OUR OBLIGATIONS TO GREEK THOUGHT. Bae 
as to create the impression, in minds not familiar with the history 
of Science, that some of the Greek philosophers were very paragons 
of investigators. Hegel, with his intense subjectivity, scarcely 
knows how to express his admiration of their formulated concep- 
tions of Being. Cuvier, occupying the position of a student of 
objective nature, says, ‘‘In Aristotle everything amazes, everything 
is prodigious, everything is colossal. He lived but sixty-two years, 
and he was able to make thousands of observations of extreme 
delicacy, the accuracy of which the most rigorous criticism has 
never been able to impeach.”* It is remarkable how the strain of 
Cuvier has been caught by French naturalists. They write and 
labour as men conscious of rearing a superstructure of Natural 
Science on the deep enduring foundation laid by ‘‘le grand 
Stagirite.” It is unnecessary to make quotations in illustration of 
the profound reverence, amounting in many instances to entire 
mental subjection, cherished during the Middle Ages for all that 
was Aristotelian. No man ever ruled over such keen intellects, 
and for so long a time, as did the creator of Logic. 
On the other hand, equally strong language has been employed, 
which, if attention were paid to it alone, would produce the con- 
viction that no greater calamity ever befel the interests of scientific 
truth than the prevalence of Greek ideas, and the domination over 
great minds of Greek forms of thought. 
The strong statement of Roger Bacon, that, had he power, he 
would have all the books of Aristotle burnt, seeing they conduce 
to a waste of time, occasions of error, and increase of ignorance 
—this statement, though thought by Dean Milman} to refer only 
to the crude Latin versions which had plagued the laborious Roger, 
nevertheless has been taken as expressive of a judgment on Greek 
Thought in which many concur. And this tendency in many 
quarters to disparage the influence of Aristotle has been strength- 
ened by the occasional observations of Lord Bacon, especially in 
his Opuscula Philosophica, who, while admitting the great power 
of the Greek, represents his natural philosophy as being more 
puerile than others have held it to be; and who, in illustration of 
his own famous ?do/a, sets Aristotle forth} as exemplum conspicuum 
of one kind of the triple false philosophers to be guarded against. 
* “Histoire des Sciences Naturelles,’” i. p. 132. 
+ “Latin Christianity,” vi. p. 298. 
t “Nov. Org. Aphorismi,” 62, 63. 
