CHAPTER VII.
THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHY OF ARISTOTLE.
Aristotle has now done with Practical and Constructive Science.[1] He turns from Man with his disputations, reasonings, oratory, poetry, moral and social life, to the subjects of Speculative Science,—to Nature, the Universe, and God. In glancing at the series of great treatises in which the results of his thoughts and researches upon these subjects are embodied, it will be convenient to divide them under the three heads of Natural Philosophy, Biology, and Metaphysics. First, then, the ‘Physical Discourse,’ the treatise ‘On the Heavens,’ that 'On Generation and Destruction,’ and the ‘Meteorologies,’ form together a distinct whole,[2] and contain the Natural Philosophy of Aristotle, of which let us now notice some of the salient points, leaving his Biology and Metaphysics to form the subject of future chapters.
Natural Philosophy, as conceived by Aristotle, was far more metaphysical than the science which is called by that name in the present day—a science based on
