MEMOIR OP ARISTOTLE. 
19 
nations. This improved philosophy was carried to 
its highest perfection hy Aristotle, in whose writings 
the doctrines of his predecessors and the learning of 
his age, were summed up and embodied as it were in- 
to one entire library. Of. his indefatigable industry 
and extensive information, his copious remains, even 
in their abridged state, afford ample and honourable 
testimony ; and as for his talents, it would be disre- 
spectful to mankind, as Dr Reid well remarks, not 
to allow an uncommon share to a man who govern- 
ed the opinions of the most enlightened part of the 
species, for nearly two thousand years. Among his 
contemporaries he was regarded as “ Nature’s Se- 
cretary,” the high priest of science, and the prince 
of philosophers. During the darker ages, his dogmas 
reigned in the universities of Christendom with un- 
disputed sway. His memory was worshipped with 
a veneration almost divine, insomuch that he has 
sometimes been placed by the side of the Apostle of 
Tarsus ; for our countryman Roger Bacon, in his 
Opus Majus, has said, that “ he hath the same au- 
thority in philosophy, that St Paul hath in divinity.” 
The age of superstitious reverence for categories 
and syllogisms has long passed away ; and the re- 
nowned Stagirite, like other writers, must be weigh- 
ed in the balance of his own merits, instead of be- 
ing measured by the standard of ignorant admiration. 
A line of demarcation can now easily and safely be 
drawn between those portions of his works that are 
still deserving of attention, and those which have 
