The word “Biology” is perhaps only about fifty years old, having first come into prominent use in the ‘Positive Philosophy’ of Auguste Comte. It is now quite naturalised in the vocabulary of science; and there is an article on “Biology,” by Professor Huxley, in the recently published edition of the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ which begins, “The Biological sciences are those which deal with the phenomena manifested by living matter.” Yet still, in the eyes of a scholar this modern compound is an unfortunate one. The Greeks had two words for life, Zöé and Bios: the former expressed life viewed from the inside, as it were—the vital principle, the functions of life, the sense of living; the latter expressed the external form and manner of living, such as a man’s profession or career. Zöé was applicable to the whole animated kingdom; Bios was restricted to man, except so far as, half-metaphorically, it was applied to the habits of beasts or birds. Thus Aristotle divided Zöé into the species “vegetable,” “animal,” and “human;” but Bios into the species “life of pleasure,” “life of ambition,” and “life of ​thought." From all this, it will be seen that "Biology" could not be used to denote a science of the phenomena of living matter in general, without a sacrifice of ancient Greek associations. "Biology," in short, is more appropriate to express what we generally call Sociology; and, on the other hand, "Zoölogy" should have been used to express what is now called "Biology." But the fact was, that the word "Zoölogy" (derived from Zöon, an animal, not from Zöé, life) had been already appropriated as a name for natural history. Hence, without regard to classical propriety, the word "Biology" was forced into service to meet a want, and to express, what had never been expressed before, the science of life in all its manifestations from the lowest ascidian up to the highest development of humanity, so far as that development can be considered to be a natural evolution out of the physiological laws of life.

Aristotle had no word to express this comprehensive idea, but assuredly he had the idea itself. He regards the whole of nature as a continuous chain, even beginning with inorganic substances and passing by imperceptible gradations on to organisms, to the vegetable, and to the zoophyte, and then to the animal and the various ranks in the animal kingdom, and lastly to man ('Researches about Animals,' VIII. i. 4), "whose soul in childhood, you might say, differs not from the soul of the lower animals." This broad comprehensive sweep of the philosophic eye through the realms of nature, this finding of unity in such endless diversity, this tracing of a continuous thread throughout the ascending scale of life, may seem quite a matter of ​Page:Aristotle (Grant).djvu/158 ​Page:Aristotle (Grant).djvu/159 ​Page:Aristotle (Grant).djvu/160 ​Page:Aristotle (Grant).djvu/161 ​Page:Aristotle (Grant).djvu/162 ​Page:Aristotle (Grant).djvu/163 ​Page:Aristotle (Grant).djvu/164 ​Page:Aristotle (Grant).djvu/165 ​Page:Aristotle (Grant).djvu/166 ​Page:Aristotle (Grant).djvu/167 ​Page:Aristotle (Grant).djvu/168 ​Page:Aristotle (Grant).djvu/169 ​MSS had been carried off to Asia Minor. It has been conjectured that the Septuagint translators, in rendering the Hebrew word arnebeth, or "hare," by the Greek word dasypus (hairy-foot), instead of by the word lagos, which had been usual in earlier classical Greek, were following a new fashion set by Aristotle in his 'Researches about Animals,' in which work "the modern word dasypus had almost entirely superseded the older."^[1] And it is added that "there was an even yet more striking example of Aristotle's influence on the passage" (Leviticus, xi. 6): for whereas in the original Hebrew text the hare was said to chew the cud, the translators, having been enlightened by the natural history of Aristotle, "boldly interpolated the word not into the sacred text." The facts of the case are—that Aristotle uses lagos for "hare" indifferently with, and nearly as often as, dasypus; and that in one passage ('An.,' III. xxi. 1) he cursorily contrasts the hare with the class of ruminants. On the whole, then, it seems most natural to believe that the Septuagint translators used the word dasypus because it had become the fashion in speaking Greek to use it, and that Aristotle himself had obeyed and not created this fashion. With regard to the other point, it is quite possible that the translators may have seen that passage of Aristotle's above referred to; at all events, as educated men, they were doubtless influenced by the spread of the study of natural history, to which Aristotle, who had died only thirty-seven years before, had given great impetus.