Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/572

512 his school to some extent, in co-operation with himself, to work out details, and to assist in a subordinate way in the construction of the great philosophical and scientific edifice which he had in view. The period of the zenith of Aristotle was coeval with the astonishing career of his pupil, Alexander. There is a tradition that Alexander furnished him with funds for his physical and zoological researches. However this may have been, it appears certain that Aristotle was identified in Athens with the Macedonian cause, and that when, in the summer of 323, the startling news of the sudden death of Alexander was spread through Greece, Aristotle was involved in the temporary fall of a political party, and those who, from different causes, were his enemies, made an attack upon him which caused him to fly from Athens. Grote has well drawn out the various elements of enmity existing against Aristotle, and to his account we refer. Aristotle retired to Chalcis in Euboea, a place garrisoned by the Macedonians, and there shortly afterwards closed, in an illness, his life of unsurpassed activity and achievement. His will, preserved by Diogenes, would seem to indicate a kind, just, and generous disposition; of the genuineness of this document we cannot be sure, but there is nothing recorded of Aristotle with any certainty which would lead us to think of him personally otherwise than with respect.

After his death his works had a strange and remarkable history. His library, containing all his own autographs, many of them being MSS. of unpublished and unfinished treatises, was bequeathed to Theophrastus, his chief disciple, who, dying thirty-five years later, bequeathed them in turn, together with his own books and writings, to Neleus, a Peripatetic scholar. Neleus took the whole precious collection with him to his home at Scepsis, in Asia Minor, and his heirs concealed it in a vault to prevent its being seized by the king of Pergamus, who was then levying contributions for his royal library. The Aristotelian MSS. were thus lost to the world for 187 years. About the year 100 they were brought out of their hiding-place and sold to a wealthy book-collector, named Apellicon, who carried them back to Athens. In the year 86, on the taking of Athens by Sulla, the library of Apellicon was seized and brought to Rome. There some learned Greeks obtained access to it; Tyrannion, the friend of Cicero, arranged the MSS.; and Andronicus of Rhodes undertook the task of furnishing a correct text, and a complete edition of the philosophical works of Aristotle, out of the materials at his disposal. He arranged the different treatises and scattered fragments under their proper heads, and published what was henceforth received as the authorised edition of the works of Aristotle. It seems reasonable to believe with Grote that "our Aristotle," that is, the collection of writings which under this name has come down to modern times, is none other than the edition of Andronicus, and thus dates from about the year 50 For the first generation after the death of Aristotle, his scholars, Theophrastus, Eudemus, Phanias, Straton, &c., were engaged partly in editing, partly in paraphrasing, sometimes in endeavouring to improve upon his mostly unfinished works. But the Peripatetic school very rapidly declined; all the philosophic ability round the shores of the Ægean threw itself into one or other of the two new rival schools which had arisen, the Stoic and the Epicurean. The Peripatetics could not keep up to their master's level; they soon lost interest in the higher parts of his system; they took to writing monographs on small separate questions, and moral platitudes dressed up in rhetorical form. We may hesitate to affirm, that, during 187 years, there were absolutely no copies of Aristotle's greatest works extant besides those hidden in the vault of Scepsis, for the Stoical ethics and logic both bear traces of a knowledge of Aristotle. But, at all events, for the time, the world had lost its interest in all that we most prize in Aristotle's thought. Strabo says expressly that "all his writings, except a few of a more popular character," had been lost; and in accordance with this, Cicero says that "even philosophers know nothing of Aristotle, though they ought to have been attracted by the incredible sweetness of his diction." The latter part of this remark may seem sur prising, for it is not in the least applicable to any of the works of Aristotle which have come down to us. But Cicero is evidently referring to the Dialogues, which were read, admired, and attributed to Aristotle in the days before the edition of Andronicus became known. The question has been raised, especially by Valentine Rose, whether these dialogues, and other short, unsystematic works which passed under the name of Aristotle, were all forgeries, or were in any case genuine. On the one hand it is urged that the dialogic, or artistic, mode of exposition, was alien from Aristotle's turn of mind. On the other hand, it may be said that Aristotle in his youth may very probably have tried his hand at imitating the Platonic dialogues. And, indeed, unless he had done so, it is difficult to understand how even the forgers could have ventured to publish dialogues bearing his name. Very likely, after his death and the loss of the main bulk of his works by their removal to a vault in Asia Minor, a crop of forged Aristotelian writings sprung up, and imitations of his earlier and more popular works were among the number. But still, it appears safest to believe that Aristotle did at one time endeavour to make the dialogue his vehicle for philosophy. In the years that followed the death of Plato, he probably felt within himself a reaction and repugnance against this mode of writing, and when he returned to Athens as the leader of a school, he utterly renounced it, and set himself henceforth to the statement of the naked truth in the directest and most scientific terms which ho could find. Whether the dialogues which Cicero and his contemporaries read and admired were early works of Aristotle himself, or were forgeries, there is no means of knowing. But the fragments of these works, which a search of all ancient literature has brought together, show us nothing worthy of Aristotle in his best days, nothing that contributes any light to his philosophy. And it is remarkable that all works of this kind seem to have been excluded from the edition of Andronicus. Owing to that exclusion they are all now lost, and thus the tables are turned, for whereas before the edition of Andronicus the