of the astounding assertion, that ‘Aristotle’s 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,[264] “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 thought.”’[265] How can materialism or anything else
be possibly refuted by a theory which is so obscurely set forth that
no two interpreters are able to agree in their explanation of it? And
even were it stated with perfect clearness and fulness, how can any
hypothesis be refuted by a mere dogmatic declaration of Aristotle? Are
we back in the Middle Ages that his _ipse dixit_ is to decide questions
now raised with far ampler means of discussion than he could possess?
As to Principal Caird’s metaphysics, we have no wish to dispute their
theoretic accuracy, and can only admire the liberality of a Church in
which propositions so utterly destructive of traditional orthodoxy
are allowed to be preached. But one thing we are certain of, and that
is, that whether or not they are consistent with Christian theism,
they are utterly inconsistent with Aristotelian principles. Which is
the ‘thought or self-consciousness’ referred to, a possibility or an
actuality? If the former, it is not a _prius_, nor is it the creative
reason. If the latter, it cannot transcend all or any individual
selves, for, with Aristotle, individuals are the sole reality, and the
supreme being of his system is pre-eminently individual; neither can it
unify them, for, according to Aristotle, two things which are two in
actuality cannot be one in actuality.[266]
We now turn to Sir A. Grant, who, as was mentioned at the beginning
of the last chapter, makes Aristotle a supporter of the late Prof.
Ferrier. We will state the learned Principal’s view in his own words:—
‘His utterances on this subject [the existence of an external world]
are perhaps chiefly to be found in the third book of his treatise
“On the Soul,” beginning with the fourth chapter. On turning to them
we see that he never separates existence from knowledge. “A thing in
actual existence,” he says, “is identical with the knowledge of that
thing.” Again, “The possible existence of a thing is identical with
the possibility in us of perceiving or knowing it.” Thus, until a
thing is perceived or known, it can only be said to have a potential
or possible existence. And from this a doctrine very similar to that
of Ferrier might be deduced, that “nothing exists except _plus_
me,”—that is to say, in relation to some mind perceiving it.‘
(_Aristotle_, p. 165.)
After much searching, we have not been able to find the originals
of the two passages quoted by Sir A. Grant. We have, however, found
others setting forth the doctrine of Natural Realism with a clearness
which leaves nothing to be desired. Aristotle tells us that former
naturalists were wrong when they said that there could be no black
or white without vision, and no taste without tasting; that is, they
were right about the actuality, and wrong about the possibility; for,
as he explains, our sensations are produced by the action of external
bodies on the appropriate organs, the activity being the same while
the existence is different. A sonorous body produces a sound in our
hearing; the sound perceived and the action of the body are identical,
but not their existence; for, he adds, the hearer need not be always
listening, nor the sonorous body sounding; and so with all the other
senses.[267]
This is not making the _percipi_ of objects their _esse_. Again, in
the eighth chapter he tells us that the soul is ‘in a certain way’
(πῶς) all things, since all things are either sensible or cogitable;
and then he proceeds to explain what is meant by ‘in a certain way.’
Sense and knowledge are distributed over things in such wise that their
possibility is the possibility, and their actuality the actuality, of
the things. They must, then, be either the things themselves or their
forms. ‘_But the things themselves they are surely not_, for the stone
is not in the soul, but its form.’ In the _Metaphysics_, Aristotle
expresses himself to the same effect, but even more explicitly.
Criticising the Protagorean doctrine, he reduces it to an absurdity by
urging that if there were nothing but sensibles, then nothing at all
could exist in the absence of animated beings, for without them there
would be no sensation. He admits that in the case supposed there would
be neither feelings nor felt objects, since these presuppose a sentient
subject; but adds, that for the substances (τὰ ὑποκείμενα) which
produce the feeling not to exist is impossible; ‘for there is something
else besides the feeling which must necessarily exist before it.’[268]
And immediately afterwards he clinches the argument by observing that
if appearances were the only truth, there would be no independent
existences, and everything would be relative, since appearances exist
only in relation to some one to whom they appear. Now we need hardly
say that this universal relativity was precisely what Ferrier contended
for.
Sir A. Grant is on stronger, or rather on more inaccessible ground,
when he uses the distinction between the two reasons as involving a
sort of idealistic theory, because here Aristotle’s meaning is much
less clearly expressed. Yet, if our interpretation be the correct
one, if the creative Nous simply means the forms of things acting
through the imagination on the possibilities of subjective conception,
Aristotle’s view will be exactly the reverse of that contended for by
Sir Alexander; thought, instead of moulding, will itself be moulded
by external reality. In no case have we a right to set an obscure and
disputed passage against Aristotle’s distinct, emphatic, and reiterated
declarations, that sensation and ideation are substantially analogous
processes, taken together with his equally distinct declaration,
that the objects of sensation are independent of our feelings. We
think, indeed, that Sir A. Grant will find, on reconsideration, that
he is proving too much. For, if the things which reason creates were
external to the mind, then Aristotle would go at least as far as
those ‘extreme German idealists’ from whom his expositor is anxious
to separate him. Finally, we would observe that to set up Aristotle’s
distinction between form and matter in opposition to the materialistic
theories of the present day, shows a profound misconception of its
meaning. Form and matter are nowhere distinguished from one another
as subject and object. Form simply means the attributes of a thing,
the entire aggregate of its differential characteristics. But that
this does not of itself amount to conscious reason we are told by
Aristotle himself.[269] On the other hand, the ‘matter’ to which ‘some
philosophers’ attribute ‘an independent existence,’ is not his ‘matter’
at all, but just the sum of things _minus_ consciousness. The Stagirite
did not, it is true, believe in the possibility of such a universe, but
only (as we have shown) because he was not acquainted with the highest
laws of motion. Yet, even taking ‘matter’ in his own technical sense,
Aristotle would have agreed with Prof. Tyndall, that it contained the
promise and the potency of all future life, reason alone excepted. He
tells us very clearly that the sensitive soul is a somatic function,
something which, although not body, belongs to body; and this we
conceive is all that any materialist would now contend for.[270] And
having gone so far, there really was nothing to prevent him from going
a step farther, had he only been acquainted with the dependence of
all intelligence on nervous action. At any rate, the tendency is now
to obliterate the distinction where he drew it, and to substitute for
it another distinction which he neglected. While all functions of
consciousness, from the most elementary sensation to the most complex
reasoning, seem to pass into one another by imperceptible gradations,
consciousness in general is still separated from objective existence
by an impassable chasm; and if there is any hope of reconciling them
it lies in the absolute idealism which he so summarily rejected. What
we have had occasion repeatedly to point out in other departments of
his system, is verified once more in his psychology. The progress of
thought has resulted from a reunion of the principles between which
he drew a rigid demarcation. We have found that perception can only
be understood as a process essentially homogeneous with the highest
thought, and neither more nor less immaterial than it is. On the
objective side, both may be resolved into sensori-motor actions; on
the subjective side, into groups of related feelings. And here, also,
we have to note that when Aristotle anticipates modern thought, it is
through his one great mediating, synthetic conception. He observes
incidentally that our knowledge of size and shape is acquired, not
through the special senses, but by motion—an aperçu much in advance of
Locke.[271]
If there are any who value Aristotle as a champion of spiritualism,
they must take him with his encumbrances. If his philosophy proves
that one part of the soul is immaterial, it proves equally that the
soul, taking it altogether, is perishable. Not only does he reject
Plato’s metempsychosis as inconsistent with physiology, but he
declares that affection, memory, and reasoning are functions not of
the eternal Nous, but of the whole man, and come to an end with his
dissolution. As to the active Nous, he tells us that it cannot think
without the assistance of the passive Nous, which is mortal. And there
are various passages in the ‘Nicomachean Ethics’ showing that he had
faced this negation of a future life, and was perfectly resigned
to its consequences.[272] At one period of his life, probably when
under the immediate influence of Plato, he had indulged in dreams
of immortality; but a profounder acquaintance with natural science
sufficed to dissipate them. Perhaps a lingering veneration for his
teacher made him purposely use ambiguous language in reference to the
eternity of that creative reason which he had so closely associated
with self-consciousness. It may remind us of Spinoza’s celebrated
proposition, _Sentimus experimurque nos aeternos esse_, words
absolutely disconnected with the hope of a continued existence of the
individual after death, but apparently intended to enlist some of the
sentiment associated with that belief on the side of the writer’s own
philosophy.
