnas dlsplaymg mSlght mto the 111mtatlons of every merelyIntellectual argument about such matters

To sound the metaphysIcal depth!> of the Eudemus we must goto the myth of MIdas and Sl1enu'> When the kmg asks hIm whatIS the hIghest good (TO nO:vLwv alpETt::lTaTOV), Sl1enus unwlllmglyreveals the mIsery and wretchedness of man's estate The styleshows the Influence of the speech of maId Lachesl", daughter ofAnanke, m the tenth book of the Republtc (617 D if) In wordand shape Sdenus breathes the melancholy humour of nature'searthbound stupor A cleverly disgUIsed PlatOnIC termInologyconveys the pnnclples of the dualist philosophy, It IS altogetherImpossIble that men should attam to the hIghest good, theycannot share In the nature of the hIghest (~aaxEiv Tfie; TOU13EATIc-rov lble '1

The speCIal attrachon, the real oracle, of these elevated wordslies In theIr mtentlonal amblgmty Popular WIsdom recom-mended torpid resIgnatIon, the best thmg IS to dIe In thlm there IS no hope whatever of another and aperfect world, or of a higher eXIstence beyond the graveAnstotle, on the contrary, Introduces mto Sl!l:'nus' words thefundamental conceptwn of Plato's metaphySICS To 1.111 yevemloLIS not merely' not to be born' , It also means .not to enter IntoBecomIng' To Becommg the Philebus (53 c if) opposes thepure Bemg of the world of Ideas as at once ItS complete OppOSIteand ItS hIghest aIm All that IS valudble, all that IS perfect, allthat IS absolute, belongs to BeIng, all that IS bad, Imperfect, andrelahve, belongs to BecomIng Whereas Anstotle in hIS laterethICS dIffers from Plato In that he seeks not for an absolutegood but for the bes tfor man (av6pt::lmvov aya66v) ,In this dIaloguehe IS completely on PlatOnIC ground It IS shU self-evIdent tohIm that when we dISCUSS the hIghest value we mu~t thmk of thetranscendental Bemg or the absolute Good, and not of what theGreeks called happIness (Eli1.OIl.lovla) In