THE SYSTEMATIC PHILOSOPHY OF ARISTOTLE.
I.
We have considered the Aristotelian philosophy in relation to the great
concrete interests of life, morals, politics, literature, and science.
We have now to ask what it has to tell us about the deepest and gravest
problems of any, the first principles of Being and Knowing, God and
the soul, spirit and matter, metaphysics, psychology, and logic. We
saw that very high claims were advanced on behalf of Aristotle in
respect to his treatment of these topics; and had we begun with them,
we should only have been following the usual example of his expositors.
We have, however, preferred keeping them to the last, that our
readers might acquire some familiarity with the Aristotelian method,
by seeing it applied to subjects where the results were immediately
intelligible, and could be tested by an appeal to the experience of
twenty-two centuries. We know that there are some who will demur
to this proceeding, who will say that Aristotle the metaphysician
stands on quite different ground from Aristotle the man of science,
because in the one capacity he had, and in the other capacity he had
not, sufficient facts to warrant an authoritative conclusion. They
will say, with Prof. St. George Mivart, that in accumulating natural
knowledge men’s minds have become deadened to spiritual truth; or with
Mr. Edwin Wallace, that the questions opened by Aristotle have not
yet been closed, and that we may with advantage begin our study of
them under his guidance. We, on the other hand, will endeavour to show
that there is a unity of composition running through the Stagirite’s
entire labours, that they everywhere manifest the same excellences and
defects, which are those of an anatomising, critical, descriptive,
classificatory genius; that his most important conclusions, however
great their historical interest, are without any positive or even
educational value for us, being almost entirely based on false physical
assumptions; that his ontology and psychology are not what his admirers
suppose them to be; and that his logic, though meriting our gratitude,
is far too confused and incomplete to throw any light on the questions
raised by modern thinkers.
Here, as elsewhere, we shall employ the genetic method of
investigation. Aristotle’s writings do not, indeed, present that
gradual development of ideas which makes the Platonic Dialogues so
interesting. Still they exhibit traces of such a development, and the
most important among them seems to have been compiled from notes taken
by the philosopher before his conclusions were definitely reasoned
out, or worked up into a consistent whole. It is this fragmentary
collection which, from having been placed by some unknown editor after
the _Physics_, has received a name still associated with every kind of
speculation that cannot be tested by a direct or indirect appeal to the
evidence of external sense.
Whether there exist any realities beyond what are revealed to us
by this evidence, and what sensible evidence itself may be worth,
were problems already actively canvassed in Aristotle’s time. His
_Metaphysics_ at once takes us into the thick of the debate. The
first question of that age was, What are the causes and principles of
things? On one side stood the materialists—the old Ionian physicists
and their living representatives. They said that all things came from
water or air or fire, or from a mixture of the four elements, or from
the interaction of opposites, such as wet and dry, hot and cold.
Aristotle, following in the track of his master, Plato, blames them
for ignoring the incorporeal substances, by which he does not mean
what would now be understood—feelings or states of consciousness, or
even the spiritual substratum of consciousness—but rather the general
qualities or assemblages of qualities which remain constant amid the
fluctuations of sensible phenomena; considered, let us observe, not as
subjective thoughts, but as objective realities. Another deficiency in
the older physical theories is that they either ignore the efficient
cause of motion altogether (like Thales), or assign causes not adequate
to the purpose (like Empedocles); or when they hit on the true cause
do not make the right use of it (like Anaxagoras). Lastly, they have
omitted to study the final cause of a thing—the good for which it
exists.
The teleology of Aristotle requires a word of explanation, which may
appropriately find its place in the present connexion. In speaking
of a purpose in Nature, he does not mean that natural productions
subserve an end lying outside themselves; as if, to use Goethe’s
illustration, the bark of cork-trees was intended to be made into
stoppers for ginger-beer bottles; but that in every perfect thing the
parts are interdependent, and exist for the sake of the whole to which
they belong. Nor does he, like so many theologians, both ancient and
modern, argue from the evidence of design in Nature to the operation
of a designing intelligence outside her. Not believing in any creation
at all apart from works of art, he could not believe in a creative
intelligence other than that of man. He does, indeed, constantly speak
of Nature as if she were a personal providence, continually exerting
herself for the good of her creatures. But, on looking a little closer,
we find that the agency in question is completely unconscious, and
may be identified with the constitution of each particular thing, or
rather of the type to which it belongs. We have said that Aristotle’s
intellect was essentially descriptive, and we have here another
illustration of its characteristic quality. The teleology which he
parades with so much pomp adds nothing to our knowledge of causes,
implies nothing that a positivist need not readily accept. It is a
mere study of functions, an analysis of statical relations. Of course,
if there were really any philosophers who said that the connexion
between teeth and mastication was entirely accidental, the Aristotelian
doctrine was a useful protest against such an absurdity; but when we
have established a fixed connexion between organ and function, we are
bound to explain the association in some more satisfactory manner than
by reaffirming it in general terms, which is all that Aristotle ever
does. Again, whatever may be the relative justification of teleology
as a study of functions in the living body, we have no grounds for
interpreting the phenomena of inorganic nature on an analogous
principle. Some Greek philosophers were acute enough to perceive the
distinction. While admitting that plants and animals showed traces of
design, they held that the heavenly bodies arose spontaneously from
the movements of a vortex or some such cause;[222] just as certain
religious savants of our own day reject the Darwinian theory while
accepting the nebular hypothesis.[223] But to Aristotle the unbroken
regularity of the celestial movements, which to us is the best proof
of their purely mechanical nature, was, on the contrary, a proof that
they were produced and directed by an absolutely reasonable purpose;
much more so indeed than terrestrial organisms, marked as these are by
occasional deviations and imperfections; and he concludes that each
of those movements must be directed towards the attainment of some
correspondingly consummate end;[224] while, again, in dealing with
those precursors of Mr. Darwin, if such they can be called, who argued
that the utility of an organ does not disprove its spontaneous origin,
since only the creatures which, by a happy accident, came to possess
it would survive—he answers that the constant reproduction of such
organs is enough to vindicate them from being the work of chance;[225]
thus displaying his inability to distinguish between the two ideas of
uniform causation and design.
As a result of the foregoing criticism, Aristotle distinguishes four
different causes or principles by which all things are determined
to be what they are—Matter, Form, Agent, and Purpose.[226] If, for
example, we take a saw, the matter is steel; the form, a toothed
blade; the agent or cause of its assuming that shape, a smith; the
purpose, to divide wood or stone. When we have enumerated these four
principles, we have told everything that can be known about a saw.
But Aristotle could not keep the last three separate; he gradually
extended the definition of form until it absorbed, or became identified
with, agent and purpose.[227] It was what we should call the idea
of function that facilitated the transition. If the very essence or
nature of a saw implies use, activity, movement, how can we define it
without telling its purpose? The toothed blade is only intelligible as
a cutting, dividing instrument. Again, how came the saw into being?
