1 6 NATURAL HISTORY. 



he so laboriously accumulated were, naturally, often in- 

 accurate, sometimes wholly baseless. In such branches 

 as anatomy and physiology his knowledge was, of 

 necessity, very imperfect, often entirely erroneous ; though 

 in certain fields of physiological inquiry, especially in 

 those relating to development and reproduction, his 

 observations are commonly extremely accurate. Palae- 

 ontology had, of course, no existence for him; and his 

 acquaintance with the laws of the geographical distribu- 

 tion of animals could not fail to be limited by the limited 

 knowledge which the ancients possessed as to geography 

 itself. Of our modern views as to the evolution of specific 

 forms also, he does not seem to have possessed any 

 foreshadowing. Rather, he held that ' species ' had a 

 real existence, and that they were therefore immutable. 



Lastly, as a systematist and classifier, Aristotle has 

 undoubtedly been credited with more than his proper 

 due. Upon this point, Mr Lewes's arguments are con- 

 clusive. Aristotle has usually been regarded as the first 

 who propounded a general classification of the animal 

 kingdom. The truth is, however, that he propounded no 

 formal or systematic arrangement of animals. As Agassiz * 

 puts it, his work shows ' a total absence of systematic 

 form, of any classification or framework to express the 

 divisions of the animal kingdom into larger or lesser 

 groups. His only divisions are genera and species : 

 classes, orders, and families, as we understand them now, 

 are quite foreign to the Greek conception of the animal 

 kingdom.' It is true that Aristotle divided animals into 



* ' Methods of Study in Natural History,' 1864, p. 3. 



