CHARACTERISTICS OF ARISTOTLE.
I.
Within the last twelve years several books, both large and small, have
appeared, dealing either with the philosophy of Aristotle as a whole,
or with the general principles on which it is constructed. The Berlin
edition of Aristotle’s collected works was supplemented in 1870 by
the publication of a magnificent index, filling nearly nine hundred
quarto pages, for which we have to thank the learning and industry of
Bonitz.[161] Then came the unfinished treatise of George Grote, planned
on so vast a scale that it would, if completely carried out, have
rivalled the author’s _History of Greece_ in bulk, and perhaps exceeded
the authentic remains of the Stagirite himself. As it is, we have a
full account, expository and critical, of the _Organon_, a chapter on
the _De Animâ_, and some fragments on other Aristotelian writings, all
marked by Grote’s wonderful sagacity and good sense. In 1879 a new and
greatly enlarged edition brought that portion of Zeller’s work on Greek
Philosophy which deals with Aristotle and the Peripatetics[162] fully
up to the level of its companion volumes; and we are glad to see that,
like them, it is shortly to appear in an English dress. The older work
of Brandis[163] goes over the same ground, and, though much behind the
present state of knowledge, may still be consulted with advantage, on
account of its copious and clear analyses of the Aristotelian texts.
Together with these ponderous tomes, we have to mention the little
work of Sir Alexander Grant,[164] which, although intended primarily
for the unlearned, is a real contribution to Aristotelian scholarship,
and, probably as such, received the honours of a German translation
almost immediately after its first publication. Mr. Edwin Wallace’s
_Outlines of the Philosophy of Aristotle_[165] is of a different
and much less popular character. Originally designed for the use of
the author’s own pupils, it does for Aristotle’s entire system what
Trendelenburg has done for his logic, and Ritter and Preller for all
Greek philosophy—that is to say, it brings together the most important
texts, and accompanies them with a remarkably lucid and interesting
interpretation. Finally we have M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire’s
Introduction to his translation of Aristotle’s _Metaphysics_,
republished in a pocket volume.[166] We can safely recommend it to
those who wish to acquire a knowledge of the subject with the least
possible expenditure of trouble. The style is delightfully simple,
and that the author should write from the standpoint of the French
spiritualistic school is not altogether a disadvantage, for that school
is partly of Aristotelian origin, and its adherents are, therefore,
most likely to reproduce the master’s theories with sympathetic
appreciation.
In view of such extensive labours, we might almost imagine ourselves
transported back to the times when Chaucer could describe a student as
being made perfectly happy by having
‘At his beddes hed
Twenty bookes clothed in blake or red
Of Aristotle and his philosophie.’
It seems as if we were witnessing a revival of Mediaevalism under
another form; as if, after neo-Gothic architecture, pre-Raphaelitism,
and ritualism, we were threatened with a return to the scholastic
philosophy which the great scientific reformers of the seventeenth
century were supposed to have irrevocably destroyed. And, however
chimerical may seem the hopes of such a restoration, we are bound
to admit that they do actually exist. One of the most cultivated
champions of Ultramontanism in this country, Prof. St. George Mivart,
not long ago informed us, at the close of his work on _Contemporary
Evolution_, that, ‘if metaphysics are possible, there is not, and never
was or will be, more than one philosophy which, properly understood,
unites all truths and eliminates all errors—_the_ Philosophy of _the_
Philosopher—Aristotle.’ It may be mentioned also, as a symptom of
the same movement, that Leo XIII. has recently directed the works
of St. Thomas Aquinas to be reprinted for use in Catholic colleges;
having, according to the newspapers, laid aside 300,000 _lire_ for
that purpose—a large sum, considering his present necessities; but
not too much for the republication of eighteen folio volumes. Now, it
is well known that the philosophy of Aquinas is simply the philosophy
of Aristotle, with such omissions and modifications as were necessary
in order to piece it on to Christian theology. Hence, in giving his
sanction to the teaching of the Angelic Doctor, Leo XIII. indirectly
gives it to the source from which so much of that teaching is derived.
It may, perhaps, be considered natural that obsolete authorities
should command the assent of a Church whose boast is to maintain
the traditions of eighteen centuries intact. But the Aristotelian
reaction extends to some who stand altogether aloof from Catholicism.
M. Saint-Hilaire speaks in his preface of theology with dislike and
suspicion; he has recently held office in a bitterly anti-clerical
Government; yet his acceptance of Aristotle’s metaphysics is almost
unreserved. The same tone is common to all official teaching in
France; and any departure from the strict Peripatetic standard has to
be apologised for as if it were a dangerous heresy. On turning to our
own country, we find, indeed, a marked change since the time when,
according to Mr. Matthew Arnold, Oxford tutors regarded the _Ethics_
as absolutely infallible. The great place given to Plato in public
instruction, and the rapidly increasing ascendency of evolutionary
ideas, are at present enough to hold any rival authority in check;
still, not only are the once neglected portions of Aristotle’s
system beginning to attract fresh attention—which is an altogether
commendable movement—but we also find the eminent Oxford teacher,
whose work on the subject has been already referred to, expressing
himself as follows:—
We are still anxious to know whether our perception of a real world
comes to us by an exercise of thought, or by a simple impression of
sense—whether it is the universal that gives the individual reality,
or the individual that shapes itself, by some process not explained,
into a universal—whether bodily movements are the causal antecedents
of mental functions, or mind rather the reality which gives truth
to body—whether the highest life is a life of thought or a life of
action—whether intellectual also involves moral progress—whether
the state is a mere combination for the preservation of goods and
property, or a moral organism developing the idea of right. And
about these and such like questions Aristotle has still much to tell
us.... His theory of a creative reason, fragmentary as that theory is
left, is the answer to all materialistic theories of the universe.
To Aristotle, as to a subtle Scottish preacher [Principal Caird]
‘the real pre-supposition of all knowledge, or the thought which is
the _prius_ of all things, is not the individual’s consciousness of
himself as individual, but a thought or self-consciousness which is
beyond all individual selves, which is the unity of all individual
selves and their objects, of all thinkers and all objects of all
thought.’[167]
Our critics are not content with bringing up Aristotle as an authority
on the metaphysical controversies of the present day, and reading into
him theories of which he never dreamed: they proceed to credit him
with modern opinions which he would have emphatically repudiated, and
modern methods which directly reverse his scientific teaching. Thus
Sir A. Grant takes advantage of an ambiguity in the word Matter, as
used respectively by Aristotle and by contemporary writers, to claim
his support for the peculiar theories of Prof. Ferrier; although the
Stagirite has recorded his belief in the reality and independence of
material objects (if not of what he called matter) with a positiveness
which one would have thought left no possibility of misunderstanding
him.[168] And Mr. Wallace says that Aristotle ‘recognises the genesis
of things by evolution and development;’ a statement which, standing
where it does, and with no more qualifications than are added to it,
would make any reader not versed in the subject think of the Stagirite
rather as a forerunner of Mr. Darwin and Mr. Herbert Spencer, than as
the intellectual ancestor of their opponents; while, on a subsequent
occasion, he quotes a passage about the variations of plants under
domestication, from a work considered to be un-Aristotelian by the best
critics, apparently with no other object than that of finding a piece
of Darwinism in his author.[169]
In Germany, Neo-Aristotelianism has already lived out the appointed
term of all such movements; having, we believe, been brought into
fashion by Trendelenburg about forty years ago. Since then, the
Aristotelian system in all its branches has been studied with such
profound scholarship that any illusions respecting its value for our
present needs must, by this time, have been completely dissipated;
while the Hegelian dialectic, which it was originally intended to
combat, no longer requires a counterbalance, having been entirely
driven from German university teaching. Moreover, Lange’s famous
_History of Materialism_ has dealt a staggering blow to the reputation
of Aristotle, not merely in itself, but relatively to the services of
early Greek thought; although Lange goes too far into the opposite
extreme when exalting Democritus at his expense.[170] We have to
complain, however, that Zeller and other historians of Greek philosophy
start with an invariable prejudice in favour of the later speculators
as against the earlier, and especially in favour of Aristotle as
against all his predecessors, even Plato included, which leads them
to slur over his weak points, and to bring out his excellencies into
disproportionate relief.[171]
It is evident, then, that Aristotle cannot be approached with the same
perfect dispassionateness as the other great thinkers of antiquity.
He is, if not a living force, still a force which must be reckoned
with in contemporary controversy. His admirers persist in making an
authority of him, or at least of quoting him in behalf of their own
favourite convictions. We are, therefore, bound to sift his claims
with a severity which would not be altogether gracious in a purely
historical review. At the same time it is hoped that historical justice
will not lose, but gain, by such a procedure. We shall be the better
able to understand what Aristotle was, after first showing what he
neither was nor could be. And the utility of our investigations will be
still further enhanced if we can show that he represents a fixed type
regularly recurring in the revolutions of thought.
II.
Personally, we know more about Aristotle than about any other Greek
philosopher of the classic period; but what we know does not amount
to much. It is little more than the skeleton of a life, a bald
enumeration of names and dates and places, with a few more or less
doubtful anecdotes interspersed. These we shall now relate, together
with whatever inferences the facts seem to warrant. Aristotle was born
384 B.C., at Stageira, a Greek colony in Thrace. It is remarkable
that every single Greek thinker of note, Socrates and Plato alone
excepted, came from the confines of Hellenedom and barbarism. It has
been conjectured by Auguste Comte, we know not with how much reason,
that religious traditions were weaker in the colonies than in the
parent states, and thus allowed freer play to independent speculation.
Perhaps, also, the accumulation of wealth was more rapid, thus
affording greater leisure for thought; while the pettiness of political
life liberated a fund of intellectual energy, which in more powerful
communities might have been devoted to the service of the State. Left
an orphan in early youth, Aristotle was brought up by one Proxenus,
to whose son, Nicanor, he afterwards repaid the debt of gratitude. In
his eighteenth year he settled at Athens, and attended the school of
Plato until the death of that philosopher twenty years afterwards. It
is not clear whether the younger thinker was quite conscious of his
vast intellectual debt to the elder, and he continually emphasises
the points on which they differ; but personally his feeling towards
the master was one of deep reverence and affection. In some beautiful
lines, still extant, he speaks of ‘an altar of solemn friendship
dedicated to one of whom the bad should not speak even in praise;
who alone, or who first among mortals, proved by his own life and by
his system, that goodness and happiness go hand in hand;’ and it is
generally agreed that the reference can only be to Plato. Again, in
his _Ethics_, Aristotle expresses reluctance to criticise the ideal
theory, because it was held by dear friends of his own; adding the
memorable declaration, that to a philosopher truth should be dearer
still. What opinion Plato formed of his most illustrious pupil is less
certain. According to one tradition, he surnamed Aristotle the Nous of
his school. It could, indeed, hardly escape so penetrating an observer
that the omnivorous appetite for knowledge, which he regarded as most
especially characteristic of the philosophic temperament, possessed
this young learner to a degree never before paralleled among the
sons of men. He may, however, have considered that the Stagirite’s
method of acquiring knowledge was unfavourable to its fresh and vivid
apprehension. An expression has been preserved which can hardly be
other than genuine, so distinguished is it by that delicate mixture
of compliment and satire in which Plato particularly excelled. He is
said to have called Aristotle’s house the ‘house of the reader.’ The
author of the _Phaedrus_, himself a tolerably voluminous writer, was,
like Carlyle, not an admirer of literature. Probably it occurred to him
that a philosophical student, who had the privilege of listening to
his own lectures, might do better than shut himself up with a heap of
manuscripts, away from the human inspiration of social intercourse, and
the divine inspiration of solitary thought. We moderns have no reason
to regret a habit which has made Aristotle’s writings a storehouse
of ancient speculations; but from a scientific, no less than from an
artistic point of view, those works are overloaded with criticisms of
earlier opinions, some of them quite undeserving of serious discussion.
