sequently, it must rather remain in necessary rest, or, if in motion, in endless motion, unless some stronger interferes."" Aristotle lived before the airpump had enabled us to produce a vacuum, and, speculating only on motion through the air, he found in the pulses of the air itself a cause for continuous motion. The mode of reasoning was natural enough. There is much of this kind of ingenious error in the physics of Aristotle. But if we do not blame, neither can we be called upon to admire.

Aristotle missed our modern doctrine of inertia, or rather our doctrine that every change demands a cause (according to which a moving body would move on for ever if nothing intervened to arrest or retard its motion), but he is credited with having ascertained several of our scientific laws of motion.

"The principle of vertical velocities' was certainly known to him. This has been denied; but Galileo himself says that he found it in Aristotle, and doubtless alludes to the following pas

sage:The same force will raise a greater weight in proportion as the force is applied at a longer distance from the fulcrum, because it then describes a larger circle; and a weight which is farthest removed from the centre, is made to move through the greatest space.'

"He also gained a glimpse of the parallelogram of forces. Poselger thinks his statement of it superior in elegance and precision to that given by Kant. Yet, in spite of this, I must still think that Aristotle only gained a glimpse of the law, as he did of the principle of ' vertical velocities,' since he failed to see its far-reaching importance, and made little or no use of it."

It illustrates the difficulty that attends upon forming an accurate estimate of the science of Aristotle, that this very explanation he gives of the power of the lever has been differently interpreted by his commentators. Some have understood that when he accounts for the greater force of a weight at the long arm of the lever by the circumstance that it describes a larger circle, he was alluding to the " marvellous properties of the circle," of

which he elsewhere discourses in a mysterious manner. Mr Lewes, it will be seen, adheres to the more generous interpretation, and understands Aristotle to mean what a modern lecturer would mean; in describing a larger circle, the weight or force would be acting a longer time.

To abridge Mr Lewes's analysis is no part of our task. Neither could it be abridged with any propriety. The reader who is interested at all in the subject will never find it too long. But we shall continue to select a few specimens from it, both to illustrate the Aristotelian mode of thinking, and also to test some of the startling eulogies which even such men as Cuvier and St Hilaire have bestowed upon the "mighty Stagirite."

The work on Meteorology has been lately translated into French by M. Barthélemy St Hilaire, who appears to be very encomiastic in his annotations. Mr Lewes, while admitting that all has been done that could be expected of an observer who had no thermometer, no barometer, no hygrometer, no anemometer, no instrument of any kind whatever, will not admit that observations made under these disadvantages have much scientific value. "The work shows," he says, "what could and what could not be effected by observation, unassisted by instruments. Aristotle, equally with moderns, makes heat the chief agent in meteorologic changes. But this is general, qualitative knowledge, and science demands quantitative knowledge." As our classification of the sciences had not yet been formed, it will not be supposed that Aristotle's work exactly corresponds with what we should understand by a treatise on meteorology. It embraces what we should call a heterogeneous variety of topics. The four elements are discussed-fire, air, water, earth

of which all mundane bodies are composed. To these are added a fifth element, an ether, which fills supra

mundane space, of which little, it seems, is said, except that it is endowed with circular movement. Explanations are given of shooting stars, comets, and the Milky Way, the formation of rivers, the saltness of the sea, clouds, fogs, dew, the winds, and other phenomena which we more distinctly recognise as meteorological. It is worth noticing, that although Democritus had already asserted of the Milky Way that it was a cluster of stars, Aristotle prefers to regard it as an exhalation from the earth suspended in the air. We moderns, judging from our own position, are disposed, in a case like this, to give the palm of superior sagacity to Democritus. But, in fact, they were both mere guesses. The telescope has revealed to us that Democritus made the happier conjecture; but in the position which the two men occupied, one guess was as meritorious as the other.

