Aristotle

CD

■CNJ
■CD

•CD

CO

B

485

T27
1919

cop. 2

Presented to the
LIBRARY of the

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

by
The Estate of -ttie late
Professor A.S.P. Woodhouse
Head of the English
Dept.
19U-1964

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2007 with funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

http://www.archive.org/details/aristotleOOtayluoft

THE
^ PEOPLE'S

^^ BOOKS

ARISTOTLE

ARISTOTLE

BY

A. E. TAYLOR, M.A., D.Litt., F.B.A.

REVISED EDITION

T. C. & E. C. JACK, LTD. | T. NELSON & SONS, LTD.

1919

h2^

^ JAN 2 6 iSSo

CONTENTS

I. LIFE AND WORKS 9

II. THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES :

SCIENTIFIC METHOD . . . .19

III. FIRST PHILOSOPHY 49

IV. PHYSICS 70

V. PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY . . • .99

BIBLIOGRAPHY 125

ARISTOTLE

CHAPTER I

LIFE AND WORKS

It has not commonly been the lot of philosophers, as
it is of great poets, that their names should become
household words. We should hardly call an English-
man well read if he had not heard the name of
Sophocles or Moliere. An educated man is expected
to know at least who these great writers were, and
to understand an allusion to the Antigone or Le Mis-
anthrope. But we call a man well read if his mind
is stored with the verse of poets and the prose of
historians, even though he were ignorant of the
fame of Descartes or Kant. Yet there are a few
philosophers whose influence on thought and lan-
guage has been so extensive that no one who reads
can be ignorant of their names, and that every man
who speaks the language of educated Europeans is
constantly using their vocabulary. Among this few
Aristotle holds not the lowest place. We have all
heard of him, as we have all heard of Homer. He
has left his impress so firmly on theology that many
of the formulae of the Churches are unintelligible

10 AKISTOTLE.

without acquaintance with his conception of the
universe. If we are interested in the growth of
modern science we shall readily discover for ourselves
that some knowledge of Aristotelianism is neces-
sary for the understanding of Bacon and Galileo and
the other great anti- Aristotelians who created the
" modern scientific " view of Nature. If we turn to
the imaginative literature of the modern languages,
Dante is a sealed book, and many a passage of
Chaucer and Shakespeare and Milton is half un-
meaning to us unless we are at home in the outlines
of Aristotle's philosophy. And if we turn to ordi-
nary language, we find that many of the familiar
turns of modern speech cannot be fully understood
without a knowledge of the doctrines they were first
forged to express. An Englishman who speaks of
the " golden mean " or of " liberal education," or
contrasts the " matter " of a work of literature with
its " form," or the " essential " features of a situation
or a scheme of policy with its "accidents," or
"theory" with "practice," is using words which
derive their significance from the part they play in
the vocabulary of Aristotle. The unambitious object
of this little book is, then, to help the English reader
to a better understanding of such familiar language
and a fuller comprehension of much that he will find
in Dante and Shakespeare and Bacon and Milton.

Life of Aristotle. — The main facts of Aristotle's
life may be briefly told. He was born in 385-4 b.c.
at Stagirus, a little city of the Chalcidic peninsula,
still called, almost by its ancient name, Chalcis, and
died at the age of sixty-two at Chalcis in Euboea.
Thus he is a contemporary of Demosthenes, his man-
hood witnessed the struggle which ended in the
establishment of the Macedonian monarchy as the

LIFE AND WOEKS. 11

dominant power in Hellas, and his later years the
campaigns in which his pupil Alexander the Great
overthrew the Persian Empire and carried Greek
civilisation to the banks of the Jumna. In studying
the constitutional theories of Aristotle, it is necessary
to bear these facts in mind. They help to explain
certain limitations of outlook which might otherwise
appear strange in so great a man. It throws a great
deal of light on the philosopher's intense conviction
of the natural inferiority of the "barbarian" in-
tellect and character to remember that he grew up
in an outlying region where the "barbarian" was
seen to disadvantage in the ordinary course of life.
Hence the distinction between Greek and "bar-
barian" came to mean for him much what the
" colour-line " does to an American brought up in a
Southern State. So, again, when we are struck by
his "provincialism," his apparent satisfaction with
the ideal of a small self-contained city-state with a
decently oligarchical government, a good system of
public education, and no " social problems," but
devoid alike of great traditions and far-reaching
ambitions, we must remember that the philosopher
himself belonged to just such a tiny community with-
out a past and without a future. The Chalcidic cities
had been first founded, as the name of the peninsula
implies, as colonies from the town of Chalcis in
Euboea ; Corinth had also been prominent in estab-
lishing settlements in the same region. At the
height of Athenian Imperial prosperity in the age
of Pericles the district had fallen politically under
Athenian control, but had been detached again from
Athens, in the last years of the Archidamian war, by
the genius of the great Spartan soldier and diplomat
Brasidas. Early in the fourth century the Chalcidic

12 AKISTOTLE.

cities had attempted to form themselves into an
independent federation, but the movement had been
put down by Sparta, and the cities had fallen under
the control of the rising Macedonian monarchy, when
Aristotle was a baby. A generation later, a double
intrigue of the cities with Philip of Macedon and
Athens failed of its effect, and the peninsula was
finally incorporated with the Macedonian kingdom.
It is also important to note that the philosopher be-
longed by birth to a guild, the Asclepiadae, in which
the medical profession was hereditary. His father
Nicomachus was court physician to Amyntas III.,
the king for whose benefit the Spartans had put
down the Chalcidic league. This early connection with
medicine and with the rough -living Macedonian
court largely explains both the predominantly bio-
logical cast of Aristotle's philosophical thought and
the intense dislike of " princes " and courts to which
he more than once gives expression. At the age of
eighteen, in 367-6, Aristotle was sent to Athens for
"higher" education in philosophy and science, and
entered the famous Platonic Academy, where he
remained as a member of the scientific group gathered
round the master for twenty years, until Plato's
death in 347-6.* For the three years immediately
following Aristotle was in Asia Minor with his friend
and fellow-student Hermeias, who had become by
force of sheer capacity monarch of the city of
Atarneus in Aeolis, and was maintaining himself
with much energy against the Persian king. Pythias,
the niece of Hermeias, became the philosopher's wife,

* It is perhaps significant that Aristotle's entry into the school
fell in the year when Plato was absent on his political mission
in Syracuse. Thus he probably did not get his first introduc-
tion to Platonism from the lips of Plato.

I

LIFE AND WORKS. 13

and it seems that the marriage was happy. Exami-
nation of Aristotle's contributions to marine biology
has shown that his knowledge of the subject is
specially good for the Aeolic coast and the shores
of the adjacent islands. This throws light on his
occupations during his residence with Hermeias, and
suggests that Plato had discerned the bent of his dis-
tinguished pupil's mind, and that his special share in
the researches of the Academy had, like that of
Speusippus, Plato's nephew and successor in the
headship of the school, been largely of a biological
kind. We also know that, presumably shortly after
Plato's death, Aristotle had been one of the group
of disciples who published their notes of their
teacher's famous unpublished lecture On the Good.
In 343 Hermeias was assassinated at the instigation
of Persia ; Aristotle honoured his memory by a hymn
setting forth the godlikeness of virtue as illustrated
by the life of his friend. Aristotle now removed to
the Macedonian court, where he received the position
of tutor to the Crown Prince, afterwards Alexander
the Great, at this time (343 B.C.) a boy of thirteen.
The association of the great philosopher and the great
king as tutor and pupil has naturally struck the
imagination of later ages ; even in Plutarch's Life of
Alexander we meet already with the full-blown
legend of the influence of Aristotle's philosophical
speculations on Alexander. It is, however, im-
probable that Aristotle's influence counted for much
in forming the character of Alexander. Aristotle's
dislike of monarchies and their accessories is written
large on many a page of his Ethics and Politics ; the
small self-contained city-state with no political am-
bitions for which he reserves his admiration would
have seemed a mere reHc of antiquity to Philip and

14 ARISTOTLE.

Alexander. The only piece of contemporary evidence
as to the relations between the master and the pupil
is a sentence in a letter to the young Alexander from
the Athenian publicist Isocrates, who maliciously
congratulates the prince on his preference for
"rhetoric," the art of efficient public speech, and
his indifference to "logic-choppers." How little
sympathy Aristotle can have had with his pupil's
ambitions is shown by the fact that, though his
political theories must have been worked out during
the very years in which Alexander was revolutionising
Hellenism by the foundation of his world-empire,
they contain no allusion to so momentous a change
in the social order. For all that Aristotle tells us,
Alexander might never have existed, and the small
city-state might have been the last word of Hellenic
political development. Hence it is probable that the
selection of Aristotle, who had not yet appeared
before the world as an independent thinker, to take
part in the education of the Crown Prince was due
less to personal reputation than to the connection of
his family with the court, taken together with his
own position as a pupil of Plato, whose intervention
in the public affairs of Sicily had caused the Academy
to be regarded as the special home of scientific interest
in politics and jurisprudence. It may be true that
Alexander found time in the midst of his conquests
to supply his old tutor with zoological specimens ; it
is as certain as such a thing can be that the ideals
and characters of the two men were too different to
allow of any intimate influence of either on the other.
When Alexander was suddenly called to the
Macedonian throne by the murder of his father in
336 B.C., Aristotle's services were no longer needed ;
he returned to Athens and gave himself to purely

I

LIFE AND WORKS. lb

scientific work. Just at this juncture the presidency
of the Academy was vacant by the death of Speu-
sippus, Aristotle's old associate in biological research.
Possibly Aristotle thought himself injured when the
school passed him over and elected Xenocrates of
Chalcedon as its new president. At any rate, though
he appears never to have wholly severed his connec-
tion with the Academy, in 335 he opened a rival
institution in the Lyceum, or gymnasium attached to
the temple of Apollo Lyceus, to which he was followed
by some of the most distinguished members of the
Academy. From the fact that his instruction was
given in the peripatos or covered portico of the
gymnasium the school has derived its name of Peri-
patetic. For the next twelve years he was occupied
in the organisation of the school as an abode for the
prosecution of speculation and research in every
department of inquiry, and in the composition of
numerous courses of lectures on scientific and philo-
sophical questions. The chief difference in general
character between the new school and the Academy
is that while the scientific interests of the Platonists
centred in mathematics, the main contributions of the
Lyceum to science lay in the departments of biology
and history.

Towards the end of Alexander's life his attention
was unfavourably directed on his old teacher. A
relative of Aristotle named Callisthenes had attended
Alexander in his campaigns as historiographer, and
had provoked disfavour by his censure of the King's
attempts to invest his semi-constitutional position
towards his Hellenic subjects with the pomp of an
Oriental despotism. The historian's independence
proved fatal. He was accused of instigating an
assassination plot among Alexander's pages, and

16 AEISTOTLE.

hanged, or, as some said, thrown into a prison where
he died before trial Alexander is reported to have
held Aristotle responsible for his relative's treason,
and to have meditated revenge. If this is so, he was
fortunately diverted from the commission of a crime
by preoccupation with the invasion of India

On the death of Alexander in 323 a brief but
vigorous anti-Macedonian agitation broke out at
Athens. Aristotle, from his Macedonian connections,
naturally fell a victim, in spite of his want of
sympathy with the ideals of Philip and Alexander.
Like Socrates, he was indicted on the capital charge
of " impiety," the pretext being that his poem on the
death of Hermeias, written twenty years before, was
a virtual deification of his friend. This was, how-
ever, only a pretext ; the real offence was political,
and lay in his connection with the Macedonian
leader Antipater. As condemnation was certain,
the philosopher anticipated it by withdrawing with
his disciples to Chalcis, the mother city of his native
Stagirus. Here he died in the following year, at the
age of sixty-two or sixty-three.

The features of Aristotle, familiar to us from busts
and intaglios, are handsome, but indicate refinement
and acuteness rather than originality, an impression
in keeping with what we should expect from a study
of his writings. The anecdotes related of him reveal
a kindly, affectionate character, and show little trace
of the self-importance which appears in his works.
His will, which has been preserved, exhibits the same
traits in its references to his happy family life and its
solicitous care for the future of his children and
servants. He was twice married, first to Pythias,
and secondly to a certain Herpyllis, by whom he left
a son Nicomachus and a daughter. The " goodness "

(1,994)

LIFE AND WORKS. 17

of Herpyllis to her husband is specially mentioned in
the clauses of the will which make provision for her,
while the warmth of the writer's feelings for Pythias
is shown by the direction that her remains are to be
placed in the same tomb with his own. The list of
servants remembered and the bequests enumerated
show the philosopher to have been in easier circum-
stances than Plato.

The Works of Aristotle. — The so-called works of
Aristotle present us with a curious problem. When
we turn from Plato to his pupil we seem to have
passed into a different atmosphere. The Discourses
of Socrates exhibit a prose style which is perhaps the
most marvellous of all literary achievements. No-
where else do we meet with quite the same combina-
tion of eloquence, imaginative splendour, incisive
logic, and irresistible wit and humour. The manner
of Aristotle is dry and formal His language bristles
with technicalities, makes little appeal to the emotions,
disdains graces of style, and frequently defies the
simplest rules of composition. Our surprise is all
the greater that we find later writers of antiquity,
such as Cicero, commending Aristotle for his copious
and golden eloquence, a characteristic which is con-
spicuously wanting in the Aristotelian writings we
possess. The explanation of the puzzle is, however,
simple. Plato and Aristotle were at once what we
should call professors and men of letters ; both wrote
works for general circulation, and both delivered
courses of lectures to special students. But while
Plato's lectures have perished, his books have come
down to us. Aristotle's books have almost wholly
been lost, but we possess many of his lectures. The
"works" of Aristotle praised by Cicero for their
eloquence were philosophical dialogues, and formed

(1,994) 2

18 ARISTOTLE. '

the model for C5icero's own compositions in this kind.
None of them have survived, though some passages
have been preserved in quotations by later writers.
That our "works " are actually the MSS. of a lecturer
posthumously edited by his pupils seems clear from
external as well as from internal evidence. In one
instance we have the advantage of a double recension,
Aristotle's Ethics or Discourses on Conduct have come
down to us in two forms — the so-called Nicomachean
Ethics, a redaction by the philosopher's son, Nico-
machus, preserving all the characteristics of an oral
course of lectures ; and a freer and more readable
recast by a pupil, the mathematician Eudemus, known
as the Eudemian Ethics. In recent years we have
also recovered from the sands of Egypt what appears
to be our one specimen of a "work "of Aristotle,
intended to be read by the public at large, the essay
on the Constitution of Athens. The style of this
essay is easy, flowing, and popular, and shows that
Aristotle could write well and gracefully when he
thought fit.

I

CHAPTER II

THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES : SCIENTIFIC
METHOD

Philosophy, as understood by Aristotle, may be said
to be the organised whole of disinterested knowledge,
that is, knowledge which we seek for the satisfaction
which it carries with itself, and not as a mere means
to utilitarian ends. The impulse which receives this
satisfaction is curiosity or wonder, which Aristotle
regards as innate in man, though it does not get full
play until civilisation has advanced far enough to
make secure provision for the immediate material
needs of life. Human curiosity was naturally directed
first to the outstanding "marvellous works" of the
physical world, the planets, the periodicity of their
movements, the return of the seasons, winds, thunder
and lightning, and the like. Hence the earliest Greek
speculation was concerned with problems of astronomy
and meteorology. Then, as reflection developed, men
speculated about geometrical figure and number, the
possibility of having assured knowledge at all, the
character of the common principles assumed in all
branches of study or of the special principles assumed
in some one branch, and thus philosophy has finally
become the disinterested study of every department
of Being or Reality. Since Aristotle, like Hegel,

20 AEISTOTLE.

, the ■!

I

thought that his own doctrine was, in essentials,
last word of speculation, the complete expression of
the principles by which his predecessors had been un-
consciously guided, he believes himself in a position
to make a final classification of the branches of science,
showing how they are related and how they are dis-
criminated from one another. This classification we ^1
have now to consider. ^|

Classification of the Sciences. — To begin with, we
have to discriminate Philosophy from two rivals with
which it might be confounded on a superficial view,
Dialectic and Sophistry. Dialectic is the art of
reasoning accurately from given premisses, true or;
false. This art has its proper uses, and of one of
these we shall have to speak. But in itself it is
indifierent to the truth of its premisses. You may
reason dialectically from premisses which you believe
to be false, for the express purpose of showing the
absurd conclusions to which they lead. Or you may
reason from premisses which you assume tentatively
to see what conclusions you are committed to if you
adopt them. In either case your object is not directly
to secure truth, but only to secure consistency.
Science or Philosophy aims directly at truth, and
hence requires to start with true and certain premisses.
Thus the distinction between Science and Dialectic
is that Science reasons from true premisses, Dialectic
only from "probable" or "plausible" premisses.*
Sophistry differs from Science in virtue of its moral
character. It is the profession of making a living
by the abuse of reasoning, the trick of employing

* A proposition is regarded as "probable " if it is held either
(1) by the great majority of men, or (2) by one or more men of
special eminence in a subject. This is the ultimate origin of the
" Probabilism " of "moraJ theologians."

CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES. 21

logical. skill for the apparent demonstration of scientific
or ethical falsehoods. " The sophist is one who earns
a living from an apparent but unreal wisiom." (The
emphasis thus falls on the notion of making an " un-
real wisdom " into a trade. The sophist's real concern
is to get his fee.) Science or Philosophy is thus the
disinterested employment of the understanding in
the discovery of truth.

We may now distinguish the different branches of
science as defined. The first and most important
division to be made is that between Speculative or
Theoretical Science and Practical Science. The broad
distinction is that which we should now draw between
the Sciences and the Arts {i.e. the industrial and
technical, not the " fine " arts). Speculative or
Theoretical Philosophy differs from Practical Philos-
ophy in its purpose, and, in consequence, in its sub-
ject-matter, and its formal logical character. The
purpose of the former is the disinterested contempla^
tion of truths which are what they are independently of
our own volition; its end is to hiow and only to know.
The object of " practical " Science is to know, but not
only to know but also to turn our knowledge to account
in devising ways of successful interference with the
course of events. (The real importance of the dis-
tinction comes out in Aristotle's treatment of the
problems of moral and social science. Since we
require knowledge of the moral and social nature of
men not merely to satisfy an intellectual interest, but
as a basis for a sound system of education and govern-
ment. Politics, the theory of government, and Ethics,
the theory of goodness of conduct, which for Aristotle
is only a subordinate branch of Politics, belong to
Practical, not to Theoretical Philosophy, a view
which is attended by important consequences.)

22 ARISTOTLE.

It follows that there is a corresponding difference
in the objects investigated by the two branches of
Philosophy. Speculative or Theoretical Philosophy
is concerned with "that which cannot possibly beHl
other than it is," truths and relations independent^'
of human volition for their subsistence, and calling
simply for recognition on our part. Practical Philos-
ophy has to do with relations which human volition
can modify, " things which may be other than they
are," the contingent. (Thus e.g. not only politics,
but medicine and economics will belong to Practical^!
Science.) ^

Hence again arises a logical difference between
the conclusions of Theoretical and those of Practical
Philosophy. Those of the former are universal truths
deducible with logical necessity from self-evident*
principles. Those of the latter, because they relate
to what "can be otherwise," are never rigidly uni-
versal ; they are general rules which hold good " in
the majority of cases." but are liable to occasional
exceptions owing to the contingent character of the
facfs with which they deal. It is a proof of a phi-
losopher's lack of grounding in logic that he looks to
the results of a practical science {e.g. to the detailed
precepts of medicine or ethics) for a higher degree of
certainty and validity than the nature of the subject-
matter allows. Thus for Aristotle the distinction
between the necessary and the contingent is real and
not merely apparent, and "probability is the guide"
in studies which have to do with the direction of life.

