My purpose is not to give a full interpretation of this difficult and important passage, but to discuss one particular problem, taking up some remarks made by F. M. Cornford (in Plato's Theory of Knowledge) and by Mr. R. Robinson (in his paper on Plato's Parmenides, Classical Philology, 1942). First it may be useful to give a very brief and unargued outline of the passage. Plato seeks to prove that concepts are related in certain definite ways, that there is a συμπλοκὴ εἰδῶν (251d–252e). Next (253) he assigns to philosophy the task of discovering what these relations are: the philosopher must try to get a clear view of the whole range of concepts and of how they are interconnected, whether in genus-species pyramids or in other ways. Plato now gives a sample of such philosophising. Choosing some concepts highly relevant to problems already broached in the Sophist he first (254–5) establishes that they are all different one from the other, and then (255e–258) elicits the relationships in which they stand to one another. The attempt to discover and state these relationships throws light on the puzzling notions ὄν and μὴ ὄν and enables Plato to set aside with contempt certain puzzles and paradoxes propounded by superficial thinkers (259). He refers finally (259e) to the absolute necessity there is for concepts to be in definite relations to one another if there is to be discourse at all: διὰ γὰρ τήν ἀλλήλων τῶν εἰδῶν συμπλοκὴν ὁ λόγος γέγονεν ἡμῖν So the section ends with a reassertion of the point with which it began (251d–252e): that there is and must be a συμπλοκὴ εἰδῶν.

The question I wish to discuss is this. Is it true to say that one of Plato's achievements in this passage is ‘the discovery of the copula’ or ‘the recognition of the ambiguity of ἔστιν’ as used on the one hand in statements of identity and on the other hand in attributive statements? The question is whether Plato made a philosophical advance which we might describe in such phrases as those just quoted, but no great stress is to be laid on these particular phrases. Thus it is no doubt odd to say that Plato (or anyone else) discovered the copula. But did he draw attention to it? Did he expound or expose the various roles of the verb ἔστιν? Many of his predecessors and contemporaries reached bizarre conclusions by confusing different usesof the word; did Plato respond by elucidating these different uses? These are the real questions.

In what relation the Magna Moralia stands to the genuine works of Aristotle, and to what phase of Peripatetic doctrine it belongs, are questions which have been discussed with a fair measure of agreement by living scholars. Jaeger described the revolution within the Peripatos which, within two generations, led Dicaearchus to reject the ideal of the contemplative life, making human happiness depend on moral virtue and the life of action. Walzer showed beyond reasonable doubt that the M.M. was influenced by Theophrastus's terminology and statement of problems, and was led to infer that the writer, in his treatment of phronesis and sophia, had formed an uneasy compromise between the views of Theophrastus and Dicaearchus (p. 191). Brink proved from the terminology and style of the treatise, and in amore general way from the structure of its argument, that the author was expounding, probably at an interval of several generations, a received doctrine which he failed to think out properly for himself. Building upon their results, Dirlmeier boldly tried to fix the absolute date of the work within half a century. He argued that it must have been in existence before the first century B.C., since it was used as an authoritative text by the Peripatetic writer from whom Arius Didymus took his compendium of Peripatetic ethical doctrine. On the other hand, a terminus post quem can be obtained from 1204a23, where we read that ‘some persons either equate happiness and pleasure, or regard pleasure as essential to happiness; others, unwilling to reckon pleasure as a good, nevertheless add absence of pain (sc. to ἀρετή in their definition of happiness). Who then were these others? Cicero provides the answer: Diodorus, eius [Critolai] auditor, adiungit ad honestatem vacuitatem doloris (de Finibus V 5, 14, cf. Tusc. Disp. V 30, 85). Now this Diodorus lived in the second half of the second century B.C., and the M.M. mustbe nearly contemporary with him. In confirmation of this, Dirlmeier showed that the writer uses without comment terms which are unquestionably of Stoic origin, such as προθετικός, ἐπιτευκτικός, κατόρθωμα, ἀποκατάστασις, which are coinages not of the earliest Stoicism but of Chrysippus or his followers. Both Walzer and Dirlmeier have called attention to the fact that the writer shows himself to be wholly without understanding of Aristotle's theology, and actually becomes polemical, refusing to contemplate a God who contemplates himself (1212b37–13a10).

