range of qualities connected with it as its special objects. Colours
can only be perceived by the eye, sounds by the ear, and so forth. But
there are certain characters of perceived things which we appear to
apprehend by more than one sense. Thus we seem to perceive size and
shape either by touch or by sight, and number by hearing as well, since
we can count _e.g._ the strokes of an unseen bell. Hence Aristotle
distinguishes between the "special sensible qualities" such as colour
and pitch, and what he calls the "common sensibles," the character of
things which can be perceived by more than one organ. These are
enumerated as size, form or shape, number, motion (and its opposite
rest), being. (The addition of this last is, of course, meant to account
for our conviction that any perceived colour, taste, or other quality is
a reality and not a delusion.) The list corresponds very closely with
one given by Plato of the "things which the mind perceives _by herself
without the help of any organ_," _i.e._ of the leading determinations of
sensible things which are due not to sense but to understanding. It was
an unfortunate innovation to regard the discernment of number or
movement, which obviously demand intellectual processes such as counting
and comparison, as performed immediately by "sense," and to assign the
apprehension of number, movement, figure to a central "organ." This
organ he finds in the heart. The theory is that when the "special
organs" of the senses are stimulated, they in turn communicate movements
to the blood and "animal spirits" (_i.e._ the vapours supposed to be
produced from the blood by animal heat). These movements are propagated
inwards to the heart, where they all meet. This is supposed to account
for the important fact that, though our sensations are so many and
diverse, we are conscious of our own unity as the subjects apprehending
all this variety. The unity of the perceiving subject is thus made to
depend on the unity of the ultimate "organ of sensation," the heart.
Further, when once a type of motion has been set up in any sense-organ
at the periphery of the body it will be propagated inward to the "common
sensorium" in the heart. The motions set up by stimulation, _e.g._ of
the eye and of the skin, are partly different, partly the same (viz. in
so far as they are determined by the number, shape, size, movement of
the external stimuli). Hence in the heart itself the stimulation on
which perception of number or size depends is one and the same whether
it has been transmitted from the eye or from the skin! Awareness of
lapse of time is also regarded as a function of the "common
sense-organ," since it is the "common sensory" which perceives motion,
and lapse of time is apprehended only in the apprehension of motion.
Thus, in respect of the inclusion of geometrical form and lapse of time
among the "common sensibles," there is a certain resemblance between
Aristotle's doctrine and Kant's theory that recognition of spatial and
temporal order is a function not of understanding but of "pure" sense.
It is further held that to be aware that one is perceiving
(self-consciousness) and to discriminate between the different classes
of "special" sense-perception must also be functions of the "common
sense-organ." Thus Aristotle makes the mistake of treating the most
fundamental acts of intelligent reflection as precisely on a par, from
the point of view of the theory of knowledge, with awareness of colour
or sound.
A more legitimate function assigned to the "common sensorium" in the
heart is that "fantasy," the formation of mental imagery, depends on its
activity. The simplest kind of "image," the pure memory-image left
behind after the object directly arousing perception has ceased to
stimulate, is due to the persistence of the movements set up in the
heart after the sensory process in the peripheral organ is over. Since
Aristotle denies the possibility of thinking without the aid of
memory-images, this function of the "common sensorium" is the
indispensable basis of mental recall, anticipation, and thought. Neither
"experience," _i.e._ a general conviction which results from the
frequent repetition of similar perceptions, nor thought can arise in any
animal in which sense-stimulation does not leave such "traces" behind
it. Similarly "free imagery," the existence of trains of imagination
not tied down to the reproduction of an actual order of sensations, is
accounted for by the consideration that "chance coincidence" may lead to
the stimulation of the heart in the same way in which it might have been
stimulated by actual sensation-processes. Sleeping and waking and the
experiences of dream-life are likewise due to changes in the functioning
of the "common sense-organ," brought about partly by fatigue in the
superficial sense-organs, partly by qualitative changes in the blood and
"animal spirits" caused by the processes of nutrition and digestion.
