[Footnote 7: Heitz, Verl. Schr. Aristot. p. 18, remarks that "In diesem Verzeichnisse (that of Diogenes) die bei weitem grösste Zahl derjenigen Schriften fehlt, welche wir heute noch besitzen, und die wir als den eigentlichen Kern der aristotelischen Lehre enthaltend zu betrachten gewohnt sind." Cf. p. 32. Brandis expresses himself substantially to the same effect (Aristoteles, Berlin, 1853, pp. 77, 78, 96); and Zeller also (Gesch. der Phil. 2nd ed. Aristot. Schriften, p. 43).] [Footnote 8: Heitz, Verl. Schr. des Aristoteles, p. 56, seq.] The last-mentioned fact is in itself sufficiently strange and difficult to explain, and our difficulty becomes aggravated when we combine it with another fact hardly less surprising. Both Cicero, and other writers of the century subsequent to him (Dionysius Hal., Quintilian, &c.), make reference to Aristotle, and especially to his dialogues, of which none have been preserved, though the titles of several are given in the two catalogues mentioned above. These writers bestow much encomium on the style of Aristotle; but what is remarkable is, that they ascribe to it attributes which even his warmest admirers will hardly find in the Aristotelian works now remaining. Cicero extols the sweetness, the abundance, the variety, the rhetorical force which he discovered in Aristotle's writings: he even goes so far as to employ the phrase "flumen orationis aureum" (a golden stream of speech), in characterizing the Aristotelian style.[9] Such predicates may have been correct, indeed were doubtless correct, in regard to the dialogues, and perhaps other lost works of Aristotle; but they describe exactly the opposite[10] of what we find in all the works preserved. With most of these (except the History of Animals) Cicero manifests no acquaintance; and some of the best modern critics declare him to have been ignorant of them.[11] Nor do other ancient authors, Plutarch, Athenæus, Diogenes Laertius, &c., give evidence of having been acquainted with the principal works of Aristotle known to us. They make reference only to works enumerated in the Catalogue of Diogenes Laertius.[12]