ARISTOTLE
1. Life, Writings, and general character of his Work.
Aristotle was born in 384 B.C. at Stagirus, a Grecian colony and
seaport on the coast of Thrace. His father Nichomachus was court
physician to King Amyntas of Macedonia, and from this began
Aristotle's long association with the Macedonian Court, which
considerably influenced his life and destinies. While he was still a
boy his father died, and he was sent by his guardian, Proxenus, to
Athens, the intellectual centre of the world, to complete his
education. He was then aged seventeen. He joined the Academy and
studied under Plato, attending the latter's lectures for a period of
twenty years. In subsequent times, Aristotle's detractors, anxious to
vilify his character, accused him of "ingratitude" to his master,
Plato. It was said that Plato's old age had been embittered by
dissensions in the school caused by the factious spirit of Aristotle.
That there is no ground for attaching any blame to Aristotle for the
troubles of Plato, which either did not exist or have been grossly
exaggerated, is evident both from the facts within our knowledge and
from the reference to Plato in Aristotle's works. It is not likely
that, had Aristotle rendered himself genuinely objectionable, he could
have remained for twenty years in {250} the Academy, and only left it
upon the death of Plato. Moreover, although Aristotle in his works
attacks the teaching of Plato with unsparing vigour, there is nowhere
to be found in these attacks any suggestion of acrimony or personal
rancour. On the contrary, he refers to himself as the friend of Plato,
but a greater friend of the truth. The fact, in all probability, is
that a man of such independent and original mind as Aristotle did not
accord to Plato the kind of blind adoration and hero-worship which he
may have received from the inferior intellects in the school. As is so
often the case with young men of marked ability, the brilliant student
may have suffered from the impatience and self-assertion of youth.
There was certainly nothing worse.
While at the Academy Aristotle exhibited an unflagging spirit and
unwearied zeal in the pursuit of knowledge in all its forms, a spirit
which gave rise to nick-names and anecdotes, which probably contained
as much truth, or as little, as most of the anecdotes which gather
round remarkable characters. One of these stories was that he used a
mechanical contrivance to wake him up whenever sleep threatened to put
an end to his hours of study.
In 347 B.C. Plato died, and his nephew Speusippus was chosen as head
of the Academy. Aristotle left Athens with his fellow-student
Xenocrates, and together they repaired to the court of Hermeias, King
of Atarneus, in Asia Minor. Hermeias, a man of low origin, but of high
instincts and advanced education, had himself attended the lectures of
Plato, and received the two young philosophers as welcome guests.
Aristotle stayed three years at Atarneus, and, while there, married
{251} Pythias, the niece of the King. In later life he was married a
second time to one Herpyllis, who bore him a son, Nichomachus. At the
end of three years Hermeias fell a victim to the treachery of the
Persians, and Aristotle went to Mytilene. Here he remained for several
years till he received an invitation from Philip of Macedonia to
become the tutor of the young Alexander, afterwards conqueror of the
world, then aged thirteen. Aristotle obeyed the summons, and for about
five years superintended the education of Alexander. Both Philip and
Alexander appear to have paid Aristotle high honour, and there were
stories that he was supplied by the Macedonian court, not only with
funds for the prosecution of learning, but even with thousands of
slaves for the collection of specimens. These stories are probably
false and certainly exaggerated. But there is no doubt that, in his
scientific and philosophical enquiries, he was backed by the influence
of the court, and could even perhaps have looked to that quarter for
supplies, had it ever been necessary.
Upon the death of Philip, Alexander succeeded to the kingship. The
period of his studies was now over, and he began to make preparations
for his subsequent conquests. Aristotle's work being finished, he
returned to Athens, which he had not visited since the death of Plato.
He found the Platonic school flourishing under Xenocrates, and
Platonism the dominant philosophy of Athens. He thereupon set up his
own school at a place called the Lyceum. It was in connection with
this that his followers became known, in after years, as the
"peripatetics," a name which arose from Aristotle's habit of walking
about as he discoursed. The period of {252} his residence in Athens
lasted thirteen years, during which time he was occupied in the
leadership of his school and in literary labours. This appears to have
been the most fruitful period of his life. There is no doubt that all
his most important writings were composed at this time. But at the end
of this period his fortunes changed.
In B.C. 323 Alexander the Great died suddenly at Babylon in the midst
of his triumphs. The Athenian Government was in the hands of a
pro-Macedonian party. Upon the death of Alexander this party was
overthrown, and a general reaction occurred against everything
Macedonian. Alexander had been regarded in Greece much as Napoleon was
regarded in Europe a century ago. He had insulted the free Greek
cities. He had even sacked the city of Thebes. The whole of Greece
lived in perpetual terror of invasion. Now that this fear was removed
by his death, there was a general outburst of feeling against
Macedonia. An anti-Macedonian party came into power. Now Aristotle had
always been regarded as a representative and protege of the Macedonian
court, although, as a matter of fact, he had recently fallen out of
favour with the autocratic Alexander. A charge of impiety was trumped
up against him. To escape prosecution he fled to Chalcis in Euboea, in
order that, as he said, "the Athenians might not have another
opportunity of sinning against philosophy as they had already done in
the person of Socrates." He perhaps intended to return to Athens as
soon as the storm had blown over. But in the first year of his
residence at Chalcis he was overtaken by a sudden illness, and died at
the age of sixty-three, in B.C. 322.
{253}
Aristotle is said to have composed some four hundred books. Our
astonishment at this productivity diminishes somewhat when we remember
that what is here called a "book" is much the same as what we should
call a chapter in a modern treatise. More than three-quarters of these
writings have been lost. But, by good fortune, what remains to us is
undoubtedly by far the most important part, and we have preserved in
it a fairly complete account of the whole Aristotelian system in all
its departments. Nearly all the writings, however, have come down to
us in a mutilated state. This is especially the case with the
"Metaphysics." This treatise is unfinished, and it was probably left
unfinished by its author at his death. But apart from this, several of
the books of the "Metaphysics" are undoubtedly spurious. Others
apparently come in the wrong order. We end one book in the middle of a
discussion, and when we begin the next we find ourselves in the middle
of an entirely different subject. There are frequent repetitions, and
parts of it read as if they were mere lecture notes. There are many
interpolations. The same characteristics are to be observed in
Aristotle's other writings, though in a less degree. It seems probable
that they were not intended, in their present state, for publication.
Final revision and finishing touches are lacking. In spite of these
defects, the writings are voluminous and clear enough to enable us to
trace out the whole of the main positions of Aristotle's thought.
We saw, in the case of Plato, that, as his literary activity lasted
over a period of half a century, during which his philosophy was in
constant development, it became important to trace this development in
the {254} order of his Dialogues. The same thing is not true in the
case of Aristotle. The whole of his writings, or rather those that
have come down to us, seem to have been written during his last
thirteen years, while he was at Athens, that is to say, after he had
passed his fiftieth year. His system was then complete, mature, and
fully developed. The question of the order in which they were written
has no great importance. The result of critical investigations,
however, is to show that he probably began with the various works upon
logic, composed next the treatises upon physical science, next the
ethical and political books, and lastly the "Metaphysics," which he
left unfinished.
