The age of Aristotle concurred with that of the Macedonian sway to terminate anarchy of every kind. To the old evil of a false dialectic, which had become an inveterate habit, and, as it were, a second nature to Grecian intellect, he endeavoured to oppose his ample and substantial logic--and this must be regarded not so much as a wonderful _organum_, a living and never-failing source of scientific truth, but rather as a remedy for that disease of a false, sophistical rhetoric, so prevalent in his own age, and the one immediately preceding--and which had brought about the ruin of all truths, and an universal anarchy of doctrines, even in practical life. With a perspicacious, penetrative, and comprehensive intellect, he has reduced all the philosophic, and all the historical science of preceding ages and of his own time, to a clear, well-ordered system, for the ample instruction of posterity:--in both these sciences, as well as in natural history, he has remained, down to the latest time, the master-guide. In those parts of his philosophy which lie between this natural science and the old dialectic contests, in its primary and fundamental principles, the system of Aristotle, when rightly understood, contains much that leads to the most dangerous errors, especially in his notion of God; though we cannot with justice impute to him the abuse which has been made of his philosophy in subsequent ages. Notwithstanding the many excellent things which are to be found in the Ethics of Aristotle, considered merely as an effort of unassisted reason; yet in all the enquiries after a higher truth--after the first notion of the divine which, in the elder philosophy of nature, was so imperfectly understood, and which in the consummate rationalism of Aristotle was completely misapprehended--in all these important enquiries, the Stagyrite is far from being such a guide as Plato; and his philosophy is not like the Platonic, a scientific introduction to the Christian revelation, and to the knowledge of divine truths. The later systems of philosophy among the Greeks were, with some slight variations of form, mere repetitions, often only mere combinations and compilations, of the ancient philosophy; or they exhibited a thorough degeneracy of science and intellect, as in the atomical system of Epicurus, which even on life and morals had an atomical influence.