INFLUENCE OF THE MACEDONIAN CAMPAIGNS, 523 



The knowledge of a great portion of the earth may now be 

 aaid to have been opened for the first time. The objective 

 world began to assume a preponderating force over that of 

 mere subjective creation, and while the fruitful seeds yielded 

 by the language and literature of the Greeks were scattered 

 abroad by the conquests of Alexander, scientific observation and 

 the systematic arrangement of the knowledge already acquired, 

 were elucidated by the doctrines and expositions of Aristotle.* 

 We here indicate a happy coincidence of favouring relations, 

 for, at the very period when a vast amount of new materials 

 was revealed to the human mind, their intellectual conception 

 was at once facilitated and multiplied through the direction 

 pven by the Stagirite to the empirical investigation of facts 

 in the domain of nature, to the profound consideration of spe- 

 culative hypothesis, and to the development of a language of 

 science based on strict definition. Thus Aristotle must still 

 remain for thousands of years to come, as Dante has grace- 

 fully termed him, 



" il VMUxtiro di ctfar cAe 



The belief in the direct enrichment of Aristotle's zoological 

 knowledge, by means of the Macedonian campaigns, has, how- 

 ever, either wholly disappeared, or, at any rate, been rendered 

 extremely uncertain by recent and more carefully conducted 

 researches. The wretched compilation of a life of the Stagi- 

 rite, which was long ascribed to Ammonius, the son of Her- 

 mias, had contributed to the diffusion of many erroneous 

 views, and amongst others to the belief that^; the philosopher 

 accompanied his pupil as far at least as the shores of the Nile. 



The chemical connection of the nourishing amylum with sugar was 

 detected both by Prosper Alpinus and Abd-Allatif, and they sought to 

 explain the origin of the banana, by the insertion of the sugar-cane, or 

 the sweet date fruit, into the root of the colocasia (Abd-Allatif, Relation 

 de VEgypte, trad, par Silvestre de Sacy, pp. 28 and 105). 



* Compare, on this epoch, Wilhelm von Humboldt's work, Ueber 

 die Kawi-Sprache und die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprach- 

 baues, bd. i. s. ccl. and ccliv; Droysen, Gesch. Alexanders des Gr., s. 

 547; and hellenist. Staatensystem, s. 24. 



f Dante, Inf., iv. 130. 



I Compare Cuvier's assertions in the Biographie universelle, t. ii. 

 1811, p. 458 (and unfortunately again repeated in the edition of 1843, t. 

 ii. p. 219), with Stahr's Aristotelia, th. i. s. 15 and 108. 



Cuvier, when he was engaged on the Life of Aristotle, inclined to 