It must not be forgotten that Aristotle was not only a philosopher in
the modern restricted sense of that term. He was a man of universal
learning. There is no branch of knowledge which did not receive his
attention, and upon which he was not the greatest expert of his time,
except perhaps mathematics. So far was he from being only an abstract
philosopher, that his natural tastes seem to have lain rather in the
field of physical science than of abstract thought. But his design
seems to have been to work over the entire field of knowledge,
thoroughly to overhaul the sciences already in existence, rejecting
what seemed false in the work of his predecessors, and invariably
adding to the residue valuable developments and suggestions of his
own. Where there was no science already in existence, his plan
involved the foundation of new sciences wherever necessary, and he
thus became the founder of at least two sciences, Logic and Zoology.
He thus attained to a pre-eminence in all branches {255} of knowledge
which would be impossible for a single man in modern times. His works
include treatises upon Logic and Metaphysics, upon Ethics, Politics,
and Art. He wrote a treatise upon the principles of Rhetoric, another
upon Astronomy, under the title "On the Heavens," another upon
Meteorology. Several of his treatises deal with the biology of animal
life, in which he was intensely interested. They include books
entitled "On the Parts of Animals," "On the Movements of Animals," "On
the Origin of Animals," as well as his great treatise, "Researches on
Animals," which contains an enormous mass of facts collected from
every possible source. It is true that a large proportion of these
facts have turned out to be fictions, but this was inevitable in the
infancy of science. It has been calculated that Aristotle shows
himself acquainted with about five hundred different species of living
beings, though they are not, of course, classified by him in the
modern way. With these books upon animals he founded the science of
Zoology, for no one before his day had made any special study of the
subject.
It has been said that everyone has either an Aristotelian or a
Platonic type of mind. As this implies that Aristotle and Plato are
opposites, it is considerably less than a half truth. No genuine
understanding of Aristotle can endorse the opinion that his
philosophical system was the opposite of Plato's. It would be truer to
say that Aristotle was the greatest of all Platonists, since his
system is still founded upon the Idea, and is an attempt to found an
idealism free from the defects of Plato's system. It is in fact a
development of Platonism. What is the cause then of the popular notion
that {256} Aristotle was the opposite of Plato? Now the fact is that
they _were_ opposites in many important respects. But there was a
fundamental agreement between them which lies deeper than the
differences. The differences are largely superficial, the agreement is
deep-seated. Hence it is the differences that are most obvious, and it
was the differences, too, which were most obvious to Aristotle
himself. The popular opinion arises largely from the fact that
Aristotle never loses an opportunity of attacking the Platonic theory
of Ideas. He is continually at pains to emphasize the difference
between himself and Plato, but says nothing of the agreement. But no
man is a judge of his own deeper relations to his predecessors and
contemporaries. It is only in after years, when the hubbub of
controversy has settled down into the silence of the past, that the
historian can see the true perspective, and can penetrate the
relations of each great man to the time in which he lived. Plato was
the founder of idealism, and his idealism was in many respects crude
and untenable. It was the special mission of Aristotle to clear away
these crudities, and so develop Platonism into a tenable philosophy.
And it was natural that he should emphasize the crudities, which he
had to fight so hard to overcome, rather than that substratum of truth
which Plato had already developed, and which therefore required no
special treatment at his hands. It was the differences between himself
and his predecessor which were most obvious to him, and it was
inevitable that he should adopt a thoroughly polemical attitude
towards his master.
But if the agreement was more deep-seated than the differences, and
lay in the recognition of the Idea as the {257} absolute foundation of
the world, the differences were none the less very striking. In the
first place, Aristotle loved facts. What he wanted was always definite
scientific knowledge. Plato, on the other hand, had no love of facts
and no gift for physical enquiries. And what disgusted Aristotle about
the system of Plato was the contempt which it poured upon the world of
sense. To depreciate objects of sense, and to proclaim the knowledge
of them valueless, was a fundamental characteristic of all Plato's
thinking. But the world of sense is the world of facts, and Aristotle
was deeply interested in facts. No matter in what branch of knowledge,
any fact was received by Aristotle with enthusiasm. To Plato it
appeared of no interest what the habits of some obscure animal might
be. That alone which should be pursued is the knowledge of the Idea.
And he went so far as to deny that knowledge of the sense-world could
properly be described as knowledge at all. But the habits of animals
appeared to Aristotle a matter worthy of investigation for its own
sake. Francis Bacon in his "Novum Organum" has many contemptuous
references to Aristotle. And the gist of them all is that Aristotle
had no regard for facts, but theorized a priori out of his head, and
that instead of patiently investigating the facts of nature, he
decided, upon so-called "rational" grounds, what nature ought to do,
and squared the facts with his theories.
It was natural for Bacon to be unjust to him. He, with the other
thinkers of his time, was engaged upon an uphill fight against
scholasticism, then dominant, which claimed to represent the true
teaching of Aristotle. And it was true that the schoolmen theorized a
priori, {258} and ignored facts, or, what was worse, appealed to the
writings of Aristotle to decide questions of fact which should have
been decided by an appeal to nature. And Bacon not unnaturally
confounded Aristotle with these modern Aristotelians, and attributed
to him the faults that were really theirs. But no man was ever keener
on facts than Aristotle as is proved by his treatises upon animals,
which contain evidences of astonishing patience and laborious work in
the collection of facts. It is true, however, that even in the domain
of facts, Aristotle, like all the ancients, was guilty of introducing
_a priori_ reasonings when they were quite out of place. Thus he does
not scruple to argue that the stars must move in circles because the
circle is the perfect figure. And numerous similar instances could be
quoted. But it was inevitable that, with science in its swaddling
clothes, without the aid of any instruments, or of any body of
previously ascertained truths, Aristotle should fall into these
snares. He well understood the fundamental necessity of all natural
sciences for a laborious investigation of facts, but, when this was
impossible, he used the only means in his power, his reason.
Secondly, in spite of Plato's rationalism, he had allowed to myths and
poetry a large share in the development of his thoughts, and had even
exhibited a distinct tendency towards mysticism. Here again what
Aristotle wanted was definite knowledge. It pained him to see poetic
metaphors substituted for rational explanation. And this accounts for
the third main difference between Plato and Aristotle, the marked
contrast in their prose styles. Plato was a master-artist in words.
Aristotle cared nothing for the ornaments and beauties of style. {259}
He harshly excludes them from his work. What alone he is intent upon
is the meaning, the truth that the words express. He is too much in
earnest with philosophy to lose himself in a haze of beautiful words,
or to be put off with metaphors instead of reasons. His style is even
harsh, abrupt, and ugly. But what it loses in beauty it gains in
clearness of conception. For every thought or shade of thought which
it is desired to express there is an accurate term. If no term in
common use will express the thought, Aristotle coins one. Hence he is
one of the greatest terminologists that ever lived. He adapted or
invented an enormous number of terms. He may be not unjustly regarded
as the founder of philosophical language, as the inventor of a
vocabulary of technical terms. Many of the terms used to this day to
express man's most abstract thoughts, were invented or introduced by
Aristotle. It must not be supposed that Aristotle wrote in a rigidly
scientific style because he had no aesthetic sense. The very contrary
is the case. His treatise on art shows him by far the best critic of
the ancient world, and in his appreciation and estimation of the
beautiful he far excels Plato. But he saw that art and science have
each their own sphere, and that it is fatal to confuse the two.
Nothing is so damaging to art as to be made the mere vehicle of
reasoning. Nothing is so damaging to philosophy as to allow itself to
be governed by poetry. If we want beauty, we must follow the path of
art. But if we desire truth, we must stick close to reason.
Aristotle's system falls most easily into the fivefold division of
logic, metaphysics, physics, ethics, and aesthetics.