Philosophy was no sooner domiciled at Athens than its professors came
in for their full share of the scurrilous personalities which seem to
have formed the staple of conversation in that enlightened capital.
Aristotle, himself a trenchant and sometimes a bitterly scornful
controversialist, did not escape; and some of the censures passed on
him were, rightly or wrongly, attributed to Plato. The Stagirite, who
had been brought up at or near the Macedonian Court, and had inherited
considerable means, was, if report speaks truly, somewhat foppish in
his dress, and luxurious, if not dissipated in his habits. It would not
be surprising if one who was left his own master at so early an age had
at first exceeded the limits of that moderation which he afterwards
inculcated as the golden rule of morals; but the charge of extravagance
was such a stock accusation at Athens, where the continued influence of
country life seems to have bred a prejudice in favour of parsimony,
that it may be taken almost as an exoneration from graver imputations;
and, perhaps, an admonition from Plato, if any was needed, sufficed to
check his disciple’s ambition for figuring as a man of fashion.
We cannot tell to what extent the divergences which afterwards
made Plato and Aristotle pass for types of the most extreme
intellectual opposition were already manifested during their personal
intercourse.[172] The tradition is that the teacher compared his pupil
to a foal that kicks his mother after draining her dry. There is a
certain rough truth as well as rough wit about the remark; but the
author of the _Parmenides_ could hardly have been much affected by
criticisms on the ideal theory which he had himself reasoned out with
equal candour and acuteness; and if, as we sometimes feel tempted to
conjecture, those criticisms were first suggested to him by Aristotle
in conversation, it will be still more evident that they were received
without offence.[173]
In some respects, Aristotle began not only as a disciple but as
a champion of Platonism. On the popular side, that doctrine was
distinguished by its essentially religious character, and by its
opposition to the rhetorical training then in vogue. Now, Aristotle’s
dialogues, of which only a few fragments have been preserved, contained
elegant arguments in favour of a creative First Cause, and of human
immortality; although in the writings which embody his maturer views,
the first of these theories is considerably modified, and the second is
absolutely rejected. Further, we are informed that Aristotle expressed
himself in terms of rather violent contempt for Isocrates, the greatest
living professor of declamation; and opened an opposition school of
his own. This step has, curiously enough, been adduced as a further
proof of disagreement with Plato, who, it is said, objected to all
rhetorical teaching whatever. It seems to us that what he condemned
was rather the method and aim of the then fashionable rhetoric; and
a considerable portion of his _Phaedrus_ is devoted to proving how
much more effectually persuasion might be produced by the combined
application of dialectics and psychology to oratory. Now, this is
precisely what Aristotle afterwards attempted to work out in the
treatise on Rhetoric still preserved among his writings; and we may
safely assume that his earlier lectures at Athens were composed on the
same principle.
In 347 Plato died, leaving his nephew Speusippus to succeed him in the
headship of the Academy. Aristotle then left Athens, accompanied by
another Platonist, Xenocrates, a circumstance tending to prove that
his relations with the school continued to be of a cordial character.
The two settled in Atarneus, at the invitation of its tyrant Hermeias,
an old fellow-student from the Academy. Hermeias was a eunuch who
had risen from the position of a slave to that of vizier, and then,
after his master’s death, to the possession of supreme power. Three
years subsequently a still more abrupt turn of fortune brought his
adventurous career to a close. Like Polycrates, he was treacherously
seized and crucified by order of the Persian Government. Aristotle,
who had married Pythias, his deceased patron’s niece, fled with her
to Mitylênê. Always grateful, and singularly enthusiastic in his
attachments, he celebrated the memory of Hermeias in a manner which
gave great offence to the religious sentiment of Hellas, by dedicating
a statue to him at Delphi, and composing an elegy, still extant,
in which he compares the eunuch-despot to Heracles, the Dioscuri,
Achilles, and Ajax; and promises him immortality from the Muses in
honour of Xenian Zeus.
When we next hear of Aristotle he is at the Macedonian Court,[174]
acting as tutor to Alexander, the future conqueror of Asia, who
remained under his charge between the ages of thirteen and sixteen
years. The philosopher is more likely to have obtained this appointment
by Court interest—his father was Court-physician to Alexander’s
grandfather, Amyntas—than by his reputation, which could hardly have
been made until several years afterwards. Much has been made of a
connexion which, although it did not last very long, appeals strongly
to the imagination, and opens a large field for surmise. The greatest
speculative and the greatest practical genius of that age—some might
say of all ages—could not, one would think, come into such close
contact without leaving a deep impression on each other. Accordingly,
the philosopher is supposed to have prepared the hero for his future
destinies. Milton has told us how Aristotle ‘bred great Alexander to
subdue the world.’ Hegel tells us that this was done by giving him the
consciousness of himself, the full assurance of his own powers; for
which purpose, it seems, the infinite daring of thought was required;
and he observes that the result is a refutation of the silly talk about
the practical inutility of philosophy.[175] It would be unfortunate
if philosophy had no better testimonial to show for herself than the
character of Alexander. It is not the least merit of Grote’s History to
have brought out in full relief the savage traits by which his conduct
was marked from first to last. Arrogant, drunken, cruel, vindictive,
and grossly superstitious, he united the vices of a Highland chieftain
to the frenzy of an Oriental despot. No man ever stood further from
the gravity, the gentleness, the moderation—in a word, the Sôphrosynê
of a true Hellenic hero. The time came when Aristotle himself would
have run the most imminent personal risk had he been within the
tyrant’s immediate grasp. His nephew, Callisthenes, had incurred
deep displeasure by protesting against the servile adulation, or
rather idolatry, which Alexander exacted from his attendants. A charge
of conspiracy was trumped up against him, and even the exculpatory
evidence, taken under torture, of his alleged accomplices did not save
him. ‘I will punish the sophist,’ wrote Alexander, ‘and those who sent
him out.’ It was understood that his old tutor was included in the
threat. Fortunately, as Grote observes, Aristotle was not at Ecbatana
but at Athens; he therefore escaped the fate of Callisthenes, who
suffered death in circumstances, according to some accounts, of great
atrocity.
Zeller finds several good qualities in Alexander—precocious
statesmanship, zeal for the extension of Hellenic civilisation,
long-continued self-restraint under almost irresistible temptation,
and through all his subsequent aberrations a nobility, a moral
purity, a humanity, and a culture, which raise him above every other
great conqueror; and these he attributes, in no small degree, to the
fostering care of Aristotle;[176] yet, with the exception of moral
purity, which was probably an affair of temperament, and has been
remarked to an equal extent in other men of the same general character,
he was surpassed, in all these respects, by Julius Caesar; while the
ruthless vindictiveness, which was his worst passion, exhibited itself
at the very beginning of his reign by the destruction of Thebes. A
varnish of literary culture he undoubtedly had, and for this Aristotle
may be thanked; but any ordinary sophist would probably have effected
as much. As to the Hellenising of Western Asia, this, according to
Grote, was the work, not of Alexander, but of the Diadochi after him.
The profit reaped by Aristotle from the connexion seems equally
doubtful. Tradition tells us that enormous sums of money were spent in
aid of his scientific researches, and a whole army of crown servants
deputed to collect information bearing on his zoological studies.
Modern explorations, however, have proved that the conquests of
Alexander, at least, did not, as has been pretended, supply him with
any new specimens; nor does the knowledge contained in his extant
treatises exceed what could be obtained either by his own observations
or by private enquiries. At the same time we may suppose that his
services were handsomely rewarded, and that his official position at
the Macedonian Court gave him numerous opportunities for conversing
with the grooms, huntsmen, shepherds, fishermen, and others, from whom
most of what he tells us about the habits of animals was learned. In
connexion with the favour enjoyed by Aristotle, it must be mentioned
as a fresh proof of his amiable character, that he obtained the
restoration of Stageira, which had been ruthlessly destroyed by Philip,
together with the other Greek cities of the Chalcidic peninsula.
Two passages in Aristotle’s writings have been supposed to give
evidence of his admiration for Alexander. One is the description of
the magnanimous man in the _Ethics_. The other is a reference in the
_Politics_ to an ideal hero, whose virtue raises him so high above the
common run of mortals that their duty is to obey him as if he were
a god. But the magnanimous man embodies a grave and stately type of
character quite unlike the chivalrous, impulsive theatrical nature of
Alexander,[177] while probably not unfrequent among real Hellenes; and
the god-like statesman of the _Politics_ is spoken of rather as an
unattainable ideal than as a contemporary fact. On the whole, then,
we must conclude that the intercourse between these two extraordinary
spirits has left no distinct trace on the actions of the one or on the
thoughts of the other.
On Alexander’s departure for the East, Aristotle returned to Athens,
where he now placed himself at the head of a new philosophical
school. The ensuing period of thirteen years was fully occupied by
the delivery of public lectures, and by the composition of those
encyclopaedic writings which will preserve his memory for ever, along,
perhaps, with many others which have not survived. Like Anaxagoras,
he was not allowed to end his days in the city of his adoption. His
youthful attacks on Isocrates had probably made him many enemies among
that rhetor’s pupils. It is supposed by Grote, but warmly disputed
by Zeller, that his trenchant criticisms on Plato had excited a
similar animosity among the sectaries of the Academy.[178] Anyhow,
circumstances had unavoidably associated him with the detested
Macedonian party, although his position, as a metic, or resident alien,
debarred him from taking any active part in politics. With Alexander’s
death the storm broke loose. A charge was trumped up against Aristotle,
on the strength of his unlucky poem in honour of Hermeias, which was
described as an insult to religion. That such an accusation should
be chosen is characteristic of Athenian bigotry, even should there
be no truth in the story that certain philosophical opinions of his
were likewise singled out for prosecution. Before the case came on
for trial, Aristotle availed himself of the usual privilege allowed
on such occasions, and withdrew to Chalcis, in order, as he said,
that the Athenians need not sin a second time against philosophy.
But his constitution, naturally a feeble one, was nearly worn out.
A year afterwards he succumbed to a stomach complaint, aggravated,
if not produced, by incessant mental application. His contemporary,
Demosthenes, perished about the same time, and at the same age,
sixty-two. Within little more than a twelvemonth the world had lost its
three greatest men; and after three centuries of uninterrupted glory,
Hellas was left unrepresented by a single individual of commanding
genius.
We are told that when his end began to approach, the dying philosopher
was pressed to choose a successor in the headship of the School.
The manner in which he did this is characteristic of his singular
gentleness and unwillingness to give offence. It was understood
that the choice must lie between his two most distinguished pupils,
Theophrastus of Lesbos, and Eudêmus of Rhodes. Aristotle asked for
specimens of the wine grown in those islands. He first essayed the
Rhodian vintage, and praised it highly, but remarked after tasting the
other, ‘The Lesbian is sweeter,’ thus revealing his preference for
Theophrastus, who accordingly reigned over the Lyceum in his stead.[179]
A document purporting to be Aristotle’s will has been preserved by
Diogenes Laertius, and although some objections to its authenticity
have been raised by Sir A. Grant, they have, in our opinion, been
successfully rebutted by Zeller.[180] The philosopher’s testamentary
dispositions give one more proof of his thoughtful consideration for
the welfare of those about him, and his devotion to the memory of
departed friends. Careful provision is made for the guardianship of his
youthful children, and for the comfort of his second wife, Herpyllis,
who, he says, had ‘been good to’ him. Certain slaves, specified by
name, are to be emancipated, and to receive legacies. None of the young
slaves who waited on him are to be sold, and on growing up they are to
be set free ‘if they deserve it.’ The bones of his first wife, Pythias,
are, as she herself desired, to be laid by his. Monuments are to be
erected in memory of his mother, and of certain friends, particularly
Proxenus, who had been Aristotle’s guardian, and his family.
