ARISTOTLE (_continued_)
_Realisation and reminiscence--The crux of philosophy--Reason in
education--The chief good--Origin of communities_
If we look closely at this conception of Aristotle's we shall see that
it has a nearer relation to the Platonic doctrine of Ideas, and even to
the doctrine of Reminiscence, than perhaps even Aristotle himself
realised. The fundamental conception of Plato, it will be remembered,
is that of an eternally existing 'thought of God,' in manifold forms or
'ideas,' which come into the consciousness of men in connection with or
on occasion of sensations, which are therefore in our experience later
than the sensations, but which we nevertheless by reason recognise as
necessarily prior to the sensations, inasmuch as it is through these
ideas alone that the sensations are knowable or namable at all. Thus
the final end for man is by contemplation and 'daily dying to the world
of sense,' to come at last into the full inheritance in conscious
knowledge of that 'thought of God' which was latent from the first in
his soul, and of which in its fulness God Himself is eternally and
necessarily possessed.
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[311]
This is really Aristotle's idea, only Plato expresses it rather under a
psychological, Aristotle under a vital, formula. God, Aristotle says,
is eternally and necessarily Entelechy, absolute realisation. _To us_,
that which is first _in time_ (the individual perception) is not first
in _essence_, or absolutely. What is first in essence or absolutely,
is the universal, that is, the form or idea, the datum of reason. And
this distinction between time and the absolute, between our individual
experience and the essential or ultimate reality, runs all through the
philosophy of Aristotle. The 'Realisation' of Aristotle is the
'Reminiscence' of Plato.
This conception Aristotle extended to Thought, to the various forms of
life, to education, to morals, to politics.
_Thought_ is an entelechy, an organic whole, in which every process
conditions and is conditioned by every other. If we begin with
sensation, the sensation, blank as regards predication, has relations
to that which is infinitely real,--the object, the real thing before
us,--which relations science will never exhaust. If we start from the
other end, with the datum of thought, consciousness, existence, mind,
this is equally blank as regards predication, yet it has relations to
another existence infinitely real,--the subject that thinks,--which
relations religion and morality and sentiment and love will never
exhaust. Or, as {189} Aristotle and as common sense prefers to do, if
we, with our developed habits of thought and our store of accumulated
information, choose to deal with things from a basis midway between the
two extremes, in the ordinary way of ordinary people, we shall find
both processes working simultaneously and in organic correlation. That
is to say, we shall be increasing the _individuality_ of the objects
known, by the operation of true thought and observation in the
discovery of new characters or qualities in them; we shall be
increasing by the same act the _generality_ of the objects known, by
the discovery of new relations, new genera under which to bring them.
Individualisation and generalisation are only opposed, as mutually
conditioning factors of the same organic function.
[316]
This analysis of thought must be regarded rather as a paraphrase of
Aristotle than as a literal transcript. He is hesitating and obscure,
and at times apparently self-contradictory. He has not, any more than
Plato, quite cleared himself of the confusion between the mutually
contrary individual and universal in _propositions_, and the
organically correlative individual and universal in _things as known_.
But on the whole the tendency of his analysis is towards an
apprehension of the true realism, which neither denies matter in favour
of mind nor mind in favour of matter, but recognises that both mind and
matter are organically correlated, and ultimately identical.
{190}
The crux of philosophy, so far as thus apprehended by Aristotle, is no
longer in the supposed dualism of mind and matter, but there is a crux
still. What is the meaning of this 'Ultimately'? Or, putting it in
Aristotle's formula, Why this relation of potentiality and actuality?
Why this eternal coming to be, even if the coming to be is no
unreasoned accident, but a coming to be of that which is vitally or in
germ _there_? Or theologically, Why did God make the world? Why this
groaning and travailing of the creature? Why this eternal 'By and by'
wherein all sin is to disappear, all sorrow to be consoled, all the
clashings and the infinite deceptions of life to be stilled and
satisfied? An illustration of Aristotle's attempt to answer this
question will be given later on (p. 201). That the answer is a failure
need not surprise us. If we even now 'see only as in a glass darkly'
on such a question, we need not blame Plato or Aristotle for not seeing
'face to face.'
