CONCEPT OF AN ATOMIC UNIVERSE 133 



may judge from a fragment, he prided himself most on his 

 travels and his skill in geometry, for he says : 



" Of all my contemporaries, it is I who have traversed the 

 greatest part of the earth, visited the most distant regions, 

 studied climates the most diverse, countries the most varied, 

 and listened to the most thinkers ; there is no one who has 

 surpassed me in geometrical constructions and demonstrations, 

 no, not even the geometers of Egypt, among whom I passed 

 five full years of my life." x 



The mere list of his studies reveals their extraordinary 

 range. Aristotle, we know, left a work on some of Democritus' 

 theorems, and there were few philosophers in antiquity who 

 did not write for or against him in some way. He seems to 

 have been abreast, if not in advance of the astronomy of his 

 day ; he writes on the Planets, the Map of the Heavens, the 

 Great Year, and much else. He was a geographer, and wrote 

 a treatise on that and on Navigation by means of the Pole- 

 star. He was learned in physics. We read with especial interest 

 of a work on the Magnet, others on Rays of Light, on the 

 Clepsydra, or water-clock. He was evidently fond of music 

 and poetry, for he left treatises on Rhythm and Harmony, on 

 Song, on the beauty of the epic poems, on Homer. He counted 

 himself a critic in matters of art, evidently, for he wrote on 

 Painting. He must have been a physician, for he left a book 

 on Fever, another on Dietetics, or The Opinions of a Physician ; 

 another on Prognostics, another on Pestilences, another on the 

 Right Way of Living. We find another on Agriculture, and 

 Causes Affecting Seeds, a book on Tactics, and Fighting in 

 Heavy Armour, possibly not his, a discourse on History, a book 

 on the Principles of Laws, a discussion of the Calendar, another 

 on Colours. He writes on Pythagoras, whom he seemed greatly 

 to admire ; he gives us a sketch of the Disposition of the Wise 

 Man, an essay on Cheerfulness, a number of others on Ethics 

 and similar topics. 



He was a zoologist and an anatomist ; 'twas said he practised 

 dissection, and we find a work on Animals. He was a psycho- 

 logist, and we find an essay on the Mind, another on the Senses. 

 We have a glimpse of his penetration and his knowledge in his 

 ideas as to the seat of the mind. Aristotle had no conception 

 of the truth ; he fixes it in the heart. A hundred years before 

 1 Mullach, Frag. Philos. GYCBC., 370. 



