Page:Aristotle (Grant).djvu/42

 leisure and positions of dignity. In this period it is probable that he not only prosecuted his researches and independent speculations in many branches of thought and science, but that he learned to know his own mission in the world, which was to stick to the matter of knowledge, abandoning all regard for the artistic adornment of truth. During this period we may believe that he thoroughly developed the individual character of his own mind in relation to philosophy, so that when he came back to Athens he had quite established his own peculiar style of writing, crabbed indeed and inelegant, but full of an exact phraseology which he had himself constructed, and on the whole not unsuited as a vehicle for the exposition of science. We are not able, however, to say for certain whether in his second period he actually composed any works, though he must constantly have been compiling notes and memoranda, to serve either as the materials or the ground-plans for future treatises. The third period of Aristotle’s life was the rich fruit-time of his genius. We have already mentioned how he set himself to the construction of an entire encyclopædia of science and philosophy. What we possess as his works contain the unfinished, but much advanced, working out of that project. There is every reason to believe that the great bulk of this series of writings was composed by Aristotle during the last thirteen years of his life. He was doubtless assisted by his school, and he must have had many treatises on hand at one time, or rather he had them all in his head, and when anything caused him to drop one for a time he could go on with an-