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 Coelo; 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.] [Footnote 2: Aristot. Topica, i. p. 104, b. 1, with the Scholia of Alexander, p. 259, a. 48 Br.; Scholia ad Analyt. Prior. p. 140, a. 47, p. 141, a. 25; also Schol. ad Categor. p. 36, a., p. 40, a., 8. This conception of the Organon is not explicitly announced by Aristotle, but seems quite in harmony with his views. The contemptuous terms in which Prantl speaks of it (Gesch. der Logik, i. 136), as a silly innovation of the Stoics, are unwarranted.