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BISTOTLE 


■ii^HiS  PhEDECESSOFSS 


THVLOl^ 


Ex  Libris 
C.  K.  OGDEN 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


ARISTOTLE 

ON    HIS   PREDECESSORS 


BEING  THE  FIRST  BOOK  OF 
HIS  METAPHYSICS 


TRANSLATED  FROM  THE  TEXT  EDITION  OF  W,  CHRIST, 
WITH  INTRODUCTION  AND  NOTES 


BT 

A.  E.  TAYLOR,  M.  A. 

FELLOW  OF  MERTON  COLLEGE,  OXFORD 

FROTHINGHAM  PROFESSOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY  IN  MCGILL 

UNIVERSITY,  MONTREAL 


CHICAGO 
THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  CO. 

LONDON  AGENTS 

Kbgan  Paul,  Trench,  Trubner  &  Co.,  Ltd. 
iqo7 


Copyright,  1907 

BY 

THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  CO. 


H3M 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Preface  ......•••         3 

Introduction  : 

I.     Life  of  Aristotle I3 

II.     The  Metaphysics i? 

III.     Historical  Value  of  Aristotle's  Criticism  .  .       29 

Summary      ......•••  45 

Chronological  Table  of  the  Pre-Aristotelian  Philos- 
ophers Referred  to  in  Metaphysics  A      .         .         •       5^ 
Books  of  Reference  ......  60 

Aristotle  on  his  Predecessors: 

Chapter       I.     The  Origin  of  Knowledge  and   Wi.sdom 

(Philosophy) 67 

Chapter      II.     General  Character  of  Wisdom     .  .  72 

Chapter    III.     Four  Kinds  of  Causes:  A  Review  of  Their 

Treatment  in  the  Past  ...        78 

Chapter     IV.     Teleology   and    the    Formative    Principle       86 
Chapter      V.     Mathematicians,  Pythagoreans,  and  Elea- 

tics 91 

Chapter     VI.     The  Peculiarities  of  Plato        .  .  .100 

Chapter  VII.     The  Four   Conceptions  of  Cause   United 

in  Aristotle   .  .  .  .  105 

Chapter  VIII.     The  Defects  of  the  Pre-.\ristotelian  Sys- 
tems ...... 

Chapter     IX.     ..^  Criticism  of  Plato  .  .  .  116 

Chapter      X.     Conclusion    ......      138 

Appendix  A.     On   the   Cognition  of  Universal   .^.xioms,  as  a 
Product  of  Experience  .  .  .  .  .  '43 

.\ppENDix  B.     The  Four  Senses  of  Cause      .  .  .      i49 

Appendix  C.     A  Popular  Resume  of  the    Main    Arguments 
Against   the   Platonic   Ideas,    with  Special  Reference  to  the 

"Idea  of  Good" 153 

Appendix  D.     The  Alleged   Difficulty  in  the   Connection   of 

Mathematics  with  the  Doctrine  of  Ideas     ....      155 
Index  to  Proper  N.\mes     ......  160 


08 


>ino^^^O 


PREFACE. 


PREFACE. 

The  present  little  work  makes  no  ambitious  pretence  to 
originality  of  any  kind.  Its  object  is  simply  to  supply 
students  and  teachers  of  philosophy,  especially  on  the  Amer- 
ican continent,  with  a  faithful  rendering  of  Aristotle's 
critical  sketch  of  the  history  of  Greek  speculative  thought 
down  to  his  own  time.  Having  experienced  the  need  of 
such  a  work  in  connection  with  my  own  lectures  at  McGill 
University,  I  have  thought  that  others  of  my  colleagues 
may  also  be  glad  that  the  want  should  be,  in  however  im- 
perfect a  manner,  remedied.  This  cannot,  I  think,  be 
done  by  the  reissue  of  any  translation,  however  meritorious 
in  itself,  dating  from  a  period  in  which  our  knowledge 
both  of  the  text  of  Aristotle  and  of  the  early  history  of 
Greek  thought  was  more  imperfect  than  is  at  present 
the  case.  Accordingly,  I  submit  to  the  judgment  of  my 
colleagues  the  accompanying  new  version,  originally  made 
for  the  purposes  of  my  own  lectures,  trusting  that  they 
also  may  find  it  of  some  service.  The  translation  has  been 
based  upon  W.  Christ's  text  of  the  Metaphysics,  published 
in  the  Teubner  series  (2nd  edition,  Leipzig,  1903),  and 
in  the  very  few  cases  in  which  I  have  found  it  necessary 
to  depart  from  that  text  in  favor  of  readings  of  other  critics 

7 


8         ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

the  fact  has  been  carefully  recorded  in  a  foot-note.  I  have 
also,  except  where  the  contrary  is  specified,  followed  the 
guidance  of  Christ  in  the  indication  of  glosses,  which 
are  marked  in  my  translation,  as  in  his  text,  by  square 
brackets. 

The  brief  notes  which  I  have  appended  to  the  transla- 
lation  do  not  in  the  least  aim  at  providing  anything  like 
an  editorial  commentary.  In  general,  their  object  is  merely 
to  supply  either  exact  information  as  to  the  Greek  terms 
represented  by  certain  words  in  the  translation,  or  to  give 
references  which  appear  indispensable  to  the  comprehen- 
sion of  the  author's  meaning.  Here  and  there  in  the  pages 
which  deal  with  the  Platonic  theory  of  Ideas  I  have,  in- 
deed, allowed  myself  to  transgress  these  self-imposed  limi- 
tations, and  can  only  plead  in  excuse  the  abstract  charac- 
ter of  the  topics  treated  of  and  the  unfamiliar  form  of  their 
presentation. 

With  regard  to  the  style  of  the  translation,  I  would  only 
say  that,  while  I  have  tried  to  reproduce  as  nearly  as  I  can 
the  effect  upon  my  own  mind  of  Aristotle's  characteristic 
manner  of  exposition,  and  in  particular  to  find  some  single 
stock  translation  for  each  technical  expression  of  the  Peri- 
patetic system  which  occurs  in  our  book,  I  have  found  it 
quite  impossible  to  produce,  in  the  rigid  sense,  a  "word- 
for-word"  rendering.  I  have  constantly  been  obliged,  from 
the  exigencies  of  readable  English  prose,  to  vary  the  Eng- 
lish equivalents  employed  for  certain  Greek  phrases  and 


PREFACE.  9 

words  of  ambiguous  signification.  I  may  note  in  partic- 
ular that  I  have  preferred  "entity,"  which,  in  general,  in 
my  version  represents  the  Greek  <po(7i<;  in  its  widest  sense 
of  "determinate  object  of  discourse,"  also  to  the  more  cus- 
tomary "substance"  as  a  translation  of  obaia  in  passages 
where  the  term  appears  to  be  used  broadly  as  an  equivalent 
for  ipoaiq  in  the  sense  above  explained,  without  reference 
to  its  more  special  significance  in  Aristotle's  own  philoso- 
phy, viz.,  that  which  is  a  subject  of  predicates,  but  not 
itself  a  predicate  of  any  further  subject.  "Entities"  I 
have  also  employed  occasionally,  as  the  most  non-committal 
term  I  can  find,  to  translate  the  substantive  use  of  the  Greek 
neuter  adjective  with  the  definite  article,  alziov  and  ahia^ 
again,  which  I  commonly  render  by  "cause,"  I  have  had 
once  or  twice  for  reasons  of  language  to  translate  "reason" 
or  "reason  why."  I  have,  however,  striven  to  reduce  the 
possibility  of  misunderstanding  by  giving,  wherever  it 
seemed  necessary,  the  precise  Greek  original  of  any  am- 
biguous term  in  the  foot-notes.  I  ought  also  to  remark  that 
I  have,  wherever  possible,  replaced  the  Greek  prefix  abro, 
when  used  with  reference  to  the  Platonic  Ideas,  by  the 
adjective  "Ideal."  Readers  accustomed  to  the  terminol- 
ogy of  modem  exact  Logic  will  perhaps  object  to  my  em- 
ployment of  "exists,"  "existence"  as  synonyms  with  "is," 
"Being,"  as  renderings  of  iori^  ehat,  etc.  This  has,  how- 
ever, been  done  deliberately  on  the  ground  that  the  ab- 
sence of  distinction  between  existential  and  non-existen- 


lo       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

tial  propositions  is  a  fundamental  characteristic  of  Aristotel- 
ian thought. 

The  works  upon  which  I  have  most  constantly  depended 
in  preparing  the  translation  are  naturally  three:  (i)  The 
Greek  commentary  of  Alexander  of  Aphrodisias  on  the 
Metaphysics  (latest  edition  by  Hayduck  in  the  collection 
of  Commentaria  in  Aristotelem  Grcsca,  published  by  the  Ber- 
lin Academy).  (2)  Bonitz's  edition  of  the  text  of  the 
Metaphysics  with  Latin  Commentary  (Bonn,  1848).  (3) 
Bonitz's  posthumously  published  German  translation  of 
the  Metaphysics  (Berlin,  i8go).  To  the  last,  in  particular, 
I  am  frequently  indebted  for  the  first  suggestion  of  appro- 
priate renderings. 

It  only  remains  to  express  my  obligation  to  Dr.  Paul 
Cams  for  his  ready  response  to  my  suggestion  that  this 
volume  should  be  included  in  the  Philosophical  Classics  of 
the  Religion  of  Science  Library. 

Montreal,  May,  1906. 


INTRODUCTION 


INTRODUCTION. 


I. 
LIFE  OF  ARISTOTLE. 
In  or  about  335  B.  C.  Aristotle  of  Stagira,  a  small  city 
of  the  Chalcidic  peninsula,  took  up  his  permanent  residence 
in  Athens  as  the  head  of  a  philosophical  school,  being  at 
the  time  a  man  of  some  forty-nine  or  fifty  years.  This 
post  he  continued  to  fill  imtil  a  few  months  before  his  death, 
which  took  place  some  twelve  or  thirteen  years  later  (322 
B.  C).  His  early  history,  so  far  as  it  is  relevant  to  the 
understanding  of  his  works,  may  be  told  in  a  few  words. 
He  came  of  a  family  in  which  the  medical  profession  was 
hereditary;  his  father,  Nicomachus,  held  the  post  of  court 
physician  to  Amyntas  II.,  King  of  Macedonia.  It  can  scarcely 
be  doubted  that  these  early  associations  with  medicine 
largely  account  both  for  Aristotle's  wide  acquaintance  with 
natural  history,  as  evinced  by  a  whole  series  of  works  on 
zoology,  and  for  the  preponderatingly  biological  cast  of 
thought  which  is  characteristic  of  his  philosophy  as  a  whole. 
At  the  age  of  eighteen  he  had  entered  the  philosophical 
seminary  of  Plato,  of  which  he  continued  to  be  a  member 

13 


14       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

until  Plato's  death,  twenty  years  later  (346  B.  C).  Some- 
what later  (343-336  B.  C.)  he  filled  for  several  years  the 
post  of  tutor  to  the  Crown  Prince  Alexander  of  Macedonia, 
afterwards  Alexander  the  Great.  On  the  accession  of 
Alexander  to  the  throne  the  ex-tutor  withdrew,  as  already 
stated,  to  Athens  and  devoted  himself  to  the  organiza- 
tion of  his  scientific  and  philosophical  school.  During  the 
short  period  of  Anti-Macedonian  reaction  which  broke  out 
in  Athens  upon  the  death  of  Alexander  (323  B.  C),  Aris- 
totle, from  his  old  connection  with  the  Macedonian  Court, 
naturally  became  an  object  of  attack.  A  prosecution  for 
"impiety,"  i.  e.,  disloyalty  to  the  state  religion,  was 
set  on  foot,  and,  as  there  was  no  possible  defense  to  be 
made,  the  philosopher  anticipated  the  verdict  by  a  volun- 
tary exile,  in  which  he  died  a  few  months  later  (322  B.  C.).' 
At  the  time  when  Aristotle  opened  his  "school"  in  the 
Lyceum,^  or  gymnasium  attached  to  the  temple  of  Apollo 
Lyceus,  there  were  already  in  existence  two  such  institutions 
for  the  prosecution  of  the  higher  education,  that  of  Isocra- 
tes,  in  which  the  instruction  was  mainly  of  a  practical  kind, 

*  The  chief  ancient  authority  for  the  life  of  Aristotle  is  the  biog- 
raphy by  Diogenes  Laertius.  There  are  also  one  or  two  shorter 
anonymous  "lives,"  which  are  commonly  reprinted  in  complete  edi- 
tions of  the  "works,"  and  a  valuable  summary,  with  dates,  by 
Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus,  the  principal  parts  of  which  the  student 
will  find  in  R.  P.  297. 

'  From  the  existence  in  this  institution  of  a  Peripatos,  a  covered 
portico  for  exercise  in  unfavorable  weather,  comes  the  name  Peri- 
patetic as  a  designation  for  the  Aristotelian  School. 


INTRODUCTION.  15 


designed  as  a  preparation  for  public  political  and  forensic 
life,  and  that  of  Plato,  now  presided  over  by  Xenocrates, 
specially  given  up  to  metaphysical,  ethical,  and  mathemat- 
ical research.  To  these  Aristotle  added  a  third,  which 
speedily  distinguished  itself  by  the  range  and  variety  of 
its  investigations  in  what  we  should  now  call  "positive" 
science,  and  especially  in  the  biological,  social,  and  histori- 
cal sciences.  These  institutions  resembled  our  "universi- 
ties" in  their  permanent  organization  and  the  wide  scope 
of  their  educational  program,  as  well  as  in  the  adoption  of 
the  formal  oral  lecture  and  the  "seminar,"  or  informal 
discussion  between  master  and  students,  as  the  principal 
methods  of  instruction.  The  chief  differences  between  the 
ancient  philosophical  school  and  the  modern  university  are, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  absence  from  the  former  of  any  pro- 
vision for  the  support  of  the  master  or  "professor"  by  fees 
or  systematic  endowments,  and  the  prolongation  of  the 
relation  of  master  and  pupil  through  a  much  longer  period, 
often  until  the  death  of  one  or  the  other.  The  character 
of  the  philosophical  writings  of  Aristotle  (such  as  the 
Metaphysics,  Physics,  Ethics)  makes  it  clear  that  they  are 
for  the  most  part  not  "works"  prepared  for  circulation  at 
all,  but  the  manuscripts  of  a  "professor's"  lectures,  written 
out  in  full  for  oral  delivery,  and  preserved  after  his  death  by 
disciples  whose  main  object  was,  not  to  construct  readable 
and  well-arranged  books,  but  to  preserve  the  maximum  of 
the  master's  words  at  any  cost  in  repetitions  and  longueurs. 


i6       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

It  is  only  on  this  supposition  that  we  can  reasonably  account 
for  the  inequalities,  abruptness,  and  frequent  irregularity  of 
their  style,  and  the  extraordinary  amount  of  repetition 
which  occurs  in  them.*  The  actual  "literary  works"  of 
Aristotle  were  the  dialogues,  intended  not  for  study  in  a 
philosophical  seminary,  but  for  general  circulation  among 
the  reading  public  of  Athens.  These  dialogues,  which 
were  presumably  in  the  main  composed  while  their  author 
was  still  a  member  of  the  Platonic  Academy  and  before  he 
had  entered  on  his  career  as  the  head  of  an  independent 
institution,  were  widely  celebrated  in  antiquity  for  their 
literary  grace,  a  quality  by  no  means  conspicuous  in  the 
Aristotelian  writings  now  extant;  portions  of  them  have 
been  suspected  by  modern  scholars  to  have  been  incor- 
porated in  some  of  the  more  elegant  and  popular  parts  of 
the  existing  writings,  and  others  are  occasionally  quoted  by 
later  authors,  but  as  a  whole  they  have  perished.  Thus 
we  have  to  compare  the  extant  books  of  Aristotle,  in  respect 
of  their  literary  character,  not  so  much  with  those  of  Plato, 
or  Descartes,  or  Hume,  as  with  the  posthumously  published 
volumes  of  lectures  by  which  the  philosophy  of  Hegel  has 
chiefly  been  preserved. 

'  Cf.  the  remarks  of  Burnet,  The  Ethics  of  Aristotle,  pp.  xi-xviii. 


INTRODUCTION.  i? 


II. 

THE  METAPHYSICS. 

The  fourteen  books  which  contain  the  substance  of  Aris- 
totle's lectures  on  the  ultimate  conceptions  of  philosophy 
are  cited  by  the  ancient  commentators  and  designated  in 
the  MSS.  by  the  title  rd  fierd  rd  ^uffud,  whence  has  arisen 
our  name  Metaphysics.  The  title,  however,  is  one  which 
gives  no  indication  of  the  nature  of  the  subjects  considered, 
and  is  never  employed  by  the  author  himself,  rd  p-zra  xd 
yuffixd  means,  literally,  simply  the  (lectures)  which  come 
after  the  (lectures)  on  "Physics,"  and  indicates  only  that 
in  the  traditional  arrangement  adopted  by  ancient  students 
of  Aristotle  the  fourteen  books  of  Metaphysics  were  made 
to  follow  on  the  eight  books  of  (pucnxd,  or  "Lectures  on 
Physics."  This  arrangement  may  have  been  adopted 
either  because,  as  the  numerous  allusions  in  the  first 
book  of  the  Metaphysics  to  previous  explanations  given  in 
"our  discourses  on  Physics"  are  enough  of  themselves  to 
show,  Aristotle  composed  the  Metaphysics  after  the  Physics, 
or  because  a  knowledge  of  the  main  doctrines  of  the  latter 
is  presupposed  by  the  former,  or  for  both  reasons.  (The 
notion  of  some  of  the  ancient  expositors  that  the  Metaphys- 
ics are  so-called  because  the  objects  of  which  they  treat  are 
more  sublime  and  recondite  than  those  of  Physics  is  more 
far-fetched  and  probably  historically  mistaken.) 

When  we  ask  what  is  the  character  of  the  subject  which 


i8       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

Aristotle  is  expounding  in  these  books,  and  how  the  science 
of  "Metaphysics"  differs  from  other  sciences  in  scope  and 
aim,  we  are  thus  thrown  back  from  the  insignificant  title 
bestowed  on  the  work  by  ancient  tradition  to  a  study  of  the 
names  actually  employed  by  Aristotle  to  denote  this  division 
of  his  philosophy.  Of  such  names,  we  find,  on  inquiry,  he 
has  three.  The  subject  of  his  present  course  of  lectures  is 
called  "Wisdom,"  "Theology,"  "first  Philosophy."  ^  Of 
the  three,  the  last  is  the  most  characteristic  and,  as  we  might 
say,  the  official  designation  of  the  science.  Of  the  other 
two,  "Wisdom"  is  simply  an  honorific  appellative,  indica- 
tive of  Aristotle's  conviction  that  "first  Philosophy"  is  the 
highest  and  noblest  exercise  of  the  intellect;  "Theology," 
again,  is,  so  far  as  it  goes,  a  correct  designation,  since  "first 
Philosophy"  is  a  study  of  ultimate  first  principles,  and,  in 
the  Aristotelian  Philosophy,  God  is  such  an  ultimate  princi- 
ple. But  God  is  only  one  ultimate  principle  among  others, 
and  thus  "Theology,"  the  doctrine  of  God,  is,  strictly  speak- 
ing, only  one  part,  though  in  a  sense  the  culminating  part, 
of  the  Aristotelian  "first  Philosophy. "=>  What,  then,  is  "first 
Philosophy,"  and  what  are  the  "second  Philosophies"  from 
which  Aristotle  wishes  to  discriminate  it  ?  To  answer  this 
question  we  have  to  turn  our  attention  to  Aristotle's  classifi- 

'  For  the  name  "wisdom"  {aofia),  see  chapters  i  and  2  of  the 
present  work,  passim.  For  the  other  two  designations,  compare 
particularly  the  passage  from  Metaphysics  E,  i,  quoted  below. 

'Thus,  strictly  speaking,  the  "doctrine  of  God"  only  occupies 
half  of  one  of  the  fourteen  books  of  our  existing  Metaphysics,  viz. : 
the  second  half  of  book  A  (c  s.  6-10). 