More than a century ago the great German scholar Welcker tried to confirm the tradition that amongst the sophists the real master of Socrates had been Prodicus. Welcker called him his ‘forerunner’. In our century this valuation was once exaggerated to the extent of maintaining that the ‘principle of Prodicus’—that is, the care for the exact distinction and usage of the meanings of synonyms—had been the starting-point for every sound development in logic, whereas the methodical pattern presupposed by Socrates in his discussions was, on the contrary, a Prinzip der absoluten Vieldeutigkeit, a principle of absolute equivocation and ambiguity, and therefore the starting-point for every kind of trouble in that field.

Of course, the connection of Socrates with Prodicus was justified by the fact that both, in their conversations, appeared frequently to be dissatisfied with certain answers or expressions of their interlocutors, and therefore discussed the meanings of certain terms used by them. But the difference between the two approaches was very sharp, as appears from every passage of the Socratic dialogues of Plato, in which Prodicus is introduced to explain the demands of his synonymies in the midst of the debate. He wants everybody to use, for example, the verb εὐφραίνεσθαι in some cases and the verb ἥδεσθαι in some others, following what he thinks to be the right usage, the ὀρθότης ὀνομάτων; whereas Socrates does not care what kind of words one may use, but is only interested in what one really expresses by these words, that is, the meaning which he gives to them. Both search for meanings of words: but Prodicus' question is: What does it mean?—and Socrates' question is: What do you mean?—Prodicus says: ἀνδρεία means this, θρασύτης means that: so you shall use ἀνδρεία in the first case and θρασύτης in the second. Socrates asks: What do you mean by ἀνδρεία? (τί λέγεις τὴν ἀνδρείαν;).

In a recent article written by Mr. G. E. L. Owen to prove that contrary to the general current opinion the composition of the Timaeus must have antedated that of the Parmenides and its dialectical successors, it is contended that when the Timaeus was written the analysis of negation given in the Sophist could not yet have been worked out. ‘For’, Mr. Owen writes, ‘the tenet on which the whole new account of negation is based, namely that τὸ μὴ ὄν ἔστιν ὄντως μὴ ὄν (Soph. 254D1), is contradicted unreservedly by Timaeus' assertion that it is illegitimate to say τὸ μὴ ὄν ἔστι μὴ ὄν (38B2–3); and thereby the Timaeus at once ranks itself with the Republic and Euthydemus.' After brushing aside Cornford's attempt to reconcile this passage of the Timaeus with the Sophist, Mr. Owen concludes his treatment of it with the words: ‘So the Timaeus does not tally with even a fragment of the argument in the Sophist. That argument is successful against exactly the Eleatic error which, for lack of the later challenge to Father Parmenides, persists in the Timaeus.’

An examination of the other arguments put forward by Mr. Owen in support of his thesis concerning the relative chronology of the Timaeus I reserve for another place. Here I propose to consider only the meaning of this one passage and whether it really does imply that the Timaeus must have been written before Plato had conceived the doctrine enunciated in the Sophist. It is a question not now raised for the first time. More than half a century ago Otto Apelt asserted that this passage of the Timaeus is enough to prove that work earlier than the Sophists. His assertion did not go unchallenged; and Apelt himself appears to have lost his original confidence in it, for in his later writings on the relative chronology of the two dialogues he did not again refer to it.