On the other hand, the spirit of Plato’s religion survived in the
teaching of his disciple under a new form. The idea of an eternal
personality was, as it were, unified and made objective by being
transferred from the human to the divine; and so each philosopher
developes an aspect of religious faith which is wanting in the other,
thereby illustrating the tendencies, to some extent mutually exclusive;
which divide all theology between them. It remains to observe that
if even Aristotle’s theism is inconsistent with the Catholic faith,
much more must his psychology be its direct negation. _The_ Philosophy
of _the_ Philosopher is as fatal to the Church’s doctrine of future
rewards and punishments as it is to her doctrine of divine interference
with the usual order of nature.
VI.
We now pass to the consideration of Aristotle’s most important
achievement—his system of logic. And as, here also, we shall find much
to criticise, it is as well to begin by saying that, in our opinion,
his contributions to the science are the most valuable ever made, and
perhaps have done more to advance it than all other writings on the
same subject put together.
The principal business of reason is, as we have seen, to form abstract
ideas or concepts of things. But before the time of Aristotle it had
already been discovered that concepts, or rather the terms expressing
them, were capable of being united in propositions which might be
either true or false, and whose truth might be a matter either of
certainty or of simple opinion. Now, in modern psychology, down to the
most recent times, it has always been assumed that, just as there is
an intellectual faculty or operation called abstraction corresponding
to the terms of which a proposition is composed, so also there is
a faculty or operation called judgment corresponding to the entire
proposition. Sometimes, again, the third operation, which consists in
linking propositions together to form syllogisms, is assigned to a
distinct faculty called reason; sometimes all three are regarded as
ascending steps in a single fundamental process. Neither Plato nor
Aristotle, however, had thought out the subject so scientifically.
To both the framing, or rather the discovery, of concepts was by far
the most important business of a philosopher, judgment and reasoning
being merely subsidiary to it. Hence, while in one part of their
logic they were realists and conceptualists, in other parts they
were nominalists. Abstract names and the definitions unfolding their
connotation corresponded to actual entities in Nature—the eternal
Ideas of the one and the substantial forms of the other—as well as to
mental representations about whose existence they were agreed, while
ascribing to them a different origin. But they did not in like manner
treat propositions as the expression of natural laws without, or of
judgments within, the mind; while reasoning they regarded much more as
an art of thinking, a method for the discovery of ideas, than as the
Systematisation of a process spontaneously performed by every human
being without knowing it; and, even as such, their tendency is to
connect it with the theory of definition rather than with the theory of
synthetic propositions. Some approach to a realistic view is, indeed,
made by both. The restless and penetrating thought of Plato had,
probably towards the close of his career, led him to enquire into the
mutual relations of those Ideas which he had at first been inclined to
regard as absolutely distinct. He shows us in the _Sophist_ how the
most abstract notions, such as Being, Identity, and so forth, must,
to a certain extent, partake of each other’s nature; and when their
relationship does not lie on the surface, he seeks to establish it by
the interposition of a third idea obviously connected with both. In the
later books of the _Republic_ he also points to a scheme for arranging
his Ideas according to a fixed hierarchy resembling the concatenation
of mathematical proofs, by ascending and descending whose successive
gradations the mind is to become familiarised with absolute truth; and
we shall presently see how Aristotle, following in the same track,
sought for a counterpart to his syllogistic method in the objective
order of things. Nevertheless, with him, as well as with his master,
science was not what it is with us, a study of laws, a perpetually
growing body of truth, but a process of definition and classification,
a systematisation of what had already been perceived and thought.
It was from the initiative of Socrates that logic received this
direction. By insisting on the supreme importance of definition, he
drew away attention from the propositions which add to our knowledge,
and concentrated it on those which only fix with precision the meaning
of words. Yet, in so doing he was influenced quite as much by the
spirit of the older physical philosophy, which he denounced, as by
the necessities of the new humanistic culture, which he helped to
introduce. His definitions were, in truth, the reproduction, on a very
minute scale, of those attempts to formulate the whole universe which
busied the earliest Ionian speculation. Following the natural tendency
of Greek thought, and the powerful attraction of cosmic philosophy,
an effort was speedily made to generalise and connect these partial
definitions until they grew into a system of universal classification.
It was when, under the influence of a new analysis, this system
threatened to fall to pieces, that a rudimentary doctrine of judgment
first made its appearance. The structure of a grammatical sentence was
used to explain how objective ideas could, in a manner, overlap and
adhere to one another. Hence propositions, which, as the expression
of general truths, were destined to become the beginning and end of
thought, remained at first strictly subordinated to the individual
concepts that they linked and reconciled.
With Aristotle propositions assumed a new importance. He looked on them
as mediating, not only between concepts, but also between conception
and reasoning. Still, neither as a psychologist nor as a logician did
he appreciate them at their real value. A very brief consideration is
given to judgment in his work on the soul, and we are left in doubt
whether it is a function of Nous alone or of Nous combined with some
other faculty. Setting aside the treatise on Interpretation, which
is probably spurious, and, at any rate, throws no new light on the
subject, we may gather from his logical writings half a dozen different
suggestions towards a classification of propositions, based partly
on their form and partly on their import. In all we find an evident
tendency to apply, here also, his grand fundamental distinction between
the sphere of uniformity and the sphere of change and opposition.
All propositions are either universal or particular; either positive
or negative; either necessary or actual or contingent; either
reciprocating or not reciprocating; either essential or accidental;
either answering to the first question in the categories, or to one of
the other nine.[273] But nowhere is any attempt made to combine and
systematise these various points of view.
In the theory of reasoning the simple proposition is taken as a
starting-point; but instead of deducing the syllogism from the
synthesis of two premises, Aristotle reaches the premises through the
conclusion. He tells us, indeed, that reasoning is a way of discovering
from what we know, something that we did not know before. With him,
however, it is really a process not of discovery but of proof. He
starts with the conclusion, analyses it into predicate and subject or
major and minor, and then, by a further analysis, introduces a middle
term connecting the two. Thus, we begin with the proposition, ‘Caius
is mortal,’ and prove it by interpolating the notion humanity between
its two extremes. From this point of view the premises are merely a
temporary scaffolding for bringing the major and minor into connexion
with the middle term; and this is also the reason why Aristotle
recognises three syllogistic figures only, instead of the four admitted
by later logicians. For, the middle may either be contained in one
extreme and contain the other, which gives us the first figure; or it
may contain both, which gives the second figure; or be contained in
both, which gives the third; and this is an exhaustive enumeration of
the possible combinations.[274]
We have here, also, the secret of that elaborate machinery devised for
the very unnecessary purpose of converting syllogisms of the second
and third figure into syllogisms of the first, which is one of the
Stagirite’s principal contributions to logic. For it is only in the
first figure that the notion by which the extremes are either united
or held apart is really a middle term, that is to say, really comes
between the others. The distinction between perfect and imperfect
syllogisms also serves to illustrate Aristotle’s systematic division
between the necessary and the contingent. The method of proof by
inclusion corresponds in its unconditioned and independent validity
to the concentric arrangement of the supernal spheres; the second and
third figures, with their conversions and reductions, to the sublunary
sphere in its helpless dependence on the celestial revolutions, and
its transformations of the elements into one another.