What shaped the steel into that particular form? We have said that
it was the smith. But surely that is too vague. The smith is a man,
and may be able to exercise other trades as well. Suppose him to be a
musician, did he make the saw in that capacity? No; and here comes in
a distinction which plays an immense part in Aristotle’s metaphysics,
whence it has passed into our every-day speech. He does not make the
saw _quâ_ musician but _quâ_ smith. He can, however, in the exercise
of his trade as smith make many other tools—knives, axes, and so
forth. Nevertheless, had he only learned to make saws it would be
enough. Therefore, he does not make the saw _quâ_ axe-maker, he makes
it _quâ_ saw-maker. Nor, again, does he make it with his whole mind
and body, but only with just those thoughts and movements required to
give the steel that particular shape. Now, what are these thoughts but
the idea of a saw present in his mind and passing through his eyes
and hands, till it fixes itself on the steel? The immaterial form of
a saw creates the real saw which we use. Let us apply the preceding
analogies to a natural object; for example, a man. What is the Form,
the definition of a man? Not a being possessing a certain outward
shape, for then a marble statue would be a man, which it is not; nor
yet a certain assemblage of organs, for then a corpse would be a man,
which, according to Aristotle, criticising Democritus, it is not; but
a living, feeling, and reasoning being, the end of whose existence is
to fulfil all the functions involved in this definition. So, also, the
creative cause of a man is another man, who directly impresses the
human form on the material supplied by the female organism. In the same
way, every definite individual aggregate becomes what it is through the
agency of another individual representing the same type in its perfect
manifestation.[228]
The substantial forms of Aristotle, combining as they do the notion
of a definition with that of a moving cause and a fulfilled purpose,
are evidently derived from the Platonic Ideas; a reflection which
at once leads us to consider the relation in which he stands to
the spiritualism of Plato and to the mathematical idealism of the
Neo-Pythagoreans. He agrees with them in thinking that general
conceptions are the sole object of knowledge—the sole enduring reality
in a world of change. He differs from them in maintaining that such
conceptions have no existence apart from the particulars in which they
reside. It has been questioned whether Aristotle ever really understood
his master’s teaching on the subject. Among recent critics, M.
Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire asserts, with considerable vehemence, that he
did not. It is certain that in some respects Aristotle is not just to
the Platonic theory, that he exaggerates its absurdities, ignores its
developments, and occasionally brings charges against it which might be
retorted with at least equal effect against his own philosophy. But on
the most important point of all, whether Plato did or did not ascribe
a separate existence to his Ideas, we could hardly believe a disciple
of twenty years’ standing[229] to be mistaken, even if the master had
not left on record a decisive testimony to the affirmative side in his
_Parmenides_, and one scarcely less decisive in his _Timaeus_.[230]
And so far as the controversy reduces itself to this particular issue,
Aristotle is entirely right. His most powerful arguments are not,
indeed, original, having been anticipated by Plato himself; but as
they were left unanswered he had a perfect right to repeat them, and
his dialectical skill was great enough to make him independent of
their support. The extreme minuteness of his criticism is wearisome to
us, who can hardly conceive how another opinion could ever have been
held. Yet such was the fascination exercised by Plato’s idealism, that
not only was it upheld with considerable acrimony by his immediate
followers,[231] but under one form or another it has been revived
over and over again, in the long period which has elapsed since its
first promulgation, and on every one of these occasions the arguments
of Aristotle have been raised up again to meet it, each time with
triumphant success. Ockham’s razor, _Entia non sunt sine necessitate
multiplicanda_, is borrowed from the _Metaphysics_; Locke’s principal
objection to innate ideas closely resembles the sarcastic observation
in the last chapter of the _Posterior Analytics_, that, according to
Plato’s theory, we must have some very wonderful knowledge of which we
are not conscious.[232] And the weapons with which Trendelenburg and
others have waged war on Hegel are avowedly drawn from the Aristotelian
arsenal.[233]
In his criticism on the ideal theory, Aristotle argues that it is
unproved; that the consequences to which it leads would be rejected
by the idealists themselves; that it involves a needless addition to
the sum of existence; that it neither explains the origin of things
nor helps us to understand them, while taking away from them their
substantial reality; that the Ideas are merely sensible objects
hypostasised, like the anthropomorphic divinities of primitive men;
that, to speak of them as patterns, in whose likeness the world was
created, is a mere idle metaphor; that, even assuming the existence of
such patterns, each individual must be made in the likeness, not of
one, but of many ideas—a human being, for instance, must be modelled
after the ideal biped and the ideal animal, as well as after the ideal
man; while many of the ideas themselves, although all are supposed
to exist absolutely, must be dependent on other and simpler types;
finally, that, assuming an idea for every abstract relation, there must
be ideas to represent the relation between every sensible object and
its prototype, others for the new relations thus introduced, and so on
to infinity.
Aristotle’s objections to the Neo-Pythagorean theory of ideal numbers
need not delay us here. They are partly a repetition of those brought
against the Platonic doctrine in its original form, partly derived
from the impossibility of identifying qualitative with quantitative
differences.[234]
Such arguments manifestly tell not only against Platonism, but against
every kind of transcendental realism, from the natural theology of
Paley to the dogmatic agnosticism of Mr. Herbert Spencer. A modern
Aristotle might say that the hypothesis of a creative first cause,
personal or otherwise, logically involves the assumption of as many
original specific energies as there are qualities to be accounted
for, and thus gives us the unnecessary trouble of counting everything
twice over; that every difficulty and contradiction from which the
transcendental assumption is intended to free us, must, on analysis,
reappear in the assumption itself—for example, the God who is to
deliver us from evil must be himself conceived as the creator of evil;
that the infinite and absolute can neither cause, nor be apprehended
by, the finite and relative; that to separate from Nature all the
forces required for its perpetuation, and relegate them to a sphere
apart, is a false antithesis and a sterile abstraction; lastly, that
causation, whether efficient or final, once begun, cannot stop; that if
this world is not self-existing, nothing is; that the mutual adaptation
of thoughts in a designing intelligence requires to be accounted for
just like any other adaptation; that if the relative involves the
absolute, so also does the relation between the two involve another
absolute, and so on to infinity.
* * * * *
These are difficulties which will continue to perplex us until
every shred of the old metaphysics has been thrown off. To that
task Aristotle was not equal. He was profoundly influenced by the
very theory against which he contended; and, at the risk of being
paradoxical, we may even say that it assumed a greater importance in
his system than had ever been attributed to it by Plato himself. To
prove this, we must resume the thread of our exposition, and follow
the Stagirite still further in his analysis of the fundamental reality
with which the highest philosophy is concerned.
II.
Ever since the age of Parmenides and Heracleitus, Greek thought had
been haunted by a pervading dualism which each system had in turn
attempted to reconcile, with no better result than its reproduction
under altered names. And speculation had latterly become still further
perplexed by the question whether the antithetical couples supposed
to divide all Nature between them could or could not be reduced to so
many aspects of a single opposition. In the last chapter but one we
showed that there were four such competing pairs—Being and Not-Being,
the One and the Many, the Same and the Other, Rest and Motion. Plato
employed his very subtlest dialectic in tracing out their connexions,
readjusting their relationships, and diminishing the total number
of terms which they involved. In what was probably his last great
speculative effort, the _Timaeus_, he seems to have selected Sameness
and Difference as the couple best adapted to bear the heaviest strain
of thought. There is some reason for believing that in his spoken
lectures he followed the Pythagorean system more closely, giving the
preference to the One and the Many; or he may have employed the two
expressions indifferently. The former would sooner commend itself to a
dialectician, the latter to a mathematician. Aristotle was both, but he
was before all things a naturalist. As such, the antithesis of Being
and Not-Being, to which Plato attached little or no value, suited him
best. Accordingly, he proceeds to work it out with a clearness before
unknown in Greek philosophy. The first and surest of all principles,
he declares, is, that a thing cannot both be and not be, in the same
sense of the words, and furthermore that it must either be or not be.
