Aristotle's Psychology: On the Soul and Parva Naturalia

occupy more space (taking as a standard the Berlin edition, which contains, it is true, some spurious treatises) than all the other treatises put together. Suidas, indeed, gave him the title of the “Secretary of Nature,” while Dante, who was conversant with the speculative or practical side of his philosophy, called him “the master of those that know.” ¹ The studies of Aristotle appear to have been concerned chiefly with the phenomena of nature, whose processes it was the primary function of his philosophy to explain.

is this sarcasm

The thing which most astonished Athenaeus (one of the most learned Greeks of the Ptolemaic era) in his reading of Aristotle’s works, was the Stagirite’s wonderful knowledge of animal life. He says in the Deipnosophists The Gastronomers: “Aristotle, my dear Democritus, about whom the sages incessantly talk and whose accuracy they constantly praise, is a marvel to me. I should like to know from what Proteus a sea god of shifting shapes or Nereus a sea god of the depths of the deep sea he learned what fish do, how they sleep, how they live. For he has told us in his writings all about these things, so that he has become, in the words of the comic poet, ‘a wonder to fools.’” ²

In contrast with this trivial, popular conception of Aristotle’s work, I quote here Aristotle’s own words touching his attitude towards the various spheres of scientific inquiry, words very significant for their singular catholicity. “By way of introduction we observe that some members of the universe are ungenerated, imperishable, and eternal, while others are subject to generation and decay. The former are excellent

¹ Il maestro di color che sanno. Inferno The master of those who know. Inferno, iv. 131.
² Deipnosophistae The Gastronomers, Bk. viii., chap 47.