The rules which Aristotle gives us for the conversion of propositions
are no doubt highly instructive, and throw great light on their
meaning; but one cannot help observing that such a process as
conversion ought, on his own principles, to have been inadmissible.
With Plato, the copulation of subject and predicate corresponded to an
almost mechanical juxtaposition of two self-existent ideas. It was,
therefore, a matter of indifference in what order they were placed.
Aristotle, on the other hand, after insisting on the restoration of the
concrete object, and reducing general notions to an analysis of its
particular aspects, could not but make the predicate subordinate to,
and dependent on, the subject—a relation which altogether excludes
the logical possibility of making them interchangeable with one
another.[275]
The antithetical structure of the whole system is reproduced even in
the first syllogistic figure, where there is a similar opposition
between the first mood, by which alone universal affirmatives can
be obtained, and the remaining three, whose conclusions are either
negative or particular, or both. And the complicated rules for
testing the validity of those syllogisms in which the premises are
distinguished as necessary, actual, and possible, are still more
obviously based on Aristotle’s false metaphysical distinctions; so
that with the overthrow of those distinctions large portions of the
_Analytics_ lose their entire value for modern students.
On the other hand, a theory of reasoning based on the relations of
concepts, instead of on the relations of judgments, necessarily leaves
out of account the whole doctrine of hypothetical and disjunctive
propositions, together with that of the syllogisms based on them; since
the elements of which they are composed are themselves propositions.
And this inevitable omission is the more remarkable because
alternative and, to a less extent, hypothetical arguments form the
staple of Aristotle’s own dialectic; while categorical reasoning never
occurs in it at all. His constant method is to enumerate all possible
views of a subject, and examine them one after the other, rejecting
those which are untenable, and resting content with the remainder. In
other words, he reaches his positive conclusions through a series of
negative premises representing a process of gradual elimination. The
_First Analytics_ is itself an admirable instance of his favourite
method. Every possible combination of terms is discussed, and the
valid moods are sifted out from a much greater number of illegitimate
syllogisms. The dialectic of Socrates and Plato followed the same
procedure. It was essentially experimental—a method of trial,
elimination, and selection. On going back still further, we find that
when there is any reasoning at all in Homer, it is conducted after the
same fashion. Hector, in his soliloquy before the Scaean Gate, imagines
three alternative courses, together exhausting the possibilities of the
situation. He may either retreat within the walls, or offer terms of
peace to Achilles, or fight. The first two alternatives being rejected,
nothing remains but the third. This is the most elaborate example; but
on many other occasions Homer’s actors are represented as hesitating
between two courses, and finally deciding on one of them.
Disjunction is, in truth, the primordial form of all reasoning, out
of which the other forms are successively evolved; and, as such, it
is common to man with the lower animals. You are taking a walk in
the country with your dog. You come to a stream and jump over it. On
measuring the distance with his eye, the animal is afraid to follow
you. After waiting a little, he first runs up stream in search of a
crossing, and, finding none, returns to look for one in the opposite
direction. Failing there also, he comes back once more, and either
ventures on the leap or makes his way home by some other route. Now,
on considering the matter a little more closely, we shall find that
hypothetical reasoning takes its rise from the examination of each
separate alternative presented by a disjunctive premise. A plurality of
courses being open to us, we consider what will ensue on the acceptance
or rejection of each. The dog in our illustration thinks (after a
canine fashion) that if he jumps he may fall in; if he does not, he
will be left behind. Hector will not take refuge within the walls,
because, if he does, Polydamas will triumph over him; nor will he offer
terms of peace, because, if he does, Achilles will refuse them. Once
more, categorical reasoning is developed out of hypothetical reasoning
by the necessity of deducing consequences from a general rule. Hector
must have argued from the known characters of Polydamas and Achilles,
that in certain circumstances they would act after a certain manner. We
may add, that this progress of conscious reasoning is a reproduction of
the unconscious logic according to which life itself is evolved. All
sorts of combinations are spontaneously produced, which, in consequence
of the struggle for existence, cannot all survive. Those adapted to the
conditions of life are selected, on trial, at the expense of the rest;
and their adaptation or non-adaptation is determined in accordance
with categorical laws. Furthermore, the framing of a disjunctive
proposition necessitates the systematic distribution of possibilities
under mutually exclusive heads, thus involving the logical processes
of definition, division, and classification. Dialectic, as Plato
understood it, consisted almost entirely in the joint performance of
these operations;—a process which Aristotle regards as the immediate
but very imperfect precursor of his own syllogistic method.[276] You
cannot, he says, prove anything by dividing, for instance, all living
things into the two classes, mortal and immortal; unless, indeed, you
assume the very point under discussion—to which class a particular
species belongs. Yet this is how he constantly reasons himself; and
even demonstrative reasoning, as he interprets it, implies the
possession of a ready-made classification. For, according to him, it
consists exclusively of propositions which predicate some essential
attribute of a thing—in other words, some attribute already included
in the definition of the subject; and a continuous series of such
definitions can only be given by a fixed classification of things.
VII.
We have endeavoured to show that Aristotle’s account of the syllogism
is redundant on the one side and defective on the other, both errors
being due to a false analysis of the reasoning process itself, combined
with a false metaphysical philosophy. The same evil influences tell
with much greater effect on his theory of applied reasoning. Here the
fundamental division, corresponding to that between heaven and earth
in the cosmos, is between demonstration and dialectic or experimental
reasoning. The one starts with first principles of unquestionable
validity, the other with principles the validity of which is to be
tested by their consequences. Stated in its most abstract form, the
distinction is sound, and very nearly prefigures the modern division
between deduction and induction, the process by which general laws are
applied, and the process by which they are established. Aristotle,
however, committed two great mistakes; he thought that each method
corresponded to an entirely different order of phenomena: and he
thought that both were concerned for the most part with definitions.
The _Posterior Analytics_, which contains his theory of demonstration,
answers to the astronomical portion of his physics; it is the doctrine
of eternal and necessary truth. And just as his ontology distinguishes
between the Prime Mover himself unmoved and the eternal movement
produced by his influence, so also his logic distinguishes between
infallible first principles and the truths derived from them, the
latter being, in his opinion, of inferior value. Now, according to
Aristotle, these first principles are definitions, and it is to this
fact that their self-evident certainty is due. At the same time they
are not verbal but real definitions—that is to say, the universal
forms of things in themselves as made manifest to the eye of reason,
or rather, stamped upon it like the impression of a signet-ring on
wax. And, by a further refinement, he seems to distinguish between the
concept as a whole and the separate marks which make it up, these last
being the ultimate elements of all existence, and as much beyond its
complex forms as Nous is beyond reasoned truth.
