The Legacy of Greece: Essays By: Gilbert Murray, W. R. Inge, J. Burnet, Sir T. L. Heath, D'arcy W. Thompson, Charles Singer, R. W. Livingston, A. Toynbee, A. E. Zimmern, Percy Gardner, Sir Reginald Blomfield
Philosophy
The Legacy of Greece: Essays By: Gilbert Murray, W. R. Inge, J. Burnet, Sir T. L. Heath, D'arcy W. Thompson, Charles Singer, R. W. Livingston, A. Toynbee, A. E. Zimmern, Percy Gardner, Sir Reginald Blomfield
Greece -- Civilization
Before he finishes the great chapter of which we have begun to speak he
indicates that there are more ways than one of relating, or
classifying, our facts; that, for instance, it may be equally proper and
necessary to deal now with the animals and their several parts or
properties, and at another time with the parts or properties as such,
explaining and illustrating them in turn by the several animals which
display or possess them. The 'Parts of Animals' is, then, a corollary, a
necessary corollary, to the more anecdotal _Historia Animalium_. And yet
again, there is a third alternative--to discuss the great functions or
actions or potentialities of the organism, as it were first of all in
the abstract, and then to correlate them with the parts which in this or
that creature are provided and are 'designed' to effect them. This
involves the conception and the writing of separate physiological
treatises on such themes as Respiration, Locomotion, on Sleeping and
Waking, and lastly (and in some respects the most ambitious, most
erudite, and most astonishing of them all) the great account of the
Generation of Animals.
So the whole range, we might say the whole conceivable range, of
biological science is sketched out, and the greater part of the great
canvas is painted in. But to bring it into touch with human life, and to
make good its claim to the high places of philosophy, we must go yet
farther and study Life itself, and what men call the Soul. So grows the
great conception. We begin with trivial anecdote, with the things that
fisherman, huntsman, peasant know; the sciences of zoology, anatomy,
physiology take shape before our very eyes; and by evening we sit humbly
at the feet of the great teacher of Life itself, the historian of the
Soul. It is not for us to attempt to show that even here the story does
not end, but the highest chapters of philosophy begin. Then, when we
remember that this short narrative of ours is but the faintest
adumbration of one side only of the philosopher's many-sided task and
enterprise, we begin to rise towards a comprehension of Roger Bacon's
saying, that 'although Aristotle did not arrive at the end of knowledge,
he set in order all parts of philosophy'. In the same spirit a modern
critic declares: 'Il n'a seulement défini et constitué chacune des
parties de la science; il en a de plus montré le lien et l'unité'.
Aristotle, like Shakespeare, is full of old saws, tags of wisdom, jewels
five words long. Here is such a one, good for teacher and pupil
alike--Δει πιστευειν τον μανθανοντα {Dei pisteuein ton manthanonta}. It
tells us that the road to Learning lies through Faith; and it means that
to be a scholar one should have a heart as well as brains.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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