‘Critical work on the text of Plato, which in the second half of the nineteenth century had taken an all too easy but mistaken path, had to make a fresh start in the last years before the war (of 1914–18) and is still in its beginnings.’ Thus Pasquali in 1934; and as regards the text of the first seven tetralogies the subsequent twenty years have not produced any marked progress—certainly nothing comparable in precision and thoroughness to the work of Sir David Ross and other contemporary scholars on the text of Aristotle. This has been due in part, I suspect, to the prevalent impression that Burnet's text is, if not final, at any rate firmly based on trustworthy and sufficient foundations. And this impression has in turn been encouraged by the paucity of fresh collations: I think I am right in saying that to this day only two manuscripts of this part of Plato's work, B and T, have been accurately collated in their entirety. In this situation it seems worth while to publish the following notes, which are based on fresh collations made in preparation for an edition of the Gorgias. I am well aware of the danger of founding any general judgement of a manuscript upon a study of one part of it; but I hope that scholars interested in the text of other dialogues may be induced to check and revise my provisional conclusions.

Empedogles' simile of the clepsydra (DK6 31B100) is a crucial document for historians of ancient science. It has been much discussed, and often quoted in evidence, in spite of formidable differences of opinion about its significance. ‘Empedocles undertook an experimental investigation of the air we breathe’ (B. Farrington). ‘The star example of a physical “experiment” in the natural philosophers, the clepsydra, was not an experiment at all, in the proper sense of the word’ (G. Vlastos). ‘All Empedocles did was to draw the explicit inference: “the vessel cannot be simply empty: the air in it cannot be nothing at all”. He did not invent the clepsydra in a laboratory’ (F. M. Cornford). The simile ‘ha tutto il carattere di una esperienza scientifica’ (A. Traglia). Now whether the fragment describes an experiment or not, it is certainly a simile, and the first step must be to understand the force of the simile. It is possible, in my view, that the differences of opinion about the fragment spring from various misunderstandings of the simile; and I propose in this article to offer an explanation of its details which I think is new and which may enable us to form a clearer picture of its place in the history of science.

The work of Cherniss on Aristotle's criticism of the Presocratics may be compared with that of Jaeger on the development of Aristotle's own thought as contained in his Aristoteles of 1923. Jaeger modestly described that epoch-making work as a Grundlegung or foundation for the history of the philosopher's development, and as such it has been of value not only for itself but in the stimulus it has given to further study, in the course of which the balance of its conclusions has been to some extent altered. Cherniss's own study is of the same pioneer kind, and if I confess to a feeling that it goes rather too far, the comparison with the now classic work of Jaeger will, I hope, make clear my general admiration and appreciation of the fact that it is a permanent contribution with which all future scholarship will have to reckon.

I cannot at this stage even begin to discuss in detail the mass of erudition on which Cherniss's case is built up. Nevertheless, the very widespread acceptance of his strictures on Aristotle's historical sense suggest that anyone to whom they seem extreme should lose no time in giving voice to his misgivings, even in general terms, before they become irrevocably canonical. This thought has been prompted by the recent monograph of Mr. J. B. McDiarmid, Theophrastus on the Presocratic Causes, at the beginning of which we read simply that ‘the question of Aristotle's bias has been dealt with exhaustively by H. Cherniss’, whose views then become, without further remark, the starting-point of the younger scholar's own inquiry into the reliability of Theophrastus. Since in what follows I may speak critically of McDiarmid on several points, let me say that his main thesis, the dependence of Theophrastus on Aristotle in much of his φυσικων δόξαι and the consequent danger of regarding him as a separate authority for Presocratic thought, seems true enough. The derivation of Theophrastus's judgments from those of his master was already beginning to be recognised with fruitful results, and the time was ripe for a general review of the evidence.

