AMONG THE GREEKS 69 



learn that the centuries preceding him yielded 

 him nothing hut vague speculation: 



I found no hasis prepared; no models to copy. 

 . . . Mine is the first step, and therefore a small 

 one, though worked out with much thought and hard 

 labour. 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 required for an initiatory start, as 

 compared with more advanced departments of theory, 

 will acknowledge what I have achieved, and pardon 

 what I have left for others to accomplish. 



In the Natural History of Animals are con- 

 tained Aristotle's views of Nature and his re- 

 markable observations upon the plant and animal 

 kingdoms. He was attracted to natural history 

 during his boyhood life upon the seashore, as de- 

 lightfully related^ by D'Arcy Thompson: 



Aristotle spent two years, the happiest years per- 

 haps of all his life — a long honeymoon — by the sea- 

 side in the island of Mytilene, after he had married 

 the little Princess, and before he began the hard 

 work of his life: before he taught Alexander in 

 Macedon, and long before he spoke urhi et orhi in the 

 L^xeum. Mere it w^as that he learned the great bulk 

 of his natural history, in which, wide and general as 



iD'Arcy Thompson: Aristotle, in The Legacy of Greece, also 

 Prefatory Note of his superb translation of Aristotle's Historia 

 Animalium. 



