ARISTOTLE’S NATURAL HISTORY

Northern Advocate, 12 June 1926, Page 4

ARISTOTLE’S NATURAL HISTORY

The merits of Aristotle’s natural history far surpass its incidental faults. It is impossible here to give an adequate appreciation of a work • which, because of its minute observa- | tion and many scraps of homely wis- ( dom (some of them ancient saws), I often recalls the charming dissertaf tions of the great French naturalist, | Henry Pabre. It may well be that the happy study, to take one particu- | lar point, of Mediterranean sea-life, ! the curious results of which are here j revealed, took place during his long j honeymoon with his fair young princess by the much-murmuring sea in ( the Isle of Mytilene. That may have | been the happiest period of his life, a ■■ joyous open-air holiday from which he gathered sun-born energy for the great tasks to come, the teaching of Alexander the Great, and the instruction of the Hellenic and Hellenised cities from the Lyceum. He would hear what the fishermen had to say, and then look into things for himself (which was Pabre’s method): His story of the fishes is a prodigious array of curious facts, carefully collected and collated, and it is surprising how often what appeared to be some small inaccuracy turns out to be a scrap of the truth which had to be re-discovered in modern times—for example, it is quite clear that he knew by sight the little transparent crea- - ture which becomes an “elver” or tiny eel, the discovery and identification of which are one of the lesser triumphs of modern research. Again, he is well acquainted with the strange metamorphoses of insects, and there are many Eabre-like touches in his life-history of the gnat, which must be throughout the outcome of his own pertinacious observation. And of the cicada, whose dry sharp chirrup was unpleasing to Browning’s ear but doubtless music to Aristophanes (see his “Birds”), he gives a complete and accurate account, noting how it was absent from the treeless lands, such as Cyrene, and ne er heard in deep sunless forests, but at its best in 1 olive groves, for the foliage there is sparse and the sun conies through In bringing together all this lore of natural history—a subject a little contemned, perhaps, by the Greeks, who had not the Roman liking for country •life —Aristotle set biology by the side j of . . . astronomy and bids us look i for beauty in the little things near at | hand. “The heavens,” he says, “are lofty and remote, and of heavenly things the knowledge that our senses give is sparse and vague The living creatures, on the other hand, are at our very door; and if we so wish, we may have, ample and accurate knowledge of them all. We take pleasure in the beauty of a statue; then shall not the living fill us with delight; and all the more if in the spirit of philosophy we search for causes and recognise the evidences of design.”—E. B. Osborn, in “The Heritage of Greece and The Legacy of Rome.” 1