Probably Aristotle's best scientific work in psychology is contained in
the series of small essays in which this theory of memory and its
imagery is worked out. (Aristotle's language about the "common
sensibles" is, of course, the source of our expression "common sense,"
which, however, has an entirely different meaning. The shifting of
sense has apparently been effected through Cicero's employment of the
phrase _sensus communis_ to mean tactful sympathy, the feeling of
fellowship with our kind on which the Stoic philosophers laid so much
stress.)
*Thought*.--Though thinking is impossible except by the use of imagery,
to think is not merely to possess trains of imagery, or even to be aware
of possessing them. Thinking means understanding the meaning of such
mental imagery and arriving through the understanding at knowledge of
the structure of the real world. How this process of interpreting
mental imagery and reaching valid truth is achieved with greater and
greater success until it culminates in the apprehension of the supreme
principles of philosophy we have seen in dealing with the Aristotelian
theory of knowledge. From the point of view of the "physicist" who is
concerned with thinking simply as a type of natural process, the
relation of "understanding" to the mental imagery just described is
analogous to that of sensation to sensible qualities. The objects which
thinking apprehends are the universal types of relation by which the
world of things is pervaded. The process of thinking is one in which
this system of universal relations is reproduced "by way of idea" in the
mind of the thinker. The "understanding" thus stands to its objects as
matter to form. The process of getting actually to understand the world
is one in which our "thought" or "understanding" steadily receives
completer determination and "form" from its contemplation of reality.
In this sense, the process is one in which the understanding may be said
to be passive in knowledge. It is passive because it is the subject
which, at every fresh stage in the progress to knowledge, is being quite
literally "informed" by the action of the real world through the
sensation and imagery. Hence Aristotle says that, in order that the
understanding may be correctly "informed" by its contact with its
objects, it must, before the process begins, have no determinate
character of its own. It must be simply a capacity for apprehending the
types of interconnection. "What is called the intelligence--I mean that
with which the soul thinks and understands--is not an actual thing until
it thinks." (This is meant to exclude any doctrine which credits the
"understanding" with either _furniture_ of its own such as "innate
ideas," or a specific _structure_ of its own. If the results of our
thinking arose partly from the structure of the world of objects and
partly from inherent laws of the "structure of mind," our thought at its
best would not reproduce the universal "forms" or "types" of
interconnection as they really are, but would distort them, as the
shapes of things are distorted when we see them through a lens of high
refractive index.) Thus, though Aristotle differs from the modern
empiricists in holding that "universals" realty exist "in" things, and
are the links of connection between them, he agrees with the empiricist
that knowledge is not the resultant of a combination of "facts" on the
one side and "fundamental laws of the mind's working" on the other. At
the outset the "understanding" has no structure; it develops a structure
for itself in the same process, and to the same degree, in which it
apprehends the "facts." Hence the "understanding" only is real in the
actual process of understanding its objects, and again in a sense the
understanding and the things it understands are one. Only we must
qualify this last statement by saying that it is only "potentially" that
the understanding is the forms which it apprehends. Aristotle does not
mean by this that such things as horses and oxen are thoughts or
"ideas." By the things with which "understanding" is said to be one he
means the "forms" which we apprehend when we actually understand the
world or any part of it, the truths of science. His point then is that
the actual thinking of these truths and the truths themselves do not
exist apart from one another. "Science" does not mean certain things
written down in a book; it means a mind engaged in thinking and knowing
things, and of the mind itself, considered out of its relation to the
actual life of thinking the truths of science, we can say no more than
that it is a name for the fact that we are capable of achieving such
thought.
*The Active Intelligence*.--So far Aristotle's account of thought has
been plain sailing. Thought has been considered as the final and
highest development of the vital functions of the organism, and hence as
something inseparable from the lower functions of nutrition and
sensitive life. The existence of a thought which is not a function of a
living body, and which is not "passive," has been absolutely excluded.