{260}
2. Logic.
Not much need be said under this head, because whoever knows the
common logic of the text-books knows the logic of Aristotle. Of the
two branches of reasoning, deductive and inductive, Aristotle clearly
recognizes the latter. And many of his observations upon induction are
acute and penetrating. But he has not reduced induction to a science.
He has not laid bare the fundamental canons of inductive thought. This
was a work not performed until comparatively modern times. His name
therefore is more especially associated with deductive logic, of which
he was the founder. He not only founded the science, but practically
completed it. What we now know as "formal logic," what is to this day
contained in all text-books, taught in all schools and universities,
is, in all its essentials, nothing more than the logic of Aristotle.
His writings upon the subject include the treatment of the well-known
laws of thought, the doctrine of the ten categories, the five
predicables, the doctrines of terms, of propositions, of syllogisms,
and of the reduction of the other figures to the first figure of the
syllogism. And these heads might well form the list of contents of a
modern work on formal logic. In only two respects has any advance been
made upon Aristotle by subsequent logicians. The fourth figure of the
syllogism is not recognized by Aristotle; and he dealt only with
categorical syllogisms, and does not treat conditional syllogisms. But
whether or not the fourth figure of the syllogism has any value is
still a matter open to dispute. And though the doctrine of conditional
syllogisms is important, it is not essential, because all conditional
syllogisms can be reduced to categorical {261} syllogisms. The
categorical syllogism is the fundamental type of reasoning, to which
every other form of deduction can be reduced. As for the rest of the
huge treatises on formal logic which some moderns have produced, the
supposed additions are nothing but wearisome, endless, useless,
nauseating, academic distinctions and refinements, which are much
better forgotten than remembered. Aristotle's logic contains therefore
all that is essential to the subject. The only ground on which it can
be attacked is its wholly empirical procedure. But that is another
story. As a collection, arrangement, and analysis of the facts of
reason, it is to all intents and purposes finality achieved at one
stroke.
3. Metaphysics.
The treatise now known as the "Metaphysics" of Aristotle did not
originally bear that name. Aristotle's name for this subject is "first
philosophy," by which he means the knowledge of the first, highest, or
most general principles of the universe. All other branches of
knowledge are subordinate to this science, not because they are
inferior in value, but because they are lower in logical sequence as
dealing with principles less universal in their scope. Thus all the
special sciences deal with one or another particular sphere of being,
but the "first philosophy" has for its subject being as such, "being
so far forth as it is being." It studies, not the characteristics of
this or that kind of being, but the principles which are equally true
of all being. The laws of Zoology apply only to animals, but the
principles of the "first philosophy" apply to everything. The name
"metaphysics" came into use only half a century B.C., when {262}
Andronicus published a complete edition of Aristotle's known works. In
this edition the treatise on "first philosophy" was placed after the
"physics," and "metaphysics" signifies simply "after physics." The
derivation of the word thus appears to be merely accidental and
adventitious. Whether it was also in any way intended to signify that
the subject is "beyond physics," that is, deals with what transcends
physical existence, seems doubtful.
Aristotle's metaphysical theory grows naturally out of his polemic
against Plato's theory of Ideas, because his own system was in effect
simply an attempt to overcome the defects which he found in Plato. The
main heads of this polemic are the following:--
(1) Plato's Ideas do not explain the existence of things. To explain
why the world is here is after all the main problem of philosophy, and
Plato's theory fails to do this. Even admitting that, say, the Idea of
whiteness exists, we cannot see how it produces white objects.
(2) Plato has not explained the relation of Ideas to things. Things,
we are told, are "copies" of Ideas, and "participate" in them. But how
are we to understand this "participation"? In using such phrases, says
Aristotle, Plato is giving no real account of the relationship, but is
merely "uttering poetic metaphors."
(3) Even if the existence of things is explained by the Ideas, their
motion is not. Suppose that the Idea of whiteness produces white
things, the Idea of beauty beautiful things, and so on, yet, since the
Ideas themselves are immutable and motionless, so will be the world
which is their copy. Thus the universe would be {263} absolutely
static, like Coleridge's "painted ship upon a painted ocean." But the
world, on the contrary, is a world of change, motion, life, becoming.
Plato makes no attempt to explain the unceasing becoming of things.
Even if the Idea of whiteness explains white objects, yet why do these
objects arise, develop, decay, and cease to exist? To explain this
there must be some principle of motion in the Ideas themselves. But
there is not. They are immovable and lifeless.
(4) The world consists of a multitude of things, and it is the
business of philosophy to explain why they exist. By way of
explanation Plato merely assumes the existence of another multitude of
things, the Ideas. But the only effect of this is to double the number
of things to be explained. How does it help thus to duplicate
everything? And Aristotle likens Plato to a man who, being unable to
count with a small number, fancies that, if he doubles the number, he
will find it easier to count.
(5) The Ideas are supposed to be non-sensuous, but they are, in fact,
sensuous. Plato thought that a non-sensuous principle must be sought
in order to explain the world of sense. But not being able to find any
such principle, he merely took the objects of sense over again and
called them non-sensuous. But there is, in fact, no difference between
the horse and the Idea of the horse, between the man and the Idea of
the man, except a useless and meaningless "in-itself" or "in-general"
attached to each object of sense to make it appear something
different. The Ideas are nothing but hypostatized things of sense, and
Aristotle likens them to the anthropomorphic gods of the popular
religion. "As {264} these," he says, "are nothing but deified men, so
the Ideas are nothing but eternalized things of nature." Things are
said to be copies of Ideas, but in fact the Ideas are only copies of
things.
(6) Next comes the argument of the "third man," so called by Aristotle
from the illustration by which he explained it. Ideas are assumed in
order to explain what is common to many objects. Wherever there is a
common element there must be an Idea. Thus there is a common element
in all men, and therefore there is an Idea of man. But there is also
an element common to the individual man and to the Idea of man. There
must, therefore, be a further Idea, the "third man," to explain this.
And between this further Idea and the individual man there must be yet
another Idea to explain what they have in common, and so on _ad
infinitum_.
(7) But by far the most important of all Aristotle's objections to the
ideal theory, and that which, to all intents and purposes, sums up all
the others, is that it assumes that Ideas are the essences of things,
and yet places those essences outside the things themselves. The
essence of a thing must be in it, and not outside it. But Plato
separated Ideas from things, and placed the Ideas away somewhere in a
mysterious world of their own. The Idea, as the universal, can only
exist in the particular. Possibly the reality in all horses is the
universal horse, but the universal horse is not something that exists
by itself and independently of individual horses. Hence Plato was led
into the absurdity of talking as if, besides the individual horses we
know, there is somewhere another individual called the
horse-in-general, or as if besides white objects there is a thing
called {265} whiteness. And this is in fact the supreme
self-contradiction of the theory of Ideas, that it begins by saying
that the universal is real, and the particular unreal, but ends by
degrading the universal again into a particular. This is the same
thing as saying that Plato's mistake lay in first (rightly) seeing
that existence is not reality, but then (wrongly) going on to imagine
that the reality is an existence.
Out of this last objection grows Aristotle's own philosophy, the
fundamental principle of which is that the universal is indeed the
absolute reality, but that it is a universal which exists only in the
particular. What is reality? What is substance? This is the first
question for the metaphysician. Now substance is what has an
independent existence of its own; it is that whose being does not flow
into it from any source outside itself. Consequently, substance is
what is never a predicate; it is that to which all predicates are
applied. Thus in the proposition, "Gold is heavy," gold is the
subject, or substance, and "heavy" is its predicate. The heaviness is
dependent for its existence on the gold, and it is therefore the
latter, and not the former, that is the substance.
