e, for the method which Aristotle applied was
that which Hippocrates had used so well before him; and it is evident to
any one that both his predecessors and contemporaries are frequently
laid under contribution by Aristotle, although the authority is rarely,
if ever, stated by him unless he is about to refute the view put
forward. Exaggerated praise of any author has a tendency to excite
depreciation correspondingly unjust and untrue. It has been so in the
case of this great man. In the endeavour to depose him from the
impossible position to which his panegyrists had exalted him, his
detractors have gone to any length. The principal charges brought
against his biological work have been inaccuracy and hasty
generalization. In support of the charge of inaccuracy, some of the
extraordinary statements which are met with in his works are adduced.
"These," Professor Huxley says, "are not so much to be called errors as
stupidities." Some, however, of the inaccuracies alleged against
Aristotle are fancied rather than real. Thus he is charged with having
represented that the arteries contained nothing but air; that the aorta
arose from the right ventricle; that the heart did not beat in any other
animal but man; that reptiles had no blood, etc.; although in reality he
made no one of these assertions. There remain, nevertheless, the gross
misstatements referred to above, and which really do occur. Such, for
instance, as that there is but a single bone in the neck of the lion;
that there are more teeth in male than in female animals; that the mouth
of the dolphin is placed on the under surface of the body; that the back
of the skull is empty, etc. Although these absurdities undoubtedly occur
in Aristotle's works, it by no means follows that he is responsible for
them. Bearing in mind the curious history of the manuscripts of his
treatises, we shall find it far more reasonable to conclude that such
errors crept in during the process of correction and restoration, by men
apparently ignorant of biology, than that (to take only one case) an
observer who had distinguished the cetacea from fishes and had detected
their hidden mammae, discovered their lungs, and recognized the distinct
character of their bones, should have been so blind as to fancy that the
mouth of these animals was on the under surface of the body.

That Aristotle made hasty generalizations is true; but it was
unavoidable. Biology was in so early a stage that a theory