* Self-evident, that is, in a purely lo^cal sense. When you
apprehend the principles in question, you see at once that they
are true, and do not require to have them proved. It is not
meant that any and every man does, in point of fact, always
apprehend the principles, or that they can be apprehended
without preliminary mental discipline.

CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES. 23

We proceed to the question how many subdivisions
there are within " theoretical " Philosophy itself.
Plato had held that there are none. All the sciences
are deductions from a single set of ultimate principles
which it is the business of that supreme science to
which Plato had given the name of Dialectic to
establish. This is not Aristotle's view. According
to him, " theoretical " Philosophy falls into a number
of distinct though not co-ordinate branches, each with
its own special subjects of investigation and its own
special axiomatic principles. Of these branches there
are three, First Philosophy, Mathematics, and Physics.
First Philosophy — afterwards to be known to the
Middle Ages as Metaphysics* — treats, to use Aris-
totle's own expression, of " Being qub, Being." This
means that it is concerned with the universal char-
acteristics which belong to the system of knowable
reality as such, and the principles of its organisation
in their full universality. First Philosophy alone in-
vestigates the character of those causative factors in
the system which are without body or shape and
exempt from all mutability. Since in Aristotle's
system God is the supreme Cause of this kind, First
Philosophy culminates in the knowledge of God, and
is hence frequently called Theology. It thus includes
an element which would to-day be assigned to the
theory of knowledge, as well as one which we should
ascribe to metaphysics, since it deals at once with the
ultimate postulates of knowledge and the ultimate
causes of the order of real existence.

* The origin of this name seems to be that Aristotle's lectures
on First Philosophy came to be studied as a continuation of his
course on Physics. Hence the lectures got the xvaxcMSiMeta'physica
because they came ajter (meta) those on Physics. Finally the
name was transferred (as in the case of Ethics) from the lectures
to the subject of which they treat.

24 ARISTOTLE.

Mathematics is of narrower scope. What it studies
is no longer "real being as such," but only real being
in so far as it exhibits number and geometrical form.
Since Aristotle holds the view that number and figure
only exist as determinations of objects given in per-
ception (though by a convenient fiction the mathe-
matician treats of them in abstraction from the
perceived objects which they qualify), he marks the
difference between Mathematics and First Philosophy
by saying that " whereas the objects of First Philos-
ophy are separate from matter and devoid of motion,
those of Mathematics, though incapable of motion,
have no separable existence but are inherent in
matter." Physics is concerned with the study of
objects which are both material and capable of motion.
Thus the principle of the distinction is the presence
or absence of initial restrictions of the range of the
different branches of Science. First Philosophy has
the widest range, since its contemplation covers the
whole ground of the real and knowable ; Physics the
narrowest, because it is confined to a " universe of
discourse " restricted by the double qualification that
its members are all material and capable of displace-
ment. Mathematics holds an intermediate position,
since in it one of these qualifications is removed,
but the other still remains, for the geometer's figures
are boundaries and limits of sensible bodies, and the
arithmetician's numbers properties of collections of
concrete objects. It follows also that the initial
axioms or postulates of Mathematics form a less simple
system than those of First Philosophy, and those of
Physics than those of Mathematics. Mathematics
requires as initial assumptions not only those which
hold good for cdl thought, but certain other special
axioms which are only valid and significant for the

I

CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES. 25

realm of figure and number ; Physics requires yet fur-
ther axioms which are only applicable to " what is in
motion." This is why, though the three disciplines
are treated as distinct, they are not strictly co-ordinate,
and " First Philosophy," though " first," is only prima
inter pares.

We thus get the following diagrammatic scheme
of the classification of sciences : —

Science
I

Theoretical Practical

I

1 1 I

First Philosophy Mathe- Physics

or matics
Theology

Practical Philosophy is not subjected by Aristotle
to any similar subdivision. Later students were
accustomed to recognise a threefold division into
Ethics (the theory of individual conduct), Economics
(the theory of the management of the household),
Politics (the theory of the management of the State).
Aristotle himself does not make these distinctions.
His general name for the theory of conduct is Politics,
the doctrine of individual conduct being for him in-
separable from that of the right ordering of society.
Though he composed a separate course of lectures on
individual conduct (the Ethics), he takes care to open
the course by stating that the science of which it
treats is Politics, and offers an apology for dealing
with the education of individual character apart from
the more general doctrine of the organisation of
society. No special recognition is given in Aristotle's

26 AKISTOTLE.

own classification to the Philosophy of Art. Modern
students of Aristotle have tried to fill in the omission
by adding artistic creation to contemplation and
practice as a third fundamental form of mental
activity, and thus making a threefold division of
Philosophy into Theoretical, Practical, and Pro-
ductive. The object of this is to find a place in the
classification for Aristotle's famous Poetics and his
work on Rhetoric, the art of effective speech and
writing. But the admission of the third division of
Science has no warrant in the text of Aristotle, nor
are the Rhetoric and Poetics, properly speaking, a
contribution to Philosophy. They are intended as
collections of practical rules for the composition of a
pamphlet or a tragedy, not as a critical examination
of the canons of literary taste. This was correctly
seen by the dramatic theorists of the seventeenth
century. They exaggerated the value of Aristotle's
directions and entirely misunderstood the meaning
of some of them, but they were right in their view
that the Poetics was meant to be a collection of rules
by obeying which the craftsman might make sure of
turning out a successful play. So far as Aristotle
has a Philosophy of Fine Art at all, it forms part of
his more general theory of education and must be
looked for in the general discussion of the aims of
education contained in his Politics.

The Methods of Science. — No place has been as-
signed in the scheme to what we call logic and Aris-
totle called Analytics, the theory of scientific method,
or of proof and the estimation of evidence. The
reason is that since the fundamental character of
proof is the same in all science, Aristotle looks upon
logic as a study of the methods common to all science.
At a later date it became a hotly debated question

lo-i^i-k ^^^

I

CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES. 27

whether logic should be regarded in this way as a
study of the methods instrumental to proof in all
sciences, or as itself a special constituent division of
philosophy. The Aristotelian view was concisely in-
dicated by the name which became attached to the
collection of Aristotle's logical works. They were
called the Organon, that is, the "instrument," or the
body of rules of method employed by Science. The
thought imphed is thus that logic furnishes the tools
with which every science has to work in establish-
ing its results. Our space will only permit of a
brief statement as to the points in which the Aris-
totelian formal logic appears to be really original,
and the main peculiarities of Aristotle's theory of
knowledge.

{a) Formal Logic. — In compass the Aristotelian
logic corresponds roughly with the contents of modem
elementary treatises on the same subject, with the
omission of the sections which deal with the so-called
Conditional Syllogism. The inclusion of arguments
of this type in mediaeval and modern expositions of
formal logic is principally due to the Stoics, who pre-
ferred to throw their reasoning into these forms and
subjected them to minute scrutiny. In his treatment
of the doctrine of Terms, Aristotle avoids the mistake
of treating the isolated name as though it had signi-
ficance apart from the enunciations in which it occurs.
He is quite clear on the all-important point that the
unit of thought is the proposition in which something
is affirmed or denied, the one thought-form which can
be properly called "true" or "false." Such an asser-
tion he analyses into two factors, that about which
something is affirmed or denied (the Subject), and
that which is affirmed or denied of it (the Predicate).
Consequently his doctrine of the classification of

28 AEISTOTLE.

Terms is based on a classification of Predicates, or of
Propositions according to the special kind of con-
nection between the Subject and Predicate which
they affirm or deny. Two such classifications, which
cannot be made to fit into one another, meet us in
Aristotle's logical writings, the scheme of the ten
"Categories" or "Predicaments," and that which
was afterwards known in the Middle Ages as the list
of " Predicables," or again as the " Five Words."
The list of " Categories " reveals itself as an attempt
to answer the question in how many different senses
the words " is a " or " are " are employed when we
assert that "a; is 3/" or "cc is a y" or "a;s are ys."
Such a statement may tell us (1) what x is, as if I
say " cc is a lion " ; the predicate is then said to fall
under the category of Substance ; (2) what x is like,
as when I say " a: is white, or x is wise," — the category
of Quality ; (3) how much or how many x is, as when
I say " there are five xs " or " x is five feet long," — the
category of Quantity ; (4) how x is related to some-
thing else, as when I say " x is to the right of y" " x is
the father of y," — the category of Relation, These
are the four chief " categories " discussed by Aristotle.
The remainder are (5) Place, (6) Time, (7) and (8)
Condition or State, as when I say " x is sitting down "
or "x has his armour on," — (the only distinction
between the two cases seems to be that (7) denotes a
more permanent state of x than (8)) ; (9) Action or
Activity, as when I say " x is cutting," or generally
"x is doing something to y" ; (10) Passivity, as
when I say " x is being cut," or more generally, " so-
and-so is being done to x." No attempt is made to
show that this list of " figures of predication " is com-
plete, or to point out any i)rinciple which has been
followed in its construction. It also happens that

II

CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES. 29

much the same enumeration is incidentally made in
one or two passages of Plato. Hence it is not un-
likely that the list was taken over by Aristotle as one
which would be familiar to pupils who had read their
Plato, and therefore convenient for practical purposes.
The fivefold classification does depend on a principle
pointed out by Aristotle which guarantees its com-
pleteness, and is therefore likely to have been thought
out by him for himself, and to be the genuine Aristo-
telian scheme. Consider an ordinary universal affirm-
ative proposition of the form "all x^ are 2/s." Now
if this statement is true it may also be true that "all
ys are ccs," or it may not. On the first supposition
we have two possible cases, (1) the predicate may
state precisely what the subject defined is ; then y is
the Definition of £c, as when I say that "men are
mortal animals, capable of discourse." Here it is
also true to say that "mortal animals capable of dis-
course are men," and Aristotle regards the predicate
"mortal animal capable of discourse" as expressing
the inmost nature of man. (2) The predicate may
not express the inmost nature of the subject, and yet
may belong only to the class denoted by the subject
and to every member of that class. The predicate is
then called a Proprium or property, an exclusive
attribute of the class in question. Thus it was held
that "all men are capable of laughter" and "all
beings capable of laughter are men," but that the
capacity for laughter is no part of the inmost nature
or "real essence" of humanity. It is therefore
reckoned as a Proprium.

Again in the case where it is true that " all x% are
2/s," but not true that aU " 2/s are ics," y may be part
of the definition of x or it may not. If it is part of
the definition of x it will be either (3) a Genus or

30 ARISTOTLE.

wider class of which x forms a subdivision, as when
I say, "All men are animals," or (4) a Difference,
that is, one of the distinctive marks by which the xs
are distinguished from other sub-classes or species of
the same genus, as when I say, " All men are capable
of discourse." Or finally (5) y may be no part of the
definition of cc, but a characteristic which belongs
both to the oos and some things other than ocs. The
predicate is then called an Accident. We have now
exhausted all the possible cases, and may say that the
predicate of a universal affirmative proposition is
always either a definition, a proprium, a genus, a
difference, or an accident. This classification reached
the Middle Ages not in the precise form in which it
is given by Aristotle, but with modifications mainly
due to the ^N'eo-Platonic philosopher Porphyry. In
its modified form it is regarded as a classification of
terms generally. Definition disappears from the list,
as the definition is regarded as a complex made up of
the genus, or next highest class to which the class to
be defined belongs, and the differences which mark off
this particular species or sub-class. The species itself
which figures as the subject-term in a definition is
added, and thus the " Five Words " of mediaeval logic
are enumerated as genus, species, difference, proprium,
accident.

The one point of philosophical interest about this
doctrine appears alike in the scheme of the "Cate-
gories " in the presence of a category of " substance,"
and in the list of " Predicables " in the sharp dis-
tinction drawn between " definition " and "proprium."
From a logical point of view it does not appear why
any proprium, a7iy character belonging to all the
members of a class and to them alone, should not be
taken as defining the class. Why should it be

hen ^^

1

CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES. 31

assumed that there is only one predicate, viz. man,
which precisely answers the question, "What is
Socrates ? " Why should it not be equally correct to
answer, "a Greek," or "a philosopher'"? The ex-
planation is that Aristotle takes it for granted that
not all the distinctions we can make between " kinds "
of things are arbitrary and subjective. Nature herself
has made certain hard and fast divisions between
kinds which it is the business of our thought to
recognise and follow. Thus according to Aristotle
there is a real gulf, a genuine difference in kind,
between the horse and the ass, and this is illustrated
by the fact that the mule, the offspring of a horse and
an ass, is not capable of propagating. It is thus a
sort of imperfect being, a kind of " monster " existing
contra naturam. Such differences as we find when
we compare e.g. Egyptians with Greeks do not
amount to a difference in " kind." To say that Socra-
tes is a man tells me what Socrates is, because the
statement places Socrates in the real kind to
which he actually belongs ; to say that he is' wise, or
old, or a philosopher merely tells me some of his
attributes. It follows from this belief in "real" or
"natural" kinds that the problem of definition
acquires an enormous importance for science. We,
who are faccustomed to regard the whole business of
classification as a matter of making a grouping of our
materials such as is most pertinent to the special
question we have in hand, tend to look upon any
predicate which belongs universally and exclusively
to the members of a group, as a sufficient basis for
a possible definition of the group. Hence we are
prone to take the "nominalist" view of definition, i.e.
to look upon a definition as no more than a declara-
tion of the sense which we intend henceforward to

32 ARISTOTLE.

put on a word or other symbol.* And consequently
we readily admit that there may be as many defini-
tions of a class as it has different propria. But in a
philosophy like that of Aristotle, in which it is held
that a true classification must not only be formally
satisfactory, but must also conform to the actual lines
of cleavage which Nature has established between
kind and kind, the task of classificatory science be-
comes much more diflacult. Science is called on to
supply not merely a definition but the definition of
the classes it considers, the definition which faithfully
reflects the "lines of cleavage" in Nature. This is
why the Aristotelian view is that a true definition
should always be per genus et differentias. It should
" place " a given class by mentioning the wider class
next above it in the olDJective hierarchy, and then
enumerating the most deep-seated distinctions by
which Nature herself marks off this class from others
belonging to the same wider class. Modern evolu-
tionary thought may possibly bring us back to this
Aristotelian standpoint. Modern evolutionary science
differs from Aristotelianism on one point of the first
importance. It regards the difference between kinds,
not as a primary fact of Nature, but as produced by
a long process of accumulation of slight differences.
But a world in which the process has progressed far
enough will exhibit much the same character as the
Nature of Aristotle. As the intermediate links be-
tween "species" drop out because they are less
thoroughly adapted to maintain themselves than the
extremes between which they form links, the world
produced approximates more and more to a system of
species between which there are unbridgeable chasms ;

* All mathematical definitions are of this kind, and are thus
purely "nominal."

CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES. 33

evolution tends more and more to the final establish-
ment of " real kinds," marked by the fact that there
is no permanent possibility of cross-breeding between
them. This makes it once more possible to distin-
guish between a " nominal " definition and a " real "
definition. From an evolutionary point of view, a
"real" definition would be one which specifies not
merely enough characters to mark ofi" the group de-
fined from others, but selects also for the purpose
those characters which indicate the line of historical
development by which the group has successively
separated itself from other groups descended from
the same ancestors. We shall learn yet more of the
significance of this conception of a " real kind " as we
go on to make acquaintance with the outlines of First
Philosophy. Over the rest of the formal logic of
Aristotle we must be content to pass more rapidly.
In connection with the doctrine of Propositions,
Aristotle lays down the familiar distinction between
the four types of proposition according to their quan-
tity (as universal or particular) and quality (as affir-
mative or negative), and treats of their contrary and
contradictory opposition in a way which still forms
the basis of the handling of the subject in elementary
works on formal logic. He also considers at great
length a subject nowadays commonly excluded from
the elementary books — the modal distinction between
the Problematic proposition (x may be y), the Asser-
tory {x is 2/)j and the Necessary (x must be y), and
the way in which all these forms may be contradicted.
For him, modality is a formal distinction like quantity
or quality, because he believes that contingency and
necessity are not merely relative to the state of our
knowledge, but represent real and objective features
of the order of Nature.

(1,994) 3

34 ARISTOTLE.

In connection with the doctrine of Inference, it is
worth while to give his definition of Syllogism or
Inference (literally " computation ") in his own words.
"Syllogism is a discourse wherein certain things
(viz. the premisses) being admitted, something else,
different from what has been admitted, follows of
necessity because the admissions are what they
are." The last clause shows that Aristotle is aware
that the all-important thing in an inference is not
that the conclusion should be novel but that it should
be proved. We may have known the conclusion asj
a fact before; what the inference does for us is
connect it with the rest of our knowledge, and thi
to show why it is true. He also formulates th«
axiom upon which syllogistic inference rests, ths
" if A is predicated universally of B and B of C, A il
necessarily predicated universally of C." Stated
the language of class-inclusion, and adapted to in-j
elude the case where B is denied of C, this become
the formula, "whatever is asserted universally^
whether positively or negatively, of a class B
asserted in like manner of any class C which is wholly
contained in B," the axiom de omni et nullo
mediaeval logic. The syllogism of the " first figure,*
to which this principle immediately applies, is
cordingly regarded by Aristotle as the natural and^
perfect form of inference. Syllogisms of the second
and third figures can only be shown to fall under the
dictum by a process of " reduction " or transformation
into corresponding arguments in the first "figure,"
and are therefore called "imperfect" or "incom-
plete," because they do not exhibit the conclusive
force of the reasoning with equal clearness, and also
because no universal affirmative conclusion can be
proved in them, and the aim of science is always to

CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES. 35

establish such affirmatives. The list of '* moods " of
the three figures, and the doctrine of the methods by
which each mood of the imperfect figures can be re-
placed by an equivalent mood of the first, is worked
out substantially as in our current text-books. The
so-called " fourth " figure is not recognised, its moods
being regarded merely as unnatural and distorted
statements of those of the first figure.

Induction. — Of the use of "induction" in Aristotle's
philosophy we shall speak under the head of " Theory
of Knowledge." Formally it is called " the way of
proceeding from particular facts to universals," and
Aristotle insists that the conclusion is only proved if
all the particulars have been examined. Thus he
gives as an example the following argument : " x, y, z
are long-lived species of animals ; x^ y, z are the only
species which have no gall ; ergo all animals which
have no gall are long-lived." This is the " induction
by simple enumeration " denounced by Francis Bacon
on the ground that it may always be discredited by
the production of a single " contrary instance " — e.g. a
single instance of an animal which has no gall and yet
is not long-lived. Aristotle is quite aware that his
" induction " does not establish its conclusion unless
all the cases have been included in the examination.
In fact, as his own example shows, an induction which
gives certainty does not start with " particular facts "
at all. It is a method of arguing that what has been
proved true of 'each sub-class of a wider class will be
true of the wider class as a whole. The premisses are
strictly universal throughout. In general, Aristotle
does not regard " induction " as p7'oqf a.t all. Histori-
cally '* induction " is held by Aristotle to have been
first made prominent in philosophy by Socrates, who
constantly employed the method in his attempts to

36 AEISTOTLE.

elicit universal results in moral science. Thus he
gives, as a characteristic argument for the famous
Socratic doctrine that knowledge is the one thing
needful, the "induction," "he who understands the
theory of navigation is the best navigator, he who
understands the theory of chariot-driving the best
driver ; from these examples we see that universally
he who understands the theory of a thing is the best
practitioner," where it is evident that all the relevant
cases have not been examined, and consequently that the
reasoning does not amount to proof. Mill's so-called
reasoning from particulars to particulars finds a place
in Aristotle's theory under the name of " arguing from
an example." He gives as an illustration, " A w^ar
between Athens and Thebes will be a bad thing, for
we see that the war between Thebes and Phocis was
so." He is careful to point out that the whole force of
the argument depends on the implied assumption of a
universal proposition which covers both cases, such as
" wars between neighbours are bad things." Hence he
calls such appeals to example " rhetorical " reasoning,
because the politician * is accustomed to leave his
hearers to supply the relevant universal consideration
for themselves.

