eo SN ARRE 
THURSDAY, MARCH 16, 1882 
ARISTOTLE ON THE PARTS OF ANIMALS 
Aristotle on the Parts of Animals. Translated, with 
Introduction and Notes, by W. Ogle, M.A., M.D., 
F.R.C.P., sometime Fellow of Corpus Christi College, 
Oxford. (London: Kegan Paul and Co., 1882.) 
HE translator and commentator of this learned work, 
in speaking of the many erroneous statements in 
the text of the master, tells us we have only to remember 
_ the strange vicissitudes to which the original manuscripts 
of Aristotle’s treatises are said to have been subjected, to 
obtain a fair reason for the occurrence of these errors. 
“ Hidden under ground in the little town of Scepsis, to 
save them from the hands of the kings of Pergamus, who 
were then collecting books to found their famous library, 
and who, in so doing, apparently paid but little regard to 
the rights of individual owners, they were left for the 
better part of two centuries to moulder in the damp, 
‘Blattarum et tinearum epulze”; and when they were at 
last brought to light feli into the hands of Apellicon of 
Teos, a man who, as Strabo says, was a lover of books 
rather than a philosopher, and who felt no scruple in 
correcting what had become worm-eaten, and supplying 
what was defective or illegible.”’ 
In putting this explanation of the errors found in the 
works of Aristotle before his readers Dr. Ogle seems to 
have ignored another explanation, which has also been 
supported, namely, that Aristotle himself intentionally 
rendered some parts of his treatises obscure. Certain of 
_our English classics have quoted or referred to the corre- 
spondence reported to have occurred between Alexander 
the Great and Aristotle. Alexander having heard, while 
he was in Asia, that the books of his master were exposed 
to public sale, is reported to have expressed himself as 
extremely disgusted that such profound knowledge was 
laid open and made plain to common understandings, 
and wrote to the master urging this complaint, and that 
when the doctrines and precepts communicated by him 
in private were spread over the world, he should have no 
wisdom to boast of above the meanest of his subjects. 
To this Aristotle is said artfully to have replied that he 
had indeed exposed his works to public sale, but had cast 
such a veil over them that not one ‘eye in a thousand 
would be able to discover what lies concealed under them, 
It had, we think, been fortunate for Aristotle if the 
mystery made to surround his works had been confined 
to the little town of Scepsis, and if the many prevarica- 
tions in respect to them had been confined to the hands 
of Apellicon, of Teos. For, until recently, it has happened 
that Aristotle generally has been read and written upon 
by lovers of books rather than philosophers, and that he 
has, consequently, been misrepresented high and low, far 
and wide. Of Aristotle indeed it may be said as Antony 
said of Czesar— 
The evil that men do lives after them ; 
The good is oft interred with their bones. 
He is much more remembered by the masses from the 
infirmities which are attributed to his career, than from the 
details of his work. The picture of his personal appear- 
ance and manner, his effeminate voice, small eyes, spindle 
VoL. xxv.—No. 646 
453. 
shanks, love of dress ; his withdrawal from the Academy ; 
the treatment of him by Plato as a truant and fugitive, 
who, like an insolent chicken, pecked at his mother 
hen ; his bluntness and supposed discourtesy to his pupil’ 
Alexander ; his retirement to the court of Hermias, and’ 
his assumed intrigues with that tyrant ; his marriage with 
the sister or concubine of the tyrant, and the absurd 
homage he is declared to have paid to the woman of his 
admiration; these are all topics which, true or false, have 
floated down and connected themselves closely in the 
popular mind with Aristotle as a man living a strange life 
rather than as a philosopher living a life of philosophy. 
They who, irrespective of all these reflections, have tried 
to read this master from himself, and, with singleness of 
mind, to understand him in his greatness, will feel no little 
delight in studying the volume which Dr. Ogle, with 
learned love for his theme and its. author, has put before 
the world, and for which all scientific men will feel deeply 
obligated. It is not only thatin 140 pages of fine English 
he has translated this work of Aristotle “On the Parts of 
Animals,” but that he has also written an “ Introduction ” 
of thirty-three pages, which prepares the mind of every 
student for the reception of what is to follow, and has 
added 111 pages of closely-printed matter, containing 
notes of an explanatory kind bearing upon all the doubts 
and difficulties of the text. 
The introduction to the work brings before us the 
mind of Aristotle in respect to his ideas of the origin 
of created things. In his period, as in ours, there 
were two schools of philosophical reasoners on begin- 
nings. There was a school which fancied it had found 
an adequate cause for the phenomena in the necessary 
operations of the inherent properties of matter. There 
was another school which discovered a solution in 
the intelligent action of a benevolent or foreseeing 
agent which they called God or Nature. Between these - 
opposite views, says our author, Aristotle had to decide, 
and he decided for neither exclusively, but for both, 
although in very unequal degrees. “The motions of the 
heavenly bodies are governed by necessity and by neces- 
sity alone. But in the works of nature, that is, in the 
phenomena of terrestrial life, this necessity is a compara- 
tively unimportant factor.” Most is the outcome of 
design. Still some part, though but a small one, is the 
result of necessity. There is indeed one sense in which 
everything in the animal body may be said to be the 
result of necessity. When a man builds a house, he 
must, in order to realise his plan, of necessity have walls, 
roof, and the like. To have these he must first have 
bricks, stones, mortar, and what not; and again, to fur- 
nish these, clay, lime, and the other necessary materials. 
So it is with the animal body, The design of nature 
cannot be carried on without the necessary antecedents. 
In this sense then all parts of the body, and all the succes- 
sive stages by which they are developed, one after the 
other, may be said to be the result of necessity, for all 
must necessarily be there if the plan of nature is to be 
realised. 
From the materialists, however, Aristotle is shown to 
differ. They contended “‘that organisms are evolved as 
necessary consequences of the inherent properties of 
matter.’ This Aristotle admitted and disputed. In some 
measure he considere? that what they said was true, but 
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