INTRODUCTION.  i9 


cation  of  the  sciences.  The  deepest  and  most  radical 
distinction  among  the  forms  of  knowledge,  according  to 
Aristotle,  is  that  between  the  Theoretical  or  Speculative 
(dswprjTixai)  and  the  Practical  Sciences,  a  distinction 
roughly  corresponding  to  that  which  we  draw  in  English 
between  the  sciences  and  the  arts.  Speculative  Philosophy 
(the  tout  ensemble  of  the  speculative)  differs  from  Practical 
Philosophy  (the  tout  ensemble  of  the  practical  sciences) 
alike  in  its  purpose,  its  subject-matter,  and  its  formal 
logical  character.  The  purpose  of  "theoretical"  Philosophy 
as  its  name  shows,  is  Oscopta^  disinterested  contemplation  or 
recognition  of  truths  which  are  what  they  are  independ- 
endy  of  our  personal  volition;  its  end  is  to  know;  the 
purpose  of  "practical"  Philosophy,  on  the  contrary,  is  to 
devise  rules  for  successful  interference  with  the  course  of 
events,  to  produce  results  which,  but  for  our  intervention, 
would  not  have  come  about;  its  end  is  thus  to  do  or  to 
make  something.  Hence  arises  a  corresponding  difference 
in  the  objects  investigated  by  the  two  branches  of  Philos- 
ophy. Speculative  Philosophy  is  exclusively  concerned  with 
what  Aristode  calls  rd  fii]  ivdexo/xeva  aXXux;  e^scv,  "things 
which  can  by  no  possibility  be  otherwise,"  truths  and 
relations  independent  of  human  volition  for  their  existence, 
and  calling  merely  for  recognition  on  our  part;  "eternal 
verities,"  to  speak  after  the  fashion  of  Leibnitz.  Practical 
Philosophy  has  to  do  exclusively  with  relations  which  human 
action  can  modify,  things  which  can  be  altered  in  various 


20       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

ways;  as  Aristotle  calls  them,  ra  ^>ds^6fi£va  akXwq  exeiv^ 
"things  which  can  possibly  be  otherwise,"  the  "contingent." 
And  hence  arises  again  a  logical  difference  between  the 
conclusions  of  speculative  and  those  of  practical  Science. 
Those  of  the  former  are  rigidly  universal  truths  which  are 
deducible  with  logical  necessity  from  self-evident  axiomatic 
principles.  Those  of  the  latter,  precisely  because  they  relate 
to  "what  can  possibly  be  otherwise,"  what  is  capable  of 
alteration,  are  never  rigid  imiversals;  they  are  general  rules 
which  hold  good  <«?  e^^  to  noXu,  "in  the  great  majority  of 
cases,"  but  which  are  all  liable  to  occasional  exceptions, 
owing  to  the  unstable  and  contingent  character  of  the  facts 
with  which  they  deal.  It  is,  according  to  Aristotle,  a  con- 
vincing proof  of  a  philosopher's  dnatdsuaia^  "lack  of  ground- 
ing in  Logic,"  that  he  looks  to  the  results  of  practical 
sciences  (e.  g.,  the  detailed  precepts  of  Ethics)  for  a  higher 
degree  of  certainty  and  universality  than  the  contingent 
nature  of  their  subject-matter  permits.^ 

*Cf.  for  all  this,  Eihica  Nicomachea  vi  2,  1139a  6-31,  vi  4, 
1140a  1-23 

'Cf.  e.  g.  Ethica  Nic.  I  3,  1094b  19.  "Such  being  the  nature 
of  our  subject-matter  and  our  axiomatic  principles,  we  must  be  satis- 
fied with  establishing  results  which  are  true  roughly  and  in  their 
general  outline,  and,  since  the  facts  of  which  we  treat  and  the  princi- 
ples from  which  we  reason  are  true  only  in  the  generality  of  cases, 
we  must  be  content  with  conclusions  of  the  same  kind.  .  .  .  The 
man  of  logical  training  will  only  seek  such  a  degree  of  certainty  in 
each  branch  of  study  as  the  character  of  the  objects  studied  permits. 
To  demand  demonstration  from  a  statesman  is  an  enor  of  the  same 
kind  as  to  be  content  with  probable  reasoning  in  a  mathematician." 


INTRODUCTION.  21 


"First  Philosophy,"  then,  is  essentially  a  "speculative 
science;"  its  aim  is  knowledge,  the  recognition  of  eternally 
valid  truths;  not  action,  the  production  of  changes  in  the 
contingent  world-order  around  us.  It  is  on  this  ground 
especially  that  in  our  present  book  Aristotle,  with  his  char- 
acteristic preference  for  the  life  of  the  student  rather  than 
that  of  the  "man  of  affairs,"  claims  the  honorific  title  of 
"wisdom,"  traditionally  consecrated  to  the  worthiest  and 
most  exalted  form  of  mental  activity,  for  "first  Philosophy." 
We  have  next  to  determine  the  exact  position  of  "first 
Philosophy"  among  the  various  divisions  of  "speculative 
science,"  and  its  relation  to  the  sister  branches.  Plato,  in- 
deed, had  taught  that  all  the  sciences  are,  in  the  end, 
deductions  from  a  single  set  of  ultimate  principles  which  it 
is  the  business  of  the  supreme  science  of  "Dialectic"  to 
discover  and  formulate.*  On  such  a  view  there  would,  of 
course,  be  no  "sister"  branches,  no  "second  Philosophy." 
Dialectic  would,  in  the  last  resort,  be  not  only  the  supreme 
but  the  only  science,  just  as  a  growing  school  of  thinkers 
maintains  to-day  that  all  "exact"  or  "pure"  science  is 
simply  Logic.  This  is,  however,  not  Aristotle's  view. 
According  to  him,  speculative  philosophy  falls  into  a  num- 
ber of  distinct  and  independent,  though  not  co-ordinate, 
branches,  each  with  its  own  characteristic  special  subject 
of  investigation,  and  its  own  special  axiomatic  principles. 
"First  Philosophy,"  though,  as  we  shall  see  directly,  the 

*  Plato,  Republic  vi,  5iob-Siid, 


22       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

paramount  branch   of  speculative  science,  is  only  prima 
inter  pares. 

How  many  distinct  branches  of  speculative  science,  then, 
are  there?  Aristotle  answers  that  there  are  three,  "first" 
Philosophy,  Mathematics,  Physics.  The  logical  basis  of 
this  classification  is  explained  in  the  following  important 
passage  from  Metaphysics  E,  i,  1026a  10-32:  "If  there  is 
anything  which  is  eternal  and  immutable  and  has  an 
independent  and  separable  existence,'  manifestly  the  cog- 
nition of  it  belongs  to  speculative  science,  since  it  is  neither 
the  object  of  Physics  (which  is  a  science  of  things 
capable  of  motion)  nor  of  Mathematics,  but  of  a 
study  logically  prior  to  both  of  them.^  For  Physics 
deals  with  objects  which  have  no  existence  separable 
[from  matter,  Tr.],  but  are  not  devoid  of  motion, 
and  Mathematics,  in  some  of  its  branches,'  with  objects 
which  are  incapable  of  motion  and  have,  perhaps,  no  separa- 
ble existence,  but  are  inherent  in  matter,  whereas  the  objects 

of  first  Philosophy  are  both  separate  andfedevoid  of  motion. 

4 

•"Independent  and  separable;"  Greek,  'j^wpiarov.  The  double 
epithet  seems  required  in  English  to  bring  out  the  full  sense. 

'  The  qualification  is  inserted  simply  because  Aristotle  has  not 
yet  given  the  formal  proof,  that  the  objects  of  Geometry  and  Arithme- 
tic themselves  are  not  independent  entities,  but  mere  predicates  of 
matter,  though  investigated  by  the  mathematician  in  abstraction 
from  the  matter  which,  in  fact,  they  qualify.  This  proof  he  attempts 
later  in  M.  3.  At  present,  he  seems  to  be  merely  appeahng  to  the 
existence  of  such  branches  of  mathematics  as  Optics  and  Harmonics 
as  obvious  examples  of  the  distinction  in  question. 


INTRODUCTION.  23 


Now,  all  causes  must  necessarily  be  eternal,  but  most  of  all 
these,  for  they  are  the  causes  of  the  visible  divine  things.* 
Thus  there  will  be  three  speculative  philosophies,  the  mathe- 
matical, the  physical,  the  theological.  For,  manifestly,  if  the 
divine  exists  at  all,  it  is  to  be  found  in  such  a  class  of  enti- 
ties as  that  just  described,  and  the  noblest  science  must 
have  the  noblest  class  of  objects  for  its  study.  Thus  the 
speculative  sciences  are  of  superior  worth  to  all  others,  and 
this  study  of  superior  worth  to  the  rest  of  the  speculative 
sciences. 
k  The  question  might,  indeed,  be  raised  whether  first 
philosophy  is  of  universal  scope  or  confined  to  the  study 
of  a  single  department  and  a  single  class  of  entities. 
For  even  in  Mathematics,  the  different  branches  are  not 
co-ordinate;  Geometry  and  Astronomy  are  confined  to 
special  classes  of  entities,  but  universal  Mathematics' 
embraces  all  alike.  If,  then,  there  are  no  substances 
besides  those  which  arise  in  the  course  of  nature,  Physics 
will  be  "first"  Philosophy.  But  if  there  is  a  substance 
which  is  immutable,  it  will  be  logically  prior,  and  the 
Philosophy  which  studies  it  will  be  "first"  Philosophy,  and 
because  "first"  will  be  universal.  And  it  will  be  for  this 
science  to  study  Being  as  such,  both  as  to  what  its  funda- 

*  i.  e.,  The  heavenly  bodies. 

'  i.  e.,  Arithmetic,  the  principles  of  which  are  presupposed  by 
every  form  of  special  mathematical  study.  Cf.  below  in  the  present 
book,  C.  2,  982a  26. 


24       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

mental  character  is  and  as  to  the  attributes  which  are 
predicable  of  it  qua  Being.* 

We  see  from  this  explanation  both  why  there  are  three 
distinct  branches  of  Speculative  Science,  and  why  one  of 
the  three  has  a  logical  position  of  priority  over  the  other 
two,  which  justifies  the  name  "first"  Philosophy.  "First" 
Philosophy,  to  begin  with,  is  logically  prior  to  the  other 
sciences  on  the  same  ground  on  which  Aristotle  tells  us  in 
the  present  book  that  Arithmetic  is  "prior"  to  Geometry; 
its  initial  assumptions  are  simpler  and  less  complicated 
than  theirs.  Physics  is  a  study  of  the  relations  between 
objects  which  possess  the  double  qualification  of  being 
embodied  in  concrete  material  form  and  being,  potentially 
at  least,  in  motion.  In  Mathematics  one  of  these  restric- 
tions is  removed;  we  consider  objects  (points,  lines,  sur- 
faces) which  are  motionless  and  immutable,  and  the  pre- 
suppositions of  Mathematics  are  consequently  so  far  simpler 
than  those  of  Physics.  (It  was  on  this  ground,  it  will  be 
remembered,  that  Plato,  in  the  educational  scheme  of 
Book  vii.  of  the  Republic,  had  contended  that  the  study  of 
Arithmetic  and  Geometry,  plane  and  solid,  should  precede 
that  of  Kinetics  or  Astronomy.)     But  the  other  restriction 

•Thus  we  get  the  following  classification: 

Science 

\ 

I  I 

Speculative  Practical 

I  \  ^1  . 

First  PhUosophy  Mathematics  Physics 


INTRODUCTION.  25 


still  remains.  The  objects  of  Mathematics,  according  to 
Aristotle,  are  still  things  which  have  no  existence  except 
as  modifications  or  attributes  of  concrete  material  things. 
They  are,  in  fact,  the  numerical  properties  of  collections  of 
concrete  objects,  or  again,  ideal  boundaries  and  limits  of 
sensible  bodies.  It  is  true  that  the  mathematician  makes 
abstraction  from  this  fact,  and  treats  it  as  though  it 
were  not  there.  He  talks  of  numbers,  lines,  planes,  etc., 
as  though  they  were  things  with  an  independent  exist- 
ence of  their  own.  But  the  fact,  according  to  Aristotle, 
is  none  the  less  there,  and  it  is  the  business  of  a  sound 
Logic  of  the  sciences  to  call  attention  to  it.  Numbers 
are  really  always  numbers  of  something,  of  men,  of 
horses,  oxen,  etc.  "Two  and  two  are  four"  means  "two 
men  (horses)  and  two  men  {horses)  are  four  men  (fwrses)." 
Only,  as  the  numerical  result  is  always  the  same  whether 
you  are  counting  men  or  horses,  there  is  no  need  to 
specify  the  particular  character  of  the  objects  you  are 
counting.  So  with  Geometry;  a  plane  is,  e.  g.,  always 
the  boimdary  of  a  certain  physical  solid  body,  only,  for 
the  purposes  of  Plane  Geometry,  it  may  not  be  neces- 
sary to  take  this  into  consideration.'  But  in  "first" 
Philosophy  this  restriction,  too,  is  removed.  We  study 
Being  not,  like  the  physicist,  in  so  far  as  it  is  composed  of 

•  I  need  not  say  that  I  am  not  here  giving  my  adhesion  to  this 
view  of  the  nature  of  mathematical  science,  but  merely  epitomising 
th€  position  assumed  by  Aristotle. 


26       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

bodies  in  motion,*  or  like  the  mathematician,  in  so  far  as  it 
possesses  number  and  spatial  form,  but  in  all  its  generality; 
we  investigate  what  it  means  to  be,  and  what  relations 
between  Beings  are  deducible  from  the  great  fundamental 
condition  that  they  one  and  all  are.  This  is  why  "first" 
Philosophy,  as  compared  with  the  other  speculative  sciences, 
has  a  higher  degree  of  universality  in  its  scope.  The  prop- 
ositions of  the  physicist  become  false  if  they  are  asserted 
about  anything  except  bodies  in  motion ;  those  of  the  mathe- 
matician become  false  when  asserted  of  subjects  which  are 
neither  numerable  collections  nor  the  spatial  forms  of  bodies. 
The  general  principles  of  "first"  Philosophy  are  applicable 
alike  to  God,  to  a  geometrical  figure,  to  a  physical  corpuscle, 
since  each  of  these  three  is  something  of  which  you  can 
say  that  it  has  being  or  is.  At  the  same  time,  there  is  one 
class  of  "things  which  are"  which  may  be  regarded  as 
constituting  in  a  very  special  sense  the  object  of  "first" 
Philosophy,  conversant  though  that  science  is,  in  a  way, 
with  everything.  This  is  the  class  of  immutable  entities 
which  have  neither  bodies  nor  spatial  form  of  any  kind, 
and  are  therefore  excluded  from  the  purview  both  of  Phys- 
ics and  of  Mathematics.     The  chief  of  such  entities  is  God, 

*  Strictly  speaking,  this  description  unduly  narrows  the  scope 
of  Physics  as  conceived  by  Aristotle.  With  him  "matter,"  the  sub- 
stratum of  change,  is  not  necessarily  corporeal,  and  "motion"  includes 
every  species  of  quantitative  and  qualitative  change.  Thus,  since 
the  human  soul  is  something  which  grows  and  develops,  Psychology 
is  a  branch  of  Physics. 


INTRODUCTION.  27 

the  immaterial  and  immutable  source  of  the  vital  move- 
ment in  the  universe,  and  hence  the  appropriateness  of  the 
name  "Theology"  or  "Science  of  God"  as  a  synonym  for 
"first  Philosophy"  itself.  Now,  Aristotle  holds  that  any 
complete  explanation  of  any  process,  e.  g.,  the  simplest  proc- 
ess of  physical  change,  involves  the  introduction  of  this 
concept  of  God  as  an  eternal  and  immaterial  "first  mover;" 
hence,  the  "doctrine  of  God"  is  the  necessary  crown  and 
culmination  of  the  physical  sciences  themselves.  This 
explains  how,  in  his  conception  of  "first"  Philosophy,  the 
notion  of  a  "Science  of  God"  and  that  of  a  most  universal 
science  of  the  "principles  of  Being  as  such"  come  to  be 
so  completely  fused.  The  business  of  "first"  Philosophy 
thus  comes  to  consist  in  the  analysis  of  the  conception  of 
individual  Being  or  Substance  {ouaia)  as  such,  i.  e.,  the 
determination  of  the  fundamental  meaning,  the  ri  tazi 
(or  what  is  it  ?)  of  Being,  and  the  analysis  of  individual  Being 
into  its  logical  factors  or  elements.  These  constituent 
factors  constitute,  in  Aristotelian  language,  the  Causes  or 
First  Principles  of  Being.  Thus  it  becomes  possible  to 
describe  the  science  of  "first"  Philosophy,  as  is  done  in  the 
opening  chapter  of  our  present  book,  as  the  Science  of  the 
Causes  and  Principles  of  all  Being.  Aristotle  believed  him- 
self to  have  finally  performed  the  requisite  analysis  by  his 
doctrine  of  the  Four  Causes  (see  appendix  B  and  the 
notes  there),  and  the  part  which  they  play  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  individual  substance  from  mere  possibility  or 


28       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

potentiality  into  actual  existence.  Accordingly,  we  find 
that  the  central  books  of  our  Metaphysics  constitute  a 
treatise  of  which  the  principal  topics  are  the  nature  of 
individual  substance,  the  doctrine  of  the  four  Causes,  and 
the  conception  of  the  development  from  potential  to  actual 
existence.  Outside  this  general  scheme  fall  the  two  con- 
cluding books,  M  and  N,  which  contain  a  polemic  against 
the  mathematical  philosophy  of  the  Pythagoreans  and 
Plato;  book  K,  a  patchwork  r^sum^,  presumably  by  a  later 
hand,  of  various  portions  of  the  Physics  and  Metaphysics; 
book  ^,  a  treatise  on  the  principal  equivocal  terms  of 
philosophy;  book  a,  a  brief  introductory  account  of  "first" 
Philosophy,  which  was  widely  recognized,  even  in  antiquity, 
as  non-Aristotelian ;  and  our  present  book  A ,  which  forms  an 
historical  introduction  to  the  whole  work,  and  has  the  inter- 
est of  being  the  earliest  known  systematic  attempt  at  writ- 
ing the  History  of  Philosophy.  As  the  present  work  is 
ofifered  merely  as  a  translation  of  this  historical  sketch,  and 
not  as  a  specimen  of  Aristotelian  metaphysics,  I  shall  at 
once  proceed  to  terminate  these  introductory  remarks  with 
a  few  observations  upon  Aristotle's  method  of  writing  philo- 
sophical histo^}^ 


INTRODUCTION.  29 


III. 

HISTORICAL    VALUE    OF    ARISTOTLE'S 
CRITICISM. 

Perhaps  the  greatest  of  the  many  obligations  which  hu- 
man thought  owfs  to  Aristotle  and  his  school  is  that  they 
were  the  first  thinkers  to  realize  at  all  adequately  the  impor- 
tance of  systematic  historical  research  into  the  evolution  of 
ideas  and  institutions.  To  such  research  x\ristotle  would 
naturally  be  led  both  by  his  natural  bias  in  favor  of 
acquaintance  with  detailed  scientific  fact  and  by  his  early 
medical  and  biological  training,  which  predisposes  him  to 
make  the  development  of  a  finished  and  articulate  product 
from  crude  and  indeterminate  beginnings  the  central 
conception  of  his  whole  philosophy.  Accordingly,  we  find 
that  the  first  systematic  histories,  alike  of  ideas  and  of 
social  institutions,  are  all  the  work  of  Aristotle  and  his 
immediate  pupils.  Thus,  to  take  only  a  few  examples 
constitutional  histor}%  if  we  except  a  few  tentative  contri- 
butions from  Plato,'  begins  with  the  series  of  sketches 
of  political  institutions  in  various  commonwealths,  known 
to  the  ancients  as  the  Ko^creTa^  oi  Aristotle,  though  they 

*  See,  particularly,  the  long  and  interesting  passages  on  the  suc- 
cessive transformations  by  which  "patriarchal"  government,  accord- 
ing to  Plato,  passed  into  historical  monarchy,  and  on  the  development 
of  the  Persian  and  Athenian  constitutions  in  Laws,  Book  III.  The 
better  known  sketch  of  the  successive  degenerations  from  the  ideaj 
constitution  in  Republic,  Books  VIII-IX,  stands  on  a  rather  different 
footing,  as  its  object  is  to  establish  an  order  of  spiritual  affinity  rather 
than  one  of  historical  sequence. 


30       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 


must  have  been  the  work  not  of  the  master  alone  but  of 
a  whole  band  of  pupils,  of  which  we  have  an  extant  specimen 
in  the  recently  recovered  ''Constitution  0}  Athens.''  The 
earliest  sketches  of  the  history  of  Philosophy  and  Psychology 
are  those  contained  in  the  present  book  and  in  the  first  book 
of  the  treatise  de  Anima,  respectively.  The  earliest  outline 
of  the  history  of  Physics  is  similarly  that  given  by  Aristotle 
in  the  opening  chapters  of  the  first  book  of  his  "Lectures  on 
Physics."  The  first  separate  and  complete  history  of  Phys- 
ics was  composed  by  Aristotle's  pupil  and  immediate  suc- 
cessor, Theophrastus,  and  the  first  history  of  Mathematics  by 
another  disciple,  Eudemus,^  and  it  is  principally  to 
second  or  third  hand  epitomes  and  to  later  citations  from 
these  works  that  we  are  still  indebted  for  our  detailed 
knowledge  of  the  development  of  early  Greek  science  in  both 
these  departments. 

To  make  a  discriminating  use  of  Aristotle's  sketch  of  pre- 
vious philosophical  thought  we  need,  however,  to  bear  care- 
fully in  mind  both  the  special  object  for  which  it  is  avowedly 
designed,  and  certain  mental  peculiarities  of  its  author.  Our 
present  book,  as  Aristotle  is  careful  to  indicate,  is  meant 

*  The  dependence  of  the  epitome  of  physical  theories  known  as 
the  Placita  Philosophorum,  which  has  been  preserved  to  us  in  a  double 
form  in  the  writings  ascribed  to  Plutarch  and  in  the  Eclogce  of 
Stobaeus,  on  the  lost  0u<T(xa\  Jo^ai  of  Theophrastus  was  estab- 
lished by  Diels  in  the  prolegomena  to  his  Doxographi  Graeci;  the  work 
of  Eudemus  is  mainly  known  to  us  from  the  use  made  of  it  by  the  Neo- 
Platonic  philosopher,  Proclus,  in  his  commentary  on  the  first  book  of 
Euclid's  Elements. 


