by Aristotle
Magna Moralia, 2 books
On the Heavens and the Universe, 4 books
On Sense and Sensibilia, 1 book
On Memory and Sleep, 1 book
On Length and Shortness of Life, 1 book
Problems of Matter, 1 book
Platonic Divisions, 6 books
Divisions of Hypotheses, 6 books
Precepts, 4 books
On Regimen, 1 book
Farming, 15 books
On the Moist, 1 book
On the Dry, 1 book
On Relatives, 1 book
I • DIALOGUES
F 1–111 R3
(Cicero, ad Atticum IV xvi 2):
. . . since I am having a preface in each book, as Aristotle does in the books he calls exoteric . . .
(Cicero, ad Atticum XIII xix 4):
In what I have written recently, I have followed the Aristotelian custom, according to which the conversation of the others is so arranged that the writer himself has the chief part.
(Plutarch, adversus Colotem III5BC):
As for the Ideas, over which he upbraids Plato, Aristotle attacks them everywhere and introduces all the puzzles about them—in his ethical works, in his metaphysics, in his physics, in his exoteric dialogues: to some he seemed more ambitious than philosophical . . . 1 these doctrines, as though proposing to subvert Plato’s philosophy; so far was he from following Plato.
(Numenius, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica XIV vi 9–10):
Cephisodorus, when he saw his master Isocrates being attacked by Aristotle, was ignorant of and unversed in Aristotle himself; but, seeing the repute which Plato’s views enjoyed, he thought that Aristotle was following Plato. So he waged war on Aristotle, but was really attacking Plato. His criticism began with the Ideas and finished with the other doctrines—things which he himself did not know; he was only guessing at the meaning of the opinions held about them. This Cephisodorus was not attacking the person he was at war with, but was attacking the person he did not wish to make war upon.
(Asclepius, Commentarius in Metaphysica 112. 16–19):
About these first principles, he [sc. Aristotle] says, we have already spoken in the Physics; and he promises to speak about these in Book α [sc. of the Metaphysics], and to raise and solve the puzzles about them in the work On Philosophy.
F 1 R3 (Plutarch, adversus Colotem 1118C):
Of the inscriptions at Delphi that which was thought to be the most divine was “Know Thyself”; it was this, as Aristotle has said in his Platonic works, that started Socrates off puzzling and inquiring.
F 2 R3 (Diogenes Laertius, II 23):
Aristotle says that he [sc. Socrates] went to Delphi.
F 3 R3 (Porphyry apud Stobaeus, Anthologium III xxi 26):
What and whose was the sacred injunction at Delphi, which bids him who is to seek anything from the god to know himself? . . . or was it even before the time of Chilon already inscribed in the temple that was founded after the one of feathers and bronze, as Aristotle has said in his work On Philosophy?
F 4 R3 (Clement, Stromateis I xiv 61.2):
Aristotle and his followers think that it [sc. “Give a pledge and you’re ruined”] comes from Chilon.
F 5 R3 (Etymologicon Magnum s.v. σoφιστής):
Aristotle calls the Seven Sages sophists.
F 6 R3 (Diogenes Laertius, I 8):
Aristotle in the first book of On Philosophy says that they [sc. the Magi] are more ancient than the Egyptians, and that according to them there are two first principles, a good spirit and an evil spirit, one called Zeus and Oromasdes, the other Hades and Arimanius.
F 7 R3 (Philoponus, Commentarius in de Anima 186. 24–26):
Aristotle says “so-called . . .” because the poems are thought not to be the work of Orpheus, as he himself says in the books On Philosophy: the opinions are those of Orpheus, but they say that Onomacritus set them to verse.
F 7 R3 (Cicero, de natura deorum I xxxviii 107):
Aristotle says the poet Orpheus never existed; the Pythagoreans ascribe this Orphic poem to a certain Cercon.
(Sextus Empiricus, adversus mathematicos X 46):
Its existence [i.e. the existence of motion] is denied by Parmenides and Melissus, whom Aristotle has called immobilists1 and unnaturalists—immobilists because they maintain the immobility of things, unnaturalists because nature is a source of motion and in saying that nothing moves they abolished nature.