In person Aristotle resembled the delicate student of modern times
rather than the athletic figures of his predecessors. He was not a
soldier like Socrates, nor a gymnast like Plato. To judge from several
allusions in his works, he put great faith in walking as a preservative
of health—even when lecturing he liked to pace up and down a shady
avenue. And, probably, a constitutional was the severest exercise that
he ever took. He spoke with a sort of lisp, and the expression of his
mouth is said to have been sarcastic; but the traits preserved to us
in marble tell only of meditation, and perhaps of pain. A free-spoken
and fearless critic, he was not over-sensitive on his own account.
When told that somebody had been abusing him in his absence, the
philosopher replied, ‘He may beat me, too, if he likes—in my absence.’
He might be abused, even in his own presence, without departing from
the same attitude of calm disdain, much to the disappointment of his
petulant assailants. His equanimity was but slightly disturbed by more
public and substantial affronts. When certain honorary distinctions,
conferred on him by a popular vote at Delphi, were withdrawn, probably
on the occasion of his flight from Athens, he remarked with his usual
studied moderation, that, while not entirely indifferent, he did not
feel very deeply concerned; a trait which illustrates the character of
the ‘magnanimous man’ far better than anything related of Alexander.
Two other sayings have an almost Christian tone; when asked how we
should treat our friends, he replied, ‘As we should wish them to treat
us;’ and on being reproached with wasting his bounty on an unworthy
object, he observed, ‘it was not the person, but the human being that I
pitied.’[181]
Still, taking it altogether, the life of Aristotle gives one the
impression of something rather desultory and dependent, not proudly
self-determined, like the lives of the thinkers who went before him.
We are reminded of the fresh starts and the appeals to authority so
frequent in his writings. He is first detained at Athens twenty years
by the attraction of Plato; and no sooner is Plato gone, than he falls
under the influence of an entirely different character—Hermeias. Even
when his services are no longer needed he lingers near the Macedonian
Court, until Alexander’s departure leaves him once more without a
patron. The most dignified period of his whole career is that during
which he presided over the Peripatetic School; but he owes this
position to foreign influence, and loses it with the temporary revival
of Greek liberty. A longer life would probably have seen him return to
Athens in the train of his last patron Antipater, whom, as it was, he
appointed executor to his will. This was just the sort of character
to lay great stress on the evidentiary value of sensation and popular
opinion. It was also the character of a conservative who was likely to
believe that things had always been very much what they were in his
time, and would continue to remain so ever afterwards. Aristotle was
not the man to imagine that the present order of nature had sprung out
of a widely different order in the remote past, nor to encourage such
speculations when they were offered to him by others. He would not
readily believe that phenomena, as he knew them, rested on a reality
which could neither be seen nor felt. Nor, finally, could he divine the
movements which were slowly undermining the society in which he lived,
still less construct an ideal polity for its reorganisation on a higher
and broader basis. And here we at once become conscious of the chief
difference separating him from his master, Plato.
III.
It is an often-quoted observation of Friedrich Schlegel’s that every
man is born either a Platonist or an Aristotelian. If we narrow the
remark to the only class which, perhaps, its author recognised as human
beings, namely, all thinking men, it will be found to contain a certain
amount of truth, though probably not what Schlegel intended; at any
rate something requiring to be supplemented by other truths before its
full meaning can be understood. The common opinion seems to be that
Plato was a transcendentalist, while Aristotle was an experientialist;
and that this constitutes the most typical distinction between them.
It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that the _à priori_ and _à
posteriori_ methods were marked off with such definiteness in Plato’s
time as to render possible a choice between them. The opposition was
not between general propositions and particular facts, but between
the most comprehensive and the most limited notions. It was as if
the question were now to be raised whether we should begin to teach
physiology by at once dividing the organic from the inorganic world,
or by directing the learner’s attention to some one vital act. Now,
we are expressly told that Plato hesitated between these two methods;
and in his Dialogues, at least, we find the easier and more popular
one employed by preference. It is true that he often appeals to wide
principles which do not rest on an adequate basis of experimental
evidence; but Aristotle does so also, more frequently even, and, as
the event proved, with more fatal injury to the advance of knowledge.
In his _Rhetoric_ he even goes beyond Plato, constructing the entire
art from the general principles of dialectics, psychology, and ethics,
without any reference, except for the sake of illustration, to existing
models of eloquence.
According to Sir A. Grant, it is by the mystical and poetical side
of his nature that Plato differs from Aristotle. The one ‘aspired
to a truth above the truth of scientific knowledge’; the other to
‘methodised experience and the definite.’[182] Now, setting aside the
question whether there is any truth above the truth of scientific
knowledge, we doubt very much whether Plato believed in its existence.
He held that the most valuable truth was that which could be imparted
to others by a process even more rigorous than mathematical reasoning;
and there was no reality, however transcendent, that he did not hope to
bring within the grasp of a dialectic without which even the meanest
could not be understood. He did, indeed, believe that, so far, the
best and wisest of mankind had owed much more to a divinely implanted
instinct than to any conscious chain of reflection; but he distinctly
asserted the inferiority of such guidance to the light of scientific
knowledge, if this could be obtained, as he hoped that it could. On the
other hand, Aristotle was probably superior to Plato as a poet; and in
speaking about the highest realities he uses language which, though
less rich and ornate than his master’s, is not inferior to it in force
and fervour; while his metaphysical theories contain a large element of
what would now be considered mysticism, that is, he often sees evidence
of purpose and animation where they do not really exist. His advantage
in definiteness is, of course, indisputable, but this was, perhaps,
because he came after Plato and profited by his lessons.
Yet there _was_ a difference between them, marking off each as the
head of a whole School much wider than the Academy or the Lyceum;
a difference which we can best express by saying that Plato was
pre-eminently a practical, Aristotle pre-eminently a speculative
genius. The object of the one was to reorganise all human life, that
of the other to reorganise all human knowledge. Had the one lived
earlier, he would more probably have been a great statesman or a great
general than a great writer; the other would at no time have been
anything but a philosopher, a mathematician, or a historian. Even
from birth they seemed to be respectively marked out for an active
and for a contemplative life: the one, a citizen of the foremost
State in Hellas, sprung from a family in which political ambition was
hereditary, himself strong, beautiful, fascinating, eloquent, and
gifted with the keenest insight into men’s capacities and motives;
the other a Stagirite and an Asclepiad, that is to say, without
opportunities for a public career, and possessing a hereditary aptitude
for anatomy and natural history, fitted by his insignificant person
and delicate constitution for sedentary pursuits, and better able to
acquire a knowledge even of human nature from books than from a living
converse with men and affairs. Of course, we are not for a moment
denying to Plato a foremost place among the masters of those who
know; he embraced all the science of his age, and to a great extent
marked out the course which the science of future ages was to pursue;
nevertheless, for him, knowledge was not so much an end in itself as a
means for the attainment of other ends, among which the preservation
of the State seems to have been, in his eyes, the most important.[M]
Aristotle, on the other hand, after declaring happiness to be the
supreme end, defines it as an energising of man’s highest nature, which
again he identifies with the reasoning process or cognition in its
purest form.
The same fundamental difference comes out strongly in their respective
theologies. Plato starts with the conception that God is good, and
being good wishes everything to resemble himself; an assumption from
which the divine origin and providential government of the world
are deduced. Aristotle thinks of God as exclusively occupied in
self-contemplation, and only acting on Nature through the love which
his perfection inspires. If, further, we consider in what relation the
two philosophies stand to ethics, we shall find that, to Plato, its
problems were the most pressing of any, that they haunted him through
his whole life, and that he made contributions of extraordinary value
towards their solution; while to Aristotle, it was merely a branch
of natural history, a study of the different types of character to
be met with in Greek society, without the faintest perception that
conduct required to be set on a wider and firmer basis than the
conventional standards of his age. Hence it is that, in reading Plato,
we are perpetually reminded of the controversies still raging among
ourselves. He gives us an exposition, to which nothing has ever been
added, of the theory now known as Egoistic Hedonism; he afterwards
abandons that theory, and passes on to the social side of conduct, the
necessity of justice, the relation of private to public interest, the
bearing of religion, education, and social institutions on morality,
along with other kindred topics, which need not be further specified,
as they have been discussed with sufficient fulness in the preceding
chapter. Aristotle, on the contrary, takes us back into old Greek life
as it was before the days of Socrates, noticing the theories of that
great reformer only that he may reject them in favour of a narrow,
common-sense standard. Virtuous conduct, he tells us, consists in
choosing a mean between two extremes. If we ask how the proper mean
is to be discovered, he refers us to a faculty called φρόνησις, or
practical reason; but on further enquiry it turns out that this faculty
is possessed by none who are not already virtuous. To the question,
How are men made moral? he answers, By acquiring moral habits; which
amounts to little more than a restatement of the problem, or, at any
rate, suggests another more difficult question—How are good habits
acquired?
An answer might conceivably have been supplied, had Aristotle been
enable to complete that sketch of an ideal State which was originally
intended to form part of his _Politics_. But the philosopher evidently
found that to do so was beyond his powers. If the seventh and eighth
books of that treatise, which contain the fragmentary attempt in
question, had originally occupied the place where they now stand in
our manuscripts, it might have been supposed that Aristotle’s labours
were interrupted by death. Modern criticism has shown, however, that
they should follow immediately after the first three books, and that
the author broke off, almost at the beginning of his ideal polity,
to take up the much more congenial task of analysing and criticising
the actually existing Hellenic constitutions. But the little that he
has done proves him to have been profoundly unfitted for the task of
a practical reformer. What few actual recommendations it contains
are a compromise—somewhat in the spirit of Plato’s _Laws_—between
the _Republic_ and real life. The rest is what he never fails to
give us—a mass of details about matters of fact, and a summary of
his speculative ethics, along with counsels of moderation in the
spirit of his practical ethics; but not one practical principle of
any value, not one remark to show that he understood what direction
history was taking, or that he had mastered the elements of social
reform as set forth in Plato’s works. The progressive specialisation
of political functions; the necessity of a spiritual power; the
formation of a trained standing army; the admission of women to public
employments; the elevation of the whole race by artificial selection;
the radical reform of religion; the reconstitution of education,
both literary and scientific, the redistribution of property; the
enactment of a new code; the use of public opinion as an instrument of
moralisation;—these are the ideas which still agitate the minds of
men, and they are also the ideas of the _Republic_, the _Statesman_,
and the _Laws_. Aristotle, on the other hand, occupies himself
chiefly with discussing how far a city should be built from the sea,
whether it should be fortified; how its citizens should _not_ be
employed; when people should _not_ marry; what children should _not_
be permitted to see; and what music they should _not_ be taught. Apart
from his enthusiasm for philosophy, there is nothing generous, nothing
large-minded, nothing inspiring. The territory of the city is to be
self-sufficing, that it may be isolated from other States; the citizens
are to keep aloof from all industrial occupations; science is put out
of relation to the material well-being of mankind. It was, in short, to
be a city where every gentleman should hold an idle fellowship; a city
where Aristotle could live without molestation, and in the enjoyment of
congenial friendships; just as the God of his system was a still higher
Aristotle, perpetually engaged in the study of formal logic.
