Aristotle was soon the star scholar. To get much out of school you have to take much with you when you go there. In one particular, especially, Aristotle, the country boy from Macedonia, brought much to Plato--and this was the scientific spirit. Plato's bent was philosophy, poetry, rhetoric--he was an artist in expression. "Know thyself," said Socrates, the teacher of Plato. "Be thyself," said Plato. "Know the world of Nature, of which you are a part," said Aristotle; "and you will be yourself and know yourself without thought or effort. The things you see, you are." Twenty-three years Aristotle and Plato were together, and when they separated it was on the relative value of science and poetry. "Science is vital," said Aristotle; "but poetry and rhetoric are incidental." It was a little like the classic argument still carried on in all publishing-houses, as to which is the greater: the man who writes the text or the man who illustrates it. One is almost tempted to think that Plato's finest product was Aristotle, just as Sir Humphry Davy's greatest discovery was Michael Faraday. One fine, earnest, receptive pupil is about all any teacher should expect in a lifetime, but Plato had at least two, Aristotle and Theophrastus. And Theophrastus dated his birth from the day he met Aristotle. Theo-Phrastus means God's speech, or one who speaks divinely. The boy's real name was Ferguson. But the name given by Aristotle, who always had a passion for naming things, stuck, and the world knows this superbly great man as Theophrastus. Botany dates from Theophrastus. And Theophrastus it was who wrote that greatest of acknowledgments, when, in dedicating one of his books, he expressed his indebtedness in these words: "To Aristotle, the inspirer of all I am or hope to be." * * * * * After Theophrastus' death the science of botany slept for three hundred years. During this interval was played in Palestine that immortal drama which so profoundly influenced the world. Twenty-three years after the birth of Christ, Pliny, the Naturalist, was born. He was the uncle of his nephew, and it is probable that the younger man would have been swallowed in oblivion, just as the body of the older one was covered by the eager ashes of Vesuvius, were it not for the fact that Pliny the Elder had made the name deathless. Pliny the Younger was about such a man as Richard Le Gallienne; Pliny the Elder was like Thomas A. Edison.