OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 109 



till at length an authority, which was destined to 

 command opinions for nearly two thousand years, 

 settled this important point, by deciding, that matter, 

 form, and privation, were to be considered the prin- 

 ciples of all things. 



(101.) It were to do injustice to Aristotle, however, 

 to judge of him by such a sample of his philosophy. 

 He, at least, saw the necessity of having recourse 

 to nature for something like principles of phy- 

 sical science; and, as an observer, a collector 

 and recorder of facts and phenomena, stood with- 

 out an equal in his age. It *ras the fault of that 

 age, and of the perverse and flimsy style of verbal 

 disputation which had infected all learning, rather 

 than his own, that he allowed himself to be con- 

 tented with vague and loose notions drawn from 

 general and vulgar observation, in place of seeking 

 carefully, in well arranged and thoroughly con- 

 sidered instances, for the true laws of nature. His 

 voluminous works, on every department of human 

 knowledge existing in his time, have nearly all 

 perished. From his work on animals, which has 

 descended to us, we are, however, enabled to ap- 

 preciate his powers of observation; and a parallel 

 drawn by an eminent Oxford professor between his 

 classifications and those of the most illustrious of 

 living naturalists, shows him to have attained a 

 view of animated nature in a remarkable degree 

 comprehensive, and which contrasts strikingly with 

 the confusion, vagueness, and assumption of his 

 physical opinions and dogmas. In these it is easy 

 to recognize a mind not at home, and an impression 

 of the necessity of saying something learned and 



