10, 11, 13) that if time is externally (exoterically, ἐξωτερικῶς)
regarded, we are inevitably led to doubt (διαπορῆσαι) whether it has
any being whatever, or whether it has bare existence, as feeble (μόλις
καὶ ἀμυδρῶς) as if it were only a potentiality. “For one part of it
was and is not: another part will be and is not as yet; but of these
parts infinite and everlasting (ἀεὶ λαμβανόμενος), time is composed.
But it now appears that time, if composed of things that are not, may
be incapable of existence. And also as regards everything divisible, if
it exists, either some or all of its parts must be. Time is certainly
divisible; but some of the parts are past, others are future, and no
part is present. For the _now_ is no part, since a part has a measure,
and the whole must consist of the parts; but time does not appear to
consist of the Now.” That is to say, because the Now is indivisible,
it has no quantitative determination which could be measured. “Besides
it is not easy to decide whether the Now remains, or always becomes
another and another. Again, time is not a movement and change, for
movement and change occur in that which is moved and changed, or
accompany time in its course; but time is everywhere alike. Besides
change is swifter and slower, but time is not. But it is not without
change and motion” (which is just the moment of pure negativity in the
same) “for when we perceive no change, it appears as if no time had
elapsed, as in sleep. Time is hence in motion but not motion itself.”
Aristotle defines it thus: “We say that time is, when we perceive the
before and after in movement; but these are so distinguished that we
apprehend them to be another and another, and conceive that there
is something between, as a middle. Now when we understand that the
extremes of the conclusion are different from the middle, and the
soul says that the Now has two instants, the one prior and the other
posterior, then we say that this is time. What is determined through
the Now, we call time, and this is the fundamental principle. But when
we are sensible of the Now as one, and not as a prior and posterior in
motion, nor as the identity of an earlier or later, then there does
not appear to us to have been any time, because neither was there
any motion.” Tedium is thus ever the same. “Time is hence the number
of motion, according to priority and posteriority; it is not motion
itself, unless so far as motion has number. We judge of the more or
less through number, but of a greater or less motion by time. But we
call number that which can be numbered, as well as that with which
we number; but time is not the number with which we number, but that
which is numbered, and, like motion, always is changing. The Now is,
which is the unity of number, and it measures time. The whole of time
is the same, for the Now which was is the same” (universality as the
Now destroyed) “but in Being it is another. Time thus is through the
Now both continuous (συνεχής) and discrete (διῇρηται). It thereby
resembles the point, for that also is the continuity of the line and
its division, its principle and limit; but the Now is not an enduring
point. As continuity of time the Now connects the past and the future,
but it likewise divides time in capacity,” the Now is only divisibility
and the moments only ideal. “And in as far as it is such, it is always
another; but, in as far as it unites, it is ever one and the same.
Similarly, in as far as we divide the line, other and yet other points
always arise for thought; but in as far as it is one, there is only
one point. Thus the Now is both the division of time in capacity, and
the limit and union of both” _i.e._ of the prior and posterior. The
universally dividing point is only one as actual; but this actual is
not permanently one, but ever and again another, so that individuality
has universality, as its negativity, within it. “But division and
union are the same, and similarly related; however their Notion (τὸ
εἶναι)[95] is different.” In one and the same respect the absolute
opposite of what was posited is immediately set forth as existent; in
space, on the other hand, the moments are not set forth as existent,
but in it first appears this being and its motion and contradiction.
Thus the identity of the understanding is not a principle with
Aristotle, for identity and non-identity to him are one and the same.
Because the Now is only now, past and future are different from it,
but they are likewise necessarily connected in the Now, which is not
without before and after; thus they are in one, and the Now, as their
limit, is both their union and their division.
Aristotle (Phys. V. 1) then goes on to movement as realized in a thing,
to change (μεταβολή) or to the physical processes—while before we had
pure movement. “In movement there is first something which moves, also
something which is moved, and the time in which it is moved; besides
these, that from which, and that into which it is moved.” (Cf. _supra_,
p. 141.) “For all motion is from something and into something; but
there is a difference between that which is first moved and that into
which and from which it is moved, as, for instance, wood, warmth and
cold. The motion is in the wood and not in the form; for neither form
nor place, nor quantity moves or is moved, but” (in the order in which
they follow) “there is that which is moved and that which moves, and
that into which it is moved. That to which movement is made, more than
that out of which movement is made, is named change. Hence to pass
into non-being is also change, although what passes away is changed
from Being: and generation is a mutation into Being, even though it
is from non-being.” The remark is to be interpreted as meaning that
for the first time in real becoming motion, _i.e._ in change, the
relation _whereto_ enters, while the relation _wherefrom_ is that in
which change is still the mere ideal motion. Besides this first form of
difference between motion and change, Aristotle further gives another,
since he divides change into three: “into change from a subject (ἐξ
ὑποκειμένον) into a subject; or from a subject into a non-subject; or
from a non-subject into a subject.” The fourth, “from a non-subject
into a non-subject,” which may also appear in the general division, “is
no mutation, for it contains no opposition.” It may certainly be merely
thought or ideal, but Aristotle indicates the actual phenomenon. “The
mutation from a non-subject into a subject is generation (γένεσις);
that from a subject into a non-subject is corruption (φθορά); that
from a subject into a subject, is motion as such;” because that which
is transformed remains the same, there is no becoming-another of
the actual, but a merely formal becoming-another. This opposition of
the materialized motion as mutation, and of merely formal motion, is
noteworthy.
