Note 1 — Chapter III · CATEGORIÆ.
Reading edition
Scholia, p. 25, b. 37, seq. Br.; p. 321, b. 30; Diogen. L. iii. 62. The order in which the forty-six Aristotelian treatises stand printed in the Berlin edition, and in other preceding editions, corresponds to the tripartite division, set forth by Aristotle himself, of sciences or cognitions generally: 1. Theoretical; θεωρητικαί 2. Practical; πρακτικαί. 3. Constructive or Technical; ποιητικαί.
Patricius, in his Discussiones Peripateticæ, published in 1581 (tom. i. lib. xiii. p. 173), proclaims himself to be the first author who will undertake to give an account of Aristotle’s philosophy from Aristotle himself (instead of taking it, as others before him had done, from the Aristotelian expositors, Andronikus, Alexander, Porphyry, or Averroes); likewise, to be the first author who will consult all the works of Aristotle, instead of confining himself, as his predecessors had done, to a select few of the works. Patricius then proceeds to enumerate those works upon which alone the professors “in Italicis scholis” lectured, and to which the attention of all readers was restricted. 1. The Predicabilia, or Eisagoge of Porphyry. 2. The Categoriæ. 3. The De Interpretatione. 4. The Analytica Priora; but only the four first chapters of the first book. 5. The Analytica Posteriora; but only a few chapters of the first book; nothing of the second. 6. The Physica; books first and second; then parts of the third and fourth; lastly, the eighth book. 7. The De Cœlo; books first and second. 8. The De Generatione et Corruptione; books first and second. 9. The De Animâ; all the three books. 10. The Metaphysica; books Alpha major, Alpha minor, third, sixth, and eleventh. “Idque, quadriennio integro, quadruplicis ordinis Philosophi perlegunt auditoribus. De reliquis omnibus tot libris, mirum silentium.”
Patricius expressly remarks that neither the Topica nor the De Sophisticis Elenchis was touched in this full course of four years. But he does not remark — what to a modern reader will seem more surprising — that neither the Ethica, nor the Politica, nor the Rhetorica, is included in the course.