Notes on Required Readings in “The Chautauquan” 429 Paragraphs from New Books 431 Talk About Books 432 The Chautauqua University: What Are Its Claims? 433 Special Notes 434 REQUIRED READING FOR APRIL. ARISTOTLE. BY WILLIAM C. WILKINSON. [The “College Greek Course in English” did not, for a reason alluded to in the following paper, include Aristotle among the authors represented. The readers of THE CHAUTAUQUAN will be glad to get some acquaintance with so great an ancient name through this supplementary chapter from Prof. Wilkinson’s pen.] Philosopher, though he by eminence is ranked, Aristotle was, too, something of an encyclopedist. He traversed almost the whole circle of the sciences, as that circle existed for the ancient world. But he was not simply first a learner, and then a teacher, of what others had found out before him. He was also an explorer and discoverer. Inventor also he was, if between discovery and invention we are to make a difference. He was a great methodizer and systematizer of knowledge. He bore to Plato the personal relation of pupil. The history of Aristotle’s intellectual influence is remarkable. That influence has suffered several phases of wax and wane, several alternate occultations and renewals of brightness. During a certain period of time, covering several hundred years, he was, perhaps beyond the fortune of any other man that ever lived, the lord of human thought. We mean the time of the schoolmen[1] so called. From near the close of the thirteenth century, until the era of the Reformation, Aristotle reigned supreme in the schools of Christian theology, which is the same thing as to say that he was acknowledged universal monarch of the European mind. The business of the schoolmen may be said to have been to state the dogmas of the church in the forms of the Aristotelian logic, and then to reconcile those dogmas so stated, with the teachings of the Aristotelian philosophy.