Even in his much-admired criticisms on the actually existing types of
government our philosopher shows practical weakness and vacillation
of character. There is a good word for them all—for monarchy, for
aristocracy, for middle-class rule, and even for pure democracy.[183]
The fifth book, treating of political revolutions, is unquestionably
the ablest and most interesting in the whole work; but when
Aristotle quits the domain of natural history for that of practical
suggestions, with a view to obviate the dangers pointed out, he can
think of nothing better than the old advice—to be moderate, even
where the constitutions which moderation is to preserve are by their
very nature so excessive that their readjustment and equilibration
would be equivalent to their destruction. And in fact, Aristotle’s
proposals amount to this—that government by the middle class should
be established wherever the ideal aristocracy of education is
impracticable; or else a government in which the class interests of
rich and poor should be so nicely balanced as to obviate the danger of
oligarchic or democratic injustice. His error lay in not perceiving
that the only possible means of securing such a happy mean was to break
through the narrow circle of Greek city life; to continue the process
which had united families into villages, and villages into towns; to
confederate groups of cities into larger states; and so, by striking
an average of different inequalities, to minimise the risk of those
incessant revolutions which had hitherto secured the temporary triumph
of alternate factions at the expense of their common interest. And, in
fact, the spontaneous process of aggregation, which Aristotle did not
foresee, has alone sufficed to remedy the evils which he saw, but could
not devise any effectual means of curing, and at the same time has bred
new evils of which his diagnosis naturally took no account.
But, if this be so, it follows that Mr. Edwin Wallace’s appeal to
Aristotle as an authority worth consulting on our present social
difficulties cannot be upheld. Take the question quoted by Mr. Wallace
himself: ‘Whether the State is a mere combination for the preservation
of goods and property, or a moral organism developing the idea of
right?’ Aristotle certainly held very strong opinions in favour of
State interference with education and private morality, if that is
what the second alternative implies; but does it follow that he would
agree with those who advocate a similar supervision at the present day?
By no means; because experience has shown that in enormous industrial
societies like ours, protection is attended with difficulties and
dangers which he could no more foresee than he could foresee the
discoveries on which our physical science is based. Or, returning for
a moment to ethics, let us take another of Mr. Wallace’s problems:
‘Whether intellectual also involves moral progress?’ What possible
light can be thrown on it by Aristotle’s exposure of the powerlessness
of right knowledge to make an individual virtuous, when writers like
Buckle have transferred the whole question from a particular to a
general ground; from the conduct of individuals to the conduct of men
acting in large masses, and over vast periods of time? Or, finally,
take the question which forms a point of junction between Aristotle’s
ethics and his politics: ‘Whether the highest life is a life of thought
or a life of action?’ Of what importance is his decision to us, who
attend far more to the social than to the individual consequences of
actions; who have learned to take into account the emotional element
of happiness, which Aristotle neglected; who are uninfluenced by his
appeal to the blissful theorising of gods in whom we do not believe;
for whom, finally, experience has altogether broken down the antithesis
between knowledge and practice, by showing that speculative ideas may
revolutionise the whole of life? Aristotle is an interesting historical
study; but we are as far beyond him in social as in physical science.
IV.
On turning to Aristotle’s _Rhetoric_ we find that, from a practical
point of view, his failure here is, if possible, still more complete.
This treatise contains, as we have already observed, an immense mass
of more or less valuable information on the subject of psychology,
ethics, and dialectic, but gives exceedingly little advice about the
very essence of rhetoric as an art, which is to say whatever you have
to say in the most telling manner, by the arrangement of topics and
arguments, by the use of illustrations, and by the choice of language;
and that little is to be found in the third book, the genuineness of
which is open to very grave suspicion. It may be doubted whether any
orator or critic of oratory was ever benefited in the slightest degree
by the study of Aristotle’s rules. His collections of scientific data
add nothing to our knowledge, but only throw common experience into
abstract formulas; and even as a body of memoranda they would be
useless, for no memory could contain them, or if any man could remember
them he would have intellect enough not to require them.[184] The
professional teachers whom Aristotle so heartily despised seem to have
followed a much more effectual method than his; they gave their pupils
ready-made speeches to analyse and learn by heart, rightly trusting to
the imitative instinct to do the rest. He compares them to a master who
should teach his apprentices how to make shoes by supplying them with
a great variety of ready-made pairs. But this would be a much better
plan than to give them an elaborate lecture on the anatomy of the foot,
with a full enumeration of its bones, muscles, tendons, nerves, and
blood-vessels, which is the most appropriate parallel to _his_ system
of instruction.
The _Poetics_ of Aristotle contains some hints on the subject of
composition which entitle it to be mentioned in the present connexion.
The deficiencies, even from a purely theoretical point of view, of
this work, once pronounced infallible, have at last become so obvious
that elaborate hypotheses have been constructed, according to which
the recension handed down to us is a mere mutilated extract from the
original treatise. Enough, however, remains to convince us that poetry
was not, any more than eloquence, a subject with which Aristotle was
fitted to cope. He begins by defining it, in common with all other
art, as an imitation. Here, we at once recognise the spirit of a
philosophy, the whole power and interest of which lay in knowledge;
and, in fact, he tells us that the love of art is derived from the
love of knowledge. But the truth seems to be that aesthetic enjoyment
is due to an ideal exercise of our faculties, among which the power
of perceiving identities is sometimes, though not always, included.
That the materials of which every artistic creation is composed are
taken from the world of our experience makes no difference; for it is
by the new forms in which they are arranged that we are interested,
not because we remember having met them in some natural combination
already. Aristotle could not help seeing that this was true in the
case of music at least; and he can only save his principle by treating
musical effects as representations of passions in the soul. To say,
however, that musical pleasure arises from a perception of resemblance
between certain sounds and the emotions with which they are associated,
would be an extremely forced interpretation; the pleasure is due
rather to a sympathetic participation in the emotion itself. And when
Aristotle goes on to tell us that the characters imitated in epic and
dramatic poetry may be either better or worse than in ordinary life, he
is obviously admitting other aesthetic motives not accounted for by his
general theory. If, on the other hand, we start with ideal energising
as the secret of aesthetic emotion, we can easily understand how an
imaginary exaltation of our faculties is yielded by the spectacle of
something either rising above, or falling below, the level on which we
stand. In the one case we become momentarily invested with the strength
put into action before our eyes; in the other, the consciousness of
our own superiority amounts to a fund of reserve power, which _not_
being put into action, is entirely available for ideal enjoyment.
And, if this be the correct view, it will follow that Aristotle was
quite wrong when he declared the plot to be more important than the
characters of a drama. The reason given for his preference is, even on
the principles of his own philosophy, a bad one. He says that there
can be plot without character-drawing, but never character-drawing
without plot. Yet he has taught us elsewhere that the human soul is of
more value than the physical organism on which its existence depends.
This very parallel suggests itself to him in his _Poetics_; but, by an
almost inconceivable misjudgment, it is the plot which he likens to the
soul of the piece, whereas in truth it should be compared to the body.
The practice and preference of his own time may have helped to mislead
him, for he argues (rather inconsistently, by the way) that plot must
be more indispensable, as young writers are able to construct good
stories before they are able to portray character; and more artistic,
as it was developed much later in the historical evolution of tragedy.
Fortunately for us, the Alexandrian critics were guided by other canons
of taste, or the structurally faulty pieces of Aeschylus might have
been neglected, and the ingeniously constructed pieces of Agathon
preserved in their place.
It is probable, however, that Aristotle’s partiality was determined
more by the systematising and analytical character of his own genius
than by the public opinion of his age; or rather, the same tendency was
at work in philosophy and in art at the same time, and the theories
of the one were unconsciously pre-adapted to the productions of the
other. In both there was a decay of penetration and of originality, of
life and of inspiration; in both a great development of whatever could
be obtained by technical proficiency; in both an extension of surface
at the expense of depth, a gain of fluency, and a loss of force. But
poetry lost far more than philosophy by the change; and so the works of
the one have perished while the works of the other have survived.
Modern literature offers abundant materials for testing Aristotle’s
theory, and the immense majority of critics have decided against
it. Even among fairly educated readers few would prefer Molière’s
_L’Étourdi_ to his _Misanthrope_, or Schiller’s _Maria Stuart_ to
Goethe’s _Faust_, or Lord Lytton’s _Lucretia_ to George Eliot’s
_Romola_, or Dickens’s _Tale of Two Cities_ to the same writer’s
_Nicholas Nickleby_, or his _Great Expectations_ to his _David
Copperfield_, although in each instance the work named first has the
better plot of the two.
Characters, then, are not introduced that they may perform actions;
but actions are represented for the sake of the characters who do
them, or who suffer by them. It is not so much a ghostly apparition
or a murder which interests us as the fact that the ghost appears to
Hamlet, and that the murder is committed by Macbeth. And the same is
true of the Greek drama, though not perhaps to the same extent. We may
care for Oedipus chiefly on account of his adventures; but we care
far more for what Prometheus or Clytemnestra, Antigone or Ajax, say
about themselves than for what they suffer or what they do. Thus, and
thus only, are we enabled to understand the tragic element in poetry,
the production of pleasure by the spectacle of pain. It is not the
satisfaction caused by seeing a skilful imitation of reality, for few
have witnessed such awful events in real life as on the stage; nor
is it pain, as such, which interests us, for the scenes of torture
exhibited in some Spanish and Bolognese paintings do not gratify,
they revolt and disgust an educated taste. The true tragic emotion
is produced, not by the suffering itself, but by the reaction of the
characters against it; for this gives, more than anything else, the
idea of a force with which we can synergise, because it is purely
mental; or by the helpless submission of the victims whom we wish to
assist because they are lovable, and whom we love still more from our
inability to assist them, through the transformation of arrested action
into feeling, accompanied by the enjoyment proper to tender emotion.
Hence the peculiar importance of the female parts in dramatic poetry.
Aristotle tells us that it is bad art to represent women as nobler and
braver than men, because they are not so in reality.[185] Nevertheless,
he should have noticed that on the tragic stage of Athens women first
competed with men, then equalled, and finally far surpassed them in
loftiness of character.[186] But with his philosophy he could not see
that, if heroines did not exist, it would be necessary to create them.
For, if women are conceived as reacting against outward circumstances
at all, their very helplessness will lead to the storing of a greater
mental tension in the shape of excited thought and feeling debarred
from any manifestation except in words; and it is exactly with this
mental tension that the spectator can most easily synergise. The
wrath of Orestes is not interesting, because it is entirely absorbed
into the premeditation and execution of his vengeance. The passion
of Electra is profoundly interesting, because it has no outlet but
impotent denunciations of her oppressors, and abortive schemes for her
deliverance from their yoke. Hence, also, Shakspeare produces some of
his greatest effects by placing his male characters, to some extent,
in the position of women, either through their natural weakness and
indecision, as with Hamlet, and Brutus, and Macbeth, or through the
paralysis of unproved suspicion, as with Othello; while the greatest
of all his heroines, Lady Macbeth, is so because she has the intellect
and will to frame resolutions of dauntless ambition, and eloquence to
force them on her husband, without either the physical or the moral
force to execute them herself. In all these cases it is the arrest of
an electric current which produces the most intense heat, or the most
brilliant illumination. Again, by their extreme sensitiveness, and by
the natural desire felt to help them, women excite more pity, which,
as we have said, means more love, than men; and this in the highest
degree when their sufferings are undeserved. We see, then, how wide
Aristotle went of the mark when he made it a rule that the sufferings
of tragic characters should be partly brought on by their own fault,
and that, speaking generally, they should not be distinguished for
justice or virtue, nor yet for extreme wickedness.[187] The ‘immoderate
moderation’ of the Stagirite was never more infelicitously exhibited.
For, in order to produce truly tragic effects, excess of every kind
not only may, but must, be employed. It is by the reaction of heroic
fortitude, either against unmerited outrage, or against the whole
pressure of social law, that our synergetic interest is wound up
to the intensest pitch. It is when we see a beautiful soul requited
with evil for good that our eyes are filled with the noblest tears.