Now, keeping this in mind, are universals, as Plato asserts,
substances? No; because the universal is merely a common predicate
which attaches to many objects of a class. Thus the concept of man is
merely what is common to all men. It is the same thing as the
predicate "humanness." But humanness cannot exist apart from human
beings, any more than heaviness apart from the heavy object.
Universals, then, are not substances. But neither are particulars
substances. For there is no such thing as that which is absolutely
{266} particular and isolated. If humanness does not exist apart from
men, neither do men exist apart from humanness. Take away from a man
what he has in common with other men, and what he has in common with
other objects, and you will find that, having stripped him of all his
qualities, there is absolutely nothing left. We say gold is heavy,
yellow, malleable, etc. Now the heaviness, the yellowness, and the
other qualities, cannot exist apart from the gold. But it is equally
true that the gold cannot exist apart from its qualities. Strip off
all its qualities in thought, and then ask yourself what the gold
itself is apart from its qualities. You will find that your mind is a
total blank. In taking away the qualities you have taken away the gold
itself. The gold can only be thought through its qualities. It only
exists through its qualities. The gold, therefore, just as much
depends on the qualities for its existence as the qualities depend
upon the gold. Hence neither of them, considered apart from the other,
is substance. But the qualities are the universal element in the gold,
the gold without the qualities is the absolutely particular and
isolated. For, first, the yellowness is a quality which this gold has
in common with that gold, and is therefore a universal, and so with
all the qualities. Even if a particular piece of gold has a quality
possessed by no other gold, it is yet possessed by some other object
in the universe, or it would be unknowable. Every quality is
consequently a universal. Secondly, the gold without its qualities is
the absolutely particular. For, being stripped of all qualities, it is
stripped of whatever it has in common with other things; it is
stripped of whatever universality it has, and it remains an absolute
particular. Hence the {267} universal is not substance, nor is the
particular. For neither of them can exist without the other. Substance
must be a compound of the two; it must be the universal in the
particular. And this means that that alone which is substance is the
individual object, for example, the gold with all its qualities
attached to it.
It is usually believed that Aristotle contradicted himself in as much
as he first states, as above, that the individual object, the compound
of universal and particular, is substance, but later on allows a
superior reality to the universal, or "form" as he calls it, and in
effect teaches, like Plato, that the universal is what alone is
absolutely real, that is, that the universal is substance. I do not
agree that there is any real inconsistency in Aristotle. Or rather,
the inconsistency is one of words and not of thought. It must be
remembered that, whenever Aristotle says that the individual, and not
the universal, is substance, he is thinking of Plato. What he means to
deny is that the universal can exist on its own account, as Plato
thought. Nevertheless he agrees with Plato that the universal is the
real. When he says that the universal is not substance he means, as
against Plato, that it is not existent. What alone exists is the
individual thing, the compound of universal and particular. When he
says, or implies, that the universal is substance, he means that,
though it is not existent, it is real. His words are contradictory,
but his meaning is not. He has not expressed himself as clearly as he
should; that is all.
The further development of Aristotle's metaphysics depends upon his
doctrine of causation. By causation here, however, is meant a very
much wider conception {268} than what is understood by that term in
modern times. I have in previous lectures attempted to make clear the
distinction between causes and reasons. The cause of a thing does not
give any reason for it, and therefore does not explain it. The cause
is merely the mechanism by which a reason produces its consequence.
Death is caused by accident or disease, but these causes explain
nothing as to why death should be in the world at all. Now if we
accept this distinction, we may say that Aristotle's conception of
causation includes both what we have called causes and reasons.
Whatever is necessary, whether facts or principles, whether causes or
reasons, fully to understand the existence of a thing, or the
happening of an event, is included in the Aristotelian notion of
causation.
Taking causation in this wide sense, Aristotle finds that there are
four kinds of causes, the material, the efficient, the formal, and the
final cause. These are not alternative causes; it is not meant that,
to explain anything, one or other of the four must be present. In
every case of the existence or production of a thing all four causes
operate simultaneously. Moreover the same four causes are to be found
both in human and in cosmic production, in the making of manufactured
articles by man and in the production of things by nature. They are
more clearly and easily seen, however, in human production, from which
sphere, therefore, we select our example. The material cause of a
thing is the matter of which it is composed. It is the raw material
which becomes the thing. For example, in the making of a bronze statue
of Hermes, the bronze is the material cause of the statue. This
example might lead one to suppose {269} that Aristotle means by
material cause what we call matter, physical substance, such as brass,
iron, or wood. As we shall see later, this is not necessarily the
case, though it is so in the present instance. The efficient cause is
always defined by Aristotle as the cause of motion. It is the energy
or moving force required to bring about change. It must be remembered
that by motion Aristotle means not merely change of place but change
of any sort. The alteration of a leaf from green to yellow is just as
much motion, in his sense, as the falling of a stone. The efficient
cause, then, is the cause of all change. In the example taken, what
causes the bronze to become a statue, what produces this change, is
the sculptor. He is, therefore, the efficient cause of the statue. The
formal cause Aristotle defines as the substance and essence of the
thing. Now the essence of a thing is given in its definition. But the
definition is the explication of the concept. Therefore the formal
cause is the concept, or, as Plato would call it, the Idea of the
thing. Plato's Ideas thus reappear in Aristotle as formal causes. The
final cause is the end, purpose, or aim, towards which the movement is
directed. When a statue is being produced, the end of this activity,
what the sculptor aims at, is the completed statue itself. And the
final cause of a thing in general is the thing itself, the completed
being of the object.
We can see at once how much wider this conception of causation is than
the modern conception. If we take Mill's definition of a cause as the
best expression of modern scientific ideas, we find that he defines a
cause as the "invariable and unconditional antecedent of a
phenomenon." This cuts out final causes at once. For {270} the final
cause is the end, and is not an antecedent in time. It also does not
include formal causes. For we do not now think of the concept of a
thing as being part of its cause. This leaves us with only material
and efficient causes, and these correspond roughly to the modern
notions of matter and energy. Even the efficient causes of Aristotle,
however, appear on further consideration, to be excluded from the
modern idea of causation. For, though the efficient cause is the
energy which produces motion, modern science regards it as purely
mechanical energy, whereas Aristotle thinks of it, as we shall see, as
an ideal force, operating not from the beginning but from the end. But
it must not be supposed that, in saying that the modern idea of
causation excludes formal and final causes, we mean that Aristotle is
wrong in adding them, or that the modern idea is better than
Aristotle's. It is not a question of better and worse at all. Modern
science does not in any way deny the reality of formal and final
causes. It merely considers them to be outside its sphere. It is no
business of science whether they exist or not. As knowledge advances,
differentiation and division of labour occur. Science takes as its
province mechanical causes, and leaves formal and final causes to the
philosopher to explicate. Thus, for example, formal causes are not
considered by science because they are not, in the modern sense,
causes at all. They are what we have called reasons. If we are to
explain the existence of an object in the universe it may be necessary
to introduce formal causes, concepts, to show why the thing exists, to
show in fact its reasons. But science makes no attempt to explain the
existence of objects. It takes their {271} existence for granted, and
seeks to trace their history and their relations to each other.
Therefore it does not require formal causes. It seeks to work out the
mechanical view of the universe, and therefore considers only
mechanical causes. But Aristotle's theory, as being philosophy rather
than science, includes both the principles of mechanism and teleology.
