thought.” From all this, it will be seen that “Biology” could not be used to denote a science of the phenomena of living matter in general, without a sacrifice of ancient Greek associations. “Biology,” in short, is more appropriate to express what we generally call Sociology; and, on the other hand, “Zoölogy” should have been used to express what is now called “Biology.” But the fact was, that the word “Zoölogy” (derived from Zöon, an animal, not from Zöé, life) had been already appropriated as a name for natural history. Hence, without regard to classical propriety, the word “Biology” was forced into service to meet a want, and to express, what had never been expressed before, the science of life in all its manifestations from the lowest ascidian up to the highest development of humanity, so far as that development can be considered to be a natural evolution out of the physiological laws of life.
Aristotle had no word to express this comprehensive idea, but assuredly he had the idea itself. He regards the whole of nature as a continuous chain, even beginning with inorganic substances and passing by imperceptible gradations on to organisms, to the vegetable, and to the zoophyte, and then to the animal and the various ranks in the animal kingdom, and lastly to man (‘Researches about Animals,’ VIII. i. 4), “whose soul in childhood, you might say, differs not from the soul of the lower animals.” This broad comprehensive sweep of the philosophic eye through the realms of nature, this finding of unity in such endless diversity, this tracing of a continuous thread throughout the ascending scale of life, may seem quite a matter of