"On these multifarious topics," Mr Lewes remarks, "his theories, as may be imagined, are mostly wide of the mark, but they often display remarkable sagacity, and bear the stamp of an earnest investigating mind. The large accumulation of facts is very noticeable; but rather, I think, on account of the attitude of mind which impelled him to make such an accumulation, and to insist with so much emphasis on the value of facts, than, as M. Barthélemy St Hilaire would have us believe, because the facts themselves display any noticeable sagacity. M. St Hilaire is at great pains, in his commentary, to point out every occasion on which his hero is correct, or approaches correctness in facts; but a little reflection reveals that in the majority of such cases the facts are such as lie open to universal observation, implying no merit, therefore, in the observer, while in no case have they quantitive precision. It is for its method rather than its results that this treatise is remarkable."

We pass on to the Anatomy and Physiology of the ancient sage. Here it will be new to many an English reader to learn that some eminent Frenchmen have discovered in Aristotle a quite surprising accuracy, and even a marvellous

anticipation of modern science. For ourselves, we have been accustomed to regard such encomiums as a harmless display of eloquence, and perhaps of vanity - nothing better, nothing worse. The man of science loves occasionally to add to his own proper honours the graceful plume of scholarship. With a cheap magnanimity he exalts the dead. He varies his lecture, or enlivens his page, with a burst of classical enthusiasm. It rings hollow to our ear-fictitious or pedantic-but it is harmless enough. No men of science now dream of reviving the authority of Aristotle ; that is, of taking any of their facts out of his pages, or any one of their opinions. Nevertheless, by those who, like the author before us, are bent on framing an accurate estimate of what a great man of past times really accomplished, such exaggerations cannot be contemplated with perfect indifference. Mr Lewes undertakes the rather ungracious task of reducing this applause to its due proportions.

"The eulogies," he observes, "lavished on Aristotle as a biologist, even by men whose own special knowledge might have made them the severest critics, remind us rather of the tone adopted in the middle ages than of the more circumspect and critical language of our own age. In Aristotle,' says Cuvier, 'everything amazes, everything is prodigious, everything is colossal. He lived but sixty-two years, and he was able to make thousands of observations of extreme delicacy, the accuracy of which the most rigorous criticism has never been able to impeach.' This rhetorical exaggeration is painfully insincere; no one better than Cuvier could have known the worthlessness of Aristotle's observations on all points which were not open to the common eye; but that servility, too common amongst Frenchmen, which makes them eager to do homage to every established reputation, made Cuvier forget his own knowledge, and bow his head before the blinding splendour of a great renown.

"Little less rhetorical is De Blainlove of contradiction, dared not whisper ville, who, though notorious for his a word against 'le grand Stagirite.' is the natural sciences,' he says, which

It

owe the most to Aristotle. His plan was vast and luminous; he laid the basis of science, which will never perish.'

"Isidore Geoffrey St Hilaire, speaking from less acquaintance with Aristotle's writings, is splendid in eulogy. 'He is in every branch of knowledge like a master who cultivated that one only. He reaches, he extends the limits of all the sciences, and penetrates to their very depths.'"

Now, if we reflect for a moment on what minute and laborious dissections our present knowledge of anatomy depends-which again is the foundation of our knowledge of physiology-it is simply impossible that Aristotle, of whom it has been disputed whether he ever dissected the human body, could have laid a sound foundation for these sciences. The knowledge of the structure and functions of our several organs has been the result of repeated examinations conducted under successive conjectures, each of which had become more and more probable, as it was founded on additional information. As Mr Lewes observes, we read into Aristotle the results of a later science, and we gladly blind ourselves to many a confused description, or pass very rapidly over physiological statements which to us are scarcely intelligible, and thus construct for ourselves a text which seems to justify any amount of applause.

