89 



NOTES TO BOOK I. 



(B.) p. 38. THE course by which the Sciences were 

 formed, and which is here referred to as that which the 

 Greeks did not follow, is described in detail in the Philo- 

 sophy, Book XL, Of the Construction of Science. 



(c.) p. 41. This Aristotle is not the Stagirite, who 

 was forty-five years younger than Plato, but one of the 

 *' thirty tyrants," as they were called. 



(D.) p. 81. This account of the cause of failure in 

 the physical speculations of the ancient Greek philoso- 

 phers has been objected to as unsatisfactory. I will offer 

 a few words in explanation of it. 



The mode of accounting for the failure of the Greeks 

 in physics is, in substance ; that the Greeks in their phy- 

 sical speculations fixed their attention upon the wrong 

 aspects and relations of the phenomena; and that the 

 aspects and relations in which phenomena are to be viewed 

 in order to arrive at scientific truths may be arranged 

 under certain heads, which I have termed Ideas ; such as 

 Space, Time, Number, Cause, Likeness. In every case, 

 there is an Idea to which the phenomena may be referred 

 so as to bring into view the Laws by which they are 

 governed ; this Idea I term the appropriate Idea in such 

 case ; and in order that the reference of the phenomena 

 to the Law may be clearly seen, the Idea must be dis- 

 tinctly possessed. 



Thus the reason of Aristotle's failure in his attempts 

 at Mechanical Science is, that he did not refer the facts 



