ARISTOTLE. 39 



SO much as bestowed upon them a cursory glance. 

 It is therefore fit that we should begin our biographi- 

 cal sketches with that celebrated author^ the more 

 especially as he did not confine himself to a single 

 branch of natural history^ but^ like all great minds^, 

 possessed an extensive acquaintance with objects of 

 various classes. It is he only, whose comprehen- 

 sive glance seizes upon what is common to nume- 

 rous tribes, that can duly estimate what ought to be 

 considered as distinctive of a particular group, or 

 can form rules for the arrangement and description 

 of the beings which compose it. The three greatest 

 naturalists whom the world has produced, Aristotle, 

 Linnaeus, and Cuvier, were men whose conceptions 

 were enlarged by the most expanded views. Others 

 have excelled them in particular departments, but 

 none have equalled them in general knowledge. 



Aristotle was born at Stagira, a city of the 

 Thracian Chersonesus, in the first year of the 99th 

 Olympiad, or the 384th before the Christian era. 

 His father, Nicomachus, was physician to Amyn- 

 tas, king of JMacedonia, the father of Philip, and 

 grandfather of Alexander the Great. Of his mo- 

 ther, we only know that her name was Phestis, 

 and that, like her husband, she was originally 

 from Chalcis. His family claimed descent from 

 Machaon, the son of Esculapius. Having lost his 

 parents at an early age, he went to reside with 

 Proxenus, a citizen of Atarneus in Mysia, the friend 

 to whose guardianship he had been left. According 

 to some authorities, not being observed very strictly 

 by those who had the immediate charge of his educa- 

 tion, he spent a great part of his youth in licentious 

 indulgences, by which he dissipated nearly the whole 



