Aristotle's Psychology: On the Soul and Parva Naturalia

PREFACE.

THE comparative inaccessibility of the Parva naturalia Minor Natural Treatises (they exist in English only in Taylor’s paraphrase) has induced me to prepare an English version of these important tractates. To this I have added a translation of the De anima On the Soul, in order that English readers might have in a single volume a practically complete account of Aristotle’s psychological theories. Such a work seemed to me to be all the more necessary at the present time in view of the need of available primary sources for historical research in philosophy and psychology. An adequate history of psychology has not as yet been written.

The translation of Aristotle’s works, owing to their crabbed Greek, their puzzling lacunae and breviloquence,—oftentimes they are almost unintelligible jottings intended, perhaps, for lecture-notes or for later elaboration which they never received,—has at no time been regarded by scholars as an easy or attractive task. It is only their immense historical significance and the intrinsic value of their content that could induce one now-a-days to set hand to the work. The De anima and Parva naturalia cannot be said to be in a more satisfactory condition