ARISTOTLE AND THE EARLIER PERIPATETICS vol.I by Eduard Zeller, B.F.C.Costelloe 1897

ARISTOTLE S WAITINGS 159
times expressly ' and always by the nature of their
contents. Some of these were no doubt composed after
or with the writings on the Parts, the Movement, and
the Genesis of Animals. 2 That group of tracts is
undoubtedly later than the Natural History, the Be
Anima, and the treatises which followed upon it. 3
On the other hand, it is probably earlier than the
Ethics and Politics, inasmuch as it can hardly be supposed
that Aristotle would have broken in upon his
studies in Natural Philosophy by undertaking extended
works lying in a wholly different direction. 4 It would
be less difficult
to suppose that the ethical writings as
a whole came before the physical. 5 This view is not
excluded by any express internal references, excepting
the reference to the Physics in the Ethics. 6 We must,
nevertheless, decide in favour of the earlier construction
of the Natural Philosophy texts, for a thinker who
was so clearly convinced as Aristotle was that the
student of ethics must have a knowledge of the human
soul, 7 must be supposed to have put his inquiry into
the soul before his researches into the moral activities
and relations. There are, indeed, in the Ethics very
unmistakable traces of his theory of the soul and of
the treatise thereon. 8 Immediately after the Ethics.
160 ARISTOTLE
comes the Politics. 1 Judging by the internal references,
the Rhetoric should be later than both, and
the Poetics should be later than the Politics but
before the Rhetoric. This, however, is probably true
only of a part of the Politics—or rather only of those
parts which Aristotle himself published, for his death
seems to have intervened before he had completed that
text as a whole. 2 So, again, in our so-called Metaphysics,
we have in all probability a work which
Aristotle left incomplete, and with which several
other
fragments, some genuine, some spurious, have been
amalgamated since. 3
the bulk of the theoretical writings.
But that there are not
many more of such traces may
perhaps be explained by the fact
that Aristotle did not wish to
interfere with the practical aim
of an ethical work (Eth. i. 1,
1096, a, i, ii. 2, init.) by any discussions
which were not indispensable
to its purpose ; cf. i. 13,
1102, a, 23.
1
See p. 100, ii. 1.
2 See p. 127 swpra, and infra,
ch. xiii. And if this supposition
is correct, it would also go to make
it improbable that the Ethics, so
closely allied with the Politics,
should have been written before
the works on natural science.
3
Cf. p. 76 sqq., and with
regard to citations of the Metaphysics,
see p. 156, n. 2. Eose's
supposition (Arist. Libr. Ord.
135 sqq. 186 sq.) that the Metaphysics
preceded all the writings
on natural science, or at any rate
the zoological ones, makes the
actual condition of that work an
inexplicable puzzle. But there
is also the fact that the Physics,
as well as the Be Casio, are quoted
in numerous passages of the
Metaphysics (Ind. Ar. 101, a, 7
sqq.) as already existing, while
the Metaphysics are referred to
in Phys.i. 9, 192, a, 35, as merely
in the future.
1
Thus n. alcrBfaeais, n. iiirvov,
5
Thus ROSE, Arist. Libr. Ord.
n. iwirvluv, n. avaTvorjs (Ind.Ar. 122 sqq.
102, b, 60 sqq.). " Mh. x. 3, 1174, b, 2. CI
2
Vide supra, p. 89 sqq. Phys. vi.-viii.
3
See pp. 89, n. 2, 89, n. 3,87, ' Eth. i. 13, 1102, a, 23.
n. 1 : Ind. Arist. 99, b, 30 sqq. » Though Aristotle in Mh.
4
The further question of i. 13, 1102, a, 26 sqq. refers, not
the relative order of the three to De An. iii. 9, 432, a, 22 sqq.
writings named has been already ii. 3, but to the l%unep\.Ko\ \6yoi,
discussed on p. 91 sq.
yet ii. 2 init. seems to presuppose