Excerpt from Life of Aristotle: Including a Critical Discussion of Some Questions of Literary History Connected With His Works 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. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.