The publication posthumously in 1951 of Professor Joachim's commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics has raised again in an acute form the question of Aristotle's use of Athenian law as the basis of his discussion of justice in Book V. We are told that Joachim In his interpretation of this book made much use of an unpublished essay of Professor J. A. Smith. It is particularly unfortunate that it has not been found possible to trace the manuscript of this essay among Professor Smith's papers since there is a good deal that is new and unorthodox in the resulting interpretation. It is also unfortunate that, because Joachim's publication was posthumous, there could be no reciprocity as between his and some other relatively recent and important discussions of the subject, especially those of H. D. P. Lee and of L. Gernet, while these last two, publishing in the same year, were ignorant of each other's work. I have felt drawn to a brief re-examination of the question because I am sceptical of the general lines of Joachim's treatment, rash though it be to differ from both him and J. A. Smith on the interpretation of Aristotle.

The specific question I propose to ask is whether in N.E. V Aristotle is basing himself at all closely on the substantive law of Athens, and my main conclusion is negative. I think that there is a tendency, particularly in Joachim, to read too much law into what Aristotle says, to force his discussion into a juristic mould into which it simply does not fit. Aristotle after all is attempting to describe a ἔζις, a tendency to feel and act in a certain way; and, close as may be in his thought the connection between the man and the citizen, we perhaps ought not tolook for too exact a mirror of the character of the good citizen in the external institutions of the city.

In the last pages of the Theaetetus Socrates is made to present four versions of a final attempt to define knowledge, as true opinion accompanied by logos, and to reject them all; yet in earlier dialogues ‘ability to give account’, λόγον ἔχειν or λόγον διδόναι δύναδθαι is closely associated with knowledge, not always, or not necessarily, knowledge of Forms, and in the Republic it is said to be the essential mark of the dialectician. These facts are exceedingly hard to interpret. In recent years the passage has been read as an indirect defence of the earlier theory of Forms, as the statement of a problem answered in the Sophist by a revision of that theory and as a piece of radical self-criticism. No one of these interpretations seems tome without difficulty, and in this article I shall attempt to argue for yet another solution which owes something to all three.

Professor Cornford, pressing the fact that Socrates draws all his illustrations from the world of concrete things, believes that Plato intended by criticism of the different versions to point the way to an old and invulnerable sense of λόγον διδόναι, which implies that the proper objects of knowledge are Forms. This is the statement or understanding of grounds for judgments which in the Meno is said to turn true opinion into knowledge. A rather similar line has been taken by Professor Cherniss. Professor Stenzel thinks that the earlier theory of Forms is vulnerable to Socrates' criticism of what I call ‘the first version’, the ‘dream’, but he believes that all three of the later versions ‘recover their meaning’ when the problem of definition has been solved in the Sophist with the help of the method of diaeresis; and so restated they can be shown to apply to particulars as well as to Forms.

Philosophy, in general, moves in a sphere of abstraction, and its statements claim to be necessary and of universal validity. The reader therefore expects them to appeal directly to his reason, and he does not normally reflect much on the time and historical conditions that determined what the philosopher took for granted. It is only in this age of historical consciousness that we have come to appreciate these factors more readily, and the great thinkers of the past appear to us more or less closely related to the culture of their age. The writings of Plato and Aristotle in particular are for us an inexhaustible source of information about Greek society and civilisation. This is true also in regard to the relation of Greek philosophy to the science of its time, and this is of special importance for our understanding. That relation can be traced throughout Aristotle's logical, physical, and metaphysical works; but the influence of other sciences and arts is no less evident in his ethics. In this paper I propose to examine the numerous references to medicine that occur in the Nicomachean Ethics. They are mostly concerned with the question of the best method of treating this subject. The problem of the right method is always of the utmost importance for Aristotle. The discussion of it begins on the first page of the Ethics, where he tries to give a definition of the subject of this course of lectures and attributes it to a philosophical discipline that he calls ‘politics’. He does so in agreement with the Platonic tradition. We can trace it back to one of the dialogues of Plato's first period, the Gorgias, in which the Platonic Socrates for the first time pronounces his postulate of a new kind of philosophy, the object of which ought to be the care of the human soul (φυχῆς θεραπεία). He assigns this supreme task to ‘political art’, even though it does not fulfil this function at present.

