ARISTOTLE AS A BIOLOGIST n 



purpose that underlay his quest of truth. And, lastly, 

 Lord Courtney spoke of Spencer's last brave effort, in the 

 Riddle of the Universe, to face and scrutinize the im- 

 placable facts of life : of how in the end he had confessed 

 himself overawed by the vastness of the unknowable, 

 appalled by the great vision of Everlasting Law, and 

 silent in the contemplation of the Infinite and the 

 Eternal. 



And now that I have tried to pay, in not ungrateful 

 words, our annual tribute to Spencer's memory, as to one 

 who has been a great influence in our world, whose words 

 have become part of our familiar speech, and whose 

 thought has interpenetrated and commingled with our 

 own, let me proceed for what time remains towards 

 another, but I hope a cognate, theme. 



In passing from Spencer to Aristotle, we turn from the 

 one philosopher of our own times who has made biology 

 an intrinsic part of his sociology and his psychology, to 

 the great biologist of antiquity, who is maestro di color 

 che sanno, in this science as in so many other departments 

 of knowledge. And by the analogy of contrast, we can 

 scarce think of Herbert Spencer's biology without recur- 

 ring to that of Aristotle, so reverting from a great teacher 

 of mechanical causation to him who taught us our first 

 clear lessons of the phenomena of Life. But, save only by 

 repeating what I have said, that Spencer came to the study 

 of biology in the spirit and with the equipment of the 

 engineer, and by declaring that Aristotle seems to me to 

 have been first and foremost a biologist, by inclination 

 and by training, I will not attempt to pursue the com- 

 parison. Let us simply glance at some parts of Aristotle's 

 Natural History, and attempt to show, in a partial and 

 elementary way, the influence of that study upon his mind. 



