[128] c. iii.
In the next Book, (from which are taken the principal passages in which his modern commentators detect his system,) he proceeds to compare the differences of parts in different animals, according to the order which he had observed in man. In the first chapter he speaks [414] of the head and neck of animals; in the second, of the parts analogous to arms and hands; in the third, of the breast and paps, and so on; and thus he comes, in the seventh chapter, to the legs, feet, and toes: and in the eleventh, to the teeth, and so to other parts.
The construction of a classification consists in the selection of certain parts, as those which shall eminently and peculiarly determine the place of each species in our arrangement. It is clear, therefore, that such an enumeration of differences as we have described, supposing it complete, contains the materials of all possible classifications. But we can with no more propriety say that the author of such an enumeration of differences is the author of any classification which can be made by means of them, than we can say that a man who writes down the whole alphabet writes down the solution of a given riddle or the answer to a particular question.
Yet it is on no other ground than this enumeration, so far as I can discover, that Aristotle’s “System” has been so decidedly spoken of,[129] and exhibited in the most formal tabular shape. The authors of this Systema Aristotelicum, have selected, I presume, the following passages from the work On Animals, as they might have selected any other; and by arranging them according to a subordination unknown to Aristotle himself have made for him a scheme which undoubtedly bears a great resemblance to the most complete systems of modern times.
[129] Linnæan Transactions, vol. xvi. p. 24.
Book I., chap. v.—“Some animals are viviparous, some oviparous, some vermiparous. The viviparous are such as man, and the horse, and all those animals which have hair; and of aquatic animals, the whale kind, as the dolphin and cartilaginous fishes.”
Book II., chap. vii.—“Of quadrupeds which have blood and are viviparous, some are (as to their extremities,) many-cloven, as the hands and feet of man. For some are many-toed, as the lion, the dog, the panther; some are bifid, and have hoofs instead of nails, as the sheep, the goat, the elephant, the hippopotamus; and some have undivided feet, as the solid-hoofed animals, the horse and ass. The swine kind share both characters.”
Chap. ii.—“Animals have also great differences in the teeth, both when compared with each other and with man. For all quadrupeds which have blood and are viviparous, have teeth. And in the first place, some are ambidental,[130] (having teeth in both jaws;) and some [415] are not so, wanting the front teeth in the upper jaw. Some have neither front teeth nor horns, as the camel; some have tusks,[131] as the boar, some have not. Some have serrated[132] teeth, as the lion, the panther, the dog; some have the teeth unvaried,[133] as the horse and the ox; for the animals which vary their cutting-teeth have all serrated teeth. No animal has both tusks and horns; nor has any animal with serrated teeth either of those weapons. The greater part have the front teeth cutting, and those within broad.”
[130] Ἀμφόδοντα.
[131] Χαυλιόδοντα.