Such a view was essentially unfavourable to the progress of science,
assigning, as it did, a higher dignity to meagre and very questionable
abstractions than to the far-reaching combinations by which alone we
are enabled to unravel the inmost texture of visible phenomena. Instead
of using reason to supplement sense, Aristotle turned it into a more
subtle and universal kind of sense; and if this disastrous assimilation
was to a certain extent imposed upon him by the traditions of Athenian
thought, it harmonised admirably with the descriptive and superficial
character of his own intelligence. Much was also due to the method of
geometry, which in his time had already assumed the form made familiar
to us by Euclid’s _Elements_. The employment of axioms side by side
with definitions, might, indeed, have drawn his attention to the
existence and importance of judgments which, in Kantian terminology,
are not analytic but synthetic—that is, which add to the content of
a notion instead of simply analysing it. But although he mentions
axioms, and states that mathematical theorems are deduced from them,
no suspicion of their essential difference from definitions, or of the
typical significance which they were destined to assume in the theory
of reasoning, seems ever to have crossed his mind; otherwise he could
hardly have failed to ask how we come by our knowledge of them, and to
what they correspond in Nature. On the whole, it seems likely that
he looked on them as an analysis of our ideas, differing only from
definition proper by the generality of its application; for he names
the law of contradiction as the most important of all axioms, and that
from which the others proceed;[277] next to it he places the law of
excluded middle, which is also analytical; and his only other example
is, that if equals be taken from equals the remainders are equal, a
judgment the synthetic character of which is by no means clear, and has
occasionally been disputed.[278]
We cannot, then, agree with those critics who attribute to Aristotle a
recognition of such things as ‘laws of nature,’ in the sense of uniform
co-existences and sequences.[279] Such an idea implies a certain
balance and equality between subject and predicate which he would never
have admitted. It would, in his own language, be making relation,
instead of substance, the leading category. It must be remembered
also that he did not acknowledge the existence of those constant
conjunctions in Nature which we call laws. He did not admit that all
matter was heavy, or that fluidity implied the presence of heat. The
possession of constant properties, or rather of a single constant
property—circular rotation—is reserved for the aether. Nor is this a
common property of different and indefinitely multipliable phenomena;
it characterises a single body, measurable in extent and unique in
kind. Moreover, we have something better than indirect evidence on
this point; we have the plain statement of Aristotle himself, that
all science depends on first principles, about which it is impossible
to be mistaken, precisely because they are universal abstractions
not presented to the mind by any combination,[280]—a view quite
inconsistent with the priority now given to general laws.
Answering to the first principles of demonstration in logic, if not
absolutely identical with them, are what Aristotle calls causes in
the nature of things. We have seen what an important part the middle
term plays in Aristotle’s theory of the syllogism. It is the vital
principle of demonstration, the connecting link by which the two
extreme terms are attached to one another. In the theory of applied
logic, whose object is to bring the order of thought into complete
parallelism with the order of things, the middle term through which
a fact is demonstrated answers to the cause through which it exists.
According to our notions, only two terms, antecedent and consequent,
are involved in the idea of causation; and causation only becomes a
matter for reasoning when we perceive that the sequence is repeated
in a uniform manner. But Aristotle was very far from having reached,
or even suspected, this point of view. A cause is with him not a
determining antecedent, but a secret nexus by which the co-existence
of two phenomena is explained. Instead of preceding it intercedes; and
this is why he finds its subjective counterpart in the middle term of
the syllogism. Some of his own examples will make the matter clearer.
Why is the moon eclipsed? Because the earth intervenes between her
and the sun. Why is the bright side of the moon always turned towards
the sun? Because she shines by his reflected light (here light is the
middle term). Why is that person talking to the rich man? Because he
wants to borrow money of him. Why are those two men friends? Because
they have the same enemy.[281]
Aristotle even goes so far as to eliminate the notion of sequence
from causation altogether. He tells us that the causes of events are
contemporary with the events themselves; those of past events being
past; of present events, present; and of future events, future. ‘This
thing will not be because that other thing has happened, for the middle
term must be homogeneous with the extremes.’[282] It is obvious that
such a limitation abolishes the power of scientific prediction, which,
if not the only test of knowledge, is at any rate its most valuable
verification. The Stagirite has been charged with trusting too much
to deductive reasoning; it now appears that, on the contrary, he had
no conception of its most important function. Here, as everywhere, he
follows not the synthetic method of the mathematician, but the analytic
method of the naturalist. Finally, instead of combining the notions of
cause and kind, he systematically confuses them. It will be remembered
how his excellent division of causes into material, formal, efficient,
and final, was rendered nugatory by the continued influence of Plato’s
ideas. The formal cause always tended to absorb the other three; and
it is by their complete assimilation that he attempts to harmonise the
order of demonstration with the order of existence. For the formal
cause of a phenomenon simply meant those properties which it shared
with others of the same kind, and it was by virtue of those properties
that it became a subject for general reasoning, which was interpreted
as a methodical arrangement of concepts one within another, answering
to the concentric disposition of the cosmic spheres.
Owing to the slight importance which Aristotle attaches to judgments as
compared with concepts, he does not go very deeply into the question,
how do we obtain our premises? He says, in remarkably emphatic
language, that all knowledge is acquired either by demonstration or
by induction; or rather, we may add, in the last resort by the latter
only, since demonstration rests on generals which are discovered
inductively; but his generals mean definitions and abstract predicates
or subjects, rather than synthetic propositions. If, however, his
attention had been called to the distinction, we cannot suppose that
he would, on his own principles, have adopted conclusions essentially
different from those of the modern experiential school. Mr. Wallace
does, indeed, claim him as a supporter of the theory that no inference
can be made from particulars to particulars without the aid of a
general proposition, and as having refuted, by anticipation, Mill’s
assertion to the contrary. We quote the analysis which is supposed to
prove this in Mr. Wallace’s own words:—
We reason that because the war between Thebes and Phocis was a war
between neighbours and an evil, therefore the war between Athens and
Thebes, being also a war between neighbours, will in all probability
be also an evil. Thus, out of the one parallel case—the war between
Thebes and Phocis—we form the _general_ proposition, All wars between
neighbours are evils; to this we add the minor, the war between Athens
and Thebes is a war between neighbours—and thence arrive at the
conclusion that the war between Athens and Thebes will be likewise an
evil.[283]
On the strength of this Mr. Wallace elsewhere observes:—
His [Aristotle’s] theory of syllogism is simply an explicit statement
of the fact that all knowledge, all thought, rests on universal truths
or general propositions—that all knowledge, whether ‘deductive’ or
‘inductive,’ is arrived at by the aid, the indispensable aid, of
general propositions. We in England have been almost charmed into the
belief that reasoning is perpetually from particular to particular,
and a ‘village matron’ and her ‘Lucy’ have been used to express the
truth for us in the concrete form adapted to our weaker comprehension
(Mill’s _Logic_, bk. ii. ch. 3). We shall next be told, forsooth,
that oxygen and hydrogen do not enter into the composition of water,
because our village matron ‘perpetually’ drinks it without ‘passing
through’ either element, and the analysis of the chemist will be
proved as great a fiction as the analysis of the logician. Aristotle
has supplied the links which at once upset all such superficial
analysis. He has shown that even in analogy or example, which
_apparently_ proceeds in this way from one particular instance to
another particular instance, we are only justified in so proceeding in
so far as we have transformed the particular instance into a general
proposition.[284]
Now, there is this great difference between Aristotle and Mill, that
the former is only showing how reasoning from examples can be set
forth in syllogistic form, while the latter is investigating the
psychological process which underlies all reasoning, and the real
foundation on which a valid inference rests—questions which had never
presented themselves clearly to the mind of the Greek philosopher at
all. Mill argues, in the first instance, that when any particular
proposition is deduced from a general proposition, it is proved
by the same evidence as that on which the general itself rests,
namely, on other particulars; and, so far, he is in perfect agreement
with Aristotle. He then argues that inferences from particulars to
particulars are perpetually made without passing through a general
proposition: and, to illustrate his meaning, he quotes the example of a
‘village matron and her Lucy,’ to which Mr. Wallace refers with a very
gratuitous sneer.[285]
However, as we have seen, he is not above turning it against Mill. The
drift of his own illustration is not very clear, but we suppose it
implies that the matron unconsciously frames the general proposition:
My remedy is good for all children suffering from the same disease as
Lucy; and with equal unconsciousness reasons down from this to the case
of her neighbour’s child. Now, it is quite unjustifiable to call Mill’s
analysis superficial because it leaves out of account a hypothesis
incompatible with the nominalism which Mill professed. It is still
more unjustifiable to quote against it the authority of a philosopher
who perfectly agreed with those who disbelieve in the possibility
of unconscious knowledge,[286] and contemptuously rejected Plato’s
opinion to the contrary. Nor is this all. The doctrine that reasoning
is from particulars to particulars, even when it passes through
general propositions, may be rigorously deduced from Aristotle’s own
admissions. If nothing exists but particulars, and if knowledge is of
what exists, then all knowledge is of particulars. Therefore, if the
propositions entering into a chain of reasoning are knowledge, they
must deal with particulars exclusively. And, quite apart from the later
developments of Aristotle’s philosophy, we have his express assertion,
that all generals are derived from particulars, which is absolutely
incompatible with the alleged fact, that ‘all knowledge, all thought,
rests on universal truths, on general propositions; that all knowledge,
whether “deductive” or “inductive,” is arrived at by the aid, the
indispensable aid, of general propositions.’ To Aristotle the basis
of knowledge was not ‘truths’ of any kind, but concepts; and in the
last chapter of the _Posterior Analytics_ he has explained how these
concepts are derived from sense-perceptions without the aid of any
‘propositions’ whatever.
