of numbers and ideas) seem to have been intended to come in as part of the same treatise, but to have been left by Aristotle in the condition of mere notes or materials; Book XI. is thought to be a separate, though very valuable and interesting, essay on the nature of the Deity; while Books IV. and X., and the appendix to Book I., are un-Aristotelian,[1] and should never have had a place assigned to them in the ‘Metaphysics.’
To turn to this work from the ‘Researches about Animals’ is like turning from White’s ‘Selborne’ to Kant’s 'Critic of the Pure Reason.’ Metaphysical questions are necessarily abstruse, dry, and difficult; but the attempt has sometimes been made—as, for instance, by Plato, Berkeley, Hume, and Ferrier—to discuss them in clear, pointed language, as little as possible removed from the ordinary language of literature. Aristotle, on the other hand, at all events in later life, aimed only at scientific precision; and his ‘Metaphysics’ is the forerunner of those German philosophies which from beginning to end exhibit a jargon of technical phraseology. In another respect, also, Aristotle here sets an example which has been much followed by the Germans during the present century; for in Book I. he gives a "history of philosophy" from Thales down to himself. This is a very
- ↑ Book IV. consists of a list of philosophical terms and their definitions, perhaps jotted down by some scholar. Book X. is a paraphrase of part of the ‘Physical Discourse.’ The appendix to Book I. is a little essay on First Principles, of which tradition attributes the authorship to one Pasides.