Subsequent logicians prefixed to these axioms another, declaring that
whatever is is. The three together are known as the laws of Identity,
Contradiction, and Excluded Middle. By all, except Hegelians, they are
recognised as the highest laws of thought; and even Hegel was indebted
to them, through Fichte, for the ground-plan of his entire system.[235]
The whole meaning and value of such excessively abstract propositions
must lie in their application to the problems which they are employed
to solve. Aristotle made at once too much and too little of his. Too
much—for he employed them to refute doctrines not really involving
any logical inconsistency—the theory of Heracleitus, that everything
is in motion; the theory of Anaxagoras, that everything was originally
confused together; the theory of Protagoras, that man is the measure of
all things. Too little—for he admitted a sphere of possibilities where
logical definition did not apply, and where subjects simultaneously
possessed the capacity of taking on one or other of two contradictory
attributes.
Nor is this all. After sharply distinguishing what is from what is
not, and refusing to admit any intermediary between them, Aristotle
proceeds to discover such an intermediary in the shape of what he
calls Accidental Predication.[236] An accident is an attribute not
necessarily or usually inhering in its subject—in other words,
a co-existence not dependent on causation. Aristotle could never
distinguish between the two notions of cause and kind, nor yet
between interferences with the action of some particular cause and
exceptions to the law of causation in general; and so he could not
frame an intelligible theory of chance. Some propositions, he tells
us, are necessarily true, others are only generally true; and it
is the exceptions to the latter which constitute accident; as, for
instance, when a cold day happens to come in the middle of summer.
So also a man is necessarily an animal, but only exceptionally white.
Such distinctions are not uninteresting, for they prove with what
difficulties the idea of invariable sequence had to contend before even
the highest intellects could grasp it. There was a constant liability
to confound the order of succession with the order of co-existence, the
order of our sensations with the order of objective existence, and the
subjection of human actions to any fixed order, with the impossibility
of deliberation and choice. The earlier Greek thinkers had proclaimed
that all things existed by necessity; but with their purely geometrical
or historical point of view, they entirely ignored the more complex
questions raised by theories about classification, logical attribution,
and moral responsibility. And the modifications introduced by Epicurus,
into the old physics, show us how unanswerable Aristotle’s reasonings
seemed to some of his ablest successors.
Absolute being is next distinguished from truth, which, we are told,
has no objective existence[237]—a remarkable declaration, which throws
much light on other parts of the Aristotelian system, and to which we
shall subsequently return.[238]
After explaining at considerable length what Being is not, Aristotle
now proceeds to ascertain what it is. He tells us that just as all
number _quâ_ number must be either odd or even, so all Being _quâ_
Being must have certain universal attributes. These he sets himself to
discover. When Descartes long afterwards entered on a somewhat similar
inquiry, he fell back on the facts of his own individual consciousness.
Aristotle, on the contrary, appeals to the common consciousness of
mankind as embodied in ordinary language. In how many senses do we
say that a thing is? The first answer is contained in his famous
Ten Categories.[239] These are not what some have supposed them to
be, _summa genera_ of existence, but _summa genera_ of predication.
In other words, they are not a classification of things, but of the
information which it is possible to receive about a single thing, more
especially about the richest and most concrete thing known to us—a
human being. If we want to find out all about a thing we ask, What is
it? Of what sort? How large? To what does it belong? Where and when
can we find it? What does it do? What happens to it? And if the object
of our investigations be a living thing, we may add, What are its
habits and dispositions? The question has been raised, how Aristotle
came to think of these ten particular categories, and a wonderful
amount of rubbish has been written on the subject, while apparently no
scholar could see what was staring him in the face all the time, that
Aristotle got them by collecting all the simple forms of interrogation
supplied by the Greek language,[240] and writing out their most general
expressions.
Having obtained his categories, Aristotle proceeds to mark off the
first from the other nine. The subject or substance named in answer
to the question, What is it? can exist without having any quality,
size, and so forth predicated of it; but they cannot exist without it.
Logically, they cannot be defined without telling _what_ they are;
really they cannot be conceived without something not themselves in
which they inhere. They are like the tail of a kite, giving greater
conspicuousness and buoyancy to the body, but entirely dependent on
it for support. What our philosopher fails to perceive is, that the
dependence is reciprocal, that substance can no more be conceived
without attributes than attributes without substance; or rather
that substance, like all other categories, can be resolved into
Relation.[241]
Meanwhile, he had a logical machine ready to hand, which could be used
with terrible effect against the Platonic Ideas. Any of these—and
there were a great number—that could be brought under one of the last
nine categories were at once deprived of all claim to independent
existence. Take Equality, for instance. It cannot be discovered outside
quantity, and quantity is always predicated of a substance. And the
same is true of number, to the utter destruction of the Neo-Pythagorean
theory which gave it a separate existence. Moreover, the categories
served not only to generalise and combine, but also to specificate
and divide. The idea of motion occurs in three of them; in quantity,
where it means increase or diminution; in quality, where it means
alteration, as from hot to cold, or _vice versâ_; and in place,
implying transport from one point to another. The Idea of Good, which
stands at the very summit of Plato’s system, may be traced through all
ten categories.[242] Thus, the supposed unity and simplicity of such
conceptions was shown to be an illusion. Platonism was, in truth, so
inconsistent with the notions embodied in common language, that it
could not but be condemned by a logic based on those notions.
Aristotle next takes the Idea of Substance and subjects it to a
fresh analysis.[243] Of all things none seem to possess so evident
an existence as the bodies about us—plants and animals, the four
elements, and the stars. But each of these has already been shown
to consist of Form and Matter. A statue, for instance, is a lump of
bronze shaped into the figure of a man. Of these two constituents,
Matter seems at first sight to possess the greater reality. The same
line of thought which led Aristotle to place substance before the
other categories now threatens to drive him back into materialism.
This he dreaded, not on sentimental or religious grounds, but because
he conceived it to be the negation of knowledge. He first shows that
Matter cannot be the real substance to which individuals owe their
determinate existence, since it is merely the unknown residuum left
behind when every predicate, common to them with others, has been
stripped off. Substance, then, must be either Form alone or Form
combined with Matter. Form, in its completest sense, is equivalent
to the essential definition of a thing—the collection of attributes
together constituting its essence or conception. To know the definition
is to know the thing defined. The way to define is to begin with the
most general notion, and proceed by adding one specific difference
after another, until we reach the most particular and concrete
expression. The union of this last with a certain portion of Matter
gives us the individual Socrates or Callias. There are no real
entities (as the Platonists pretend) corresponding to the successive
stages of generalisation, biped, animal, and so forth, any more than
there are self-existing quantities, qualities, and relations. Thus
the problem has been driven into narrower and narrower limits, until
at last we are left with the _infimæ species_ and the individuals
contained under them. It remains to discover in what relation these
stand to one another. The answer is unsatisfactory. We are told that
there is no definition of individuals, and also that the definition is
identical with the individual.[244] Such, indeed, is the conclusion
necessarily resulting from Aristotle’s repeated declarations that
all knowledge is of definitions, that all knowledge is of something
really existing, and that nothing really exists but individual things.
Nevertheless, against these we have to set equally strong declarations
to the effect that knowledge is of something general, not of the
perishing individuals which may pass out of existence at any moment.
The truth is, that we are here, as Zeller has shown,[245] in presence
of an insoluble contradiction, and we must try to explain, not how
Aristotle reconciled it with itself, for that was impossible, but how
he reconciled himself to it.
His analysis of individuality was the first step in this direction.
