160 COSMOS. 



abroad hy the conquests of Alexander, scientific observation 

 and the systematic arrangement of the knowledge already ac- 

 quired were elucidated by the doctrines and expositions of 

 Aristotle.* We here indicate a happy coincidence of favoring 

 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 given by the Stagirite to the empirical investigation 

 jof facts in the domain of nature, to the profound consideration 

 of speculative hypothesis, and to the development of a lan- 

 guage of science based on strict definition. Thus Aristotle 

 must still remain, for thousands of years ^ come, as Dante 

 has gracefully termed him, 



" II maestro di color eke sanno."\ 



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 Stag- 

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

 mias, had contributed to the diffusion of many erroneous 

 views, and, among others, to the belief that| the philosopher 

 accompanied his pupil as far, at least, as the shores of the 

 Nile.§ The great work on Animals appears to have been 

 written only a short time after the Meteorologica, the date 

 of which would seem, from internal evidence, II to fall in the 



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

 die Kawi-Spracke iind die Versckiedenheit des menscklic^en Sprachbai/ts, 

 bd. i., s. ccl. und ccliv. ; Droysen, Gesck. Alexanders des Gr., s. 547 ; and 

 Hellenist. Staaten system, s. 24. t Dante, Inf., iv., 130. 



X 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 und 108. 



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

 the belief of the philosopher having accompanied Alexander to Egypt, 

 " whence," he says, " the Stagfrite must have brought back to Athens 

 (Olymp. 112, 2) all the materials for the Historia Animalinm." Subse- 

 quently (1830) the distinguished French naturalist abandoned this opin 

 ion, because, after a more careful examination, he remarked " that the 

 descriptions of Egyptian animals were not sketched from life, but from 

 notices by Herodotus." (See, also, Cuvier, Histoire des Sciences Nai- 

 urelles, publiee par Magdeleine de Saint Agy, t. i., 1841, p. 136.) 



II To these internal indications belong the statement of the perfect 

 insulation of the Caspian Sea ; the notice of the great comet, which ap. 

 peared under Nicomachus when holding the office of archon, Olymp. 

 109, 4 (according to Corsini), and which is not to be confounded with 

 that which Von Bo guslawski has lately named the comet of Aristotle 



