156 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



which appear to have prevailed before him. There are at this day 

 three known catalogues of the writings the first is the one given by 

 Diogenes Laertius in his life, the second that of the anonymous Greek 

 biographer published by Menage. These resemble one another very 

 much, and bear every appearance of having been derived, probably, 

 however, through secondary channels, from the same source, which has 

 been conjectured with great plausibility to be Hermippus of Alexan- 

 dria's work, 1 of which we have spoken in the early part of this essay. 

 But it is impossible to imagine a greater difference than is found be- 

 tween these lists and the works which have come down to us. The 

 names are so completely unlike, and there are so many reciprocal 

 omissions, that a scholar of the sixteenth century was able, with the 

 aid of a mortal antipathy to the Aristotelian philosophy, to succeed in 

 persuading himself that everything which has come down to us under 

 the name of the great Stagirite, was, with very slight exceptions, 

 spurious. 2 The third catalogue is found only in Arabic, and is said to 

 much more nearly correspond with our own ; 3 and, indeed, a great part 

 of the difference between this and the two former is explicable from 

 the fact that the same work is often referred to under more names 

 than one, not merely by subsequent commentators on Aristotle, but 

 also by the philosopher himself. 4 But such differences, independently 

 of positive testimony, abundantly show that many pieces which now 

 form the component parts of a larger treatise were not left by the 

 author in such an order, or, at least, that no authentic documents from 

 which any given arrangement could be decidedly inferred, came to the 

 < no knowledge of Andronicus and his brethren. If they had, if, that is, 



authentic the manuscripts of Apellicon had been, as they are represented, a 

 copy. genuine copy of all or most of Aristotle's works, never till then known, 



the task of these critics would have been a most easy one. There 

 would have been no occasion for discussions of the internal evidence 

 to determine between various readings of the text, different systems of 

 arrangement, or contending claims as to authorship. A simple refer- 

 ence to a primitive copy would at once have settled all. And what 

 shall we say to the letter of Alexander to Aristotle, complaining that 

 he had published his acroamatic works, and thus put the world on a 

 footing with his most highly-instructed pupil ? It is of no avail to urge 

 that the letter is not genuine : it very likely may not be so, but it was 



1 Brandis, pp. 249, 262. 



2 Patritius, Discussiones Peripatetics, i. p. 16, et seq. His only exceptions were 

 the Mechanics, and the treatise on the doctrines of Xenophanes, Zeno, and Gorges. 

 Some years afterwards a yet more extravagant opinion was propounded, that the 

 present Greek manuscripts of Aristotle were translations from the Arabic. Philippe 

 Cattier (quoted by Harles on Fabricius, Bib. Gr. vol. iii. p. 207) mentions it as 

 the belief of some. 



3 Brandis, p. 262. 



4 Brandis, p. 261. Petiti (Observatt. Miscell. iv. 9) and Buhle (Commenta- 

 tiones Societatis Reg. Gottingensis, vol. xv. p. 57), quoted by Brandis, give several 

 instances of this identity; as also Brandis himself (Diatribe de perditis Arist. libris 

 De Ideis et De Bono, p. 7). 



