COSMOS, VOL. II - World eBook Library

INFLUENCE OF THE MACEDONIAN CAMPAIGNS. 525
The knowledge of a great portion of the earth may
now be
said to have been opened for the first time. The objective
world began to assume a preponderating
force over that of
mere subjective creation, and while the fruitful seeds yielded
by the language and literature of the Greeks were scattered
abroad by the conquests of Alexander, scientific observation and
the systematic arrangement of the knowledge already acquired,
were elucidated by the doctrines and expositions of Aristotle.""
We here indicate a happy coincidence of favouring relations,
for, at the very period when a vast amount of new materials
was revealed to the human mind, their intellectual conception
was at once facilitated and multiplied through the direction
given by the Stagirite to the empirical investigation of facts
in the domain of nature, to the profound consideration of speculative
hypothesis, and to the development of a language of
science based on strict definition. Thus Aristotle must still
remain for thousands of years to come, as Dante has grace-
fully termed him, " il maestro di color che
The belief in the direct enrichment of Aristotle's zoological
knowledge, by means of the Macedonian campaigns, has, however,
either wholly disappeared, or, at any rate, been rendered
extremely uncertain by recent and more carefully conducted
researches. The wretched compilation of a life of the Stagirite,
which was long ascribed to Ammonias, the son of Herinias,
had contributed to the diffusion of many erroneous
views, and amongst others to the belief that| the philosopher
accompanied his pupil as far at least as the shores of the Nile.
The chemical connection of the nourishing amylum with sugar was
detected both by Prosper Alpinus and Abd-Allatif, and they sought to.
explain the origin of the banana, by the insertion of the sugar-cane, or
the sweet date fruit, into the root of the colocasia (Abd-Allatif, Relation
de VEgypte, trad, par Silvestre de Sacy, pp. 28 and 105).
* Compare, on this epoch, Wilhelm von Humboldt's work, Ueber
die Kawi-Sproxlie und die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Spracli-
baues, bd. i. s. ccl. and ccliv; Droysen, Gesch. Alexanders des Gr., s.
547; and Hellenist. Staatensystem, s. 24.
iv. 130.
f Dante, Inf.,
Compare Cuvier's assertions in the Biographic universelle, t. ii.
1811, p. 458 (and unfortunately again repeated in the edition of 1843, t.
ii. p. 219), Avith Stahr's Aristotelia,
th. i. s. 15 and 108.
Cuvier, when he was engaged on the Life of Aristotle, inclined to