ARISTOTLE AS A BIOLOGIST 25 



The influence, then, of scientific study, and in particular 

 of Biology, is not far to seek in Aristotle's case,. / It has 

 ever since been a commonplace to compare the state, the 

 body politic, with an organism, but it was Aristotle who 

 first employed the metaphor. Again, in his exhaustive 

 accumulation and treatment of political facts, his 

 method is that of the observer, of the scientific student, 

 and is in the main inductive. Just as, in order to under- 

 stand fishes, he gathered all kinds together, recording 

 their forms, their structure, and their habits, so he did 

 with the Constitutions of cities and of states. Those two 

 hundred and more TroAireuu which Aristotle laboriously 

 compiled, after a method of which Plato would never have 

 dreamed, were to form a Natural History of Constitutions 

 and Governments. And if we see in his concrete, objective 

 treatment of the theme a kinship with Spencer's Descrip- 

 tive Sociology, again, I think, a difference is soon apparent, 

 between Spencer's colder catalogue of facts and Aris- 

 totle's more loving insight into the doings and into the 

 hearts, into the motives and the ambitions, of men. 

 ,. But whatever else Aristotle is, he is the great Vitalist, 

 the student of the Body with the Life thereof, the historian 

 of the Soul/ 



Now we have already seen how and where Aristotle 

 fixed the soul's seat and local habitation. But the soul 

 has furthermore to be studied according to its attributes, 

 or analysed into its ' parts '. Its attributes can be 

 variously analysed, as in his Ethics Aristotle shows. 

 But it is in the light of Biology alone that what amounts 

 to a scientific analysis, such as is developed in the De 

 Anima, becomes possible ; and in that treatise it is only 

 after a long preliminary physiological discussion that 

 Aristotle at length formulates his distinctive psychology. 

 There is a principle of continuity, a wvtytia, that runs 



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