F 8 R3 (Proclus, apud Philoponus, de aeternitate mundi II 2):
. . . and in his dialogues, where he [sc. Aristotle] announces most clearly that he cannot agree with this doctrine [sc. the Theory of Ideas], even if he should be thought to be opposing it from ambition.
F 9 R3 (Syrianus, Commentarius in Metaphysica 159.35–160.3):
This is shown by what he [sc. Aristotle] says in the second book of the work On Philosophy: “Thus if the Ideas are a different sort of number, not mathematical number, we can have no understanding of it; for of the majority of us, at all events, who understands any other number?”
(Alexander, Commentarius in Metaphysica 117.23–118.1)
Aristotle sets out their view, which he has also stated in the work On Philosophy. Wishing to refer the things that exist (he always calls the things that exist substances) to the first principles which they assumed (for them the first principles of existing things were the great and the small, which they called the indefinite dyad)—wishing to refer everything to this, they said that the first principles of length were the short and the long (on the grounds that length takes its origin from a long and short, i.e. a great and small, or that every line falls under one or other of these), and that the first principles of the plane were the narrow and wide, which are themselves also great and small.
(Simplicius, Commentarius in de Anima 28.7–9):
Aristotle now [sc. in the de Anima] applies the name On Philosophy to his work On the Good (taken down from Plato’s seminar), in which he relates both the Pythagorean and the Platonic opinions about what exists.
([Alexander], Commentarius in Metaphysica 777.16–21):
The principle of the One, he [sc. Aristotle] says, they did not all introduce in the same way. Some said that the numbers themselves introduced the Forms into magnitudes, e.g. the number 2 doing so for line, the number 3 for plane, the number 4 for solid (Aristotle relates this about Plato in the work On Philosophy, and that is why he here [sc. in the Metaphysics] expounds their theory only briefly and concisely); while others explained the form of the magnitudes by participation in the One.
F 10 R3 (Sextus Empiricus, adversus mathematicos IX 20–23):
Aristotle used to say that men’s concept of god sprang from two sources—the experiences of the soul and the phenomena of the heavens. From the experiences of the soul, because of its inspiration and prophetic power in dreams. For, he says, when the soul gets by itself in sleep, it then assumes its nature and foresees and foretells the future. The soul is also in such a condition when it is severed from the body at death. At all events, he accepts even Homer as having observed this; for he has represented Patroclus, in the moment of his death, as foretelling the death of Hector, and Hector as foretelling the end of Achilles. It was from such events, he says, that men came to suspect the existence of something divine, of something in itself akin to the soul and of all things most knowledgeable. And from the heavenly bodies too: seeing by day the revolution of the sun and by night the well-ordered movement of the other stars, they came to think that there was a god who is the cause of such movement and order.
F 12 R3 (Cicero, de natura deorum II xxxvii 95):
Thus Aristotle brilliantly remarks: ‘Suppose there were men who had always lived underground, in good and well-lighted dwellings, adorned with statues and pictures, and furnished with everything in which those who are thought happy abound. Suppose, however, that they had never gone above ground, but had learned by report and hearsay that there was a divine spirit and power. Suppose that the
n, at some time, the jaws of the earth opened, and they were able to escape and make their way from those hidden dwellings into these regions which we inhabit. When they suddenly saw earth and seas and skies, when they learned the grandeur of clouds and the power of winds, when they saw the sun and realized not only its grandeur and beauty but also its power, by which it fills the sky with light and makes the day; when, again, night darkened the lands and they saw the whole sky picked out and adorned with stars, and the varying light of the moon as it waxes and wanes, and the risings and settings of all these bodies, and their courses settled and immutable to all eternity; when they saw those things, most certainly would they have judged both that there are gods and that these great works are the works of gods’. Thus far Aristotle.
