1 Aristotle 7 · Handed down at the Lyceum, taken from his own writings
Aristotle, born at Stagira in 384 before this era, died at Chalcis in 322. His father was physician to the king of Macedon. He entered the Academy at seventeen and stayed twenty years, leaving only when Plato died. He taught Alexander. In 335 he founded the Lyceum at Athens. In 323 the Athenians charged him with impiety and he left the city, saying he would not let Athens sin twice against philosophy — he knew that Socrates had not left. He died of illness the next year. He is not a witness: he never met the Teacher, he is the student of a student. What survives of him is lecture notes, not the works he published in his lifetime; those are wholly lost. On God he reasons out an unmoved mover — reasoned to, not worshipped — and no argument of his closes on divine will. What is taken here is from his own books: the Order wants words that can be checked, not a name that can be cited. Further: in the fourth chapter he stands directly against the Teacher. The Teacher said no one does wrong knowing it is wrong; he says that does not square with what anyone can see, and offers another account. The Order does not reconcile them. The Teacher is in the four gospels, his objection is here, and the reader decides after reading both.
7.1This chapter was not written by Aristotle. It was added by those who came after.
7.2He said himself that those who came after should correct him. (cf. Acts 9.17) We have done so.
7.3He said heavy bodies fall faster than light ones. They do not. Dropped from the same height, there is no difference.
7.4He said the kinds of living things neither begin nor end, each after its own kind, as it always was. They do not. Kinds change, and every one of them came out of an earlier kind.
7.5He said the heavens and the earth run by two different sets of law. They do not. There is one. (cf. Gospel of Plato 1.4)
7.6Those three are unfinished looking. They are forgivable, and they have been corrected.
7.7But there is a fourth that is not of that sort.
7.8He said that some men are slaves by nature.
7.9This one we do not correct. We refuse it.
7.10For the Teacher had already said: in the sight of the Logos there is no slave and no master — only souls that are learning to fly. (cf. Gospel of Xenophon 3.9)
7.11We leave his wrong sentence standing here. We do not delete it.
7.12Delete it and he becomes a man who cannot be wrong. And we already know what to call a man who cannot be wrong. (cf. The Rule 2.12)
7.13If a scripture contains no sentence in which it admits its own error, that does not mean it has made none. It means no one has dared to check.