It was not Aristotle's habit to propound his theories as if they were
something absolutely new, sprung for the first time out of his own
brain. In attacking any problem, his custom was to begin by
enumerating current and past opinions, to criticise them, to reject
what was valueless in them, to retain the residue of truth, and to add
to it his own suggestions and original ideas. The resultant of this
process was his own theory, which he thus represented, not as
absolutely new, but as a development of the views of his predecessors.
This course he follows also in the present instance. The first book of
the "Metaphysics" is a history of all previous philosophy, from Thales
to Plato, undertaken with the object of investigating how far the four
causes had been recognized by his predecessors. The material cause, he
says, had been recognized from the first. The Ionics believed in this
and no other cause. They sought to explain everything by matter,
though they differed among themselves as to the nature of the material
cause, Thales describing it as water, Anaximenes as air. Later
philosophers also gave different accounts of it, Heracleitus thinking
it was fire, Empedocles the four elements, Anaxagoras an indefinite
number of kinds of matter. But the point is that they all recognized
the necessity for a material cause of some sort to explain the
universe.
{272}
The earliest thinkers, then, the Ionics, assumed only this one cause.
But as thought advanced, says Aristotle, and other philosophers came
upon the scene, "the thing itself guided them." It was seen that a
second cause was necessary to explain the motion and becoming of
things. For matter itself does not produce its motion. Wood is not the
cause of its becoming a bed, nor is brass the cause of its becoming a
statue. Hence arose the idea of the efficient cause. The Eleatics did
not recognize it, for they denied motion, and for them, therefore, no
cause of motion could be assumed. But Parmenides, Aristotle thinks,
wavered on this point, somehow allowing vaguely the existence of a
second cause, which he denominated the hot and the cold. The reference
is, of course, to the second part of the poem of Parmenides. Other
philosophers clearly assumed an efficient cause, for they thought that
one element, for example, fire, is more active, that is, more
productive of motion, than others. Empedocles certainly attained to
the idea of an efficient cause, for he named as moving forces, harmony
and discord, love and hate. Anaxagoras also, used Nous as a moving
force.
Formal causes had, perhaps, been recognized by the Pythagoreans, for
numbers are forms. But they straightway degraded the formal cause to
the level of a material cause by declaring that number is the stuff or
matter of which things are made. Plato alone clearly saw the necessity
for the formal cause, for formal causes are, as we have seen, the same
as Plato's Ideas. But Plato's philosophy contains only two of the four
causes, namely the material and the formal, for Plato made all things
out of matter and the Ideas. Since the Ideas have in them {273} no
principle of motion, Plato's system contains no efficient cause. As
for final causes, Plato had indeed the vague idea that everything is
for the sake of the Good, but he makes no use of this conception and
does not develop it. Final causes were introduced into philosophy by
Anaxagoras, whose doctrine of the world forming mind was assumed to
explain the design and purpose which the universe exhibits. But as his
system developed he forgot about this, and used the Nous merely as a
piece of mechanism to explain motion, thus letting it sink into
nothing more than an efficient cause.
In the result, Aristotle finds that all four causes have been
recognized in greater or lesser degrees by his predecessors, and this,
in his opinion, greatly reinforces his own doctrine. But whereas
material and efficient causes have been clearly understood, his
predecessors had only vaguely foreshadowed and dimly perceived the
value of formal and final causes.
The next step in Aristotle's metaphysics is to reduce these four
principles to two, which he calls matter and form. This reduction
takes place by showing that formal cause, efficient cause, and final
cause, all melt into the single conception of form. In the first
place, the formal cause and the final cause are the same. For the
formal cause is the essence, the concept, the Idea, of the thing. Now
the final cause, or the end, is simply the realisation of the Idea of
the thing in actuality. What the thing aims at is the definite
expression of its form. It thus aims at its form. Its end, final
cause, is thus the same as its formal cause. Secondly, the efficient
cause is the same as the final cause. For the efficient cause is the
cause of becoming. The final cause is the end of {274} the becoming,
it is what it becomes. And, in Aristotle's opinion, what causes the
becoming is just that it aims at the end. The striving of all things
is towards the end, and exists because of the end. The end is thus
itself the cause of becoming or motion. That is to say, the final
cause is the real efficient cause. We may see this better by an
example. The end or final cause of the acorn is the oak. And it is the
oak which is the cause of the acorn's growth, which consists
essentially in a movement by which the acorn is drawn towards its end,
the oak. We may see this even more definitely in the case of human
productions, because here the striving towards an end is conscious,
whereas in nature it is unconscious or instinctive. The efficient
cause of the statue is the sculptor. It is he that moves the brass.
But what moves the sculptor, and causes him to act upon the brass, is
the idea of the completed statue in his mind. The idea of the end, the
final cause, is thus the real ultimate cause of the movement. Only, in
the case of human production, the idea of the end is actually present
in the sculptor's mind as a motive. In nature there is no mind in
which the end is conscious of itself, but nevertheless nature moves
towards the end, and the end is the cause of the movement. Thus the
three causes named all melt into a single notion, which Aristotle
calls the form of the thing. And this leaves only the material cause
unreduced to any other. So we are left with the single antithesis of
matter and form.
Now as matter and form are the fundamental categories of Aristotle's
philosophy, by means of which he seeks to explain the entire universe,
it is essential that we should thoroughly understand their
characteristics. {275} First of all, matter and form are inseparable.
We think of them as separate in order to understand them clearly. And
this is quite right, because they are opposite principles, and
therefore they are separable in thought. But they are never separable
in fact. There is no such thing as form without matter, or matter
without form. Every existent thing, that is, every individual object,
is a compound of matter and form. We may compare them in this respect
to the material and the shape of a thing, though we must be careful
not to think that form is merely shape. Geometry considers shapes as
if they existed by themselves. But, in fact, we know that there are no
such things as squares, circles, and triangles. There are only square
objects, circular objects, etc. And as there are no shapes without
objects, so there are no objects without shapes. We talk of things
being "shapeless," but this only means that their shape is irregular
or unusual. Some shape an object must have. Yet, though shape and
matter are inseparable in fact, they are opposite principles, and are
separable in thought. Geometry is quite right to treat shapes as if
they existed by themselves, but it is nevertheless dealing with mere
abstractions. Just in the same way, matter and form are never apart,
and to think of form by itself or matter by itself is a mere
abstraction. No such thing exists. In fact, to imagine that forms can
exist by themselves was just the mistake of which, as we have seen,
Aristotle accuses Plato. For the form is the Idea, and Plato imagined
that Ideas exist in a world of their own.
From this, too, we can see that the form is the universal, the matter
the particular. For the form is the Idea, and the Idea is the
universal. To say that form and {276} matter cannot exist apart is
thus the same as saying that the universal only exists in the
particular, which, as we have seen, is the fundamental note of
Aristotle's philosophy. But if we thus identify matter with the
particular element in things, we must be careful that we do not
confuse the particular with the individual. We often use these two
words as practically synonymous, and there is no harm in this, but
here we must be careful to separate them. For every individual is,
according to Aristotle, a compound of matter and form, of the
particular and the universal. And when we say that matter is the
particular, we mean, not that it is such a compound, but that it is
the absolutely particular which has no universal in it. But the
absolutely particular and isolated does not exist. A piece of gold,
for instance, only exists by virtue of its properties, yellowness,
heaviness, etc., and these qualities are just what it has in common
with other things. So that the particular, as such, has no existence,
but this is only the same as saying, what we have already said, that
matter has no existence apart from form.