We are here confronted with an important and much disputed question,
Was Aristotle an empiricist? We hold most decidedly that he was,
if by empiricist is meant, what alone should be meant—one who
believes that the mind neither anticipates anything in the content,
nor contributes anything to the form of experience; in other words,
who believes knowledge to be the agreement of thought with things
imposed by things on thought. We have already shown, when discussing
Sir A. Grant’s view to the contrary, that Aristotle was in no sense
a transcendental idealist. The other half of our position is proved
by the chapter in the _Posterior Analytics_ already referred to,
the language of which is _primâ facie_ so much in favour of our
view that the burden of proof rests on those who give it another
interpretation. Among these, the latest with whom we are acquainted
is Zeller. The eminent German historian, after asserting in former
editions of his work that Aristotle derived his first principles from
the self-contemplation of the Nous, has now, probably in deference
to the unanswerable arguments of Kampe, abandoned this position. He
still, however, assumes the existence of a rather indefinable _à
priori_ element in the Aristotelian noology, on the strength of the
following considerations:—In the first place, according to Aristotle,
even sense-perception is not a purely passive process, and therefore
intellectual cognition can still less be so (p. 190). But the passages
quoted only amount to this, that the passivity of a thing which is
raised from possibility to actuality differs from the passivity
implied in the destruction of its proper nature; and that the objects
of abstract thought come from within, not from without, in the sense
that they are presented by the imagination to the reason. The pure
empiricist need not deny either position. He would freely admit that to
lose one’s reason through drunkenness or disease is a quite different
sort of operation from being impressed with a new truth; and he would
also admit that we generalise not directly from outward experience, but
from that highly-abridged and representative experience which memory
supplies. Neither process, however, constitutes an anticipation of
outward experience or an addition to it. It is from the materialist,
not from the empiricist, that Aristotle differs. He believes that the
forms under which matter appears are separable from every particular
portion of matter, though not from all matter, in the external world;
and he believes that a complete separation between them is effected
in the single instance of self-conscious reason, which again, in
cognising any particular thing is identified with that thing _minus_
its matter. Zeller’s next argument is that the cognition of ideas by
the Nous is immediate, whereas the process of generalisation from
experience described by Aristotle is extremely indirect. Here Zeller
seems to misunderstand the word ἄμεσος. Aristotle never applies it
to knowledge, but only to the objective relations of ideas with one
another. Two terms constitute an ‘immediate’ premise when they are not
connected by another term, quite irrespective of the steps by which
we come to recognise their conjunction. So with the terms themselves.
They are ‘immediate’ when they cannot be derived from any ulterior
principle; when, in short, they are simple and uncaused. Finally, the
objection that first principles, being the most certain and necessary
of any, cannot be derived from sensible experience, which, dealing only
with material objects, must inherit the uncertainty and contingency
of matter,—is an objection, not to the empiricist interpretation
of Aristotle’s philosophy, but to empiricism itself; and it is not
allowable to explain away the plain words of an ancient writer in
order to reconcile them with assumptions which he nowhere admits.
That universality and necessity involve an _à priori_ cognition or an
intellectual intuition, is a modern theory unsupported by a single
sentence in Aristotle.[287] We quite agree with Zeller when he goes on
to say that in Aristotle’s psychology ‘certain thoughts and notions
arise through the action of the object thought about on the thinking
mind, just as perception arises through the action of the perceived
object on the percipient’ (p. 195); but how this differs from the
purest empiricism is more than we are able to understand.
It is remarkable that Aristotle, after repeatedly speaking of induction
as an ascent from particulars to generals, when he comes to trace the
process by which we arrive at the most general notions of any, does
not admit the possibility of such a movement in one direction only.
The universal and the individual are, according to him, combined in
our most elementary sense-impressions, and the business of scientific
experience is to separate them. Starting from a middle point, we work
up to indivisible predicates on the one hand and down to indivisible
subjects on the other, the final apprehension of both extremes being
the office, not of science, but of Nous. This theory is equally true
and acute. The perception of individual facts is just as difficult and
just as slowly acquired as the conception of ultimate abstractions.
Moreover, the two processes are carried on _pari passu_, each being
only made possible by and through the other. No true notion can be
framed without a firm grasp of the particulars from which it is
abstracted; no individual object can be studied without analysing it
into a group of common predicates, the idiosyncrasy of which—that is,
their special combination—differentiates it from every other object.
What, however, we wish to remark is the illustration incidentally
afforded by this striking aperçu of Aristotle’s analytical method,
which is also the essentially Greek method of thought. We saw that,
for our philosopher, syllogism was not the subsumption of a particular
case under a general law, but the interpolation of a mean between two
extremes; we now see that his induction is not the finding of a law
for the particular phenomenon, but its analysis into two elements—one
universal and the other individual—a solution of the mean into the
extremes. And the distinctive originality of his whole system was to
fix two such extremes for the universe—a self-thinking thought in
absolute self-identity at one end of the scale, and an absolutely
indeterminate matter at the other; by combining which in various
proportions he then re-constructed the whole intermediate phenomenal
reality. In studying each particular class of facts, he follows the
same method. The genus is marked by some characteristic attribute which
one species—the prerogative species, so to speak—exhibits in its
greatest purity, while the others form a graduated scale by variously
combining this attribute with its opposite or privation. Hence his
theory, since revived by Goethe, that the colours are so many
different mixtures of light and darkness.
