ARISTOTLE. 167 



justify us in concluding that he had any decided opinion on this score. 1 

 But it was a view which would not fail to be caught hold of in an age 

 singularly attached, as the declining Roman empire was, to mystical 

 orgies and secret associations. Before Clement, indeed, Lucian had 

 taken advantage of it for the purposes of a jest, where, in his * Sale of 

 Philosophers,' he puts Aristotle up to auction as a double man ; 2 but 

 obviously this is only a ludicrous version of the fact that his works 

 were of very different kinds, stated, as very likely the later Aristotelians 

 would themselves be fond of doing, in a paradoxical form. Nay, even 

 when we get down to the close of the fourth century, to the 

 rhetorician Themistius, a very great allowance must be made for the 

 conceits of his affected style, before we form our estimate of his real 

 sentiments. No one can dream of taking in their literal sense such 

 phrases as those of " Aristotle shutting up and fortifying his meaning 

 in a rampart of obscure phraseology, to secure it from the ravages of 

 uninitiated plunderers;" 3 or "considering that knowledge was like 

 food and drugs, one sort proper for the healthy, another for the sick," 

 and therefore " involving his meaning in a wall of cloud, the doors of 

 which two guardians, Perspicuity and Obscurity, like the Homeric 

 Hours, stood ready to open to the initiated and close upon the pro- 

 fane." 4 But after making all proper allowance, there is no question 

 that in the time of Themistius the opinion of a double meaning of Establish- 

 Aristotle was widely received. 5 Ammonius in the fifth century thinks mentofthe 



i . . i TIT/- opinion or 



it necessary to state, apparently in opposition to the popular belief, Aristotle's 

 " that the Dialogues of Aristotle differ very much from the direct du P llclt y- 

 treatises (airoTrpoo-wTra) ; that in the latter, as directing his discourse 

 to genuine students, he not only delivers his real opinions, but employs 

 the severest methods, such as people in general cannot follow ; while 

 in the latter, as they are written for general use, he delivers his real 

 opinions, but employs methods not rigidly demonstrative, but of the 

 kind that the generality of people are able to follow." 6 But his scholar 

 Simplicius no longer swims against the tide ; he asserts that in the 

 " acroamatic works Aristotle aimed at obscurity, in order* through it 



1 Stromm. loc. supra cit. After speaking of double doctrines of the Pythago- 

 reans, Plato, Epicurus, and the Stoics, he adds, \eyovffi 5e Kal ol 'ApttTToreAous 

 TO yuev etrcorepiKa elt/a: TU>V ffvyypa^p.ar(av ai>Ta>v, TO. 8e Koivd re Kal e'|a?Tepi/ca, 

 where the true reading would seem to be avrov instead of avrwv. 



2 Vol. iii. p. 112, ed. Bipont. 



3 Orat. xxiii. p. 294. 



4 Orat. xxvi. p. 319. The allusion is to Iliad, v. 750 ; and there are some others 

 in the context, equally tasteless andstrained, to the marshalling of the Median army 

 by Cyaxares (Herod, i. 98), and to the palace of Agbatana with its concentric 

 sevenfold walls. (Herod, i. 98.) 



5 One great reason of this, no doubt, was the desire of reconciling him with Plato, 

 which is observable in Themistius, and was by his time the great object of phi- 

 losophers. See especially Orat. xx. pp. 235, 236. Utterly unable to ascend to the 

 point which would enable them to appreciate both, they endeavoured to establish a 

 spurious agreement by the help of fictions like this. 



6 Ammonius, loc. supra cit. 



