220 Natural-Historical Collections. 



they were in part destroyed by the damp. Appelicon, who afterwards became 

 possessed of them, filled up the vacuities ; but unfortunately the persons whom 

 he employed in this task were not very well qualified for it, and their restitutions 

 liave been more injurious than useful. Appelicon carried these books to Athens, 

 where Sylla found them when he obtained possession of that city. They were 

 then transported to Rome, and a grammarian, named Pyrranion, made nume- 

 roas copies of them. Andronicus the Rhodian superintended their publication, 

 and divided them into chapters. This division, however, was injudiciously 

 made, and the titles in many cases have no connection with the subject, or are 

 taken from the most frivolous circumstance. 



Of the two hundred and sixty works of Aristotle, of which Diogenes Laertius 

 has preserved the titles, many are known to us only by nanae. Of those which 

 are lost we have especially to regret a series of anatomical descriptions, in eight 

 books, accompanied with painted figures, which corresponded to the text, and a 

 collection rerum naturalium, disposed in alphabetical order, forming a diction- 

 ary of natural science, which, without doubt, contained nearly all the subjects of 

 which Aristotle had given a general account in his other works. It consists of 

 thirty-eight rolls, and must have formed a large 4to volume. Another loss to be 

 deplored by those concerned with the history of the Greek republics was that of 

 a collection of the constitutions of a hundred and fifty -eight independent states, 

 which formed a kind of preparatory work to the author in writing his book on 

 politics, 



Aristotle embraces in his works nearly the whole range of human knowledge, 

 but he does not confound the various departments as his predecessors had done. 

 He assigns to the different branches of the sciences their precise limits, and the 

 manner in which he has arranged them is so judicious, and so accordant with 

 nature, that the labours of two thousand years have effected no change in it. We 

 ought here to speak only of such of his works as belong to natural history, but 

 we cannot refrain from mentioning the others, in order to give an idea of the 

 prodigious acquirements of that wonderful man, whase genius was truly universal. 

 His first works relate to logic and physiology, and it was in fact natural that 

 these studies should precede every other. In his books we find for the first time 

 explained the rales of the syllogism, an art by means of which it may easily be 

 discovered in what points a course of reasoning is deficient, by throwing it into 

 certain determinate forms. Plato, it is true, in his dialogues, has made use of 

 the syllogism, but only as it were instinctively, whereas Aristotle treats of in a 

 didactic manner. 



We then come to his works on rhetoric and poetry. Aristotle in them gives 

 rules which he derives from observation, and which, for this reason, have not be- 

 come obsolete ; while all those which have since been attempted to be laid down 

 in an arbitrary manner have been found false or insufficient, and have been suc- 

 cessively abandoned. 



It is also by the method of observation that the author proceeds in his works 

 on morals and politics. In the latter, we find some ideas which are not now ad- 

 missible, especially those which refer to slavery. But these ideas were so much 

 those of the period in which he lived, that it cost Christianity many ages of con- 

 tinued efforts to establish more humane sentiments. 



In his metaphysics, Aristotle treats of the being considered as existing by it- 

 self. Here we do not find the same clearness of expression as in his other works, 

 which depends partly upon tlie circumstance that the subject is more abstract, 

 and partly upon the circumstance that the author's ideas are less precise. Yet 

 even here we do not find that Aristotle has been surpassed by his successors ; 

 and it is even to be remarked that, of all the parts of his works it was this which 

 most contibuted to extend his influence, and to give him the ascendancy in the 

 schools during the middle ages. 



We now come to the parts which require our special attention, the books 

 which treat of the physical sciences. They are numerous and varied, and we 

 find : 1st, Eight books on physics, properly so called, four books on the heavens, 