We have seen that he treats definition as a process of gradual
specification, beginning with the most general notions, and working
down by successive differentiations to the most particular. Now,
the completed conception is itself the integration of all these
differences, the bond of union holding them together. Turning to an
antithetical order of ideas, to the material substance of which bodies
are composed, and its various transformations, we find him working out
the same vein of thought. According to the Aristotelian chemistry,
an ultimate indeterminate unknowable something clothes itself with
one or other of the opposing attributes, dry and moist, hot and cold;
and when two of these are combined, manifests itself to our senses as
one of the four elements. The elements combine in a particular manner
to form homogeneous animal tissues, and these again are united into
heterogeneous organs, which together constitute the living body. Here,
then, we have two analogous series of specifications—one conceptual
and leading down from the abstract to the concrete, the other physical,
and leading up from the vague, the simple, and the homogeneous, to the
definite, the complex, and the heterogeneous. Aristotle embraces both
processes under a single comprehensive generalisation. He describes
each of them as the continuous conversion of a possibility into an
actuality. For the sake of greater clearness, let us take the liberty
of substituting modern scientific terms for his cumbrous and obsolete
classifications. We shall then say that the general notion, living
thing, contains under it the two less general notions—plant and
animal. If we only know of any given object that it has life, there
is implied the possibility of its being either the one or the other,
but not both together. On determining it to be (say) an animal, we
actualise one of the possibilities. But the actualisation is only
relative, and immediately becomes the possibility of being either
a vertebrate or an invertebrate animal. The actuality vertebrate
becomes the possibility of viviparous or oviparous, and so on through
successive differentiations until we come (say) to a man. Now let us
begin at the material end. Here are a mass of molecules, which, in
their actual state are only carbon, nitrogen, and so forth. But they
are potential starch, gluten, water, or any other article of food that
might be named; for under favourable conditions they will combine to
form it. Once actualised as such, they are possible blood-cells; these
are possible tissues; these, again, possible organs, and lastly we
come to the consensus of vital functions, which is a man. What the raw
material is to the finished product, that are the parts to the entire
organism, the elements to the compound, the genus to the species, and
such in its very widest sense is potency to realisation, δύναμις to
ἐντελέχεια, throughout the universe of growth and decay.[246]
It will be observed that, so far, this famous theory does not add one
single jot to our knowledge. Under the guise of an explanation, it is a
description of the very facts needing to be explained. We did not want
an Aristotle to tell us that before a thing exists it must be possible.
We want to know how it is possible, what are the real conditions of its
existence, and why they combine at a particular moment to produce it.
The Atomists showed in what direction the solution should be sought,
and all subsequent progress has been due to a development of their
method. Future ages will perhaps consider our own continued distinction
between force and motion as a survival of the Peripatetic philosophy.
Just as sensible aggregates of matter arise not out of potential
matter, but out of matter in an extremely fine state of diffusion, so
also sensible motion will be universally traced back, not to potential
motion, which is all that force means, but to molecular or ethereal
vibrations, like those known to constitute heat and light.
We have said, in comparing him with his predecessors, that the
Stagirite unrolled Greek thought from a solid into a continuous
surface. We have now to add that he gave his surface the false
appearance of a solid by the use of shadows, and of aërial perspective.
In other words, he made the indication of his own ignorance and
confusion do duty for depth and distance. For to say that a thing is
developed out of its possibility, merely means that it is developed out
of something, the nature of which we do not know. And to speak about
such possibilities as imperfect existences, or matter, or whatever
else Aristotle may be pleased to call them, is simply constructing the
universe, not out of our ideas, but out of our absolute want of ideas.
We have seen how, for the antithesis between Form and Matter, was
substituted the wider antithesis between Actuality and Possibility.
Even in this latter the opposition is more apparent than real. A
permanent possibility is only intelligible through the idea of its
realisation, and sooner or later is certain to be realised. Aristotle
still further bridges over the interval between them by a new
conception—that of motion. Motion, he tells us, is the process of
realisation, the transformation of power into act. Nearly the whole
of his _Physics_ is occupied with an enquiry into its nature and
origin. As first conceived, it is equivalent to what we call change
rather than to mechanical movement. The table of categories supplies
an exhaustive enumeration of its varieties. These are, as we have
already mentioned, alteration of quality or transformation, increase
or decrease of quantity, equivalent to growth and decay, and transport
from place to place. Sometimes a fourth variety is added, derived from
the first category, substance. He calls it generation and destruction,
the coming into existence or passing out of it again. A careful
analysis shows that motion in space is the primordial change on which
all others depend for their accomplishment. To account for it is the
most vitally important problem in philosophy.
III.
Before entering on the chain of reasoning which led Aristotle to
postulate the existence of a personal First Cause, we must explain the
difference between his scientific standpoint, and that which is now
accepted by all educated minds. To him the eternity not only of Matter,
but also of what he called Form,—that is to say, the collection of
attributes giving definiteness to natural aggregates, more especially
those known as organic species—was an axiomatic certainty. Every type,
capable of self-propagation, that could exist at all, had existed, and
would continue to exist for ever. For this, no explanation beyond the
generative power of Nature was required. But when he had to account for
the machinery by which the perpetual alternation of birth and death
below, and the changeless revolutions of the celestial spheres above
the moon were preserved, difficulties arose. He had reduced every
other change to transport through space; and with regard to this his
conceptions were entirely mistaken. He believed that moving matter
tended to stop unless it was sustained by some external force; and
whatever their advantages over him in other respects, we cannot say
that the Atomists were in a position to correct him here: for their
theory, that every particle of matter gravitated downward through
infinite space, was quite incompatible with the latest astronomical
discoveries. Aristotle triumphantly showed that the tendency of heavy
bodies was not to move indefinitely downwards in parallel lines, but
to move in converging lines to the centre of the earth, which he, in
common with most Greek astronomers, supposed to be also the centre of
the universe; and seeing light bodies move up, he credited them with
an equal and opposite tendency to the circumference of the universe,
which, like Parmenides and Plato, he believed to be of finite extent.
Thus each kind of matter has its appropriate place, motion to which
ends in rest, while motion away from it, being constrained, cannot
last. Accordingly, the constant periodicity of terrestrial phenomena
necessitates as constant a transformation of dry and wet, and of hot
and cold bodies into one another. This is explained with perfect
accuracy by the diurnal and annual revolutions of the sun. Here,
however, we are introduced to a new kind of motion, which, instead of
being rectilinear and finite, is circular and eternal. To account for
it, Aristotle assumes a fifth element entirely different in character
from the four terrestrial elements. Unlike them, it is absolutely
simple, and has a correspondingly simple mode of motion, which, as
our philosopher erroneously supposes, can be no other than circular
rotation.
Out of this eternal unchanging divine substance, which he calls aether,
are formed the heavenly bodies and the transparent spheres containing
them. But there is something beyond it of an even higher and purer
nature. Aristotle proves, with great subtlety, from his fundamental
assumptions, that the movement of an extended substance cannot be
self-caused. He also proves that motion must be absolutely continuous
and without a beginning. We have, therefore, no choice but to accept
the existence of an unextended, immaterial, eternal, and infinite Power
on which the whole cosmos depends.
So much only is established in the _Physics_. Further particulars
are given in the twelfth book of the _Metaphysics_. There we learn
that, all movement being from possibility to actuality, the source of
movement must be a completely realised actuality—pure form without any
admixture of matter. But the highest form known to us in the ascending
scale of organic life is the human soul, and the highest function of
soul is reason. Reason then must be that which moves without being
moved itself, drawing all things upwards and onwards by the love which
its perfection inspires. The eternal, infinite, absolute actuality
existing beyond the outermost starry sphere is God. Aristotle describes
God as the thought which thinks itself and finds in the simple act of
self-consciousness an everlasting happiness, wonderful if it always
equals the best moments of our mortal life, more wonderful still if it
surpasses them. There is only one supreme God, for plurality is due to
an admixture of matter, and He is pure form. The rule of many is not
good, as Homer says. Let there be one Lord.