In a passage of his Protrepticus mentioned by several ancient authors Aristotle wrote: εἰ μὲνφιλοσοφητέον φιλοσοφητέον, καὶ εἰ μὴ φιλοσοφητέον φιλοσοφητέον πάντως ἄρα φιλοσοφητέον (V. Rose, Aristotelis Fragmenta, 51. Cf. R. Walzer, Aristotelis Dialogorum Fragmenta, p. 22; W. D. Ross, Select Fragments of Aristotle, p. 27). That is to say, ‘If we ought to philosophise, then we ought to philosophise; and if we ought not to philosophise, then we ought to philosophise (i.e. in order to justify this view); in any case, therefore, we ought to philosophise’. So far as I know, this is the first appearance in philosophical literature of a pattern of argument that became popular among the Jesuits of the seventeenth century under the name of the consequentia mirabilis and inspired Saccheri's work Euclides ab Omni Naevo Vindicatus, in which theorems of non-Euclidean geometry were proved for the first time. The later history has been told by G. Vailati (in his article on Saccheri's Logica Demonstrativa, ‘Di un’ opera dimenticata del P. Gerolamo Saccheri’, reprinted in his Scritti, 1911, pp. 477–84), G. B. Halsted (in the preface to his 1920 edition of Saccheri's Euclides), and J. -Łukasiewicz (in his ‘Philosophische Bemerkungen zu mehrwertigen Systemen des Aussagenkalküls’, Comptes Rendus des séances de la société des sciences et des lettres de Varsovie, Classe III, Vol. xxiii, 1930, p. 67). In this note I wish to consider only the early history of the argument and in particular a curious criticism of it which appears in Aristotle's Prior Analytics.

The excellent report by H.-R. Schwyzer in his long article on Plotinus in R.-E. (Bd. XLI (1951), col. 477–81), presents the reader with a picture of the present state of research concerning Ammonius, while giving a critique of previous discussions. A significant feature of the situation is this: simultaneously with the endeavour to obtain a clear picture of Ammonius's doctrine from the reports in Nemesius of Emesa and Hierocles (Photius, Bibl. cod. 214 and 251)—reports whose upper and lower limits are controversial—a new and fruitful attempt has been made to work back to Ammonius as the common source behind numerous concordances between Plotinus and Origen. Following the lead of René Cadiou, who, in his epoch-making work La jeunesse d'Origène (Paris, 1935), demonstrated the importance of Ammonius for the development of the theology of Origen, de Jong has given a convenient conspectus of the parallels between Plotinus and Origen (Plotinus of Ammonius Saccas, Leiden, 1941). But this gives rise to some problems of general procedure. What justification is there for Schwyzer's assertion (op. cit. 480. 65) that ‘it is a priori improbable that Plotinus would have studied the writings of Origen’? This depends upon the presupposition that Christianity, and in particular its theology, during the years of Plotinus's studies at Alexandria, was of far too slight importance, intensive or extensive, to have had any influence upon a man of the spiritual calibre of Plotinus.

As regards Aristotle's Περὶ φυτῶν ᾱβ mentioned in Diog. Laert.'s list (nr. 108), Alexander's Statement is decisive: … ἔστι περὶ φυτῶν Θεοφράστῳ πραγματεία γεγραμμένη ᾿Αριστοτέλους γὰροὐ φέρεται and though Simplicius and others occasionally refer to a πραγματεία περὶ φυτῶν there is no indication that they ever saw the book with their own eyes. Aristotle's treatise On Plants, therefore, seems to have disappearedat an early date, and since the quotations in Antigonus, Athenaeus and others are concerned with insignificant details, they cannot give any hint as to its contents.

