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So the whole range, we might say the whole conceivable range, of biological science is sketched out, and the greater part of the great canvas is painted in. But to bring it into touch with human life, and to make good its claim to the high places of philosophy, we must go yet farther and study Life itself, and what men call the Soul. So grows the great conception. We begin with trivial anecdote, with the things that fisherman, huntsman, peasant know; the sciences of zoology, anatomy, physiology take shape before our very eyes; and by evening we sit humbly at the feet of the great teacher of Life itself, the historian of the Soul. It is not for us to attempt to show that even here the story does not end, but the highest chapters of philosophy begin. Then, when we remember that this short narrative of ours is but the faintest adumbration of one side only of the philosopher's many-sided task and enterprise, we begin to rise towards a comprehension of Roger Bacon's saying, that 'although Aristotle did not arrive at the end of knowledge, he set in order all parts of philosophy'. In the same spirit a modern critic declares: 'Il n'a seulement défini et constitué chacune des parties de la science; il en a de plus montré le lien et l'unité'.

Aristotle, like Shakespeare, is full of old saws, tags of wisdom, jewels five words long. Here is such a one, good for teacher and pupil alike—Δει πιστευειν τον μανθανοντα {Dei pisteuein ton manthanonta}. It tells us that the road to Learning lies through Faith; and it means that to be a scholar one should have a heart as well as brains.

By reason partly of extraneous interpolation, but doubtless also through a lingering credulity from which even philosophers are not immune, we find in Aristotle many a strange story. The goats that breathe through their ears, the vulture impregnated by the wind, the eagle that dies of hunger, the stag caught by music, the salamander which walks through fire, the unicorn, the mantichore, are but a few of the 'Vulgar Errors' or 'Received Tenents' (as Sir Thomas Browne has it) which are perpetuated, not originated, in the Historia Animalium. Some of them come, through Persia, from the farther East: and others (we meet with them once more in Horapollo the Egyptian priest) are but the exoteric or allegorical expression of the arcana of ancient Egyptian religion.

So it comes to pass that for two thousand years and throughout all lands men have come to Aristotle, and found in him information and instruction—that which they desired. Arab and Moor and Syrian and Jew treasured his books while the western world sat in darkness; the great centuries of Scholasticism hung upon his words; the oldest of our Universities, Bologna, Paris, Oxford, were based upon his teaching, yea, all but established for his study. Where he has been, there, seen or unseen, his influence remains; even the Moor and the Arab find in him, to this day, a teacher after their own hearts: a teacher of eternal verities, telling of sleep and dreams, of youth and age, of life and death, of generation and corruption, of growth and of decay: a guide to the book of Nature, a revealer of the Spirit, a prophet of the works of God.

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