Yet so absolutely perverted have men’s minds been by the Aristotelian
dictum that Gervinus, the great Shakspearian critic, actually tries to
prove that Duncan, to some extent, deserved his fate by imprudently
trusting himself to the hospitality of Macbeth; that Desdemona was very
imprudent in interceding for Cassio; and that it was treasonable for
Cordelia to bring a French army into England! The Greek drama might
have supplied Aristotle with several decisive contradictions of his
canons. He should have seen that the _Prometheus_, the _Antigone_,
and the _Hippolytus_ are affecting in proportion to the pre-eminent
virtue of their protagonists. The further fallacy of excluding very
guilty characters is, of course, most decisively refuted by Shakspeare,
whose Richard III., whose Iago, and whose Macbeth excite keen interest
by their association of extraordinary villainy with extraordinary
intellectual gifts.
So far Aristotle gives us a purely superficial and sensational view of
the drama. Yet he could not help seeing that there was a moral element
in tragedy, and he was anxious to show, as against Plato, that it
exercised an improving effect on the audience. The result is his famous
theory of the Catharsis, so long misunderstood, and not certainly
understood even now. The object of Tragedy, he tells us, is to purify
(or purge away) pity and terror by means of those emotions themselves.
The _Poetics_ seems originally to have contained an explanation of
this mysterious utterance, now lost, and critics have endeavoured to
supply the gap by writing eighty treatises on the subject. The result
has been at least to show what Aristotle did _not_ mean. The popular
version of his dictum, which is that tragedy purges the passions by
pity and terror, is clearly inconsistent with the wording of the
original text. Pity and terror are both the object and the instrument
of purification. Nor yet does he mean, as was once supposed, that each
of these emotions is to counterbalance and moderate the other; for
this would imply that they are opposed to one another, whereas in the
_Rhetoric_ he speaks of them as being akin; while a parallel passage
in the _Politics_[188] shows him to have believed that the passions
are susceptible of homoeopathic treatment. Violent enthusiasm, he
tells us, is to be soothed and carried off by a strain of exciting,
impassioned music. But whence come the pity and terror which are
to be dealt with by tragic poetry? Not, apparently, from the piece
itself, for to inoculate the patient with a new disease, merely for
the sake of curing it, could do him no imaginable good. To judge from
the passage in the _Politics_ already referred to, he believes that
pity and terror are always present in the minds of all, to a certain
extent; and the theory apparently is, that tragedy brings them to the
surface, and enables them to be thrown off with an accompaniment of
pleasurable feeling. Now, of course, we have a constant capacity for
experiencing every passion to which human nature is liable; but to say
that in the absence of its appropriate external stimulus we are ever
perceptibly and painfully affected by any passion, is to assert what
is not true of any sane mind. And, even were it so, were we constantly
haunted by vague presentiments of evil to ourselves or others, it is
anything but clear that fictitious representations of calamity would
be the appropriate means for enabling us to get rid of them. Zeller
explains that it is the insight into universal laws controlling our
destiny, the association of misfortune with a divine justice, which,
according to Aristotle, produces the purifying effect;[189] but this
would be the purgation of pity and terror, not by themselves, but by
the intellectual framework in which they are set, the concatenation of
events, the workings of character, or the reference of everything to an
eternal cause. The truth is that Aristotle’s explanation of the moral
effect produced by tragedy is irrational, because his whole conception
of tragedy is mistaken. The emotions excited by its highest forms are
not terror and pity, but admiration and love, which, in their ideal
exercise, are too holy for purification, too high for restriction, and
too delightful for relief.
Before parting with the _Poetics_ we must add that it contains
one excellent piece of advice to dramatists, which is, to imagine
themselves present at the scenes which they are supposing to happen,
and also at the representation of their own play. This, however, is an
exception which proves the rule, for Aristotle’s exclusively theoretic
standpoint here, as will sometimes happen, coincides with the truly
practical standpoint.
A somewhat similar observation applies to the art of reasoning, which
it would be possible to compile by bringing together all the rules on
the subject, scattered through the _Organon_. Aristotle has discovered
and formulated every canon of theoretical consistency, and every
artifice of dialectical debate, with an industry and acuteness which
cannot be too highly extolled; and his labours in this direction have
perhaps contributed more than those of any other single writer to
the intellectual stimulation of after ages; but the kind of genius
requisite for such a task was speculative rather than practical; there
was no experience of human nature in its concrete manifestations, no
prevision of real consequences involved. Such a code might be, and
probably was to a great extent, abstracted from the Platonic dialogues;
but to work up the processes of thought into a series of dramatic
contests, carried on between living individuals, as Plato has done,
required a vivid perception and grasp of realities which, and not any
poetical mysticism, is what positively distinguishes a Platonist from
an Aristotelian.[190]
V.
But if Aristotle had not his master’s enthusiasm for practical reforms,
nor his master’s command of all the forces by which humanity is raised
to a higher life, he had, more even than his master, the Greek passion
for knowledge as such, apart from its utilitarian applications, and
embracing in its vast orb the lowliest things with the loftiest, the
most fragmentary glimpses and the largest revelations of truth. He
demanded nothing but the materials for generalisation, and there was
nothing from which he could not generalise. There was a place for
everything within the limits of his world-wide system. Never in any
human soul did the theorising passion burn with so clear and bright
and pure a flame. Under its inspiration his style more than once breaks
into a strain of sublime, though simple and rugged eloquence. Speaking
of that eternal thought which, according to him, constitutes the divine
essence, he exclaims:
On this principle the heavens and Nature hang. This is that best
life which we possess during a brief period only, for there it is
so always, which with us is impossible. And its activity is pure
pleasure; wherefore waking, feeling, and thinking, are the most
pleasurable states, on account of which hope and memory exist.... And
of all activities theorising is the most delightful and the best,
so that if God always has such happiness as we have in our highest
moments, it is wonderful, and still more wonderful if he has more.[191]
Again, he tells us that—
If happiness consists in the appropriate exercise of our vital
functions, then the highest happiness must result from the highest
activity, whether we choose to call that reason or anything else which
is the ruling and guiding principle within us, and through which
we form our conceptions of what is noble and divine; and whether
this be intrinsically divine, or only the divinest thing in us, its
appropriate activity must be perfect happiness. Now this, which we
call the theoretic activity, must be the mightiest; for reason is
supreme in our souls and supreme over the objects which it cognises;
and it is also the most continuous, for of all activities theorising
is that which can be most uninterruptedly carried on. Again, we think
that some pleasure ought to be mingled with happiness; if so, of all
our proper activities philosophy is confessedly the most pleasurable,
the enjoyments afforded by it being wonderfully pure and steady;
for the existence of those who are in possession of knowledge is
naturally more delightful than the existence of those who merely
seek it. Of all virtues this is the most self-sufficing; for while
in common with every other virtue it presupposes the indispensable
conditions of life, wisdom does not, like justice and temperance and
courage, need human objects for its exercise; theorising may go on in
perfect solitude; for the co-operation of other men, though helpful,
is not absolutely necessary to its activity. All other pursuits are
exercised for some end lying outside themselves; war entirely for
the sake of peace, and statesmanship in great part for the sake of
honour and power; but theorising yields no extraneous profit great or
small, and is loved for itself alone. If, then, the energising of pure
reason rises above such noble careers as war and statesmanship by its
independence, by its inherent delightfulness, and, so far as human
frailty will permit, by its untiring vigour, this must constitute
perfect human happiness; or rather such a life is more than human,
and man can only partake of it through the divine principle within
him; wherefore let us not listen to those who tell us that we should
have no interests except what are human and mortal like ourselves;
but so far as may be put on immortality, and bend all our efforts
towards living up to that element of our nature which, though small in
compass, is in power and preciousness supreme.[192]
Let us now see how he carries this passionate enthusiasm for knowledge
into the humblest researches of zoology:—
Among natural objects, some exist unchanged through all eternity,
while others are generated and decay. The former are divinely
glorious, but being comparatively inaccessible to our means of
observation, far less is known of them than we could wish; while
perishable plants and animals offer abundant opportunities of study to
us who live under the same conditions with them. Each science has a
charm of its own. For knowledge of the heavenly bodies is so sublime
a thing that even a little of it is more delightful than all earthly
science put together; just as the smallest glimpse of a beloved
beauty is more delightful than the fullest and nearest revelation of
ordinary objects; while, on the other hand, where there are greater
facilities for observation, science can be carried much further; and
our closer kinship with the creatures of earth is some compensation
for the interest felt in that philosophy which deals with the divine.
Wherefore, in our discussions on living beings we shall, so far as
possible, pass over nothing, whether it rank high or low in the scale
of estimation. For even such of them as displease the senses, when
viewed with the eye of reason as wonderful works of Nature afford an
inexpressible pleasure to those who can enter philosophically into
the causes of things. For, surely, it would be absurd and irrational
to look with delight at the images of such objects on account of our
interest in the pictorial or plastic skill which they exhibit, and
not to take still greater pleasure in a scientific explanation of
the realities themselves. We ought not then to shrink with childish
disgust from an examination of the lower animals, for there is
something wonderful in all the works of Nature; and we may repeat
what Heracleitus is reported to have said to certain strangers who
had come to visit him, but hung back at the door when they saw him
warming himself before a fire, bidding them come in boldly, for
that there also there were gods; not allowing ourselves to call any
creature common or unclean, because there is a kind of natural beauty
about them all. For, if anywhere, there is a pervading purpose in the
works of Nature, and the realisation of this purpose is the beauty of
the thing. But if anyone should look with contempt on the scientific
examination of the lower animals, he must have the same opinion about
himself; for the greatest repugnance is felt in looking at the parts
of which the human body is composed, such as blood, muscles, bones,
veins, and the like.[193] Similarly, in discussing any part or organ
we should consider that it is not for the matter of which it consists
that we care, but for the whole form; just as in talking about a house
it is not bricks and mortar and wood that we mean; and so the theory
of Nature deals with the essential structure of objects, not with the
elements which, apart from that structure, would have no existence at
all.[194]
It is well for the reputation of Aristotle that he could apply himself
with such devotion to the arduous and, in his time, inglorious
researches of natural history and comparative anatomy, since it was
only in those departments that he made any real contributions to
physical science. In the studies which were to him the noblest and most
entrancing of any, his speculations are one long record of wearisome,
hopeless, unqualified delusion. If, in the philosophy of practice and
the philosophy of art, he afforded no real guidance at all, in the
philosophy of Nature his guidance has always led men fatally astray.
So far as his means of observation extended, there was nothing that
he did not attempt to explain, and in every single instance he was
wrong. He has written about the general laws of matter and motion,
astronomy, chemistry, meteorology, and physiology, with the result
that he has probably made more blunders on those subjects than any
human being ever made before or after him. And, if there is one thing
more astounding than his unbroken infelicity of speculation, it is
the imperturbable self-confidence with which he puts forward his
fallacies as demonstrated scientific certainties. Had he been right,
it was no ‘slight or partial glimpses of the beloved’ that would have
been vouchsafed him, but the ‘fullest and nearest revelation’ of her
beauties. But the more he looked the less he saw. Instead of drawing
aside he only thickened and darkened the veils of sense which obscured
her, by mistaking them for the glorious forms that lay concealed
beneath.