It has, until lately, been customary to speak as if all that Aristotle
knew about induction was contained in a few scattered passages where
it is mentioned under that name in the _Analytics_. This, no doubt,
is true, if by induction we mean simple generalisation. But if we
understand by it the philosophy of experimental evidence—the analysis
of those means by which, in the absence of direct observation, we
decide between two conflicting hypotheses—then the _Topics_ must be
pronounced as good a discussion on the subject as was compatible with
his general theory of knowledge. For he supposes that there are large
classes of phenomena, including, among other things, the whole range
of human life, which, not being bound by any fixed order, lie outside
the scope of scientific demonstration, although capable of being
determined with various degrees of probability; and here also what
he has in view is not the discovery of laws, but the construction of
definitions. These being a matter of opinion, could always be attacked
as well as maintained. Thus the constant conflict and balancing of
opposite forces, which we have learned to associate with the sublunary
sphere, has its logical representative no less than the kindred ideas
of uncertainty and vicissitude. And, in connexion with this side of
applied logic, Aristotle has also to consider the requirements of
those who took part in the public debates on disputed questions,
then very common among educated Athenians, and frequently turning on
verbal definitions. Hence, while we find many varieties of reasoning
suggested, such as Reasoning by Analogy, Disjunctive Reasoning,
Hypothetical Reasoning (though without a generalised expression for
all its varieties), and, what is most remarkable, three out of Mill’s
four Experimental Methods,[288] we do not find that any interesting
or useful application is made of them. Even considered as a handbook
for debaters, the _Topics_ is not successful. With the practical
incompetence of a mere naturalist, Aristotle has supplied heads for
arguments in such profusion and such utter carelessness of their
relative importance that no memory could sustain the burden, except in
the probably rare instances when a lifetime was devoted to their study.
VIII.
We have now concluded our survey of the first great mental antithesis,
that between reason on the one hand, and sense and opinion on the
other. The next antithesis, that between reason and passion, will
occupy us a much shorter time. With it we pass from theory to practice,
from metaphysics and logic to moral philosophy. But, as we saw in
the preceding chapter, Aristotle is not a practical genius; for him
the supreme interest of life is still the acquisition of knowledge.
Theorising activity corresponds to the celestial world, in which there
can be neither opposition nor excess; while passion corresponds to the
sublunary sphere, where order is only preserved by the balancing of
antithetical forces; and the moderating influence of reason, to the
control exercised by the higher over the lower system.
The passions themselves, and the means by which they can be either
excited or controlled, are described in Aristotle’s _Rhetoric_
with wonderful knowledge of human nature in the abstract, but with
almost no reference to the art for whose purposes the information is
ostensibly systematised; while in the _Ethics_ they are studied, so
to speak, statically, in their condition of permanent equilibration
or disequilibration; the virtues and vices being represented as so
many different aspects of those conditions. It is obvious that such
an extremely artificial parallelism could not be carried out without
a considerable strain and distortion of the facts involved. The only
virtue that can, with truth, be described as a form of moderation is
temperance; and even in temperance this is accidental rather than
essential. Elsewhere Aristotle deduces the extremes from the mean
rather than the mean from the extremes; and sometimes one of the
extremes is invented for the occasion. To fit justice, confessedly
the most important virtue, into such a scheme, was obviously
impracticable without reinterpreting the idea of moderation. Instead of
an equilibrium between opposing impulses in the same person, we have
equality in the treatment of different persons; which again resolves
itself into giving them their own, without any definite determination
of what their own may be.[289] It cannot even be said that Aristotle
represented either the best ethical thought of his own age, or an
indispensable stage in the evolution of all thought. The extreme
insufficiency of his ethical theory is due to the fancied necessity
of squaring it with the requirements of his cosmological system. For
no sooner does he place himself at the popular point of view than he
deduces the particular virtues from regard to the welfare of others,
and treats them all as so many different forms of justice.[290]
Aristotle has sometimes been represented as an advocate of free-will
against necessity. But the question had not really been opened in
his time. He rejected fatalism; but it had not occurred to him that
internal motives might exercise a constraining power over action. Nor
has his freedom anything to do with the self-assertion of mind, its
extrication from the chain of physical antecedents. It is simply the
element of arbitrariness and uncertainty supposed to characterise
the region of change and opposition, as distinguished from the higher
region of undeviating regularity.
It is only in this higher region that perfect virtue can be realised.
The maintenance of a settled balance between rival solicitations, or
between the excess and defect of those impulses which lead us to seek
pleasure and avoid pain, is good indeed, but neither the only nor the
chief good. The law of moderation does not extend to that supremely
happy life which is related to our emotional existence as the aether
to the terrestrial elements, as soul to body, as reason to sense, as
science to opinion. Here it is the steady subordination of means to
ends which imitates the insphering of the heavenly orbs, the hierarchy
of psychic faculties, and the chain of syllogistic arguments. Of
theoretic activity we cannot have too much, and all other activities,
whether public or private, should be regarded as so much machinery
for ensuring its peaceful prosecution. Wisdom and temperance had been
absolutely identified by Socrates; they are as absolutely held apart
by Aristotle. And what we have had occasion to observe in the other
departments of thought is verified here once more. The method of
analysis and opposition, apparently so prudent, proved, in the end,
unfruitful. Notwithstanding his paradoxes, Socrates was substantially
right. The moral regeneration of the world was destined to be brought
about, not by Dorian discipline, but by free Athenian thought, working
on practical conceptions—by the discovery of new moral truth, or
rather by the dialectic development of old truth. And, conversely, the
highest development of theoretic activity was not attained by isolating
it in egoistic self-contemplation from the world of human needs, but
by consecrating it to their service, informing it with their vitality,
and subjecting it, in common with them, to that law of moderation from
which no energy, however godlike, is exempt.
The final antithesis of conscious life is that between the individual
and the state. In this sense, Aristotle’s _Politics_ is the completion
of his _Ethics_. It is only in a well-ordered community that moral
habits can be acquired; and it is only in such a community that the
best or intellectual life can be attained, although, properly speaking,
it is not a social life. Nevertheless, the _Politics_, like every other
portion of Aristotle’s system, reproduces within itself the elements
of an independent whole. To understand its internal organisation, we
must begin by disregarding Aristotle’s abortive classification (chiefly
adapted from Plato) of constitutions into three legitimate—Monarchy,
Aristocracy, and Republic; and three illegitimate—Democracy,
Oligarchy, and Tyranny. Aristotle distinguishes them by saying that
the legitimate forms are governed with a view to the general good; the
illegitimate with a view to the interests of particular classes or
persons. But, in point of fact, as Zeller shows,[291] he cannot keep
up this distinction; and we shall better understand his true idea by
substituting for it another—that between the intellectual and the
material state. The object of the one is to secure the highest culture
for a ruling caste, who are to abstain from industrial occupations,
and to be supported by the labour of a dependent population. Such a
government may be either monarchical or aristocratic; but it must
necessarily be in the hands of a few. The object of the other is to
maintain a stable equilibrium between the opposing interests of rich
and poor—two classes practically distinguished as the few and the
many. This end is best attained where supreme power belongs to the
middle class. The deviations are represented by oligarchy and tyranny
on the one side, and by extreme democracy on the other. Where such
constitutions exist, the best mode of preserving them is to moderate
their characteristic excess by borrowing certain institutions from the
opposite form of government, or by modifying their own institutions in
a conciliatory sense.
In the last chapter we dealt at length with the theories of art, and
especially of tragic poetry, propounded in Aristotle’s _Poetics_.
For the sake of formal completeness, it may be mentioned here that
those theories are adapted to the general scheme of his systematic
philosophy. The plot or plan of a work answers to the formal or
rational element in Nature, and this is why Aristotle so immensely
over-estimates its importance. And, just as in his moral philosophy,
the ethical element, represented by character-drawing, is strictly
subordinated to it. The centre of equilibrium is, however, not supplied
by virtue, but by exact imitation of Nature, so that the characters
must not deviate very far from mediocrity in the direction either of
heroism or of wickedness.