Theory of Knowledge. — Here, as everywhere in
Aristotle's philosophy, we are confronted by an initial
and insuperable difficulty. Aristotle is always anxious
to insist on the difference between his own doctrines
and those of Plato, and his bias in this direction
regularly leads him to speak as though he held a
thorough-going naturalistic and empirical theory with
no "transcendental moonshine" about it. Yet his
final conclusions on all points of importance are hardly

* We must remember that " rhetorician " or " orator," in the
Greek of Aristotle's day, means " politician."

CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES. 37

distinguishable from those of Plato, except by the
fact that, as they are so much at variance with the
naturalistic side of his philosophy, they have the
appearance of being sudden lapses into an alogical
mysticism. We shall find the presence of this " fault "
more pronouncedly in his metaphysics, psychology,
and ethics than in his theory of knowledge, but it is
not absent from any part of his philosophy. He is
everywhere a Platonist malgre lui, and it is just the
Platonic element in his thought to which it owes its
hold over men's minds.

Plato's doctrine on the subject may be stated with
enough accuracy for our purpose as follows. There
is a radical distinction between sense-perception and
scientific knowledge. A scientific truth is exact and
definite, it is also true once and for all, and never
becomes truer or falser with the lapse of time. This
is the character of the propositions of the science
which Plato regarded as the type of what true science
ought to be — pure mathematics. It is very different
with the judgments which we try to base on our
sense-perceptions of the visible and tangible world.
The colours, tastes, shapes of sensible things seem
different to different percipients, and moreover they
are constantly changing in incalculable ways. We can
never be certain that two lines which seem to our
senses to be equal are really so ; it may be that the
inequality is merely too slight to be perceptible to our
senses. No figure which we can draw and see actually
has the exact properties ascribed by the mathematician
to a circle or a square. Hence Plato concludes that if
the word science be taken in its fullest sense, there can
be no science about the world which our senses reveal.
We can have only an approximate knowledge, a
knowledge which is after all, at best, probable opinion.

38 AKISTOTLE.

The objects of which the mathematician has certain,
exact, and final knowledge cannot be anything which
the senses reveal. They are objects of thought, and
the function of visible models and diagrams in mathe-
matics is not to present examples of them to us, but
only to show us imperfect approximations to them, and
so to " remind " the soul of objects and relations
between them which she has never cognised with the
bodily senses. Thus mathematical straightness is
never actually beheld, but when we see lines of less
and more approximate straightness we are " put in
mind" of that absolute straightness to which sense-
perception only approximates. So in the moral
sciences, the various " virtues " are not presented in
their perfection by the course of daily life. We do
not meet with men who are perfectly brave or just,
but the experience that one man is braver or juster
than another " calls into our mind " the thought of the
absolute standard of courage or justice implied in the
conviction that one man comes nearer to it than an-
other, and it is these absolute standards which are
the real objects of our attention when we try to define
the terms by which we describe the moral life. This
is the " epistemological " side of the famous doctrine of
the " Ideas." The main points are two : (1) that strict
science deals throughout with objects and relations
between objects which are of a purely intellectual or
conceptual order, no sense-data entering into their
constitution ; (2) since the objects of science are of
this character, it follows that the " Idea " or " concept "
or "universal" is not arrived at by any process of
" abstracting " from our experience of sensible things
the features common to them all. As the particular
fact never actually exhibits the "universal" except
approximately, the "universal" cannot be simply

CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES. 39

disentangled from particulars by abstraction. As
Plato puts it, it is " apart from " particulars, or, as
we might reword his thought, the pure concepts of
science represent " upper limits " to which the com-
parative series which we can form out of sensible
data continually approximate but do not reach them.
In his theory of knowledge Aristotle begins by
brushing aside the Platonic view. Science requires no
such " Ideas," transcending sense-experience, as Plato
had spoken of ; they are, in fact, no more than
" poetic metaphors." What is required for science is
not that there should be a " one over and above the
many " (that is, such pure concepts, unrealised in the
world of actual perception, as Plato had spoken of),
but only that it should be possible to predicate one
term universally of many others. This, by itself,
means that the "universal" is looked on as a mere
residue of the characteristics found in each member of
a group, got by abstraction — i.e. by leaving out of view
the characteristics which are peculiar to some of the
group and retaining only those which are common to
all. If Aristotle had held consistently to this point
of view, his theory of knowledge would have been a
purely empirical one. He would have had to say that,
since all the objects of knowledge are particular facts
given in sense-perception, the universal laws of science
are a mere convenient way of describing the observed
uniformities in the behaviour of sensible things. But
since it is obvious that in pure mathematics we are
not concerned with the actual relations between sen-
sible data or the actual ways in which they behave,
but with so-called "pure cases" or ideals to which
the perceived world only approximately conforms, he
would also have had to say that the propositions of
mathematics are not strictly true. In modern times

40 ARISTOTLE.

consistent empiricists have said this, but it is not a
position possible to one who had passed twenty years
in association with the mathematicians of the Academy,
and Aristotle's theory only begins in naturalism to end
in Platonism. We may condense its most striking
positions into the following statement. By science we
mean proved knowledge. And proved knowledge is
always " mediated " ; it is the knowledge of con^
elusions from premisses. A truth that is scientifi-
cally known does not stand alone. The " proof " is
simply the pointing out of the connection between the
truth we call the conclusion and other truths which
we call the premisses of our demonstration. Science
points out the reason why of things, and this is what
is meant by the Aristotelian principle that to have
science is to know things through their causes or reasons
why. In an ordered digest of scientific truths, the
proper arrangement is to begin with the simplest
and most widely extended principles and to reason
down, through successive inferences, to the most
complex propositions, the reason why of which can
only be exhibited by long chains of deductions. This
is the order of logical dependence, and is described by
Aristotle as reasoning from, what is " more knowable
in its own nature," * the simple, to what is usually
" more familiar to ws," because less removed from the
infinite wealth of sense-perception, the complex. In
discovery we have usually to reverse the process and
argue from " the familiar to us," highly complex facts,
to " the more knowable in its own nature," the simpler
principles implied in the facts.

It follows that Aristotle, after all, admitjs the

* This simple expression acquires a mysterious appearance
in mediaeval philosophy from the standing mistranslation notiora
natures, " better known to nature."

CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES. 41

disparateness of sense-perception and scientific know-
ledge. Sense-perception of itself never gives us scien-
tific truth, because it can only assure us that a fact is
so; it cannot explain the fact by showing its con-
nection with the rest of the system of facts, " it does
not give the reason for the fact." Knowledge of
perception is always " immediate," and for that very
reason is never scientific. If we stood on the moon
and saw the earth interposing between us and the
sun, we should still not have scientific knowledge
about the eclipse, because "we should still have to
ask for the reason why" (In fact, we should not
know the reason why without a theory of light includ-
ing the proposition that light-waves are propagated
in straight lines and several others.) Similarly
Aristotle insists that Induction does not yield scien-
tific proof. " He who makes an induction points out
something, but does not demonstrate anything."

For instance, if we know that each species of
animal which is without a gall is long-lived, we may
make the induction that all animals without a gall are
long-lived, but in doing so we have got no nearer to
seeing why or how the absence of a gall makes for
longevity. The questions which we may raise in
science may all be reduced to four heads : (1) Does
this thing exist 1 (2) Does this event occur 1 (3) If the
thing exists, precisely what is it ? and (4) If the event
occurs, why does it occur? and science has not com-
pleted its task unless it can advance from the solution
of the first two questions to that of the latter two.
Science is no mere catalogue of things and events ; it
consists of inquiries into the " real essences " and
characteristics of things and the laws of connection
betw^een events.

Looking at scientific reasoning, then, from the point

42 AEISTOTLE.

of view of its formal character, we may say that all
science consists in the search for " middle terms " of
syllogisms, by which to connect the truth which
appears as a conclusion with the less complex truths
which appear as the premisses from which it is drawn.
When we ask, " does such a thing exist ? " or " does such
an event happen ? " we are asking, " is there a middle
term which can connect the thing or event in question
with the rest of known reality 1 " Since it is a rule of
the syllogism that the middle term must be taken
universally, at least once in the premisses, the search
for middle terms may also be described as the search
for universals, and we may speak of science as know-
ledge of the universal interconnections between facts
and events.

A science, then, may be analysed into three con-
stituents. These are : (1) A determinate class of
objects which form the subject-matter of its inquiries.
In an orderly exhibition of the contents of the
science, these appear, as in Euclid, as the initial
data about which the science reasons. (2) A number
of principles, postulates, and axioms, from which our
demonstrations must start. Some of these will be
principles employed in all scientific reasoning ; others
will be specific to the subject-matter with which a
particular science is concerned. (3) Certain charac-
teristics of the objects under study which can be
shown by means of our axioms and postulates to
follow from our initial definitions, the accidentia 'per
se of the objects defined. It is these last which are
expressed by the conclusions of scientific demonstra-
tion. We are said to know scientifically that B is
true of A when we show that this follows, in virtue
of the principles of some science, from the initial
definition of A. Thus if we convinced ourselves that

CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES. 43

the sum of the angles of a plane triangle is equal to
two right angles by measurement, we could not be
said to have scientific knowledge of the proposition.
But if we show that the same proposition follows
from the definition of a plane triangle by repeated
applications of admitted axioms or postulates of
geometry, our knowledge is genuinely scientific. We
now know that it is so, and we see why it is so j we
see the connection of this truth with the simple initial
truths of geometry.

This leads us to the consideration of the most
characteristic point of Aristotle's whole theory.
Science is demonstrated knowledge — that is, it is the
knowledge that certain truths follow from still simpler
truths. Hence the simplest of all the truths of any
science cannot themselves be capable of being known
by inference. You cannot infer that the axioms of
geometry are true because its conclusions are true,
since the truth of the conclusions is itself a consequence
of the truth of the axioms. Nor yet must you ask for
demonstration of the axioms as consequences of still
simpler premisses, because if all truths can be proved,
they ought to be proved, and you would therefore
require an infinity of successive demonstrations to
prove anything whatever. But under such condi-
tions all knowledge of demonstrated truth would be
impossible. The first principles of any science must
therefore be indemonstrable. They must be known,
as facts of sense-perception are known, inmaediately
and not mediately. How then do we come by our
knowledge of them? Aristotle's answer to this
question appears at first sight curiously contradictory.
He seems to say that these simplest truths are ap-
prehended intuitively, or on inspection, as self-
evident by Intelligence or Mind. On the other

44 AEISTOTLE.

hand, he also says that they are known to us as a
result of induction from sense-experience. Thus he
seems to be either a Platonist or an empiricist, ac-
cording as you choose to remember one set of his
utterances or another, and this apparent inconsistency
has led to his authority being claimed in their favour
by thinkers of the most widely different types. But
more careful study will show that the seeming con-
fusion is due to the fact that he tries to combine
in one statement his answers to two quite different
questions : (1) how we come to reflect on the axioms,
(2) what evidence there is for their truth. To the
first question he replies, *' by induction from experi-
ence," and so far he might seem to be a precursor
of John Stuart Mill. Successive repetitions of the
same sense-perceptions give rise to a single experience,
and it is by reflection on experience that we become
aware of the most ultimate simple and universal
principles. We might illustrate his point by con-
sidering how the thought that two and two are four
may be brought before a child's mind. We might
first take two apples, and two other apples, and set the
child to count them. By repeating the process with
different apples we may teach the child to dissociate
the result of the counting from the particular apples
employed, and to advance to the thought, " any two
apples and any two other apples make four apples."
Then we might substitute pears or cherries for the
apples, so as to suggest the thought, " two fruits and
two fruits make four fruits." And by similar nvethods
we should in the end evoke the thought, " any two
objects whatever and any other two objects whatever
make four objects." This exactly illustrates Aristotle's
conception of the function of induction, or comparison
of instances, in fixing attention on a universal prin-

CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES. 45

ciple of which one had not been conscious before the
comparison was made.

Now comes in the point where Aristotle differs
wholly from all empiricists, later and earlier. Mill
regards the instances produced in the induction as
having a double function : they not merely fix the
attention on the principle, they also are the evidence
of its trutL This gives rise to the greatest difficulty
in his whole logical theory. Induction by imperfect
enumeration is pronounced to be (as it clearly is)
fallacious, yet the principle of the uniformity of
Nature which Mill regards as the ultimate premiss of
all science, is itself supposed to be proved by this
radically fallacious method. Aristotle avoids a simi-
lar inconsistency by holding that the sole function
of the induction is to fix our attention on a principle
which it does not prove. He holds that ultimate
principles neither permit of nor require proof. When
the induction has done its work in calling attention
to the principle, you have to see for yourself that the
principle is true. You see that it is true by im-
mediate inspection, just as m sense-perception you
have to see that the colour before your eyes is red or
blue. This is why Aristotle holds that the know-
ledge of the principles of science is not itself science
(demonstrated knowledge), but what he calls intelli-
gence, and we may call intellectual intuition. Thus
his doctrine is sharply distinguished not only from
empiricism (the doctrine that universal principles are
proved by particular facts), but also from all theories
of the Hegelian type which regard the principles and
the facts as somehow reciprocally proving each other,
and from the doctrine of some eminent modem
logicians who hold that "self-evidence" is not re-
quired in the ultimate principles of science, as we

46 ARISTOTLE.

are only concerned in logic with the question what
consequences follow from our initial assumptions,
and not with the truth or falsehood of the assumptions
themselves.

The result is that Aristotle does little more than
repeat the Platonic view of the nature of science.
Science consists of deductions from universal prin-
ciples which sensible experience " suggests/' but into
which, as they are apprehended by a purely intellec-
tual inspection, no sense-data enter as constituents.
The apparent rejection of "transcendental moon-
shine " has, after all, led to nothing. The only differ-
ence between Plato and his scholar lies in the clear-
ness of intellectual vision which Plato shows when he
expressly maintains in plain words that the universals
of exact science are not " in " our sense-perceptions
and therefore to be extracted from them by a process
of abstraction, but are "apart from" or "over"
them, and form an ideal system of interconnected
concepts which the experiences of sense merely
" imitate " or make approximation to.

One more point remains to be considered to com-
plete our outline of the Aristotelian theory of know-
ledge. The sciences have "principles" which are
discerned to be true by immediate inspection. But
what if one man professes to see the self-evident truth
of such an alleged principle, while another is doubtful
of its truth, or even denies it? There can be no
question of silencing the objector by a demonstration,
since no genuine simple principle admits o/ demon-
stration. All that can be done — e.y. if a man doubts
whether things equal to the same thing are equal to
one another, or whether the la,w of contradiction is
true — is to examine the consequences of a denial of the
axiom and to show that they include some which are

CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES. 47

false, or which your antagonist at least considers false.
In this way, by showing the falsity of consequences
which follow from the denial of a given " principle,"
you indirectly establish its truth. Now reasoning of
this kind differs from "science" precisely in the
point that you take as your major premiss, not what
you regard as true, but the opposite thesis of your
antagonist, which you regard as false. Your object
is not to prove a true conclusion but to show your
opponent that his premisses lead to false conclusions.
This is "dialectical" reasoning in Aristotle's sense of
the word — i.e. reasoning not from your own but from
some one else's premisses. Hence the chief philosoph-
ical importance which Aristotle ascribes to "dialec-
tic" is that it provides a method of defending the
undemonstrable axioms against objections. Dialectic
of this kind became highly important in the mediaeval
Aristotelianism of the schoolmen, with whom it
became a regular method, as may be seen e.g. in the
Summa of St. Thomas, to begin their consideration of
a doctrine by a preliminary rehearsal of all the argu-
ments they could find or devise against the conclusion
they meant to adopt. Thus the first division of any
article in the Summa Theologiae of Thomas is regularly
constituted by arguments based on the premisses of
actual or possible antagonists, an,d is strictly dialec-
tical. (To be quite accurate Aristotle should, of
course, have observed that this dialectical method of
defending a principle becomes useless in the case of a
logical axiom which is presupposed by all deduction.
For this reason Aristotle falls into fallacy when he
tries to defend the law of contradiction by dialectic.
It is true that if the law be denied, then any and
every predicate may be indifferently ascribed to any
subject. But until the law of contradiction has been

48 ARISTOTLE.

admitted, you have no right to regard it as absurd to
ascribe all predicates indiscriminately to all subjects.
Thus, it is only assumed laws which are riot ultimate
laws of logic that admit of dialectical justification. If
a truth is so ultimate that it has either to be recog-
nised by direct inspection or not at all, there can be
no arguing at all with one who cannot or will not
see it.)

CHAPTER III

FIRST PHILOSOPHY

First Philosophy is defined by Aristotle as a " science
which considers What Is simply in its character of
Being, and the properties which it has as such." That
there is, or ought to be, such a science is urged on the
ground that every " special " science deals only with
some restricted department of what is, and thus con-
siders its subject-matter not universally in its char-
acter of being, or being real, but as determined by
some more special condition. Thus, First Philosophy,
the science which attempts to discover the most
ultimate reasons of, or grounds for, the character of
things in general cannot be identified with any of the
" departmental " sciences. The same consideration
explains why it is " First Philosophy " which has to
disentangle the " principles " of the various sciences,
and defend them by dialectic against those who im-
pugn them. It is no part of the duty of a geometer
or a physicist to deal with objections to such universal
principles of reasoning as the law of contradiction.
They may safely assume such principles ; if they are
attacked, it is not by specifically geometrical or physi-
cal considerations that they can be defended. Even
the "principles of the special sciences " have not to be
examined and defended by the special sciences. They

(1,994) 4

50 ARISTOTLE.

are the starting-points of the sciences which employ
them; these sciences are therefore justified in re-
quiring that they shall be admitted as a condition of
geometrical, or physical, or biological demonstrations.
If they are called in question, the defence of them is
the business of logic.

First Philosophy, then, is the study of ** What Is
simply as such," the universal principles of structure
without which there could be no ordered system of
knowable objects. But the word "is " has more than
one sense. There are as many modes of being as
there are types of predication. "Substances," men,
liorses, and the like, have their own specific mode of
being — they are things ; qualities, such as green or
sweet, have a different mode of being — they are
not things, but " affections " or " attributes " of things.
Actions, again, such as building, killing, are neither
things nor yet " affections " of things ; their mode of
being is that they are processes which produce or
destroy things. First Philosophy is concerned with
the general character of all these modes of being, but
it is specially concerned with that mode of being which
belongs to substances. For this is the most primary
of all modes of being. We had to introduce a refer-
ence to it in our attempt to say what the mode of
being of qualities and actions is, and it would have
been the same had our illustrations been drawn from
any other "categories." Hence the central and
special problem of First Philosophy is to analyse the
notion of substance and to show the causes of the
existence of substances.

