Copy 1

A preliminary discourse on the study of natural history / By William Swainson, esq.

  • Swainson, William, 1789-1855.
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A preliminary discourse on the study of natural history / By William Swainson, esq. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/476 (page 7)
    that such ideas are grounded upon partial consider- ations, and they are at once_refuted by such names as those of Newton and Bacon. Furthermore, it should be remembered that the most ordinary ob- server can readily distinguish a quadruped from a bird, a snake from a fish, and a vertebrated from a boneless animal. All these distinctions are obvious, and, therefore, known even to the vulgar. Nor does it require any great skill to express these differences inwords. The same may be said of those secondary divisions by which a beetle may be known from a butterfly, and these, again, from a bee. It is not so much, therefore, from having embodied facts like these into classic language that the philosopher of Stagyra derives his high fame; it rather reposes upon the peculiar tact with which he brought the rules of philosophic reasoning to bear upon a subject hitherto neglected,—upon the extent and depth of his personal researches,—upon the clear- ness with which he arranged his results,— and, above all, upon those obscure perceptions which he ac- quired, while so employed, of hidden truths, which were only to be developed in subsequent ages. Nor should that innate grandeur of his mind be forgotten, which led him, in an age of universal superstition, to discard from his work all those popular tales, and fancies, and beliefs, which were received by the mass of his countrymen as religious truths, sane: tioned by antiquity, interwoven in their history, and consecrated in their poetry. The death of this great father of our science was the death of natural history in the Grecian era. The splendour of his discoveries passed like a comet. He left no luminary B 4