Out of the mist and fog of time, the name of Aristotle looms up large. It was more than twenty-three hundred years ago that Aristotle lived. He might have lived yesterday, so distinctively modern was he in his method and manner of thought. Aristotle was the world's first scientist. He sought to sift the false from the true--to arrange, classify and systematize. Aristotle instituted the first zoological garden that history mentions, barring that of Noah. He formed the first herbarium, and made a geological collection that prophesied for Hugh Miller the testimony of the rocks. Very much of our scientific terminology goes back to Aristotle. Aristotle was born in the mountains of Macedonia. His father was a doctor and belonged to the retinue of King Amyntas. The King had a son named Philip, who was about the same age as Aristotle. Some years later, Philip had a son named Alexander, who was somewhat unruly, and Philip sent a Macedonian cry over to Aristotle, and Aristotle harkened to the call for help and went over and took charge of the education of Alexander. The science of medicine in Aristotle's boyhood was the science of simples. In surgery the world has progressed, but in medicine, doctors have progressed most, by consigning to the grave, that tells no tales, the deadly materia medica. In Aristotle's childhood, when his father was both guide and physician to the king, on hunting trips through the mountains, the doctor taught the boys to recognize sarsaparilla, stramonium, hemlock, hellebore, sassafras and mandrake. Then Aristotle made a list of all the plants he knew and wrote down the supposed properties of each. Before Aristotle was half-grown, both his father and mother died, and he was cared for by a Mr. and Mrs. Proxenus. This worthy couple would never have been known to the world were it not for the fact that they ministered to this orphan boy. Long years afterward he wrote a poem to their memory, and paid them such a tender, human compliment that their names have been woven into the very fabric of letters. "They loved each other, and still had love enough left for me," he says. And we can only guess whether this man and his wife with hearts illumined by divine passion, the only thing that yet gladdens the world, ever imagined that they were supplying an atmosphere in which would bud and blossom one of the greatest intellects the world has ever known. It was through the help of Proxenus that Aristotle was enabled to go to Athens and attend the School of Oratory, of which Plato was dean. The fine, receptive spirit of this slender youth evidently brought out from Plato's heart the best that was packed away there.