INTRODUCTION.  31 


not  as  an  independent  contribution  to  the  history  of  thought, 
but  strictly  as  an  introduction  to  Aristotelian  "first"  Philos- 
ophy as  expounded  in  the  subsequent  lectures.  Its  purpose 
is  not  to  give  a  full  account  of  the  "systems"  of  previous 
thinkers,  but  to  afford  presumption  that  the  Aristotelian 
classification  of  causes  and  principles  is  complete,  by  show- 
ing that  it  provides  a  place  for  every  sense  of  "Cause,"  and 
every  principle  of  explanation  occurring  in  the  works  of  the 
pre- Aristotelian  philosophers.  This  anxiety  to  confirm  his  / 
own  views  by  pointing  to  partial  anticipations  of  them  by 
earlier  thinkers,  and  even  by  popular  unphilosophic  opinion, 
is  very  characteristic  of  Aristotle,  who  was  profoundly  con- 
vinced, as  he  says  himself  in  the  Ethics,'^  that  "a  widely-held 
conviction  must  have  something  in  it,"  and  by  no  means 
shared  Plato's  superb  disdain  for  conventional  current 
"opinion"  in  matters  of  philosophy.  No  great  philosopher 
has  ever  been  farther  removed  than  Aristotle  from  the 
mental  attitude  of  a  recent  writer  who  protests  eloquently  , 
against  the  intrusion  into  philosophy  of  ' '  the  vulgar  prej-  \ 
udices  of  common  sense."  * 

We  have  further  to  remember  that  Aristotle,  like  Hegel 
in  later  days,  was  convinced  that  his  own  philosophy  was  the 
"absolute"  philosophy,  the  final  formulation  of  that  answer 

'  Ethica  Nic.,  ii73ai.  "What  everybody  thinks  to  be  good,  that 
we  say  is  good;  he  who  rejects  this  ground  of  belief  will  not  easily 
produce  a  more  convincing  one."  Contrast  Shelley's  characteristic 
remark  that  "E.er>'body  saying  a  thing  doesn't  make  it  true." 


Russell,  Principles  oj  Mathematics,  I,,  348. 


■^^/ 


<  t 


32       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

to  the  problems  of  the  human  intellect  which  all  previous 
thought  had  been  vainly  trying  to  express.  Hence  he  looks 
upon  all  earlier  systems,  from  the  point  of  view  of  his  own 
doctrine,  as  imperfect  and  "stammering  "attempts  to  formu- 
Jate  a  thought  identical  with  his  own.  What  he  says  more 
than  once  of  Empedocles  and  Anaxagoras  he  might  equally, 
from  his  own  point  of  view,  have  said  of  all  his  predecessors: 
"If  the  consequences  of  their  doctrines  could  have  been  put 
|\C(^    r'  '  before  them,  they  would  have  arrived  at  my  own  results;  but 

\\  '  lysV- '  there  was  no  one  to  point  out  these  consequences  to  them,  and 

ft,  ^,fyr:^_^^fy^  consequently  they  failed  to  make  their  theories  consistent." 
Unlike  Plato,  Aristotle  shows  little  of  the  imaginative  sym- 
pathy which  is  required  of  any  thinker  who  attempts  to 
^""^  give  an  uncolored  version  of  the  thoughts  of  minds  less  in- 
formed and  less  developed  than  his  own.  Hence,  if  we  relied 
upon  the  letter  of  his  statements  about  cruder  and  older 
philosophies,  we  should  often  be  led  seriously  astray;  when 
we  have,  however,  made  allowance,  as  it  is  usually  easy  to 
do,  for  this  tendency  to  read  his  own  system  into  the  utter- 
ances of  his  predecessors,  what  he  tells  us  is,  in  general,  of 
the  highest  importance,  and  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that 
the  first  book  of  the  Metaphysics,  thus  cautiously  interpreted, 
is  by  far  the  most  valuable  single  document  for  the  history  of 
early  Greek  Philosophy.' 

Aristotle's  version  of  the  development  of  previous  Greek 
philosophical  thought  may  be  briefly  summarised  as  follows. 

'    See  Burnet,  Early  Greek  Philosophy,  p.  370,  on  which  these 
remarks  are  largely  founded. 


INTRODUCTION.  33 


The  earliest  thinkers  unconsciously  adopted  the  standpoint 
of  a  materialistic  Monism.     They  assumed  that  the  only 
things  which  exist  are  the  physical  bodies  perceived  by  our 
'senses,  and  that  the  only  question  which  science  has  to  ask 
about  them  is,  what  is  the  one  ultimate  form  of  body  of 
which  they  are  all  transformations?   (The  Milesian  school, 
HeracUtus.)     In  Aristotelian  language,  they  were  interested 
only  in  the  material  cause  of  bodies,  the  stuff  of  which  they 
are  made,  and  they  assumed  that  there  is  ultimately  only  one 
such  original  stuff  and  that  it  is  one  of  the  perceptible  forms 
of  matter.^     Their  later  successors  (Empedocles,  Anaxag- 
oras,  the  Atomists)  saw  that  from  such  a  point  of  view  it  is 
more  plausible  to  regard  sensible  bodies  as  complexes  of 
many  different  and  equally  primary  constituents,  and  thus 
materialistic  Monism  gave  way  to  Pluralism  on  the  question 
of  the  material  cause.     At  the  same  time,  half  unconsciously, 
they  felt  the  need  of  asking  a  second  question :  What  provides 
the  motive  impulse  by  which  these  constituents  have  been 
brought  into  just  these  combinations,  and  no  others  ?  Thus  we 
get  a  first  confused  recognition  of  the  existence  of  efficient 
causes  and  their  indispensability  to  complete  scientific  expla- 
nation.    (Empedocles,  Anaxagoras.)     As   order,  arrange- 
ment, organization  are  naturally  recognized  as  good,  and 
their  opposites  as  evil,  this  entails  further  the  notion  of  a  final 
cause  or  rational  purpose  as  present  in  the  order  of  nature, 
and  thus  the  conception  of  end  or  purpose  makes  its  appear- 

'  The  last  clause  is  scarcely  applicable  to  Anaximander,  whomV,^ — 
Aristotle  ignores  as  completely  as  he  can  throughout  this  sketch.  ^^ 


34       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

ance,  though  at  first  in  a  form  in  which  the  final  and  efficient 
causes  of  the  natural  order  are  not  properly  discriminated. 
(Empedocles,  Anaxagoras.)  Meanwhile,  attention  had 
been  directed  in  an  unsystematic  way  by  the  Pythagorean 
mathematicians  to  the  importance  of  discovering  the  law 
or  constitutive  formula  by  which  the  elementary  constituents 
of  each  different  kind  of  object  are  combined.  Socrates 
further  developed  this  interest  in  formal  causes  or  constitutive 
formulae  by  his  insistence  on  the  importance  for  Ethics  of 
accurate  definitions  of  the  various  virtues.  From  these 
initial  impulses  arose  the  Ideal  Theory  of  Plato,  in  which 
the  conception  of  the  formative  law  or  formal  cause,  as 
hypostatised  into  a  transcendent  noumenon,  is  made  the 
center  of  a  great  philosophical  system,  to  the  neglect,  as  Aris- 
totle thinks,  of  the  equally  important  concepts  of  efficient 
and  final  cause.  \  Thus  the  upshot  of  the  whole  review  of 
philosophical  history  is,  that  all  the  four  senses  of  causation 
discriminated  in  the  Physics  have  received  recognition  by  pre- 
ceding thinkers,  but  that  they  have  not  yet  been  defined  with 
sufficient  accuracy  or  distinguished  sharply  enough  from 
each  other.  The  task  thus  indicated  as  essential  to  the 
thorough  scientific  explanation  of  things  is  the  task  that  the 
Aristotelian  "first"  Philosophy  undertakes  to  accomplish. 
It  is  plain  that,  though  Aristotle  does  not  say  this  in  so  many 
words,  he  regards  as  the  specially  important  figures  among 
his  predecessors  Anaxagoras  and  Plato;  Anaxagoras,  because 
by  his  doctrine  of  Mind  as  the  formative  cause  of  the  world- 
order  he  first  gave  expression,  in  however  inadequate  and 


INTRODUCTION.  35 

unconscious  a  way,  to  the  teleological  interpretation  of  the 
universe,  and  Plato,  because  he  was  the  first  philosopher  to 
put  the  problem  of  determining  the  "forms"  or  "real 
essences"  of  the  different  kinds  of  objects  in  the  forefront  of 
philosophical  inquiry. 

The  extent  to  which  lack  of  sympathetic  imagination  has 
vitiated  the  historical  character  of  Aristotle's  sketch  of  pre- 
ceding philosophy  appears  to  vary  considerably  as  we  con- 
sider his  treatment  of  the  different  schools.  From  the  point 
of  view  of  the  most  recent  investigation,  little  can  be  objected 
against  his  treatment  of  the  early  Ionian  Monists,  from  Tha- 
les  to  Heraclitus,  except  a  tendency  to  employ  in  stating 
their  views  technical  terms  of  his  own  system,  such  as  ^PXVt 
"principle,"  ffTocxeJov,  "element,"  and  the  like.  When 
allowance  has  been  made  for  this  habit,  we  readily  see  that 
Aristotle's  interpretation  of  these  naive  Monistic  thinkers 
is  in  all  essentials  thoroughly  historical.  The  same  is  true 
of  his  brief  but  lucid  account  of  the  Atomism  in  which  pre- 
Sophistic  physical  science  culminated,  and  his  still  briefer 
characterisation  of  the  place  of  Socrates  in  the  development 
of  thought.  We  can  hardly  say  as  much  for  his  treatment, 
in  the  present  work,  of  Empedocles  and  Anaxagoras.  The 
attempt  to  distinguish  in  the  system  of  Empedocles  between 
the  "four  elements"  as  the  material  and  Love  and  Strife  as 
the  efficient  causes  of  Nature  is  quite  unhistorical,and  Aris- 
totle's own  remarks  on  Empedocles  in  other  writings  show 
that  he  is  fully  aware  of  this.  Similarly  it  is,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  objective  historical  fact,  a  misapprehension  to 


36       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

censure  Anaxagoras  for  his  mechanical  conception  of  the 
relation  between  Mind  and  the  "  mixture."  The  teleological 
significance  read  by  Plato  and  Aristotle  into  the  notion  of 
Mind  as  the  source  of  cosmic  order  was  certainly  not  promi- 
nent, if  present  at  all,  in  the  actual  thought  of  Anaxagoras. 
Still,  it  may  possibly  be  said  that  Aristotle  is  avowedly  un- 
dertaking rather  to  show  how  far  the  utterances  of  the  earlier 
thinkers  would  permit  of  logical  development  into  some- 
thing like  his  own  doctrine  than  to  determine  their  actual 
original  meaning.  This  defence  has,  no  doubt,  considerable 
weight,  but  one  may  be  allowed  to  question  whether  it  justi- 
fies the  interpretation  of  Anaxagoras'  "mixture"  into  a 
quasi-Aristotelian  theory  of  "  indeterminate  matter,"  or 
the  criticism  of  it  in  the  light  of  the  Aristotelian  concep- 
tion of  chemical  combination. 

There  remain  three  schools  of  thought  towards  which  it 
seems  impossible  to  deny,  when  all  allowances  for  a  philoso- 
pher's natviral  bias  have  been  made,  Aristotle  shows  him- 
self unsympathetic  and  unjust,  viz.,  the  Eleatics,  the  Pythag- 
oreans, the  Platonists.  The  sources  of  his  lack  of  sym- 
pathy are  in  all  three  cases  fortunately  easily  discoverable. 
A  biologically-minded  philosopher  to  whom  the  develop- 
ment of  the  individual  is  the  most  salient  fact  of  existence 
can  hardly  be  expected  to  show  much  tenderness  for  thinkers 
who  regard  all  change  as  mere  illusion,  and  consequently,  as 
Aristotle  observes,  leave  no  room  for  a  science  of  Physics  at 
all.  Hence  it  is  not  strange  that,  though  Aristotle  elsewhere 
correctly  indicates  the  important  influence  of  Eleatic  dialec- 


INTRODUCTION.  37 


tic  on  the  development  of  physical  speculation/  his  brief 
and  unsympathetic  observations  in  the  present  book  should 
entirely  obscure  the  fact  that  the  criticism  of  Parmenides, 
by  annihilating  the  logical  basis  of  materialistic  Monism, 
was  really  the  most  important  turning-point  in  the  whole 
history  of  pre-sophistic  speculation.^  It  is  unfortunate,  also, 
that  his  account  of  the  two  great  thinkers  of  the  Eleatic 
school,  Parmenides  and  Melissus,  has  been  gravely  vitiated  in 
the  case  of  Parmenides  by  the  assumption  that  the  dualistic 
cosmology  of  the  second  part  of  his  poem  represents  the 
author's  own  views,'  and  in  the  case  of  Melissus,  by  a  pedan- 
tic objection  to  that  great  thinker's  incidental  transgressions 
of  the  laws  of  formal  logic* 

Sunilarly  Aristotle's  unsympathetic  account  of  Pythag- 
oreanism  and  Platonism  is  largely  explained  by  the  simple 
consideration  that  the  leading  ideas  of  both  those  philosophies 
are  essentially  mathematical,  whereas  Aristotle  was  by  train- 
ing and  natural  bent  a  biologist,  and  of  a  thoroughly  non-  1 
mathematical  cast  of  mind.  His  criticism  of  the  mathe=-^ 
matical  philosophers  in  books  A,  M,  N  of  the  Metaphysics 
betrays  much  the  same  kind  of  misunderstanding  as  we  should 
expect  if  a  thinker  of  the  antecedents  of  Herbert  Spencer 
were  to  set  himself  to  demolish  the  ideas,  for  instance,  of 

>  DeGeneratione,  A8.324b35  S.  (R.  P.  148  A.)  Compare  Burnet, 
op.  cU.  354-6. 

'  See  Burnet,  op.  cit.  p.  192. 
'  Cf.  Burnet,  op.  cit.  p.  195  ff. 
♦Burnet,  o/>.  ct/.  p.  341-2. 


38       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

Weierstrass  or  Cantor.  In  the  case^Tthe^Xthagoreans,  the 
difficulty  of  entering  sympathetically  into  their  thought  was 
no  doubt  increased  for  Aristotle  both  by  the  naivete  with 
which  their  ideas  were  formulated,  and  by  the  absence  of 
really  trustworthy  sources  of  information.  It  is  pretty  clear 
that  down  to  the  time  of  Aristotle  there  was  no  Pythagorean 
literature  in  existence,  and  in  its  absence  Aristotle  would 
necessarily  depend  for  information  upon  the  verbal  state- 
ments of  such  associates  as  the  musician,  Aristoxenus,  whose 
historical  good  faith  is  far  from  being  above  suspicion.  (It  is 
probably  from  the  oral  assertions  of  such  associates  who  had 
been  personally  acquainted  with  the  latest  generations  of 
(5  u.,v*.*ifU-  *^  y  Pythagoreans  that  Aristotle  derived  his  decidedly  improb- 
Jtu-vs.  iCwt  (fi  ^t)le  view  that  the  Platonic  doctrine  of  the  "participation" 

*\i-J  w*  yfJ*  i***^'  of  things  in  Ideas  had  been  anticipated  by  Pythagoreanism.)' 
Whether  we  ascribe  the  result  primarily  to  defective  infor- 
mation or  to  mathematical  incompetence,  one  thing  at  least 
is  certain,  viz.,  that  chapters  5  and  8  of  our  present  book 
are  quite  inadequate  as  an  account  of  the  thinkers  who  laid 
the  foundations  of  scientific  arithmetic  and  geometry,  and 
made  a  nearer  approximation  to  the  true  theory  of  the  solar 
system  than  any  other  pre-Copernican  men  of  science.  It 
is  quite  impossible  to  do  justice  to  Pythagorean  science,  or 
even  to  understand  its  true  character,  unless  the  wretchedly 
inadequate  discussion  of  Aristotle  is  supplemented  by  some 

*  See  Burnet,  op.  cit.  p.  302  £f,  whose  opinion  as  to  the  spurious- 
ness  of  all  the  so-called  fragments  of  "Philolaus,"  though  not  uni- 
versally accepted  by  scholars,  seems  to  me  more  than  probable. 


INTRODUCTION.  39 


historical  account  in  which  due  prominence  is  given  to 
the  work  of  the  school  in  Astronomy,  Harmony,  and  pure 
Mathematics.^  Aristotle,  it  should  be  noted,  had  com- 
posed a  separate  monograph  on  Pythagoreanism  which  is 
now  lost,  but  can  hardly,  from  his  lack  of  sympathy  with 
mathematical  modes  of  thought,  have  possessed  any  high 
philosophical  value. 

The  Aristotelian  criticism  of  Platonism  has  given  rise  to 
a  host  of  divergent  opinions  and  a  mass  of  the  most  tedious 
of  human  writings.  Every  possible  view  has  been  taken  of  it, 
from  that  of  those  who  regard  it  as  a  crushing  refutation  of 
the  vagaries  of  a  transcendentalist  dreamer  of  genius  to  that 
of  those  who  refuse  to  believe  that  Plato  can  ever  have 
taught  anything  so  crazy  as  the  doctrine  Aristotle  puts  into 
his  mouth.  This  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  at  length  topics 
on  which  I  may  have  a  more  suitable  opportunity  of  enlarg- 
ing in  the  near  future,  and  I  will  therefore  merely  record 
here  one  or  two  conclusions  which  seem  to  me  to  follow  from 
any  unbiased  consideration  of  the  anti-Platonic  polemic 
of  the  Metaphysics. 

Aristotle,  lecturing  during  the  life-time  of  Xenocrates, 

^  For  excellent  accounts  of  the  school,  see  Baumker,  Das  Prob- 
lem der  Materie  in  der  Griechischen  Philosophie,  pp.  33-46;  Milhaud, 
Philosoplies-Geometres  dela  Grece,  pp.  79-123;  M.  Cantor,  Geschichte 
der  MatJiematik,  I.,  pp.  137-175.  It  was  the  non-existence  of  •mitten 
Pythagorean  literature  which  gave  rise  in  later  ages  to  the  fiction  of 
the  "Pythagorean  Silence,"  the  imaginary  division  of  the  order  into 
an  inner  and  outer  circle,  and  the  tale  of  the  drowning  of  Hippasus  in 
revenge  for  his  publication  of  the  secrets  of  the  school.  See  Biirnet, 
op.  cit.  p.  loi  ff. 


40       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

his  fellow-pupil  in  the  Platonic  Academy,  undoubtedly  in- 
tended to  give  a  bona  fide  account  of  the  Platonic  doctrine^ 
A  mere  polemical  misrepresentation,  where  the  circum- 
stances were  such  as  to  make  exposure  inevitable,  would 
have  been  suicidal.  It  is  also  clear  that  Aristotle  intends 
to  present  the  doctrine  in  question  as  that  of  Plato  himself, 
and  not  merely  of  Xenocrates  and  the  contemporary  Acad- 
emy. This  is  shown  by  the  occurrence  of  occasional  direct 
references  to  expressions  employed  by  Plato  in  his  oral  teach- 
ing, as  well  as  by  passages  in  which  the  views  of  particular 
contemporary  Platonists  are  distinguished  from  those  of 
"the  first"  author  of  the  doctrine,"  i.  e.,  Plato.  Hence  it 
seems  to  me  indubitable  that,  although  the  doctrine  of  the 
Ideal  Numbers  and  their  derivation  from  the  One  and  the 
"Great  and  Small"  is  not  to  be  found  totidem  verbis  in  the 
Platonic  dialogues,  Plato  must  actually  have  said  substan- 
tially what  Aristotle  makes  him  say  on  these  topics.  If  a 
philosopher  of  the  genius  of  Aristotle,  writing  after  twenty 
years  of  personal  association  with  a  teacher  of  whose  lectures 
he  had  himself  been  an  associate  editor,  and  in  circumstances 
which  make  intentional  misrepresentation  incredible,  can- 
not be  trusted  to  give  a  substantially  correct  account  of  what 
his  master  said,  surely  there  is  an  end  to  all  confidence  in 
human  testimony.  I  would  further  suggest  that  the  doc- 
trine ascribed  to  Plato  by  Aristotle  is  in  the  main  consistent 
and  intelligible,  and  can  be  shown  to  be  a  natural  develop- 
ment of  positions  which  are  actually  taken  up  in  several 
of    the  dialogues,  notably  the  Partnenides  and  Philebus. 


INTRODUCTION.  41 

Most  of  the  difficulties  found  in  it  by  scholars  have,  I  believe, 
been  due  to  their  own  unfortunate  imfamiliarity  with  the 
concepts  of  Mathematics  and  exact  Logic.  At  the  same 
time,  I  think  it  probable  that  Plato  himself  fell  into  occa- 
sional inconsist^cies  in  the  first  formulation  of  such  highly 
abstract  principles,  and  certain  that  Aristotle,  from  lack  of 
mathematical  competence,  has  often  failed  to  understand  the 
meaning  of  the  propositions  he  attacks.  Some  cases  of  such 
failure  I  have  tried  to  indicate  in  my  notes  to  chapter  9  of 
the  present  work.  I  will  here  terminate  these  introductory 
remarks  with  the  two  suggestions  (i)  that  the  growing  in- 
terest of  contemporary  philosophers  in  the  logic  of  the  exact 
sciences  promises  to  put  us  in  a  better  position  for  compre- 
hending the  central  thought  of  the  Platonic  theory  than 
has  ever  been  possible  since  its  first  enunciation,*  and  (2)  that 
it  would  be  an  interesting  subject  for  inquiry  whether  the 
forcing  of  all  philosophic  thought  into  biological  categories 
by  the  genius  of  Aristotle  has  not  fatally  retarded  the 
development  of  correct  views  on  the  logic  of  exact  science 
right  down  to  the  present  day. 

'  Particularly  valuable  as  illustrating  the  light  thrown  on  Plato's 
philosophy  by  a  study  of  the  mathematical  problems  in  which  it 
originated,  is  the  work  of  Prof.  G.  Milhaud,  Lss  Philosoph^s-Geometres 
de  la  Grece,  to  which  I  have  several  times  had  occasion  to  refer  in  the 
course  of  this  book. 


SUMMARY. 


SUMMARY. 