But at this point we are suddenly met by the most startling of all the
inconsistencies between the naturalistic and the "spiritualist" strains
in Aristotle's philosophy. In a few broken lines he tells us that there
is another sense of the word "thought" in which "thought" actually
creates the truths it understands, just as light may be said to make the
colours which we see by its aid. "And _this_ intelligence," he adds,
"is separable from matter, and impassive and unmixed, being in its
essential nature an _activity_.... It has no intermission in its
thinking. It is only in separation from matter that it is fully itself,
and it alone is immortal and everlasting ... while the passive
intelligence is perishable and does not think at all, apart from this."
The meaning of this is not made clear by Aristotle himself, and the
interpretation was disputed even among the philosopher's personal
disciples.
One important attempt to clear up the difficulty is that made by
Alexander of Aphrodisias, the greatest of the commentators on Aristotle,
in the second century A.D. Alexander said, as Aristotle has not done,
that the "active intelligence" is numerically the same in all men, and
is identical with God. Thus, all that is specifically human in each of
us is the "passive intelligence" or capacity for being enlightened by
God's activity upon us. The advantage of the view is, that it removes
the "active intelligence" altogether from the purview of psychology,
which then becomes a purely naturalistic science. The great Arabian
Aristotelian, Averroes (Ibn Roschd) of Cordova, in the twelfth century,
went still further in the direction of naturalism. Since the "active"
and "passive" intelligence can only be separated by a logical
abstraction, he inferred that men, speaking strictly, do not think at
all; there is only one and the same individual intelligence in the
universe, and all that we call our thinking is really not ours but
God's. The great Christian scholastics of the following century in
general read Aristotle through the eyes of Averroes, "_the_
Commentator," as St. Thomas calls him, "Averrois che il gran commento
feo," as Dante says. But their theology compelled them to disavow his
doctrine of the "active intelligence," against which they could also
bring, as St. Thomas does, the telling argument that Aristotle could
never have meant to say that there really is no such thing as human
intelligence. Hence arose a third interpretation, the Thomist,
according to which the "active intelligence" is neither God nor the same
for all men, but is the highest and most rational "part" of the
individual human soul, which has no bodily "organ."
*CHAPTER V*
*PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY*
Hitherto we have been concerned with the speculative branches of
knowledge, we have now to turn to practice. Practice, too, is an
activity of thought, but an activity which is never satisfied by the
process of thinking itself. In practice our thinking is always directed
towards the production of some result other than true thought itself.
As in engineering it is not enough to find a solution of the problem how
to build a bridge over a given river capable of sustaining a given
strain, so in directing our thought on the problems of human conduct and
the organisation of society we aim at something more than the
understanding of human life. In the one case what we aim at is the
construction of the bridge; in the other it is the production of
goodness in ourselves and our fellow-men, and the establishment of right
social relations in the state. Aristotle is careful to insist on this
point throughout his whole treatment of moral and social problems. The
principal object of his lectures on conduct is not to tell his hearers
what goodness is, but to make them good, and similarly it is quite plain
that _Politics_ was intended as a text-book for legislators. In close
connection with this practical object stands his theory of the kind of
truth which must be looked for in ethics and politics. He warns us
against expecting precepts which have the exact and universal rigidity
of the truths of speculative science. Practical science has to do with
the affairs of men's lives, matters which are highly complex and
variable, in a word, with "what may be otherwise." Hence we must be
content if we can lay down precepts which hold good in the main, just as
in medicine we do not expect to find directions which will effect a cure
in all cases, but are content with general directions which require to
be adapted to special cases by the experience and judgment of the
practitioner. The object of practical science then is to formulate
rules which will guide us in obtaining our various ends. Now when we
consider these ends we see at once that some are subordinate to others.