Such are the closing words of what was possibly Aristotle’s last
work, the clear confession of his monotheistic creed. A monotheistic
creed, we have said, but one so unlike all other religions, that its
nature has been continually misunderstood. While some have found in
it a theology like that of the Jews or of Plato or of modern Europe,
others have resolved it into a vague pantheism. Among the latter we
are surprised to find Sir A. Grant, a writer to whom the Aristotelian
texts must be perfectly familiar both in spirit and in letter. Yet
nothing can possibly be more clear and emphatic than the declarations
they contain. Pantheism identifies God with the world; Aristotle
separates them as pure form from form more or less alloyed with matter.
Pantheism denies personality to God; Aristotle gives him unity,
spirituality, self-consciousness, and happiness. If these qualities do
not collectively involve personality, we should like to know what does.
Need we remind the accomplished editor of the _Nicomachean Ethics_ how
great a place is given in that work to human self-consciousness, to
waking active thought as distinguished from mere slumbering faculties
or unrealised possibilities of action? And what Aristotle regarded as
essential to human perfection, he would regard as still more essential
to divine perfection. Finally, the God of pantheism is a general idea;
the God of Aristotle is an individual. Sir A. Grant says that he (or
it) is the idea of Good.[247] We doubt very much whether there is a
single passage in the _Metaphysics_ to sanction such an expression.
Did it occur, however, that would be no warrant for approximating
the Aristotelian to the Platonic theology, in presence of such a
distinct declaration as that the First Mover is both conceptually
and numerically one,[248] coming after repeated repudiations of the
Platonic attempt to isolate ideas from the particulars in which they
are immersed. Then Sir A. Grant goes on to speak of the desire felt
by Nature for God as being itself God,[249] and therefore involving a
belief in pantheism. Such a notion is not generally called pantheism,
but hylozoism, the attribution of life to matter. We have no desire,
however, to quarrel about words. The philosopher who believes in
the existence of a vague consciousness, a spiritual effort towards
something higher diffused through nature, may, if you will, be called a
pantheist, but not unless this be the only divinity he recognises. The
term is altogether misleading when applied to one who also proclaims
the existence of something in his opinion far higher, better and more
real—a living God, who transcends Nature, and is independent of her,
although she is not independent of him.
We must also observe that the parallel drawn by Sir A. Grant between
the theology of Aristotle and that of John Stuart Mill is singularly
unfortunate. It is in the first place incorrect to say that Mill
represented God as benevolent but not omnipotent. He only suggested
the idea as less inconsistent with facts than other forms of
theism.[250] In the next place, Aristotle’s God was almost exactly
the reverse of this. He possesses infinite power, but no benevolence
at all. He has nothing to do with the internal arrangements of the
world, either as creator or as providence. He is, in fact, an egoist
of the most transcendent kind, who does nothing but think about
himself and his own perfections. Nothing could be more characteristic
of the unpractical Aristotelian philosophy; nothing more repugnant to
the eager English reformer, the pupil of Bentham and of Plato. And,
thirdly, Sir A. Grant takes what is not the God of Aristotle’s system
at all, but a mere abstraction, the immanent reason of Nature, the
Form which can never quite conquer Matter, and places it on the same
line with a God who, however hypothetical, is nothing if not a person
distinct from the world; while, as if to bewilder the unfortunate
‘English reader’ still further, he adds, in the very next sentence,
that ‘the great defect in Aristotle’s conception of God is’ the denial
‘that God can be a moral Being.’[251]
The words last quoted, which in a Christian sense are true enough,
lead us over to the contrasting view of Aristotle’s theology, to the
false theory of it held by critics like Prof. St. George Mivart. The
Stagirite agrees with Catholic theism in accepting a personal God,
and he agrees with the First Article of the English Church, though
not with the Pentateuch, in saying that God is without parts or
passions; but there his agreement ceases. Excluding such a thing as
divine interference with nature, his theology of course excludes the
possibility of revelation, inspiration, miracles, and grace. Nor is
this a mere omission; it is a necessity of the system. If there can be
no existence without time, no time without motion, no motion without
unrealised desire, no desire without an ideal, no ideal but eternally
self-thinking thought—then it logically follows that God, in the
sense of such a thought, must not interest himself in the affairs of
men. Again, Aristotelianism equally excludes the arguments by which
modern theologians have sought to prove the existence of God. Here
also the system is true to its contemporaneous, statical, superficial
character. The First Mover is not separated from us by a chain of
causes extending through past ages, but by an intervening breadth of
space and the wheels within wheels of a cosmic machine. Aristotle
had no difficulty in conceiving what some have since declared to be
inconceivable, a series of antecedents without any beginning in time;
it was rather the beginning of such a series that he could not make
intelligible to himself. Nor, as we have seen, did he think that the
adaptation in living organisms of each part to every other required an
external explanation. Far less did it occur to him that the production
of impressions on our senses was due to the agency of a supernatural
power. It is absolutely certain that he would have rejected the
Cartesian argument, according to which a perfect being must exist
if it be only conceivable—existence being necessarily involved in
the idea of perfection.[252] Finally, not recognising such a faculty
as conscience, he would not have admitted it to be the voice of God
speaking in the soul.
On the other hand, Aristotle’s own theistic arguments cannot stand for
a moment in the face of modern science. We know by the law of inertia
that it is not the continuance, but the arrest or the beginning of
motion which requires to be accounted for. We know by the Copernican
system that there is no solid sidereal sphere governing the revolutions
of all Nature. And we know by the Newtonian physics that gravitation
is not dependent on fixed points in space for its operation. _The_
Philosophy of _the_ Philosopher Aristotle is as inconsistent with the
demonstrations of modern astronomy as it is with the faith of mediaeval
Catholicism.
It remains to be seen whether the system which we are examining is
consistent with itself. It is not. The Prime Mover, being unextended,
cannot be located outside the sidereal sphere; nor can he be brought
into immediate contact with it more than with any other part of the
cosmos. If the aether has a motion proper to itself, then no spiritual
agency is required to keep it in perpetual rotation. If the crystalline
spheres fit accurately together, as they must, to avoid leaving a
vacuum anywhere, there can be no friction, no production of heat, and
consequently no effect produced on the sublunary sphere. Finally, no
rotatory or other movement can, taken alone, have any conceivable
connexion with the realisation of a possibility, in the sense of
progress from a lower to a higher state of being. It is merely the
perpetual exchange of one indifferent position for another.
We have now to consider what were the speculative motives that led
Aristotle to overlook these contradictions, and to find rest in a
theory even less satisfactory than the earlier systems which he is
always attacking with relentless animosity. The first motive, we
believe, was the train of reasoning, already laid before the reader,
by which universal essences, the objects of knowledge, gradually came
to be identified with particular objects, the sole existing realities.
For the arguments against such an identification, as put forward by
our philosopher himself, still remained unanswered. The individuals
comprising a species were still too transient for certainty and too
numerous for comprehension. But when for the antithesis between Form
and Matter was substituted the antithesis between Actuality and
Possibility, two modes of evasion presented themselves. The first was
to distinguish between actual knowledge and potential knowledge. The
former corresponded to existing particulars, the latter to general
ideas.[253] This, however, besides breaking up the unity of knowledge,
was inconsistent with the whole tenor of Aristotle’s previous
teaching. What can be more actual than demonstration, and how can
there be any demonstration of transient particulars? The other mode of
reconciliation was perhaps suggested by the need of an external cause
to raise Possibility into Actuality. Such a cause might be conceived
with all the advantages and without the drawbacks of a Platonic Idea.
