174 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



four elements and the properties of gravity and lightness, and afford 

 much information relative to the systems of Empedocles and Demo- 

 critus. 



VIII. On Generation and Decay, (i. n.) (7^ yereffewg rat 

 fydopag.) This work treats on those properties of bodies which in our 

 times would be considered to be the proper subject of physiological 

 and of chemical science. Many other notions, however, of a meta- 

 physical nature are mixed up with these, and it is only for its illustra- 

 tion of the history of philosophy that this work, like the rest of the 

 physical treatises, is of any value to the modern student. 



IX. Meteorology, (i. n. HI. IV.) (peTtupoXoytKa.) The first of 

 these books was by some in the time of the old commentators held 

 not to be genuine; and Ammonius and others considered that the 

 fourth should immediately follow the second of the last treatise, with 

 which the subjects on which it treats, the changes effected in bodies 

 by heat and cold, moisture and dryness, &c., are certainly more con- 

 nected. 



X. To Alexander, on the World, (wept Koarpov irpoQ 'AXt'favdpov.) 

 The titles of this tract in the various MSS. differ much from one 

 another. In one it is called irepi KoapoypafylaQ ; in another TTE^I Koapov 

 KCU Irepwv avayKai(t)v ; in a third GVVO^IQ 0iAo<ro0/ae Trepi KO<TJJ,OV ; 

 in Stobffius e.7n<TTo\rj -rrepl TOV Travroc, which Fabricius holds to be the 

 true title. He considers the work to be genuine, contrary to the 

 opinion of Scaliger, Salmasius, Casaubon, Voss, andBuhle. Fabricius's 

 opinion has been taken up by Weisse, but the spuriousness of the 

 piece is glaring. Stahr (' Aristoteles bei den Roemern,' p. 165, et 

 seq.) has, as we think, satisfactorily shown that it is in all probability 

 a composition of very late date, based upon Apuleius's work ' De 

 Mundo,' which has sometimes been taken to be a translation of it. 



XI. On the Soul. (i. II. in.) (irtpl \^v^ijg.} In the first of these 

 books are discussed the opinions of preceding philosophers upon this 

 subject ; in the second, the Soul in its sensible relations ; in the third, 

 in its rational ones. A celebrated dialogue of Aristotle's, to which 

 we have before referred, 1 bore this same title ; and such as consider 

 that the exoteric works were all in the form of dialogues, imagine that 

 in the Nicomachean Ethics he alludes to it. At the same time there 

 are parts of the third book of this treatise which seem apt for his pur- 

 pose in that place; and although the work serves to make up that 

 system of Aristotle's to which the preceding physical treatises, as well 

 as the following belong, it is sufficiently independent of them to allow 

 of its being perfectly understood without their perusal ; a character 

 which, in our opinion, is the only essential one of an exoteric writing. 



XII. Eight tracts on physical subjects, namely, 

 (a.) On Perception and Objects of Perception, (jrepl 



(b.) On Memory and Recollection, (^epl jj.vfjjj.nG /ecu 

 1 P. 163. 