"The extent of his survey," Mr Lewes admits, "is amazing, embracing the whole animal kingdom, from sea-anemones to man. But of the accuracy of his knowledge," he adds, "I am compelled, after long and minute study, to form a very different estimate from what is current amongst critics and historians. Reading his works by the light of modern discovery, we are apt to credit him with all that his words suggest to us: we come indeed upon numerous inaccuracies,

and on many statements which imply gross carelessness; but whenever his Language does not palpably betray him, modern readers insensibly fill out his hints with details from their fuller store. On a superficial examination, therefore, he will seem to have given tolerable descriptions, especially if ap proached with that disposition to discover marvels which unconsciously determines us in our study of ancient

writers. But a more unbiassed and impartial criticism will disclose that he has given no single anatomical description of the least value. All that he knew may have been known, and probably was known, without dissection. The casual revelations of the slaughter-house and battle-field, together with the intimations gathered from auguries and embalmments, probably furnished his knowledge of man and the larger animals. I do not assert that he never opened an animal; on the contrary, it seems highly probable that he had opened many. But I am persuaded that he never dissected one in the careful systematic style necessary for more than a general acquaintance with the positions of the chief organs. He never followed the course of a vessel or a nerve; never laid bare the origin and insertion of a muscle; never discriminated the component parts of organs; never made clear to himself the connection of organs with systems."

This judgment Mr Lewes has fully established by the examples he has given. Aristotle places the heart higher than the lungs; he describes the human kidney as lobed like that of the ox; and when he passes to the functions of the heart, he determines it to be the seat of sensation, on the ground that it is the centre of the body. He also disputes the claim of the brain, because it is insensible. He says of the brain that it is bloodless, and that it does not extend to the back part of the skull, which is quite empty. He assigned to the brain the function of moderator, its coolness serving to temper the great heat of the heart region. Believing that there was no blood in it (probably from the appearance of the brains of animals cooked for eating), he naturally concluded that it was cold. Credit has been given to Aristotle for the discovery of nerves; but the nerve with him was a duct, and the optic nerve was a duct to nourish the eye. He says nothing of a nervous system forming the mechanisms of sensation and motion.

With regard to those anticipations of some of the latest discoveries of the zoologists, which have made some noise amongst us, they shrink into the fact, curious

or not as you choose to look at it, that certain animals only lately known to naturalists, or certain of their habits or functions but lately recognised, had come before the inspection of Aristotle, or had been heard of by him. The Hectorotylus of the Argonaut, an anomalous member which he who is anxious to un

preciation of delicate or complex phenomena; but in cases where the phenomena are not too remote or too complex for the unassisted senses, where the intellect is chiefly tasked, he is no longer under the same disadvantage as when having to deal with data discernible only through the arduous research of ages, Here the mighty intellect displays itself; here the mind which could not avoid fall

ed in the present work; the Par thenogenesis of Bees; a Placental Fish these curiosities had arrested the attention of this wide-surveying naturalist. But they were with him merely isolated facts, they were not wrought into any physiological theory, neither did they conflict with any such theory; they had not the same significance to him as they have to Richard Owen. Inasmuch as they are observations of nature, and not mere guesses at the causes of things, they may have some value, and certainly redound to the credit of this early sage, so avaricious of all knowledge. But isolated observations of this kind, though valuable as materials of science, cannot be designated as "anticipations of the discoveries of modern science," because in reality they do not constitute a part of science till they are harmonised with other facts into a consistent scheme of things.

We come next upon a chapter in which Mr Lewes plays himself the part of admirer; not extravagantly or incautiously, but, tired apparently with the task of moderating the praises of others, he takes the more generous office of sounding a hearty note of laudation. We are bound to say that he succeeds better as the accusing spirit, than as the angel of the silver trumpet. But we should be unfair both to Aristotle and his critic if we did not follow him, so far as we are able, now that he puts on the herald's tabard, and proclaims the true style and dignity of one whom all agree to describe, on some ground or other, as the great Stagirite.

"I have indicated the reason," he says, "why Aristotle could not have made a discovery when it involved a precise ap

about Heat without the aid of a thermo

meter, and about Physics without knowledge of the laws of motions, rises into admirable eminence when treating of the higher generalities of Life and Mind."

