454 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 
elements of scientific inquiry fall in with the disciplines of 
the poet. But, on the other hand, a mind thus richly 
endowed in the direction of natural history may be almost 
shorn of endowment as regards the physical and mechan- 
ical sciences. Goethe was in this condition. He could 
not formulate distinct mechanical conceptions; he could 
not see the force of mechanical reasoning; and in regions 
where such reasoning reigns supreme, he became a mere 
ignis fatuus to those who followed him. 
I have sometimes permitted myself to compare Aristotle 
with Goethe to credit the S_ta^mte_wrth_ an almost super- 
human power of amassing and systematizing facts, but to 
consider him fatally defective on that side of the mind, in 
respect to which incompleteness has been just ascribed to 
Goethe. Whewell refers the errors of Aristotle not to a 
neglect of facts, but to "a neglect of the idea appropriate 
to the facts; the idea of Mechanical cause, whicli is Force, 
and the substitution of vague or inapplicable notions, 
involving only relations of space or emotions of wonder." 
This is doubtless true; but the word "neglect" implies 
mere intellectual misdirection, whereas in Aristotle, as 
in Goethe, it was not, I believe, misdirection, but sheer 
natural incapacity which lay at the root of his mistakes. 
As a physicist, Aristotle displayed what we should consider 
some of the worst of attributes in a modern physical inves- 
tigator indistinctness of ideas, confusion of mind, and a 
confident use of language which led to the delusive notion 
that he had really mastered his subject, while he had, as 
yet, failed to grasp even the elements of it. He put words 
in the place of things, subject in the place of object. He 
preached Induction without practicing it, inverting the 
true order of inquiry, by passing from the general to the 
particular, instead of from the particular to the general. 
He made of the universe a closed sphere, in the center of 
which he fixed the earth, proving from general principles, 
to his own satisfaction and to that of the world for near 
two thousand years, that no other universe was possible. 
His notions of motion were entirely unphysical. It was 
natural or unnatural, better or worse, calm or violent no 
real mechanical conception regarding it lying at the bottom 
of his mind. He affirmed that a vacuum could not exist, 
and proved that if it did motion in it would be impossible. 
He determined a priori how many species of animals must 