A very natural mistake would be to suppose that by matter Aristotle
meant the same as we do, namely, physical substance, such as wood or
iron, and that by form he meant simply shape. Now although there is a
kinship in the ideas, these two pairs of ideas are far from identical.
Let us begin with matter. Our ordinary idea of matter as physical
substance is an absolute conception. That is to say, a thing which we
call material is absolutely, once and for all, matter. It is not
material from one point of view, and immaterial from another. In every
possible relation it is, and {277} remains, matter. Nor does it in
process of time cease to be matter. Brass never becomes anything but
matter. No doubt there are in nature changes of one sort of matter
into another, for example, radium into helium. And for all we know,
brass may become lead. But even so, it does not cease to be matter.
But Aristotle's conception of matter is a relative conception. Matter
and form are fluid. They flow into one another. The same thing, from
one point of view, is matter, from another, form. In all change,
matter is that which becomes, that upon which the change is wrought.
That is form towards which the change operates. What becomes is
matter. What it becomes is form. Thus wood is matter if considered in
relation to the bed. For it is what becomes the bed. But wood is form
if considered in relation to the growing plant. For it is what the
plant becomes. The oak is the form of the acorn, but it is the matter
of the oak furniture.
That matter and form are relative terms shows, too, that the form
cannot be merely the shape. For what is form in one aspect is matter
in another. But shape is never anything but shape. No doubt the shape
is part of the form, for the form in fact includes all the qualities
of the thing. But the shape is quite an unimportant part of the form.
For form includes organization, the relation of part to part, and the
subordination of all parts to the whole. The form is the sum of the
internal and external relations, the ideal framework, so to speak,
into which the thing is moulded. Form also includes function. For it
includes the final cause. Now the function of a thing is just what the
thing is for. And what it is for is the same as its end, or final
cause. {278} Therefore function is included in form. For example, the
function of a hand, its power of gripping, is part of its form. And
therefore, if it loses its function by being cut off from the arm, it
likewise loses its form. Even the dead hand, of course, has some form,
for every individual object is a compound of matter and form. But it
has lost the highest part of its form, and relatively to the living
hand it is mere matter, although, relatively to the flesh and bones of
which it is composed, it is still form. Clearly, then, form is not
merely shape. For the hand cut off does not lose its shape.
The form includes all the qualities of the thing. The matter is what
has the qualities. For the qualities are all universals. A piece of
gold is yellow, and this means simply that it has this in common with
other pieces of gold, and other yellow objects. To say that anything
has a quality is immediately to place it in a class. And what the
class has in common is a universal. A thing without qualities cannot
exist, nor qualities without a thing. And this is the same as saying
that form and matter cannot exist separately.
The matter, then, is the absolutely formless. It is the substratum
which underlies everything. It has, in itself, no character. It is
absolutely featureless, indefinite, without any quality. Whatever
gives a thing definiteness, character, quality, whatever makes it a
this or that, is its form. Consequently, there are no differences
within matter. One thing can only differ from another by having
different qualities. And as matter has no qualities, it has no
difference. And this in itself shows that the Aristotelian notion of
matter is not the same as our notion of physical substance. For,
according {279} to our modern usage, one kind of matter differs from
another, as brass from iron. But this is a difference of quality, and
for Aristotle all quality is part of the form. So in his view the
difference of brass from iron is not a difference of matter, but a
difference of form. Consequently, matter may become anything,
according to the form impressed upon it. It is thus the possibility of
everything, though it is actually nothing. It only becomes something
by the acquisition of form. And this leads directly to a most
important Aristotelian antithesis, that between potentiality and
actuality. Potentiality is the same as matter, actuality as form. For
matter is potentially everything. It may become everything. It is not
actually anything. It is a mere potentiality, or capacity of becoming
something. But whatever gives it definiteness as a this or that,
whatever makes it an actual thing, is its form. Thus the actuality of
a thing is simply its form.
Aristotle claims, by means of the antithesis of potentiality and
actuality, to have solved the ancient problem of becoming, a riddle,
propounded by the Eleatics, which had never ceased to trouble Greek
thinkers. How is becoming possible? For being to pass into being is
not becoming, for it involves no change, and for not-being to pass
into being is impossible, since something cannot come out of nothing.
For Aristotle, the sharp line drawn between not-being and being does
not exist. For these absolute terms he substitutes the relative terms
potentiality and actuality, which shade off into each other.
Potentiality in his philosophy takes the place of not-being in
previous systems. It solves the riddle because it is not an absolute
not-being. It is {280} not-being inasmuch as it is actually nothing,
but it is being because it is potential being. Becoming, therefore,
does not involve the impossible leap from nothing to something. It
involves the transition from potential to actual being. All change,
all motion, is thus the passage of potentiality into actuality, of
matter into form.
Since matter is in itself nothing, a bare unrealised capacity, while
form is actuality, the completed and perfected being, it follows that
form is something higher than matter. But matter is what becomes form.
In order of time, therefore, matter is earlier, form later. But in
order of thought, and in reality, it is otherwise. For when we say
that matter is the potentiality of what it is to become, this implies
that what it is to become is already present in it ideally and
potentially, though not actually. The end, therefore, is already
present in the beginning. The oak is in the acorn, ideally, otherwise
the oak could never come out of it. And since all becoming is towards
the end, and would not take place but for the end, the end is the
operative principle and true cause of becoming. Motion is produced not
by a mechanical propulsive force, pushing from behind, so to speak,
but by an ideal attractive force, drawing the thing towards its end,
as a piece of iron is drawn to the magnet. It is the end itself which
exerts this force. And, therefore, the end must be present at the
beginning, for if it were not present it could exert no force. Nay,
more. It is not only present in the beginning, it is anterior to it.
For the end is the cause of the motion, and the cause is logically
prior to its consequence. The end, or the principle of form, is thus
the absolute first in thought and reality, though it may be the last
in time. If, then, {281} we ask what, for Aristotle, is that ultimate
reality, that first principle, from which the entire universe flows,
the answer is, the end, the principle of form. And as form is the
universal, the Idea, we see that his fundamental thesis is the same as
Plato's. It is the one thesis of all idealism, namely, that thought,
the universal, reason, is the absolute being, the foundation of the
world. Where he differs from Plato is in denying that form has any
existence apart from the matter in which it exhibits itself.
Now all this may strike the unsophisticated as very strange. That the
absolute being whence the universe flows should be described as that
which lies at the end of the development of the universe, and that
philosophy should proceed to justify this by asserting that the end is
really prior to the beginning, this is so far removed from the common
man's mode of thought, that it may appear mere paradox. It is,
however, neither strange nor paradoxical. It is essentially sound and
true, and it seems strange to the ordinary man only because it
penetrates so much deeper into things than he can. This thought is, in
fact, essential to a developed idealism, and till it is grasped no
advance can be made in philosophy. Whether it is understood is,
indeed, a good test of whether a man has any talent for philosophy or
not. The fact is that all philosophies of this sort regard time as
unreal, as an appearance. This being so, the relation of the absolute
being, or God, to the world cannot be a relation of time at all. The
common man's idea is that, if there is a first principle or God at
all, He must have existed before the world began, and then, somehow,
perhaps billions of years ago, something happened as a {282} result of
which the world came into being. The Absolute is thus conceived as the
cause, the world as the effect, and the cause always precedes its
effect in time. Or if, on the other hand, we think that the world
never had a beginning, the ordinary man's thought would lead him to
believe that, in that case, it is no longer necessary to assume a
first principle at all. But if time is a mere appearance, this whole
way of looking at things must be wrong. God is not related to the
world as cause to effect. It is not a relation of time at all. It is a
_logical_ relation. God is rather the logical premise, of which the
world is the conclusion, so that, God granted, the world follows
necessarily, just as, the premises granted, the conclusion follows.
