A History of Greek Philosophy / ARISTOTLE

Page 4

But his temporary and accidental eclipse was amply compensated in the effect upon the civilised world which he subsequently exercised.[1] So all-embracing, so systematic, so absolutely complete did his philosophy appear, that he seemed to after generations to have left nothing more to discover. He at once attained a supremacy which lasted for some two thousand years, not only over the Greek-speaking world, but over every form of the civilisation of that long period, Greek, Roman, Syrian, Arabic, from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, from Africa to Britain. His authority was accepted equally by the learned doctors of Moorish Cordova and the Fathers of the Church; to know Aristotle was to have all knowledge; not to know him was to be a boor; to deny him was to be a heretic.

His style has nothing of the grace of Plato; he illuminates his works with no myths or allegories; his manner is dry, sententious, familiar, without the slightest attempt at ornament. There are occasional touches of caustic humour, but nothing of emotion, still less of rhapsody. His strength lies in the vast architectonic genius by which he correlates every domain of the knowable in a single scheme, and in the extraordinary faculty for illustrative detail with which he fills the scheme in every part. He knows, and can shrewdly criticise every thinker and writer who has preceded him; he classifies them as he classifies the mental faculties, the parts of logical speech, the parts of sophistry, the parts of rhetoric, the parts of animals, the parts of the soul, the parts of the state; he defines, distinguishes, combines, classifies, with the same sureness and minuteness of method in them all. He can start from a general conception, expand it into its parts, separate these again by distinguishing details till he brings the matter down to its lowest possible terms, or infimae species. Or he can start from these, find analogies among them constituting more general species, and so in ascending scale travel surely up to a general conception, or summum genus.

Elpenor's note : [1] The author judges mainly from the western world; in Byzantium Plato’s influence was equally large, and essentially greater.

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A History of Greek Philosophy : Table of Contents
Cf. D'Arcy W. Thompson, Aristotle's Natural Science

Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-Greece/history-of-philosophy/aristotle.asp?pg=4