IX.
Notwithstanding the radical error of Aristotle’s philosophy—the false
abstraction and isolation of the intellectual from the material sphere
in Nature and in human life—it may furnish a useful corrective to
the much falser philosophy insinuated, if not inculcated, by some
moralists of our own age and country. Taken altogether, the teaching
of these writers seems to be that the industry which addresses itself
to the satisfaction of our material wants is much more meritorious
than the artistic work which gives us direct aesthetic enjoyment, or
the literary work which stimulates and gratifies our intellectual
cravings; while within the artistic sphere fidelity of portraiture is
preferred to the creation of ideal beauty; and within the intellectual
sphere, mere observation of facts is set above the theorising power
by which facts are unified and explained. Some of the school to whom
we allude are great enemies of materialism; but teaching like theirs
is materialism of the worst description. Consistently carried out,
it would first reduce Europe to the level of China, and then reduce
the whole human race to the level of bees or beavers. They forget that
when we were all comfortably clothed, housed, and fed, our true lives
would have only just begun. The choice would then remain between some
new refinement of animal appetite and the theorising activity which,
according to Aristotle, is the absolute end, every other activity
being only a means for its attainment. There is not, indeed, such a
fundamental distinction as he supposed, for activities of every order
are connected by a continual reciprocity of services; but this only
amounts to saying that the highest knowledge is a means to every other
end no less than an end in itself. Aristotle is also fully justified
in urging the necessity of leisure as a condition of intellectual
progress. We may add that it is a leisure which is amply earned,
for without it industrial production could not be maintained at its
present height. Nor should the same standard of perfection be imposed
on spiritual as on material labour. The latter could not be carried on
at all unless success, and not failure, were the rule. It is otherwise
in the ideal sphere. There the proportions are necessarily reversed.
We must be content if out of a thousand guesses and trials one should
contribute something to the immortal heritage of truth. Yet we may
hope that this will not always be so, that the great discoveries and
creations wrought out through the waste of innumerable lives are not
only the expiation of all error and suffering in the past, but are also
the pledge of a future when such sacrifices shall no longer be required.
The two elements of error and achievement are so intimately blended and
mutually conditioned in the philosophy which we have been reviewing,
that to decide on their respective importance is impossible without
first deciding on a still larger question—the value of systematic
thought as such, and apart from its actual content. For Aristotle
was perhaps the greatest master of systematisation that ever lived.
The framework and language of science are still, to a great extent,
what he made them; and it remains to be seen whether they will ever
be completely remodelled. Yet even this gift has not been an unmixed
benefit, for it was long used in the service of false doctrines, and it
still induces critics to read into the Aristotelian forms truths which
they do not really contain. Let us conclude by observing that of all
the ancients, or even of all thinkers before the eighteenth century,
there is none to whom the methods and results of modern science could
so easily be explained. While finding that they reversed his own most
cherished convictions on every point, he would still be prepared by
his logical studies to appreciate the evidence on which they rest,
and by his ardent love of truth to accept them without reserve. Most
of all would he welcome our astronomy and our biology with wonder and
delight, while viewing the development of modern machinery with much
more qualified admiration, and the progress of democracy perhaps with
suspicious fear. He who thought that the mind and body of an artisan
were alike debased by the exercise of some simple handicraft under
the pure bright sky of Greece, what would he have said to the effect
wrought on human beings by the noisome, grinding, sunless, soulless
drudgery of our factories and mines! How profoundly unfitted would
he have deemed its victims to influence those political issues with
which the interests of science are every day becoming more vitally
connected! Yet slowly, perhaps, and unwillingly, he might be brought
to perceive that our industry has been the indispensable basis of our
knowledge, as supplying both the material means and the moral ends
of its cultivation. He might also learn that there is an even closer
relationship between the two: that while the supporters of privilege
are leagued for the maintenance of superstition, the workers, and those
who advocate their claims to political equality, are leagued for its
restraint and overthrow. And if he still shrank back from the heat and
smoke and turmoil amid which the genius of our age stands, like another
Heracleitus, in feverish excitement, by the steam-furnace whence its
powers of revolutionary transmutation are derived, we too might reapply
the words of the old Ephesian prophet, bidding him enter boldly, for
here also there are gods.
FOOTNOTES:
[222] _Phys._, II., viii., p. 198, b, 24.
[223] The late Father Secchi, for example.
[224] _Phys._, II., iv., p. 196, a, 28; _De Coel._, II., xii.
[225] _Phys._, II., viii., p. 199, b, 14.
[226] _Metaph._, I., iii., _sub in._; _Anal. Post._, II., xi., _sub
in._ Bekker. (cap. x., in the Tauchnitz ed.); _Phys._ II., iii.; _De
Gen. An._, I., i. _sub in._
[227] _Metaph._, VIII., iv., p. 1044, b, 1; _De Gen. An._, I., i., p,
715, a, 6; _ib._ II., i., 732, a, 4; _Phys._, II., vii., p. 198, a, 24
ff.
[228] _Phys._, II., iii., p. 195, a, 32 ff.; _Metaph._, IX., viii., p.
1049, b, 24.
[229] That is, according to the traditional view, which, however, will
have to be considerably modified if we accept the conclusions embodied
in Teichmüller’s _Literarische Fehden_.
[230] _Parmen._, 130, A ff.; _Tim._, 28, A.
[231] As we may infer from a passage in the _Rhetoric_ (II., ii., p.
1379, a, 35), where partisans of the Idea are said to be exasperated by
any slight thrown on their favourite doctrine.
[232] Repeated in the _Metaphysics_, I., ix., p. 993, a, 1.
[233] This may seem inconsistent with our former assertion, that Hegel
holds in German philosophy a place analogous to that held by Aristotle
in Greek philosophy. Such analogies, however, are always more or
less incomplete; and, so far as he attributes a self-moving power to
ideas, Hegel is a Platonist rather than an Aristotelian. Similarly,
as an evolutionist, Mr. Herbert Spencer stands much nearer to early
Greek thought than to Aristotle, whom, in other respects, he so much
resembles.
[234] Zeller, _Ph. d. Gr._, II., b, 297 f.
[235] _Metaph._ IV., iii. and viii.
[236] _Ibid._ VI., ii., p. 1026, b, 21.
[237] _Metaph._, VI., iv., p. 1027, b, 29.
[238] _Ibid._, VI., iv.
[239] _Ibid._, VI., ii., _sub in._; VII., i., _sub in._; _Topic._, I.,
ix.
[240] These are τί, ποιόν, ποσόν, ποῦ, ποτέ, and πῶς. Τί is associated
with πρός in the question πρὸς τί, which has no simple English
equivalent. Apparently it was suggested to Aristotle by ποσόν, how
much? in connexion with which it means, in relation to what standard?
If we were told that a thing was double, we should ask, double what?
Again, the Greeks had a simply compound question, τί παθών, meaning,
what was the matter with him? or, what made him do it? From this
Aristotle extracted πάσχειν, a wider notion than our passion, meaning
whatever is done or happens to anything; which again would suggest
ποιεῖν, what it does. Finally, πῶς, taken alone, is too vague a
question for any answer, but must be taken in its simplest compounds
πῶς διακείμενον and πῶς ἔχον, which give the two rarely-occurring
categories ἔχειν and κεῖσθαι, for which it is on one occasion
substituted (_Soph. El._, xxii., p. 178, b, 39). Διὰ τί does not figure
among the categories, because it is reserved for the special analysis
of οὐσία.
