[10] This opinion is insisted on by Ravaisson, Essai sur la Métaphysique d’Aristote, pp. 210, 211.
[11] Valentine Rose, Aristoteles Pseudepigraphus, p. 23: “Cicero philosophicis certe ipsius Aristotelis libris nunquam usus est.â€� Heitz, Die Verlor. Schrift. des Aristot. pp. 31, 158, 187: “Cicero, dessen Unbekanntschaft mit beinahe sämmtlichen heute vorhandenen Werken des Aristoteles eine unstreitige Thatsache bildet, deren Bedeutung man sich umsonst bemüht hat abzuschwächen.â€� Madvig, Excursus VII. ad Ciceron. De Finibus, p. 855: “Non dubito profiteri, Ciceronem mihi videri dialogos Aristotelis populariter scriptos, et Rhetorica (quibus hic Topica adnumero) tum πολιτείας legisse; difficiliora vero, quibus omnis interior philosophia continebatur, aut omnino non attigisse, aut si aliquando attigerit, non longe progressum esse, ut ipse de subtilioribus Aristotelis sententiis aliquid habere possit explorati.â€� The language here used by Madvig is more precise than that of the other two; for Cicero must be allowed to have known, and even to have had in his library, the Topica of Aristotle.
[12] See this point enforced by Heitz, pp. 29-31. Athenæus (xiv. 656) refers to a passage of Philochorus, in which Philochorus alludes to Aristotle, that is, as critics have hitherto supposed, to Aristot. Meteorol. iv. 3, 21. Bussemaker (in his Præfat. ad Aristot. Didot, vol. iv. p. xix.) has shewn that this supposition is unfounded, and that the passage more probably refers to one of the Problemata Inedita (iii. 43) which Bussemaker has first published in Didot’s edition of Aristotle.
Here, then, we find several embarrassing facts in regard to the Aristotelian Canon. Most of the works now accepted and known as belonging to Aristotle, are neither included in the full Aristotelian Catalogue given by Diogenes, nor were they known to Cicero; who, moreover, ascribes to Aristotle attributes of style not only different, but opposite, to those which our Aristotle presents. Besides, more than twenty of the compositions entered in the Catalogue are dialogues, of which form our Aristotle affords not a single specimen: while others relate to matters of ancient exploit or personal history; collected proverbs; accounts of the actual constitution of many Hellenic cities; lists of the Pythian victors and of the scenic representations; erotic discourses; legendary narratives, embodied in a miscellaneous work called ‘Peplus’ — a title perhaps borrowed from the Peplus or robe of Athênê at the Panathenaic festival, embroidered with various figures by Athenian women; a symposion or banquet-colloquy; and remarks on intoxication. All these subjects are foreign in character to those which our Aristotle treats.[13]
[13] Brandis and Zeller, moreover, remark, that among the allusions made by Aristotle in the works which we possess to other works of his own, the majority relate to other works actually extant, and very few to any of the lost works enumerated in the Catalogue (Brand. Aristoteles, pp. 97-101; Zeller, Phil. der Griech. ii. 2, p. 79, ed. 2nd). This however is not always the case: we find (e.g.) in Aristotle’s notice of the Pythagorean tenets (Metaphys. A. p. 986, a. 12) the remark, διώρισται δὲ περὶ τούτων ἐν ἑτέροις ἡμῖν ἀκριβέστερον; where he probably means to indicate his special treatises, Περὶ τῶν Πυθαγορείων and Πρὸς τοὺς Πυθαγορείους, enumerated by Diog. L. v. 25, and mentioned by Alexander, Porphyry, and Simplikius. See Alexander, Schol. ad Metaphys. p. 542, b. 5, 560, b. 25, Br.; and the note of Schwegler on Metaphys. i. 5, p. 47.
The difficulty of harmonizing our Aristotle with the Aristotle of the Catalogue is thus considerable. It has been so strongly felt in recent years, that one of the ablest modern critics altogether dissevers the two, and pronounces the works enumerated in the Catalogue not to belong to our Aristotle. I allude to Valentine Rose, who in his very learned and instructive volume, ‘Aristoteles Pseudepigraphus,’ has collected and illustrated the fragments which remain of these works. He considers them all pseudo-Aristotelian, composed by various unknown members of the Peripatetic school, during the century or two immediately succeeding the death of Aristotle, and inscribed with the illustrious name of the master, partly through fraud of the sellers, partly through carelessness of purchasers and librarians.[14] Emil Heitz, on the other hand, has argued more recently, that upon the external evidence as it stands, a more correct conclusion to draw would be (the opposite of that drawn by Rose, viz.): That the works enumerated in the Catalogue are the true and genuine; and that those which we possess, or most of them, are not really composed by Aristotle.[15] Heitz thinks this conclusion better sustained than that of Rose, though he himself takes a different view, which I shall presently mention.
[14] Valent. Rose, Aristoteles Pseudepigr. pp. 4-10. The same opinion is declared also in the earlier work of the same author, De Aristotelis Librorum Ordine et Auctoritate.
[15] Heitz, Die Verlor. Schrift. des Ar. pp. 29, 30.
It will be seen from the foregoing observations how much more difficult it is to settle a genuine Canon for Aristotle than for Plato. I do not assent to either of the two conclusions just indicated; but I contend that, if we applied to this question the same principles of judgment as those which modern Platonic critics often apply, when they allow or disallow dialogues of Plato, we should be obliged to embrace one or other of them, or at least something nearly approaching thereto. If a critic, after attentively studying the principal compositions now extant of our Aristotle, thinks himself entitled, on the faith of his acquired “Aristotelisches Gefühl,� to declare that no works differing materially from them (either in subject handled, or in manner of handling, or in degree of excellence), can have been composed by Aristotle — he will assuredly be forced to include in such rejection a large proportion of those indicated in the Catalogue of Diogenes. Especially he will be forced to reject the Dialogues — the very compositions by which Aristotle was best known to Cicero and his contemporaries. For the difference between them and the known compositions of Aristotle, not merely in form but in style (the style being known from the epithets applied to them by Cicero), must have been more marked and decisive than that between the Alkibiades, Hippias, Theages, Erastæ, Leges, &c. — which most Platonic critics now set aside as spurious — and the Republic, Protagoras, Gorgias, Philêbus, &c., which they treat as indisputably genuine.[16]
[16] Thus (for example) in Bernays, who has displayed great acuteness and learning in investigating the Aristotelian Canon, and in collecting what can be known respecting the lost dialogues of Aristotle, we read the following observations:— “In der That mangelt es auch nicht an den bestimmtesten Nachrichten über die vormalige Existenz einer grossen aristotelischen Schriftenreihe, die von der jetzt erhaltenen durch die tiefste formale Verschiedenheit getrennt war. Das Verzeichniss aristotelischer Werke führt an seiner Spitze sieben und zwanzig Bände jetzt verlorener Schriften auf, die alle in der künstlerischen Gesprächsform abgefasst waren,� &c. (Bernays, Die Dialoge des Aristoteles, p. 2; compare ibid. p. 30).