[326]
_Life_ is an entelechy, not only abstractedly, as already shown (above,
p. 186), but in respect of the varieties of its manifestations. We
pass from the elementary life of mere growth common to plants and
animals, to the animal life of impulse and sensation, thence we rise
still higher to the life of rational action which is the peculiar
function of man. Each is a _potentiality_ to that which is immediately
above it; in {191} other words, each contains in germ the possibilities
which are realised in that stage which is higher. Thus is there a
touch of nature which makes the whole world kin, a purpose running
through all the manifestations of life; each is a preparation for
something higher.
[339]
_Education_ is in like manner an entelechy. For what is the
_differentia_, the distinguishing character of the life of man?
Aristotle answers, the possession of reason. It is the action of
reason upon the desires that raises the life of man above the brutes.
This, observe, is not the restraining action of something wholly alien
to the desires, which is too often how Plato represents the matter.
This would be to lose the dynamic idea. The desires, as Aristotle
generally conceives them, are there in the animal life, prepared, so to
speak, to receive the organic perfection which reason alone can give
them. Intellect, on the other hand, is equally in need of the desires,
for thought without desire cannot supply motive. If intellect is
_logos_ or reason, desire is that which is fitted to be obedient to
reason.
It will be remembered that the question to which Plato addressed
himself in one of his earlier dialogues, already frequently referred
to, the _Meno_, was the teachableness of Virtue; in that dialogue he
comes to the conclusion that Virtue is teachable, but that there are
none capable of teaching it; for the {192} wise men of the time are
guided not by knowledge but by right opinion, or by a divine instinct
which is incommunicable. Plato is thus led to seek a machinery of
education, and it is with a view to this that he constructs his ideal
_Republic_. Aristotle took up this view of the state as educative of
the individual citizens, and brought it under the dynamic formula. In
the child reason is not actual; there is no rational law governing his
acts, these are the immediate result of the strongest impulse. Yet
only when a succession of virtuous acts has formed the virtuous habit
can a man be said to be truly good. How is this process to begin? The
answer is that the reason which is only latent or dynamic in the child
is actual or realised in the parent or teacher, or generally in the
community which educates the child. The law at first then is imposed
on the child from without, it has an appearance of unnaturalness, but
only an appearance. For the law is there in the child, prepared, as he
goes on in obedience, gradually to answer from within to the summons
from without, till along with the virtuous habit there emerges also
into the consciousness of the child, no longer a child but a man, the
apprehension of the law as his own truest nature.
These remarks on education are sufficient to show that in Morals also,
as conceived by Aristotle, there is a law of vital development. It may
be {193} sufficient by way of illustration to quote the introductory
sentences of Aristotle's _Ethics_, in which the question of the nature
of the chief good is, in his usual tentative manner, discussed: "If
there be any end of what we do which we desire for itself, while all
other ends are desired for it, that is, if we do not in every case have
some ulterior end (for if that were so we should go on to infinity, and
our efforts would be vain and useless), this ultimate end desired for
itself will clearly be the chief good and the ultimate best. Now since
every activity, whether of knowing or doing, aims at some good, it is
for us to settle what the good is which the civic activity aims
at,--what, in short, is the ultimate end of all 'goods' connected with
conduct? So far as the name goes all are pretty well agreed as to the
answer; gentle and simple alike declare it to be happiness, involving,
however, in their minds on the one hand well-living, on the other hand,
well-doing. When you ask them, however, to define this happiness more
exactly, you find that opinions are divided, and the many and the
philosophers have different answers.
"But if you ask a musician or a sculptor or any man of skill, any
person, in fact, who has some special work and activity, what the chief
good is for him, he will tell you that the chief good is in the work
well done. If then man has any special work or function, we may assume
that the chief good for man {194} will be in the well-doing of that
function. What now is man's special function? It cannot be mere
living, for that he has in common with plants, and we are seeking what
is peculiar to him. The mere life of nurture and growth must therefore
be put on one side. We come next to life as sensitive to pleasure and
pain. But this man shares with the horse, the ox, and other animals.
What remains is the life of action of a reasonable being. Now of
reason as it is in man there are two parts, one obeying, one possessing
and considering. And there are also two aspects in which the active or
moral life may be taken, one potential, one actual. Clearly for our
definition of the chief good we must take the moral life in its full
actual realisation, since this is superior to the other.