It would be at once the moving agent and the model of perfection; it
could reconcile the general and the particular by the simple fact of
being eternal in time, comprehensive in space, and unique in kind.
Aristotle found such a cause, or rather a whole series of such causes,
in the celestial spheres. In his system, these bear just the same
relation to terrestrial phenomena that Plato’s Ideas bear to the world
of sense. They are, in fact, the Ideas made sensible and superficial,
placed alongside of, instead of beneath or behind, the transient
particulars which they irradiate and sustain.
The analogy may be carried even farther. If Plato regarded the things
of sense as not merely a veil, but an imperfect imitation of the only
true realities; so also did Aristotle represent the sublunary elements
as copying the disposition and activities of the ethereal spheres.
They too have their concentric arrangements—first fire, then air,
then water, and lastly earth in the centre; while their perpetual
transformation into one another presents an image in time of the
spatial rotation which those sublime beings perform. And although we
think that Sir A. Grant is quite mistaken in identifying Aristotle’s
Supreme Mind with the Idea of Good, there can be no doubt of its having
been suggested by that Idea. It is, in fact, the translation of Plato’s
abstraction into concrete reality, and the completion of a process
which Plato had himself begun. From another point of view we may say
that both master and disciple were working, each in his own way, at
the solution of a problem which entirely dominates Greek philosophy
from Empedocles on—the reconciliation of Parmenides and Heracleitus,
Being and Becoming, the eternal and the changeful, the one and the
many. Aristotle adopts the superficial, external method of placing the
two principles side by side in space; and for a long time the world
accepted his solution for the same reason that had commended it to his
own acceptance, its apparent agreement with popular tradition and with
the facts of experience. It must be confessed, however, that here also
he was following the lines laid down by Plato. The _Timaeus_ and the
_Laws_ are marked by a similar tendency to substitute astronomy for
dialectics, to study the celestial movements with religious veneration,
to rebuild on a scientific basis that ancient star-worship which,
even among the Greeks, enjoyed a much higher authority and prestige
than the humanised mythology of the poets. But for Christianity this
star-worship would probably have become the official faith of the
Roman world. As it is, Dante’s great poem presents us with a singular
compromise between the two creeds. The crystalline spheres are
retained, only they have become the abode of glorified spirits instead
of being the embodiment of eternal gods. We often hear it said that the
Copernican system was rejected as offensive to human pride, because it
removed the earth from the centre of the universe. This is a profound
mistake. Its offence was to degrade the heavenly bodies by assimilating
them to the earth.[254] Among several planets, all revolving round
the sun, there could not be any marked qualitative difference. In
the theological sense there was no longer any heaven; and with the
disappearance of the solid sidereal sphere there was no longer any
necessity for a Prime Mover.
There is, perhaps, no passage in Aristotle’s writings—there is
certainly none in his scientific writings—more eloquent than that
which describes the glory of his imaginary heavens. The following
translation may give some faint idea of its solemnity and splendour:—
We believe, then, that the whole heaven is one and everlasting,
without beginning or end through all eternity, but holding infinite
time within its orb; not, as some say, created or capable of being
destroyed. We believe it on account of the grounds already stated,
and also on account of the consequences resulting from a different
hypothesis. For, it must add great weight to our assurance of its
immortality and everlasting duration that this opinion may, while the
contrary opinion cannot possibly, be true. Wherefore, we may trust
the traditions of old time, and especially of our own race, when
they tell us that there is something deathless and divine about the
things which, although moving, have a movement that is not bounded,
but is itself the universal bound, a perfect circle enclosing in its
revolutions the imperfect motions that are subject to restraint and
arrest; while this, being without beginning or end or rest through
infinite time, is the one from which all others originate, and into
which they disappear. That heaven which antiquity assigned to the
gods as an immortal abode, is shown by the present argument to be
uncreated and indestructible, exempt alike from mortal weakness and
from the weariness of subjection to a force acting in opposition
to its natural inclination; for in proportion to its everlasting
continuance such a compulsion would be laborious, and unparticipant in
the highest perfection of design. We must not, then, believe with the
old mythologists that an Atlas is needed to uphold it; for they, like
some in more recent times, fancied that the heavens were made of heavy
earthy matter, and so fabled an animated necessity for their support;
nor yet that, as Empedocles says, they will last only so long as
their own proper momentum is exceeded by the whirling motion of which
they partake.[255] Nor, again, is it likely that their everlasting
revolution can be kept up by the exercise of a conscious will; for
no soul could lead a happy and blessed existence that was engaged in
such a task, necessitating, as it would, an unceasing struggle with
their native tendency to move in a different direction, without even
the mental relaxation and bodily rest which mortals gain by sleep, but
doomed to the eternal torment of an Ixion’s wheel. Our explanation,
on the other hand, is, as we say, not only more consistent with the
eternity of the heavens, but also can alone be reconciled with the
acknowledged vaticinations of religious faith.[256]
It will be seen from the foregoing passage how strong a hold the old
Greek notion of an encircling limit had on the mind of Aristotle, and
how he transformed it back from the high intellectual significance
given to it by Plato into its original sense of a mere space-enclosing
figure. And it will also be seen how he credits his spheres with a full
measure of that moving power which, according to his rather unfair
criticism, the Platonic Ideas did not possess. His astronomy also
supplied him with that series of graduated transitions between two
extremes in which Greek thought so much delighted. The heavenly bodies
mediate between God and the earth; partly active and partly passive,
they both receive and communicate the moving creative impulse. The four
terrestrial elements are moved in the various categories of substance,
quantity, quality, and place; the aether moves in place only. God
remains ‘without variableness or shadow of a change.’ Finally, by its
absolute simplicity and purity, the aether mediates between the coarse
matter perceived by our senses and the absolutely immaterial Nous, and
is itself supposed to be pervaded by a similar gradation of fineness
from top to bottom. Furthermore, the upper fire, which must not be
confounded with flame, furnishes a connecting link between the aether
and the other elements, being related to them as Form to Matter, or
as agent to patient; and, when the elements are decomposed into their
constituent qualities, hot and cold occupy a similar position with
regard to wet and dry.
IV.
In mastering Aristotle’s cosmology, we have gained the key to his
entire method of systematisation. Henceforth, the Stagirite has no
secrets from us. Where we were formerly content to show that he
erred, we can now show why he erred; by generalising his principles
of arrangement, we can exhibit them still more clearly in their
conflict with modern thought. The method, then, pursued by Aristotle
is to divide his subject into two more or less unequal masses, one of
which is supposed to be governed by necessary principles, admitting
of certain demonstration; while the other is irregular, and can only
be studied according to the rules of probable evidence. The parts of
the one are homogeneous and concentrically disposed, the movements of
each being controlled by that immediately outside and above it. The
parts of the other are heterogeneous and distributed among a number
of antithetical pairs, between whose members there is, or ought to
be, a general equilibrium preserved, the whole system having a common
centre which either oscillates from one extreme to another, or holds
the balance between them. The second system is enclosed within the
first, and is altogether dependent on it for the impulses determining
its processes of metamorphosis and equilibration. Where the internal
adjustments of a system to itself or of one system to the other are not
consciously made, Aristotle calls them Nature. They are always adapted
to secure its everlasting continuance either in an individual or a
specific form. Actuality belongs more particularly to the first sphere,
and possibility to the second, but both are, to a certain extent,
represented in each.