[241] As Grote has shown in his chapter on the Categories.
[242] _Eth. Nic._, I., iv., p. 1096, a, 24, where six are enumerated.
[243] _Metaph._, VII. _passim_.
[244] _Metaph._, VII., vi., p. 1031, b, 18 ff.
[245] Zeller, _Phil. d. Gr._, II., b, 309.
[246] For the general theory of Actuality and Possibility, see
_Metaph._, VIII.
[247] Grant’s _Aristotle_, p. 176.
[248] _Metaph._, XII., viii., p. 1074, a, 36.
[249] Grant’s _Aristotle_, p. 176.
[250] ‘The rational attitude of a thinking mind towards the
supernatural, whether in natural or revealed religion, is that of
scepticism, as distinguished from belief on the one hand and atheism on
the other.’—Mill’s _Essays on Religion_, p. 242.
[251] Grant’s _Aristotle_, p. 177.
[252] τὸ δ’
[252] τὸ δ’ εἶνα οὐκ οὐσία οὐδενί· οὐ γὰρ γένος τὸ ὄν.—_An. Post._,
II., vii., p. 92, b, 13.
[253] _Metaph._, XIII., x.
[254] ‘Non pensar oltre lei [la terra] essere un corpo senza alma e
vita et anche feccia tra le sustanze corporali.’ Giordano Bruno, _Cena
de le Ceneri_, p. 130 (_Opere_, ed. Wagner). ‘Non dovete stimar ... che
il corpo terreno sia vile e più degli altri ignobile.’—_De l’Infinito
Universo e Mondi_, p. 54 (_ib._).
[255] This conjecture of Empedocles deserves more attention than it has
as yet received. It illustrates once more the superior insight of the
early thinkers as compared with Aristotle.
[256] _De Coelo_, II., 1.
[257] Lewes, quoted by Zeller, p. 524.
[258] So Trendelenburg, Brandis, Kampe, and apparently also Zeller.
Grote speaks of it rather vaguely as an intelligence pervading the
celestial sphere. Schwegler vacillates between the theological and the
psychological explanation.
[259] The last chapter of the _Posterior Analytics_ sets forth a much
more developed and definite theory of the process by which general
ideas are formed. We think that it was composed at a considerably later
date than the rest of the work, and probably after the treatise on the
Soul, to which we should almost suspect an allusion in the word πάλαι
(p. 100, a, 14), did philology permit. The reference can hardly be
to the first part of the chapter (as is generally supposed); nor has
the subject under discussion been touched on in any other part of the
_Analytics_.
[260] Grote and Kampe think that Aristotle assigns a portion of aether
as an extended, if not precisely a material, substratum to the rational
soul; but the arguments of Zeller (p. 569) seem decisive against this
view.
[261] _De Gen. An._, II., iii., p. 736, b, 15.
[262] _Outlines of the Philosophy of Aristotle_, p. 45.
[263] The word θεῖον, at any rate, does not mean ‘almost God,’ for
Aristotle applies it to the intelligence of bees, and also to the
heavenly bodies (_De Gen. An._, III., x., p. 761, a, 5; _De Coelo_,
II., xii., p. 292, b, 32).
[264] Principal Caird.
[265] _Outlines_, Preface, p. viii.
[266] _Metaph._, VII., xiii., p. 1039, a, 4.
[267] _De An._, III., ii., p. 426, a, 20; 425, b, 25 ff. What Aristotle
means by saying that the εἶναι of object and sensation is not the same,
appears from a passage in his tract on Memory (p. 450, b, 20), where he
employs the illustration of a portrait and its original, which are the
same, although their εἶναι is different.
[268] _Metaph._, IV., v., _sub fin._
[269] _De An._, III., iv., _sub fin._
[270] _De An._, II., ii., p. 414, a, 20.
[271] _De An._, III., i., p. 425, a, 13.
[272] See Zeller pp. 602-606, where the whole subject is thoroughly
discussed.
[273] _Anal. Pr._, I., i., _sub in._; ii., _sub in._; _Top._, I.,
viii., Bekker (in the Tauchnitz ed., vi.).
[274] _Anal. Pr._, I., xxiii., 41, a, 11 (in the Tauchnitz ed., xxii.,
8).
[275] This point is well brought out in F. A. Lange’s _Logische
Untersuchungen_.
[276] _Anal. Pr._, I., xxxi.; _Anal. Post._, II., v.
[277] _Metaph._, IV., iii., _sub in._
[278] _Anal. Post._, I., x.
[279] ‘Die Wissenschaft soll die Erscheinungen aus ihren Gründen
erklären, welche näher in den allgemeinen Ursachen und Gesetzen zu
suchen sind’ (Zeller, p. 203). ‘Induction is the method of proceeding
from particular instances to general laws’ (Wallace, p. 13). ‘It seems
to have been his [Aristotle’s] idea that after gathering facts up to a
certain point, a flash of intuition would supervene, telling us “This
is a law”’ (Grant, p. 68). _Apropos_ of the discussion whence this
last passage is extracted, we may observe that Sir A. Grant is quite
mistaken in saying that Aristotle ‘omits to provide for verification.’
Aristotle is, on the contrary, most anxious to show that his theories
agree with all the known facts. See in particular his memorable
declaration (_De Gen. An._, III., x., p. 760, b, 27), that facts are
more to be trusted than reasonings.
The emphasis laid by Aristotle on concepts as distinguished from laws
is noticed by J. H. v. Kirchmann, in his German translation of the
_Metaphysics_, p. 13.
[280] _De An._, III., vi., _sub in._, taken together with _Anal.
Post._, I., vi.
[281] _Anal. Post._, I., xxxiv.; II., ii.
[282] _Anal. Post._, II., xii., p. 95, a, 36.
[283] Wallace’s _Outlines_, p. 14.
[284] _Ibid._, Preface, pp. viii.-ix.
[285] As if Mill wrote exclusively for Oxford tutors, and as if other
philosophers had not constantly elucidated their arguments by concrete
examples. One does not see why the village matron should be more
deserving of contempt than Aristotle’s Thebans and Phocians.
[286] That is, knowledge which has never been actualised.
[287] It is a mistake to translate νόησις, as the Germans do, by
Anschauung. The Nous does not intuite ideas, but is converted into and
consists of them.
[288] For Analogy, see _Top._, II., x., _sub in._; Disjunction, II.,
vi., _sub in._; Hypothetical Reasoning, II., x., p. 115, a, 15; Method
of Differences, II., xi., _sub in._; Method of Residues, VI., xi., _sub
in._; Concomitant Variations, II., x., p. 114, b, 37; V., viii., _sub
in._; VI., vii., _sub in._ The Method of Agreement occurs _An. Prior._,
II., xxvii., _sub fin._; and _An. Post._, II., xiii., p. 97, b, 7.
[289] It may possibly be urged that the fifth book of the _Nicomachean
Ethics_ is of doubtful authenticity. Still the dilemma remains that
Aristotle either omitted the most important of all moral questions from
his ethics, or that he treated it in a miserably inadequate manner.
[290] _Eth. Nic._, V., iii.; _Rhet._, I., vi., p. 1362, b, 28; ix., p.
1366, b, 4.
[291] P. 753.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
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Transcriber’s note:
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Other
variations in hyphenation spelling, accents and punctuation remain
unchanged.
Footnotes are placed at the end of each chapter.
Footnote 143: Zeller, 678-8. This appears erroneous.