CHAPTER  I. 

Intellectual  curiosity  a  fundamental  natural  instinct,  as 
is  shown  by  the  fact  that  sense-perceptions  are  normally 
pleasant  in  themselves.  The  successive  stages  in  the  de- 
velopment of  rational  cognition :  sensation,  primary  memory  ^ 
experience,  art  or  science  [i.  e.,  bodies  of  general  truths 
which  involve  a  theory  as  to  the  reason  of  facts  and  a  sys- 
tematic classification  of  them].  General  theory,  though 
often  less  serviceable  for  immediate  practice  than  experience, 
holds  a  higher  rank  in  the  series  of  intellectual  activities, 
because  it  involves  insight  into  the  cause  or  reason  of  facts; 
hence,  we  regard  it  as  revealing  a  superior  degree  of  Wisdom. 
Historically,  hiunan  intelligence  was  first  employed  in  pro- 
viding for  the  necessities,  and  then  for  the  comforts,  of 
existence;  science  arose,  in  Egypt,  from  the  existence  of  a 
priestly  caste  for  whose  necessities  and  comforts  adequate 
provision  had  already  been  made,  and  who  therefore  were 
at  leisure  to  employ  their  intellect  upon  speculative  inquiry 
into  the  reasons  and  causes  of  things. 

45 


46       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 


CHAPTER  II. 

What  is  the  general  character  of  that  highest  form  of 
intellectual  activity  which  is  traditionally  known  as  "Wis- 
dom ?  "  By  universal  consent,  Wisdom  possesses  the  follow- 
ing characteristics:  (i)  universality  of  range  (conversance 
with  the  universal  presuppositions  of  all  cognition);  (2) 
profundity;  (3)  ultimate  certainty  and  validity;  (4)  finality 
in  its  explanations;  (5)  scientific  disinterestedness;  (6)  inde- 
pendence of  immediate  practical  needs.  All  these  character- 
istics will  be  found  to  belong  in  a  superlative  degree  to  the 
scientific  investigation  of  the  ultimate  causes  and  principles 
of  existence.  The  original  incentive  to  such  investigation 
is  the  sense  of  wonder  and  perplexity  in  the  presence  of  facts 
which  we  are^unable  to  explain.  The  science  thus  origi- 
nated, because  independent  of  all  practical  interests,  is  the 
only  really  liberal  science.  It  also,  more  than  any  other 
form  of  knowledge,  is  "divine,"  for  the  double  reason  that  it 
involves  the  contemplation  of  divine  objects  and  that  it  is 
the  only  form  of  cognition  worthy  of  divine  intelligences. 


CHAPTER  III. 

Our  object,  then,  is  the  analysis  and  classification  of  the 
different  kinds  of  cause.  In  the  Physics  we  have  distin- 
guished four  senses  of  the  term:  (i)  the  jormal,  (2)  the  ma- 
terial, (3)  the  efficient,  (4)  the  f,nal  cause.  A  review  of  the 
past  history  of  philosophical  thought  will  confirm  our  con- 


SUMMARY.  47 


fidence  in  the  exhaustiveness  of  this  analysis  if  we  find  that 
every  principle  of  explanation  employed  by  previous  thinkers 
can  be  classed  under  one  or  other  of  these  four  heads. 

Now,  the  earliest  philosophers  asked  only:  What  is  the 
wo/maZ  cause  of  things — i.  e.,  what  is  the  primitive  and  in- 
destructible body  of  which  all  sensible  things  are  perishable 
transformations  ?  Thales,  whose  reasons  for  his  opinion  can 
only  be  conjectured,  said  that  it  is  water  (a  view  which 
perhaps  has  some  support  in  early  poetical  tradition); 
Anaximenes  and  Diogenes,  that  it  is  air;  Heraclitus  and 
Hippasus,  that  it  is  pre;  while  Empedocles  assumes  the 
existence  of  four  such  primitive  forms  of  body;  Anaxagoras, 
of  an  infinite  number.  This  leads  to  a  second  problem.  By 
what  agency  have  the  various  transformations  of  the  primary 
body  or  bodies  been  produced;  what  is  the  efficient  cause  of 
the  physical  world  ?  The  early  Monists  ignored  this  prob- 
lem, with  the  exception  of  the  Eleatic  school,  who  met  it  by 
asserting  that  change  itself  is  a  mere  illusion.  Parmenides, 
however,  and  the  later  pluralistic  Physicists  (Empedocles, 
Anaxagoras)  provide  some  material  for  its  solution  by 
assigning  to  some  elements  an  active,  to  others  a  passive 
role  in  the  formation  of  things. 

A  further  question  which  obviously  suggests  itself  is  the 
problem:  What  is  the  explanation  of  the  presence  of  Order, 
Beauty,  Goodness,  and  their  opposites  in  the  universe — - 
i.  e.,  what  is  the  final  cause  of  existence  ?  The  first  explicit 
recognition  of  such  a  final  cause  is  contained  in  the  declara- 
tion of  Anaxagoras  that  Mind  is  the  source  of  all  cosmic  order. 


48       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

CHAPTER  IV. 

Still  earlier  implicit  hints  of  a  teleological  explanation  of 
things  may  be  found  in  those  writers  who  treat  sexual  Desire 
as  a  formative  principle.  (Hesiod,  Parmenides.)  Emped- 
ocles  goes  a  step  farther  in  recognizing  Strife  as  well  as 
Love  as  a  native  impulse  in  the  universe,  thus  half-consciously 
introducing  a  double  teleological  principle,  a  cause  of  Good 
and  a  contrasted  cause  of  Evil.  But  neither  Anaxagoras 
nor  Empedocles  has  a  really  consistent  and  well  thought-out 
philosophy.  Anaxagoras,  in  the  actual  working-out  of  his 
scheme,  treats  Mind  as  a  mere  mechanical  agent,  and  only 
falls  back  upon  it  when  he  cannot  find  a  specific  physical 
mechanical  cause  of  a  given  state  of  things.  In  Empedocles 
Strife  is,  in  fact,  just  as  much  a  cause  of  organic  combina- 
tions as  Love,  and  Love  as  much  a  source  of  dissolution  as 
Strife,  and  though  he  professes  to  recognize  four  equally 
ultimate  "elements,"  he  really  assigns  a  special  active  func- 
tion to  Fire  and  treats  the  other  three,  in  contrast  with  Fire, 
as  a  single  passive  principle. 

The  Atomists,  again,  Leucippus  and  Democritus,  con- 
sider only  the  problem  of  the  material  cause,  which  they  solve 
by  recognizing  a  pair  of  contrasted  factors  —  Body,  which 
consists  of  an  infinity  of  solid  atoms,  and  Void,  or  Empty 
Space,  as  the  ingredients  of  which  things  are  made. 


SUMMARY.  49 


CHAPTER  V. 

Meanwhile,  the  Pythagorean  mathematicians  were  led, 
by  fanciful  analogies  between  the  properties  of  numbers 
and  those  of  visible  things,  to  the  view  that  physical  things 
are  made  of  numbers  and  that  the  constituent  elements  of 
nimiber  (which  are  the  Even  and  Odd,  or  Unlimited  and 
Limit)  are  the  ultimate  elements  of  the  universe.  In  order 
to  carry  out  this  correspondence  between  numbers  and 
things,  they  allowed  themselves  a  wide  license  in  the  inven- 
tion of  imaginar)'  objects.  Some  of  them,  following  hints 
unsystematically  thrown  out  by  Alcmson  of  Crotona,  con- 
structed a  list  of  ten  contrasted  pairs  of ' '  opposite  "  principles. 
Their  doctrine  is  obscure  and  confused,  but  it  is  clear  that 
they  meant  to  say  that  the  elements  of  number  are  the 
material  causes  or  constituent  factors  of  things. 

The  Eleatics,  who  regarded  the  Universe  as  a  simple 
Unity,  were  in  consistency  debarred  from  any  inquiry  into 
causation,  since  on  their  view  all  change  and  all  processes 
of  origination  must  be  subjective  illusions.  Parmenides, 
however,  affords  some  reconciliation  of  the  Monistic  doctrine 
with  actual  experience,  since  he  seems  to  hold  that  though 
Being  is  one  from  the  point  of  view  of  rational  thought, 
it  is  many  from  that  of  sensation.  Hence,  in  the  cosmolog- 
ical  part  of  his  poem  he  treats  not-Being  as  a  causative  prin- 
ciple opposed  to  and  co-ordinate  with  Being,  and  thus 
reverts  to  a  kind  of  Dualism.  The  cruder  views  of  Melissus 
and  Xenophanes  call  for  no  consideration. 


so       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

Thus  we  see  that  all  these  philosophers  recognize  the  ex- 
istence of  a  material  cause  or  causes,  though  they  disagree 
about  their  number.  They  also  recognize  the  existence  of 
efficient  causality,  though  some  of  them  postulate  a  single 
initial  motive  impulse,  others  a  pair  of  contrasted  impulses. 
The  Pythagoreans,  also,  adopted  a  dualist  explanation  of 
things,  but  they  differed  from  other  thinkers  in  holdmg  that 
number  and  its  elements  are  not  predicates  of  some  sensible 
reality,  but  the  actual  substance  or  stuff  of  which  things  are 
made.  They  further  tentatively  began  to  give  definitions 
of  some  things  and  thus  to  recognize  the  principle  of  the 
formal  cause,  though  in  a  crude  and  superficial  way. 

CHAPTER  VI. 

The  system  of  Plato,  though  in  general  analogous  to  that 
of  the  Pythagoreans,  has  some  special  peculiarities.  From 
early  association  with  Cratylus,  the  Heraclitean,  he  derived 
a  fixed  conviction  that  sensible  things,  being  essentially 
variable  and  mutable,  cannot  be  defined.  Hence,  having 
been  led  by  the  example  of  Socrates  to  regard  universal  defi- 
nition as  the  fvmdamental  problem  of  science,  he  inferred 
that  the  objects  of  scientific  cognition  are  a  separate  class  of 
supra-sensible  entities,  which  he  called  "Ideas,"  and  that  the 
corresponding  classes  of  sensible  things  are  connected  with 
them  by  a  peculiar  relation  which  he  called  "participation," 
but  the  Pythagoreans  "imitation."  The  nature  of  this 
relation  was  left  unexplained.  He  further  held  that  the 
objects  of  Mathematics  form  a  third  class  of  entities,  inter- 


SUMMARY.  51 


mediate  between  "Ideas"  and  sensible  things.  Like  the 
"Ideas,"  they  are  immutable;  like  sensible  things,  there  are 
many  of  each  kind. 

The  "Ideas"  being  the  causes  of  everything  else,  their 
constituent  elements  are  ultimately  the  constituent  elements 
of  everything.  These  elements  are  two,  a  material  principle, 
the  "Great  and  Small,"  and  a  formal  principle,  the  One. 
From  the  union  of  these  two  proceed  the  "Ideal  Numbers." 
Thus  he  agreed  with  the  Pythagoreans  in  holding  (i)  that 
numbers  are  the  causes  of  all  Being,  and  (2)  that  they  are 
independent  entities  and  not  mere  predicates  of  anything 
more  ultimate.  He  differed  from  them  in  (i)  taking  as  his 
material  principle  or  Unlimited  a  duality  of  the  "Great  and 
Small "  and  (2)  in  regarding  numbers  as  entities  of  a  different 
kind  both  from  sensible  things  and  from  mathematical 
objects. 

Thus  we  see  that  this  theory  recognizes  two  forms  of  cause, 
the  formal  and  the  material.  IncidentaUy,  also,  he  follows 
the  lead  of  Empedocles  in  regarding  one  of  these  factors, 
the  One,  as  the  cause  of  Good,  the  other  as  the  cause  of  Evil. 

CHAPTER  VII. 

We  see,  then,  that  every  type  of  cause  recognized  in  earlier 
philosophy  is  provided  for  in  our  fourfold  classification. 
The  material  cause  appears  in  one  shape  or  another  in  the 
philosophies  of  Plato,  the  Pythagoreans,  Empedocles,  An- 
axagoras,  the  Ionian  Monists.  The  efficient  cause  has 
received  recognition  from  Empedocles  and  Anaxagoras,  not 


52       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

to  mention  the  poets  who  have  found  a  cosmic  principle  in 
sexual  Desire.  The  riearest  approximation  to  the  con- 
ception of  a  formal  cause  or  constitutive  law  is  to  be  found 
in  Platonism,  according  to  which  the  Ideas  constitute  the 
what  or  essential  nature  of  things,  the  One  that  of  the  Ideas. 
As  for  the  final  cause,  it  has  in  a  way  been  recognized  by 
Empedocles,  Anaxagoras  and  Plato,  but  not  in  its  true  char- 
acter. Thus  our  historical  retrospect  affords  some  pre- 
sumption that  our  fourfold  classification  of  causes  is  com- 
plete. It  remains  to  point  out  the  main  defects  of  the  various 
systems. 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

Monistic  Materialism  (the  doctrine  of  the  Milesians 
Heraclitus,  etc.)  is  defective  (i)  because  its  explanations  are 
only  applicable  to  corporeal  things,  whereas  there  exist  also 
things  which  are  incorporeal;  (2)  because  it  renders  the 
fact  of  phenomenal  change  inexplicable,  from  its  inability 
to  recognize  e^ae«/ causality;  (3)  because  it  ignores  inquiry 
into  the  formal  causes  or  constitutive  laws  of  things;  (4) 
because  the  Monistic  Materialists  proceed  on  no  intelligible 
principle  in  their  selection  of  the  primary  body.  We  may 
suppose  other  bodies  to  be  produced  from  this  primary 
body  either  by  a  process  of  concretion  or  by  one  of  disintegra- 
tion; and  again,  we  may  hold  that  on  either  view,  the  tem- 
poral starting-point  of  the  process  is  identical  with  its  final 
resvilt,  or  that  it  is  opposite.  Whichever  of  these  alterna- 
tives be  adopted,  we  can  only  reasonably  regard  either  the 


1 


SUMMARY.  S3 


densest  form  of  matter  (earth)  or  the  least  dense  (fire)  as 
the  primary  body.  The  early  Monists  overlooked  this,  and 
selected  then:  primary  body  at  hap-hazard.  The  pluralistic 
materialist,  Empedocles,  is  exposed  to  some  of  the  same  diffi- 
culties, and  there  are  also  special  objections  to  his  doctrine, 
(i)  He  holds  that  the  "simple  bodies"  are  not  reciprocally 
convertible  into  each  other,  whereas  we  see,  in  fact,  that  they 
do  pass  into  one  another.  (2)  His  account  of  efficient  causality 
is  neither  correct  nor  consistent  with  itself.  (3)  His  general 
position  involves  denial  of  the  reality  of  all  qualitative 
change.  As  for  Anaxagoras.  his  doctrine  of  the  original 
intermixture  of  all  things  is  open,  as  it  stands,  to  the  follow- 
ing objections:  (i)  If  such  a  "mixture"  ever  existed,  there 
must  have  been  a  previous  period  during  which  its  ingre- 
dients existed  unmixed;  (2)  it  is  not  true  in  fact  that  every- 
thing will  "mix"  with  everything  else;  (3)  what  is  united 
by  "mixture"  is  also  separable;  hence,  if  qualities  belong  to 
things  by  being  "mixed"  with  them,  it  should  be  possible 
to  separate  the  "mixture"  and  obtain  pure  qualities  with- 
out any  corresponding  substances.  Probably,  then,  his 
language  about  the  "mixture"  was  merely  an  inadequate 
attempt  to  formulate  the  conception  of  a  common  material 
substrate  in  physical  things  devoid  of  all  determinate  sensible 
quality.  If  so,  his  doctrine  amounts  to  a  dualism  of  Mind 
and  an  indeterminate  Matter  which  closely  anticipates 
the  Platonic  dualism  of  the  One  and  its  Other,  the  "Great 
and  Small." 

The  doctrine  of  the  Pythagoreans,  though  apparently  of 


54       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

a  more  abstract  character,  was  also  really  intended  as  a  cos- 
mology. They  too,  like  the  early  physicists  just  discussed, 
held  that  what  is  consists  entirely  of  perceptible  physical 
bodies,  though  their  principles  would  really  have  been  more 
in  place  in  a  system  of  abstract  Mathematics  than  in  Physics. 
They  cannot  possibly  deduce  real  motion  from  their  purely 
mathematical  principles,  nor  can  they  give  any  account  of 
the  physical  properties  of  body.  The  cosmical  causality 
they  ascribe  to  number  is  unintelligible  if  there  is  only  one 
kind  of  numbers  and  these  are  identical  with  physical  things. 

CHAPTER  rX. 

To  the  Platonist  doctrine  of  Ideas  or  "Ideal  Numbers"  we 
may  object:  (i)  That  it  merely  duplicates  theunsolved  prob- 
lems of  the  sensible  world  by  postulating  a  precisely  similar 
"ideal"  world  as  its  counterpart.  (2)  The  supposed  proofs 
of  the  existence  of  Ideas  are  all  fallacious.  Some  of  them 
would  require  the  existence  of  Ideas  of  artificial  objects  and 
of  negatives,  others  that  of  Ideas  of  the  perishable.  The 
most  exact  of  them  lead  either  to  the  admission  of  Ideas  of 
relatives  or  to  the  indefinite  regress.  (3)  The  argmnents 
for  the  theory  of  Ideas  involve  assimiptions  inconsistent 
with  the  Platonic  view  of  the  One  and  the  "Great  and 
Small "  as  the  primary  elements  of  Being. 

(4)  Those  arguments  are  also  inconsistent  with  the  theory 
of  the  "participation"  of  things  in  the  Ideas.  According 
to  the  former,  there  must  be  Ideas  corresponding  to  every 
logical  category  of  general  names,  whereas  it  is  implied  by 


SUMMARY. 55 

the  doctrine  of  participation"  that  there  can  only  be  Ideas 
of  substances. 

(5)  The  Ideas  are  useless  as  principles  for  the  explanation 
of  the  sensible  world,  (a)  They  do  not  account  for  our 
knowledge  of  the  things,  since,  by  hypothesis,  they  are  outside 
them,  in  a  world  of  their  own.  (b)  For  the  same  reason,  they 
do  not  accoimt  for  the  Being  of  other  things,  (c)  Nor  do 
they  accoimt  for  the  production  of  other  things.  "Partici- 
pation," "archetype,"  etc.,  are  mere  empty  metaphors. 
For  who  is  the  artist  who  constructs  things  on  the  model  of 
these  archetypes?  Further,  it  will  follow  that  there  can  be 
several  archetypes  of  the  same  thmg,  and  also  that  some 
Ideas  are  archetypes  of  other  Ideas. 

The  mere  existence  of  a  Platonic  Idea  is  insufficient 
to  cause  the  existence  of  a  corresponding  sensible  thing; 
and,  on  the  other  side,  some  things  come  into  being  of  which 
the  Platonists  do  not  recognize  Ideas. 

(6)  Special  difficulties  arise  from  the  view  that  the  Ideas 
are  a  class  of  Numbers,  (a)  How  on  such  a  view  are  we  to 
understand  the  assertion  that  they  are  causes  of  sensible 
things?  (b)  What  relation  among  Ideas  corresponds  to  the 
arithmetical  relations  between  nimibers  which  are  com- 
bined by  addition  into  a  sum  ?  (c)  The  theory  requires  us 
to  construct  a  further  class  of  numbers  which  are  to  be  the 
objects  of  arithmetic,  (d)  It  is  difficult  to  reconcile  the 
assertion  that  the  Ideas  are  numbers  with  the  other  assertion 
that  they  are  substances. 

(7)  It  is  quite  impossible  to  bring  the  fundamental  con- 


56       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

cepts  of  geometry  into  connection  with  the  Platonic  theory 
of  the  One  and  the  "  Great  and  Small"  as  the  universal  con- 
stituents of  Being.  Plato  had  seen  the  difficulty,  so  far  as 
points  are  concerned,  and  had  consequently  refused  to  recog- 
nize their  existence.  But  the  same  line  of  argiunent  which 
establishes  the  existence  of  lines  is  equally  valid  for  that  of 
points. 

(8)  In  short,  the  Ideal  Theory  is  the  substitution  of 
mere  Mathematics  for  Philosophy,  and  merely  duplicates 
the  problems  of  the  sensible  world.  It  throws  light  neither 
on  efficient  nor  on  final  causation.  Even  the  conception  of 
matter  in  this  philosophy  is  mathematical  rather  than  physi- 
cal, and,  as  to  motion,  its  very  existence  is  inconsistent  with 
he  principles  of  the  theory.  Not  to  mention  the  impossi- 
bility of  finding  any  place  whatever  in  the  Platonic  scheme 
for  certain  important  geometrical  entities. 

(9)  In  general,  we  may  say  that  Plato  has  fallen  into  the 
error  of  supposing  that  all  objects  of  cognition  are  com- 
posed of  the  same  universal  elementary  constituents,  and 
that  these  are  discoverable  by  analysis.  But  the  truth  is  (a) 
that  analysis  into  constituent  elements  is  impossible  except  in 
the  case  of  substances,  and  (b)  all  acquisition  of  knowledge 
presupposes  previous  knowledge  as  its  basis.  Hence,  the 
Platonic  conception  of  a  single  all-comprehensive  science 
of  Dialectic  which  analyses  all  objects  into  their  elements 
is  chimerical.  Even  if  it  were  not,  one  could  at  least  never 
be  sure  that  the  analysis  had  been  carried  to  completion. 
Also  the  Platonic  philosopher,  who  knows  the  elements  of 


SUMMARY.  57 


everything,  ought  to  be  able  to  know  sense-qualities  with- 
out needing  to  have  experienced  the  corresponding  sensa- 
tions. 