We have already seen how this fundamental division is applied to
the universe as a whole. But our philosopher is not content with
classifying the phenomena as he finds them; he attempts to demonstrate
the necessity of their dual existence; and in so doing is guilty of
something very like a vicious circle. For, after proving from the
terrestrial movements that there must be an eternal movement to keep
them going, he now assumes the revolving aether, and argues that there
must be a motionless solid centre for it to revolve round, although a
geometrical axis would have served the purpose equally well. By a still
more palpable fallacy, he proceeds to show that a body whose tendency
is towards the centre, must, in the nature of things, be opposed by
another body whose tendency is towards the circumference. In order
to fill up the interval created by this opposition, two intermediate
bodies are required, and thus we get the four elements—earth, water,
air, and fire. These, again, are resolved into the antithetical
couples, dry and wet, hot and cold, the possible combinations of which,
by twos, give us the four elements once more. Earth is dry and cold,
water cold and wet, air wet and hot, fire hot and dry; each adjacent
pair having a quality in common, and each element being characterized
by the excess of a particular quality; earth is especially dry, water
cold, air wet, and fire hot. The common centre of each antithesis is
what Aristotle calls the First Matter, the mere abstract unformed
possibility of existence. This matter always combines two qualities,
and has the power of oscillating from one quality to another, but it
cannot, as a rule, simultaneously exchange both for their opposites.
Earth may pass into water, exchanging dry for wet, but not so readily
into air, which would necessitate a double exchange at the same moment.
Those who will may see in all this an anticipation of chemical
substitution and double decomposition. We can assure them that it will
be by no means the most absurd parallel discovered between ancient and
modern ideas. It is possible, however, to trace a more real connexion
between the Aristotelian physics and mediaeval thought. We do not
of course mean the scholastic philosophy, for there never was the
slightest doubt as to its derivation; we allude to the alchemy and
astrology which did duty for positive science during so many centuries,
and even overlapped it down to the time of Newton, himself an ardent
alchemist. The superstitions of astrology originated independently
of the peripatetic system, and probably long before it, but they
were likely to be encouraged by it instead of being repressed, as
they would have been by a less anthropomorphic philosophy. Aristotle
himself, as we have seen, limited the action of the heavens on the
sublunary sphere to their heating power; but, by crediting them with
an immortal reason and the pursuit of ends unknown to us, he opened
a wide field for conjecture as to what those ends were, and how they
could be ascertained. That the stars and planets were always thinking
and acting, but never about our affairs, was not a notion likely to
be permanently accepted. Neither was it easy to believe that their
various configurations, movements, and names (the last probably
revealed by themselves) were entirely without significance. From such
considerations to the casting of horoscopes is not a far remove. The
Aristotelian chemistry would still more readily lend itself to the
purposes of alchemy. If Nature is one vast process of transmutation,
then particular bodies, such as the metals, not only may, but must be
convertible into one another. And even those who rejected Aristotle’s
logic with scorn still clung to his natural philosophy when it
flattered their hopes of gain. Bacon kept the theory of substantial
forms. His originality consisted in looking for a method by which
any form, or assemblage of forms might be superinduced at pleasure
on the underlying matter. The real development of knowledge pursued
a far different course. The great discoverers of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries achieved their success by absolutely reversing
the method of Aristotle, by bringing into fruitful contact principles
which he had condemned to barren isolation. They carried terrestrial
physics into the heavens; they brought down the absoluteness and
eternity of celestial law to earth; they showed that Aristotle’s
antithetical qualities were merely quantitative distinctions. These
they resolved into modes of motion; and they also resolved all motions
into one, which was both rectilinear and perpetual. But they and their
successors put an end to all dreams of transmutation, when they showed
by another synthesis that all matter, at least within the limits of our
experience, has the changeless consistency once attributed exclusively
to the stellar spheres.
When Aristotle passes from the whole cosmos to the philosophy of life,
his method of systematic division is less distinctly illustrated, but
still it may be traced. The fundamental separation is between body
and soul. The latter has a wider meaning than what we associate with
it at present. It covers the psychic functions and the whole life of
the organism, which, again, is not what we mean by life. For life
with us is both individual and collective; it resides in each speck
of protoplasm, and also in the consensus of the whole organism. With
Aristotle it is more exclusively a central principle, the final cause
of the organism, the power which holds it together, and by which it
was originally shaped. Biology begins by determining the idea of the
whole, and then considers the means by which it is realised. The
psychic functions are arranged according to a system of teleological
subordination. The lower precedes the higher in time, but is logically
necessitated by it. Thus nutrition, or the vegetative life in general,
must be studied in close connexion with sensation and impulse, or
animal life; and this, again, with thought or pure reasoning. On
the other hand, anatomy and physiology are considered from a purely
chemical and mechanical point of view. A vital purpose is, indeed,
assigned to every organ, but with no more reference to its specifically
vital properties than if it formed part of a steam engine. Here, as
always with Aristotle, the idea of moderation determines the point of
view whence the inferior or material system is to be studied. Organic
tissue is made up of the four elemental principles—hot, cold, wet, and
dry—mixed together in proper proportions; and the object of organic
function is to maintain them in due equilibrium, an end effected by
the regulating power of the soul, which, accordingly, has its seat in
the heart or centre of the body. It has been already shown how, in
endeavouring to work out this chimerical theory, Aristotle went much
further astray from the truth than sundry other Greek physiologists
less biassed by the requirements of a symmetrical method.
After the formal and material elements of life have been separately
discussed, there comes an account of the process by which they
are first brought into connexion, for this is how Aristotle views
generation. With him it is the information of matter by psychic
force; and his notions about the part which each parent plays in
the production of a new being are vitiated throughout by this
mistaken assumption. Nevertheless his treatise on the subject is,
for its time, one of the most wonderful works ever written, and,
as we are told on good authority,[257] is now less antiquated than
the corresponding researches of Harvey. The philosopher’s peculiar
genius for observation, analysis, and comparison will partly account
for his success; but, if we mistake not, there is another and less
obvious reason. Here the fatal separation of form and matter was,
except at first starting, precluded by the very idea of generation;
and the teleological principle of spontaneous efforts to realise a
predetermined end was, as it happened, perfectly in accordance with the
facts themselves.
And now, looking back on his cosmology, we can see that Aristotle
was never so near the truth as when he tried to bridge over the gulf
between his two spheres, the one corruptible and the other eternal, by
the idea of motion considered as a specific property of all matter,
and persisting through all time; as a link between the celestial
revolutions and the changes occurring on or near the earth’s surface;
and, finally, as the direct cause of heat, the great agent acting in
opposition to gravity—which last view may have suggested Bacon’s
capital discovery, that heat is itself a mode of motion.
Another method by which Aristotle strove to overcome the antithesis
between life as a mechanical arrangement and life as a metaphysical
conception, was the newly created study of comparative anatomy. The
variations in structure and function which accompany variations in the
environment, though statically and not dynamically conceived, bring us
very near to the truth that biological phenomena are subject to the
same general laws of causation as all other phenomena; and it is this
truth which, in the science of life, corresponds to the identification
of terrestrial with celestial physics in the science of general
mechanics. Vitality is not an individualised principle stationed in
the heart and serving only to balance opposite forces against one
another; but it is diffused through all the tissues, and bestows on
them that extraordinary plasticity which responds to the actions of the
environment by spontaneous variations capable of being summed up in
any direction, and so creating entirely new organic forms without the
intervention of any supernatural agency.
V.
We have now to consider how Aristotle treats psychology, not in
connexion with biology, but as a distinct science—a separation not
quite consistent with his own definition of soul, but forced on him
by the traditions of Greek philosophy and by the nature of things.
