112 MEMOIR OF ARISTOTLE. 



In taking a retrospective view of the life and 

 writings of this extraordinary man, the reader can- 

 not but be struck with the amazing extent and va- 

 riety of his attainments. It is a brief but bold and 

 not inappropriate character of him given by an ano 

 nymous writer in Suidas, that he was " Nature's se- 

 cretary, and had dipt his pen in intellect." Had 

 he lived in the eighteenth century, the scientific 

 world might have been indebted to him for the per- 

 fection of those systems which we owe to the la- 

 bours of Linnaeus, Cuvier, and Buffon. Had he 

 known the discoveries of Galileo arid Kepler, he 

 might perhaps have been a Newton. But it was by 

 the eye of reason and analogy only that he had to 

 study the heavens and the earth, of whose beauty 

 and grandeur he speaks with as much rapture as the 

 most enlightened philosopher could feel. By the 

 light of Nature alone, we see him sometimes pene- 

 trating deeply into Nature's mysteries analyzing, 

 defining, and demonstrating sometimes encounter- 

 ing difficulties which the human mind itself is un- 

 able to surmount often foiled in his exertions, yet 

 always renewing the combat with renovated hope. 

 fin the lapse of centuries, while his theories have 

 been alternately attacked and defended, exploded 

 and revived, the facts which he collected with un- 

 exampled diligence, and which he has so systema- 

 tically digested in his works, will for ever support 

 his fame as the " Prince of Philosophers," and in- 

 struct the caost distant ages of posterity, 



