as it is, comprises many of the dogmata, of an otherwise enlightened age, upon the more abstruse topics of natural philosophy and physiology.
It is scarcely necessary to observe, that several versions of this Treatise are extant, but as they have been written under an impression that its design is rather psychological than physiological, this misapprehension has tended to vitiate, or render unintelligible what otherwise, as literary productions, might have done justice to the original. Some of the translators, besides, seem to have been but imperfectly acquainted with physiology, and this want of preliminary knowledge has sometimes led to a misapprehension of the text, and sometimes to an inadequate appreciation of what could be only suggestive. Thus, the causes which have contributed to make the text abstruse, and even in places unintelligible, have concurred in making the translations obscure, and occasionally incomprehensible; for besides indications of imperfect anatomical knowledge, the arguments in the Treatise can be regarded but as suggestions, and be elucidated only by reference to the more matured science of modern times. It cannot derogate from what is due to Aristotle, to admit that physiology, in his age, was not only encumbered with the hypotheses of earlier schools, but also dwarfed and distorted by imperfect acquaintance with those systems and organs of the living body, which
