4^36 Ml'. W. S. MacLeay on the Dying Struggle 



I not therefore, unlearned layman as I am, permitted to 

 doubt that Scripture has laid down any positive rule on the 

 subject? I suspect indeed, that, whatever Moses may have 

 himself known, he was aware that he was writing the Penta- 

 teuch for men who were neither chemists, astronomers, or 

 naturalists ; and that if he had addressed the Israelites in 

 the language of science, his laws on the subject of clean 

 and unclean animals would have remained incomprehensible 

 to them. In the very chapter which we are now told exhibits 

 not indistinctly the rudiments of the dichotomous method, 

 we find the following law : " And these are they which ye 

 shall have in abomination among the fowls; the eagle, &c. 

 and the stork, the heron after her kind, and the lapwing, and 

 the bat." Are we then, upon the authority of Moses, to place 

 the bat among fowls ? For heaven's sake, if clergymen be 

 anxious, and properly anxious, not to forget their profession, 

 let them at the same time bear in mind that the cause of 

 religion is more hurt than aided by absurd and inconsiderate 

 zeal. The Bible was intended to direct our moral conduct 

 and religious belief. No one but a madman, a fanatic, or an 

 interested knave, can pretend to tell us that it is an encyclo- 

 paedia of science. But Dr. Fleming, not content with the 

 Mosaic authority, says, " In the writings of Aristode equally 

 obvious traces of this method may be perceived, not only in 

 the construction of his different classes, but in the numerous 

 accurate subdivisions which he announced." Let us here di- 

 chotomize. Either Dr. Fleming has read Aristotle or he has 

 not. If he has read him, he has stated what he knew to be not true ; 

 since the Slagyrite has not, as may be seen from the sj'uopsis 

 I have given of his System in the Linn£Ean Transactions, 

 considered it more necessary to divide animals into twos, 

 than Lamarck, Cuvier, or Linnaeus : and if the Doctor has 

 not read him, what shall we say to the modest assurance of 

 this minister of Flisk? Although Aristotle, however, has not 

 deemed it requisite to construct his different classes and nu- 

 merous subdivisions necessarily on this method, he was per- 

 fectly aware of its merits and defects, as has been shown in the 

 Linnaean Transactions, from which I quote the following 

 words: " Secondly, Aristotle says, Oi'gans may be arranged 

 according to their excess and defect (xafl' vTrspo-^yiv xai £XX£<v|/(v). 

 This being entirely a consideration of quantity and not of form, 

 his mathematical axiom comes into play. His opinion is ac- 

 cordingly correct, that animals are capable of a binary distri- 

 bution, depending entirely on the excess or defect of particular 

 organs; as where he instances birds being divisible into those 

 with long and those with short beaks, into those with crests 

 and those without crests, &c. &c. This is the most arbitrary, 



and 



