Page:The Story of Philosophy.pdf/89

 experiment had not yet been made; and the best he could do was to achieve an almost universal and continuous observa- tion. Nevertheless the vast body of data gathered by him and his assistants became the groundwork of the progress of science, the text-book of knowledge for two thousand years; one of the wonders of the work of man.

Aristotle's writings ran into the hundreds. Some ancient authors credit him with four hundred volumes, others with a thousand. What remains is but a part, and yet it is a library in itself—conceive the scope and grandeur of the whole. There are, first, the Logical works: "Categories," "Topics," "Prior" and "Posterior Analytics," "Propositions," and "So- phistical Refutation"; these works were collected and edited by the later Peripatetics under the general title of Aristotle's "Organon,"—that is, the organ or instrument of correct think- ing. Secondly, there are the Scientific works: "Physics," "On the Heavens," "Growth and Decay," "Meteorology," "Natural History," "On the Soul," "The Parts of Animals," "The Movements of Animals," and "The Generation of Ani- mals." There are, thirdly, the Esthetic works: "Rhetoric" and "Poetics." And fourthly come the more strictly Philosophical works: "Ethics," "Politics," and "Metaphysics."

Here, evidently, is the Encyclopedia Brittanica of Greece: every problem under the sun and about it finds a place; no wonder there are more errors and absurdities in Aristotle than in any other philosopher who ever wrote. Here is such a syn- thesis of knowledge and theory as no man would ever achieve again till Spencer's day, and even then not half so magnifi- cently; here, better than Alexander's fitful and brutal victory, was a conquest of the world. If philosophy is the quest of unity Aristotle deserves the high name that twenty centuries gave him—Ille Philosophus: The Philosopher.

Naturally, in a mind of such scientific turn, poesy was lack- ing. We must not expect of Aristotle such literary brilliance