RISE AND PROGRESS OF ZOOLOGY. a 
that such ideas are grounded upon partial consider- 
ations, and they are at once refuted by such names 
as those of Newton and Bacon. Furthermore, it 
should be remembered that the most ordinary ob- 
server can readily distinguish a quadruped from a. 
bird, a snake from a fish, and a vertebrated from 
a boneless animal. All these distinctions are obvious, 
and, therefore, known even to the vulgar. Nor does 
it require any great skill to express these differences 
inwords. The same may be said of those secondary 
divisions by which a beetle may be known from a 
butterfly, and these, again, from a bee. It is not 
so much, therefore, from having embodied facts like 
these into classic language that the philosopher of 
Stagyra derives his high fame; it rather reposes 
upon the peculiar tact with which he brought the 
rules of philosophic reasoning to bear upon a 
subject hitherto neglected,—upon the extent and 
depth of his personal researches,—upon the clear- 
ness with which he arranged his results,— and, above 
all, upon those obscure perceptions which he ac- 
quired, while so employed, of hidden truths, which 
were only to be developed in subsequent ages. Nor 
should that innate grandeur of his mind be forgotten, 
which led him, in an age of universal superstition, 
to discard from his work all those popular tales, and 
fancies, and beliefs, which were received by the 
mass of his countrymen as religious truths, sane- 
tioned by antiquity, interwoven in their history, and 
consecrated in their poetry. The death of this 
great father of our science was the death of natural 
history in the Grecian era. The splendour of his 
discoveries passed like a comet. He left no luminary 
B 4 
