INTRODUCTION 



II. THEOPHRASTUS' LIFE AND WORKS 



Such information as we possess concerning the 

 life of Theophrastus comes mainly from Diogenes 

 Laertius' Lives of the Philosophers, compiled at least 

 four hundred years after Theophrastus' death ; it is 

 given therefore here for what it may be worth ; 

 there is no intrinsic improbability in most of what 

 Diogenes records. 



He was born in 370 B.C. at Eresos in Lesbos ; at 

 an early age he went to Athens and there became a 

 pupil of Plato. It may be surmised that it was from 

 him that he first learnt the importance of that 

 principle of classification which runs through all his 

 extant works, including even the brochure known as 

 the ( Characters ' (if it is rightly ascribed to him), 

 and which is ordinarily considered as characteristic 

 of the teaching of his second master Aristotle. But 

 in Plato's own later speculations classification had a 

 very important place, since it was by grouping things 

 in their ' natural kinds ' that, according to his later 

 metaphysic, men were to arrive at an adumbration 

 of the ' ideal forms ' of which these kinds are the 

 phenomenal counterpart, and which constitute the 

 world of reality. Whether Theophrastus gathered 

 the principle of classification from Plato or from his 

 fellow-pupil Aristotle, it appears in his hands to 

 have been for the first time systematically applied 

 to the vegetable world. Throughout his botanical 



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