132 HISTORY OF ENTOMOLOGY. 
he has referred to them incidentally, it is generally with 
this latter view. 
If we turn from the word and people of God to the 
Lovers of Wisdom (as they modestly styled themselves) of 
the heathen world, and their writings ; we shall discern 
amongst them a great light shining, the beams of which 
illuminate even our own times. In the illustrious Stagy- 
rite we recognize — " The father of philosophy, at least 
of our philosophy, who, rising superior to the darkness 
in which he lived, darted his penetrating glance through 
all nature, and established principles which a long course 
of ages of inquiry have but confirmed. With Aristotle 
begins the real History of science : and how much so- 
ever he may have erred upon particular points, the great- 
ness of his conceptions and the justness of his ideas, on 
the whole entitle him to our high veneration. His la- 
bours in the investigation of the Animal Kingdom have 
laid the foundation of the knowledge we now possess 3 ." 
This language f the lamented and learned President of 
the Linnean Society is particularly applicable to what 
this great and original genius has effected in Entomo- 
logy. We have seen upon a former occasion 5 , that 
Linne himself had not those precise ideas of the limits 
of the Class Insccta, which Aristotle so many centuries 
before him had adopted. In stating the obligations of 
Entomology to this true scavdnt, I shall begin by laying 
before you a tabular view of what may be called his 
system, as far as I have been able to collect it from his 
works, especially his History of Animals. 
a Linn. Trans, i. 5. b Vol. III. p. C. 
