BY WILLIAM C. WILKINSON.
[The “College Greek Course in English” did not, for a reason alluded to in the following paper, include Aristotle among the authors represented. The readers of The Chautauquan will be glad to get some acquaintance with so great an ancient name through this supplementary chapter from Prof. Wilkinson’s pen.]
Philosopher, though he by eminence is ranked, Aristotle was, too, something of an encyclopedist. He traversed almost the whole circle of the sciences, as that circle existed for the ancient world. But he was not simply first a learner, and then a teacher, of what others had found out before him. He was also an explorer and discoverer. Inventor also he was, if between discovery and invention we are to make a difference. He was a great methodizer and systematizer of knowledge. He bore to Plato the personal relation of pupil.
The history of Aristotle’s intellectual influence is remarkable. That influence has suffered several phases of wax and wane, several alternate occultations and renewals of brightness. During a certain period of time, covering several hundred years, he was, perhaps beyond the fortune of any other man that ever lived, the lord of human thought. We mean the time of the schoolmen[1] so called. From near the close of the thirteenth century, until the era of the Reformation, Aristotle reigned supreme in the schools of Christian theology, which is the same thing as to say that he was acknowledged universal monarch of the European mind. The business of the schoolmen may be said to have been to state the dogmas of the church in the forms of the Aristotelian logic, and then to reconcile those dogmas so stated, with the teachings of the Aristotelian philosophy.
Curiously enough, the introduction of Aristotle to the doctors of the church was through the Mohammedan Arabs. These men had, during a term of centuries, been the continuers of the intellectual life of the race. While through the long night of those ages of darkness the Christian mind slept, the Arabian mind, waking, gave itself largely to the study of Aristotle. The Greek philosopher was posthumously naturalized a barbarian; for Aristotle’s writings were now translated from their original tongue into Arabic. In this Arabic version, the celebrated Ibn Roshd (chiefly famous under his latinized name A-verˈroës) knew Aristotle and commented on him. The Arabic commentaries of Averroes were translated into Latin, and the thought of Aristotle thus became once more accessible to European students. Averroes (A. D. 1149-1198) himself was of the Moors of Spain.
For centuries previous to the time when the son and successor of good Haroun al Raschid,[2] known at least by name to the readers and lovers of Tennyson, collected at Bagdad all the scattered volumes of Greek letters that his agents could find in Armenia, Syria and Egypt—for centuries, we say, previous to this, Aristotle suffered an almost complete arrest and suspension of intellectual influence. That man would have been a bold prophet who should then have predicted what a resurrection to power awaited the slumbering philosopher.
Still earlier, however, than this, that is, during the interval between the third Christian century and the sixth, Aristotle enjoyed a great vogue. He was studied and commented on as if all human wisdom was summed up in him. The spirit of independent and original philosophy had perished, and whatever philosophic aptitude survived was well content to exhaust itself in expounding Aristotle. Aristotle’s works became a kind of common Bible to the universal mind of the Roman empire. This was the period of the Greek scholiasts, so-called—in more ordinary language, commentators.
Taking the reverse or regressive direction of history, we have thus run back to a point of time some six or seven centuries subsequent to the personal life and activity of Aristotle. During the latter half of these centuries, Aristotle’s fame was gradually growing, from total obscurity to its great culmination in splendor under the scholiasts.
Before that growth began, the productions of Aristotle had experienced a fortune that is one of the romances of literary history. The great pupil of Plato had himself no great pupil to continue after his death the illustrious succession of Grecian philosophy. His writings, unduplicated manuscripts they seem to have been, fell into the hands of a disciple, who, dying, bequeathed them to a disciple of his own, residing in the Troad. To the Troad accordingly they went. Here, with a view to save them from the grasp of a ruthless royal collector of valuable parchments, the family having these works in possession hid them in an underground vault, in which they lay moldering and forgotten one hundred and fifty years! It was thus in all nearly two hundred years that Aristotle’s thoughts were lost to the world. When at last it was deemed safe, the precious documents were brought out and sold to a rich and cultivated Athenian. This gentleman, let us name him for honor, it was A-pelˈli-con, had unawares purchased his prize for a rapacious Roman collector. Sylla seized it, on his capture of Athens, and sent it to Rome. At Rome it had the good fortune to be appreciated. One An-dro-niˈcus edited the collection, and gave to the world that, probably, which is now the accepted text of Aristotle.