It has often been asked whether there exists any relation between this lost treatise and the two books Περὶ φυτῶν which are incorporated into all editions of the Corpus Aristotelicum (pp. 814–830 Bk.), but the question has never received a definite answer. There are good reasons for this reticence, for though these books were identified more than a century ago as a work of Nicolaus of Damascus, the text is in such a deplorable condition that it seemed to resist every attempt at interpretation. However, since in 1841 E. H. F. Meyer published the Arabic-Latin translation made by Alfred of Sareshel (the exemplar of the clumsy Greek rendering whichwas already known), the material has considerably increased.

Dans un travail déjà anciennous avons attiré l'attention sur l'intérêt que présentait pour l'histoire de la constitution du texte de la Physique d'Aristote latraduction arabo-latine de ce traité attribuée à Michel Scot ou à son école, et jointe, dans les éditions du XVIe siècle, comme dans les mss., à la version latine du Commentaire d'Averroès. En conclusion de cette étude nous avons appuyé—peut-être unpeu trop—sur la parenté du texte dont dérive la version arabo-latine avec celui du cod. E, le meilleur des mss. de Bekker. Sir David Ross, à qui ces pages sont offertes en hommage, a repris les données fournies par notre travail, mais a été amené par une étude plus minutieuse des leçonsen présence, à modifier ou à redresser nos conclusions. Il juge que le texte auquel remonte la version se trouve à peu près à mi-chemin entre celui de E et celui du groupe des autres mss. principaux de la Physique.

Notre travail antérieur ne portait que sur les quatre premiers livres de la Physique. Nous voudrions entreprendre ici un travail analogue sur une base à la fois plus étroite et plus large. Nous nous limiterons tout d'abord aux trois premiers chapitres du texte secondaire du livre VII de la Physique. Mais au lieu d'en examiner une seule version arabo-latine, nous en rapprocherons les deux versions médiévalesfaites sur l'arabe, lesquelles remontent respectivement au XIIe et au XIIIe siècle: dans la mesure où elles convergent elles pourront nous renseigner ainsi en même temps sur certaines caractéristiques du texte arabe dont elles dépendent et par là sur la teneur du texte grec dont dérive en dernière analyse ce texte arabe.

Das bekannte Problem, von wem der Name Metaphysik eigentlich stamme und ob derselbe denn mehr als ganz äuβerliche Bedeutung (nämlich die Angabe der Reihenfolge der Ausgabe der Aristotelischen Schriften) habe, wurde innerhalb der letzten Jahre überaus gründlich diskutiert. Das Problem, das hier behandelt werden soll, ist ihm verwandt. Wie immer man Name und dessen Entstehung erklärt, so bleibt doch sehr bemerkenswert, daβ die Metaphysik, wie ihr Name besagt, in irgendeinem Sinne auf die Physik folgt. Denn es scheint doch, daβ es im Sinne einer Reihe von Stellen bei Aristoteles läge, dieselbe nicht auf die Physik, sondern auf die Mathematik folgen zulassen, so daβ sie nicht Metaphysik, sondern Metamathematik heiβen sollte. Wenn wir uns also für den Namen Metaphysik interessieren, so geschieht es in dem Sinne: Warum Metaphysik und nicht Metamathematik?

An den Stellen, an denen Aristoteles das Wesen der Ersten Philosophie bestimmt, behandelt er immer wieder zwei Wissenschaften, die den Anspruch erheben könnten, Erste Philosophie zu sein. Es sind dies Physik und Mathematik. Und Aristoteles gibt diesen beiden das Recht zu, als Teile der Weisheit zu gelten, weist dagegen deren Anspruch Erste Philosophie zu sein, ab. Als Endergebnis der Diskussion finden wir die Formel, daβ es drei Philosophien (oder wie wir auch sagen könnten, Sophien) gibt, Physik, Mathematik und Erste Philosophie.

