-MEMOIR OF LINM5US. 
71 
be found uniting in the same degree all the quali- 
ties which constitute these different characters, oi 
capable of achieving so wonderful a reformation in 
all these several branches of natural history ? 
Aristotle, considered as a Naturalist, was un- 
doubtedly a man of powerful genius ; but independ- 
ently of his treating more particularly of animals 
only, we know that for -want of materials, and con- 
sequently of more extended observation, he was 
unable to establish accurate or comprehensive classi- 
fications. LinnsBus, on the other hand, excelled in 
those qualifications of method and arrangement in 
which the Greek philosopher was defective. Pliny 
and Dioscorides succeeded in collecting a vast num- 
ber of facts, which they arranged methodically ; but 
they seemed incapable of appreciating their value, 
or of assigning them their proper place in any 
general system. Their works appear like the point 
of transition between an age of ignorance, when 
every thing is amassed without order, and those 
enlightened times when the human mind, better 
informed, and consequently more inquisitive, will 
adopt nothing on hazard, or without ascertaining 
its relative position among other phenomena of the 
same class. Those ancient philosophers lived when 
natural science was yet in embryo. Some of the 
materials which they supplied were admirably fitted 
to be incorporated in the edifice reared by Linnssus ; 
but to institute comparisons between them, is to do 