F 14 R3 (Seneca, quaestiones naturales VII xxx 1):
Aristotle excellently says that we should nowhere be more modest than in discussions about the gods. If we compose ourselves before we enter temples, . . . how much more should we do so when we discuss the constellations, the stars, and the nature of the gods, lest from temerity or impudence we should make ignorant assertions or knowingly tell lies.
F 15 R3 (Synesius, Dio 48A):
. . . as Aristotle claims that those who are being initiated are not to learn anything but to experience something and be put into a certain condition . . .
F 16 R3 (Alexander, apud Simplicius, Commentarius in de Caelo 289.1–15):
He [sc. Aristotle] speaks of this in his On Philosophy. In general, where there is a better there is also a best. Since, then, among existing things one is better than another, there is also something that is best, which will be the divine. Now that which changes is changed either by something else or by itself, and if by something else, either by something better or by something worse, and if by itself, either to something worse or through desire for something nobler. But the divine has nothing better than itself by which it will be changed (for that other thing would then have been more divine), nor is it right for the better to be affected by the worse; besides, if it were changed by something worse, it would have admitted something bad into itself—and nothing in it is bad. Nor yet does it change itself through desire for something nobler, since it lacks none of its own nobilities; nor yet does it change itself for the worse, since not even a man willingly makes himself worse, nor does it possess anything bad such as it would have acquired from a change to the worse. This proof too Aristotle took over from the second book of Plato’s Republic.
F 17 R3 (Scholia in Proverbia Salomonis, cod. Paris gr. 174, fol. 46a):
Aristotle: ‘There is either one first principle or many. If there is one, we have what we are looking for; if there are many, they are either ordered or disordered. Now if they are disordered, their products are more so, and the world is not a world but a chaos; and that which is contrary to nature exists while that which is in accordance with nature does not exist. If on the other hand they are ordered, they were ordered either by themselves or by some outside cause. But if they were ordered by themselves, they have something common that joins them, and that is the first principle’.
F 18 R3 (Philo, de aeternitate mundi III 10–11):
Aristotle was surely speaking piously and devoutly when he objected that the world is ungenerated and imperishable, and convicted of grave ungodliness those who maintained the opposite and thought that the great visible god, which contains in truth sun and moon and the remaining pantheon of planets and fixed stars is no different from an artefact; he used to say in mockery (we are told) that in the past he had been afraid for his house lest it be destroyed by violent winds or by fierce storms or by time or by lack of proper maintenance, but that now a greater fear hung over him, from those who by an argument were destroying the whole world.
F 19 R3 (Philo, de aeternitate mundi V 20–24):
The arguments which prove the world to be ungenerated and imperishable should, out of respect for the visible god, be given their proper precedence and placed earlier in the discussion. All things that admit of being destroyed are subject to two causes of destruction, one inward, the other outward. Iron, bronze and such-like substances you will find being destroyed from themselves, when rust invades and devours them like a creeping disease, and from without when a house or city is set on fire and they catch fire from it and are destroyed by the fierce rush of flame; and similarly death comes to living beings from themselves when they fall sick, and from outside when they have their throats cut or are stoned or burned to death or suffer the unclean death by hanging. Thus if the world, too, is destroyed, it must be either by something outside or by one of the powers in itself. Now each of these is impossible. For there is nothing outside the world, since all things have contributed to its completeness. For so will it be one, whole, and ageless: one, because if some things had been left out another world like the present world would come into being; whole, because all substance has been expended on it; ageless and diseaseless, because bodies caught by disease and old age are destroyed by the violent assault from without of heat and cold and the other contrary forces, none of which powers can escape and circle round and attack the world, since all without exception are entirely enclosed within it. If then there is anything outside, it must be a complete void or an impassive nature which cannot suffer or do anything. Nor again will the world be destroyed by anything within it—first, because the part would then be both greater and more powerful than the whole, which is most absurd; for the world, wielding unsurpassable power, directs all its parts and is directed by none; secondly, because, there being two causes of destruction, one within and one without, things that can suffer the one are susceptible also to the other. Oxen and horses and men and such-like animals, because they can be destroyed by iron, will also perish by disease. For it is hard, or rather impossible, to find anything that is naturally subject to the external cause of destruction and entirely insusceptible to the internal. Since, then, it was shown that the world will not be destroyed by anything without, because absolutely nothing has been left outside, neither will it be destroyed by anything within, because of the preceding demonstration to the effect that that which is susceptible to the one cause is also by nature susceptible to the other.