Next, we have to note that the word " substance "
itself has two senses. When we spoke of substance as
one of the categories we were using it in a secondary
sense. We meant by substances " horse," " mafi," and

FIRST PHILOSOPHY. 51

the rest of the " real kinds " which we find in Nature,
and try to reproduce in a scientific classification. In
this sense of the word " substances " are a special class
of predicates, as when we affirm of Plato that he is
a man, or of Bucephalus that he is a horse. But in
the primary sense a substance means an absolutely
individual thing, " this man," or " this horse." We
may therefore define primary substances from the
logician's point of view by saying that they can be
only subjects of predication, never predicates. Or^'
again, it is peculiar to substances, that whUe remain- [
ing numerically one a substance admits of incom-J
patible determinations, as Socrates, remaining one/
and the same Socrates, is successively young and old.
This is not true of ** qualities," "actions," and the
rest. The same colour cannot be first white and then
black ; the same act cannot be first bad and then
good. Thus we may say that individual substances
are the fixed and permanent factors in the world of
mutability, the invariants of existence. Processes
go on in them, they run the gamut of changes from
birth to decay, processes take place among them, they
act on and are acted on by one another, they fluctuate
in their qualities and their magnitude, but so long as
[a substance exists it remains numerically one and the
/same throughout all these changes. Their existence
is the first and most fundamental condition of the
existence of the universe, since they are the bearers
of all qualities, the terms of all relations, and the
agents and patients in all interaction.

The point to note is that Aristotle begins his in-
vestigation into the structure of What Is and the
causes by which it is produced by starting from the
existence of individual things belonging to the physical
order and perceived by the senses. About any such

52 ARISTOTLE.

thing we may ask two questions, (1) into what con
stituent factors can it be logically analysed? (2) and
how has it come to exhibit the character which our
analysis shows it to have? The answer to these
questions will appear from a consideration of two
standing antitheses which run through Aristotle's
philosophy, the contrast between Matter and Form,
and that between Potential and Actual, followed by
a recapitulation of his doctrine of the Four Causes,
or four senses of the word Cause.

Matter and Form. — Consider any completely de-
veloped individual thing, whether it is the product of
human manufacture, as a copper bowl, or of natural
reproduction, as an oak-tree or a horse. We shall
see at once that the bowl is like other articles made
of the same metal, candlesticks, coal-vases, in being
made of the same stuff, and unlike them in having
the special shape or structure which renders it fit
for being used as a bowl and not for holding a candle
or containing coals. So a botanist or a chemist will
tell you that the constituent tissues of an oak or
horse, or the chemical elements out of which these
tissues are built up are of the same kind as those of
an ash or an ox, but the oak differs from the ash or
the horse from the ox in characteristic structure.
We see thus that in any individual thing we can
distinguish two components, the stuff of which it
consists — which may be identical in kind with the
stuff of which things of a very different kind consist
— and the structural law of formation or arrangement
which is peculiar to the " special " kind of thing under
consideration. In the actual individual thing these
two are inseparably united ; they do not exist side
by side, as chemists say the atoms of hydrogen and
oxygen do in a drop of water ; the law of organisa-

nnn. ^^

FIRST PHILOSOPHY. 53

tion or structure is manifested in and through the
copper, or the various tissues of the living body.
Aristotle expresses this by saying that you can dis-
tinguish two aspects in an individual, its Matter,
{hyhy 'materia) and its Form (eidos, forma). The
individual is the matter as organised in accord with
a determinate principle of structure, the form. Of
these terms, the former, hyle {materia^ matter) means
literally timber, and more specifically ship's timbers,
and the selection of it to mean what is most exactly
rendered by our own word "stuff" may perhaps be
due to a reminiscence of an old Pythagorean fancy
which looked on the universe as a ship. The word
for form is the same as Plato's, and its philosophical
uses are closely connected with its mathematical sense,
"regular figure," also a Pythagorean technicality
which still survives in certain stereotyped phrases in
Euclid. Aristotle extends the analysis into Matter
and Form by analogy beyond the range of individual
substances to everything in which we can distinguish
a relatively indeterminate " somewhat " and a law or
type of order and arrangement giving it determina-
tion. Thus if we consider the relatively fixed or
"formed" character of a man in adult life, we may
look upon this character as produced out of the " raw
material " of tendencies and dispositions, which have
received a specific development along definite lines,
according to the kind of training to which the mind
has been subjected in the " formative " period of its
growth. We may therefore speak of native disposi-
tion as the matter or stuff of which character is made,
and the practical problem of education is to devise a
system of training which shall impress on this matter
precisely the form required if the grown man is to
be a good citizen of a good state. Since a man's

54 ARISTOTLE.

character itself is not a substance but a complex of
habits or fixed ways of reacting upon suggestions coming
from the world around him, this is a good instance
of the extension of the antithesis of Matter and Form
beyond the category of substance. We see then that
Matter in the Aristotelian sense must not be con-
founded with body; the relatively undetermined fac-
tor which receives completer determination by the
structural law or Form is Matter, whether it is cor-
poreal or not. This comes out with particular clear-
ness in the metaphysical interpretation put on the
logical process of definition by genus and difference.
When I define any real kind by specifying a higher
and wider class of which it is a sub-kind, and adding
the peculiar characteristics which distinguish the sub-
kind under consideration from the other sub-kinds
of the same genus, the genus may be said to stand to
the " differences " as Matter, the relatively indetermi-
nate, to the Form which gives it its structure.

We further observe that Matter and Form are
strictly correlative. The matter is called so relatively
to the form which gives it further determination.
When the words are used in their strictest sense,
with reference to an individual thing, the Form is
taken to mean the last determination by which the
thing acquires its complete character, and the Matter
is that which has yet to receive this last determination.
Thus in the case of a copper globe, the spherical
figure is said to be its Form, the copper its material.
In the case of the human body, the Matter is the
various tissues, muscles, bones, skin, &c. But each
of these things which are counted as belonging to the
Matter of the globe or the human body has, accord-
ing to Aristotle, a development behind it. Copper
is not an "element" but a specific combination of

FIRST PHILOSOPHY. 55

" elements," and the same thing is even more true of
the highly elaborate tissues of the living body. Thus
what is Matter relatively to the globe or living body
is Matter already determined by Form if we consider
it relatively to its own constituents. The so-called
" elements " of Empedocles, earth, water, air, fire, are
the matter of all chemical compounds, the Form of
each compound being its specific law of composition ;
the immediate or " proximate " Matter of the tissues
of the animal body is, according to Aristotle's biology,
the " superfluous " blood of the female parent, out of
which the various tissues in the ofi*spring are de-
veloped, and the Matter of this blood is in turn the
various substances which are taken into the body of
the parent as food and converted by assimilation into
blood. Their Matter, once more, is the earth, air,
fire, and water of which they are composed. Thus at
every stage of a process of manufacture or growth a
fresh Form is superinduced on, or developed within,
a Matter which is already itself a combination of
Matter and Form relatively to the process by which
it has itself been originated. Fully thought out, such
a view would lead to the conclusion that in the end
the simple ultimate matter of all individual things is
one and the same throughout the universe, and haa
absolutely no definite structure at all. The intro-
duction of Form or determinate structure of any
kind would then have to be thought of as coming
from an outside source, since structureless Matter
cannot be supposed to give itself all sorts of specific
determinations, as has been demonstrated in our own
times by the collapse of the " Synthetic Philosophy."
Aristotle avoids the diflficulty by holding that " pure
Matter " is a creation of our thought. In actual fact
the crudest form in which matter is found is that of

56 ARISTOTLE.

m

'. theflj

the "elements." Since the transmutability of
"elements" is an indispensable tenet in Aristotle's
Physics, we cannot avoid regarding earth, water, fire,
air, as themselves determinations by specific Form of
a still simpler Matter, though this " prime Matter "
" all alone, before a rag of Form is on," is never to be
found existing in its simplicity.*

The Potential and the Actual. — So far we have
been looking at the analysis of the individual thing, m
as the current jargon puts it, statically ; we have ^1
arrived at the antithesis of Matter and Form by con-
trasting an unfinished condition of anything with
its finished condition. But we may study the same
contrast dynamically, with special reference to the
process of making or growth by which the relatively
undetermined or unfinished becomes determined or
finished. The contrast of Matter with Form then
passes into the contrast between Potentiality and
Actuality. What this antithesis means we can best
see from the case of the growth of a living organism.
Consider the embryos of two animals, or the seeds of
two plants. Even a botanist or a physiologist may
be unable to pronounce with certainty on the species
to which the germ submitted to him belongs, and
chemical analysis may be equally at a loss. Even at
a later stage of development, the embryo of one
vertebrate animal may be indistinguishable from that
of another. Yet it is certain that one of two
originally indistinguishable germs will grow into an
oak and the other into an elm, or one into a chim-
panzee and the other into a man. However indis-

* Hudibras, Pt. 1, Canto 1, 560.

" He had First Matter seen undressed ;
He took her naked all alone,
Before one rag of Form was on. "

FIRST PHILOSOPHY. 57

tinguishable, they therefore may be said to have
different latent tendencies or possibilities of develop-
ment within them. Hence we may say of a given
germ, " though this is not yet actually an oak, it is
potentially an oak," meaning not merely that, if un-
interfered with, it will in time be an oak, but also
that by no interference can it be made to grow into
an elm or a beech. So we may look upon all pro-
cesses of production or development as processes by
which what at first possessed only the tendency to
grow along certain lines or to be worked up into a
certain form, has become actually endowed with the
character to which it possessed the tendency. The
acorn becomes in process of time an actual oak, the
baby an actual man, the copper is made into an actual
vase, right education brings out into active exercise
the special capacities of the learner. Hence the dis-
tinction between Matter and Form may also be ex
pressed by saying that the Matter is the persisten\
underlying substratiim in which the development of
the Form takes place, onthat the individual when finally
determined by the Form is the Actuality of which the
undeveloped Matter was the Potentiality. The process
of conception, birth, and growth to maturity in Nature,
or of the production of a finished article by the " arts "
whose business it is to " imitate " Nature, may be said
to be one of continuous advance towards the actual
embodiment of a Form, or law of organisation, in a
Matter having the latent potentiality of developing
along those special lines. When Aristotle is speaking
most strictly he distinguishes the process by which a
Form is realised, which he calls Energeia, from the
manifestation of the realised Form, calling the latter
Entelechy (literally "finished" or "completed" con-
dition). Often, however, he uses the word Energeia

58 AKISTOTLE.

more loosely for the actual manifestation of the Form
itself, and in this he is followed by the scholastic
writers, who render Energeia by actus or actus purus.

One presupposition of this process must be specially
noted. It is not an unending process of development
of unrealised capacities, but always has an End in
the perfectly simple sense of a last stage. We see
this best in the case of growth. The acorn grows into
the sapling and the sapling into the oak, but there is
nothing related to the oak as the oak is to the sapling.
The oak does not grow into something else. The pro-
cess of development from potential to actual in this
special case comes to an end with the emergence of the
mature oak. In the organic world the end or last state
is recognised by the fact that the organism can now
exercise the power of reproducing its like. This ten-
dency of organic process to culminate in a last stage of
complete maturity is the key to the treatment of the
problem of the " true end " of life in Aristotle's Ethics.

The Four Causes. — The conception of the world
involved in these antitheses of Form and Matter,
Potential and Actual, finds its fullest expression in
Aristotle's doctrine of the Four Causes or conditions
of the production of things. This doctrine is looked
on by Aristotle as the final solution of the problem
which had always been the central one for Greek
philosophy, What are the causes of the world-order 1
All the previous philosophies he regards as inadequate
attempts to formulate the answer to this question
which is only given completely by his own system.
Hence the doctrine requires to be stated with some
fullness. We may best approach it by starting from
the literal meaning of the Greek terms aitia, aition,
which Aristotle uses to convey the notion of cause.
Aition is properly an adjective used substantivally,

I

FIEST PHILOSOPHY. 59

and means " that on which the legal responsibility for
a given state of affairs can be laid." Similarly aitia,
the substantive, means the " credit " for good or bad,
the legal " responsibility," for an act. Now when we
ask, " what is responsible for the fact that such and
such a state of things now exists?" there are four
partial answers which may be given, and each of
these corresponds to one of the "causes." A complete
answer requires the enumeration of them all We
may mention (1) the 'matter or material cause of the
thing, (2) the law according to which it has grown or
developed, the form or formal cause, (3) the agent
with whose initial impulse the development began —
the "starting-point of the process," or, as the later
Aristotelians call it, the efficient cause, (4) the com-
pleted result of the whole process, which is present in
the case of human manufacture as a preconceived
idea determining the maker's whole method of hand-
ling his material, and in organic development in
Nature as implied in and determining the successive
stages of growth — the end ov final cause. If any one
of these had been different, the resultant state of
things would also have been different. Hence aU
four must be specified in completely accounting for
it Obvious illustrations can be given from artificial
products of human skill, but it seems clear that it
was rather reflection on the biological process of re-
production and growth which originally suggested
the analysis. Suppose we ask what was requisite in
order that there should be now an oak on a given
spot. There must have been (1) a germ from which
the oak has grown, and this germ must have had
the latent tendencies towards development which are
characteristic of oaks. This is the material cause of
the oak. (2) This germ must have followed a definite

60 ARISTOTLE.

law of growth ; it must have had a tendency to grow
in the way characteristic of oaks and to develop the
structure of an oak, not that of a plane or an ash.
This is form or formal cause. (3) Also the germ of
the oak did not come from nowhere; it grew on a
parent oak. The parent oak and its acorn-bearing
activity thus constitute the efficient cause of the
present oak. (4) And there must be a final stage to
which the whole process of growth is relative, in
which the germ or sapling is no longer becoming but
is an adult oak bearing fresh acorns. This is the end
of the process. One would not be going far wrong in
saying that Aristotle's biological cast of thought leads
him to conceive of this "end" in the case of repro-
duction as a sub-conscious purpose, just as the work-
man's thought of the result to be attained by his action
forms a conscious directing purpose in the case of
manufacture. Both in Nature and in *' art " the
" form," the *' efficient cause," and the " end " tend to
coalesce. Thus in Nature "a man begets a man,"
organic beings give birth to other organic beings of
the same kind, or, in the technical language of the
Aristotelian theory of Causation, the efficient cause
produces, as the " end " of its action, a second being
having the same " form " as itself, though realised in
different "matter," and numerically distinct from
itself. Thus the efficient cause {i.e. the parent) is a
"form" realised in matter, and the "end" is the
same " form " realised in other matter. So in " prod-
ucts of art" the true "source of the process" is the
" form " the realisation of which is the " end " or final
cause, only with this difference, that as efficient cause
the " form " exists not in the material but by way of
" idea " or " representation " in the mind of the crafts-
man. A house does not produce another house, but

>

FIRST PHILOSOPHY. 61

the house as existing in " idea " in the builder's mind
sets him at work building, and so produces a corre-
sponding house in brick or stone. Thus the ultimate
opposition is between the " cause as matter," a passive
and inert substratum of change and development and
the " formal " cause which, in the sense just explained,
is one with both the " efficient " or starting-point, and
the "end" or goal of development. It will, of
course, be seen that individual bearers of "forms"
are indispensable in the theory ; hence the notion of
activity is essential to the causal relation. It is a
relation between things, not between events. Aris-
totle has no sense of the word cause corresponding to
Mill's conception of a cause as an event which is the
uniform precursor of another event.

Two more remarks may be made in this connection.
(1) The prominence of the notion of "end" gives
Aristotle's philosophy a thorough-going " teleological "
character. God and Nature, he tells us, do nothing
aimlessly. We should probably be mistaken if we
took this to mean that " God and Nature " act every-
where with conscious design. The meaning is rather
that every natural process has a last stage in which
the " form " which was to begin with present in the
agent or " source of change " is fully realised in the
matter in which the agent has set up the process of
change. The normal thing is e.g. for animals to re-
produce " their kind " ; if the reproduction is im-
perfect or distorted, as in monstrous births, this is an
exception due to the occasional presence in " matter "
of imperfections which hinder the course of develop-
ment, and must be regarded as "contrary to the
normal course of Nature." So hybrid reproduction
is exceptional and "against Nature," and this is
shown by the sterility of hybrids, a sort of lesser

62 AEISTOTLE. ^^M

monstrosity. Even females, being *' arrested deveio^^^
ments," are a sort of still minor deviation from prin-
ciple. (2) It may just be mentioned that Aristotle
has a classification of efficient causes under the three
heads of Nature, Intelligence (or Man), and Chance.
The difference between Nature and Man or Intelli-
gence as efficient causes has already been illustrated.
It is that in causation by Nature, such as sexual re-
production, or the assimilation of nutriment, or the
conversion of one element into another in which
Aristotle believed, the form which is superinduced on
the matter by the agent already exists in the agent
itself as its form. The oak springs from a parent
oak, the conversion of nutriment into organic tissue
is due to the agency of already existing organic tissue.
In the case of human intelligence or art, the " form "
to be superinduced exists in the agent not as his
characteristic form, but by way of representation, as
a contemplated design. The man who builds a house
is not himself a house ; the form chara.cteristic of a
house is very different from that characteristic of a
man, but it is present in contemplation to the builder
before it is embodied in the actual house. A word
may be added about the third sort of efficient causality,
causation by chance. This is confined to cases which
are exceptions from the general course of Nature,
remarkable coincidences. It is what we may call
"simulated purposiveness." When something in
human affairs happens in a way which subserves the
achievement of a result but was not really brought
about by any intention to secure the result, we speak
of it as a remarkable coincidence. Thus it would , be
a coincidence if a man should be held to ransom by
brigands and his best friend should, without knowing
anything of the matter, turn up on the spot with the

FIEST PHILOSOPHY. 63

means of ransoming him. The events could not have
happened more opportunely if they had been planned,
and yet they were not planned but merely fell out
so; and since such a combination of circumstances
simulating design is unusual, it is not proper to say
that the events happened "in the course of Nature."
We therefore say it happened by chance. This
doctrine of chance has its significance for mediaeval
Ethics. In an age when the Protestant superstition
that worldly success is proof of nearness to God had
not yet been invented, the want of correspondence
between men's "deserts" and their prosperity was
accounted for by the view that the distribution of
worldly goods is, as a rule, the work of Fortune or
Chance in the Aristotelian sense ; that is, it is due to
special coincidences which may look like deliberate
design but are not really so. (See the elaborate
exposition of this in Dante, Inferno^ vii 67-97.)

Motion. — We have seen that causation, natural
or artificial, requires the production in a certain
"matter" of a certain "form " under the influence of
a certain "agent." What is the character of the
process set up by the agent in the matter and culmi-
nating in the appearance of the form^ Aristotle
answers that it is Motion (kii/iesis). The effect of the
agent on the matter is to set up in it a motion which
ends in its assuming a definite form. The important
point to be noted here is that Aristotle regards this
motion as falling wholly within the matter which is
to assume the form. It is not necessary that the
agent should itself be in motion, but only that it
should induce motion in something else. Thus in all
cases of intentional action the ultimate efficient cause
is the "idea of the result to be attained," but this
idea does not move about. By its presence to the

64 AKISTOTLE.

mind it sets something else (the members of the body)
moving. This conception of an efficient cause which,
not moving itself, by its mere presence induces move-
ment in that to which it is present, is of the highest
importance in Aristotle's theology. Of course it
follows that since the motion by which the transition
from potentiality to actuality is achieved falls wholly
within the matter acted upon, Aristotle is not troubled
with any of the questions as to the way in which
motion can be transferred from one body to another
which were so much agitated in the early days of the
modem mechanical interpretation of natural pro-
cesses. Aristotle's way of conceiving Nature is
'thoroughly non-mechanical, and approximates to
what would now be called the ascription of vital or
quasi-vital characteristics to the inorganic. As, in
the causality of "art" the mere presence of the
"form" to be embodied in a given material to the
mind of the craftsman brings about and directs the
process of manufacture, so in some analogous fashion
the presence of an efficient cause in Nature to that
on which it works is thought of as itself constituting
the "efficiency" of the cause. As Lotze phrases it,
things "take note of" one another's compresence in
the universe, or we might say the efficient cause and
that on which it exercises its efficiency are en rapport.
''Matter" is sensitive to the presence of the "effi-
cient cause," and in response to this sensitivity, puts
forth successive determinations, expands its latent
tendencies on definite lines.

