112 
MEMOIR OP ARISTOTLE. 
In taking a retrospective view of the life and 
writings of this extraordinary man, the reader can- 
not but be struck with the amazing extent and va- 
riety of his attainments. It is a brief but bold and 
not inappropriate character of him given by an ano- 
nymous writer in Suidas, that he was “ Nature’s se- 
cretary, and had dipt his pen in intellect." Had 
he lived in the eighteenth century, the scientific 
world might have been indebted to him for the per- 
fection of those systems which we owe to the la- 
bours of Linnams, Cuvier, and Buffon. Had he 
known the discoveries of Galileo and Kepler, he 
might perhaps have been a Newton. But it was by 
the eye of reason and analogy only that he had to 
study the heavens and the earth, of whose beauty 
and grandeur he speaks with as much rapture as the 
most enlightened philosopher could feel. By the 
light of Nature alone, we see him sometimes pene- 
trating deeply into Nature's mysteries — analyzing, 
defining, and demonstrating — sometimes encounter- 
ing difficulties which the human mind itself is un- 
able to surmount — often foiled in his exertions, yet 
always renewing the combat with renovated hope. 
In the lapse of centuries, while his theories have 
been alternately attacked and defended, exploded 
and revived, the fads which he collected with un- 
exampled diligence, and which he has so systema- 
tically digested in his works, will for ever support 
his fame as the “ Prince of Philosophers,” and in- 
struct the most distant ages of posterity. 