Modern admirers of Aristotle labour to prove that his errors were
inevitable, and belonged more to his age than to himself; that without
the mechanical appliances of modern times science could not be
cultivated with any hope of success. But what are we to say when we
find that on one point after another the true explanation had already
been surmised by Aristotle’s predecessors or contemporaries, only to be
scornfully rejected by Aristotle himself? Their hypotheses may often
have been very imperfect, and supported by insufficient evidence; but
it must have been something more than chance which always led him wrong
when they were so often right. To begin with, the infinity of space is
not even now, nor will it ever be, established by improved instruments
of observation and measurement; it is deduced by a very simple
process of reasoning, of which Democritus and others were capable,
while Aristotle apparently was not. He rejects the idea because it is
inconsistent with certain very arbitrary assumptions and definitions
of his own, whereas he should have rejected them because they were
inconsistent with it. He further rejects the idea of a vacuum, and with
it the atomic theory, entirely on _à priori_ grounds, although, even
in the then existing state of knowledge, atomism explained various
phenomena in a perfectly rational manner which he could only explain by
unmeaning or nonsensical phrases.[195] It had been already maintained,
in his time, that the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies were
due to the rotation of the earth on its own axis.[196] Had Aristotle
accepted this theory one can imagine how highly his sagacity would have
been extolled. We may, therefore, fairly take his rejection of it as
a proof of blind adherence to old-fashioned opinions. When he argues
that none of the heavenly bodies rotate, because we can see that the
moon does not, as is evident from her always turning the same side to
us,[197] nothing is needed but the simplest mathematics to demonstrate
the fallacy of his reasoning. Others had surmised that the Milky Way
was a collection of stars, and that comets were bodies of the same
nature as planets. Aristotle is satisfied that both are appearances
like meteors, and the aurora borealis—caused by the friction of our
atmosphere against the solid aether above it. A similar origin is
ascribed to the heat and light derived from the sun and stars; for it
would be derogatory to the dignity of those luminaries to suppose,
with Anaxagoras, that they are formed of anything so familiar and
perishable as fire. On the contrary, they consist of pure aether like
the spheres on which they are fixed as protuberances; though how
such an arrangement can co-exist with absolute contact between each
sphere and that next below it, or how the effects of friction could
be transmitted through such enormous thicknesses of solid crystal, is
left unexplained.[198] By a happy anticipation of Roemer, Empedocles
conjectured that the transmission of light occupied a certain time:
Aristotle declares it to be instantaneous.[199]
On passing to terrestrial physics, we find that Aristotle is, as usual,
the dupe of superficial appearances, against which other thinkers were
on their guard. Seeing that fire always moved up, he assumed that it
did so by virtue of a natural tendency towards the circumference of the
universe, as opposed to earth, which always moved towards the centre.
The atomists erroneously held that all matter gravitated downwards
through infinite space, but correctly explained the ascent of heated
particles by the pressure of surrounding matter, in accordance, most
probably, with the analogy of floating bodies.[200] Chemistry as a
science is, of course, an entirely modern creation, but the first
approach to it was made by Democritus, while no ancient philosopher
stood farther from its essential principles than Aristotle. He analyses
bodies, not into their material elements, but into the sensuous
qualities, hot and cold, wet and dry, between which he supposes the
underlying substance to be perpetually oscillating; a theory which, if
it were true, would make any fixed laws of nature impossible.
It might have been expected that, on reaching physiology, the Stagirite
would stand on firmer ground than any of his contemporaries. Such,
however, is not the case. As already observed, his achievements belong
entirely to the dominion of anatomy and descriptive zoology. The whole
internal economy of the animal body is, according to him, designed
for the purpose of creating and moderating the vital heat; and in
apportioning their functions to the different organs he is entirely
dominated by this fundamental error. It was a common notion among the
Greeks, suggested by sufficiently obvious considerations, that the
brain is the seat of the psychic activities. These, however, Aristotle
transports to the heart, which, in his system, not only propels the
blood through the body, but is also the source of heat, the common
centre where the different special sensations meet to be compared,
and the organ of imagination and of passion. The sole function of
the brain is to cool down the blood—a purpose which the lungs also
subserve. Some persons believe that air is a kind of food, and is
inhaled in order to feed the internal fire; but their theory would
involve the absurd consequence that all animals breathe, for all have
some heat. Anaxagoras and Diogenes did, indeed, make that assertion,
and the latter even went so far as to say that fish breathe with
their gills, absorbing the air held in solution by the water passed
through them—a misapprehension, says Aristotle, which arose from not
having studied the final cause of respiration.[201] His physiological
theory of generation is equally unfortunate. In accordance with his
metaphysical system, hereafter to be explained, he distinguishes two
elements in the reproductive process, of which one, that contributed by
the male, is exclusively formative; and the other, that contributed by
the female, exclusively material. The prevalent opinion was evidently,
what we know now to be true, that each parent has both a formative and
a material share in the composition of the embryo. Again, Aristotle,
strangely enough, regards the generative element in both sexes as
an unappropriated portion of the animal’s nutriment, the last and
most refined product of digestion, and therefore not a portion of
the parental system at all; while other biologists, anticipating Mr.
Darwin’s theory of pangenesis in a very wonderful manner, taught that
the semen is a conflux of molecules derived from every part of the
body, and thus strove to account for the hereditary transmission of
individual peculiarities to offspring.[202]
All these, however, are mere questions of detail. It is on a subject of
the profoundest philosophical importance that Aristotle differs most
consciously, most radically, and most fatally from his predecessors.
They were evolutionists, and he was a stationarist. They were
mechanicists, and he was a teleologist. They were uniformitarians, and
he was a dualist. It is true that, as we mentioned at the beginning of
this chapter, Mr. Edwin Wallace makes him ‘recognise the genesis of
things by evolution and development,’ but the meaning of this phrase
requires to be cleared up. In one sense it is, of course, almost an
identical proposition. The genesis of things must be by genesis of some
kind or other. The great question is, what things have been evolved,
and how have they been evolved? Modern science tells us, that not
only have all particular aggregates of matter and motion now existing
come into being within a finite period of time, but also that the
specific types under which we arrange those aggregates have equally
been generated; and that their characteristics, whether structural
or functional, can only be understood by tracing out their origin
and history. And it further teaches us that the properties of every
aggregate result from the properties of its ultimate elements, which,
within the limits of our experience, remain absolutely unchanged. Now,
Aristotle taught very nearly the contrary of all this. He believed
that the cosmos, as we now know it, had existed, and would continue
to exist, unchanged through all eternity. The sun, moon, planets,
and stars, together with the orbs containing them, are composed of
an absolutely ungenerable, incorruptible substance. The earth, a
cold, heavy, solid sphere, though liable to superficial changes, has
always occupied its present position in the centre of the universe.
The specific forms of animal life—except a few which are produced
spontaneously—have, in like manner, been preserved unaltered through
an infinite series of generations. Man shares the common lot. There is
no continuous progress of civilisation. Every invention and discovery
has been made and lost an infinite number of times. Our philosopher
could not, of course, deny that individual living things come into
existence and gradually grow to maturity; but he insists that their
formation is teleologically determined by the parental type which they
are striving to realise. He asks whether we should study a thing by
examining how it grows, or by examining its completed form: and Mr.
Wallace quotes the question without quoting the answer.[203] Aristotle
tells us that the genetic method was followed by his predecessors, but
that the other method is his. And he goes on to censure Empedocles for
saying that many things in the animal body are due simply to mechanical
causation; for example, the segmented structure of the backbone, which
that philosopher attributes to continued doubling and twisting—the
very same explanation, we believe, that would be given of it by a
modern evolutionist.[204] Finally, Aristotle assumes the only sort of
transformation which we deny, and which Democritus equally denied—that
is to say, the transformation of the ultimate elements into one
another by the oscillation of an indeterminate matter between opposite
qualities.
VI.
The truth is that while our philosopher had one of the most powerful
intellects ever possessed by any man, it was an intellect strictly
limited to the surface of things. He was utterly incapable of divining
the hidden forces by which inorganic nature and life and human society
are moved. He had neither the genius which can reconstruct the past,
nor the genius which partly moulds, partly foretells the future. But
wherever he has to observe or to report, to enumerate or to analyse, to
describe or to define, to classify or to compare; and whatever be the
subject, a mollusc or a mammal, a mouse or an elephant; the structure
and habits of wild animals; the different stages in the development
of an embryo bird; the variations of a single organ or function
through the entire zoological series; the hierarchy of intellectual
faculties; the laws of mental association; the specific types of
virtuous character; the relation of equity to law; the relation of
reason to impulse; the ideals of friendship; the different members of a
household; the different orders in a State; the possible variations of
political constitutions, or within the same constitution; the elements
of dramatic or epic poetry; the modes of predication; the principles
of definition, classification, judgment, and reasoning; the different
systems of philosophy; all varieties of passion, all motives to action,
all sources of conviction;—there we find an enormous accumulation of
knowledge, an unwearied patience of research, a sweep of comprehension,
a subtlety of discrimination, an accuracy of statement, an impartiality
of decision, and an all-absorbing enthusiasm for science, which, if
they do not raise him to the supreme level of creative genius, entitle
him to rank a very little way below it.
It was natural that one who ranged with such consummate mastery over
the whole world of apparent reality, should believe in no other
reality; that for him truth should only mean the systematisation of
sense and language, of opinion, and of thought. The visible order of
nature was present to his imagination in such precise determination
and fulness of detail that it resisted any attempt he might have made
to conceive it under a different form. Each of his conclusions was
supported by analogies from every other department of enquiry, because
he carried the peculiar limitations of his thinking faculty with him
wherever he turned, and unconsciously accommodated every subject to the
framework which they imposed. The clearness of his ideas necessitated
the use of sharply-drawn distinctions, which prevented the free play
of generalisation and fruitful interchange of principles between the
different sciences. And we shall have occasion to show hereafter, that,
when he attempted to combine rival theories, it was done by placing
them in juxtaposition rather than by mutual interpenetration. Again,
with his vivid perceptions, it was impossible for him to believe in
the justification of any method claiming to supersede, or even to
supplement, their authority. Hence he was hardly less opposed to the
atomism of Democritus than to the scepticism of Protagoras or the
idealism of Plato. Hence, also, his dislike for all explanations which
assumed that there were hidden processes at work below the surface
of things, even taking surface in its most literal sense. Thus, in
discussing the question why the sea is salt, he will not accept the
theory that rivers dissolve out the salt from the strata through which
they pass, and carry it down to the sea, because river-water tastes
fresh; and propounds in its stead the utterly false hypothesis of a
dry saline evaporation from the earth’s surface, which he supposes to
be swept seawards by the wind.[205] Even in his own especial province
of natural history the same tendency leads him astray. He asserts that
the spider throws off its web from the surface of its body like a skin,
instead of evolving it from within, as Democritus had taught.[206] The
same thinker had endeavoured to prove by analogical reasoning that the
invertebrate animals must have viscera, and that only their extreme
minuteness prevents us from perceiving them; a view which his successor
will not admit.[207] In fact, wherever the line between the visible and
the invisible is crossed, Aristotle’s powers are suddenly paralysed, as
if by enchantment.
Another circumstance which led Aristotle to disregard the happy aperçus
of earlier philosophers was his vast superiority to them in positive
knowledge. It never occurred to him that their sagacity might be
greater than his, precisely because its exercise was less impeded by
the labour of acquiring and retaining such immense masses of irrelevant
facts. And his confidence was still further enhanced by the conviction
that all previous systems were absorbed into his own, their scattered
truths co-ordinated, their aberrations corrected, and their discords
reconciled. But in striking a general average of existing philosophies,
he was in reality bringing them back to that anonymous philosophy which
is embodied in common language and common opinion. And if he afterwards
ruled the minds of men with a more despotic sway than any other
intellectual master, it was because he gave an organised expression to
the principle of authority, which, if it could, would stereotype and
perpetuate the existing type of civilisation for all time.
