ARISTOTLE. 



43 



moist terrestrial slime. In regard to Anaxaeoras' 

 conception of adaptations as due to intelligent 

 design in Nature, Zeller says : — 



" The question whether the purposefubess of the tendencies of 

 Nature (Natureinrichtung) could be explained without a purpose- 

 ful working natural force — this question could not be raised until 

 men had observed adaptation in Nature and had begun to attribute 

 it to Intelligent Design. No one, according to Aristotle and 

 Plato, had taken this step before Anaxagoras. But even he ap- 

 plied this newly discovered principle in exceptional cases, — not 

 to the origin of life, sureh-, for he derived plants and animals from 

 the air and ether. He did not, therefore, further the explanation 

 of the problem of design in Nature, which Empedocles is mis- 

 takenly supposed to have raised." 



Aristotle. 



Give me no peeping scientist, if I 

 Shall judge God's grandly-ordered world aright ; 

 But give, to plant my Cosmic sur\'ey high, 

 The wisest of wise Greeks, the Stagirite. 



— John Stuart Blackie. 



With Aristotle (384^322) we enter a new world. 

 He towered above his predecessors, and by the 

 force of his own genius created Natural History. 

 In his own words, lately quoted by Romanes, we 

 learn that the centuries preceding him yielded him 

 nothing but vague speculation : — 



" I found no basis prepared ; no models to copy. . . . Mine 

 is the first step, and therefore a small one, though worked out with 

 much thought and hard labor. It must be looked at as a first 

 step and judged with indulgence. You, my readers, or hearers 

 of my lectures, if you think I have done as much as can fairly be 