CHAPTER  X. 
Thus  we  see  that  all  our  four  significations  of  the  term 
"cause"  have  emerged  in  past  speculation,  and  no  others. 
But  the  real  sense  and  import  of  the  principles  employed 
has  been  only  confusedly  and  dimly  perceived.  Even  Em- 
pedocles,  e.  g.,  had  a  dim  glimpse  into  the  significance  of 
formal  causes  or  constitutive  laws,  though  he  was  unable  to 
give  distinct  expression  to  his  thought. 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE    OF    THE    PRE- 

ARISTOTELIAN    PHILOSOPHERS 

REFERRED      TO      IN 

METAPHYSICS  A. 

B.C. 

Thales  floruit  c.  585  (he  foretold  the  solar  eclipse 

of  this  year) 
Anaximander  born  c.  610 
Anaximenes  floruit  c.  546 
Xenophanes         "    c.  536 
'  AUAmU^wiU      Pythagoras         "    c.  532  (is  said  to  have  left  Samos 


'  ICtfr/?Lf  ^^<^"^  disapproval  of  the  tyr- 

ji^^lA*  anny  of  Polycrates)  *Tf 

Heraclitus  "    c.  500 

Parmenides         "    c.  470    (accepting  the  statements  of 

Plato  in  his  Parmenides) 
Empedocles         "     c-  455 
Anaxagoras     born  c.  500  d.  c.  428 
Melissus  defeated  an  Athenian  navy  441 
Diogenes  of  ApoUonia  floruit  c.  423  (he  is  satirized  in  the 

Clouds  of  Aristophanes  produced  that  year) 
Democritus      born  c.  460  floruit  c.  420 
Socrates  "     c.  470  died  399 

Plato  "         427  died  347 

S8 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE.  59 

Where  a  floruit  is  given  without  any  further  explanation 
it  is  taken  from  the  notices  of  the  Alexandrian  chronologists 
as  preserved  to  us  by  such  writers  as  Diogenes  Laertius  and 
Suidas.  A  man  was  conventionally  assumed  to  be  forty 
years  old  at  the  date  of  his  "flourishing." 

Of  philosophers  mentioned  in  the  present  book  but  not 
inserted  in  the  foregoing  list  Hippo  is  known  to  have  been  a 
contemporary  of  Pericles;  the  physician  Alcmaeon  was,  as 
Aristotle  tells  us,  "contemporary  with  the  old  age  of  Pythag- 
oras," i.  e.,  approximately  contemporary  with  Heraclitus. 
Of  Hippasus  nothing  can  be  said  but  that  he  was  a  member 
of  the  Pythagorean  order,  and  therefore  jvmior  to  Pythagoras. 
Of  Leucippus  we  can  only  say  that  he  was  a  predecessor  of 
Democritus  and  pretty  certainly  younger  than  Melissus.     ^ 

As  for  the  "Pythagoreans"  mentioned  by  Aristotle,  in  the 
absence  of  names,  we  cannot  date  them  precisely.  The 
Pythagorean  "Order"  was  violently  destroyed  at  a  date  some- 
where between  450  and  410,  but  the  survivors  continued  to 
exist  as  a  band  of  scientific  students  for  some  time  longer. 
Among  its  later  members  were  Philolaus  of  Thebes,  a  con- 
temporary of  Socrates,  and  Plato's  friend  Archytas,  the 
engineer  and  statesman  of  Tarentum,  probably  about  a 
generation  later.  See  on  the  history  of  these  proceedings 
Burnet,  op.  cit.  p.  96  fif. 


WORKS  USEFUL  TO  THE  STUDENT  OF 
ARISTOTLE'S    METAPHYSICS. 

[I  have  omitted  from  the  following  list  both  complete  edi- 
tions of  Aristotle's  works  and  general  histories  of  Greek 
Philosophy  as  a  whole.] 

Editions  of  the  text  of  the  Metaphysics.  Commen- 
taries, etc. 

Aristotelis  Metaphysica,  edit.  W.  Christ.  Leipzig, 
Teubner.     2nd  edit.  1903. 

Aristotelis  Metaphysica,  recognovit  et  emendavit  Herman- 
nusBonitz.  Bonn,  1848.  (Pt.  I.,  Text;  Pt.  II.,  Commentary 
in  Latin.)  The  most  important  modem  edition  of  the 
Metaphysics. 

Aristoteles,  Metaphysik,  ubersetzt  von  Hermann  Bonitz. 
Berlin,  1890.  (Posthumously  edited  from  the  papers  of  Bon- 
itz by  E.  Wellmann.) 

Alexandri  Aphrodisiensis  in  Aristotelis  Metaphysica  Com- 
mentaria.  Edit.  Michael  Hayduck,  Berlin,  1891.  (Vol.1, 
of  the  complete  collection  of  Commentaria  in  Aristotelem 
GrcBca,  published  by  the  Berlin  Academy.)  Alexander  of 
Aphrodisias  in  the  Troad  (floruit  c.  200  A.  D.)  is  far  the 
most  trustworthy  of  the  ancient  expositors  of  Aristotle,  and 
the  commentary  on  the  Metaphysics,  in  particular,  is  an  in- 
60 


BOOKS    OF    REFERENCE. 6i 

dispensable  aid  to  the  serious  student  of  Aristotle.  There  is 
an  earlier  edition  of  the  work  by  Bonitz,  Berlin,  1847.  The 
commentary  on  the  first  five  books,  with  excerpts  from  the 
remainder,  is  also  printed  among  the  scholia  in  the  4th  vol- 
ume of  the  Berlin  Aristotle. 


General  works  on  Aristotelian  Philosophy  (apart  from 
the  complete  histories  of  Greek  Philosophy). 

H.  Siebeck.  Aristoteles  (Frohmann's  Klassiker  der  Phi- 
losophie.  No.  VIII).    Stuttgart,  1899. 

E.  Wallace.  Outlines  of  the  Philosophy  of  Aristotle. 
Cambridge  (Eng.)  University  Press,  3rd  edition,  1887.  A 
useful  litde  digest  of  the  main  positions  of  the  Aristotelian 
system,  the  most  important  passages  being  quoted  in  the 
original  Greek  at  the  end  of  each  section.  The  student 
should,  however,  be  on  his  guard  against  the  author's  unfor- 
tunate tendency  to  read  Hegelianism  into  Aristode. 

Works  on  the  History  of  Greek  Philosophy  down  to  Aris- 
totle. 

H.  Ritter  and  L.  Preller.    Historia  Philosophies  Graca.JU  Y"*^****-* 
7th  edition,  Gotha,  1888.    [Referred  to  in  the  notes  to  theUf^CiJj  4iJ^l 
present  work  as  R.  P.]    An  invaluable  collection  of  the  chief  /?KJ  ftf  ^j^  f 
original  texts  for  the  study  of  Greek  Philosophy,  chronologic-  ^  9;  ^K'tik 
ally  arranged. 

H.  Diels.  Fragmente  der  Vorsokratiker.  Berlin,  1903. 
Greek  text  with  German  translation.    The  latest  complete 


62       ARISTOTLE   ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

CftiW*^  ^  ^^    critical  text  of  the  remains  of  the  earliest  Greek  men  of 
ht^  luMJSfi  science, 

H.  Diels.  Doxographi  Grceci.  Berlin,  1879.  A  care- 
ful edition  of  the  various  ancient  "doxographies,"  or  sum- 
maries of  the  theories  of  philosophical  schools,  which  can  be 
shown  to  have  been  ultimately  derived  from  the  lost  ^uaixai 
86^ at  of  Theophrastus.  Particularly  valuable  are  the 
elaborate  Prolegomena  (in  Latin),  in  which  Diels  placed  the 
whole  subject  of  the  origin  and  value  of  the  doxographical 
tradition  as  to  the  doctrines  of  the  Pre-Socratics  in  an  entirely 
new  light. 

A.  Fairbanks.  The  First  Philosophers  0}  Greece.  Lon- 
don, 1898.  Greek  text  of  the  fragments  of  the  Pre-Socratics 
with  translation. 
^^  J.  Burnet.  Early  Greek  Philosophy.  London  and  Edin- 
burgh, 1892.  The  most  important  of  recent  English  works 
on  the  Pre-Socratics,  and  quite  indispensable  to  the  student. 

Th,  Gomperz.  Griechische  Denker.  Leipzig,  1896.  In 
course  of  publication.  Vols.  1,2,  which  bring  the  treatment 
of  the  subject  down  to  the  death  of  Plato,  have  already  ap- 
peared. Vol.  I  has  appeared  also  in  an  English  translation 
under  the  title  Greek  Thinkers.    London,  1901 . 

Learned  and  vivacious,  but  lacks  the  sound  judgment  of 
the  work  last  mentioned. 

P.  Tannery.  Pour  VHistoire  de  la  Science  Hellene.  Paris, 
1887.     Studies  of  the  Pre-Socratics. 

G.  Milhaud.  Les  Philosophes-Geomhtres  de  la  Grhe: 
Platon  et  ses  Pridecesseurs.  Paris   1900.    A  particularly 


BOOKS   OF   REFERENCE.  63 

valuable  study  of  the  Platonic  doctrine  of  Ideas  in  the  light 
of  Greek  Mathematics.  The  concluding  chapter  contains 
some  acute  examination  of  the  anti-Platonic  polemic  of 
Aristotle's  Metaphysics,  Bks.  A  9,  M-N 

E.  Zeller,  Platonische  Studien.  Tubingen,  1839.  The 
last  of  the  studies  is  an  examination  of  Aristotle 's  account 
of  Platonism. 

C.  Baumker.  Das  Problem  der  Materie  in  der  Griechischen 
Philosophie.  Munster,  1890.  A  full  and  learned  history  of 
Greek  philosophical  theories  of  the  nature  of  Matter. 

The  standard  history  of  the  whole  development  of  Greek 
thought  down  to  the  final  closing  of  the  philosophical  schools 
of  Athens  by  Justinian  in  529  A.  D.  continues  to  be 

E.  Zeller.    Philosophie  der  Griechen.    Last  ccjffiplete  edi-  C*^  w  ««.-r)t  e**t  y 
tion,  the4th.    5th  edition  in  course  of  publication.    Separate'fcO^  J  >  *^  <  1%^ 
translations  of  various  sections  into  English:  Pre-Socratic    f**"^ 
Philosophy,  London,  1881;  Plato  and  the  Older  Academy, 
London,  1876;  Aristotle  and  the  Earlier  Peripatetics,  Lon- 
don, 1897. 


/ 


I 


ARISTOTLE    ON    HIS 
PREDECESSORS. 


FIRST  BOOK  OF  HIS   METAPHYSICS 


ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 


CHAPTER   I. 

All  mankind  have  an  instinctive  desire  of  knowl-  980a  21. 
edge.  This  is  illustrated  by  our  enjoyment  of 
our  sense-perceptions.  Even  apart  from  their 
utility  they  are  enjoyed  for  their  own  sake,  and 
above  all  the  others  the  perceptions  of  the  eye. 
For  we  prize  sight,  speaking  roughly,  above 
everything  else,  not  merely  as  a  guide  to  action, 
but  even  when  we  are  not  contemplating  any 
action.  The  reason  of  this  is  that  of  all  the  senses 
sight  gives  us  most  information  and  reveals  many 
specific  qualities.^  Now,  all  animals,  when  they 
come  into  the  world,  are  provided  by  nature 
with  sensation,  but  in  some  of  them  memory  does 
not  result  from  their  sensations,  while  in  others  980b  21. 
it  does.  Hence  the  latter  are  both  more  intelli- 
gent and  more  able  to  learn  than   those  which 

^ diafopa.q\  lit.,  "specific  differences"  of   the  various  kinds  of 
things. 

67 


68       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

are  incapable  of  memory.*  Creatures  like  the 
bee,  and  any  other  similar  species  which  there 
may  be,  which  cannot  hear  sounds,  are  intelli- 
gent without  the  power  to  learn;  those  which,  in 
addition  to  memory,  possess  this  sense  learn. 

Now,  all  the  animals  live  by  the  guidance  of 
their  presentations^  and  memories,  but  only  par- 
take to  a  trifling  degree  of  experience,  but  the 
human  species  lives  also  by  the  guidance  of  rules 
of  art  and  reflective  inferences.  In  man  mem- 
ory gives  rise  to  experience,  since  repeated  mem- 
ories of  the  same  thing  acquire  the  character  of 
981a.  a  single  experience.  [Experience,  in  fact,  seems 
to  be  very  similar  to  science  and  art.]  And 
science  and  art  in  man  are  a  product  of  experi- 
ence. For  "experience  has  created  art,"  as 
Polus  correctly  remarks,  "but  inexperience 
chance."'  Art  comes  into  being  when  many 
observations  of  experience  give  rise  to  a  single 
universal  conviction  about  a  class  of  similar 
cases.  Thus  to  be  convinced  that  such  and  such 
a  treatment  was  good  for  Callias  when  suffering 

*  i.  e.,  primary  memory,  retentiveness;  not  recall.  Cf.  De 
Memoria,  451a  15:  "Memory  is  retentiveness  of  a  presentation  as  an 
image  of  a  presented  object." 

'  <pavTaaiaiq 

'  Reference  is  to  Plato,  Gorgias  448c,  where  Polus  says:  "Experi- 
ence makes  our  life  to  advance  by  art;  want  of  experience,  by  hap- 
hazard." 


ARISTOTLE'S   METAPHYSICS.  69 


from  such  and  such  an  ailment,  and  again  for 
Socrates,  and  similarly  in  each  of  many  indi- 
vidual cases,  is  a  result  of  experience,  but  the 
conviction  that  it  was  found  beneficial  to  all 
persons  of  a  specific  constitution,  whom  we  have 
placed  together  as  a  definite  class,  when  suffer- 
ing from  a  specific  ailment  — e.  g.,  sufferers  from 
catarrh,  or  bile,  or  fever  —  is  an  affair  of  art. 
Now,  for  purposes  of  practice  experience  is  rec- 
ognized to  be  not  inferior  to  art;  indeed,  we 
observe  that  persons  of  experience  are  actually 
more  successful  than  those  who  possess  theory 
without  experience.  The  reason  of  this  is  that 
experience  is  acquaintance  with  individual  facts, 
but  art  with  general  rules,  and  all  action  and 
production  is  concerned  with  the  individual. 
Thus  the  physician  does  not  cure  tnan,  except 
in  an  accidental  sense,  but  Callias  or  Socrates  or 
some  other  individual  person  of  whom  it  is  an 
accident  to  be  a  man.  Hence,  if  one  possesses 
the  theory  without  the  experience,  and  is  ac- 
quainted with  the  universal  concept,  but  not 
with  the  individual  fact  contained  under  it,  he 
will  often  go  wrong  in  his  treatment;  for  what 
has  to  be  treated  is  the  individual. 

In  spite  of  this,  however,  we  ascribe  knowledge 
and  understanding  to  art  rather  than  to  expe- 
rience, and  regard  artists  as  wiser  than  persons 


70       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

of  mere  experience,  thus  implying  that  wisdom 
is  rather  to  be  ascribed  to  men  in  all  cases  in 
proportion  to  their  knowledge.  This  is  because 
the  former  class  know  the  reaso7i^  for  the  thing; 
the  latter  not.  Persons  of  mere  experience  know 
the  that  J  but  not  the  why\  the  others  recognize 
the  why  and  the  reason.  Hence,  too,  in  every 
department  master  workmen  are  held  in  higher 
esteem  and  thought  to  know  more  and  to  be 
981b.  wiser  than  manual  workers,  because  they  know 
the  reasons  for  what  is  done,^  while  manual  work- 
ers, it  is  held,  are  like  some  inanimate  things 
which  produce  a  result  (e.  g.,  fire  hums),  but 
produce  it  without  any  knowledge  of  it.  Thus 
we  estimate  superiority  in  wisdom  not  by  skill 
in  practice,  but  by  the  possession  of  theory  and 
the  comprehension  of  reasons.  In  general,  too, 
it  is  an  indication  of  wisdom  to  be  able  to  teach 
others,  and  on  this  ground,  also,  we  regard  art 
as  more  truly  knowledge  than  experience;  the 
artist  can  teach,  the  man  of  mere  experience 
cannot.  Again,  we  hold  that  none  of  our  sense- 
perceptions  is  wisdom,  though  it  is  they  which 
give  us  the  most  assured  knowledge  of  individual 

'  or  cause  (ahta). 

'  The  remainder  of  the  sentence,  which  is  not  commented 
upon  by  Alexander,  and  interrupts  the  logical  sequence,  is  not  im- 
probably a  gloss. 


ARISTOTLE'S   METAPHYSICS.  71 

facts.  Still,  they  do  not  tell  us  the  reason  why 
about  anything;  e.  g.,  they  do  not  tell  us  why 
fire  is  hot,  but  merely  the  fact  that  it  is  hot.  Hence 
it  was  natural  that  in  the  earliest  times  the  in- 
ventor of  any  art  which  goes  beyond  the  com- 
mon sense-perceptions  of  mankind  should  be 
universally  admired,  not  merely  for  any  utility  to 
be  found  in  his  inventions,  but  for  the  wisdom  by 
which  he  was  distinguished  from  other  men. 
But  when  a  variety  of  arts  had  been  invented, 
some  of  them  being  concerned  with  the  necessi- 
ties and  others  with  the  social  refinements  of 
life,  the  inventors  of  the  latter  were  naturally 
always  considered  wiser  than  those  of  the  former 
because  their  knowledge  was  not  directed  to 
immediate  utility.  Hence  when  everything  of 
these  kinds  had  been  already  provided,  those 
sciences  were  discovered  which  deal  neither  with 
the  necessities  nor  with  the  enjoyments  of  life, 
and  this  took  place  earliest  in  regions  where 
men  had  leisure.  This  is  why  the  mathematical 
arts*  were  first  put  together  in  Egypt,  for  in  that 
country  the  priestly  caste  were  indulged  with 
leisure.^    (The  difference  between  art  and  science 

'  The  word  "arts"  (ri^vai)  is  here  used,  as  Bonitz  notes,  like 
the  Latin  ars,  to  embrace  both  science  and  art  in  the  narrower  sense. 

'  Contrast  the  more  historical  remark  of  Herodotus,  that 
Egjrptian  geometry  arose  from  the  necessity  of  resurveying  the  land  after 


72       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

and  the  other  kindred  concepts  has  been  ex- 
plained in  our  course  on  Ethics;*  the  purpose 
of  the  present  observations  is  simply  to  show 
that  it  is  universally  agreed  that  the  object  of 
what  is  called  wisdom  is  first  causes  and  prin- 
ciples.) So,  as  we  have  already  said,  the  pos- 
sessor of  experience  is  recognized  as  wiser  than 
the  possessor  of  any  form  of  sense-perception, 
the  artist  as  wiser  than  the  mere  possessor  of 
•experience,  the  master  craftsman  than  the  man- 
982  a.  ual  worker,  the  speculative  sciences  than  the 
productive.  Thus  it  is  manifest  that  wisdom  is 
a  form  of  science  which  is  concerned  with  some 
kind  of  causes  and  principles. 


CHAPTER   II. 

Since  we  are  in  quest  of  this  science,  we  have 
to  ask  what  kind  of  causes  and  principles  are 
treated  of  by  the  science  which  is  wisdom  ?  Well, 
the  matter  will  perhaps  become  clearer  if  we 
enumerate  the  convictions  which  we  currently 
hold  about  the  wise  man.    Well,  we  currently 

the  periodical  inundations  of  the  Nile  (Hdt.  II.,  109) ;  and  on  the 
nature  of  tliis  geometry,  see  Cantor,  Geschichte  der  Mathematik,  I., 
42-73.     Bxirnet,  Early  Greek  Philosophy,  17-20. 

'  Ethica  Nicomachea,  VI.,  1139b  i5-ii4ib  23.     The  sentenceis 
probably  a  gloss,  as  Christ  holds. 


ARISTOTLE'S  METAPHYSICS.  73 


hold,  first,  that  the  wise  man,  so  far  as  possible, 
knows  everything,  but  without  possessing  scientific 
knowledge  of  the  individual  details.  Secondly, 
that  he  is  one  who  is  capable  of  appre- 
hending difficult  things  and  matters  which  it  is 
not  easy  for  man  to  apprehend;  (for  sense-per- 
ception is  the  common  possession  of  all,  and 
hence  easy,  and  is  nothing  wise).  Again,  that 
in  every  science  he  who  is  more  exact  and  more 
competent  to  teach  is  the  wiser  man.  Also  that, 
among  the  various  sciences,  that  which  is  pur- 
sued for  its  own  sake  and  with  a  view  to  knowl- 
edge has  a  better  claim  to  be  considered  wisdom 
than  that  which  is  pursued  for  its  applications, 
and  the  more  commanding^  science  a  better  claim 
than  the  subsidiary.  For  the  wise  man,  it  is 
held,  has  not  to  be  directed  by  others,  but  to 
direct  them;  it  is  not  for  him  to  take  instruc- 
tions from  another,  but  for  those  who  are  less 
wise  to  take  them  from  him. 

Here,  then,  is  an  enumeration  of  our  current 
convictions  about  wisdom  and  the  wise.  Now, 
of  these  marks  that  of  universality  of  knowl- 
edge necessarily  belongs  to  him  whose  knowl- 
edge has  the  highest  generality,  for  in  a  sense 
he  knows  all  that  is  subsumed  under  it.    These 

*  The     distinction    between    "commanding"    and     subsidiary 
sciences  is  taken  from  Plato,  PolUicus,  260b. 


