instruction; he scarcely allowed himself sufficient time for repose, usually sleeping with a metal ball in his hand, held over a bason, which, by the noise of its fall, sufficed to arouse him from his slumber. After death, his memory was treated with great respect; a festival was instituted to his honour, and many of his sayings have been handed down to posterity. Amongst them is recorded his last prayer: "I entered the world corruptly, I have lived in it anxiously, I quit it in perturbation. O Cause of causes have mercy upon me!" His enemies, however, have not been idle in their attacks upon his character; he has been styled a glutton and a parasite, stigmatized with impiety and ingratitude; and even Bacon sneers at his dogmatism, by observing that "he wished to rule men's minds as his pupil did nations." personal appearance, and the defect of a weak and hesitating utterance, have been used as fertile topics of abuse, as well as the more legitimate subject of censure-an effeminate attention to dress.

His

Notwithstanding these detractive circumstances, the writings of no philosopher have been more esteemed for their practical use; so that, after two thousand years, the world is still

indebted to him as the best guide in the art of reasoning, while, as a moralist, his precepts— resting on the impression of the Divine law in man's soul-strikingly resemble those of Christianity. He is more practical than Plato, but, from his desire to embrace the conflicting views of other minds, has often the appearance of sceptical indecision; and his writings, which seem originally to have comprehended the whole range of science known in his day, have come down to us in a very imperfect shape, after being preserved in a most extraordinary manner. They were first bequeathed to Theophrastus, by him to Neleus, who carried them to Scepsis, in Asia Minor, and subsequently his heirs, fearing the violence of the kings of Pergamos, some of whom had begun to form libraries, buried the writings in a vault, where they were discovered after one hundred and thirty years. They were next bought by Apellicon, a book-collector, who brought them to Athens, where they remained until Sulla, the Roman general, on the capture of that capital, took them to Rome, in which city they were successively copied by a learned Greek, Tyrannio, and by the Rhodian Andronicus, who, after more than two hundred and fifty years from the

life of the philosopher, published them to the world. His chief work, upon morals, he dedicated to his son Nicomachus, the child of his second wife, Herpyllis, who, after becoming a pupil of Theophrastus, fell in battle, at an early age.

In the general features of his system, we may remark that Aristotle was opposed to the partisans of Plato's doctrine of ideas, and compares them to men who separated each quality into a new existence, and thus increased number to simplify calculation. He is the first philosopher who really divided the different sciences, and discussed each on its own principles, for hitherto, philosophy, even when most conclusive, had been presented to the mind as a combination of thought, embracing every subject with as much speculation, or more fancifulness, than solid deduction; and, therefore, Aristotle endeavoured to enunciate one real intellectual system, which Plato had only imagined. Essentially practical, he wished to draw off the mind from vague theory to analyze the real course of nature, and to sure principles of knowledge, not by rejecting the Platonic idea of one universal principle, but by a denial that this had any physical existence, independent of the human mind. For his purpose

he employed induction, as the art which, enabling us, by the memory of our sensations, to discern resemblances and the contrary, not only, in his opinion, constituted the difference between man and animals, but caused men to reduce their notions within strict logical definition, for which purpose he employed it. Every common or universal idea in regard to objects was rejected; that only was retained which particularized, or was alone appropriate to the object, or by which its real nature was denoted. His commentators of the German school charge him with being an empiric, because he asserts that science can penetrate all the phenomena of existence, while itself rests only upon partial experiences, and also because, from insufficient premises, he is often found to jump at an erroneous conclusion: yet still we must acknowledge that his logical method rendered him observant of the minutest detail, accustoming the mind to contemplate each object steadily, without suffering distraction from surrounding phenomena.

All philosophy he divided into three branches -theoretic, efficient, and practical: the first including physics, mathematics, and metaphysics, which last he designated theology; the

second, logic, rhetoric, and poetry; the third, inoral sciences, ethics, and politics and this division we cannot improve upon, in our treatment of the Aristotelian system, which of itself is so intimately blended with its founder's habit of mind, that we become irremediably confused the moment we abandon his model.

He

If the impossibility of reducing physiology in its endless variations to one strict rule of definition, caused him to regard it as a less perfect science than the rest, his own description of it as conversant about things referring to the body, draws a strong line of distinction between the rational and the natural. connected, indeed, physics with mathematical science and theology, chiefly because they all relate to things that are, and, throughout, his object is to investigate the mind's arrangement of the natures and properties of existent things; but this combination vitiates his physical science by entangling him in the mazes of different lines of inquiry, so that in his natural philosophy he opposes some of the older plilosophers in a manner at once illogical and unfair. The endeavour to carry out a favourite theory of motion gave the peculiar character to his astronomy, which depends as a system upon