8o2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



when we survey the art that produced them, whether in painting or 

 sculpture, and do not rather love the sight of the actual works of 

 Nature when we are able to discover their causes." 



Dr. Ferdinand Hoefer, writing on Aristotle in the " Nouvelle 

 Biographic Universelle," says, " It is the part of men of genius to 

 show equal superiority in every field," and many of Aristotle's eulogists 

 write as if to abate one jot of this thesis would be treason to their 

 idol. They outdo the zealous friend of Miles Standish in 



" Praising his virtues, transforming his very defects into virtues," 



and are frequently carried into absurdities. To quote one other in- 

 stance from Hoefer, "We find among others this remarkable (!) state- 

 ment, that animate bodies are composed of air and water. As a fact, 

 chemists have shown that all organic bodies are reduced by analysis to 

 the elements of air and water (oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitro- 

 gen)." Now Aristotle's notion of elements was that there were four, 

 having respectively the characters of air, water, earth, and fire, or hot 

 moisture, cold moisture, cold dryness, and hot dryness ; and he con- 

 ceived that animal substances combined the qualities of the first two. 

 A glance at the percentage compositions of air, water, and an animal 

 body i>uts Hoefer's coincidence in a still worse light. A favorite de- 

 fense of Aristotle is to suggest that the erroneous passages have been 

 interpolated — so sublimely confident are his disciples that Aristotle 

 can not be wrong, and that what is wrong can not be Aristotle. Then, 

 too, we are bidden to consider the state of science in his day. But, 

 unless Aristotle made a decided advance on the state of science in 

 his day, why call him a great naturalist ? Just how much better he 

 observed and experimented than the writers on natural science who 

 immediately preceded him, it is impossible to say, since their books, to 

 which he often refers, are lost. Certainly, he failed to record any 

 adequate understanding and appreciation of these processes, and the 

 world has had to learn them from later thinkers. His most ardent 

 admirer will not claim to find in his writings an exposition of induc- 

 tive reasoning to be compared with his exposition of the deductive 

 process. His mind seems to have had such a pre-eminent command 

 and comprehension of deductive reasoning — it was so perfectly adapted 

 to run in deductive grooves, as it were — that it was incapable of more 

 than the most imperfect use or conception of induction. Without a 

 good command of the tools of science — observation, experiment, and 

 induction — his scientific work could not be important. 



But the reputation of Aristotle can well afford to dispense with 

 these contested ascriptions. Sufficient remains unimpeachable to vin- 

 dicate his title to a gigantic intellect, and let no one suppose that they 

 who deny him equal eminence in widely unlike fields can be outdone 

 in their honor of his real genius. 



