Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/583

Rh widely from the modern point of view, and which, therefore, are his points of weakness. Much that the world has accepted from him, many a solid mass of wisdom and good sense, to be found in his writings, we have been obliged to pass over in silence. On most subjects Aristotle is no longer an authority, but yet, for many reasons his works are well worth study. First, on account of the important part they have borne in the history of the world. No one who aspires to cultivation can dispense with a historical knowledge of the thought of Europe, and Aristotle is one of the great fountain-heads of that thought. Secondly, if cultivation consists, as has been said, in an acquaintance with all the best productions of the human mind, Aristotle's works, despite their want of style, certainly come among the number. Hegel advocated the study of these works as " the noblest problem of classical philology." The University of Oxford, during the present century, has made a renewed study of Aristotle one of its chief instruments of education, and with great success, as was especially testified to by the late Dr Arnold of Rugby. Aristotle's great knowledge of human nature, exhaustive classification, and clear methods of disentangling a question and dealing with what is essential in it, render many of his works an excellent curriculum for training young men, and fitting them for all the superior business of life. There is a certain dynamical impulse to be derived from Aristotle, independent of all his results and conclusions. The Aristotelian element in thought and knowledge may, perhaps, be summed up as " analytic insight; and this insight arises out of concentration of the mind upon the subject in hand, marshalling together all the facts and opinions attainable upon it, and dwelling on these, and scrutinising and comparing them till a light flashes on the whole subject. Such is the procedure which may be learnt, by imitation, from Aristotle.

The history of the study of the Aristotelian philosophy, since the time of Andronicus, falls under various heads, dealt with elsewhere. It is contained, first, under such names as those of the Greek commentators, Boethus, Nicolas Damascenus, Alexander of ^Egse, Aspasius, Adrastus, Galenus, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Porphyry, lamblichus, Dexippus, Themistius, Proclus, Ammonius, Damascius, David the Armenian, Asclepius, Olympiodorus, Simplicius, and Johannes Philoponus; secondly, under the history of the caliphs of Baghdad, and their encouragement of the translation into Arabic of Greek philosophical works; thirdly, under the names of Avicenna (of Baghdad), and Averroes, and Moses Maimonides (of Cordova), and the history of the controversies to which they gave rise; fourthly, under the name of Thomas Aquinas, and the history of Scholasticism generally; fifthly, under the history of the Renaissance, and of the manifold editions of Aristotle to which the first age of printing gave birth; sixthly, under the names of Ramus and Bacon, and the history of the reaction against scholastic Aristotelianism; seventhly, under the names of Lessing, Hegel, and other great Germans who, within the last hundred years, have revived a genuinely philosophical and critical study of Aristotle.

For the bibliography of Aristotle's works we must refer to the first volume of Buhle's (Bipontine) edition (1791-1800), which contains an enumeration of all the earlier editions, translations, and commentaries. All previous editions of the text of the entire works give way to the recension of Immanuel Bekker (1831-1840), which being supplemented by a volume of Scholia upon Aristotle, edited by Brandis (1836), and a complete index to all the works, compiled by Bonitz (1870), constitutes the great edition of the Prussian Royal Academy. Within the last forty years much admirable work has been done in Ger many in the way of clearing up special questions relating to Aristotle, and introducing correct judgments about his philosophy generally. Perhaps the scholar who, by a mixture of rich learning and penetrating good sense, has deserved best of Aristotle is Dr Leonhard Spengel, to whose papers, contributed to the Royal Bavarian Academy of Munich, we have of ten previously referred. The historians of philosophy, beginning with Hegel's "Lectures," and going on to Brandis, Zeller, Schwegler, and Ueberweg, reflect the progressive opinions about Aristotle of critical and philosophical circles. Many excellent editions of the separate treatises, and many monographs on special points, have performed a subsidiary function. And a good German translation, executed by Stahr, Bender, Karsel, tc., of the works of Aristotle, now nearly complete, has been published at Stuttgart, by Krais and Hoffmann.

No other nation can compare with Germany in recent services towards a knowledge of Aristotle. France has contributed translations of the Physics, De Anima, Parva Xaturalia, Organon, Politics, and Ethics, by Barthelemy St Hilaire, an essay on the Metaphysics, by Ravaisson, and a few less important works. The translations are readable, but cannot be relied on for accuracy in any difficult point. In England the contributions to Aristotelian literature have borne no sort of proportion to the extent to which minds have been educationally imbued with certain of Aristotle's works. The unproductiveness of Oxford in this respect is certainly a matter of reproach to that university. Sir W. Hamilton exhibited great learning in all that concerned Aristotle rather than a true insight into Aristotle himself. Grote's work was conceived in a German spirit, but it was begun far too late in life to have any chance of success. The problem how to translate Aristotle into English has not yet been solved. We have had a translation of the entire works by the not very sane, and very unscholarlike, Thomas Taylor (10 vols., London, 1806-12), which exists only as a curiosity for book collectors. And wo have had the not uncreditable versions of Bohn's Classical Library, but these latter were done to order, and cannot be expected to perform what is in itself so difficult. Mr Poste, perhaps the most thorough of present English Aristotelians, in his Aristotle on Fallacies, gives us rather a condensed paraphrase than a translation, and is often as difficult as the original Greek. The problem is, how to convey, in readable English, a philosophical style, full of technical terms for which we .have no exact representatives. Circumlocution, or paraphrase, becomes necessary; the question is, how to use this with the greatest tact, so as, while conveying Aristotle's exact meaning, to retain some thing of his manner. Perhaps this problem may, in course of time, be solved, if in the meanwhile the study of Greek is not altogether abandoned in England.

The following are works relating to Aristotle which are worthy of consultation, but have not been mentioned in the previous text or notes: Stahr, Aristotelia (2 vols., Halle, 1830-32); Aristoteles bei den Romern (Leipsic, 183i). Biese, Die Philosophic des Aristoteles (2 vols., Berlin, 1835-42). Waitz, Organon (2 vols., Leipsic, 1844-46). Schwegler, Metaphysica (4 vols., Tubingen, 1847-48). Torstrick, De Anima (Berlin, 1862). Meyer, J. B., Dissertatio de Principiis Aristotelis in distribution animalium adhibit is (Berlin, 1854); Aristotelis Thierlatnde: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Zoologie, Physiologie, und alien Philosophic (1855). Spengel, Ucber die Ehetorik des Aristoteles (Munich, 1851). (A GR.)