Here, then, are three main points of distinction between our
philosopher and his precursors, the advantage being, so far, entirely
on their side. He did not, like the Ionian physiologists, anticipate
in outline our theories of evolution. He held that the cosmos had
always been, by the strictest necessity, arranged in the same manner;
the starry revolutions never changing; the four elements preserving
a constant balance; the earth always solid; land and water always
distributed according to their present proportions; living species
transmitting the same unalterable type through an infinite series of
generations; the human race enjoying an eternal duration, but from time
to time losing all its conquests in some great physical catastrophe,
and obliged to begin over again with the depressing consciousness that
nothing could be devised which had not been thought of an infinite
number of times already; the existing distinctions between Hellenes and
barbarians, masters and slaves, men and women, grounded on everlasting
necessities of nature. He did not, like Democritus, distinguish between
objective and subjective properties of matter; nor admit that void
space extends to infinity round the starry sphere, and honeycombs the
objects which seem most incompressible and continuous to our senses. He
did not hope, like Socrates, for the regeneration of the individual,
nor, like Plato, for the regeneration of the race, by enlightened
thought. It seemed as if Philosophy, abdicating her high function, and
obstructing the paths which she had first opened, were now content to
systematise the forces of prejudice, blindness, immobility, and despair.
For the restrictions under which Aristotle thought were not determined
by his personality alone; they followed on the logical development of
speculation, and would have imposed themselves on any other thinker
equally capable of carrying that development to its predetermined goal.
The Ionian search for a primary cause and substance of nature led to
the distinction, made almost simultaneously, although from opposite
points of view, by Parmenides and Heracleitus, between appearance and
reality. From that distinction sprang the idea of mind, organised by
Socrates into a systematic study of ethics and dialectics. Time and
space, the necessary conditions of physical causality, were eliminated
from a method having for its form the eternal relations of difference
and resemblance, for its matter the present interests of humanity.
Socrates taught that before enquiring whence things come we must
first determine what it is they are. Hence he reduced science to the
framing of exact definitions. Plato followed on the same track, and
refused to answer a single question about anything until the subject of
investigation had been clearly determined. But the form of causation
had taken such a powerful hold on Greek thought, that it could not
be immediately shaken off; and Plato, as he devoted more and more
attention to the material universe, saw himself compelled, like the
older philosophers, to explain its construction by tracing out the
history of its growth. What is even more significant, he applied the
same method to ethics and politics, finding it easier to describe how
the various virtues and types of social union came into existence,
than to analyse and classify them as fixed ideas without reference to
time. Again, while taking up the Eleatic antithesis of reality and
appearance, and re-interpreting it as a distinction between noumena and
phenomena, ideas and sensations, spirit and matter, he was impelled by
the necessity of explaining himself, and by the actual limitations of
experience to assimilate the two opposing series, or, at least, to view
the fleeting, superficial images as a reflection and adumbration of the
being which they concealed. And of all material objects, it seemed as
if the heavenly bodies, with their orderly, unchanging movements, their
clear brilliant light, and their remoteness from earthly impurities,
best represented the philosopher’s ideal. Thus, Plato, while on the
one side he reaches back to the pre-Socratic age, on the other reaches
forward to the Aristotelian system.
Nor was this all. As the world of sense was coming back into
favour, the world of reason was falling into disrepute. Just as the
old physical philosophy had been decomposed by the Sophisticism
of Protagoras and Gorgias, so also the dialectic of Socrates was
corrupted into the sophistry of Eubulides and Euthydêmus. Plato himself
discovered that by reasoning deductively from purely abstract premises,
contradictory conclusions could be established with apparently equal
force. It was difficult to see how a decision could be arrived at
except by appealing to the testimony of sense. And a moral reform could
hardly be effected except by similarly taking into account the existing
beliefs and customs of mankind.
It is possible, we think, to trace a similar evolution in the history
of the Attic drama. The tragedies of Aeschylus resemble the old Ionian
philosophy in this, that they are filled with material imagery,
and that they deal with remote interests, remote times, and remote
places. Sophocles withdraws his action into the subjective sphere, and
simultaneously works out a pervading contrast between the illusions by
which men are either lulled to false security or racked with needless
anguish, and the terrible or consolatory reality to which they finally
awaken. We have also, in his well-known irony, in the unconscious
self-betrayal of his characters, that subtle evanescent allusiveness
to a hidden truth, that gleaming of reality through appearance which
constitutes, first the dialectic, then the mythical illustration,
and finally the physics of Plato. In Aeschylus also we have the
spectacle of sudden and violent vicissitudes, the abasement of insolent
prosperity, and the punishment of long successful crime; only with him
the characters which attract most interest are not the blind victims,
but the accomplices or the confidants of destiny—the great figures of
a Prometheus, a Darius, an Eteocles, a Clytemnestra, and a Cassandra,
who are raised above the common level to an eminence where the
secrets of past and future are unfolded to their gaze. Far otherwise
with Sophocles. The leading actors in his most characteristic works,
Oedipus, Electra, Dejanira, Ajax, and Philoctetes, are surrounded by
forces which they can neither control nor understand; moving in a
world of illusion, if they help to work out their own destinies it is
unconsciously, or even in direct opposition to their own designs.[208]
Hence in Aeschylus we have something like that superb self-confidence
which distinguishes a Parmenides and a Heracleitus; in Sophocles that
confession of human ignorance which the Athenian philosophers made
on their own behalf, or strove to extract from others. Euripides
introduces us to another mode of thought, more akin to that which
characterises Aristotle. For, although there is abundance of mystery
in his tragedies, it has not the profound religious significance of
the Sophoclean irony; he uses it rather for romantic and sentimental
purposes, for the construction of an intricate plot, or for the
creation of pathetic situations. His whole power is thrown into the
immediate and detailed representation of living passion, and of the
surroundings in which it is displayed, without going far back into its
historical antecedents like Aeschylus, or, like Sophocles, into the
divine purposes which underlie it. On the other hand, as a Greek writer
could not be other than philosophical, he uses particular incidents
as an occasion for wide generalisations and dialectical discussions;
these, and not the idea of justice or of destiny, being the pedestal
on which his figures are set. And it may be noticed as another curious
coincidence that, like Aristotle again, he is disposed to criticise his
predecessors, or at least one of them, Aeschylus, with some degree of
asperity.
The critical tendency just alluded to suggests one more reason why
philosophy, from having been a method of discovery, should at last
become a mere method of description and arrangement. The materials
accumulated by nearly three centuries of observation and reasoning were
so enormous that they began to stifle the imaginative faculty. If there
was any opening for originality it lay in the task of carrying order
into this chaos by reducing it to a few general heads, by mapping out
the whole field of knowledge, and subjecting each particular branch to
the new-found processes of definition and classification. And along
with the incapacity for framing new theories there arose a desire to
diminish the number of those already existing, to frame, if possible, a
system which should select and combine whatever was good in any or all
of them.
VII.
This, then, was the revolution effected by Aristotle, that he found
Greek thought in the form of a solid, and unrolled into a surface of
the utmost possible tenuity, transparency, and extension. In so doing,
he completed what Socrates and Plato had begun, he paralleled the
course already described by Greek poetry, and he offered the first
example of what since then has more than once recurred in the history
of philosophy. It was thus that the residual substance of Locke and
Berkeley was resolved into phenomenal succession by Hume. It was thus
that the unexplained reality of Kant and Fichte was drawn out into
a play of logical relations by Hegel. And, if we may venture on a
forecast of the future towards which speculation is now advancing,
it is thus that the limits imposed on human knowledge by positivists
and agnostics in our own day, are yielding to the criticism of those
who wish to establish either a perfect identity or a perfect equation
between consciousness and being. This is the position represented in
France by M. Taine, a thinker offering many points of resemblance to
Aristotle, which it would be interesting to work out had we space at
our command for the purpose. The forces which are now guiding English
philosophy in an analogous direction have hitherto escaped observation
on account of their disunion among themselves, and their intermixture
with others of a different character. But on the whole we may say
that the philosophy of Mill and his school corresponds very nearly in
its practical idealism to Plato’s teaching; that Mr. Herbert Spencer
approaches Aristotle on the side of theorising systematisation, while
sharing to a more limited extent the metaphysical and political realism
which accompanied it: that Lewes was carrying the same transformation
a step further in his unfinished _Problems of Life and Mind_; that the
philosophy of Mr. Shadworth Hodgson is marked by the same spirit of
actuality, though not without a vista of multitudinous possibilities
in the background; that the Neo-Hegelian school are trying to do over
again for us what their master did in Germany; and that the lamented
Professor Clifford had already given promise of one more great attempt
to widen the area of our possible experience into co-extension with the
whole domain of Nature.[209]
The systematising power of Aristotle, his faculty for bringing the
isolated parts of a surface into co-ordination and continuity, is
apparent even in those sciences with whose material truths he was
utterly unacquainted. Apart from the falseness of their fundamental
assumptions, his scientific treatises are, for their time, masterpieces
of method. In this respect they far surpass his moral and metaphysical
works, and they are also written in a much more vigorous style,
occasionally even rising into eloquence. He evidently moves with much
more assurance on the solid ground of external nature than in the
cloudland of Platonic dialectics, or among the possibilities of an
ideal morality. If, for example, we open his _Physics_, we shall find
such notions as Causation, Infinity, Matter, Space, Time, Motion, and
Force, for the first time in history separately discussed, defined,
and made the foundation of natural philosophy. The treatise _On the
Heavens_ very properly regards the celestial movements as a purely
mechanical problem, and strives throughout to bring theory and
practice into complete agreement. While directly contradicting the
truths of modern astronomy, it stands on the same ground with them;
and anyone who had mastered it would be far better prepared to receive
those truths than if he were only acquainted with such a work as
Plato’s _Timaeus_. The remaining portions of Aristotle’s scientific
encyclopaedia follow in perfect logical order, and correspond very
nearly to Auguste Comte’s classification, if, indeed, they did not
directly or indirectly suggest it. We cannot, however, view the
labours of Aristotle with unmixed satisfaction until he comes on to
deal with the provinces of natural history, comparative anatomy, and
comparative psychology. Here, as we have shown, the subject exactly
suited the comprehensive observation and systematising formalism in
which he excelled. Here, accordingly, not only the method but the
matter of his teaching is good. In theorising about the causes of
phenomena he was behind the best science of his age; in dissecting
the phenomena themselves he was far before it. Of course very much
of what he tells was learned at second-hand, and some of it is not
authentic. But to collect such masses of information from the reports
of uneducated hunters, fishermen, grooms, shepherds, beemasters,
and the like, required an extraordinary power of putting pertinent
questions, such as could only be acquired in the school of Socratic
dialectic. Nor should we omit to notice the vivid intelligence which
enabled even ordinary Greeks to supply him with the facts required for
his generalisations. But some of his most important researches must be
entirely original. For instance, he must have traced the development
of the embryo chicken with his own eyes; and, here, we have it on good
authority that his observations are remarkable for their accuracy, in
a field where accuracy, according to Caspar Friedrich Wolff, is almost
impossible.[210]
Still more important than these observations themselves is the great
truth he derives from them—since rediscovered and worked out in detail
by Von Baer—that in the development of each individual the generic
characters make their appearance before the specific characters.[211]
Nor is this a mere accidental or isolated remark, but, as we shall show
in the next chapter, intimately connected with one of the philosopher’s
metaphysical theories. Although not an evolutionist, he has made other
contributions to biology, the importance of which has been first
realised in the light of the evolution theory. Thus he notices the
antagonism between individuation and reproduction;[212] the connexion
of increased size with increased vitality;[213] the connexion of
greater mobility,[214] and of greater intelligence,[215] with increased
complexity of structure; the physiological division of labour in the
higher animals;[216] the formation of heterogeneous organs out of
homogeneous tissues;[217] the tendency towards greater centralisation
in the higher organisms[218]—a remark connected with his two great
anatomical discoveries, the central position of the heart in the
vascular system, and the possession of a backbone by all red-blooded
animals;[219] the resemblance of animal intelligence to a rudimentary
human intelligence, especially as manifested in children;[220] and,
finally, he attempts to trace a continuous series of gradations
connecting the inorganic with the organic world, plants with animals,
and the lower animals with man.[221]
The last mentioned principle gives one more illustration of the
distinction between Aristotle’s system and that of the evolutionist,
properly so called. The continuity recognised by the former only
obtains among a number of coexisting types; it is a purely logical
or ideal arrangement, facilitating the acquisition and retention of
knowledge, but adding nothing to its real content. The continuity of
the latter implies a causal connexion between successive types evolved
from each other by the action of mechanical forces. Moreover, our
modern theory, while accounting for whatever is true in Aristotle’s
conception, serves, at the same time, to correct its exaggeration. The
totality of existing species only imperfectly fill up the interval
between the highest human life and the inorganic matter from which
we assume it to be derived, because they are collaterally, and not
lineally, related. Probably no one of them corresponds to any less
developed stage of another, although some have preserved, with more
constancy than others, the features of a common parent. In diverging
from a single stock (if we accept the monogenetic hypothesis,) they
have become separated by considerable spaces, which the innumerable
multitude of extinct species alone could fill up.
