A LIFE OF ARISTOTLE, INCLUDING A CRITICAL DISCUSSION OF SOME QUESTIONS OF LITERARY HISTORY CONNECTED WITH HIS WORKS. BY JOSEPH WILLIAMS BLAKESLEY, M.A. FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, CAMBRIDGE: J. AND J. J. DEIGHTON. M.DCCC.XXXIX. ADVERTISEMENT. THE following Essay is intended by the author to be preliminary to a few others in which he hopes to give an account of the several systems of Ancient Philosophy which converged in those of Plato and Aristotle, to pursue some of the more important branches of speculation in the course which they took after leaving the hands of the latter, and to examine the success which has attended their cultivation up to the present time. Before this task could be attempted with any advantage, it was necessary to enter upon some points relative to the history of philosophical literature, and, from the nature of these, no mode of discussing them appeared preferable to interweaving them in a critical biography of the founder of the Peripatetic School. The present treatise, however, although the first of a series, is complete in itself, and it is the intention of the writer to preserve a similar independence to each of the others. |