166 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



imputed method, where readers do not take the trouble to put themselves upon 

 between n ' s standing-ground, to enter into his thoughts, and follow them out 

 Aristotle's through the ramifications of his system, there will often appear a want 

 of harmony between the results at which he arrives. There is a point 

 from which all these will appear in their true perspective ; but this 

 point is on an eminence which it requires both time and labour to 

 ascend. Such a want of agreement in his results was imputed to 

 Aristotle at an early period, before the time of Cicero, who notes it 

 and gives a partial explanation of it. " On the subject of the chief 

 good," says he, " there are two kinds of works, the one written in a 

 popular manner, and termed by them exoteric, the other worked up 

 with greater care (limatius), which they left in the form of notes 

 (quod in commentariis 'reliquerunt). This makes them thought not 

 always to say the same thing; although in the upshot there is no 

 variation at all, in those at least whom I mentioned [Aristotle and 

 Theophrastus], nor do the two differ the one from the other." 1 Here 

 Cicero only speaks of those works which the author kept by him and 

 continually made additions to, a class of works which did not form a 

 Exoteric and large proportion of the scientific ones. 2 But it is quite plain that the 

 esoteric doc- remark might be extended to the whole of these latter : in every one 

 of them might be found instances where Aristotle might u appear not 

 to say the same thing " as in his more popular publications, but where 

 at the same time " in the upshot there w^ould be no variation at all." 

 Now here we have the fact which formed the basis of the subsequent 

 opinion that Aristotle had an inner and an outer doctrine, an opinion 

 which gathered strength and distinctness as it passed from one hand 

 to another, and is in modern times repeated with a confidence that 

 would lead one to suppose that it rested on the explicit assertion of 

 the author himself. Neither in Strabo, Plutarch, nor Gellius, is there 

 any hint of a wilful suppression of sentiments on the part of Aristotle, 3 

 although all three of these authors allude to a division of his works 

 into two classes adapted to different mental qualifications in the readers. 

 Growth of I n Clement of Alexandria appears the first trace of any such notion, 

 and the expressions which he makes use of are hardly sufficient to 



1 De Finibus, v. 5. 



2 Aminonius (Introd. ad Arist. Categ.) describes those writings which he calls 

 vTro/j-vrj/jiaTiKa, answering to Cicero's Commentarii, as common-place books kept by 

 Aristotle for his own use, some of them devoted to one subject, some miscellaneous. 

 Simplicius says of them (Proleg. in Cat.), So/ce? Se TO vTTOp.vnfJia.TiKO. /*)) irdvrr) 

 o-TrouSyjs &ia eivai. He, however, does not seem to know much about them him- 

 self, for he quotes Alexander Aphrodisias as his authority. But all the ancient 

 commentators are agreed in making the acroamatic works a separate and more 

 important class than the hypomnematic. 



3 The word aTrdpfara may seem opposed to this statement (Plut. Vit. Alex, 

 sec. 7), but it seems only intended to indicate those writings which were not pub- 

 lished, and which were kept secret, not because they contained peculiar doctrines, 

 but from the same reasons which prevent any man from showing a work yet 

 growing under his hands to any but his particular friends. One of these works 

 was the Rhetoric, as has been remarked by Niebuhr in a note to the History of 

 Eome, vol. i. p. 19, Eng. Trans. 