Our preliminary survey of the subject is now completed. So far, we have
been engaged in studying the mind of Aristotle rather than his system
of philosophy. In the next chapter we shall attempt to give a more
complete account of that system in its internal organisation not less
than in its relations to modern science and modern thought.
FOOTNOTES:
[161] _Aristotelis Opera._ Edidit Academia Regia Borussica. Berlin.
1831-70.
[162] _Die Philosophie der Griechen._ Zweiter Theil, Zweite Abtheilung:
_Aristoteles u. d. alten Peripatetiker_. By Dr. Eduard Zeller. Leipzig.
1879.
[163] _Aristoteles._ By Christian Aug. Brandis. Berlin. 1853-57.
[164] _Aristotle._ By Sir Alexander Grant, Bart., LL.D. Edinburgh and
London. 1877.
[165] _Outlines of the Philosophy of Aristotle._ Compiled by Edwin
Wallace, M.A. Oxford and London. 1880.
[166] _De la Métaphysique: Introduction à la Métaphysique d’ Aristote._
By Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire. Paris. 1879.
[167] Wallace’s _Outlines_, preface, pp. vi-viii.
[168] As will be shown in the next chapter.
[169] _Outlines_, pp. 29 and 38.
[170] Zeller, _op. cit._, p. 513.
[171] _Ibid._, p. 407.
[172] Written before the appearance of Teichmüller’s _Lit. Fehden_
(already referred to in the preceding chapter).
[173] Zeller’s opinion that all the Platonic Dialogues except the
_Laws_ were composed before Aristotle’s arrival in Athens, does not
seem to be supported by any satisfactory evidence. [Since the above was
first published I have found that a similar view of the _Parmenides_
had already been maintained by Tocco (_Ricerche Platoniche_, p. 105);
and afterwards, but independently, by Teichmüller (_Neue Studien_, III.
363). See Chiapelli, _Della Interpretazione panteistica di Platone_, p.
152.]
[174] Teichmüller infers, from certain expressions in the
_Panathenaicus_ of Isocrates, that Aristotle had returned from Mitylênê
to Athens and resumed his former position as a teacher of rhetoric when
the summons to Pella reached him. (_Lit. Fehden_, 261.)
[175] _Gesch. d. Phil._, II., 302.
[176] Zeller, _op. cit._, p. 25.
[177] Cf. Teichmüller, _Lit. Fehden_, 192.
[178] Zeller, p. 38.
[179] Ritter and Preller, _Hist. Ph._, p. 329.
[180] Zeller, p. 41, _note_ 2.
[181] Diog. L., V., 17-21.
[182] Grant’s _Aristotle_, p. 7.
[183] We think, however, that Mr. Edwin Wallace has overstated the
case, when he makes Aristotle say that ‘democracy is not unlikely with
the spread of population to become the ultimate form of government; and
may be anticipated without dread by considering that the _collective_
voice of a people is as likely to be sound in state administration as
in criticisms on art,’ pp. 57-8. In the first place, the expressions
of opinion which are brought together in Mr. Wallace’s summary are
separated in the original text by a considerable interval—an important
circumstance when we are dealing with so inconsistent a writer; then
what Aristotle says about the collective wisdom of the people, besides
being advanced with extreme hesitation, is not a reassurance against
any danger to be dreaded from their supremacy, but an answer to the
argument that the few had a natural right to political power from their
greater wealth and better education; the whole question being, in this
connexion, one of political justice, not of political expediency;
finally, not only is ‘ultimate form of government’ a very strong
rendering of the Greek words, but what Aristotle says on the subject in
his third book is virtually retracted in the fifth, where oligarchy,
democracy, and tyranny are regarded as succeeding each other in any
order indifferently, and Plato (or the Platonic Socrates) is censured
for assuming a constant sequence of revolutions. The explanation of
this change seems to be that when Aristotle wrote his third book he
was only acquainted with the history of Athens and a few other of
the greater states, but that subsequently a vast collection of facts
bearing on the subject came to his knowledge, showing that each form of
government embraced more varieties and admitted of more mutations than
he had been originally aware of; and this led to a complete recast of
his opinions.
[184] Many of the topics noted are not only trite enough, but have no
possible bearing on the subject under which they stand. For instance,
in discussing judicial eloquence Aristotle goes into the motives for
committing crime; among these are pleasurable feelings of every kind,
including the remembrance of past trouble. Even the hero of a spasmodic
tragedy would hardly have committed an offence for the purpose of
procuring himself this form of experience.
[185] _Poet._, xv., p. 1454, a, 20.
[186]
Μάτην ἄρ’ εἰς γυναῖκας ἐξ ἀνδρῶν ψόγος
Ψάλλει κενὸν τόξευμα καὶ κακῶς λέγει.
αἱ δ’ εἴσ’ ἀμείνους ἀρσένων, ἐγὼ λέγω.
Euripides, _Frag._ 512. (Didot.)
[187] _Poet._, xiii., p. 1453, a, 8.
[188] _Pol._, VIII., vii., p. 1342, a, 10.
[189] Zeller, p. 780.
[190] As an illustration of the stimulating effect produced by the
study of Aristotle’s logic, we quote the following anecdote from the
notes to Whately’s edition of Bacon’s _Essays_:—‘The late Sir Alexander
Johnstone, when acting as temporary Governor of Ceylon (soon after its
cession), sat once as judge in a trial of a prisoner for a robbery
and murder; and the evidence seemed to him so conclusive, that he
was about to charge the jury (who were native Cingalese) to find a
verdict of guilty. But one of the jurors asked and obtained permission
to examine the witnesses himself. He had them brought in one by one,
and cross-examined them so ably as to elicit the fact that they were
_themselves_ the perpetrators of the crime, which they afterwards had
conspired to impute to the prisoner. And they were accordingly put on
their trial and convicted. Sir Alexander Johnstone was greatly struck
by the intelligence displayed by this juror, the more so as he was only
a small farmer, who was not known to have had any remarkable advantages
of education. He sent for him, and after commending the wonderful
sagacity he had shown, inquired eagerly what his studies had been.
The man replied that he had never read but one book, the only one he
possessed, which had long been in his family, and which he delighted
to study in his leisure hours. This book he was prevailed on to show
to Sir Alexander Johnstone, who put it into the hands of one who knew
the Cingalese language. It turned out to be a translation into that
language of a large portion of Aristotle’s _Organon_. It appears that
the Portuguese, when they first settled in Ceylon and other parts of
the East, translated into the native languages several of the works
then studied in the European Universities, among which were the Latin
versions of Aristotle. The Cingalese in question said that if his
understanding had been in any degree cultivated and improved, it was
to that book that he owed it. It is likely, however (as was observed
to me [Whately] by the late Bishop Copleston), that any other book,
containing an equal amount of close reasoning and accurate definition,
might have answered the same purpose in sharpening the intellect of the
Cingalese.’ Possibly, but not to the same effect. What the Cingalese
got into his hands was a triple-distilled essence of Athenian legal
procedure. The cross-examining elenchus was first borrowed by Socrates
from the Athenian courts and applied to philosophical purposes; it was
still further elaborated by Plato, and finally reduced to abstract
rules by Aristotle; so that in using it as he did the juror was only
restoring it to its original purposes.
[191] _Metaph._, XII., vii., p. 1072, b, 13.
[192] _Eth. Nic._, X., vii. (somewhat condensed).
[193] It is perfectly possible that Aristotle was not acquainted at
first hand with human anatomy. But Sir A. Grant is hardly justified in
observing that the words quoted above ‘do not show the hardihood of the
practised dissecter’ (_Aristotle_, p 3). Aristotle simply takes the
popular point of view in order to prove that the internal structure
of the lower animals is no more offensive to the eye than that of
man. And, as he took so much delight in the former, nothing but want
of opportunity is likely to have prevented him from extending his
researches to the latter.
[194] _De Part. An._, I. v.
[195] Compare the arguments in _Phys._, IV., ix.
[196] The hypothesis of the earth’s diurnal rotation had clearly
been suggested by a celebrated passage in Plato’s _Timaeus_, though
whether Plato himself held it is still doubtful. That he accepted the
revolution of the celestial spheres is absolutely certain; but while
to our minds the two beliefs are mutually exclusive, Grote thinks that
Plato overlooked the inconsistency. It seems probable that the one was
at first actually a generalisation from the other; it was thought that
the earth must revolve _because_ the crystal spheres revolved; then the
new doctrine, thus accidentally struck out, was used to destroy the old
one.
[197] _De Coel._, II., viii., 290, a, 26.
[198] Zeller, p. 469.
[199] _De Sens._, vi., 446, a, 26.
[200] _De Coel._, I., viii., 277, b, 2.
[201] _De Respir._, i. and ii.
[202] _De Gen. An._, I., xvii.
[203] _Outlines_, p. 30.
[204] There is a passage in the _Politics_ (I., ii., _sub. in._) in
which Aristotle distinctly inculcates the method of studying things
by observing how they are first produced, and how they grow; but this
is quite inconsistent with the more deliberate opinion referred to in
the text (_De Part. An._, I., i., p. 640, a, 10). Perhaps, in writing
the first book of the _Politics_ he was more immediately under the
influence of Plato, who preferred the old genetic method in practice,
though not in theory.
[205] _Meteor._, II., iii., 357, a, 15 ff.
[206] _Hist. An._, IX., xxxix., _sub fin._
[207] _De Part. An._, III., iv., _sub in._
[208] This characterisation applies neither to the _Antigone_ nor to
the _Oedipus in Colônus_, the first and the last extant dramas of
Sophocles. The reason is that the one is still half Aeschylean, and the
other distinctly an imitation of Euripides.
[209] Cf. the memorable declaration of Mr. F. Pollock: ‘To me it
amounts to a contradiction in terms to speak of unknowable existence or
unknowable reality in an absolute sense. I cannot tell what existence
means if not the possibility of being known or perceived.’—_Spinoza_,
p. 163.
[210] _Aristoteles von d. Zeugung u. Entwickelung d. Thiere._ Aubert u.
Wimmer, Einleitung, p. 15.
[211] _De Gen. An._, II., iii., 736, b, 1.
[212] _Ibid._, I., xviii., 725, b, 25.
[213] _De Respir._, 477, a, 18.
[214] _De Part. An._, I., vii., _sub. in._
[215] _Ibid._, II., x., 656, a, 4.
[216] _Ibid._, IV., vi., 683, a, 25.
[217] _Ibid._, II., i.
[218] _Ibid._, IV., v., 682, a, 8; _De Long._, vi., 467, a, 18; _De
Ingr. An._, vii., 707, a, 24.
[219] _De Part. An._, II., ix., 664, b, 11; Zeller, p. 522.
[220] _Hist. An._, VIII., i., _sub in._
[221] Zeller, p. 553.