y of the results that might accrue
were such studies to be taken up by that Greek mind which, as he justly
conceived, had the power to vitalize and enrich all that it touched.
But he told here of what he would have others do, not of what he himself
thought of doing. His voice was prophetic, but it stimulated no worker
of his own time.

Plato himself had travelled widely. It is a familiar legend that he
lived for years in Egypt, endeavoring there to penetrate the mysteries
of Egyptian science. It is said even that the rudiments of geometry
which he acquired there influenced all his later teachings. But be that
as it may, the historian of science must recognize in the founder of the
Academy a moral teacher and metaphysical dreamer and sociologist, but
not, in the modern acceptance of the term, a scientist. Those wider
phases of biological science which find their expression in metaphysics,
in ethics, in political economy, lie without our present scope; and
for the development of those subjects with which we are more directly
concerned, Plato, like his master, has a negative significance.

ARISTOTLE (384-322 B.C.)

When we pass to that third great Athenian teacher, Aristotle, the case
is far different. Here was a man whose name was to be received as almost
a synonym for Greek science for more than a thousand years after his
death. All through the Middle Ages his writings were to be accepted as
virtually the last word regarding the problems of nature. We shall see
that his followers actually preferred his mandate to the testimony of
their own senses. We shall see, further, that modern science progressed
somewhat in proportion as it overthrew the Aristotelian dogmas. But the
traditions of seventeen or eighteen centuries are not easily set aside,
and it is perhaps not too much to say that the name of Aristotle stands,
even in our own time, as vaguely representative in the popular mind of
all that was highest and best in the science of antiquity. Yet, perhaps,
it would not be going too far to assert that something like a reversal
of this judgment would be nearer the truth. Aristotle did, indeed, bring
together a great mass of facts regarding animals in his work on natural
history, which, being preserved, has been deemed to entitle its author
to be called the "father of zoology." But there is no reason to suppose
that any considerable portion of this work contained matter that was
novel, or recorded observations that were o