"If our view thus far be correct, it follows that the chief good for
man consists in the full realisation and perfection of the life of man
as man, in accordance with the specific excellence belonging to that
life, and if there be more specific excellences than one, then in
accordance with that excellence which is the best and the most rounded
or complete. We must add, however, the qualification, 'in a rounded
life.' For one swallow does not make a summer, nor yet one day. And
so one day or some brief period of attainment is not sufficient to make
a man happy and blest."
{195}
The close relation of this to the teaching of Socrates and Plato need
hardly be insisted on, or the way in which he correlates their ideas
with his own conception of an actualised perfection.
[340]
Aristotle then proceeds to a definition of the 'specific excellence' or
virtue of man, which is to be the standard by which we decide how far
he has fully and perfectly realised the possibilities of his being. To
this end he distinguishes in man's nature three modes of existence:
first, _feelings_ such as joy, pain, anger; second, _potentialities_ or
capacities for such feelings; third, _habits_ which are built upon
these potentialities, but with an element of reason or deliberation
superadded. He has no difficulty in establishing that the virtue of
man must be a habit. And the test of the excellence of that habit, as
of every other developed capacity, will be twofold; it will make the
worker good, it will cause him to produce good work.
So far Aristotle's analysis of virtue is quite on the lines of his
general philosophy. Here, however, he diverges into what seems at
first a curiously mechanical conception. Pointing out that in
everything quantitative there are two extremes conceivable, and a
_mean_ or average between them, he proceeds to define virtue as a mean
between two extremes, a mean, however, having relation to no mere
numerical standard, but having reference _to us_. In this last {196}
qualification he perhaps saves his definition from its mechanical turn,
while he leaves himself scope for much curious and ingenious
observation on the several virtues regarded as means between two
extremes. He further endeavours to save it by adding, that it is
"defined by reason, and as the wise man would define it."
Reason then, as the impersonal ruler,--the wise man, as the
personification of reason,--this is the standard of virtue, and
therefore also of happiness. How then shall we escape an externality
in our standard, divesting it of that binding character which comes
only when the law without is also recognised and accepted as the law
within? The answer of Aristotle, as of his predecessors, is that this
will be brought about by wise training and virtuous surroundings, in
short, by the civic community being itself good and happy. Thus we get
another dynamic relation; for regarded as a member of the body politic
each individual becomes a potentiality along with all the other
members, conditioned by the state of which he and they are members,
brought gradually into harmony with the reason which is in the state,
and in the process realising not his own possibilities only, but those
of the community also, which exists only in and through its members.
Thus each and all, in so far as they realise their own well-being by
the perfect development of the virtuous {197} habit in their lives,
contribute _ipso facto_ to the supreme end of the state, which is the
perfect realisation of the whole possibilities of the total organism,
and consequently of every member of it.
[342]
The _State_ therefore is also an entelechy. For man is not made to
dwell alone. "There is first the fact of sex; then the fact of
children; third, the fact of variety of capacity, implying variety of
position, some having greater powers of wisdom and forethought, and
being therefore naturally the rulers; others having bodily powers
suitable for carrying out the rulers' designs, and being therefore
naturally subjects. Thus we have as a first or simplest community the
family, next the village, then the full or perfect state, which,
seeking to realise an absolute self-sufficiency within itself, rises
from mere living to well-living as an aim of existence. This higher
existence is as natural and necessary as any simpler form, being, in
fact, the end or final and necessary perfection of all such lower forms
of existence. Man therefore is by the natural necessity of his being a
'political animal,' and he who is not a citizen,--that is, by reason of
something peculiar in his nature and not by a mere accident,--must
either be deficient or something superhuman. And while man is the
noblest of animals when thus fully perfected in an ordered community,
on the other hand when deprived of law and justice he is the very
worst. {198} For there is nothing so dreadful as lawlessness armed.
And man is born with the arms of thought and special capacities or
excellences, which it is quite possible for him to use for other and
contrary purposes. And therefore man is the most wicked and cruel
animal living when he is vicious, the most lustful and the most
gluttonous. The justice which restrains all this is a civic quality;
and law is the orderly arrangement of the civic community" (Arist.
_Pol_. i. p. 2).
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