Turning to the defects of the Aristotelian method, I would point out that there is apparently no little difference in the care with which Aristotle had studied the writings of his predecessors. His general attitude towards the Eleatic school is well known, and there is no evidence that he was really familiar with the works of Xenophanes or Parmenides or Melissos. The fact that three of the four quotations from Parmenides were at least suggested by Plato’s writings should not receive undue weight, yet it is certainly suggestive. Several _sayings_ are quoted from Herakleitos, and his logic is severely criticised; we do not, however, obtain from Aristotle any conception of the real importance of Herakleitos. In fact, Aristotle does not seem at all to have understood the meaning of Herakleitos’ work, whether we are to attribute it to his inability to put himself in sympathy with so different a thinker, or to his failure to study his writings. If we had only the data from Aristotle, we should really know more of the significant work of Anaximandros than of Herakleitos. The conception of the earlier Greek thinkers which we obtain from Aristotle’s writings is distorted along four lines. 1. Whether or not it was due to his failure to study certain of these thinkers, Aristotle’s comparative estimate of them is not one with which we can agree. As for Herakleitos, we can say that Aristotle assigns him a very important place in early thought, even though he gives us but little clue to what his work really was. Perhaps he overestimates the work of Anaximandros and Anaximenes because he finds in them so clear an anticipation of his own thought. Certainly he does not give due weight to the Eleatic school as a whole, and in particular to Melissos. Melissos was not a great original thinker along entirely new lines, but his work in systematising Eleatic thought was very important. Perhaps because he resembled Aristotle in what he sought to do, although from so very different premisses, he is handled with the greater disdain. 2. We may get from Aristotle a slightly distorted view of the earlier thinkers because he stated their views in the terms of his own philosophic system. The commonest philosophical terms, such as ἄπειρον, ἕν, φύσις, κενόν, τὰ ὄντα, στοιχεῖον, σῶμα, οὐσία, πάθη, slightly changed their meanings as they gradually took their place in a definite philosophical terminology. ἄρχη is regularly used by Aristotle to denote the original principle of all things which the early thinkers sought, εἶδος is used in the statement of Herakleitos’ position[109] and of the Pythagorean philosophy[110]: the latter a word introduced into philosophy by Plato, the former probably not used in this sense before Aristotle himself.