The name " motion " has a wider sense for Aristotle
than it has for ourselves. He includes under the
one common name all the processes by which things
come to be what they are or cease to be what they have
been. Thus he distinguishes the following varieties of

FIRST PHILOSOPHY. 65

" motion " : generation (the coming of an individual
thing into being), with its opposite decay or comqytion
(the passing of a thing out of being), alteration (change
of quality in a thing), augmentation and diminution
(change in the m^ugnitude of a thing), motion through
space (of which latter he recognises two sub-species,
rectilinear transference and rotation in a circular orbit
about an axis). It is this last variety, motion through
space, which is the most fundamental of aD, since its
occurrence is involved in that of any of the other
types of process mentioned, though Aristotle does
not hold the thorough-going mechanical view that the
other processes are only apparent, and that, as we
might put it, qualitative change is a mere disguise
which mechanical motion wears for our senses.

The Eternity of Motion. — Certain very important
consequences follow from the conception of efficient
causation which we have been describing. Aristotle
has no sympathy with the " evolutionist " views which
had been favoured by some of his predecessors.
According to his theory of organic generation, " it
takes a man to beget a man " ; where there is a baby,
there must have been a father. Biological kinds
representing real clefts in Nature, the process of the
production of a young generation by an already adult
generation must be thought of as without beginning
and without end. There can be no natural " evolu-
tion " of animals of one species from individuals of a
diflferent kind. Nor does it occur to Aristotle to take
into account the possibility of " Creationism," the
sudden coming into being of a fully fledged first
generation at a stroke. This possibility is excluded
by the doctrine that the " matter " of a thing must
exist beforehand as an indispensable condition of the
production of that thing. Every baby, as we said,

(1.994) 5

66 AKISTOTLE.

must have had a father, but- that father must also
have been a baby before he was a full-grown man.
Hence the perpetuation of unchanging species must be
without beginning and without end. And it is implied
that all the various processes, within and without the
organism, apart from which its life could not be kept up,
must be equally without beginning and without end.
The " cosmos," or orderly world of natural processes, is
strictly " eternal " ; " motion " is everlasting and con-
tinuous, or unbroken. Even the great Christian theo-
logians who built upon Aristotle could not absolutely
break with him on this point. St. Thomas, though
obliged to admit that the world was actually created a
few thousand years before his own time, maintains that
this can only be known to be true from revelation,
philosophically it is equally tenable that the world
should have been " created from all eternity." And
it is the general doctrine of scholasticism that the ex-
pression "creation" only denotes the absolute de-
pendence of the world on God for its being. When
we say " God created the world out of nothing," we
mean that He did not make it out of pre-existing
matter, that it depends for its being on Him only ;
the expression is purely negative in its import.

God. — With the doctrine of the eternity of the
world and the processes which make up its life we
come close to the culminating theory of Aristotelian
First Philosophy, its doctrine of God, as the eternal,
unchanging source of all change, movement, and
process. All motion is a process within matter by
which the forms latent in it are brought into actual
manifestation. And the process only takes place in
the presence of an adequate efficient cause or source
of motion. Hence the eternity of natural processes
involves the existence of one or more eternal sources

FIRST PHILOSOPHY. 67

of motion. For, if we do not admit the existence of
an unoriginated and ever-present source or sources of
motion, our only alternative is to hold that the world-
process is due to a series of sources of motion existing
successively. But such a view would leave the unity
and unbroken continuity of the world-process un-
accounted for. It would give us a succession of
processes, temporally contiguous, not one unbroken
process. Hence we argue from the continuity of
motion to its dependence on a source or sources which
are permanent and present throughout the whole ever-
lasting world-process. And when we come to the
question whether there is only one such ultimate
source of movement for the whole universe, or several,
Aristotle's answer is that the supreme "Unmoved
Mover " is one. One is enough for the purpose, and
the law of parsimony forbids us to assume the super-
fluous. This then is the Aristotelian conception of
God and God's relation to the world. God is the one
supreme unchanging being to whose presence the world
responds with the whole process of cosmic development,
the ultimate educer of the series of " forms " latent in
the " matter " of the world into actual manifestation.
Standing, as He does, outside the whole process which
by His mere presence He initiates in Nature, He is
not Himself a composite of " form " and " matter," as
the products of development are. He is a pure
individual " form " or " actuality," with no history of
gradual development behind it. Thus He is a purely
immaterial being, indispensable to the world's exist-
ence, but transcending it and standing outside it
How His presence inspires the world to move Aristotle
tries to explain by the metaphor of appetition. Just
is the good I desire and conceive, without itself
"moving" "moves" my appetition, so God moves

68 ARISTOTLE.

the universe by being its good. This directly brings
about a uniform unbroken rotation of the whole
universe round its axis (in fact, the alternation of day
and night). And since this rotation is communicated
from the outermost " sphere " of heaven to all the
lesser " spheres " between it and the immovable
centre, the effects of God's presence are felt uni-
versally. At the same time, we must note that
though God is the supreme Mover of the Universe,
He is not regarded by Aristotle as its Creator, even in
the sense in which creation can be reconciled with the
eternity of the world. For the effect of God's presence
is simply to lead to the development of " form " in an
already existing " matter." Without God there could
be no " form " or order in things, not even as much as
is implied in the differentiation of matter into the
four "elements," yet "primary matter" is no less
than God a precondition of all that happens.

It is characteristic of Aristotle that his God is as
far from discharging the functions of a Providence as
He is from being a Creator. His " activity " is not,
as Plato had made it, that of the great " Shepherd of
the sheep." As far as the world is concerned, God's
only function is to be there to move its appetition. For
the rest, the unbroken activity of His life is directed
wholly inward. Aristotle expressly calls it an " activity
of immobility." More precisely, he tells us, it is activ-
ity of thought, exercised unbrokenly and everlastingly
upon the only object adequate to exercise God's contem-
plation. Himself. His life is one of everlasting self-
contemplation or " thinking of thought itself." Like all
unimpeded exercise of activity, it is attended by pleas-
ure, and as the activity is continuous, so the pleasure of
it is continuous too. At our best, when we give our-
selves up to the pure contemplative activity of scientific

FIEST PHILOSOPHY. 69

thought or aesthetic appreciation, we enter for a while
into this divine life and share the happiness of God.
But that is a theme for our chapter on the Ethics.

It is a far cry from this conception of a God un-
troubled by care for a world to which He is only
related as the object of its aspiration to the God who
cares even for the fall of the sparrow and of whom it
is written, Sic Deus dilexU mundutn^ but it was the
standing task of the philosophical theologians of the
Middle Ages to fuse the two conceptions. Plato's
God, who, if not quite the Creator, is the " Father
and Fashioner " of us all, and keeps providential
watch over the world He has fashioned, would have
lent Himself better to their purposes, but Plato was
held by the mediaeval church to have denied the re-
surrection of the body.* The combination of Aris-
totle's Theism with the Theism of early Christianity
was effected by exquisitely subtle logical devices, but
even in St. Thomas one cannot help seeing the seams.

Kor can one help seeing in Aristotle's own doctrine
the usual want of coherence between an initial anti-
Platonic bias and a final reversion to the very Platonic
positions Aristotle is fond of impugning. We are
told at the outset that the Platonic " separate forms "
are empty names, and that the real individual thing is
always a composite of matter and a form which only
exists " in matter." We find in the end that the source
of the whole process by which " matter " becomes im-
bued with " form " is a being which is *' pure '' form and
stands outside the whole development which its presence
sets up. And the issue of Aristotle's warning against
" poetic metaphors " is the doctrine that God moves
the world by being "the object of the world's desire."

* Because in the Pkaedo he makes Socrates speak of the
"saints " as living "wholly freed from the body."

CHAPTER lY

PHYSICS

There is no part of Aristotle's system which has been
more carefully thought out than his Physics ; at the
same time it is almost wholly on account of his
physical doctrines that his long ascendancy over
thought is so much to be regretted. Aristotle's
qualifications as a man of science have been much
overrated. In one department, that of descriptive
natural history, he shows himself a master of minute
and careful observation who could obtain unqualified
praise from so great a naturalist as Darwin. But in
Astronomy and Physics proper his inferiority in
mathematical thinking and his dislike for mechanical
ways of explaining facts put him at a great dis-
advantage, as compared with Plato and Plato's
Pythagorean friends. Thus his authority was for
centuries one of the chief influences which prevented
the development of Astronomy on right lines. Plato
had himself both taught the mobility of the earth and
denied correctly that the earth is at the centre of the
universe, and the "Copernican" hypothesis in As-
tronomy probably originated in the Academy. Aris-
totle, however, insists on the central position of the
earth, and violently attacks Plato for believing in its
motion. It is equally serious that he insists on treat-

PHYSICS. 71

ing the so-called "four elements" as ultimately un-
analysable forms of matter, though Plato had not only
observed that so far from being the ABC {stoicheia
or eleinenta^ literally, letters of the alphabet) of Nature
they do not deserve to be called even " syllables," but
had also definitely put forward the view that it is the
geometrical structure of the "corpuscles" of body
upon which sensible qualities depend.* It is on this
doctrine, of course, that all mathematical physics
rests. Aristotle reverts to the older theory that the
differences between one "element" and another are
qualitative differences of a sensible kind. Even in
the biological sciences Aristotle shows an unfortunate
proneness to disregard established fact when it con-
flicts with the theories for which he has a personal
liking. Thus, though the importance of the brain as
the central organ of the sensori-motor system had
been discovered in the late sixth or early fifth century
by the physician Alcmaeon of Crotona, and taught by
the great Hippocrates in the fifth and by Plato in
the fourth century, Aristotle's prejudices in favour of
the doctrines of a different school of biologists led
him to revert to the view that it is the heart which
is the centre of what we now call the "nervous
system." It is mainly on account of these reactionary
scientific views that he was attacked in the early
seventeenth century by writers like our own Francis
Bacon, who found in veneration for Aristotle one of
the chief hindrances to the free development of
natural science. The same complaints had been
made long before by critics belonging to the Platonic
Academy. It is a Platonist of the time of Marcus
Aurelius who sums up a vigorous attack on the

* Plato does not even claim to be the author of the doctrine,
«'hich he ascribes to the Pythagoreans of the age of Socrates.

72 ARISTOTLE.

Aristotelian astronomy by the remark that Aristotle
never understood that the true task of the physicist
is not to prescribe laws to Nature, but to learn from
observation of the facts what the laws followed by
Nature are.

In determining the scope of Physics, we have to
begin by considering what is the special characteristic
of things produced by Nature as contrasted with those
produced by "art." The obvious distinction, inti-
mated by the very etymology of the word " Nature "
(physisy connected with phyesthai, to grow, to be
born, as natura is with nasci), is that " what is by
Nature" is bom and grows, whereas what is as a
result of artifice is made. The " natural " may thus
be said to consist of living bodies and of their con-
stituent parts. Hence inorganic matter also is
included in "Nature," on the ground that living
tissue can be analysed back into compounds of the
"elements." Now things which are alive and grow
are distinguished from things which are made by " a
source of motion and quiescence within themselves " ;
all of them exhibit motions, changes of quality, pro-
cesses of growth and decline which are initiated from
within. Hence Nature may be defined as the totality
of things which have a source of motion internal to
themselves and of the constituent parts of such things.
Nature then comprises all beings capable of spon-
taneous change. Whatever either does not change
at all, or only changes in consequence of external
influences, is excluded from Nature.*

Thus the fundamental fact everywhere present in
Nature is "change," "process," "motion." Since

process,

* Even the "element8,"accordingto Aristotle, exhibit "spon-
taneity." Earth e.g. spontwneoualy falls dowmoards, fire and air
rise uptoards.

PHYSICS. 73

motion in the literal sense of change of position is
involved as a condition of every such process, and
such motion requires space through which to move
and time to move in, the doctrine of space and time
will also form part of Physics. Hence a great part
of Aristotle's special lectures on Physics is occupied
with discussion of the nature of space and time, and
of the continuity which we must ascribe to them if
the " continuous motion " on which the unbroken life
of the universe depends is to be real. Aristotle
knows nothing of the modem questions whether
space and time are "real" or only "phenomenal,"
whether they are " objective " or " subjective." Just
as he simply assumes that bodies are things that
really exist, whether we happen to perceive them or
not, so he assumes that the space and time in which
they move are real features of a world that does not
depend for its existence on our perceiving it.

His treatment of space is singularly naif. He
conceives it as a sort of vessel, into which you can
pour different liquids. Just as the same pot may
hold first wine and then water, so, if you can say,
"there was water here, but now there is air here,"
this implies the existence of a receptacle which once
held the water, but now holds the air. Hence a jug
or pot may be called a "place that can be carried
about," and space or place may be called "an immov-
able vessel." Hence the "place" of a thing may be
defined as the boundary, or inner surface, of the
body which immediately surrounds the thing. It
follows from this that there can be no empty space.
In the last resort, "absolute space" is the actual
surface of the outermost "heaven" which contains
everything else in itself but is not contained in any
remoter body. Thus all things whatever are "in"

74 ARISTOTLE.

this "heaven." But it is not itself "in" anything
else. In accord with the standing Greek identifica-
tion of determinate character with limitation, Aris-
totle holds that this outermost heaven must be at a
limited distance from us. Actual space is thus finite
in the sense that the volume of the universe could be
expressed as a finite number of cubic miles or yards,
though, since it must be " continuous," it is infinitely
divisible. However often you subdivide a length, an
area, or a volume, you will always be dividing it into
lesser lengths, etc., which can once more be divided.
You will never by division come to "points," i.e.
mere positions without magnitude of divisibility. i
The treatment of time is more thoughtful. Time ifl 3
inseparably connected with movement or change. We
only perceive that time has elapsed when we perceive
that change has occurred. But time is not the same
as change. For change is of difierent and incom-
mensurate kinds, change of place, change of colour,
etc. ; but to take up time is common to all these
forms of process. And time is not the same as
motion. For there are difierent rates of speed, but
the very fact that we can compare these different
velocities implies that there are not different velocities
of time. Time then is that in terms of which we
measure motion, "the number of motion in respect of
before and after," i.e. it is that by which we estimate
the duration of processes. Thus e.g. when we speak
of two minutes, two days, two months as required for
a certain process to be completed, we are counting
something. This something is time. It does not
seem to occur to Aristotle that this definition implies
that there are indivisible bits of time, though he
quite correctly states the incompatible proposition
that time is "made up of successive nows" i.e.

PHYSICS. 75

moments which have no duration at all, and can no
more be counted than the points on a straight line.
He recognises of course that the "continuity" of
motion implies that of time as well as of space.
Since, however, *' continuity " in his language means
the same thing as indefinite divisibility, it ought not
to be possible for him to regard time as " made up of
nows " ', time, like linear extension, ought for him to
be a " length of " something.

The Continuous Motion and the ** Spheres." — The
continuous world-process depends upon a continuous
movement set up in the universe as a whole by the
presence of an everlasting and unchangeable "First
Mover," God. From the self-sameness of Grod, it
follows that this most universal of movements must
be absolutely uniform. Of what precise kind can
such a movement be 1 As the source of the move-
ment is one, and the object moved is also one — viz.
the compass of the "heaven," the movement of the
primum mobile or "first moved" — the object im-
mediately stimulated to motion by God's presence to
it, must be mechanically simple. Now Aristotle,
mistakenly, held that there are two forms of move-
ment which are simple and unanalysable, motion
of translation along a straight line, and motion of
rotation round an axis. He is at pains to argue that
rectilinear motion, which we easily discover to be
that characteristic of bodies near the earth's surface
when left to themselves, cannot be the kind of move-
ment which belongs to the "heaven" as a whole.
For continuous rectilinear movement in the same
direction could not go on for ever on his assumption
that there is no space outside the "heaven," which
is itself at a finite distance from us. And motion
to and fro would not be unbroken, since Aristotle

76 AEISTOTLE.

argues that every time a moving body reached the
end of its path, and the sense of its movement was
reversed, it would be for two consecutive moments in
the same place, and therefore at rest. Reversal of
sense would imply a discontinuity. Hence he decides
that the primary unbroken movement must be the
rotation of the "first moved" — that is, the heaven
containing the fixed stars — round its axis. This is
the only movement which could go on for ever at a
uniform rate and in the same sense. Starting with
the conviction that the earth is at rest in the centre
of the universe, he inevitably accounts for the alter-
nation of day and night as the effect of such a
revolution of the whole universe round an axis pass-
ing through the centre of the earth. The universe is
thus thought of as bounded by a spherical surface, on
the concave side of which are the fixed stars, which
are therefore one and all at the same distance from
us. This sphere, under the immediate influence of
God, revolves on its axis once in twenty-four hours,
and this period of revolution is absolutely uniform.
Next the apparently irregular paths of the " planets "
known to Aristotle (i.e. the moon, Mercury, Venus,
the sun. Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) are resolved into com-
binations of similar uniform rotations, each planet
having as many " spheres " assigned to it as are
requisite for the analysis of its apparent path into
perfectly circular elementary motions. Altogether
Aristotle holds that fifty-four such rotating spheres
are required over and above the " first moved " itself,
whose rotation is, of course, communicated to all the
lesser " spheres " included within it. As in the case
of the " first moved," the uniform unceasing rotation
of each " sphere " is explained by the influence on it
of an unchanging immaterial " form," which is to its

PHYSICS. 77

own " sphere " what God is to the universe as a whole.
In the Aristotelianism of the mediaeval Church these
pure forms or intelligences which originate the move-
ments of the various planetary spheres are naturally
identified with angels. It is e.g. to the angelic in-
telligences that " move " the heaven of Venus, which
comes third in order counting outward from the
earth, that Dante addresses his famous Canzone,
Voi cK intendendo il terzo del movete. The mediaeval
astronomy, however, differs in two important respects
from that of Aristotle himself. (1) The number of
" spheres " is different. Increasing knowledge of the
complexity of the paths of the planets showed that if
their paths are to be analysed into combinations of
circular motions, fifty-four such rotations must be an
altogether inadequate number. Aristotle's method of
analysis of the heavenly movements was therefore
combined with either or both of two others originated
by pure astronomers who sat loose to metaphysics.
One of these methods was to account for a planet's
path by the introduction of epicycles. The planet
was thought of not as fixed at a given point on its
principal sphere, but as situated on the circumference
of a lesser sphere which has its centre at a fixed point
of the principal sphere and rotates around an axis
passing through this centre. If need were, this type
of hypothesis could be further complicated by im-
agining any number of such epicycles within epicycles.
The other method was the employment of " eccentrics,"
i.e. circular movements which are described not about
the common centre of the earth and the universe, but
about some point in its neighbourhood. By com-
binations of epicycles and eccentrics the mediaeval
astronomers contrived to reduce the number of
principal spheres to one for each planet, the arrange-

78 ARISTOTLE.

ment we find in Dante. (2) Also real or supposed
astronomical perturbations unknown to Aristotle led
some mediaeval theorists to follow the scheme devised
by Alphonso the Wise of Castile, in which further
spheres are inserted between that of Saturn, the
outermost planet, and the " first moved." In Dante,
we have, excluding the "empyrean" or immovable
heaven where God and the blessed are, nine " spheres,"
one for each of the planets, one for the fixed stars, and
one for the "first moved," which is now distinguished
from the heaven of the stars. In Milton, who adopts
the "Alphonsine" scheme, we have further a sphere
called the " second movable " or " crystalline " intro-
duced between the heaven of the fixed stars and the
"first moved," to account for the imaginary pheno-
menon of "trepidation."* In reading Dante, Shake-
speare, and Milton, we have always to remember that
none of these reproduces the Aristotelian doctrine of
the " spheres " accurately ; their astronomy is an
amalgam of Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Hipparchus.