74       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

most  universal  truths  are  also  in  general  those 
which  it  is  hardest  for  men  to  recognize,  since 
they  are  most  remote  from  sense-perception. 
And  the  most  exact  of  the  sciences  are  those 
which  are  most  directly  concerned  with  ultimate 
truths.  For  the  sciences  which  depend  on  fewer 
principles  are  more  exact*  than  those  in  which 
additional  assumptions  are  made;  e.  g.,  Arith- 
metic than  Geometry.  And,  again,  that  science 
is  more  competent  to  teach  which  is  more  con- 
cerned with  speculation  on  the  causes  of  things, 
for  in  every  case  he  who  states  the  causes  of  a 
tiling  teaches.  And  knowledge  and  science  jor 
their  own  sake  are  found  most  of  all  in  the  science 
of  that  which  is  in  the  highest  sense  the  object 
of  knowledge.  For  he  who  chooses  science  for 
its  own  sake  will  give  the  highest  preference  to 
982  b.  the  highest  science,  and  this  is  the  science  of 
that  which  is  in  the  highest  sense  the  object  of 
knowledge.  But  the  highest  objecto  of  knowl- 
edge are  the  ultimates  and  causes.  For  it  is 
through  them  and  as  consequences  of  them  that 
other  truths  are  apprehended,  not  they  through 
what  is  subordinate  to  them.  And  the  most 
commanding  among  the  sciences,  more  truly 
commanding  than  the  subsidiary  sciences,  is  that 

'  The  distinction  of  more  and  less  exact  sciences  is  again  from 
^\         Plato,  Phile^s,  56c  ff. 


ARISTOTLE'S   METAPHYSICS.  75 


which  apprehends  the  end  for  which  each  act 
must  be  done;  this  end  is,  in  each  individual 
case,  the  corresponding  good,  and  universally  the 
highest  good  in  the  universe.  All  these  consid- 
erations indicate  that  the  title  in  question  is  ap- 
propriate to  one  and  the  same  science.  For  this 
science  must  be  one  which  contemplates  ulti- 
mate principles  and  causes;  for  the  good  or  end 
is  itself  one  type  of  cause.  That  it  is  not  a  pro- 
ductive science  is  clear,  even  from  consideration 
of  the  earliest  philosophies.  For  men  were  first 
led  to  study  philosophy,  as  indeed  they  are  to- 
day, by  wonder.^  At  first  they  felt  wonder  about 
the  more  superficial  problems;  afterward  they 
advanced  gradually  by  perplexing  themselves 
over  greater  difficulties;  e.  g.,  the  behavior  of 
the  moon,  the  phenomena  of  the  sun  [and  stars], 
and  the  origination  of  the  universe.  Now,  he 
who  is  perplexed  and  wonders  believes  himself 
to  be  ignorant.  (Hence  even  the  lover  of  myths 
is,  in  a  sense,  a  philosopher,  for  a  myth  is  a  tissue 
of  wonders.)  Thus  if  they  took  to  philosophy 
to  escape  ignorance,  it  is  patent  that  they  were 
pursuing  science  for  the  sake  of  knowledge  itself, 
and    not   for   any  utilitarian  applications.     This 

*  An  allusion  to  Plato,  TheaeUtus,  issd:  "This  emotion  of 
wonder  is  vcrj'  proper  to  a  philosopher;  for  there  is  no  other  starting- 
point  for  philosophy." 


76       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

is  confirmed  by  the  course  of  the  historical  devel- 
opment itself.  For  nearly  all  the  requisites  both 
of  comfort  and  social  refinement  had  been 
secured  before  the  quest  for  this  form  of  enlight- 
enment began.  So  it  is  clear  that  we  do  not  seek 
it  for  the  sake  of  any  ulterior  application.  Just 
as  we  call  a  man  free  who  exists  for  his  own  ends, 
and  not  for  those  of  another,  so  it  is  with  this, 
which  is  the  only  liberal^  science;  it  alone  of  the 
sciences  exists  for  its  own  sake. 

Hence  there  would  be  justice  in  regarding  the 
enjoyment  of  it  as  superhuman.  For  human 
nature  is  in  many  respects  unfree.  So,  in  the 
words  of  Simonides,^  "this  meed  belongs  to  God 
alone;  for  man,  'tis  meet"  to  seek  a  science  con- 
formable to  his  estate.  Indeed,  if  there  is  any- 
thing in  what  the  poets  say,  and  Deity  is  of  an 
envious  temper,  it  would  be  most  natural  that 
983  a.  it  should  be  shown  here,  and  that  all  the  pre- 
eminently gifted  should  be  unlucky.  But  Deity 
cannot  by  any  possibility  be  envious;^  rather,  as 
the  proverb  has  it,  ''Many  are  the  lies  of  the  bards," 

'The  conception  of  "liberal"  science  again  comes  from  Plato. 
Cf.  Republic,  VI.,  499a;  VII.,  5366. 

'  Another  Platonic  reminiscence.  The  lines  are  from  the  poem  of 
Simonides  on  Scopas,  quoted  in  Protagoras,  344c. 

'Again  an  echo  of  Plato,  Phaedrus,  247a:  "Envy has  noplace 
in  the  celestial  choir. "  Timaeus,  296 :  "He  (the  Creator)  was  good,  and 
envy  is  never  felt  about  any  thing  by  any  being  who  is  good." 


ARISTOTLE'S  METAPHYSICS.  77 

nor  is  it  right  to  prize  any  other  knowledge  more 
highly  than  this.  For  the  divinest  of  sciences  is 
to  be  prized  most  highly;  and  this  is  the  only 
science  which  deserves  that  name,  for  two  rea- 
sons. For  that  science  is  divine  which  it  would 
be  most  fitting  for  God  to  possess,  and  also  that 
science,  if  there  is  one,  which  deals  with  divine 
things.  And  this  is  the  only  science  which  has 
both  these  attributes.  For  it  is  universally  ad- 
mitted that  God  is  a  cause  and  a  first  principle;* 
and,  again,  God  must  be  thought  to  possess  this 
science,  either  alone  or  in  a  superlative  degree. 
To  be  sure,  all  the  sciences  are  more  indispen- 
sable, but  none  is  nobler. 

However,  the  acquisition  of  this  science  must 
in  a  sense  lead  to  a  condition  which  is  the  oppo- 
site of  our  original  state  of  search.  For,  as  has 
been  said,  all  begin  by  wondering  whether  some- 
thing is  so,^  just  as  those  who  have  not  yet 
examined  the  explanation  wonder  at  automatic 

*  Hence  Aristotle's  own  name  for  what  his  commentators  called 
"metaphysics"  is  indifferently  "first  Philosophy"  or  "Theology."  His 
doctrine  of  God  as  the  supreme  efficient  cause  is  more  particulariy 
contained  in  book  A  (12)  of  the  present  work. 

^  Or,  adopting  Bonitz's  proposal  to  transfer  the  words  ror-r — 
T^v  ahiav  (983a  14)  and  place  them  after  izasiv  (a  16),  "whether 
something  is  so.  So  men  wonder  at  automatic  marionettes,  or  the 
solstices,  or  the  incommensurability  of  the  diagonal.  It  seems,  in  fact, 
wonderful  to  all  who  have  not  yet  examined  the  reason  that  some- 
thing," etc. 


7S       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

marionettes.  So  men  wonder  about  the  solstices 
or  the  incommensurability  of  the  diagonal/  It 
seems,  in  fact,  a  wonderful  thing  to  everybody 
that  something  should  not  be  measurable  by  any 
measure,  even  the  smallest.  But  this  wonder 
must  end  in  an  opposite,  and,  as  the  proverb 
says,  a  better  state,  as  it  does  in  these  cases  when 
knowledge  has  been  gained.  A  geometer  would 
wonder  at  nothing  so  much  as  he  would  if  the 
diagonal  were  to  be  found  commensurable. 

We  have  explained,  then,  the  nature  of  the 
science  of  which  we  are  in  quest,  and  the  char- 
acter of  the  end  at  which  this  inquiry  and  this 
whole  branch  of  knowledge  should  aim. 


CHAPTER  III. 

Since  we  manifestly  must  acquire  scientific 
knowledge  of  ultimate  causes  (for  in  an  individ- 
ual case  we  only  claim  to  know  a  thing  when  we 
believe  ourselves  to  have  apprehended  its  pri- 

'  i.  e.,  the  incommensurability  of  the  diagonal  of  a  square  with  its 
side;  or,  as  we  should  say,  the  irrationality  oi  ^ 2.  This  was  the 
earliest  case  of  irrationality  known  to  the  Greeks,  and  was  probably 
discovered  by  the  Pythagoreans.  The  other  quadratic  surds  from  V  3 
to  'x/ 17  were  discovered  by  Plato's  friends,  Theodorus  and  Theaetetus 
{Theaetet.,  i47d).  Aristotle,  who  had  little  mathematical  capacity, 
regularly  uses  "the  diagonal"  as  his  one  stock  illustration  of  incom- 


ARISTOTLE'S   METAPHYSICS.  79 

mary  cause),  and  since  the  term  "cause"  is  used 
in  four  senses,  to  signify  (i)  the  essence^  or  essen- 
tial nature^  of  things  (for  the  why  is  reducible 
in  the  last  instance  to  the  concept  of  the  thing, 
but  the  ultimate  why  is  a  cause  and  principle), 
(2)  the  material  or  substrate,  (3)  the  source  oj 
movement,  (4)  cause  in  a  sense  opposed  to  this 
last,  viz.,  the  purpose  or  good  (for  that  is  the  end 
of  all  processes  of  becoming  and  movement),' 
though  we  have  already  treated  this  subject  at 
length  in  our  discourses  on  Physics,  we  may  seek 
further  light  from  the  consideration  of  our  prede-  983  b. 
cessors  in  the  investigation  of  Being  and  the  phil- 
osophical examination  of  Reality.  For  they,  also, 
obviously  speak  of  certain  principles  and  causes. 
Hence  it  will  be  of  service  to  our  present  inquiry 
to  review  these  principles,  as  we  shall  thus  either 
discover  some  further  class  of  causes,  or  be  con- 

mensurability  as  a  non-mathematical  philosopher  to-day  might  use 
TT.  His  constant  recurrence  to  this  example  is  perhaps  explained  by 
the  prominence  given  to  it  in  Plato,  Meno,  82-84. 

'  ovffta. 

^To  Tt  ^v  elvac;  lit.,  "What  the  being  of  the  thing  was  found  to 
be,"  i.  e.,  the  fundamental  characteristics,  or  connotation  as  expressed 
in  the  definition. 

'  The  scholastic  names  for  the  four  senses  of  cause  in  the  order 
of  their  enumeration  here  are  thus:  (i)  catisa  formalis,  or  jorma', 
(2)  causa  materialis,  or  materia;  (3)  causa  efficiens;  (4)  causa  finalis, 
or  finis. 


8o       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

firmed  in  our  confidence  in  the  present  enumera- 
tion. 

Now,  most  of  the  earhest  philosophers  regarded 
principles  of  a  material  kind  as  the  only  princi- 
ples of  all  things.  That  of  which  all  things  con- 
sist, from  which  they  are  originally  generated, 
and  into  which  they  are  finally  dissolved,  its  sub- 
stance persisting  though  its  attributes  change, 
this,  they  affirm,  is  an  element  and  first  princi- 
ple of  Being.  Hence,  too,  they  hold  that  noth- 
ing is  ever  generated  or  annihilated,  since  this 
primary  entity*  always  persists.  Similarly,  we  do 
not  say  of  Socrates  that  he  comes  into  being, 
in  an  absolute  sense,  when  he  becomes  hand- 
some or  cultivated,  nor  that  he  is  annihilated 
when  he  loses  these  qualifications,  because  their 
substrate,  viz.,  Socrates  himself,  persists.  In  the 
same  way,  they  held,  nothing  else  absolutely 
comes  into  Ixing  or  perishes.  For  there  must 
be  one  or  more  entities^  which  persist,  and  out 
of  which  all  other  things  are  generated.  They 
do  not,  however,  all  agree  as  to  the  number  and 
character  of  these  principles.  Thales,  the  founder 
of  this  type  of  philosophy,  says  it  is  water.    Hence, 

'^u<r{?;  lit.,  "nature."  In  the  mouths  of  the  early  Physicists, 
of  whom  Aristotle  is  here  speaking,  the  word  means  the  supposed  pri- 
mary body  or  bodies  of  which  all  others  arc  special  modifications  or 
transformations.     (Burnet,  Early  Creek  Philosophy,  pp.  10-12.) 

'  (fuai^;  i.  e.,  primary  form  of  body. 


ARISTOTLE'S   METAPHYSICS.  8i 

he  also  put  forward  the  ^iew  that  the  earth  floats 
on  the  water.  Perhaps  he  was  led  to  this  con- 
viction by  observing  that  the  nutriment  of  all 
things  is  moist,  and  that  even  heat  is  generated 
from  moisture,  and  lives  upon  it.  (Now,  that 
from  which  anything  is  generated  is  in  every 
case  a  first  principle  of  it.)  He  based  his  con- 
viction, then,  on  this,  and  on  the  fact  that  the 
germs  of  all  things  are  of  a  moist  nature,  while 
water  is  the  first  principle  of  the  nature  of  moist 
things.^  There  are  also  some  who  think  that 
even  the  men  of  remote  antiquity  who  first  spec- 
ulated about  the  gods,  long  before  our  own  era, 
held  this  same  view  about  the  primary  entity. 
For  they  represented  Oceanus  and  Tethys  as 
the  progenitors  of  creation,  and  the  oath  of  the 
gods  as  being  by  water,  or,  as  they  [the  poets] 
call  it,  Styx.  Now,  the  most  ancient  of  things 
is  most  venerable,  while  the  most  venerable  thing 
is   taken   to   swear   by.^    Whether   this   opinion 

*  Aristotle  does  not  prefer  to  know  the  reason  of  Thales  for  his 
doctrines,  and  the  biological  character  of  the  reasons  he  conjecturally 
ascribes  to  him  makes  it  improbable,  as  Burnet  says  (o/>.  cit.  p.  4^), 
that  they  are  really  those  of  Thales.  Possibly,  as  Burnet  suggests, 
Aristotle  has,  in  the  absence  of  positive  information  about  the  argu- 
ments of  Thales,  credited  him  with  arguments  actually  employed 
by  Hippo  of  Samos,  who  revived  his  doctrine  in  the  fifth  century. 

'  Probably  a  "chaffing"  allusion  to  Plato,  who  makes  the  sug- 
gestion here  referred  to  in  two  obviously  playful  passages:  Cratylus, 
402b;  Theaeietus,  i8ib. 


82       ARISTOTLE   ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

984  a.  about  the  primary  entity  is  really  so  original  and 
ancient  is  very  possibly  uncertain;  in  any  case, 
Thales  is  said  to  have  put  forward  this  doctrine 
about  the  first  cause.  (Hippo,  indeed,  from  the 
poverty  of  his  ideas,  can  hardly  be  thought  fit 
to  be  ranked  with  such  men  as  these. ^  Anax- 
imenes  and  Diogenes,  however,  regard  air  as 
more  primitive  than  water,  and  as  most  properly 
the  first  principle  among  the  elementary  bodies. 
Hippasus  of  Metapontium  and  Heraclitus  of 
Ephesus  think  it  is  fire;  Empedocles,  all  four 
elements,  earth  being  added  as  a  fourth  to  the 
previous  three.  For  they  always  persist  and 
never  come  into  being,  except  in  respect  of  mul- 
titude and  paucity,  according  as  they  are  com- 
bined into  a  unity  or  separated  out  from  the 
unity. ^  But  Anaxagoras  of  Clazomenae,  who, 
though  prior  to  Empedocles  in  age,  was  poste- 
rior^ to  him  in  his  achievements,  maintains  that 
the   number   of   principles   is   infinite.    For   he 

*  The  remark  about  Hippo  breaks  the  connection,  and  is  prob- 
ably, as  Christ  holds,  a  marginal  gloss. 

'  Cf.  Empedocles,  36  (Stein),  R.  P.,  131b:  "There  is  no  com- 
ing into  being  of  any  perishable  thing,  nor  any  end  in  ba::efi:i  death, 
but  only  mingling  and  separation  of  what  has  been  mingled." 

*  "Posterior  in  achievements"  prol^nbly  means  simply  "later  in 
the  date  of  his  activity  as  c.  philosopher"  (Burnet).  Alterative 
explanations  are  "philosophically  inferior"  (Alexander);  "more  devel- 
oped in  his  views"  (Zeller). 


ARISTOTLE'S  METAPHYSICS.  83 

alleges  that  pretty  nearly  all  homceomerous^ 
things  come  into  being  and  are  destroyed  in  this 
sense  [just  like  water  and  fire],  viz.,  only  by 
combination  and  dissolution.  In  an  absolute^ 
sense,  they  neither  come  into  being  nor  perish,  he 
thinks,  but  persist  eternally. 

According  to  all  this,  one  might  regard  the 
"material"  cause,  as  it  is  called,  as  the  only  kind 
of  cause.  But  as  they  progressed  further  on  these 
lines,  the  very  nature  of  the  problem  pointed  out 
the  way  and  necessitated  further  investigation. 
For,  however  true  it  may  be  that  there  is  under- 
lying the  production  and  destruction  of  anything 
something  out  of  which  it  is  produced  (whether 
this  be  one  thing  or  several),  why  does  the  process 
occur,  and  what  is  its  cause  ?  For  the  substrate, 
surely,  is  not  the  agent  which  effects  its  own  trans- 
formation. I  mean,  e.  g.,  that  wood  and  brass 
are  not  the  causes  of  their  respective  transforma- 

'  "Homceomerous"  things  is  not  an  expression  of  Anaxagoras, 
but  a  technical  term  of  Aristotle's  own  biology,  denoting  the  forms  of 
organic  matter  (bone,  flesh,  etc.)  which  can  be  divided  into  parts  of 
the  same  character  as  themselves.  It  is  here  appropriately  applied 
to  the  iniinity  of  qualitatively  different  molecules  which  Anaxagoras 
regarded  as  the  primary  form  of  matter.  (Burnet,  op.  at.  p.  289.) 
The  words  in  brackets  are  probably  a  gloss. 

^  Reading  with  Zeller  dnXwq,  "in  an  absolute  sense,"  for  aXXax;, 
"in  any  other  sense."  The  reference  is  to  Anaxagoras,  Fr.  17.,  R.  P. 
119:  "Nothing  comes  into  being  or  perishes,  but  there  are  mixture 
and  separation  of  things  that  already  are." 


84        ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

tions;  the  wood  is  not  the  agent  that  makes 
the  bed,  nor  the  brass  the  agent  that  makes  the 
statue,  but  something  else  is  the  cause  of  the 
transformation.  To  inquire  into  this  cause  is  to 
inquire  into  the  second  of  our  principles,  in  my 
own  terminology,  the  source  of  motion.  Now, 
those  who  were  the  very  first  to  attach  themselves 
to  these  studies,  and  who  maintained  that  the 
substratum  was  one,^  gave  themselves  no  trouble 
over  this  point.  Still,  some^  at  least  of  those  who 
asserted  its  unity  were,  so  to  say,  baffied  by  this 
problem,  and  maintained  that  the  one  and  the 
universe  as  a  whole^  are  immutable,  not  merely 
as  regards  generation  and  destruction  (for  that 
was  a  primitive  belief  in  which  they  all  concurred), 
but  in  every  other  sense  of  the  term  "change;" 
984  b.  and  this  view  was  peculiar  to  them.  So  none 
of  those  who  said  that  the  universe  is  one  single 
thing  had  an  inkling  of  the  kind  of  causation  we 
are  now  considering,  except  possibly  Parmenides, 
and  he  only  recognized  its  existence  so  far  as  to 
assume  not  merely  one  cause,  but,  in  a  sense, 
two."*    To  be  sure,  those  who  assume  a,  plurality  of 

*  i.  e.,  the  Ionian  Monists  of  the  sixth  century. 

^  Parmenides  and  his  successors  of  the  Eleatic  School. 
^  Or  "body  as  a  whole"  (rijy  <puaiv  oXtjv). 

*  The   reference   is   to  the  duaUstic  cosmology  of  the  second 
part  of  Parmenides'  poem,  the  "Way  of  Opinion."     It  is  now  fairly 


ARISTOTLE'S   METAPHYSICS.  85 


causes  are  in  a  better  position  to  say  something 
on  the  subject;  e.  g.,  those  who  assume  as  causes 
heat  and  cold,  or  fire  and  earth,  for  they  treat 
fire  as  ha\ing  the  nature  of  an  agent, ^  but  such 
things  as  water  and  earth  in  the  opposite  fashion. 
After  these  philosophers  and  such  first  prin- 
ciples, since  these  principles  were  found  inade- 
quate to  account  for  the  production  of  the  uni- 
verse, men  were  once  more  compelled,  as  I  have 
said,  by  facts  themselves  to  investigate  the  prin- 
ciple which  naturally  follows  next  in  order.  For 
it  is,  perhaps,  equally  improbable  that  the  reason 
why  there  are  goodness  and  beauty  both  in  Being 
and  in  Becoming  should  be  fire  or  earth  or  any- 
thing else  of  that  kind,  and  that  these  philos- 
ophers should  have  had  such  an  opinion.  Nor, 
again,  would  it  have  been  reasonable  to  ascribe 
so  important  a  result  to  accident  and  chance. 
So  when  some  one  said  that  it  is  the  presence 
of  Mind  which  is  the  cause  of  all  order  and 
arrangement  in  the  universe  at  large,  just  as  it  is 
in  the  animal  organism,  he  seemed,  by  contrast 
with  his  predecessors,  like  a  sober  man  compared 

established,  however,  that  this  cosmology  represents  the  views 
not  of  Parmenides  himself,  but  of  a  rival  school,  probably  the 
Pythagorean,  whom  Parmenides  regards  as  entirely  in  error. 
(Burnet,  op.  cit.  p.  195  £f.) 

