ces, and who had
this knowledge constantly in his mind when he drew his conclusions with
regard to philosophical and theological questions.

It used to be the fashion to make little of the medieval scholars for
the high estimation in which they held Aristotle. Occasionally even yet
one hears narrowly educated men, I am sorry to say much more frequently
scientific specialists than others, talk deprecatingly of this ardent
devotion to Aristotle. No one who knows anything about Aristotle ever
indulges in such an exhibition of ignorance of the realities of the
history of philosophy and science. To know Aristotle well is to think of
him as probably possessed of the greatest human mind that ever existed.
We do not need to go back to the Middle Ages to be confirmed in that
opinion. Modern scientists who know their science well, but who also
know Aristotle well, and who are ardent worshippers at his shrine, are
not hard to find. Romanes, the great English biologist of the end of the
nineteenth century, said: "It appears to me that there can be no
question that Aristotle stands forth not only as the greatest figure in
antiquity but as the greatest intellect that has ever appeared upon this
earth."

Before Romanes, George H. Lewes, in his interesting monograph in the
history of thought, "Aristotle, a Chapter in the History of Science," is
quite as complimentary to the great Greek thinker. We may say that Lewes
was by no means partial to Aristotle. Anything but inclined to accept
authority as of value in philosophy, he had been rendered impatient by
the fact that so much of the history of philosophy was dominated by
Aristotle, and it was only that the panegyric was forced from him by
careful study of all that the Stagirite wrote that he said: "History
gazed on him with wonder. His intellect was piercing and comprehensive;
his attainments surpassed those of every philosopher; his influence has
been excelled only by the founders of religion ... his vast and active
intelligence for twenty centuries held the world in awe."

Professor Osborn, whose scholarly study of the theory of evolution down
the ages "From the Greeks to Darwin" rather startled the world of
science by showing not only how old was a theory of evolution, but how
frequently it had been stated and how many of them anticipated phases of
our own thought in the matter, pays a high compliment to the great Greek
scientist. He says: "Aristotle clearly states and rejects a t