ARISTOTLE AS A ZOOLOGIST. 801 



refers his readers to them. He could not, however, have dissected 

 to any great extent, or he would not have made the erroneous asser- 

 tions that he has on many points not difficult of demonstration. It 

 seems to be chiefly among marine animals that he practiced dissec- 

 tion, and to which he paid most personal attention ; certainly, many 

 of his observations on sponges, Crustacea, cephalopoda, and other sea- 

 creatures, are admirably correct. To the question, did Aristotle dissect 

 human bodies? his many misstatements seem to require a negative 

 answer ; at any rate, as Mr. Lewes remarks, " An answer in the 

 affirmative would be still more damaging to his rej)utation, since it 

 would render many of his errors unpardonable." 



There seems much reason to believe that he paid little attention to 

 examining the skeletons of animals, and that his osteological knowl- 

 edge was very limited. Let us consider what he has recorded of a 

 certain bone, well known to the Greeks as being one much used for 

 dice and some other purposes. "Many cloven-footed animals," he 

 says, "have an astragalus, but no many-toed animals have one, neither 

 has man ; the lynx has, as it were, half an astragalus, the lion one in 

 the form of a coil ; solid-hoofed animals, with the exception of the 

 Indian ass, have no astragalus ; swine have not a well-formed astraga- 

 lus." The fact is that the hind-feet of all mammals possess this bone, 

 with slight differences in form and relative position with the other 

 tarsal bones, but always preserving its characteristic shape. Aristotle 

 had a theory — a kind of physiological axiom — which led him to infer 

 that certain animals could not have an astragalus, and he did not exam- 

 ine them to verify his theory ; he was satisfied that his theory proved 

 his facts, and that there was no need of verification. His argument, 

 gathered from several passages, is mainly as follows : Large animals 

 have in their system much earthy matter, the superabundance of which 

 Nature uses in the formation of teeth, tusks, and horns. In solid-hoofed 

 animals, as the horse, the excess of earthy matter goes to form the 

 hoof, and not horns or tusks as it does in cattle and elephants ; and, as 

 this excess is spent in the formation of a solid hoof, such animals have 

 no astragalus, which is only a kind of superadded bone, and would be, 

 in the horse, for instance, a detriment rather than an advantage. 



Aristotle had an ardent love and admiration of Nature, and in Na- 

 ture he always saw the beautiful. He gives expression to this feeling 

 in the following admirable passage from the " Parts of Animals " : 

 "Having already treated of these subjects, and given what is our 

 opinion about them, it remains for us now to speak of animated nature, 

 omitting nothing, as far as lies in our power, whether it be ignoble or 

 honorable ; for, even in those things which seem less pleasing to our 

 senses in our contemplation of them. Nature, the creator of all things, 

 affords inconceivable pleasures to those able to discover the causes of 

 things and are philosophers by nature. For it would be unexpected 

 and strange, indeed, if, when looking at images of things, we rejoice 



VOL. XXTI — 51 



