Of the character of Aristotle, no man now living is qualified to give an exact delineation. That his under standing was of the very highest order, and that his in dustry in exploring all the departments of science has never been exceeded, appears to be universally admit ted. But whether he was actuated chiefly by the love of truth, or by the love of fame ; whether he aimed at uti lity more than he courted admiration ; whether he has intentionally obscured what he could not illustrate, and affected to be profound, when he was only disguising his ignorance ; whether he has ungenerously withheld the praise due to his predecessors, and even loaded them with unmerited censure, when he ought to have acknowledged his obligations to their labours ; whether, in his treatment of other authors, he was more under the influence of pride and envy, than of liberality and candour—are questions which the most careful perusal of his works can scarcely entitle us to decide. The voice of antiquity concerning his merits is but little known, and was probably not impartial. The hyperboli cal panegyrics of the myriads of commentators, whose ignorance and prejudice reflect dishonour on human nature, and who, through ages of darkness and supersti tion, pretended to venerate a name whose glories they were unconsciously labouring to sully, are totally un worthy of our regard. It is difficult to say whether the Mahometan doctors, Averroes, Alfarabius, and Almu bassar, who, in some instances, have not scrupled to relinquish the tenets of their prophet, when they could not reconcile them with the dicta of the Stagirite, have been more obsequious in their homage than the school men, professing Christianity, who have venerated him as one of the fathers of the church, and scarcely refrain ed from canonizing him,—affirming that he was as truly the forerunner of the Messias, in the mysteries of na ture, as the Baptist was in the revelation of grace, [4ristotelem sic fuisse Christi priecu•sorent in Araturali bus, quemadmodum Joannes Baptista in gratuitis.] Since the reformation, the works of Aristotle have fallen into disrepute. The intrepid zeal of Luther prompted him to sweep away all the rubbish of monas tic learning, in which the defenders of the Catholic faith endeavoured to elude the assaults of their antagonists; and, as he had neither erudition nor patience sufficient to discriminate the speculations of Aristotle from the garrulity of the schoolmen, with which they were often intermingled, he chose to devote both root and branch to the same destruction. The more learned and more ingenuous Calvin, though a determined foe to the scho lastic doctrines, does not withhold from Aristotle's ethi cal writings, the praise of acuteness and profundity. Some of lord Bacon's censures are unquestionably too harsh, smeuring more of the bitterness of the German ecclesiastic, to whose austere invectives we have slight ly adverted, than of the dignified liberality which be came the great reformer of logic ; who, in an age over whelmed with ignorance and prejudice, boldly under took to light the torch of truth, to trace a map of the intellectual world, to describe the roads by which it may be explored, and (which is harder still) to unfold the methods by which these roads may be regained after they have been lost. Bacon saw clearly the de fects of that art of reasoning which was practised in his own age ; but with the value of Aristotle's writings, and the purposes which his logic was intended to serve, the English philosopher was very imperfectly acquainted. The works of Gassendi, Des Cartes, Hobbes, Male branche, and Locke, have contributed to increase the discredit of the Peripatetic philosophy ; so that it has at length become as fashionable to depreciate the thun der of that sect, as it was formerly to extol his name. Some of these authors, however, betray such a preme ditated spirit of hostility, as must convince us that they never had the patience to examine those works, which they so dogmatically condemn, as an assemblage of vague, indeterminate, confused, and unprofitable ideas, pregnant with unmeaning words, and tending to extin guish, rather than to quicken the human faculties. Even the sagacious Rcid, who appears to have formed a justcr estimate of Aristotle's merit, than almost any gther modern philosopher, has sometimes, by confound ing the disciples with their master, included the latter in censure which does not apply to him, and has even treated some of his doctrines with a degree of levity, which cannot be vindicated, except by representing it as a just retribution on the Stagirite, for the superci lious contempt with which he is accused of having de tracted from the claims of all his fellow-labourers.
We will not form a correct judgment of the literary character of Aristotle, if we implicitly depend on the accounts which have been given by the most enlighten ed philosophers of modern times; and much less cor rect will our notions be, if we listen to the bigoted ad herents of the Peripatetic philosophy ; who, during the long night of ignorance, in which Europe was involved, after the irruption of the barbarous hordes of the north, were incessantly engaged in echoing and dilating the doctrines of their idolised preceptor. Nor will the rem nant of his writings enable us to gain an adequate view of his superiority. To appreciate their value would re quire qualifications which can scarcely ever be united in one individual. A perfect acquaintance with the language of Greece, as written by Aristotle, and with the state of science before his time, and also a profi ciency in the knowledge of those subsequent discove ries which have enlarged the boundaries of human knowledge, are necessary qualifications of the man who shall venture to pronounce, what is the extent of the services for which posterity is indebted to that great mind, and what is the degree of praise to which he is fully entitled. There is no small difficulty in under standing the language which wrote. Though he professes to define every word which he introduces, even when unsusceptible of definition, his definitions must often be incomprehensible to those who haN e not previously learned the peculiarities of his notions. He did not invent a new vocabulary, but he employed many words in a sense either more restricted, or more ex tended than they had hitherto borne, or with shades of meaning, of which no trace can be discovered is the works of other authors. Lord Bacon speaks of this liberty in the strongest terms of reprehension, saying, that Aristotle, from an unbridled spirit of contradiction, and a sworn enmity to every thing established by the ancients, not only coined unheard-of technical phrases, but strenuously endeavoured to blot out the remem brance of all the wisdom which former ages had amass ed; insomuch that (his lordship adds) lie never names any authors anterior to his time, or refers to their writ ings, except for the purpose of refuting and slighting them ; thus as it were emulating his ambitious pupil, by attempting to convert the commonwealth of letters into an universal and absolute despotism, over which he chose to tyrannise. Concerning this philosophical arrogance of which Aristotle is so generally accused, we can only say, that, in some instances, he appears to bestow on his contemporaries greater praise than they deserved, and that nothing can be more unbecoming than the petulant sneering of Malebranchc " Aussi Aristote prend-il un soin particulier d'avertir, qu'il faut le croire sur sa parole car; c'est un axiome incontest-. able a cet auteur, qu'il faut (ie le disciple croie." But with regard to his innovations in the use of words, what philosopher can be named who has not found it neces sary to attempt something of this nature ; and can lord Verulam himself claim an exemption from the same censure ? The vagueness and imperfection of language has always proved one of the greatest embarrassments to every inquirer ; and the attempt of Aristotle to sur mount this difficulty, was .worthy of the boldness and vigour of his genius. If he has ever overstepped that mocesty which courtesy should have prescribed, and which respect for kindred worth should have demanded, let it be recollected that he is neither the first nor the last who has forgotten the maxims of urbanity amidst the strife of tongues ; and that the devotion which has been paid to his name, has proceeded less from his overweening appetite for superiority, than from the ab ject servility of his followers.
Of those who profess to have studied the works of Aristotle, some entertain a superstitious reverence for ancient learning, and are almost entirely ignorant of la ter acquirements. Others being partially versed in the language of recent discoveries, but not very familiarly acquainted with their extent, seem predetermined to find in the writings of the Peripatetic philosopher the germ of all posterior improvements. Both these de scriptions of authors present us with a distorted and exaggerated view of the Aristotelian philosophy.