entertained amid inquiries into corporeal functions and sympathies; and the chief object of this treatise, is to ascertain what that principle is which, for a stated time, animates and presides over the functions of reproduction, nutrition, growth and decay. It is evident, besides, that Aristotle has annexed, so to say, this high privilege to the mind, as the seat and source of all moral and intellectual qualities and faculties.
CHAPTER II.
Note 1, p. 64. It is not only correct that the word-
ing, &c.] Aristotle[1] makes a definition to be a term
significant of what a thing essentially is, and, thus a defi-
nition may be employed in place of nouns, or one defini-
for another; but a noun cannot be accepted as an
adequate definition, since every definition ought to involve
some kind of cause. It is an expression[2], in fact, which so
explains any term as to distinguish it from all else, as a
boundary line separates fields. Aristotle, again, makes it
to be something laid down (θέσις μὲν ἐστι) as the arithme-
tician lays down the unit as indivisible, quantitatively
considered; and yet this is no hypothesis, since the unit,