So far, the doctrine of the fifty-five "spheres"
might be no more than a legitimate mathematical
fiction, a convenient device for analysing the com-
plicated apparent movements of the heavenly bodies
into circular components. This was originally the
part played by " spheres " in ancient astronomical
theory, and it is worth while to be quite clear about
the fact, as there is a mistaken impression widely
current to-day that Aristotle's astronomy is typical
of Greek views in general. The truth is that it is
peculiar to himself. The origin of the theory was
Academic. Plato proposed to the Academy as a
♦ Paradise Lost, iii. 481.

" They pass the planets seven, and pass the fixed,
And that crystalline sphere whose balance weighs
The trepidation talked, and that first moved."

I

PHYSICS. 79

subject of inquiry, to devise such a mathematical
analysis of astronomical motions as will best ''save
the appearances," i.e. will most simply account for the
apparent paths of the planets. The analysis of these
paths into resultants of several rotations was offered
as a solution by the astronomer Eudoxus of Cnidus.
So far, the " spheres," then, were a mere kinematical
hypothesis. What Aristotle did, and it is perhaps
the most retrograde step ever taken in the history
of a science, was to convert the mathematical hypo-
thesis into physical fact. The "spheres" become
with him real bodies, and as none of the bodies we
are familiar with exhibit any tendency to rotate in
circles when left to themselves, Aristotle was forced
to introduce into Physics the disastrous theory, which
it was a great part of Galileo's life-work to destroy,
that the stuff of which the spheres are made is a
"fifth body," different from the "elements" of which
the bodies among which we live are made. Hence he
makes an absolute distinction between two kinds of
matter, "celestial matter," the "fifth body," and
"terrestrial" or "elementary" matter. The funda-
mental difference is that "terrestrial" or "ele-
mentary" matter, left to itself, follows a rectilinear
path, "celestial" matter rotates, but it is further
inferred from the supposed absolute uniformity of
the celestial movements that "celestial matter" is
simple, uncompounded, incapable of change, and con-
sequently that no new state of things can ever arise
in the heavens. The spheres and planets have always
been and will always be exactly as they are at
the present moment. Mutability is confined to the
region of " terrestrial " or " elementary " matter, which
only extends as far as the orbit of the moon, the
"lowest of the celestial bodies," because it is only

80 AKISTOTLE.

"terrestrial" things which are, as we should say,
chemical coropounds. This is the doctrine which
Galileo has in mind when he dwells on such newly-
discovered astronomical facts as the existence of sun-
spots and variable stars, and the signs of irregularity
presented by the moon's surface.* The distinction
is peculiar to Aristotle. No one before him had ever
thought of supposing the heavenly bodies to be made
of any materials other than those of which " bodies
terrestrial " are made. In the Academic attack on
Aristotle's science of which we have already spoken
the two points singled out for reprobation are (1) his
rejection of the principle that all moving bodies, left
to themselves, follow a rectilinear path, and (2) his
denial that the heavenly bodies are made of the same
"elements" as everything else. (It may just be
mentioned in passing that our word quintessence gets
its sense from the supposed special " nobility " of the
incorruptible " fifth body.")

Terrestrial Bodies. — As we have seen already,
Aristotle was out of sympathy with the tendency to
regard the sensible differences between bodies as con-
sequences of more ultimate differences in the geomet-
rical structure of their particles. Hence his whole
attitude towards the problems of that branch of
natural science which we call physics is quite unlike
any view to which we are accustomed. He roA^erts
from the mathematical lines of thought current in
Plato's Academy to the type of view more natural to
the " plain man," and, like the earliest sixth-century
men of science, regards the qualitative differences
which our senses apprehend as fundamental. Among
these, particular stress is laid on the difference in

* For a mediaeval " Aristotelian " explanation of the "face in
the moon," see Dante Paradiso, ii. 46-105.

PHYSICS. 81

sensible temperature (the hot — the cold), in saturation
(the dry — the moist), and in density (the dense — the
rare). If we consider the first two of these opposi-
tions, we can make four binary combinations of the
elementary "opposite" characters, viz, hot and dry,
hot and moist, cold and moist, cold and dry. These
combinations are regarded as corresponding respec-
tively to the sensible characteristics of the four bodies
which Empedocles, the father of Greek chemistry, had
treated as the ultimate components of everything.
Fire is hot and dry, air hot and moist, water moist
and cold, earth cold and dry. This reflection shows
us why Aristotle held that the most rudimentary
form in which *' matter " ever actually exists is that
of one of these "elements." Each of them has one
quality in common with another, and it is in virtue of
this that a portion of one element can be assimilated
by and transmuted into another, a process which
seems to the untutored eye to be constantly recurring
in Nature. We also observe that the order in which
the " elements " appear, when so arranged as to form
a series in which each term has one quality in com-
mon with each of its neighbours, is that of their
increasing density. This would help to make the
conception of their transmutability all the more
natural, as it suggests that the process may be effected
by steady condensation. We must remember care-
fully that for Aristotle, who denies the possibility of
a vacuum, as for the mediaeval alchemists, condensa-
tion does not mean a mere diminution of the distances
between corpuscles which remain unchanged in char-
acter, but is a process of real qualitative change in
the body which undergoes it. Incidentally we may
remark that all changes of quality are regarded by
Aristotle as stages in a continuous " movement " from

(1,994) 6

82 AEISTOTLE.

one extreme of a scale to another. For example,
colours, with him as with Goethe, form a series of
which the " opposites " white and black are the end-
points. Every other colour is a combination of white
and black according to a definite proportion.

The Aristotelian doctrine of weight was one of the
chief obstacles which seventeenth-century science had
to contend with in establishing correct notions in
dynamics. It is a curious feature of Greek science
before Aristotle that, though the facts connected wit'
gravity were well known, no one introduced th
notion of weight to account for them. The differem
between heavy bodies and light bodies had been
previously treated as secondary for science. Plato's
treatment of the matter is typical of the best fourth-
century science. We riiust not try to explain why
the heavier bodies tend to move towards the earth's
surface by saying that they have a "downward"
motion ; their motion is not downward but " towards
the centre " (the earth, though not fixed at the centre
of the universe, being nearer to it than the rest of the
solar and sidereal system). Plato then explains the
tendency in virtue of which the heavier bodies move
towards the " centre " as an attraction of like for like.
The universal tendency is for smaller masses of
"earth," "water," "air," "fire" to be attracted
towards the great aggregations of the same materials.
This is far from being a satisfactory theory in the
light of facts which were not yet known to Plato, but
it is on the right lines. It starts from the conception
of the facts of gravity as due to an " attractive force "
of some kind, and it has the great merit of bringing
the " sinking " of stones and the " rising " of vapours
under the same explanation.

Aristotle, though retaining the central idea that a

ce

I

PHYSICS. 83

body tends to move towards the region where the
great cosmic mass of the same kind is congregated,
introduced the entirely incompatible notion of an
absolute distinction of "up" and "down." He
identified the centre of the universe with that of the
earth, and looked on motion to this centre as " down-
ward." This led him to make a distinction between
" heavy " bodies, which naturally tend to move
"down," and "light" bodies, which tend to move
" up " away from the centre. The doctrine works
out thus. The heaviest elements tend to be massed
together nearest the centre, the lightest to be furthest
from it. Each element thus has its " proper place,"
that of water being immediately above earth, that of
air next, and that of fire furthest from the centre, and
nearest to the regions occupied by " celestial matter."
(Readers of Dante will recollect the ascent from the
Earthly Paradise through the "sphere of fire" with
which the Paradiso opens.)

In its own "proper region" a body is simply
quiescent; as we should say, any fluid loses its
weight when immersed in itself. When a portion
of an element is out of its own region and sur-
rounded by the great cosmic aggregate of another
element, either of two cases may occur. The body
which is " out of its element " may be below its proper
place, in which case it tends to move perpendicularly
upwards to its place, or it may be above its proper
place, and then it tends to move perpendicularly
"down" until it reaches its place. Hence the two
elements whose " proper place " is " below," earth and
water, are absolutely heavy; those whose "proper
place " is " above," air and fire, are light. It was this
supposed real distinction between motion " up " and
motion " down " which made it so hard for the con-

84 ARISTOTLE.

i

iflated

temporaries of Galileo to understand that an in
bladder rises for the same reason that a stone sinks.

Biology. — Of Aristotle's biology reasons of space
forbid us to say much here. But a remark or two
may be made about his theory of reproduction, since
it is constantly referred to in much modern literature
and has also played its part in theology. An inter-
esting point is the distinction between " perfect " an
" imperfect " animals. " Perfect " animals are thoi
which can only be reproduced sexually. Aristot
held, however, that there are some creatures, ev(
among vertebrates, which may be produced by the
vivifying effect of solar heat on decomposing matter,
without any parents at all. Thus malobservation of
the facts of putrefaction led to the belief that flies
and worms are engendered by heat from decaying
bodies, and it was even thought that frogs and mice
are produced in the same way from river-slime. In
this process, the so-called "aequivocal generation,"
solar heat was conceived as the operative efficient
cause which leads to the realisation of an organic
" form " in the decaying matter.

In sexual reproduction Aristotle regards the male
parent as the agent or efficient cause which contributes
the element of form and organisation to the offspring.
The female parent supplies only the raw material of
the new creature, but she supplies the whole of this.
No material is supplied by the male parent to the
body of the offspring, a theory which St. Thomas found
useful in defending the dogma of the Virgin Birth.

Psychology. — Since the mind grows and develops,
it comes under the class of things which have a
" source of motion internal to themselves," and psy-
chology is therefore, for Aristotle, a branch of Physics.
To undei-stand his treatment of psychological ques-

er-

I

PHYSICS. 85

tions we need bear two things in mind. (1) Psyche
or "soul" means in Greek more, and less, than "con-
sciousness " does to us. Consciousness is a relatively
late and highly developed manifestation of the prin-
ciple which the Greeks call "soul." That principle
shows itself not merely in consciousness but in the
whole process of nutrition and growth and the adap-
tation of motor response to an external situation.
Thus consciousness is a more secondary feature of the
"soul" in Greek philosophy than in most modern
thought, which has never ceased to be affected by
Descartes' selection of "thought" as the special
characteristic of psychical life. In common language
the word psyche is constantly used where we should
say "life" rather than "soul," and in Greek philos-
ophy a work " on the Psyche " means what we should
call one on " the principle of life." *

(2) It is a consequence of this way of thinking of
the "soul" that the process of bodily and mental
development is regarded by Aristotle as one single
continuous process. The growth of a man's intellect
and character by which he becomes a thinker and a
citizen is a continuation of the process by which his
body is conceived and born and passes into physical
manhood. This comes out in the words of the defini-
tion of the soul. "The soul is the first entelechy
(or actual realisation) of a natural organic body."
What this means is that the soul stands to the living
body as all form realised in matter does to the matter
of which it is the form, or that the soul is the
" form " of the body. What the " organic body " is
to the embryo out of which it has grown, that soul
is to the body itself. As the embryo grows into the

* In particular the importance of self -consciousness is a dis-
covery of the Neo-Platonist Plotinus.

86 AEISTOTLE.

actual living body, so the living body grows into a
body exhibiting the actual directing presence of mind.
Aristotle illustrates the relation by the remark that
if the whole body was one vast eye, sight would be
its soul. As the eye is a tool for seeing with, but a
living tool which is part of ourselves, so the body is
a like tool or instrument for living with. Hence we
may say of the soul that it is the " end " of the body,
the activity to which the body is instrumental, as
seeing is the " end " to which the eye is instrumental
But we must note that the soul is called only the^H
"first" or initial "entelechy" of the body. The^
reason is that the mere presence of the soul does not
guarantee the full living of the life to which our body
is but the instrument. If we are to live in the fullest
sense of the word, we must not merely " have " a
soul ; we " have " it even in sleep, in ignorance, in
folly. The soul itself needs further to be educated
and trained in intelligence and character, and to
exercise its intelligence and character efficiently on
the problems of thought and life. The mere "pre-
sence" of soul is only a first step in the progress
towards fullness of life. This is why Aristotle calls
the soul the Ji^'st entelechy of the living body. The
full and final entelechy is the life of intelligence and
character actively functioning.

From this conception of the soul's relation to the
body we see that Aristotle's " doctrine of body and
mind " does not readily fall into line with any of the
typical theories of our time. He neither thinks of
the soul as a thing acting on the body and acted on
by it, nor yet as a series of "states of mind" con-
comitant with certain "states of body." From his
point of view to ask whether soul and body interact,
or whether they exhibit " parallelism," would be much

PHYSICS. 87

the same thing as to ask whether life interacts with
the body, or whether there is a " parallelism " between
vital processes and bodily processes. We must not
ask at all how the body and soul are united. They
are one thing, as the matter and the form of a copper
globe are one. Thus they are in actual fact insepa-
rable. The soul is the soul of its body and the body
the body of its soul. We can only distinguish them
by logical analysis, as we can distinguish the copper
from the sphericity in the copper globe.

Grades of Psychical Life. — If we consider the order
of development, we find that some vital activities
make their appearance earlier than others, and that
it is a universal law that the more highly developed
activities always have the less highly developed as
their basis and precondition, though the less highly
developed may exist apart from the more highly de-
veloped. So we may arrange vital activities in general
in an ontogenetic order, the order in which they make
their appearance in the individual's development.
Aristotle reckons three such stages, the "nutritive,"
the " sensitive," and the *' intelligent." The lowest
form in which life shows itself at all, the level of
minimum distinction between the living and the life-
less, is the power to take in nutriment, assimilate it,
and grow. In vegetables the development is arrested
at this point. With the animals we reach the next
highest level, that of " sensitive " life. For all animals
have at least the sense of touch. Thus they all show
sense-perception, and it is a consequence of this that
they exhibit " appetition," the simplest form of
conation, and the rudiments of feeling and "temper."
For what has sensations can also feel pleasure and
pain, and what can feel pleasure and pain can desire,
since desire is only appetition of what is pleasant.

88 ARISTOTLE. i

Thus in the animals we have the beginnings of cogni-
tion, conation, and affective and emotional life in
general. And Aristotle adds that locomotion makes
its appearance at this level; animals do not, like
plants, have to trust to their supply of nutriment
coming to them ; they can go to it.

The third level, that of "intelligence," i.e. the
power to compare, calculate, and reflect, and to order
one's life by conscious rule, is exhibited by man.
What distinguishes life at this level from mere
" sensitive " life is, on the intellectual side, the ability
to cognise universal truths, on the conative, the power
to live by rule instead of being swayed by momentary
" appetition." The former gives us the possibility of
science, the latter of moral excellence.*

Sensation. — Life manifests itself at the animal
level on the cognitive side as sense-perception, on
the conative as appetition or desire, on the affective
as feeling of pleasure or pain, and in such simple
emotional moods as "temper," resentment, longing.
Aristotle gives sensation a logical priority over the
conative and emotional expression of " animal " life.
To experience appetition or anger or desire you must
have an object which you crave for or desire or are
angry with, and it is only when you have reached the
level of presentations through the senses that you can
be said to have an object. Appetition or " temper "
is as real a fact as perception, but you cannot crave
for or feel angry with a thing you do not apprehend.

Ai'istotle's definition of sense-perception is that it
is a "capacity for discerning" or distinguishing be-

* Cf. Dante's "Fatti non foste a viver come bniti,

Ma per seguir virtute e conoscenza "

— that is, to follow practical [virtute] and speculative [conoscenza)
reason.

PHYSICS. 89

tween "the sensible qualities of things." His con-
ception of the process by which the discernment or
distinguishing is effected is not altogether happy.
In sense-perception the soul "takes into itself the
form of the thing perceived without its matter^ as
sealing-wax receives the shape of an iron seal-ring
without the iron." To understand this, we have to
remember that for Aristotle the sensible qualities of
the external world, colour, tones, tastes, and the rest,
are not effects of mechanical stimulation of our sense-
organs, but real qualities of bodies. The hardness
of iron, the redness of a piece of red wax are all
primarily "in" the iron or the wax. They are
"forms," or determinations by definite law, of the
" matter " of the iron or the wax. This will become
clearer if we consider a definite example, the red
colour of the wax. In the wax the red colour is a
definite combination of the colour-opposites white and
black according to a fixed ratio. Now Aristotle's
view of the process of sense-perception is that when I
become aware of the red colour the same proportion
of white to black which makes the wax red is repro-
duced in my organ of vision ; my eye, while I am
seeing the red, " assimilated " to the wax, is itself for
the time actually "reddened." But it does not be-
come wcux although the red thing I am looking at is
a piece of red wcux. The eye remains a thing com-
posed of living tissues. This is what is meant by
saying that in seeing the colours of things the eye
receives "forms" without the "matter" of the things
in which those forms are exhibited. CThus the process
of sense-perception is one in which the organ of sense
is temporarily assimilated to the thing apprehended
in respect of the particular quality cognised by that
organ, but in respect of no other.^ According to Aris-

90 AKISTOTLE.

1

totle this process of "assimilation" always requires
the presence of a " medium." If an object is in im-
mediate contact with the eye we cannot see its colour ;
if it is too near the ear, we do not discern the note it
gives out. Even in the case of touch and taste there
is no immediate contact between the object perceived
and the true organ of perce^Dtion. For in touch the
" flesh " is not the organ of apprehension but an
integument surrounding it and capable of acting as
an intermediary between it and things. Thus per-
ception is always accomplished by a " motion " set up
in the "medium" by the external object, and by the
medium in our sense-organs. Aristotle thus contrives
to bring correct apprehension by sense of the qualities
of things under the formula of the " right mean " or
" right proportion," which is better known from the
use made of it in the philosopher's theory of conduct.
The colour of a surface, the pitch of the note given
out by a vibrating string, etc., depend on, and vary
with, certain forms or ratios " in " the surface or the
vibrating string; our correct apprehension of the
qualities depends on the reproduction of the samfie
ratios in our sense-organs, the establishment of the
" right proportion " in us. That this " right propor-
tion " may be reproduced in our own sense-organs it
is necessary (1) that the medium should have none of
the sensible qualities for the apprehension whereof it
serves as medium, e.g. the medium in colour-perception
must be colourless. If it had a colour of its own, the
" motion " set up by the coloured bodies we apprehend
would not be transmitted undistorted to our organs ;
we should see everything through a coloured haze.
It is necessary for the same reason (2) that the per-
cipient organ itself, when in a state of quiescence,
should possess none of the qualities which can be in-

PHYSICS. 91

duced in it by stimulation. The upshot of the whole
theory is that the sense-organ is " potentially " what
the sense-quality it apprehends is actually. Actual per-
ceiving is just that special transition from the potential
to the actual which results in making the organ for
the time being actually oi the same quality as the object.
The Common Sensibles and the Common Sense-
organ. — Every sense has a range of qualities con-
nected 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
characters 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 per-
ceives hy 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 in-
tellectual 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.