The manufacture of small-arms may be the end at which their maker aims,
but it is to the military man a mere means to _his_ end, which is the
effective use of them. Successful use of arms is again the end of the
professional soldier, but it is a mere means among others to the
statesman. Further, it is the military men who use the arms from whom
the manufacturer has to take his directions as to the kind of arms that
are wanted, and again it is the statesman to whom the professional
soldiers have to look for directions as to when and with what general
objects in view they shall fight. So the art which uses the things
produced by another art is the superior and directing art; the art which
makes the things, the inferior and subordinate art. Hence the supreme
practical art is politics, since it is the art which uses the products
turned out by all other arts as means to its ends. It is the business
of politics, the art of the statesman, to prescribe to the practitioners
of all other arts and professions the lines on which and the conditions
under which they shall exercise their vocation with a view to securing
the supreme practical end, the well-being of the community. Among the
other professions and arts which make the materials the statesman
employs, the profession of the educator stands foremost. The statesman
is bound to demand certain qualities of mind and character in the
individual citizens. The production of these mental and moral qualities
must therefore be the work of the educator. It thus becomes an
important branch of politics to specify the kind of mental and moral
qualities which a statesman should require the educator to produce in
his pupils.
It is this branch of politics which Aristotle discusses in his _Ethics_.
He never contemplates a study of the individual's good apart from
politics, the study of the good of the society. What then is the good or
the best kind of life for an individual member of society? Aristotle
answers that as far as the mere name is concerned, there is a general
agreement to call the best life, _Eudaimonia_, Happiness. But the real
problem is one of fact. What kind of life deserves to be called
happiness? Plato had laid it down that the happy life must satisfy three
conditions. It must be desirable for its own sake, it must be
sufficient of itself to satisfy us, and it must be the life a wise man
would prefer to any other. The question is, What general formula can we
find which will define the life which satisfies these conditions? To
find the answer we have to consider what Plato and Aristotle call the
work or function of man. By the work of anything we mean what can only
be done by it, or by it better than by anything else. Thus the work of
the eye is to see. You cannot see with any other organ, and when the
eye does this work of seeing well you say it is a good eye. So we may
say of any living being that its work is to live, and that it is a good
being when it does this work of living efficiently. To do its own work
efficiently is the excellence or virtue of the thing. The excellence or
virtue of a man will thus be to live efficiently, but since life can be
manifested at different levels, if we would know what man's work is we
must ask whether there is not some form of life which can _only_ be
lived by man. Now the life which consists in merely feeding and growing
belongs to all organisms and can be lived with equal vigour by them all.
There is, however, a kind of life which can only be lived by man, the
life which consists in conscious direction of one's actions by a rule.
It is the work of man to live this kind of life, and his happiness
consists in living it efficiently and well. So we may give as the
definition of human well-being that it is "an active life in accord with
excellence, or if there are more forms of excellence than one, in accord
with the best and completest of them"; and we must add "in a complete
life" to show that mere promise not crowned by performance does not
suffice to entitle man's life to be called happy. We can see that this
definition satisfies Plato's three conditions. A vigorous and active
living in a way which calls into play the specifically human capacities
of man is desirable for its own sake, and preferable to any other life
which could be proposed to us. It too is the only life which can
permanently satisfy men, but we must add that if such a life is to be
lived adequately certain advantages of fortune must be presupposed. We
cannot fully live a life of this kind if we are prevented from
exercising our capacities by lack of means or health or friends and
associates, and even the calamities which arise in the course of events
may be so crushing as to hinder a man, for a time, from putting forth
his full powers. These external good things are not constituents of
happiness, but merely necessary conditions of that exercise of our own
capacities which is the happy life.
In our definition of the happy life we said that it was one of activity
in accord with goodness or excellence, and we left it an open question
whether there are more kinds of such goodness than one. On
consideration we see that two kinds of goodness or excellence are
required in living the happy life. The happy life for man is a life of
conscious following of a rule. To live it well, then, you need to know
what the right rule to follow is, and you need also to follow it. There
are persons who deliberately follow a wrong rule of life--the wicked.
