Note 56 — Chapter VIII · PLATONIC COMPOSITIONS GENERALLY.
Reading edition
The dialogues composed by Aristotle himself were in great measure dialogues of search, exercises of argumentation pro and con (Cicero, De Finib. v. 4). “Aristoteles, ut solet, quærendi gratiâ, quædam subtilitatis suæ argumenta excogitavit in Gryllo,” &c. (Quintilian, Inst. Orat. ii. 17.)
Bernays indicates the probable titles of many among the lost Aristotelian Dialogues (Die Dialoge des Aristoteles, pp. 132, 133, Berlin, 1868), and gives in his book many general remarks upon them.
The observations of Aristotle in the Metaphys. (A. ἐλάττων 993, b. 1-16) are conceived in a large and just spirit. He says that among all the searchers for truth, none completely succeed, and none completely fail: those, from whose conclusions we dissent, do us service by exercising our intelligence — τὴν γὰρ ἕξιν προήσκησαν ἡμῶν. The enumeration of ἀπορίαι in the following book B of the Metaphysica is a continuation of the same views. Compare Scholia, p. 604, b. 29, Brandis.