This is the reason why, in discussing Plato, we said that it must be
possible to _deduce_ the world from his first principle. If the
Absolute were merely the cause of the world in time, it would not
explain the world, for, as I have so often pointed out, causes explain
nothing. But if the world be deducible from the Absolute, the world is
explained, a reason, not a cause, is given for it, just as the
premises constitute the reason for the conclusion. Now the conclusion
of a syllogism follows from the premises, that is, the premises come
first, the conclusion second. But the premise only comes first in
thought, not in time. It is a logical succession, not a
time-succession. Just in the same way, the Absolute, or in Aristotle's
language, the form, is logically first, but is not first in order of
time. And though it is the end, it is in thought the absolute
beginning, and is thus the foundation of the world, the first
principle from which the world flows. The objection may be, taken that
if the relation of the {283} Absolute to the world is not a
time-relation, then it can no more be the end than the beginning. This
objection is, as we shall see, a misunderstanding of Aristotle's
philosophy. Although things in time strive towards the end, yet the
absolute end is not in time at all, or, in other words, the end is
never reached. Its relation to the world as end is just as much a
logical, and not a time-relation, as its relation to the world as
beginning or absolute prius. As far as time is concerned, the universe
is without beginning or end.
As the world-process is a continual elevation of matter into higher
and higher forms, there results the conception that the universe
exhibits a continuous scale of being. That is higher in the scale in
which form predominates, that lower in which matter outweighs form. At
the bottom of the scale will be absolutely formless matter, at the
top, absolutely matterless form. Both these extremes, however, are
abstractions. Neither of them exists, because matter and form cannot
be separated. Whatever exists comes somewhere between the two, and the
universe thus exhibits a process of continuous gradations. Motion and
change are produced by the effort to pass from the lower to the higher
under the attractive force of the end.
That which comes at the top of the scale, absolute form, is called by
Aristotle, God. And the definitions of God's character follow from
this as a matter of course. First, since form is actuality, God alone
is absolutely actual. He alone is real. All existent things are more
or less unreal. The higher in the scale are the more real, as
possessing more form. The scale of being is thus also a scale of
reality, shading off through infinite gradations {284} from the
absolutely real, God, to the absolutely unreal, formless matter.
Secondly, since the principle of form contains the formal, the final,
and the efficient causes, God is all these. As formal cause, He is the
Idea. He is essentially thought, reason. As final cause, He is the
absolute end. He is that to which all beings strive. Each being has no
doubt its own end in itself. But as absolute end, God includes all
lower ends. And as the end of each thing is the completed perfection
of the thing, so, as absolute end, God is absolute perfection. Lastly,
as efficient cause, God is the ultimate cause of all motion and
becoming. He is the first mover. As such, He is Himself unmoved. That
the first mover should be itself unmoved is a necessary consequence of
Aristotle's conception of it as end and form. For motion is the
transition of a thing towards its end. The absolute end can have no
end beyond it, and therefore cannot be moved. Likewise motion is the
passage of matter into form. Absolute form cannot pass into any higher
form, and is therefore unmoved. But the argument which Aristotle
himself more frequently uses to establish the immovability of the
first mover is that, unless we so conceive it, no cause of motion
appears. The moving object is moved perhaps by another moving object.
The motion of the latter demands a further cause. If this further
cause is itself moving, we must again ask for the cause of its motion.
If this process goes on for ever, then motion is unexplained, and no
real cause of it has been shown. The real and ultimate cause must
therefore be unmoved.
This last argument sounds as if Aristotle is now thinking in terms of
mechanism. It sounds as if he meant that {285} the first mover is
something at the beginning of time, which, so to speak, gave things a
push to start them off. This is not what Aristotle means. For the true
efficient cause is the final cause. And God is the first mover only in
His character as absolute end. As far as time is concerned, neither
the universe, nor the motion in it, ever had any beginning. Every
mechanical cause has its cause in turn, and so _ad infinitum_. God is
not a first cause, in our sense, that is, a first mechanical cause
which existed before the world, and created it. He is a teleological
cause working from the end. But as such, He is logically prior to all
beginning, and so is the first mover. And just as the universe has no
beginning in time, so it has no end in time. It will go on for ever.
Its end is absolute form, but this can never be reached, because if it
were, this would mean that absolute form would exist, whereas we have
seen that form cannot exist apart from matter.
God is thought. But the thought of what? As absolute form, he is not
the form of matter, but the form of form. His matter, so to speak, is
form. Form, as the universal, is thought. And this gives us
Aristotle's famous definition of God as "the thought of thought." He
thinks only his own self. He is at once the subject and the object of
his thought. As mortal men think material things, as I now think the
paper on which I write, so God thinks thought. In more modern terms,
he is self-consciousness, the absolute subject-object. That God should
think anything other than thought is inconceivable, because the end of
all other thought is outside the thought itself. If I think this
paper, the end of my thought, the paper, is outside me. But the
thought of {286} God, as the absolute end, cannot have any end outside
itself. Were God to think anything else than thought, he would be
determined by that which is not himself. By way of further expression
of the same idea, Aristotle passes into figurative language. God, he
says, lives in eternal blessedness, and his blessedness consists in
the everlasting contemplation of his own perfection.
A modern will naturally ask whether Aristotle's God is personal. It
does not do to be very dogmatic upon the point. Aristotle, like Plato,
never discusses the question. No Greek ever did. It is a modern
question. What we have to do, then, is to take the evidence on both
sides. The case for personality is that the language Aristotle uses
implies it. The very word God, used instead of the Absolute, or form,
conveys the idea of personality. And when he goes on to speak of God
living in eternal blessedness, these words, if taken literally, can
mean nothing except that God is a conscious person. If we say that
this language is merely figurative, it may be replied that Aristotle
on principle objects to figurative language, that he frequently
censures Plato for using it, that what he demands and sets out to
supply is exact, literal, scientific terminology, and that he is not
likely to have broken his own canons of philosophic expression by
using merely poetical phrases.
To see the other side of the case, we must first ask what personality
means. Now without entering into an intricate discussion of this most
elusive idea, we may answer that personality at any rate implies an
_individual_ and _existent_ consciousness. But, in the first place, God is
absolute form, and form is the universal. What is universal, with no
particular in it, cannot be an individual. {287} God, therefore,
cannot be individual. Secondly, form without matter cannot exist. And
as God is form without matter, he cannot be called existent, though he
is absolutely real. God, therefore, is neither existent nor
individual. And this means that he is not a person. To degrade the
real to the level of the existent, to convert the universal into the
individual, is exactly the fault for which Aristotle blames Plato. It
is exactly the fault which it was the whole object of his philosophy
to remedy. If he thought that God is a person, he committed the same
fault himself in an aggravated form.