92 ARISTOTLE.

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 appre-
hending 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-per-

PHYSICS. 93

ception 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 sensa-
tion-processes. Sleeping and waking and the ex-
periences 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

94 AKISTOTLE.

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 tlie phrase sensus communis
to mean tactful sympathy, the feeling of fellowship
with our kind on which the Stoic philosophers laid so ^m
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 truth is achieved with greater
and greater success until it culminates in the appre-
hension 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 rela-
tion 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

PHYSICS. 95

its contemplation of reality. In this sense, the pro-
cess 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 under-
stands— 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 modem empiricists in holding that " uni-
versals" really exist "in" things, and are the links
of connection between them, he agrees with the em-
piricist that knowledge is not the resultant of a com-
bination 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

96 AEISTOTLE.

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 appre-
hends. 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 dow^H
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 natu-
ralistic 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 under-
stands, just as light may be said to make the colours

PHYSICS. 97

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 activiiy. . . .
It has no intermivssion 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 inter-
pretation 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 hsid 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 enlight-
ened 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 Roshd)
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 cen-
tury in general read Aristotle through the eyes of
Averroes, "^Ae Commentator," as St. Thomas calls
him, " Averrois che il gran commento feo," as Dante

(1,994) 7

98 AKISTOTLE.

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 hurtmn in-
telligence. 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." Aristotle
had said of it that it is the only thing in us which
is not contributed by our parents, but comes "from
outside." In Christian theology this becomes the
doctrine that the " rational soul " is directly created
by God.

I

CHAPTER Y

PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY

Hitherto we have been concerned with the specu-
lative 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 under-
standing 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

100 ARISTOTLE.

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 prescriptions which will effect a
cure in all cases, but are content with general direc-
tions 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. Success-
ful 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 poli-
tics, the art of the statesman, to prescribe to the
practitioners of all other arts and professions the

PKACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 101

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 com-
munity. Among the other professions and arts which
make the materials the statesman employs, the pro-
fession of the educator stands foremost. The states-
man 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 1
Aristotle answers that as far as the mere name is con-
cerned, there is a general agreement to call the best
life, Eudaimonia, Happiness. But the real problem
is one of fact. What knicT^of life deserves to be called
happiness 1 Plato had laid it down that the happy
life must satisfy threfLHonditions. It must be desir-
able for its own sake, it must be sufficient of itself to '^
^ia|istX-^' ^^^ ^* must be the life a wise man would
'prefer to any other. The question is,' W hat general
~fofmTila" can we fin3 which will define the life that
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

102 ARISTOTLE.

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'^efficientiy, but slntin^ life can be manifested
at HiHereht 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
acti^aJife in accord!~wltTriexcelIe'nce, or if there Sre^
"more forms oi excellence than one, in accord with the
bestand completest of them"; and we mugTadd ''in'
aoraiplete life*^To ^Eow* 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 vigor-
ous 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 advan-
tages of fortune must be presupposed. We caimot
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 crush-

PEACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 103

mg 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 con-
ditions 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 ex-
cellence, 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 lifa
ThfiJiapjgWife for man is a life of consciaus-i^llewiHg-
ofja rula To live it well, then, you need to know
whaFtKe 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 un-
ruly— 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 good-
ness of intellect and goodness of character (moral
goodness), the word character being used for the com-
plex of tempers, feelings, and the affective side of
human nature generally. In education goodness of
character has to be produced by training and dis-
cipline 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

104 AEISTOTLE.

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 good-
ness 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 im-
pulses. 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 dis-
play 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 endur-
ance, 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 un-
fairly, profligately, or like a coward. When habitua-
tion b»s brought about this result the moral excel-
lences in question have become part of our inmost

PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 105

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 tlie
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 feel-
ings. 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 spon-
taneous 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

106 ARISTOTLE.

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 ''^^|{
settled condition of the soul which wills or chooses^^B
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." ^|l

There are several points in this definition of the^"
mean upon which moral virtue depends of which we
must take note unless we are to misunderstand
Aristotle seriously. To begin with, the definition
expressly says that " moral goodness is a state of will
or choice." Thus it is not enough that one should
follow the rule of the mean outwardly in one's actions ;
one's personal will must be regulated by it. Good-
ness of character is inward ; it is not merely outward.
Next we must not suppose that Aristotle means that
the "just enough" is the same for all our feelings,
that every impulse has a moral right to the same
authority in shaping our conduct as any other. How
much or how little is the just enough in connection
with a given spring of action is one of the things
w^hich the wise man's rule has to determine, just as
the wise physician's rule may determine that a very
little quantity is the just enough in the case of some
articles of diet or curative drugs, while in the case
of others the just enough may be a considerable
amount. Also the right mean is not the same for
every one. What we have to attain is the mean
relatively to ourselves, and this will be different for
persons of different constitutions and in different
conditions. It is this relativity of the just enough
to the individual's personality and circumstances
which makes it impossible to lay down precise rules

PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 107

of conduct applicable alike to everybody, and renders
the practical attainment of goodness so hard. It is
my duty to spend some part of my income in taking
a yearly holiday, but no general rule will tell me
what percentage of my income is the right amount
for me to spend in this way. That depends on a host
of considerations, such as the excess of my income
above my necessary expenses and the like. Or again,
the just enough may vary with the same man accord-
ing to the circumstances of the particular case. No
rule of thumb application of a formula will decide
such problems. Hence Aristotle insists that the right
mean in the individual case has always to be deter-
mined by immediate insight. This is precisely why
goodness of intellect needs to be added to goodness of
character. His meaning is well brought out by an
illustration which I borrow from Professor Burnet.
"On a given occasion there will be a temperature
which is just right for my morning bath. If the
bath is hotter than this, it will be too hot ; if it is
colder, it will be too cold. But as this just right
temperature varies with the condition of my body, it
cannot be ascertained by simply using a thermometer.
If I am in good general health I shall, however,
know by the feel of the water when the temperature
is right. So if I am in good moral health I shall
know, without appealing to a formal code of maxims,
what is the right degree, e.g. of indignation to show
in a given case, how it should be shown and towards
whom." Thus we see why Aristotle demands good-
ness of character as a preliminary condition of good-
ness of intellect or judgment in moral matters.
Finally, if we ask by what rule the mean is deter-
mined, the answer will be that the rule is the judg-
ment of the legislator who determines what is the

108 ARISTOTLE.

right mean by his knowledge of the conditions
which the well-being of the community depends. He
then embodies his insight in the laws which he makes
and the regulations he imposes on the educators of
youth. The final aim of education in goodness is to
make our immediate judgment as to what is right
coincide with the spirit of a wise legislation.

The introduction of the reference to will or choice
into the definition of goodness of character leads
Aristotle to consider the relation of will to conduct.
His main object is to escape the paradoxical doctrine
which superficial students might derive from the
works of Plato, that wrong-doing is always well-
meaning ignorance. Aristotle's point is that it is
the condition of will revealed by men's acts which is
the real object of our approval or blame. This is
because in voluntary action the man himself is the
efficient cause of his act. Hence the law recognises
only two grounds on which a man may plead that he
is not answerable for what he does. (1) Actual
physical compulsion by ybrcema/6«^e. (2) Ignorance,
not due to the man's own previous negligence, of some
circumstances material to the issue. When either of
these pleas can be made with truth the man does not
really contribute by his choice to the resulting act,
and therefore is not really its cause. But a plea of
ignorance of the general laws of morality does not
excuse. I cannot escape responsibility for a murder
by pleading that I did not know that murder is
wrong. Such a plea does not exempt me from having
been the cause of the murder ; it only shows that my
moral principles are depraved.

More precisely will is a process which has both an
intellectual and an appetitive element. The appetitive
element is our wish for some result. The intellectual

} on^l

PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 109

factor is the calculation of the steps by which that
result may be obtained. When we wish for the
result we begin to consider how it might be brought
about, and we continue our analysis until we find
that the chain of conditions requisite may be started
by the performance of some act now in our power
to do. Will may thus be defined as the deliberate
appetition of something within our power, and the
very definition shows that our choice is an efiicient
cause of the acts we choose to do. This is why we
rightly regard men as responsible or answerable for
their acts of choice, good and bad alike.

From the analysis of goodness of character we
proceed to that of goodness of intellect. The im-
portant point is to decide which of all the forms of
goodness of intellect is that which must be combined
with goodness of character to make a man fit to be a
citizen of the state. It must be a kind of intellectual
excellence which makes a man see what the right
rule by which the mean is determined is. Now when
we come to consider the different excellences of
intellect we find that they all fall under one of two
heads, theoretical or speculative wisdom and practical
wisdom.

Theoretical wisdom is contained in the sciences
which give us universal truths about the fixed and
unalterable relations of the things in the universe, or,
as we should say, which teach us the laws of Natura
Its method is syllogism, the function of which is to
make us see how the more complex truths are implied
in simpler principles. Practical wisdom is intelligence
as employed in controlling and directing human life to
the production of the happy life for a community, and
it is this form of intellectual excellence which we
require of the statesman. It is required of him not

110 ARISTOTLE.

only that he should know in general what things are
good for man, but also that he should be able to judge
correctly that in given circumstances such and such
an act is the one which will secure the good. He
must not only know the right rule itself, which
corresponds to the major premiss of syllogism in
theoretical science, but he must understand the
character of particular acts so as to see that they
fall under the right rule. Thus the method of prac-
tical wisdom will be analogous to that of theoretical
wisdom. In both cases what we have to do is to see
that certain special facts are cases of a general law or
rule. Hence Aristotle calls the method of practical
wisdom the practical syllogism or syllogism of action,
since its peculiarity is that what issues from the
putting together of the premisses is not an assertion
but the performance of an act. In the syllogism of
action, the conclusion, that is to say, the performance
of a given act, just as in the syllogism of theory, is
connected with the rule given in the major premiss
by a statement of fact ; thus e.g. the performance of
a specific act such as the writing of this book is con-
nected with the general rule that what helps to spread
knowledge ought to be done by the conviction that
the writing of this book helps to spread knowledge.
Our perception of such a fact is like a sense-perception
in its directness and immediacy. We see therefore
that the kind of intellectual excellence which the
statesman must possess embraces at once a right con-
ception of the general character of the life which is
best for man, because it calls into play his specific
capacities as a human being, and also a sound judg-
ment in virtue of which he sees correctly that par-
ticular acts ai-e expressions of this good for man.
This, then, is what we mean by practical wisdom.

PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. Ill

So far, then, it would seem that the best Kfe for
man is just the life of co-operation in the life of the
State, which man, being the only political animal or
animal capable of life in a State, has as his peculiar
work, and as if the end of all moral education should
be to make us good and efficient citizens. But in the
Ethics, as elsewhere, the end of Aristotle's argument
has a way of forgetting the beginning. We find that
there is after all a still higher life open to man than
that of public affairs. Affairs and business of all
kinds are only undertaken as means to getting leisure,
just as civilised men go to war, not for the love of war
itself, but to secure peace. The highest aim of life,
then, is not the carrying on of political business for
its own sake, but the worthy and noble employment
of leisure, the periods in which we are our own
masters. It has the advantage that it depends more
purely on ourselves and our own internal resources
than any other life of which we know, for it needs
very little equipment with external goods as compared
with any form of the life of action. It calls into
play the very highest of our own capacities as in-
telligent beings, and for that very reason the active
living of it is attended with the purest of all pleasures.
In it, moreover, we enter at intervals and for a little
while, so far as the conditions of our mundane exist-
ence allow, into the life which God enjoys through
an unbroken eternity. Thus we reach the curious
paradox that while the life of contemplation is said
to be that of our truest self, it is also maintained that
this highest and happiest life is one which we live,
not in respect of being human, but in respect of having
a divine something in us. When we ask what this
life of contemplation includes, we see from references
in the Politics that it includes the genuinely aesthetic

112 ARISTOTLE.

appreciation of good literature and music and pictorial
and plastic art, but there can be no doubt that what
bulks most largely in Aristotle's mind is the active
pursuit of science for its own sake, particularly of
such studies as First Philosophy and Physics, which
deal with the fundamental structure of the universe.
Aristotle thus definitely ends by placing the life of
the scholar and the student on the very summit of
felicity.

It is from this doctrine that mediaeval Christianity
derives its opposition between the vita contemplativa
and vita activa and its preference for the former, though
in the mediaeval mind the contemplative life has come
to mean generally a kind of brooding over theological
speculations and of absorption in mystical ecstasy
very foreign to the spirit of Aristotle. The types
by which the contrast of the two lives is illustrated —
Rachel and Leah, Mary and Martha — are familiar to
all readers of Christian literature.

The Theory of the State. — Man is by nature a
political animal, a being who can only develop his
capacities by sharing in the life of a community.
Hence Aristotle definitely rejects the view that the
State or Society is a mere creature of convention or
agreement, an institution made by compact between
individuals for certain special ends, not growing
naturally out of the universal demands and aspira-
tions of humanity. Mankind, he urges, have never
existed at all as isolated individuals. Some rudi-
mentary form of social organisation is to be found
wherever men are to be found. The actual stages
in the development of social organisation have been
three — the family, the village community, the city
State. In the very rudest forms of social life known
to us, the patriarchal family, not the individual, is

PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 113

the social unit. Men lived at first in separate families
under the control of the head of the family. Now a
family is made up in its simplest form of at least
three persons — a man, his wife, and a servant or slave
to do the hard work ; though very poor men often
have to replace the servant by an ox as the drudge of
all work. Children when they come swell the number,
and thus we see the beginnings of complex social
relations of subordination in the family itself. It
involves three such distinct relations, that of husband
and wife, that of parent and child, that of master and
man. The family passes into the village community,
partly by the tendency of several families of common
descent to remain together under the direction of the
oldest male member of the group, partly by the associa-
tion of a number of distinct families for purposes of
mutual help and protection against common dangers.
Neither of these forms of association, however, makes
adequate provision for the most permanent needs of
human nature. Complete security for a permanent
supply of material necessaries and adequate protection
only come when a number of such scattered com-
munities pool their resources, and surround them-
selves with a city wall. The city State, which has
come into being in this way, proves adequate to
provide from its own internal resources for all the
spiritual as well as the material needs of its members.
Hence the independent city State does not grow as
civilisation advances into any higher form of organi-
sation, as the family and village grew into it. It is
the end, the last word of social progress. It is
amazing to us that this piece of cheap conservatism
should have been uttered at the very time when the
system of independent city States had visibly broken
down, and a former pupil of Aristotle himself was

(1,994) 8

114 ARISTOTLE.

founding a gigantic empire to take their place as the
vehicle of civilisation.

The end for which the State exists is not merely its
own self-perpetuation. As we have seen, Aristotle
assigns a higher value to the life of the student than
to the life of practical affairs. Since it is only in the
civilised State that the student can pursue his voca-
tion, the ultimate reason for which the State exists
is to educate its citizens in such a way as shall fit
them to make the noble use of leisure. In the end
the State itself is a means to the spiritual cultivation
of its individual members. This implies that the
chosen few, who have a vocation to make full use of
the opportunities provided for leading this life of
noble leisure, are the real end for the sake of which
society exists. The other citizens who have no quali-
fication for any life higher than that of business and
affairs are making the most of themselves in devoting
their lives to the conduct and maintenance of the
organisation whose full advantages they are unequal
to share in. It is from this point of view also that
Aristotle treats the social problem of the existence
of a class whose whole life is spent in doing the hard
work of society, and thus setting the citizen body free
to make the best use it can of leisure. In the condi-
tions of life in the Greek world this class consisted
mainly of slaves, and thus the problem Aristotle has
to face is the moral justifiability of slavery. We
must remember that he knew slavery only in its com-
paratively humane Hellenic form. The slaves of
whom he speaks were household servants and assistants
in small businesses. He had not before his eyes the
system of enormous industries carried on by huge
gangs of slaves under conditions of revolting degrada-
tion which disgraced the later Roman Republic and

PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 115

the early Roman Empire, or the Southern States of
North America. His problems are in all essentials
much the same as those which concern us to-day in
connection with the social position of the classes who
do the hard bodily work of the community. As
against social revolutionaries who regard all slavery
as wrong, Aristotle holds that it would certainly be
wrong if it meant the condemnation of the slave to
a worse life than the best of which he is capable. But
it does not really mean this. Non-Greeks, "bar-
barians," do not really possess the capacity for being
their own masters or for living either the life of the
civilised man of affairs or that of the student. They
attain the highest mental and moral development of
which they are capable, not when left in their native
" barbarism," but when they occupy the position of
servants in a civilised Greek society. A Thracian
who is the slave of a decent and kindly Greek master
is living a worthier life than a Thracian who runs
wild on his "native heath." It is thus really for his
own good and for his own happiness that he should
make the best of himself; he is not wronged by
losing a " freedom " of which he is incapable of mak-
ing the proper use. Much in the same way evan-
gelical Protestants used at one time to defend negro
slavery in our own colonies by the plea that the slave
got opportunities of salvation which he could not
have enjoyed as a free heathen in his native Africa.

Much consideration is given in the Politics to the
classification of the different types of constitution
possible for the city State. The current view was
that there are three main types, distinguished by the
number of persons who form the sovereign politi-
cal authority : monarchy, in which sovereign power
belongs to a single person ; oligarchy, in which it is

116 AKISTOTLE.

in the hands of a select few ; democracy, in which
it is enjoyed by the whole body of the citizens.
Aristotle observes, correctly, that the really funda-
mental distinction between a Greek oligarchy and a
Greek democracy was that the former was govern-
ment by the propertied classes, the latter government
by the masses. Hence the watchword of democracy
was always that all political rights should belong
equally to all citizens ; that of oligarchy, that a man's
political status should be graded according to his
"stake in the country." Both ideals are, according
to him, equally mistaken, since the real end of
government, which both overlook, is the promotion
of the " good life." In a State which recognises this
ideal, an aristocracy or government by the best, only
the "best" men will possess the full rights of citizen-
ship, whether they are many or few. There might
even be a monarch at the head of such a State, if it
happened to contain some one man of outstanding
intellectual and moral worth. Such a State should
be the very opposite of a great imperial power. It
should, that its cultivation may be the more intensive,
be as small as is compatible with complete independ-
ence of outside communities for its material and
spiritual sustenance, and its territory should only
be large enough to provide its members with the
permanent possibility of ample leisure, so long as
they are content with plain and frugal living.
Though it ought not, for military and other reasons,
to be cut off from communication with the sea,
the great military and commercial highroad of the
Greek world, it ought not to be near enough to
the coast to run any risk of imperilling its moral
cultivation by becoming a great emporium, like the
Athens of Pericles. In the organisation of the

PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 117

society care should be taken to exclude the agricul-
tural and industrial population from full citizenship,
which carries with it the right to appoint and to be
appointed as administrative magistrates. This is
because these classes, having no opportunity for the
worthy employment of leisure, cannot be trusted to
administer the State for the high ends which it is
its true function to further.

Thus Aristotle's political ideal is that of a small
but leisured and highly cultivated aristocracy, with-
out large fortunes or any remarkable differences in
material wealth, free from the spirit of adventure and
enterprise, pursuing the arts and sciences quietly
while its material needs are supplied by the labour
of a class excluded from citizenship, kindly treated
but without prospects. Weimar, in the days when
Thackeray knew it as a lad, would apparently re-
produce the ideal better than any other modern State
one can think of.