Cod. Florence Bibl. Nazion. Centr. Conv. Soppr. J.VI.34—formerly in Niccolò Niccoli's and St. Mark's libraries—written in a beautiful French hand of c. A.D. 1150–1200—contains the second edition of Boethius's translation of Pr. An. Many scholia, written on the margins and between the lines by the same calligraphic hand which wrote the Aristotelian text or by a hand very similar to and contemporary with it, accompany the translation in this MS. They are mainly concentrated in about one-half of the work, viz. in book i.23–30 (4ob–46a) and book ii (52a–70b); quite a few accompany i. 1, 5–6, 30–45 (24a, 27b–28a, 46a–50a); almost none is to be found in i. 10–14, 17–22 (30b7–33b25, 37a25–40b10). Arrangement and writing suggest that the scribe intended to give the reader Aristotle's text together with what was available to him of an authoritative commentary.

The scholia range, in nature and extent, from short glosses on single words or phrases and short summaries of sections of Aristotle's work to detailed explanations and doctrinal developments of important or difficult passages. Here and there carefully drawn diagrams illustrate logical rules and geometrical examples. The following scholia are mainly chosen from book i; others, from both books, will be given farther on.

In his lost essay περὶ ἰδεῶν Aristotle retailed and rebutted a number of Academic arguments for the existence of Ideas. Several of these, together with Aristotle's objections to them, are preserved in Alexander's commentary on A 9 of the Metaphysics. The first object of the following discussion is to show the sense and the provenance of one, the most complex and puzzling, of these surviving arguments. For several reasons it seems to deserve more consideration than it has yet had. 1. Its length and technicality make it singularly fitted to illustrate the sort of material on which Aristotle drew in his critique. 2. Moreover, Alexander reports it by way of amplifying Aristotle's comment that, of the more precise arguments on Ideas, οἱ μὲν τῶν πρός τι ποιοῦσιν ἰδέας , ὧν οὔ φαμεν εἶναι καθ᾿ αὑτὸ γένος (Met. 990b15–17 = 1079a11–13); condensed and allusive form of this remark and its immediate neighbours in the Metaphysics can be taken to show that here Aristotle is epitomising parts of his περὶ ἰδεῶν that are independently known to us only through his commentator. We shall not understand the objection if we misidentify its target; and another purpose of this discussion is to show that the objection is not the disingenuous muddle that one recent writer labours to make it. 3. But Alexander's report of the argument is a nest of problems, and the same recent writer brands it as almost incredibly careless. To this extent, the success of our explanation will be a vindication of the commentator. But on all the heads of this discussion I am well aware that much more remains to be said.

Among the topics this paper will discuss, the leading one is that of the moral psychology of the Laws; it will not, however, attempt a general study of this, but will confine itself to the question whether that work presupposes any particular division of the soul into parts. The problem seems to have been on the whole neglected by scholars. Apelt in his Platon-Index says briefly that the soul is there treated as tripartite, which is certainly not true without qualification. Neither England's commentary nor Ritter's affords much help. The latter does, indeed, touch on the question in Volume II of his Platon; he there states that the Laws treats the soul as tripartite, and supports this by referring to I. 644C and IX. 863B, but neither passage proves his point, the second actually suggesting that it requires some modification, as will be argued below. The best treatment known to me is the discussion of the second of these passages by L. Gernet in his translation (with commentary) of Book IX, but it requires some expansion and supplementation.