We have, then, two hypotheses, both of which involve that Aristotle
was guilty of some inconsistency. If God is not a person, then
Aristotle's language is figurative, and his use of such language is
inconsistent with his rooted objection to its use. This, however, is,
after all, merely an inconsistency of language, and not of thought. It
does not mean that Aristotle really contradicted himself. It merely
means that, though he set himself to express his philosophy in
technical scientific terms, and to exclude figurative language, yet he
found himself compelled in a few passages to make use of it. There are
some metaphysical ideas so abstract, so abstruse, that it is almost
impossible to express them at all without the use of figures of
speech. Language was made by common men for common purposes, and this
fact often forces the philosopher to use terms which he knows only
figure forth his meaning without accurately expressing it. Perhaps
every philosophy in the world finds itself sometimes under this
necessity, and, if Aristotle did so, and was thereby technically
inconsistent with himself, it is no wonder, and involves no serious
blame upon him.
{288}
But the other hypothesis, that God is a person, means that Aristotle
committed a contradiction, not merely in words, but in thought, and
not merely as regards some unimportant detail, but as regards the
central thesis of his system. It means that he stultified himself by
making his conception of God absolutely contradict the essentials of
his system. For what is the whole of Aristotle's philosophy, put in a
nutshell? It is that the Absolute is the universal, but that the
universal does not exist apart from the particular. Plato supplied the
thought of the first clause of the sentence. Aristotle added the last
clause, and it is the essential of his philosophy. To assert that God,
the absolute form, exists as an individual, is flatly to contradict
this. It is not likely that Aristotle should have contradicted himself
in so vital a matter, and in a manner which simply means that his
system falls to the ground like a house of cards.
My conclusion, then, is that it was not Aristotle's intention that
what he calls God should be regarded as a person. God is thought, but
not subjective thought. He is not thought existent in a mind, but
objective thought, real on its own account, apart from any mind which
thinks it, like Plato's Ideas. But Plato's mistake was to suppose that
because thought is real and objective, it must exist. Aristotle avoids
this error. The absolute thought is the absolutely real. But it does
not exist. With the concept of God the metaphysics of Aristotle
closes.
4. Physics, or the Philosophy of Nature.
The existent universe is a scale of being lying between the two
extremes of formless matter and matterless form. But this must not be
merely asserted, as a general {289} principle. It must be carried out
in detail. The passage of matter into form must be shown in its
various stages in the world of nature. To do this is the object of
Aristotle's Physics, or philosophy of nature.
If nature is to be understood, we must keep in mind certain general
points of view. In the first place, since form includes end, the
entire world-process, as passage of matter into form, is essentially
movement towards ends. Everything in nature has its end and function.
Nothing is purposeless. Nature seeks everywhere to attain the best
possible. Everywhere we find evidences of design and of rational plan.
Aristotle's philosophy of nature is essentially teleological. This
does not, however, exclude the principle of mechanism, and to
investigate mechanical causes is part of the duty of science. But
mechanical causes turn out in the end to be teleological, because the
true efficient cause is the final cause.
But if nothing in nature is aimless or useless, this is not to be
interpreted in a narrow anthropocentric spirit. It does not mean that
everything exists for the use of man, that the sun was created to give
him light by day, the moon by night, and that plants and animals exist
only for his food. It is true that, in a certain sense, everything
else sublunary is _for_ man. For man is the highest in the scale of
beings in this terrestrial sphere, and therefore as the higher end, he
includes all lower ends. But this does not exclude the fact that lower
beings have each its own end. They exist for themselves and not for
us.
Another mistake which we must avoid is to suppose that the design in
nature means that nature is conscious of her designs, or, on the other
hand, that there is any {290} existent consciousness outside the world
which governs and controls it. The latter supposition is excluded by
the fact that God is not an existent conscious person, the former by
its own inherent absurdity. The only being upon this earth who is
conscious of his ends is man. Such animals as bees and ants appear to
work rationally, and their activities are clearly governed by design.
But it is not to be supposed that they are reasoning beings. They
attain their ends instinctively. And when we come to inorganic matter,
we find that even here its movements are purposive, but no one could
suppose them deliberate and conscious. These manifold activities of
lower nature are indeed the work of reason, but not of an existent or
self-conscious reason. And this means that instinct, and even
mechanical forces such as gravitation are, in their essence, reason.
It is not that they are created by reason, but that they are reason,
exhibiting itself in lower forms. In commenting upon Plato's dualism
of sense and reason, I remarked that any true philosophy, though
recognizing the distinction between sense and reason, must yet find
room for their identity, and must show that sense is but a lower form
of reason. This idea Aristotle thoroughly understood, and sought to
show, not merely that sense is reason, but even that the activities of
inorganic matter, such as gravitation, are so. In the result, nature,
though working through reason, is not conscious of the fact, does so
blindly and instinctively, and is compared to a creative artist, who
forms beautiful objects by instinct, or, as we should say, by
inspiration, without setting before his mind the end to be attained or
the rules to be observed in order to attain it.
{291}
In the process of nature, it is always form which impels, matter which
retards and obstructs. The entire world-movement is the effort of form
to mould matter, but, just because matter has in itself a power of
resistance, this effort does not always succeed. This is the reason
why form cannot exist without matter, because it can never wholly
overcome the clogging activity of matter, and therefore matter can
never be wholly moulded into form. And this explains, too, the
occasional occurrence in nature of freaks, monstrosities, abortions,
and unnatural births. In these the form has failed to mould the
matter. Nature has failed to attain her ends. Science, therefore,
should study the normal and natural rather than the abnormal and
monstrous. For it is in the normal that the ends of nature are to be
seen, and through them alone nature can be understood. Aristotle is
fond of using the words "natural" and "unnatural," but he uses them
always with this special meaning. That is natural which attains its
end, that in which the form successfully masters the matter.
No doctrine of physics can ignore the fundamental notions of motion,
space, and time. Aristotle, therefore, finds it necessary to consider
these. Motion is the passage of matter into form, and it is of four
kinds. The first is motion which affects the substance of a thing,
origination and decease. Secondly, change of quality. Thirdly, change
of quantity, increase and decrease. Fourthly, locomotion, change of
place. Of these, the last is the most fundamental and important.
Aristotle rejects the definition of space as the void. Empty space is
an impossibility. Hence, too, he disagrees with the view of Plato and
the Pythagoreans that {292} the elements are composed of geometrical
figures. And connected with this is his repudiation of the mechanical
hypothesis that all quality is founded upon quantity, or upon
composition and decomposition. Quality has a real existence of its
own. He rejects, also, the view that space is a physical thing. If
this were true, there would be two bodies occupying the same place at
the same time, namely the object and the space it fills. Hence there
is nothing for it but to conceive space as limit. Space is, therefore,
defined as the limit of the surrounding body towards what is
surrounded. As we shall see later, in another connexion, Aristotle did
not regard space as infinite.
Time is defined as the measure of motion in regard to what is earlier
and later. It thus depends for its existence upon motion. If there
were no change in the universe, there would be no time. And since it
is the measuring or counting of motion, it also depends for its
existence upon a counting mind. If there were no mind to count, there
could be no time. This presents difficulties to us, if we conceive
that there was a time when conscious beings did not exist. But this
difficulty is non-existent for Aristotle, who believed that men and
animals have existed from all eternity. The essentials of time,
therefore, are two: change and consciousness. Time is the succession
of thoughts. If we object that the definition is bad because
succession already involves time, there is doubtless no answer
possible.
As to the infinite divisibility of space and time, and the riddles
proposed thereupon by Zeno, Aristotle is of opinion that space and
time are potentially divisible {293} _ad infinitum_, but are not
actually so divided. There is nothing to prevent us from going on for
ever with the process of division, but space and time are not given in
experience as infinitely divided.