MEMOIR OF ARISTOTLE. 19 



nations. This improved philosophy was carried to 

 its highest perfection hy Aristotle, in whose writings 

 the doctrines of his predecessors and the learning of 

 his age, were summed up and embodied as it were in- 

 to one entire library. Of his indefatigable industry 

 and extensive information, his copious remains, even 

 in their abridged state, afford ample and honourable 

 testimony ; and as for his talents, it would be disre- 

 spectful to mankind, as Dr Reid well remarks, not 

 to allow an uncommon share to a man who govern- 

 ed the opinions of the most enlightened part of the 

 species, for nearly two thousand years. Among his 

 contemporaries he was regarded as " .Nature's ^Se- 

 cretary," the high priest of science, anxl the prince 

 of philosophers. During the darker ages, his dogmas 

 reigned in the universities of Christendom with un- 

 disputed sway. His memory was worshipped with 

 a veneration almost divine, insomuch that he has 

 sometimes been placed by the side of tbe Apostle of 

 Tarsus ; for our countryman Roger Bacon, in his 

 Opus Majus, has said, that " he hath the same au- 

 thority in philosophy, that St Paul hath in divinity." 

 The age of superstitious reverence for categories 

 and syllogisms has long passed away ; and the re- 

 nowned Stagirite, like other writers, must be weigh- 

 ed in the balance of his own merits, instead of be- 

 ing measured by the standard of ignorant admiration. 

 A line of demarcation can now easily and safely be 

 drawn between those portions of his works that are 

 still deserving of attention, and those which have 



