After Aristotle 71 



Aristotle's Historia animalium or De generatione animalium 

 survived, had a Latin version of the Hippocratic work On 

 generation or of the treatises of Theophrastus On plants 

 reached the earlier Middle Ages, the whole mental history 

 of Europe might have been different and the rediscovery 

 of nature might have been antedated by centuries. But this 

 was a change of heart for which the world had long to wait ; 

 something much less was the earliest biological gift of Greece. 

 The gift, when it came, came in two forms, one of which has 

 not been adequately recognized, but both are equally her 

 legacy. These two forms are, firstly, the well-known work of 

 the early translators and, secondly, the tardily recognized work 

 of certain schools of minor art. 



The earliest biological treatises that became accessible in the 

 west were rendered not from Greek but from Arabic. The 

 first of them was perhaps the treatise Trept fjiv&v KIF?/O-COS, On 

 movement of muscles of Galen, a work which contains more 

 than its title suggests and indeed sets forth much of the Galenic 

 physiological system. It was rendered into Latin from the Arabic 

 of Joannitius (Hunain ibn Ishaq, 809-73), probably about the 

 year 1200, by one Mark of Toledo. It attracted little atten- 

 tion, but very soon after biological works of Aristotle began 

 to become accessible. The first was probably the fragment 

 On plants. The Greek original of this is lost, and besides the 

 Latin, only an Arabic version of a former Arabic translation 

 of a Syriac rendering of a Greek commentary is now known ! 

 Such a work appeared from the hand of a translator known 

 as Alfred the Englishman about 1220 or a little later. Neither 

 it nor another work from the same translator, On the motion 

 of the heart, which sought to establish the primacy of that 

 organ on Aristotelian grounds, can be said to contain any of 

 the spirit of the master. 1 



1 C. H. Haskins, ' The reception of Arabic science in England,' English 

 Historical Review, London, 1915, p. 56. 