^The  reference  is  apparently  to  the    active    role   ascribed   to 
Qre  in  the  system  of  Empedocles.     (Burnet,  op.  cit.  p.  244.) 


86       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

with  idle  babblers/  Now,  we  know  for  certain 
that  Anaxagoras^  had  conceived  this  idea,  but 
Hermotimus  of  Clazomenae  is  alleged  to  have 
given  still  earlier  expression  to  it.  Those  who 
framed  this  conception,  then,  assumed  the  cause 
of  Beauty  as  a  principle  in  things  and,  at  the 
same  time,  as  being  a  principle  of  the  kind  by 
which  motion  is  communicated  to  things. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

One  might  even  fancy  that  this  point  was  first 
investigated  by  Hesiod,  or  any  other  of  the  poets 
who  assumed  sexual  Love  or  Desire  as  a  prin- 
ciple in  things  —  Parmenides,^  for  instance,  who 
says,  in  his  description  of  the  formation  of  the 
universe:  "So  Love  she  devised  as  earliest-born 
of  all  the  gods."  So  Hesiod*  writes,  "First  of 
all  things  was  the  Abyss  {x°^o^),  and  next  broad- 

^  Cf.  Plato's  account  of  the  effect  produced  upon  Socrates  by 
the  famous  statement  of  Anaxagoras  about  Mind,  Phaedo,  97b  fif. 
Aristotle  probably  intends  an  allusion  to  this  passage. 

'  Anaxagoras,  Fr.  6;  R.  P.,  123:  "All  things  that  were  to  be, 
and  that  were,  all  things  that  are  not  now,  and  that  are  now  — 
Mind  set  them  all  in  order." 

^  Parmenides,  133;  R.  P.,  loia.  Aristotle  is  probably  intend- 
ing an  allusion  to  Plato,  Symposium,  1 78b,  where  both  the  verse  of 
Parmenides  and  part  of  the  verses  from  Hesiod  are  quoted. 

*  Hesiod.   Theogony,    ii6-ii8. 


ARISTOTLE'S  METAPHYSICS.  87 


breasted  Earth,  and  Love  conspicuous  above  all 
the  immortal  ones,"  implying  that  there  must  be 
in  the  world  some  cause  to  set  things  in  motion 
and  bring  them  together.  (How  the  question 
of  priority  is  to  be  settled  between  these  authors 
is  a  point  of  which  we  may  be  allowed  to  postpone 
the  consideration.)  But,  further,  since  it  was 
patent  that  there  is  also  present  in  the  universe  935  ^^ 
the  opposite  of  good,  and  not  only  Order  and 
Beauty,  but  also  Disorder  and  Ugliness,  and  that 
the  evil  and  unseemly  things  are  more  numer- 
ous than  the  good  and  beautiful,  another  poet 
introduced  the  concepts  of  Love*  and  Strife  as 
the  respective  causes  of  each  class.  For  if  one 
follows  out  the  statements  of  Empedocles  with 
attention  to  his  meaning,  and  not  to  its  lisping 
expression  in  words,  it  will  be  found  that  he  treats 
Love  as  the  cause  of  good  things,  Strife  as  the 
cause  of  evil.  Hence,  if  one  said  that  in  a  sense 
Empedocles  designated,  and  was  the  first  to 
designate,  Good  and  Evil  as  principles,  the 
remark  would  probably  be  just,  since  that  which 
is  the  cause  of  all  good  things  is  the  Good  itself 
[and  that  which  is  the  cause  of  all  evil  things 
is  Evil  itself]. 

*  <pdla,  "affection,"  "mutual  attraction."  Empedocles  (for 
whom  see  Burnet,  op.  cit.  pp.  245-247)  uses  for  the  principle  of 
attraction  the  names  of  ^piXorr]^  (=  Aristotle's  <ptXia)  and  Aphrodite 
(—  Aristotle's  epwqj  sexual  attraction)  indifferently. 


ARBTOTLE   ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 


As  I  have  said,  then,  the  writers  just  referred 
to  manifestly  had  formed  the  conception,  to  the 
degree  alrea.dy  indicated,  of  two  of  the  senses 
of  Cause  which  have  been  distinguished  in  my 
discourses  on  Physics — the  Matter  and  the  Source 
of  Motion.  Their  exposition,  however,  was  ob- 
scure and  confused,  and  might  be  Hkened  to  the 
conduct  of  untrained  recruits  in  battle.  In  the 
general  melee  such  recruits  often  deal  admir- 
able blows,  but  they  do  not  deal  them  with  science. 
Similarly,  these  philosophers  do  not  seem  to  un- 
derstand the  significance  of  their  own  statements, 
for  it  is  patent  that,  speaking  generally,  they  make 
little  or  no  application  of  them.  Anaxagoras, 
for  instance,  uses  his  "  Tvlind  "  as  a  mechanical* 
device  for  the  production  of  order  in  Nature,  and 
when  he  is  at  a  loss  to  say  by  what  cause  some 
result  is  necessitated,  then  he  drags  in  Mind  as 
a  last  resource,  but  in  all  other  cases  he  assigns 
anything  and  everything  rather  than  Mind  as 
the  cause  of  what  occurs.^  Empedocles,  again, 
though  he  makes  more  use  of  his  causes   than 


^  fiTj'^avrJ .  The  metaphor  is  from  the  machine  used  in  the  theatre 
to  hoist  up  the  god  who  appears  to  "cut  the  knot"  of  an  othemase 
insoluble  dramatic  tangle.  The  idiomatic  Enghsh  rendering  would 
be:  "He  treats  Minu  as  a  sort  of  fairy  godmother." 

*  An  obvious  allusicn  to  the  complaint  of  Socrates  in  Plato, 
Phaedo,  98b.  ff:    'As  I  went   on  to  read   fiurther,  I  found  that  the 


ARISTOTLE'S   METAPHYSICS. 


the  other,  does  not  make  adequate  use  of  them, 
nor  does  he  succeed  in  attaining  consistency  where 
he  does  employ  them.  At  least,  he  frequently 
treats  Love  as  a  separating  and  Strife  as  a  com- 
bining agency/  Thus,  when  the  Universe  is 
resolved  into  its  rudiments^  by  Strife,  fire  and  each 
of  the  other  four  are  combined  into  one,  but  when 
they  coalesce  again  into  the  One,  under  the  in- 
fluence of  Love,  the  parts  of  each  are  necessarily 
separated  again.  Empedocles,  then,  differed  from 
his  predecessors  in  being  the  first  to  introduce 
this  cause  in  a  double  form;  he  assumes,  not  a 
single  source  of  motion,  but  a  pair  which  are  op- 
posed to  one  another.  He  was  also  the  first  to 
assert  that  the  number  of  the  so-called  material 

man  made  nc  use  of  his  'Mind,'  and  assigned  no  real  causes  for  the 
order  in  things,  but  alleged  as  causes  airs,  ethers,  waters,  and  a  host 
of  other  monstrosities." 

'  For  this  criticism,  cf.  Metaphysics,  B,  loooa  26:  "It  is  true 
that  he  assumes  a  certain  principle  as  the  cause  of  dissolution, 
viz..  Strife.  But  one  has  to  suppose  that  Strife  just  as  truly  produces 
everything  except  the  One."  For  a  full  commentar}'  on  tliis,  see 
Burnet,  op.  cit.  p.  246. 

2  ffTtn)rscwv.  The  word,  which  primarily  means  a  letter  of  the 
alphabet,  is  taken  by  Aristotle  from  Plato,  Theaetetus,  20ie  ff,  where 
the  analysis  of  a  complex  into  its  simple  factors  is  illustrated  by  the 
spelling  of  a  syllable.  Aristotle's  definition  of  (jror/^elov,  which  I 
shall  henceforth  render  "element,"  is  (Aletaphysics,  J  3, 1014a  26)  "an 
ultimate  factor  present  in  a  complex,  not  further  divisible  in  respect  of 
its  kind  into  factors  which  differ  in  kind."  The  term  was,  of  course, 
unknown  to  Empedocles,  whose  name  for  his  "elementary  bodies" 
is  simply  "  roots  of  things." 


90       ARISTOTLE   ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

elements  is  four.  Yet,  he  does  not  employ  them 
as  four,  but  as  if  they  were  only  two,  treating 
fire  on  the  one  side  by  itself,  and  the  elements 
985  b.  opposed  Jo  it — earth,  air,  and  water — on  the  other, 
as  if  they  were  a  single  nature.  One  can  dis- 
cover this  from  his  verses  by  careful  reflection. 
Such,  then,  were  the  nature  and  number  of  the 
principles  assumed  by  Empedocles. 

But  Leucippus  and  his  follower,  Democritus,  say 
that  the  elements  are  the  Full  and  the  Void,  call- 
ing the  one  Being  and  the  other  Non-being.  The 
full  and  solid  they  call  Being,  the  void  and  rare 
Non-being.  (This,  too,  is  why  they  say  that  Non- 
being  is  just  as  real  as  Being,  for  the  Void  is  as 
real  as  Body.^)  These  are,  they  declare,  the  mate- 
rial causes  of  things.  And  just  as  those  who 
regard  the  underl}T[ng  nature  of  things  as  one 
derive  everything  else  from  the  modifications  of 
this  substrate,  assuming  density  and  rarity  as 
the  fundamental  distinction  between  these  modi- 
fications, so  Leucippus  and  Democritus  assert 
that  the  differences^  are  the  causes  of  everything 
else.    Now,  of   these  they  say  there  are  three — 

*  The  Greek  text  has  "for  Body  is  real  as  Void."    The  context 
shows  that  we  must  emend  the  reading  of  the  MS.  into  the  sense 
**       given  above.     The  simplest  method  of  doing  this  is,  vdth  Zeller,  to 
substitute  eXazTov  ioTfidXkuv  in  gS^h  8. 

'  i.  e.,  the  differences  between  the  atoms  of  which  according  to 
this  school  Being,  or  Body,  is  composed. 


ARISTOTLE'S   METAPHYSICS.  91 

shape,  order,  and  position.  For  Being,  they 
say,  differs  only  in  contour  [^ueixoq)^  arrangement 
(dtadiyri)^  sUimtion  (rpon^).  Of  these  terms,  con- 
tour means  shape,  arrangement  means  order 
{diadtrrj)^  and  situation  means  position/  Thus,  e.  g., 
A  differs  from  N  in  shape,  AN  from  NA  in 
order,  Z  from  N  in  position.  Like  the  rest  of 
the  philosophers,  they  also  indolently  neglected 
the  question  whence  or  how  motion  is  communi- 
cated to  things.  This,  then,  is  the  point  to  which 
the  investigation  of  these  two  kinds  of  cause  seems 
to  have  been  carried  by  the  earlier  thinkers. 


CHAPTER  V. 

At  the  same  time,  and  even  earlier,  the  so- 
called  Pythagoreans  attached  themselves  to  the 
mathematics  and  were  the  first  to  advance  that 
science^  by  their  education,  in  which  they  were 

*  Aristotle  explains  the  unfamiliar  technical  expressions  of  the 
Atomists,  which  are  all  words  belonging  to  their  native  Ionic  dialect, 
by  Attic  equivalents.  I  fear  my  attempt  to  find  unfamiliar  synonyms 
for  such  common  technical  terms  as  shape,  order,  position  is  not  alto- 
gether happy,  but  it  is  the  best  I  can  do.  Z  is  said  below  to  differ  from 
N  only  in  position  because  it  is  the  same  figure  rotated  through  a  right  ^ 

angle.      The   paleographical   correction   of   this  sentence   by   B«is  yll^r»fif>M 
does  not  affect  the  sense,  and  I  have  therefore  been  content  to 'keep  ** 

the  traditional  text. 

'On  the  nature  and  extent  of  the  Pythagorean  mathematics, 
see  particularly  Cantor,  Ceschichte  der  Mathematik,  I.,  pp.  137-160 


92       ARISTOTLE   ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

led  to  suppose  that  the  principles  of  mathematics 
are  the  principles  of  all  things.  So  as  numbers 
are  logically  first  among  these  principles,  and 
as  they  fancied  they  could  perceive  in  numbers 
many  analogues  of  what  is  and  what  comes  into 
being,  much  more  readily  than  in  fire  and  earth 
and  water  (such  and  such  a  property  of  number 
being  justice,  such  and  such  another  soul  or  mind, 
another  opportunity,  and  so  on,  speaking  gener- 
ally, with  all  the  other  individual  cases),  and 
since  they  further  observed  that  the  properties 
and  determining  ratios  of  harmonies  depend  on 
numbers — since,  in  fact,  everything  else  mani- 
festly appeared  to  be  modelled  in  its  entire  char- 
acter on  numbers,  and  numbers  to  be  the  ulti- 
986  a.  mate^  things  in  the  whole  Universe,  they  became 
convinced  that  the  elements  of  numbers  are  the 
elements  of  everything,  and  that  the  whole 
"Heaven"^  is  harmony  and  number.     So,  all  the 

Milhaud,  Les  Philosophes-Geomhtres  dela  Grece,  bk.  i,  ch.  2.  Note 
that  Aristotle  never  professes  to  know  anything  of  the  philosophical  or 
scientific  views  of  Pythagoras  himself.  On  the  sources  of  his  knowl- 
edge of  the  "so-called  Pythagoreans,"  consult  Burnet,  op.  cit.  p.  321. 

^Tipmroi;  literally,  "first,"  as  above. 

^  ol)pav6(:]  literally,  "heaven"  meant  to  the  early  Greek  phys- 
icists the  whole  collection  of  bodies  comprised  within  the  apparent 
vault  of  the  sky.  We  must  not  translate  by  "universe,"  since  it  was 
commonly  held  that  much  which  exists  is  outside  the  oopayo-.  An 
equivalent  term  of    later  date,  probably  of   Pythagorean  origin,  is 

XOffflO^, 


1 


ARISTOTLE'S   METAPHYSICS.  93 


admitted  analogies  they  could  show  betAveen 
numbers  and  harmonies  and  the  properties  or 
parts  of  the  "Heaven"  and  the  whole  order  of  the 
universe,  they  collected  and  accommodated  to 
the  facts;  if  any  gaps  were  left  in  the  analogy, 
they  eagerly  caught  at  some  additional  notion, 
so  as  to  introduce  connection  into  their  system 
as  a  whole.  I  mean,  e.  g.,  that  since  the  number 
lo  is  thought  to  be  perfect,  and  to  embrace  the 
whole  essential  nature  of  the  numerical  system, 
they  declare  also  that  the  number  of  revolving 
heavenly  bodies  is  ten,  and  as  there  are  only 
nine'  visible,  they  invent  the  Antichthon  as  a 
tenth.  But  I  have  discussed  this  subject  more 
in  detail  elsewhere.^  I  only  enter  on  it  here 
for  the  purpose  of  discovering  from  these  philos- 
ophers as  well  as  from  the  others  what  prin- 
ciples they  assume,  and  how  those  principles  fit 
into  our  previous  classification  of  causes.  Well, 
they,  too,  manifestly  regard  number  as  a  prin- 
ciple, both  in  the  sense  that  it  is  the  material  of 
things,  and  in  the  sense  that  it  constitutes  their 
properties  and  states.  The  elements  of  number 
are,  they  think,  the  Even  and  the  Odd,  the  former 
being    unlimited,    the    latter    limited.     Unity    is 

1  viz.,  Earth,  Moon,  Sun,  Mercur}',  Venus,  Mars,  Jupiter,  Saturn, 
circle  of  Fixed  Stars. 

^  In  a  now  lost  work,  "  On  the  Pythagoreans^ 


94       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

composed  of  both  factors,  for,  they  say,  it  is  both 
even  and  odd.  Number  is  derived  from  unity, 
and  numbers,  as  I  have  said,  constitute  the  whole 
"Heaven." 

Other  members  of  the  same  school  say  that 
the  principles  are  ten,  which  they  arrange  in  a 
series  of  corresponding  pairs :^ 

Limit  —  the  Unlimited. 

Odd  —  Even. 

Unity— Multitude. 

Right  —  Left. 

Male  —  Female. 

Rest  —  Motion. 

Straight  —  Curved. 

Light  —  Darkness. 

Good  —  Evil. 

Square  —  Oblong. 

Alcmaeon  of  Crotona  appears  to  have  followed 
the  same  line  of  thought,  and  must  either  have 
borrowed  the  doctrine  from  them  or  they  from 

*  On  the  meaning  of  this  numerical  cosmology  of  the  Pythag- 
oreans the  student  will  find  most  enlightenment  in  the  works  of  Burnet 
and  Milha'ud,  previously  referred  to,  and  the  section  on  Pythagorean- 
ism  in  Baumker,  Das  Problem  der  Materie  in  der  Griechischen  Philo So- 
phie. He  should  note,  also,  the  fundamental  initial  error  which  vitiated 
all  ancient  arithmetical  theory,  viz.,  the  view  that  i,  and  not  o,  is  the 
first  of  the  series  of  integers.  This  view  is  connected  partly  with  the 
defects  of  Greek  arithmetical  notation,  partly  with  an  erroneous 
assimiption,  tacitly  made  by  all  Greek  logicians,  as  to  the  "existential 
import"  of  predication. 


ARISTOTLE >S  METAPHYSICS. 95 

him,  since  Alcmaeon  was  contemporary  with  the 
old  age  of  Pythagoras.  His  views  were  very 
similar  to  theirs.  He  says,  in  fact,  that  most 
things  human  form  pairs,  meaning  pairs  of  op- 
posites.  He  does  not,  however,  like  the  Pythag- 
oreans, give  a  precise  list  of  these,  but  mentions 
at  random  any  that  occur  to  him,  e.  g.,  White- 
Black,  Sweet-Bitter,  Good-Bad,  Great-Small. 
Thus  in  other  cases  he  merely  threw  out  indefinite 
suggestions,  but  the  Pythagoreans  further  under-  986  b. 
took  to  explain  how  many  and  what  the  oppo- 
sites  are.  From  both,  then,  we  can  learn  this  much: 
that  the  opposites  are  the  principles  of  things, 
but  only  from  the  latter  how  many,  and  what 
these  are.  They  have  not  clearly  explained  in 
detail  how  these  opposites  are  to  be  reduced  to 
our  previous  classification  of  causes,  but  they 
appear  to  treat  their  elements  as  the  material  of 
things;  for  they  say  that  Being^  is  composed  and 
fashioned  out  of  them  as  inherent  constituent 
factors.  The  meaning,  then,  of  those  ancients 
who  asserted  that  the  elements  of  the  universe 
are  a  plurality  can  be  sufficiently  perceived  from 
the  foregoing  exposition.  But  there  are  some' 
who  expressed  the  view  that  the  all  is  one  single 
entity,   though  they  differed   among  themselves 

^rijv  ouffcav. 
'viz.,  the  Eleatics. 


96       ARISTOTLE   ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

both  in  respect  of  the  merits  of  their  doctrine, 
and  in  respect  of  its  logical  character.  Now,  a 
discussion  of  their  views  is  not  strictly  relevant 
to  our  present  inquiry  into  causation,  for,  unlike 
some  of  the  physicists*  who  postulate  the  unity 
of  Being,  and  yet  treat  of  its  derivation  from  the 
one  substance  as  its  material  cause,  they  main- 
tain the  doctrine  in  a  different  sense.  Those 
physicists  assume,  also  of  course,  the  existence  of 
motion,  since  they  treat  of  the  derivation  of  the 
All,  but  this  school  declares  that  the  All  is  motion- 
less. Still,  one  observation  at  least  is  relevant  to 
our  present  inquiry.  Parmenides  appears  to  con- 
ceive of  the  One  in  a  formal  sense,  Melissus  in  a 
material.  Hence  the  former  calls  it  limited,  the 
latter  unhmited.  Xenophanes,  who  was  the  first 
of  them  to  teach  the  doctrine  of  unity  (for  they 
say  that  Parmenides  had  been  his  disciple),  did 
not  make  any  definite  pronouncement,  and  seems 
to  have  formed  the  notion  of  neither  of  these 
entities,  but  gazing  up  at  the  whole  Heaven^ 
declared  that  the  One  is  God.  As  I  said,  then, 
for  the  purposes  of  the  present  investigation 
this  school  may  be  disregarded.  Two  of  them 
we  may  disregard  altogether  as  a  little  too  naive,  ^ 

^  i.  e.,  the  Ionian  Monists,  from  Thales  to  Heraclitus. 
'  Or,  perhaps,  "contemplating  the  Universe  as  a  whole." 
'"Naivete"    {aypouia)  is  a   technical    term    with    Aristotle, 


ARISTOTLE'S   METAPHYSICS.  97 

viz.,  Xenophanes  and  Melissus,  but  Parmenides 
appears,  perhaps,  to  speak  with  greater  insight. 
For,  since  he  claims  that  Non-being,  as  contrasted 
with  Being,  is  nothing,  he  is  forced  to  hold  that 
Being  is  one,  and  that  nothing  else  exists — a  doc- 
trine on  which  we  have  spoken  more  fully  and 
clearly  in  our  course  on  Physics.^  But,  as  he 
is  obhged  to  adapt  his  views  to  sensible  appear- 
ances, he  assumes  that  things  are  one  from  the 
point  of  view  of  reason,  but  many  from  that  of 
sensation,  and  thus  reintroduces  a  duality  of 
principles  and  causes,  the  Hot  and  Cold,  by 
which  he  means,  e.  g.,  fire  and  earth.  Of  these 
he  co-ordinates  the  Hot  with  Being,  its  counter-  987  a. 
part  with  Non-being. 