In the sixth book Aristotle comes to the consideration of the dialectic
of this motion and change as advanced by Zeno, that is, to the endless
divisibility which we have already (Vol. I. pp. 266-277) considered.
Aristotle solves it through the universal. He says that they are the
contradiction of the universal turned against itself; the unity in
which its moments dissolve is not a nothing, so that motion and change
are nothing, but a negative universal, where the negative is itself
again posited as positive, and that is the essence of divisibility.
Of the further details into which Aristotle enters, I shall only give
the following. As against atoms and their motion, he remarks (Phys.
VI. 10) that the indivisible has no motion and mutation, which is the
direct opposite of the proposition of Zeno that only simple indivisible
Being and no motion exists. For as Zeno argues from the indivisibility
of atoms against motion, Aristotle argues from motion against atoms.
“Everything which moves or changes is in the first division of this
time partly here and partly there. The atom, as simple indivisible
Being, can, however, not have any part of it in both points in space,
because it then would be divisible. The indivisible could thus only
move if time consisted of the Now; this is, however, impossible, as we
proved before.” Because atoms thus neither have change in themselves,
nor can this come to them from without through impulse, &c., they are
really without truth.
The determination of the pure ideality of change is important.
Aristotle says of this (Phys. VII. 3), “That which is changed is alone
the sensuous and perceptible (αἰσθητόν); and forms and figures, as also
capacities, are not changed, they arise and disappear in a thing only,
without being themselves changed.” In other words: the content of
change is unchangeable; change as such belongs to mere form. “Virtues
or vices belong, for example, to habits acquired. Virtue is the
perfection (τελείωσις) in which something has reached the end of its
nature. Vice, however, is the corruption and non-attainment of this.
They are not changes, for they only arise and pass away while another
alters.” Or the difference becomes a difference of Being and non-being,
_i.e._ a merely sensuous difference.
From these conceptions Aristotle now comes nearer to the first real
or physical motion (Phys. VIII. 6, 8, 9; De C\nlo, I. 4): The first
principle of motion is itself unmoved. An endless motion in a straight
line is an empty creation of thought; for motion is necessarily an
effort after something. The absolute motion is the circular, because
it is without opposition. For because movement has to be considered
in regard to the starting-place and the end in view, in the straight
movement the directions from A to B and from B to A are opposed, but
in motion in a circle they are the same. The idea that heavenly bodies
would of themselves have moved in a straight line, but that they
accidentally came into the sphere of solar attraction, is an empty
reflection which is far from occurring to Aristotle.
Aristotle then shows (De C\nlo, II. I; I. 3) that “the whole heavens
neither arose nor can pass away, for they are one and eternal: they
neither have beginning nor end in eternal time, for they contain
infinite time shut up within them.” All the other ideas are sensuous
which try to speak of essential reality, and in them there always
is that present which they think they have excluded. For when they
assert a vacuum before the beginning of generation, this is the
quiescent, self-identical, _i.e._ the eternal matter, which is thus
already established before origination; they will not allow that
before origination nothing exists. But in fact a thing does not exist
before its origination, _i.e._ in movement there is something to move,
and where reality is, there is motion. They do not, however, bring
together that vacuum, the self-identical, the un-originated matter
and this nothing. “That which has this absolute circular movement is
neither heavy nor light; for the heavy is what moves downwards, and the
light what moves upwards.” In modern physics the heavenly bodies, on
the other hand, are endowed with weight, and seek to rush into the sun,
but cannot do so on account of another force. “It is indestructible
and ungenerated, without decrease or increase, without any change. It
is different from earth, fire, air and water; it is what the ancients
called ether, as the highest place, from its continuous course (ἀεὶ
θεῖν) in infinite time.” This ether thus appears to be eternal matter
which does not, however, take such a definite form, but which remains
as it is, just as the heavens do in our conception, although here the
juxtaposition begins ever to strike us more forcibly.