Here the fundamental antithesis assumes a three-fold form. First the
theoretical activity of mind is distinguished from its practical
activity; the one being exercised on things which cannot, the other on
things which can, be changed. Again, a similar distinction prevails
within the special province of each. Where truth is the object,
knowledge stands opposed to sense; where good is sought, reason rises
superior to passion. The one antithesis had been introduced into
philosophy by the early physicists, the other by Socrates. They were
confounded in the psychology of Plato, and Aristotle had the merit of
separating them once more. Yet even he preserves a certain artificial
parallelism between them by using the common name Nous, or reason, to
denote the controlling member in each. To make his anthropology still
more complex, there is a third antithesis to be taken into account,
that between the individual and the community, which also sometimes
slides into a partial coincidence with the other two.
Aristotle’s treatise on the soul is mainly devoted to a description of
the theoretical faculties—sense, and thought or reason. By sense we
become acquainted with the material qualities of things; by thought
with their forms or ideas. It has been already mentioned that,
according to our philosopher, the organism is a system of contrary
forces held in equilibrium by the soul, whose seat he supposes to be
in the heart. We now learn that every sensation is a disturbance of
this equilibrium. In other words, the sensorium being virtually any
and every mode of matter, is raised from possibility to actuality by
the presence of some one force, such as heat or cold, in sufficient
strength to incline the balance that way. Here we have, quite in
Aristotle’s usual style, a description instead of an explanation. The
atomic notion of thin films thrown off from the object of sense, and
falling on the organs of sight or touch, was but a crude guess; still
it has more affinity with the discoveries of a Young or a Helmholtz
than scholastic phrases about potentiality and actuality. That
sensation implies a disturbance of equilibrium is, indeed, an important
truth; only, the equilibrium must be conceived as a balance, not of
possible sensations, but of molecular states; that is to say, it must
be interpreted according to the atomic theory.
Aristotle is more successful when he proceeds to discuss the
imagination. He explains it to be a continuance of the movement
originally communicated by the felt object to the organ of sense, kept
up in the absence of the object itself;—as near an approach to the
truth as could be made in his time. And he is also right in saying
that the operations of reason are only made possible by the help of
what he calls phantasms—that is, faint reproductions of sensations.
In addition to this, he points out the connexion between memory and
imagination, and enumerates the laws of association briefly, but with
great accuracy. He is, however, altogether unaware of their scope. So
far from using them to explain all the mental processes, he does not
even see that they account for involuntary reminiscence, and limits
them to the voluntary operation by which we recall a missing name or
other image to consciousness.
So far, Aristotle regards the soul as a function, or energy, or
perfection of the body, from which it can no more be separated than
vision from the eye. It is otherwise with the part of mind which
he calls Nous, or Reason—the faculty which takes cognisance of
abstract ideas or the pure forms of things. This corresponds, in the
microcosm, to the eternal Nous of the macrocosm, and, like it, is
absolutely immaterial, not depending for its activity on the exercise
of any bodily organ. There is, however, a general analogy between
sensation and thought considered as processes of cognition. Previous
to experience, the Nous is no thought in particular, but merely a
possibility of thinking, like a smooth wax tablet waiting to be written
on. It is determined to some particular idea by contact with the
objective forms of things, and in this determination is raised from
power to actuality. The law of moderation, however, does not apply to
thought. Excessive stimulation is first injurious and then destructive
to the organs of sense, but we cannot have too much of an idea; the
more intense it is the better are we able to conceive all the ideas
that come under it, just because ideation is an incorporeal process.
And there seems to be this further distinction between sensation and
thought, that the latter is much more completely identified with its
object than the former; it is in the very act of imprinting themselves
on the Nous that the forms of things become perfectly detached from
matter, and so attain their final realisation. It is only in our
consciousness that the eternal ideas of transient phenomena become
conscious of themselves. Such, we take it, is the true interpretation
of Aristotle’s famous distinction between an active and a passive Nous.
The one, he tells us, _makes_ whatever the other is _made_. The active
Nous is like light raising colours from possibility to actuality. It is
eternal, but we have no remembrance of its past existence, because the
passive Nous, without which it can think nothing, is perishable.
It will be seen that we do not consider the two kinds of Nous to differ
from each other as a higher and a lower faculty. This, in our opinion,
has been the great mistake of the commentators, of those, at least,
who do not identify the active Nous with God, or with some agency
emanating from God—a hypothesis utterly inconsistent with Aristotle’s
theology. They describe it as a faculty, and as concerned with some
higher kind of knowledge than what lies within the reach of the passive
Nous.[258] But with Aristotle faculty is always a potentiality and a
passive recipient, whereas the creative reason is expressly declared
to be an actuality, which, in this connexion, can mean nothing but an
individual idea. The difficulty is to understand why the objective
forms of things should suddenly be spoken of as existing within the
mind, and denominated by a term carrying with it such subjective
associations as Nous; a difficulty not diminished by the mysterious
comparison with light in its relation to colour, an illustration
which, in this instance, has only made the darkness visible. We
believe that Aristotle was led to express himself as he did by the
following considerations. He began by simply conceiving that, just
as the senses were raised from potency to actuality through contact
with the corresponding qualities in external objects, so also was the
reasoning faculty moulded into particular thoughts through contact with
the particular things embodying them; thus, for instance, it was led
to conceive the general idea of straightness by actual experience of
straight lines. It then, perhaps, occurred to him that one and the same
object could not produce two such profoundly different impressions as
a sensation and a thought; that mind was opposed to external realities
by the attribute of self-consciousness; and that a form inherent in
matter could not directly impress itself on an immaterial substance.
The idea of a creative Nous was, we think, devised in order to escape
from these perplexities. The ideal forms of things are carried into
the mind, together with the sensations, and in passing through the
imagination, become purified from the matter previously associated
with them. Thus they may be conceived as part of the mind—in, though
not yet of it—and as acting on its highest faculty, the passive
Nous. And, by a kind of anticipation, they are called by the name of
what they become completely identified with in cognition. As forms of
things they are eternal; as thoughts they are self-conscious; while,
in both capacities, they are creative, and their creative activity
is an essentially immaterial process. Here we have the old confusion
between form and function; the old inability to reconcile the claims
of the universal and the particular in knowledge and existence. After
all, Aristotle is obliged to extract an actuality from the meeting of
two possibilities, instead of from the meeting of an actuality and a
possibility. Probably the weakness of his own theory did not escape
him, for he never subsequently recurs to it.[259]
Aristotle’s work on reproduction is supposed by many to contain a
reference to his distinction between the two Reasons, but we are
convinced that this is a mistake. What we are told is that at the
very first formation of a new being, the vegetative soul, being an
exclusively corporeal function, is precontained in the elements
furnished by the female; that the sensitive soul is contributed by the
male (being, apparently, engendered in the semen by the vital heat of
the parent organism); and, finally, that the rational soul, although
entirely immaterial, is also carried in with the semen, into which it
has first been introduced from without, but where, or when, or how is
not more particularly specified.[260] But even were the genetic theory
in question perfectly cleared up, it would still throw no light on the
distinction between active and passive reason, as the latter alone
can be understood by the rational soul to which it refers. For we are
expressly informed—what indeed hardly required to be stated—that
the embryonic souls exist not in act but in potency.[261] It seems,
therefore, that Mr. Edwin Wallace is doubly mistaken when he quotes
a sentence from this passage in justification of his statement, that
‘Aristotle would seem almost to identify’ the creative reason ‘with
God as the eternal and omnipresent thinker;’[262] first, because it
does not refer to the creative Nous at all; and, secondly, because,
if it did, the words would not stand the meaning which he puts upon
them.[263]