F 20 R3 (Philo, de aeternitate mundi VI 28-VII 34):
This may be put in another way. Of composite bodies all that are destroyed are dissolved into their components; dissolution is then nothing but return to the natural state of each thing, so that conversely composition has forced into an unnatural state the parts that have come together. And indeed it seems to be so beyond a doubt. For we men were put together by borrowing little parts of the four elements, which belong in their entirety to the whole universe—earth, water, air and fire. Now these parts when mixed are robbed of their natural position, the upward-travelling heat being forced down, the earthy and heavy substance being made light and seizing in turn the upper region, which is occupied by the earthiest of our parts, the head. The worst of bonds is that which is fastened by violence; this is brief and shortlived, for it is broken sooner by the things bound, because they shake it off through longing for their natural movement, to which they hasten to return. For, as the tragic poet says, “Things born of earth return to earth, things born of an ethereal seed return to the pole of heaven again; nothing that comes into being dies; one departs in one direction, one in another, and each shows its own form.”1 For all things that perish, then, this is the law and this is the rule prescribed—when the parts that have come together in the mixture have settled down they must in place of their natural order have accepted disorder, and must move to the opposite places, so that they seem to be in a sense exiles; but when they are separated they turn back to their natural lot. Now the world has no part in the disorder which is found in the things we have spoken of. For let us consider: if the world is perishing, its parts must now each have been arranged in a region unnatural to it. But this it is not right to suppose; for to all the parts of the world have fallen perfect position and harmonious
arrangement, so that each, as though fond of its own country, seeks no change to a better. For this reason, then, earth was assigned the midmost position, to which all earthy things, even if you throw them up, descend. This is an indication of their natural place; for that region in which a thing brought thither stays and rests, when under no compulsion, is its allotted home. Water is spread over the earth, and air and fire have moved from the middle to the upper region, to air falling the region between water and fire, and to fire the highest region of all. And so, even if you light a torch and throw it to the ground, the flame will none the less strive against you and lighten itself and return to the natural motion of fire. If, then, the cause of destruction of other creatures is their unnatural situation, but in the world each of its parts is arranged according to nature and has its proper place assigned to it, the world may justly be called imperishable.
F 21 R3 (Philo, de aeternitate mundi VIII 39–43):
The most demonstrative argument is that on which I know countless people to pride themselves, as on something most precise and quite irrefutable. They ask why god should destroy the world. Either to save himself from continuing in world-making, or in order to make another world. The former of these purposes is alien to god; for what befits him is to turn disorder into order, not order into disorder; and further, he would be admitting a change of mind, and hence an affection and disease of the soul. For he should either not have made a world at all, or else, if he judged the work becoming to him, should have rejoiced in the product. The second alternative deserves full examination. For if in place of the present world he is to make another, the world he makes is bound to be either worse or like or better, and each of these possibilities is open to objection. If it is worse, its artificer too will be worse; but the works of god are blameless, free from criticism and incapable of improvement, fashioned as they are by the most perfect art and knowledge. For, as the saying goes, ‘not even a woman is so lacking in good judgement as to prefer the worse when the better is available’; and it is fitting for god to give shape to the shapeless and to deck the ugliest things with marvellous beauties. If the new world is like the old, its artificer will have laboured in vain, differing in nothing from silly children, who often when playing on the beach make great piles of sand and then undermine them with their hands and pull them down again. Much better than making a similar world would be neither to take away nor to add anything, nor change anything for better or for worse, but to leave the original world in its place. If he is to make a better world, the artificer himself must become better, so that when he made the former world he must have been more imperfect both in art and in wisdom—which it is not right even to suspect. For god is equal and like to himself, admitting neither slackening towards the worse nor tautening towards the better.