Aristotle (De C\nlo, III. 6) shows further that the elements do
not proceed from one body, but from one another; for in generation
they neither proceed from what is incorporeal, nor from what is
corporeal. In the first case they would have sprung from the vacuum,
for the vacuum is the immediate incorporeal; but in that case the
vacuum must have existed independently as that in which determinate
corporeality arose. But neither do the elements arise from a corporeal,
for else this body itself would be a corporeal element before the
elements. Thus it only remains that the elements must spring from one
another. Regarding this we must remark that Aristotle understands by
origination, actual origination—not the transition from the universal
to the individual, but the origination of one determinate corporeal,
not from its principle, but from the opposite as such. Aristotle does
not consider the universal as it contains the negative within it; else
the universal would be the absolute matter whose universality, as
negativity, is set forth, or is real.
From this point Aristotle comes (De C\nlo, IV. I-5) to a kind of
deduction of the elements, which is noteworthy. He shows that there
must be four of them, in the following way—because he starts from the
fundamental conceptions of weight and of lightness, or what we should
call attraction and centrifugal force. The corporeal, he says, in its
motion is neither light nor heavy, and, indeed, it is not only relative
but also absolute. The relatively light and heavy is what, while equal
in volume, descends more slowly or quickly. Absolute lightness goes
up to the extremity of the heavens, absolute weight down into the
middle. These extremes are fire and earth. Between these there are
mediums, other than they, which relate to one another like them; and
these are air and water, the one of which has weight, and the other
lightness, but only relatively. For water is suspended under everything
except earth, and air over everything except fire. “Hence,” Aristotle
concludes, “there now are these four matters, but they are four in such
a way that they have one in common; more particularly, because they
arise out of one another, but exist as different.” Yet it is not the
ether that Aristotle designates as this common matter. We must in this
regard remark that however little these first determinations may be
exhaustive, Aristotle is still far further on than the moderns, since
he had not the conception of elements which prevails at the present
time, according to which the element is made to subsist as simple.
But any such simple determination of Being is an abstraction and has
no reality, because such existence would be capable of no motion and
change; the element must itself have reality, and it thus is, as the
union of opposites, resolvable. Aristotle hence makes the elements, as
we have already seen with those who went before (Vol. I., pp. 181, 182;
290-293; 336), arise out of one another and pass into one another; and
this is entirely opposed to our Physics, which understands by elements
an indelible, self-identical simplicity only. Hence men are wonderfully
discerning in reproaching us for calling water, air, &c., elements!
Nor yet in the expression “neutrality” have the modern physicists been
able to grasp a universality conceived of as a unity, such as Aristotle
ascribes to the elements; in fact, however, the acid which unites with
a base is no longer, as is asserted, present within it as such. But
however removed Aristotle may be from understanding simplicity as an
abstraction, just as little does he recognize here the arid conception
of consisting of parts. Quite the contrary. He strives enough against
this, as, for instance, in relation to Anaxagoras (De C\nl. III. 4).
I shall further mention the moments of the real process in relation
to motion, in which Aristotle finally passes on (De gen. et corr.
II. 2-4) to the “principles of perceptible body”; we here see the
elements in process, as formerly in their restful determinateness.
Aristotle excludes the relations which concern sight, smell, &c.,
and brings forward the others as being those which are of sensible
weight or lightness. He gives as these fundamental principles—warmth
and cold, dryness and moisture; they are the sensible differences for
others, while weight and lightness are different for themselves. Now
in order to prepare for the transition of the elements into sensible
relations, Aristotle says: “Because there are those four principles,
and four things have properly six relations to one another, but the
opposite cannot here be connected (the moist cannot be connected
with the dry, or the warm with the cold), there are four connections
of these principles, warm and dry, warm and moist, cold and moist,
cold and dry. And these connections follow those first elements, so
that thus fire is warm and dry, air warm and moist (vapour), water
cold and moist, earth cold and dry.” From this Aristotle now makes
the reciprocal transformation of the elements into one another
comprehensible thus: Origination and decay proceed from the opposite
and into the opposite. All elements have a mutual opposite; each is
as non-being to the Being of the other, and one is thus distinguished
from the other as actuality and capacity. Now amongst these some have
an equal part in common; fire and water, for example, have warmth;
thus if in fire dryness were overcome by moisture, out of fire air
would arise. On the contrary, as regards those which have nothing in
common with one another, like earth, which is cold and dry, and air,
which is warm and moist, the transition goes more slowly forward. The
transition of all elements into one another, the whole process of
nature, is thus to Aristotle the constant rotation of their changes.
This is unsatisfactory, because neither are the individual elements
comprehended nor is the remainder rounded into a whole.
