Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/821

Rh refers bis readers to them. He could not, however, have dissected to any great extent, or he would not have made the erroneous assertions that he has on many points not difficult of demonstration. It seems to be chiefly among marine animals that he practiced dissection, and to which he paid most personal attention; certainly, many of his observations on sponges, Crustacea, cephalopoda, and other sea creatures, are admirably correct. To the question, did Aristotle dissect human bodies? his many misstatements seem to require a negative answer; at any rate, as Mr. Lewes remarks, "An answer in the affirmative would be still more damaging to his reputation, since it would render many of his errors unpardonable."

There seems much reason to believe that he paid little attention to examining the skeletons of animals, and that his osteological knowledge was very limited. Let us consider what he has recorded of a certain bone, well known to the Greeks as being one much used for dice and some other purposes. "Many cloven-footed animals," he says, "have an astragalus, but no many-toed animals have one, neither has man; the lynx has, as it were, half an astragalus, the lion one in the form of a coil; solid-hoofed animals, with the exception of the Indian ass, have no astragalus; swine have not a well-formed astragalus." The fact is that the hind-feet of all mammals possess this bone, with slight differences in form and relative position with the other tarsal bones, but always preserving its characteristic shape. Aristotle had a theory—a kind of physiological axiom—which led him to infer that certain animals could not have an astragalus, and he did not examine them to verify his theory; he was satisfied that his theory proved his facts, and that there was no need of verification. His argument, gathered from several passages, is mainly as follows: Large animals have in their system much earthy matter, the superabundance of which Nature uses in the formation of teeth, tusks, and horns. In solid-hoofed animals, as the horse, the excess of earthy matter goes to form the hoof, and not horns or tusks as it does in cattle and elephants; and, as this excess is spent in the formation of a solid hoof, such animals have no astragalus, which is only a kind of superadded bone, and would be, in the horse, for instance, a detriment rather than an advantage.

Aristotle had an ardent love and admiration of Nature, and in Nature he always saw the beautiful. He gives expression to this feeling in the following admirable passage from the "Parts of Animals": "Having already treated of these subjects, and given what is our opinion about them, it remains for us now to speak of animated nature, omitting nothing, as far as lies in our power, whether it be ignoble or honorable; for, even in those things which seem less pleasing to our senses in our contemplation of them, Nature, the creator of all things, affords inconceivable pleasures to those able to discover the causes of things and are philosophers by nature. For it would be unexpected and strange, indeed, if, when looking at images of things, we rejoice