It is the treatise De Animâ' which calls forth this ardent praise. "The extreme interest of its problems," he says, "and the profundity of its views, render it the most valuable and valued of ancient attempts to bring the facts of life and mind into scientific order." Aristotle here, he adds farther on,

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stands at the point of view now generally occupied by the most advanced thinkers."

Aristotle is applauded for the wide generalisation which embraces the plant and the animal under the one great class of living things, and regards the mind of man itself as only the highest development of life. He did not hold with Stahl that mind was the agent in all vital functions as well as the intelligential, but, on the contrary, taught that "mind is only the highest development of life." Now, in the first place, it is difficult to determine on a subject of this kind-still so open to mere speculation-what is the point of view now generally occupied by advanced thinkers. presuming this established, we doubt if any point of view which a modern thinker adopts would find itself represented in Aristotle's writings. Judging only by the analysis of this treatise given here by its admirer, we find ourselves baffled by its inconsistencies and its peculiar modes of metaphysical thought, and altogether unable to detect the identity of Aristotle's doctrines, and what Mr Lewes represents as the advanced views of modern physiologists.

And

"Life," according to the definition Mr Lewes proposes, "is the dynamical condition of the organism." And he describes Mind as the highest development of Life, the highest dynamical condition, therefore, of the organism. But,

1. Is this accepted as the last word of science and, 2. Does it really accord with what Aristotle taught? It is this second question with which we are chiefly concerned, and to which we shall first apply ourselves. "One great source of confusion," Mr Lewes observe, "has been the radical error of conceiving Life to be an entity apart from, and only inhabiting, the organism; just as the several forces were for centuries conceived to be independent of matter, instead of being regarded as matter in dynamic conditions. To escape from such a confusion, and to have seen thus early the positive solution of the difficulty, implies immense intellectual force." But, as we read the extracts given us in this very chapter from Aristotle, we are unable to see in the old Greek a representative of the positive philosophy. We find him constantly speaking of a Vital Principle, which is the source of all vital phenomena, and discussing whether there is more than one such Vital Principle. "The vitality of plants," he says, "is due to a kind of soul." This is surely what the positivist describes and condemns as the metaphysical stage in the development of science. Sometimes the vital principle is said to be essentially one in plants, in animals, and in man. But Mr Lewes has himself furnished us with a passage in which Aristotle also speaks of mind "as another kind of soul, alone capable of separation, as the everlasting from the perishable." It is impossible to reconcile all the statements of Aristotle with each other. And besides this, there is, as we have intimated, a mode of thinking, running through the whole treatise, so peculiarly Greek, that it is equally impossible to fix Aristotle, at any moment, in an attitude of thought

identical with that of the advanced modern thinker to whom he is assimilated.

It is true that this vital principle, this ux, is again and again asserted to be inseparable from the animal body. It is an animal body because it has this . The Greek philosopher defined all things as consisting of Matter and Form. In many cases we can translate Form by our word Property. Matter, we say, is endowed with certain properties. These we do not consider as having a separate existence from matter. Their union with matter makes the thing to be what it is. This use of the word Property leads to some misunderstandings. But the old word Form was constantly assuming a vague independence, and if at one time we translate it by the word property, at another time we are compelled to translate it by the word essence, or some term that vaguely suggests a species of reality in itself. Life is the entelechie that reality which, being added to body, makes it a living organism. "Therefore it follows," we quote from Mr Lewes's Analysis, "that the Vital Principle must be an essence, as being the form of a natural body holding life in potentiality; but essence is a reality (entelechie). The vital principle is the original reality of a natural body endowed with potential life; this, however, is to be understood only of a body which may be organised. Thus the parts even of plants are organs, but they are organs that are altogether simple, as the leaf which is the covering of the pericarp, the pericarp of the fruit. If, then, there be any general formula for any kind of Vital Principle, it is the primary reality of an organism."

A Positive philosopher may read into this his theory that Life is the dynamical condition of the organism; or, if he were so disposed, he might detect in it a constant tendency to fall into the radical error of conceiving life to be an entity."