There are others who know what the right rule is but fail to follow it
because their tempers and appetites are unruly--the morally weak. To
live the happy life, then, two sorts of goodness are required. You must
have a good judgment as to what the right rule is (or if you cannot find
it out for yourself, you must at least be able to recognise it when it
is laid down by some one else, the teacher or lawgiver), and you must
have your appetites, feelings, and emotions generally so trained that
they obey the rule. Hence excellence, goodness, or virtue is divided
into goodness of intellect and goodness of character (moral goodness),
the word _character_ being used for the complex of tempers, feelings,
and the affective side of human nature generally. In education goodness
of character has to be produced by training and discipline before
goodness of intellect can be imparted. The young generally have to be
trained to obey the right rule before they can see for themselves that
it is the right rule, and if a man's tempers and passions are not first
schooled into actual obedience to the rule he will in most cases never
see that it is the right rule at all. Hence Aristotle next goes on to
discuss the general character of the kind of goodness he calls goodness
of character, the right state of the feelings and passions.
The first step towards understanding what goodness of character is is to
consider the way in which it is actually produced. We are not born with
this goodness of tempers and feelings ready made, nor yet do we obtain
it by theoretical instruction; it is a result of a training and
discipline of the feelings and impulses. The possibility of such a
training is due to the fact that feelings and impulses are rational
capacities, and a rational capacity can be developed into either of two
contrasted activities according to the training it receives. You cannot
train stones to fall upwards, but you can train a hot temper to display
itself either in the form of righteous resentment of wrong-doing or in
that of violent defiance of all authority. Our natural emotions and
impulses are in themselves neither good nor bad; they are the raw
material out of which training makes good or bad character according to
the direction it gives to them. The effect of training is to convert
the indeterminate tendency into a fixed habit. We may say, then, that
moral goodness is a fixed state of the soul produced by habituation. By
being trained in habits of endurance, self-mastery, and fair dealing, we
acquire the kind of character to which it is pleasing to act bravely,
continently, and fairly, and disagreeable to act unfairly, profligately,
or like a coward. When habituation has brought about this result the
moral excellences in question have become part of our inmost self and we
are in full possession of goodness of character. In a word, it is by
repeated doing of right acts that we acquire the right kind of
character.
But what general characteristics distinguish right acts and right habits
from wrong ones? Aristotle is guided in answering the question by an
analogy which is really at the bottom of all Greek thinking on morality.
The thought is that goodness is in the soul what health and fitness are
in the body, and that the preceptor is for the soul what the physician
or the trainer is for the body. Now it was a well-known medical theory,
favoured by both Plato and Aristotle, that health in the body means a
condition of balance or equilibration among the elements of which it is
composed. When the hot and the cold, the moist and the dry in the
composition of the human frame exactly balance one another, the body is
in perfect health. Hence the object of the regimen of the physician or
the trainer is to produce and maintain a proper balance or proportion
between the ingredients of the body. Any course which disturbs this
balance is injurious to health and strength. You damage your health if
you take too much food or exercise, and also if you take too little.
The same thing is true of health in the soul. Our soul's health may be
injured by allowing too much or too little play to any of our natural
impulses or feelings. We may lay it down, then, that the kind of
training which gives rise to a good habit is training in the avoidance
of the opposite errors of the too much and the too little. And since
the effect of training is to produce habits which issue in the
spontaneous performance of the same kind of acts by which the habits
were acquired, we may say not merely that goodness of character is
produced by acts which exhibit a proper balance or mean, but that it is
a settled habit of acting so as to exhibit the same balance or
proportion. Hence the formal definition of goodness of character is that
it is "a settled condition of the soul which wills or chooses the mean
relatively to ourselves, this mean being determined by a rule or
whatever we like to call that by which the wise man determines it."