It will be well to begin by recapitulating briefly the main points in the moral psychology of the Republic. The soul is there divided into three parts or (better) elements, the rational, the spirited and the appetitive, and this division has two aspects: (a) an analysis is thus provided which can be used in the interpretation and appraisal of all action whatever, the soul being in the right state and the agent's actions right in consequence when the rational element controls the appetitive through the agency of the spirited; (b) at the same time each of the three elements represents a drive towards one of three goals, the rational towards knowledge, the spirited towards honour and public distinction, and the appetitive towards pleasure (interpreted as bodily pleasure), or towards material gain as a means to the attainment of pleasure. Secondly, each of these three drives may predominate in any individual soul (though it is commonest for the last to do so, and least common for the first), and the three are therefore to be correlated with three ways of life, that of the thinker, that of the soldier or man in public life, and that of the merchant or other person engaged in a money-making enterprise, and further these ways of life are specially characteristic of different races. Thirdly, the three elements in the soul and the three types of character are correlated by Plato with the three classes in his ideal state, the rulers, the auxiliaries and the artisans. Fourthly, the distinction of three elements in the soul is made the basis for interpreting the four virtues, wisdom being the virtue of the rational element and courage of the spirited (ideally under the control of the rational), while justice consists in the maintenance of the proper relation between the three elements, the rational controlling the appetitive through the agency of the spirited, and temperance in the willing acquiescence of the appetites in the rule of reason. On the larger canvas of state organisation, the three classes will have as their specially characteristic virtues wisdom, courage and temperance respectively, while the state as a whole will be just if the correct relation between the three classes is maintained and the reason of the rulers preserves its control with the help of the auxiliaries. Fifthly, the tripartition of the soul is applied in Book IX to the discussion of pleasure, pleasures being graded as higher or lower according to the element in the soul which enjoys them; indeed, Plato argues that the pleasures of the rational element are not simply superior to those of the other two but more real as well.Finally, Book X suggests at least that the rational element is the real self, that it alone is immortal, and that the other two exist merely in virtue of our temporary attachment to a body.

A short section of Aristotle's de generatione animalium embodies his final answer to the question how the faculties of soul are transmitted from parent to offspring. Aristotle here speaks in a tone which is dogmatic as well as enthusiastic; he is able to announce a new discovery. There is, he sets forth, in the sperma a peculiar substance (σῶμα) which has some connection with soul and differs in quality as the souls themselves differ in worth. This substance is identical with two of the entities mentioned in our title and ‘analogous’ to the third.

Πάσης μὲν οὖν ψυχῆς δύναμις ἑτέρου σώματος ἔοικε κεκοινωνηκέναι καὶ θειοτέρου τῶν καλουμένων στοιχείων ὡς δὲ διαφέρουσι τιμιότητι αἱ ψυχαὶ καὶ ἀλλήλων, οὕτω καὶ ἡ τοιαύτη διαφέρει φύσις. πάντων μὲν γὰρ ἐν τῷ σπέρματι ὑπάρχει ὅπερ ποιεῖ γόνιμα εἶναι τὰ σπέρματα, τό καλούμενον θερμόν. τοῦτο δ᾿ οὐ πῦρ πὐδὲ τοιαύτη δύναμίς ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ τὸ ἐμπεριλαμβανόμενον ἐν τῷ σπέρματι καὶ ἐν τῷ ἀφρώδει πνεῦμα καὶ ἡ ἐν τῷ πνεύματι φύσις, ἀνάλογον οὖσα τῶν ἄστρων στοιείῳ.

The sentences which follow state that fire has no generative or procreative power, yet such a power must be present in the Sun and in the θερμόν, the vital heat of living beings. Clearly, then, this θερμόν cannot be identical with the fire.

Nowhere else in the body of his preserved work does Aristotle establish this close connection between the vital heat, the pneuma, and the element of the stars, the so-called aether. These three concepts differ as much in their origin and past history as in their function and place within Aristotle's own physical or biological system. A brief sketch of them—skipping by necessity many significant episodes in the history of each—will suffice to make this clear.

What needs here to be said about the ‘element of the stars’ is indeed not much. It was Aristotle himself who added this element to the canonic four of the Empedoclean and Platonic tradition. The dialogue On Philosophy and the First Book On the Heaven secured it its place. It is divine, un-ageing, and unchanging, and yet a material element. Like the other elements it has its specific ‘natural motion’, to wit the circular, which makes it possible for Aristotle to explain by a physical ‘hypothesis’ the celestial motions for which Plato had resorted to the World-Soul. The place of this element is the entire heavenly region, extending from the First Heaven to the moon; below this, in the regions occupied by the four other elements, it is never to be found.