ou gar esti touto mythos, all’ esti kata taen alaetheian], this he leaves wholly out, without giving us his reason for it, if he had any:  And Scaliger’s[B] insinuation in his Comment, viz.  Negat esse fabulam de his (sc.  Pygmeis) Herodotus, at Philosophus semper moderatus & prudens etiam addidit, [Greek:  hosper legetai], is not to be allowed.  Nor can I assent to Sir Thomas Brown’s[C] remark upon this place; Where indeed (saith he) Aristotle plays the Aristotle; that is, the wary and evading asserter; for tho’ with non est fabula he seems at first to confirm it, yet at last he claps in, sicut aiunt, and shakes the belief he placed before upon it.  And therefore Scaliger (saith he) hath not translated the first, perhaps supposing it surreptitious, or unworthy so great an Assertor. But had Scaliger known it to be surreptitious, no doubt but he would have remarked it; and then there had been some Colour for the Gloss.  But ’tis unworthy to be believed of Aristotle, who was so wary and cautious, that he should in so short a passage, contradict himself:  and after he had so positively affirmed the Truth of it, presently doubt it.  His [Greek:  hosper legetai] therefore must have a Reference to what follows, Pusillum genus, ut aiunt, ipsi atque etiam Equi, as Scaliger himself translates it.

[Footnote A:  Bocharti Hierozoic.  S. de Animalib.  S. Script. part.  Posterior. lib. 1. cap. 11. p.m. 76.]

[Footnote B:  Scaliger.  Comment. in Arist.  Hist.  Animal. lib. 8. p.m. 914.]

[Footnote C:  Sir Thomas Brown’s Pseudodoxia, or, Enquiries into Vulgar Errors, lib. 4. cap. 11.]

I do not here find Aristotle asserting or confirming any thing of the fabulous Narrations that had been made about the Pygmies.  He does not say that they were [Greek:  andres], or [Greek:  anthropoi mikroi], or [Greek:  melanes]; he only calls them [Greek:  pygmaioi].  And discoursing of the Pygmies in a place, where he is only treating about Brutes, ’tis reasonable to think, that he looked upon them only as such. This is the place where the Pygmies are; this is no fable, saith Aristotle, as ’tis that they are a Dwarfish Race of Men; that they speak the Indian Language; that they are excellent Archers; that they are very Just; and abundance of other Things that are fabulously reported of them; and because he thought them Fables, he does not take the least notice of them, but only saith, This is no Fable, but a Truth, that about the Lakes of Nile such Animals, as are called Pygmies, do live.  And, as if he had foreseen, that the abundance of Fables that Ctesias (whom he saith is not to be believed) and the Indian Historians had invented about them, would make the whole Story to appear as a Figment, and render it doubtful, whether there were ever such Creatures as Pygmies in Nature; he more zealously asserts the Being of them, and assures us, That this is no Fable, but a Truth.