The object of the Politics is, however, not merely
to discuss the ideal State, but to give practical advice
to men who might be looking forward to actual
political life, and would therefore largely have to be
content with making the best of existing institutions.
In the absence of the ideal aristocracy, Aristotle's
preference is for what he calls Polity or constitutional
government, a sort of compromise between oligarchy
and democracy in which political power is in the
hands of the " middle " classes. Of course a practi-
cal statesman may have to work with a theoretically
undesirable constitution, such as an oligarchy or an
unqualified democracy. But it is only in an ideal
constitution that the education which makes its
subject a good man, in the philosopher's sense of the
word, will also make him a good citizen. If the

118 AEISTOTLE.

constitution is bad, then the education best fitted to
make a man loyal to it may have to be very different
from that which you would choose to make him a
good man. The discussion of the kind of education
desirable for the best kind of State, in which to be
a loyal citizen and to be a good man are the same
thing, is perhaps the most permanently valuable part
of the Politics. Though Aristotle's writings on
"practical" philosophy have been more read in
modern times than any other part of his works, they
are far from being his best and most thorough per-
formances. In no department of his thought is he
quite so slavishly dependent on his master Plato as
in the theory of the " good for man " and the char-
acter of " moral " excellence. No Aristotelian work
is quite so commonplace in its handling of a vast
subject as the Politics. In truth his interest in these
social questions is not of the deepest. He is, in
accordance with his view of the superiority of " theo-
retical science," entirely devoid of the spirit of the
social reformer. What he really cares about is
" theology " and " physics," and the fact that the
objects of the educational regulations of the Politics
are all designed to encourage the study of these
"theoretical" sciences, makes this section of the
Politics still one of the most valuable expositions of
the aims and requirements of a " liberal " education.

All education must be under public control, and
education must be universal and compulsory. Public
control is necessary, not merely to avoid educational
anarchy, but because it is a matter of importance
to the community that its future citizens should be
trained in the way which will make them most loyal
to the constitution and the ends it is designed to
subserve. Even in one of the " bad " types of State,

PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 119

where the life which the constitution tends to foster
is not the highest, the legislator's business is to see
that education is directed towards fostering the " spirit
of the constitution." There is to be an " atmosphere "
which impregnates the whole of the teaching, and it
is to be an " atmosphere " of public spirit. The only
advantage which Aristotle sees in private education
is that it allows of more modification of programme
to meet the special needs of the individual pupil than
a rigid State education which is to be the same for
all. The actual regulations which Aristotle lays down
are not very different from those of Plato. Both
philosophers hold that "primary" education, in the
early years of life, should aim partly at promoting
bodily health and growth by a proper system of
physical exercises, partly at influencing character
and giving a refined and elevated tone to the mind
by the study of letters, art, and music. Both agree
that this should be followed in the later " teens " by
two or three years of specially rigorous systematic
military training combined with a taste of actual
service in the less exhausting and less dangerous
parts of a soldier's duty. It is only after this, at
about the age at which young men now take a
" university " course, that Plato and Aristotle would
have the serious scientific training of the intellect
begun. The Politics leaves the subject just at the
point where the young men are ready to undergo
their special military training. Thus we do not know
with certainty what scientific curriculum Aristotle
would have recommended, though we may safely
guess that it would have contained comparatively
little pure mathematics, but a great deal of astronomy,
cosmology, and biology.

With respect to the " primary " education Aristotle

120 AEISTOTLE.

has a good deal to say. As " forcing " is always in-
jurious, it should not be begun too soon. For the
first five years a child's life should be given up to
healthy play. Great care must be taken that children
are not allowed to be too much with " servants," from
whom they may imbibe low tastes, and that they are
protected against any familiarity with indecency.
From five to seven a child may begin to make a first
easy acquaintance with the life of the school by look-
ing on at the lessons of its elders. The real work
of school education is to begin at seven and not
before.

We next have to consider what should be the
staple subjects of an education meant not for those
who are to follow some particular calling, but for all
the full citizens of a State. Aristotle's view is that
some "useful" subjects must, of course, be taught.
Reading and writing, for instance, are useful for the
discharge of the business of life, though their com-
mercial utility is not the highest value which they
have for us. But care must be taken that only those
" useful " studies which are also " liberal " should be
taught; "illiberal" or "mechanical" subjects must
not have any place in the curriculum. A " liberal "
education means, as the name shows, one which will
tend to make its recipient a " free man," and not a
slave in body and soul. The mechanical crafts were
felt by Aristotle to be illiberal because they leave a
man no leisure to make the best of body and mind ;
practice of them sets a stamp on the body and narrows
the mind's outlook. In principle, then, no study
should form a subject of the universal curriculum if
its only value is that it prepares a man for a pro-
fession followed as a means of making a living.
General education, all-round training which aims at

PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 121

the development of body and mind for its own sake,
must be kept free from the intrusion of everything
which has a merely commercial value and tends to
contract the mental vision. It is the same principle
which we rightly employ ourselves when we maintain
that a university education ought not to include
specialisation on merely "technical" or "profes-
sional" studies. The useful subjects which have at
the same time a higher value as contributing to the
formation of taste and character and serving to
elevate and refine the mind include, besides reading
and writing, which render great literature accessible
to us, bodily culture (the true object of which is not
merely to make the body strong and hardy, but to
develop the moral qualities of grace and courage),
music, and drawing. Aristotle holds that the real
reason for making children learn music is (1) that the
artistic appreciation of really great music is one of
the ways in which "leisure" may be worthily em-
ployed, and to appreciate music rightly we must have
some personal training in musical execution ; (2) that
all art, and music in particular, has a direct influence
on character.

Plato and Aristotle, though they differ on certain
points of detail, are agreed that the influence of music
on character, for good or bad, is enormous. Music,
they say, is the most imitative of all the arts. The
various rhythms, times, and scales imitate different
tempers and emotional moods, and it is a fundamental
law of our nature that we grow like what we take
pleasure in seeing or having imitated or represented
for us. Hence if we are early accustomed to take
pleasure in the imitation of the manly, resolute, and
orderly, these qualities will in time become part of
our own nature. This is why right musical education

122 AKISTOTLE.

is so important that Plato declared that the revolu-
tionary spirit always makes its first appearance in
innovations on established musical form.

There is, however, one important difference between
the two philosophers which must be noted, because
it concerns Aristotle's chief contribution to the phi-
losophy of fine art. Plato had in the Republic pro-
posed to expel florid, languishing, or unduly exciting
forms of music not only from the schoolroom, but
from life altogether, on the ground of their unwhole-
some tendency to foster an unstable and morbid
character in those who enjoy them. Por the same
reason he^ had proposed the entire suppression of
tragic drama. Aristotle has a theory which is directly
aimed against this overstrained Puritanism. He
holds that the exciting and sensational art which
would be very bad as daily food may be very useful
as an occasional medicine for the soul. He would
retain even the most sensational forms of music on
account of what he calls their "purgative" value.
In the same spirit he asserts that the function of
tragedy, with its sensational representations of the
calamities of its heroes, is "by the vehicle of fear
and pity to purge our minds of those and similar
emotions." The explanation of the theory is to be
sought in the literal sense of the medical term " pur-
gative." According to the medical view which we
have already found influencing his ethical doctrine,
health consists in the maintenance of an equality
between the various ingredients of the body. Every
now and again it happens that there arise superfluous
accretions of some one ingredient, which are not
carried away in the normal routine of bodily life.
These give rise to serious derangement of function,
and may permanently injure the working of the

PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 123

organism, unless they are removed in time by a
medicine which acts as a purge, and clears the body
of a superfluous accumulation. The same thing also
happens in the life of the soul. So long as we are in
good spiritual health our various feelings and emo-
tional moods will be readily discharged in action, in
the course of our daily life. But there is always the
possibility of an excessive accumulation of emotional
" moods " for which the routine of daily life does not
provide an adequate discharge in action. Unless this
tendency is checked we may contract dangerously
morbid habits of soul. Thus we need some medicine
for the soul against this danger, which may be to it
what a purgative is to the body.

Now it was a well-known fact, observed in con-
nection with some of the more extravagant religious
cults, that persons suffering from an excess of religious
frenzy might be cured homoeopathically, so to say, by
artificially arousing the very emotion in question by
the use of exciting music. Aristotle extends the
principle by suggesting that in the artificial excite-
ment aroused by violently stimulating music or in the
transports of sympathetic apprehension and pity with
which we follow the disasters of the stage-hero, we
have a safe and ready means of ridding ourselves of
morbid emotional strain which might otherwise have
worked havoc with the efficient conduct of real life.

The great value of this defence of the occasional
employment of sensation as a medicine for the soul
is obvious. Unhappily it would seem to have so
dominated Aristotle's thought on the functions of
dramatic art as to blind him to what we are accus-
tomed to think the nobler functions of tragedy. No
book has had a more curious fate than the little
manual for intending composers of tragedies which

124 AEISTOTLE.

is all that remains to us of Aristotle's lectures on
Poetry. This is not the place to tell the story of the
way in which the great classical French playwrights,
who hopelessly misunderstood the meaning of Aris-
totle's chief special directions, but quite correctly
divined that his lectures were meant to be an actual
Yade Mecum for the dramatist, deliberately con-
structed their masterpieces in absolute submission to
regulations for which they had no better reasons than
that they had once been given magisterially by an
ancient Greek philosopher. But it may be worth
while to remark that the worth of Aristotle's account
of tragedy as art-criticism has probably been vastly
overrated. From first to last the standpoint he
assumes, in his verdicts on the great tragic poets, is
that of the gallery. What he insists on all through,
probably because he has the purgative effect of the
play always in his mind, is a well-woven plot with
plenty of melodramatic surprise in the incidents and
a thoroughly sensational culmination in a scene of
unrelieved catastrophe over which the spectator can
have a good cry, and so get well "purged" of his
superfluous emotion. It is clear from his repeated
allusions that the play he admired above all others
was the King Oedipus of Sophocles, but it is equally
clear that he admired it not for the profound insight
into human life and destiny or the deep sense of the
mystery of things which some modern critics have
found in it, but because its plot is the best and most
startling detective story ever devised, and its finale a
triumph of melodramatic horror.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The English reader who wishes for further information
about Aristotle and his philosophy may be referred to any
or all of the following works : —

E. Zaller. — Aristotle and the Earlier Peripatetics. English
translation in 2 vols, by B. F. C. Costelloe and J. H.
Muirhead. London. Longmans & Co.

*E. Wallace. — Outlijies of the Philosophy of Aristotle. Cam-
bridge University Press.

G. Grote. — Aristotle. London. John Murray.

*"W. D. Ross. — The Works of Aristotle translated into English,
vol. viii., Metaphysics. Oxford. Clarendon Press.

*A. E. Taylor. — Aristotle on his Predecessors. {Metaphysics^
Bk. L, translated with notes, &c.) Chicago. Open
Court Publishing Co.

E.. D. Hicks. — Aristotle de Anima. (Greek text, English
translation. Commentary.) Cambridge University
Press.

*D. P. Chase.— TVie Ethics of Aristotle. Walter Scott Co.

*J. Burnet. — Aristotle on Education. (English translation of
Ethics, Bks. L-III. 5, X. 6 to end; Politics, VII. 17,
VIII.) Cambridge University Press,

*B. Jowett. — The Politics of Aristotle. Oxford. Clarendon
Press.

*I. By water. — Aristotle on the Art of Poetry. (Greek text,
English translation. Commentary.) Oxford. Claren-
don Press.

126 ARISCCOTLE.

J. I. Beare and G. T. Ross. — The Works of Aristotle trans-
lated into English^ Pt. I. {Parva NaturcUia, the
minor psychological works.) Oxford. Clarendon
Press.

J. I. Beare. — Greek Theories of Elementary Cognition from
Alcmaeon to Aristotle. Oxford. Clarendon Press.

The works marked by an asterisk will probably be found
most useful for the beginner. No works in foreign languages
and no editions not accompanied by an English translation
have been mentioned.

There is at present no satisfactory complete translation of
Aristotle into English. One, of which two volumes have
been mentioned above, is in course of production at the
Clarendon Press, Oxford, under the editorship of J. A. Smith
and G. T. Ross.

THE END.

PBINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT
THE PRESS OF THE PUBLISHERS.

" We have nothing but the highest praise for these httle books, and no
e who examines them will have anything else." — Westminster Gazette.

THE PEOPLE^S BOOKS

The Foundations of Science .
Embryology— The Beginnings of Life .

Biology

Zoologry : The Study of Animal Life .

Botanjr: The Modern Study of Plants.

Bacteriology

The Structure of the Earth

Evolution ....

Heredity ....

Inorganic Chemistry

Organic Chemistry .

The Principles of Electricity

Radiation ....

The Science of the Stars

The Science of Light

Weather-Science

Hypnotism and Self-Education

The Baby: A Mother's Book by a Mother

By W. C. D.Whetham, M.A., F.R.S.

By Prof. Gerald Leighton, M.D.

By Prof. W. D. Henderson, M.A.
/By Prof. E. W. MacBride, M.A.,
(. F.R.S.

By M. C. Stopes,D.Sc.,Ph.D.,F.L.S.

By W. E. Carnegie-Dickson, M.D.

By Prof. T. G. Bonney, F.R.S.

By E. S. Goodrich, M.A., F.R.S.

By J. A. S. Watson, B.Sc.

By Prof. E. C. C. Baly, F.R.S.

By Prof. J. B. Cohen, B.Sc, F.R.S.

By Norman R. Campbell, M.A.

By P. Phillips, D.Sc.

By E. W. Maunder, F. R.A.S.

By P. Phillips, D.Sc.

By R, G. K. Lempfert, M.A.

By A. M. Hutchison, M.D.

By a University Woman.

Youth and Sex— Dangers and Safe- \ By Mary Scharlieb, M.D., M.S
' " ~ ■ "■ ' / F. Arthur Sibly

M.A.,LL.D.
Davidson, M.B.,

gTiards for Boys and Girls
Marriage and Motherhood— A Wife's \ By H. S.

Handbook / F.R.C.S.E.

Lord Kelvin By A Russell, D.Sc, M.I. E.E.

Huxley By Prof. G. Leighton, M.D.

Sir William Huggins and Spectro-\ByE. W. Maunder, F.R.A.S., of the

scopic Astronomy / Roj^I Observatory, Greenwich.

Emanuel Swedenborg . . . . By L. B. De Beaumont, D.Sc.
"chinglT°°; '^^'^ Philosophy of}ByH.WildonCarr.
Psychology' .**.!!!! By H. J. Watt, M.A, Ph.D., D.Phil.
Ethics ByCanonRashdall, D.Litt., F.B.A.

Kant's Philosophy
Christianity and Christian Science
Roman Catholicism ....
The Oxford Movement .

The Bible and Criticism .

The Growth of Freedom .

Bismarck and Origin of German Empire

Oliver Cromwell

Mary Queen of Scots ....
Cecil Rhodes, 1853-1902 ....
JuHus^Caesar : Soldier. Statesman, Em- 1 g'^ ^^^^^ Hardinge

/By Prof.F.J.C. Hearnshaw, M.A

•I LL.D.

. By E. O'Neill, M.A.

By A. D. Lindsay, M.A., Oxford.
, By M. C. Sturge.

By H. B. Coxon.
, By Wilfrid Ward.
/By W. H. Bennett, M.A., D.D.,
• \ LittD.,&W. F. Adeney, M.A.,D.D.

By H. W. Nevinson,

By Prof. F. M. Powicke.

By Hilda Johnstone, M.A.

By E. O'Neill, M.A

By Ian D. Colvin.

England in the Making .

England in the Middle Ages .
The Monarchy and the People
The Industrial Revolution .
Empire and Democracy . .
Women's Suffrage , , ,
A History of Greece , ,
Shakespeare ....

Wordsworth By Rosaline Masson.

Pure Gold-A Choice ofLyricsft Sonnets By H. C. O'Neill.

Francis Bacon By Prof. A. R. Skemp, M.A,

The Brontes By Flora Masson.

Carlyle By L. Maclean Watt.

Dante By A. G. Ferrers Howell.

By W. T. Waugh, M.A.

By Arthur Jon«s, M.A

By G. S. Veitch, M.A., Litt.D.

By M. G. Fawcett, LL.D.

By E. Fearenside, B.A.

By Prof. C. Herford, Litt.D.

THE FHOPLE'S BOOKS— (Con/inMd).m\

..'il

58. Charles Dickens By Sidney Dark.

60. A Dictionary of Synonyms . , . By Austin K. Gray, B. A.

61. Home Rule By L. G. Redmond Howard.

62. Practical Astronomy .... By H. Macpherson, Jr., F.R.A

63. Aviation By S. F. Walker, R.N., M.I.E.

64. Navigation By William Hall, R.N., B.A.

65. Pond Life By E. C Ash, M.R.A.C.

66. Dietetics By Alex. Bryce, M.D., D.P.H.

67. Aristotle By Prof. A. E.Taylor, M. A., F.I

68. Friedrich Nietzsche . . . . By M. A. Mugge.

69. Eucken : Philosophy of Life . . . By A. J. Jones, M.A., B.Sc., Pt

70. Experimental Psychology of Beauty . By C. W. Valentine, B.A.

71. The Problem of Truth . . . . By H. Wildon Carr.

72. Church of England By Rev. Canon Masterman.

73. Anglo-Catholicism By A. E. Manning- Foster.

74. Hopeand Mission of the Fr-ee Churches By Rev. Edward bhillito, M.A

75. Judaism By Ephraim Levine, M.A.

76. Theosophy By Annie Besant.

78. Wellington and Waterloo ... By Major G. W. Redway.

79. Mediaeval Socialism .... By Bede Jarrett, O.P., M.A.

80. Syndicalism By J. H. Harley, M.A.

82. Co-operation By Joseph Clayton.

83. Insurance as a Means of Investment . By W. A. Robertson, F.F.A.
85. A History of English Literature . . ByA.Conipton-Rickett,M.A,

87. Charles Lamb By Flora Masson.

88. Goethe By Prof. C. H. Herford, Litt.

92. Training of the Child: A Parents' \ r>„ r- c«;tu.

Manual |ByG. Spiller.

93. Tennyson By Aaron Watson.

94. The Nature of Mathematics . . By P. E. B. Jourdain, M.A.

'=• *¥iifh„"SV/aferr"f*^'" .'""':} By Al=..„d=rOgilvi., B.Sc

96. Gardening By A. Cecil Bartlett.

97. Vegetable Gardening , . , . By J. S. Chisholm.

98. Atlas of the World By J, Bartholomew, F.R.G.S.

loi. Luther and the Reformation . , By Leonard D. Agate, M.A.

103. Turkey and the Eastern Question . By John Macdonald, M.A

104. Architecture (108 Illustrations) . . By Mrs. Arthur Bell.

105. Trade Unions By Joseph Clayton.

106. Everyday Law By J. J. Adams.

107. Robert Louis Stevenson . . .By Rosaline Masson.

108. Shelley .By Sydney Waterlow, M.A.

110. British Birds By F. B. Kirkman, B.A.

111. Spiritualism By J- Arthur Hill.

XX2. Kindergarten Teaching at Home . { %^^^,,%';^lr °';^'' ""

113. Schopenhauer ....

114. The Stock Exchange .

115. Coleridge

116. The Crusades ....

117. Wild Flowers (209 Illustrations)

118. Principles of Logic

119. Foundations of Religion

120. A History of Rome. . ^ .

121. Land, Industry, and Taxation

122. Canada

123. Tolstoy

124. Greek Literature .

125. The Navy of To-day

128. A French Self-Tutor

129. Germany .

130. Treitschke

131. The HohenzoUerns. •
X32. Belgium ....
133. The British Army ,

By Margrieta Beer, M.A.

By J. F. Wheeler.

By S. L. Bei&usan.

By M. M. C. Calthrop.

By Macgregor Skene, B.Sc.

By Stanley Williams, B.A.

By Stanley A. Cook, M.A.

By A. F. Giles, M.A.(Edin. &Ox

By Fredk. Verinder.

By Ford Fairford.

By L. Winstanley, M.A.

By H. J. W. Tillyard, M.A.

By Percival H islam.

By W. M. Conacher.

By W. T. Waugh, M.A.

By M. A. Miigge.

By A. D. Innes.

By A. W. Evans.

By Captain A. H. Atteridge.

003604812020

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY

B

T27
1919
cop. 2

Taylor, Alfred Edward
Aristotle Rev. ed