As a matter of fact, Aristotle now goes on, in meteorology, to
the consideration of the universal process of nature. But here we
have reached his limits. Here, in the natural process, the simple
determination as such—this system of progressive determination—ceases
to hold good, and its whole interest is lost. For it is in the
real process that these determinate conceptions always lose their
signification again and become their opposite, and in it also this
contingent succession is forced together and united. In determining
time and motion, we certainly saw Aristotle himself uniting opposite
determinations; but movement, in its true determination, must take
space and time back into itself; it must represent itself as being
the unity of these its real moments and in them; that is, as the
realization of this ideal. But still more must the following moments,
moisture, warmth, &c., themselves come back under the conception of
process. But the sensuous manifestation here begins to obtain the upper
hand; for the empirical has the nature of the isolated form, which is
to fall out of relation. The empirical manifestation thus outstrips
thought, which merely continues everywhere to stamp it as its own,
but which has no longer power to permeate the manifestation, since it
withdraws out of the sphere of the ideal, while it is still in the
region of time, space and movement.
3. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND.
As regards the other side from the Philosophy of Nature, the Philosophy
of Mind, we find that Aristotle has constituted in it also a separation
into special sciences, in a series of works which I shall name. In
the first place, his three books “On the Soul” deal partly with the
abstract universal nature of the soul, though mainly in an antagonistic
spirit; and even more, and in a fashion both profound and speculative,
they deal with the soul’s essential nature—not with its Being, but
with the determinate manner and potentiality of its energy; for
this is to Aristotle the Being and essence of the soul. Thus there
are several different treatises, viz.: On Sense-perception and the
Sensible, On Memory and Recollection, On Sleeping and Waking, On
Dreams, On Divination (μαντική) through Dreams, besides a treatise on
Physiognomy; there is no empirical point of view or phenomenon, either
in the natural or the spiritual world, that Aristotle has considered
beneath his notice. With respect to the practical side, he in like
manner devotes his attention to man in his capacity of householder, in
a work on economics (οἰκονομικά); then he takes into his consideration
the individual human being, in a moral treatise (ἠθικά), which is
partly an inquiry into the highest good or the absolute end, and
partly a dissertation on special virtues. The manner of treatment is
almost invariably speculative, and sound understanding is displayed
throughout. Finally, in his Politics, he gives a representation of the
true constitution of a state and the different kinds of constitution,
which he deals with from the empirical point of view; and in his
Politics an account is given of the most important states, of which we
are, however, told very little.
a. PSYCHOLOGY.
In Aristotle’s teaching on this subject we must not expect to find
so-called metaphysics of the soul. For metaphysical handling such as
this really pre-supposes the soul as a thing, and asks, for example,
what sort of a thing it is, whether it is simple, and so on. Aristotle
did not busy his concrete, speculative mind with abstract questions
such as these, but, as already remarked, he deals rather with the
manner of the soul’s activity; and though this appears in a general way
as a series of progressive determinations which are not necessarily
blended into a whole, each determination is yet apprehended in its own
sphere with as much correctness as depth.
Aristotle (De Anima, I. 1) makes in the first place the general remark
that it appears as if the soul must, on the one hand, be regarded
in its freedom as independent and as separable from the body, since
in thinking it is independent; and, on the other hand, since in the
emotions it appears to be united with the body and not separate, it
must also be looked on as being inseparable from it; for the emotions
show themselves as materialized Notions (λόγοι ἔνυλοι), as material
modes of what is spiritual. With this a twofold method of considering
the soul, also known to Aristotle, comes into play, namely the purely
rational or logical view, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the
physical or physiological; these we still see practised side by side.
According to the one view, anger, for instance, is looked on as an
eager desire for retaliation or the like; according to the other view
it is the surging upward of the heart-blood and the warm element in
man. The former is the rational, the latter the material view of anger;
just as one man may define a house as a shelter against wind, rain, and
other destructive agencies, while another defines it as consisting of
wood and stone; that is to say, the former gives the determination and
the form, or the purpose of the thing, while the latter specifies the
material it is made of, and its necessary conditions.
Aristotle characterizes the nature of the soul more closely (De Anima,
II. 1) by referring to the three moments of existence: “First there
is matter (ὕλη), which is in itself no individual thing; secondly,
the form and the universal (μορφὴ καὶ εἶδος), which give a thing
individuality; thirdly, the result produced by both, in which matter
is potentiality and form is energy (ἐντελέχεια);” matter thus does
not exist as matter, but only implicitly. “The soul is substance,
as being the form of the physical organic body which is possessed
potentially of life; but its substance is energy (ἐντελέχεια), the
energy of a body such as has been described” (endowed with life). “This
energy appears in twofold form: either as knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) or as
active observation (τὸ θεωρεῖν). But it is evident that here it is to
be regarded as the former of these. For the soul is present with us
both when we sleep and when we wake; waking corresponds with active
observation, and sleep with possession and passivity. But knowledge is
in origination prior to all else. The soul is thus the first energy of
a physical but organic body.” It is in respect of this that Aristotle
gives to the soul the definition of being the entelechy (_supra_, pp.
143, 144).