Now,  from  the  account  we  have  just  given, 
and  by  a  comparison  of  the  thinkers  who  have 
previously  concerned  themselves  with  the  sub- 
ject, we  have  arrived  at  the  following  result. 
From  the  earliest  philosophers  we  have  learned 
of  a  bodily  principle    (for  water,  fire,   and   the 


for  want  of  acquaintance  with  formal  logic.  On  the  particular  logical 
fallacy  to  which  he  objected  in  Melissus,  see  Burnet,  op.  cit.  p.  341,  and 
on  his  misapprehension  of  the  second  part  of  the  poem  of  Parmenides, 
p.  195  of  the  same  work.  Plato,  it  should  be  said,  held  the  same  view 
as  to  the  relative  merits  of  these  two  philosojihcrs.y  See  Theaetetus, 
1836. 

'  Physics,  I.,  3,  186a  3,  ff. 


98       ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

like,  are  bodies),  which  some  of  them*  regard 
as  a  single  principle,  others^  as  a  plurality,  though 
both  schools  treat  these  principles  as  bodily. 
From  others  we  have  learned,  in  addition  to  this 
principle,  of  a  source  of  motion,  and  this  also 
is  regarded  by  some^  of  them  as  one,  but  by 
others  *  as  twofold.  They  all,  down  to  the  Italian^ 
school  and  exclusive  of  them,  treated  the  sub- 
ject in  a  rather  ordinary^  way.  As  I  have  said, 
they  only  employed  two  kinds  of  cause,  and  the 
second  of  these,  the  source  of  motion,  some  of 
them  regarded  as  one,  others  as  two.  The  Pythag- 
oreans likewise  maintained  a  duality  of  princi- 
ples, but  they  added,  and  this  is  peculiar  to  them, 
the  notion  that  the  limited,  the  unlimited,  the 
one  are  not  predicates  of  some  other  entity,  such 
as  fire,  or  earth,  or  something  else  of  that  kind, 
but  that  the  Unlimited  and  the  One  themselves  are 
the  substance  of  the  things  of  which  they  are  predi- 

'  The  Milesians,  Heraclitus,  Diogenes. 

^  Empedocles,  Anaxagoras,  the  Atomists. 

^  i.  e.,  Anaxagoras. 

*  i.  e.,  Empedocles. 

'  i.  e.,  the  Pythagoreans  of  Magna  Graecia. 

^  [itrpicoTtpov.  If  the  text  is  correct,  this  must  mean  "un- 
satisfactorily," though  the  word  will  hardly  bear  that  sense.  There 
♦  is  a  rival  MS.  reading /xaAazcurejOov,  "  rather  feebly, "  and  Alexander  of 
Aphrodisias  appears  to  be  explaining  a  reading  fiova^^torepov,  "rather 
one-sidedly." 


ARISTOTLE'S  METAPHYSICS.  99 

cated.    This  is  why,  according  to  them,  num- 
ber is  the  substance  of  everything. 

This  was  the  doctrine  they  proclaimed  on 
these  points.  They  also  began  to  discuss  the 
what  of  things,  and  to  give  definitions  of  it,  but 
their  method  of  procedure  was  extraordinarily 
crude.  Their  definitions  were  superficial,  and 
they  regarded  anything  to  which  a  term  under 
examination  first  appHed  as  the  essential  nature 
of  the  object  in  question,  as  if  one  were  to  think 
that  "double  of"  and  "the  number  2"  are  the 
same  thing,  on  the  ground  that  2  is  the  first 
number  which  is  double  of  another.  But,  methinks, 
it  is  not  the  same  thing  to  be  double  of  something 
as  it  is  to  be  the  number  2.  If  it  were,  then  one 
thing  would  be  many\  a  consequence  which 
actually  followed  in  their  system.^  So  much, 
then,  is  what  may  be  learned  from  the  earlier 
thinkers  and  their  successors. 

*  For,  if  every  number  which  is  double  of  another  is  the  number  2 
the  single  number  2  must  be  identical  with  an  infinity  of  other  even 
numbers,  4,  6,  8.  .  .   . 

*  The,  way  in  which  this  occurred  was  that  the  same  number  was 
identified,  on  the  strength  of  diflerent  fanciful  analogies,  with  a  variety 
of  different  objects.  Thus  i  was  "the  point,"  but  it  was  also  "the 
soul." 


loo     ARISTOTLE   ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

The  said  philosophies  were  succeeded  by  the 
system  of  Plato,  which  was  for  the  most  part 
in  harmony  with  them,  but  had  also  some  dis- 
tinctive peculiarities  by  which  it  was  discrimi- 
nated from  the  philosophy  of  the  Itahans\  In 
his  youth  Plato  had  been  familiar  with  Cratylus 
and  with  the  Herachtean  doctrines,  according  to 
which  all  things  perceived  by  the  senses  are  in 
incessant  flux,  and  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
scientific  knowledge  of  them,  and  to  this  part 
of  the  doctrine  he  remained  true  through  life. 
987  b.  Socrates,  however,  though  confining  his  exami- 
nation to  questions  of  moral  conduct,  and  giving 
no  study  to  the  nature  of  the  universe  as  a  whole, 
sought  within  the  moral  sphere  for  the  universal, 
and  was  the  first  to  concentrate  his  attention  on 
definitions.  Hence  Plato,  who  succeeded  him,  con- 
ceived for  the  reason  immediately  to  be  mentioned 
that  the  objects  thus  defined  cannot  be  any  sensible 
things,  but  are  of  some  different  kind,  since  it  is 
impossible  that  there  should  be  a  general  defini- 
tion of  a  sensible  thing,  as  such  things  are  in- 
cessantly changing.  Hence  he  called  this  kind 
of   things   "Ideas,"    and   held    that   all   sensible 

M.  e.,  the  Pythagoreans. 


ARISTOTLE'S   METAPHYSICS. 


things  exist  by  the  side  of  them  and  are  named 
after  them;  for  the  muUiplicity  of  things  called 
by  the  same  names  as  the  Ideas  exist,  he  holds, 
in  consequence  of  their  "participation"  in  them* 

In  this  theory  of  participation  the  only  inno- 
vation lay  in  the  name,  for  the  Pythagoreans  say 
that  things  exist  by  "imitation"  of  the  numbers, 
and  Plato  by  "participation"  [a  mere  change  of 
a  word].  But  what  this  "participation  in"  or 
"imitation  of"  the  Ideas  may  be,  they  left  for 
their  successors  to  inquire. 

Further,  he  teaches  that  the  objects  of  mathe- 

^  Cf.  the  fuller  parallel  passage,  Metaphysics,  M,  1078a  9  ff: 
"The  theory  of  Ideas  arose  in  the  minds  of  its  originators  from  their 
persuasion  of  the  truth  of  the  HeracUtean  doctrine,  that  all  sensible 
things  are  always  in  flux.  Hence,  they  inferred,  if  there  is  to  be  scien- 
tific knowledge  and  rational  comprehension  of  amiihing,  there  must 
be  other  entities  distinct  from  those  of  sense,  and  they  must  be  per- 
manent. Now,  Socrates  confined  his  studies  to  the  moral  virtues,  and 
was  the  first  to  attempt  universal  definition  in  connection  with  them 
Among  the  physicists,  Democritus  had  indeed  just  touched  the  fringe 
of  the  problem,  and  had  given  a  sort  of  definition  of  heat  and  cold,  and 
the  Pythagoreans  even  earHer  had  discussed  the  definition  of  a  few 
concepts,  connecting  them  with  their  theor}'  of  numbers.  They  asked, 
e.  g.,  what  is  opportunity,  or  justice,  or  marriage  ?  But  Socrates  had 
a  good  reason  for  inquiring  into  the  what  of  things.  He  was  attempt- 
ing to  construct  syllogisms,  and  the  'what  is  it'  is  the  starting-point 
of  the  syllogism.  .  .  .  There  are,  in  fact,  two  things  which  must  in 
justice  be  assigned  to  Socrates,  inductive  argvmients  and  universal 
definition.  For  both  of  these  have  to  do  with  the  foundation  of  science, 
Socrates,  however,  did  not  regard  his  universals,  or  definitions,  as  sepa- 
rable from  things;  his  successors  made  the  separation,  and  called  this 
class  of  objects  'Ideas.'  " 


I02     ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

matics  exist  as  an  intermediate  class  beside  the 
Ideas  and  sensible  things.  They  differ  from 
sensible  things  in  being  eternal  and  immutable, 
and  from  the  Ideas  in  this,  that  there  is  a  multi- 
plicity of  similar  mathematical  objects,  but  each 
Idea  is  a  single,  self-subsisting  entity.^ 

And  since  the  Ideas  are  the  causes  of  every- 
thing else,  he  thought  that  their  constituent  ele- 
ments are  the  elements  of  everything.  Their 
material  principle,  then,  is  the  "Great  and 
Small,"  but  their  formal  principle  the  One. 
For  the  numbers  [which  are  the  Ideas]  ^  are 
derived  from  the  former  principle  by  participa- 
tion in  the  One.  In  regarding  the  One  as  a 
substance,  and  not  as  a  predicate  of  some  other 
entity,  his  doctrine  resembles  Pythagoreanism, 
and  also  in  holding  that  the  numbers  are  the 
causes  of  Being  in  ever5Athing  else.     But    it   is 

'  From  the  polemic  against  Plato,  which  occupies  books  M  and 
N  oi  the  Metaphysics,  particularly  from  M  2,  1076b,  it  appears  that 
Aristotle  understood  Plato  to  distinguish  between  three  kinds  of 
entity,  each  of  which  is  in  its  ultimate  constitution  a  number,  or  ratio 
of  numbers:  (i)  The  sensible  object,  e.  g.,  a  visible  round  disc;  (2)  the 

"mathematical    object,"   e.    g,    mm  Tnmi«J.i«rinn^'nnHr.n-r.f    Q    par-fof-fly 

0.    \^i4tL»    vrw«  uiituUr^sc;   (3)  the  Idea,  e.°g.,  tlie  circle  in  the  sense  in  which  it  is 

^^^  ^j    1^        studied    by  the  analytical  geometer,  and  defined  by  its  equation.  (2) 
differs  from  (3)  as  "circles"  from  "the  circle." 


>0  O 


'  The   text    is   ra  eldr)  too?  dpid/iou'^,  where  either  rd  s^Stj  or 
Toh^  dpid[iobq    is  pretty  clearly  a  gloss.    I  follow  Zeller's  reading. 
L»illx  ^*W*  ^f^         Christ   has    rd  e'ld-^  \ruoq  dpcfffiooq],  "the  Ideas  [which  are  the 
numbers]. " 


ARISTOTLE'S   METAPHYSICS.  103 

peculiar  to  him  to  set  up  a  duality  instead  of  the 
single  Unlimited,  and  to  make  the  Unlimited 
consist  of  the  Great  and  Small.*  It  is  a  pecu- 
liarity, also,  that  he  regards  the  Numbers  as  dis- 
tinct from  sensible  things,  whereas  the  Pythag- 
oreans say  that  things  themselves  are  number, 
and  do  not  assert  the  existence  of  an  intermediate 
class  of  mathematical  objects.  This  treatment 
of  the  One  and  the  Numbers  as  distinct  from 
things,  in  which  he  differed  from  the  Pythago- 
reans, and  also  the  introduction  of  the  ''Ideas," 
were  due  to  his  logicaP  studies  (for  his  prede- 
cessors knew  nothing  of  Dialectic);  his  concep- 
tion of  the  second  principle  as  a  DuaHty,  to  the 
ease  with  which  numbers  other  than  primes  can 
be  generated  from  such  a  Duality  as  a  matrix.^    988  a. 

^  This  "Great  and  Small,"  or  principle  of  indefinite,  variability, 
is  regularly  spoken  of  by  Aristotle  in  the  sequel  as  "the  indeterminate 
Dyad"  or  "Duality."  It  corresponds  exactly  to  the  notion  of  "the 
variable"  in  modern  Logic  and  Mathematics.  The  nearest  equivalent 
phrase  in  the  wTitings  of  Plato  himself  occurs  at  Philehiis,  246,  where 
the  amtpov  or  indeterminate  is  characterized  as  "all  things  which 
appear  to  us  to  exist  in  a  greater  and  a  less  degree,  and  admit  the  quali- 
fications 'intensely,'  'gently,'  'e.xcessively'  and  the  like."  Ac- 
cording to  the  ancient  commentators,  the  foregoing  account  of  the 
composition  of  the  Ideas,  which  is  not  to  be  found  explicitly  in  any  of 
the  Platonic  writings,  was  given  orally  by  Plato  in  lectures  which 
were  posthumously  edited  by  Aristotle  and  others  of  his  disciples. 

^  TTji'  iv  To'is  loyoii  axi(piv,  "his  inquiries  in  the  domain  of 
concepts,"  i.  e.,  his  study  of  the  nature  of  logical  definition  and  divi- 
sion. 

^  A    matrix,    IxfiayeXov^   properly,   a    mass    of    material    pre- 


I04     ARISTOTLE   ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

Yet,  the  actual  process  is  the  reverse  of  this, 
and  his  suggested  derivation  has  no  logical  foun- 
dation. According  to  his  followers,  the  existence 
of  a  multipHcity  of  things  is  a  consequence  of 
matter,  whereas  each  Form  is  only  productive 
once  for  all.  Yet,  it  is  notorious  that  only  one 
table^  can  be  fashioned  from  one  and  the  same 
piece  of  timber,  whereas  he  who  impresses  the 
form  on  it,  though  but  a  single  workman,  can 
make  many  tables.     So  with  the  relation  of  the 

pared  to  receive  a  mould  or  stamp,  a  Platonic  term  borrowed 
by  Aristotle  from  Theaetetus,  191c;  Timaeus,  50c.  The  clause 
"other  than  primes"  is  difficult  to  interpret,  and  has  been  treated 
as  a  mistaken  gloss.  I  think,  however,  that  it  alludes  to  Parmenid-es, 
143-4.  where  Plato  deduces  from  the  existence  of  i,  that  of  2, 
and  from  these  two  that  of  the  whole  series  of  all  the  other 
integers  which  can  be  resolved  into  factors,  whether  odd  or  even; 
i.  e.,  all  except  the  primes.  If  this  explanation  is  correct,  and 
it  appears  to  have  been  held  by  Bonitz  (see  his  edition  of  the 
Metaphysics,  Commentary,  p.  94-5),  this  is  one  of  several  passages 
which  refute  the  current  assertion  that  the  dialogue  Parmenides 
is  never  cited  by  Aristotle.  Another  is  N,  1091a  11,  which  unmis- 
takably refers  to  the  same  passage  of  the  Parmenides.  It  should, 
however,  be  obser\'ed  that  the  two  factors  from  which  nxmibers  are 
derived  in  that  dialogue  are  not  the  number  i  and  the  Variable  or 
"Indeterminate  Duality,"  but  the  number  i,  and  the  number  2,  "the 
Ideal  Duahty."  This  conscious  or  unconscious  perversion  of  Plato's 
theorj'  of  numbers  recurs  throughout  the  whole  of  the  sustained 
polemic  of  Books  M,  N. 

*  The  illustration  of  the  table  is  an  echo  of  Republic,  X.,  596a. 
Aristotle  is  punning  on  the  Literal  meaning  of  the  word  vkfj^  timber, 
which  he  employs  as  a  technical  term  for  the  "material"  from  which 
a  thing  is  produced. 


ARISTOTLE'S   METAPHYSICS.  105 

male  to  the  female;  the  latter  is  impregnated  by 
a  single  coition,  but  one  male  can  impregnate 
many  females.  And  yet  these  relations  are 
"copies"  of  those  principles! 

This,  then,  is  the  account  which  Plato  gave 
of  the  questions  we  are  now  investigating.  From 
our  statement  it  is  clear  that  he  only  employed 
two  kinds  of  cause,  the  principle  of  the  what 
and  the  material  cause.  (The  Ideas,  in  fact, 
are  the  cause  of  the  what  in  everything  else, 
and  the  One  in  the  Ideas  themselves.)  He  also 
tells  us  what  is  the  material  substratum  of  which 
the  Ideas  are  predicated  in  the  case  of  sensible 
things,  the  One  in  the  case  of  the  Ideas,  viz., 
that  it  is  the  duaUty  of  the  "Great  and  Small." 
He  further  identified  these  two  elements  with  the 
causes  of  good  and  evil,  respectively,  a  line  of 
research  which,  as  we  have  said,  had  already 
been  followed  by  some  of  his  philosophical  prede- 
cessors, e.  g.,  Empedocles  and  Anaxagoras. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

We  have  now  summarily  and  in  outline  an- 
swered the  questions,  what  thinkers  have  treated 
of  principles  and  of  reality,  and  what  doctrines 
they  have  taught.    This  much,  however,  can  be 


io6     ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

gathered  from  our  sketch  of  them,  viz.,  that  of 
all  who  have  discussed  principles  and  causes 
none  has  spoken  of  any  kind  except  those  which 
have  been  distinguished  in  our  discourses  on 
Physics.  They  are  all  unmistakably,  though  ob- 
scurely, trying  to  formulate  these.  Some  of  them 
understand  their  principle  in  the  sense  of  a  ma- 
terial cause,  whether  this  be  regarded  as  one  or 
as  several,  as  a  body  or  as  something  incorpo- 
real. E.  g.,  Plato,  with  his  Great  and  Small;  the 
ItaHans,  with  their  Unlimited;  Empedocles,  with 
his  fire,  earth,  water,  and  air;  Anaxagoras,  with 
the  infinity  of  his  homoeomerous  bodies.  All 
these,  then,  have  formed  the  concept  of  cause 
in  this  sense,  as  likewise  all  those  who  make  a 
first  principle  of  air,^  or  fire,^  or  water,  ^  or  a  body 
denser  than  fire  but  finer  than  air;*  for,  in  fact, 
some  have  identified  the  prime  element  with  such 
a  body.  These  thinkers,  then,  apprehended  only 
this  form  of  cause;  others  had  apprehended  cause, 
also,  in  the  sense  of  the  source  of  motion,  e.  g., 
those  who  make  a  principle  of  Love  and  Strife, 

'  Anaximenes,  Diogenes. 

^  Heraclitus. 

^Thales  (Hippo). 

*  On  the  identification  of  the  philosopher  thus  designated,  see 
Burnet,  op.  cit.  56-58,  and  references  given  there.  I  hold  with  Burnet 
that  the  criticism  of  the  doctrine  in  De  Coelo,  303b  12,  proves  that  the 
allusion  is  to  Anaximander. 


ARISTOTLE'S  METAPHYSICS.  107 

or  Mind,  or  sexual  Love.  The  what '  or  essential 
nature^  has  not  been  exphcitly  assigned  by  any 
of  them,  but  the  authors  of  the  theory  of  Ideas 
have  come  nearest  to  recognizing  it.  For  they  988  b. 
neither  conceive  the  Ideas  as  the  material  of  sen- 
sible things  and  the  One  as  that  of  the  Ideas,  nor 
do  they  regard  them  as  providing  the  source  of 
motion  (indeed,  they  say  that  they  are  rather 
causes  of  motionlessness  and  rest),  but  the  what  * 
is  supplied  to  everything  else  by  the  Ideas,  and  to 
the  Ideas  by  the  One.  The  end  jor  the  sake  of 
which  actions,  changes,  and  movements  take  place 
they  do,  in  a  sense,  introduce  as  a  cause,  but  not 
in  this  form,  nor  in  one  corresponding  to  its  real 
character.  For  those  who  speak  of  Mind  or  Love 
assume  these  causes,  indeed,  as  something  good, 
but  not  in  the  sense  that  anything  is  or  comes  to 
be  for  the  sake  oj  them,  but  only  in  the  sense  that 
motions  are  initiated  by  them.  Similarly,  those^ 
who  assert  that  Being,  or  the  One,  are  entities 
of  this  kind^  assert,  indeed,  that  they  are  a  cause 
of  existence,  but  not  that  anything  is  or  comes  to 
be  for  the  sake  of  them.  Consequently  they,  in  a 
sense,  both  'assert  and  deny  that  the  Good  is  a 

'  TO  rt  ^v  elvat. 

^Tijv  ovffiav. 

'  i.  e.,  Plato  and  his  followers. 

*  i.  e.,  Sources  of  motion. 


io8     ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

cause,  for  they  treat  it  as  such,  not  absolutely  but 
per  accidens}  They  all  thus  appear  to  supply  evi- 
dence that  our  own  determination  of  the  number 
and  kind  of  the  senses  of  cause  is  correct,  since 
they  have  all  failed  to  conceive  of  any  further  sense 
of  cause.  Further,  it  is  clear  that  we  must  investi- 
gate these  principles  either  as  they  stand  in  their 
entirety  or  a  selection  of  them.  We  will  next,  how- 
ever, examine  possible  difficulties  in  the  doctrines 
of  the  individual  thinkers,  and  their  views  about 
principles. 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

It  is  clear,  then,  that  all  who  regard  the  universe 
as  one  and  assume  a  single  entity  as  its  material, 
and  that  a  bodily  and  extended^  entity,  have  fallen 
into  error  in  several  respects.  They  only  assume 
constituent  elements  for  bodies,  but  not  for  in- 
corporeal entities,  though  incorporeal  entities  also 
really  exist,  and  though  they  attempt  to  provide 

*  i.  e.,  they  treat  "the  Good"  as  being  a  cause  only  in  a  relative 
and  derivative  sense,  because  it  happens  also  to  be  something  which 
mechanically  initiates  movemait. 

^  fiiyedoq  k'^ouaav;  ht.,  "having  magnitude."  iiiysdoq  (see 
Bonitz's  Index  Arislotelicus  sub.  voc.)  means  to  Aristotle  res  extensa, 
spatial  magnitude,  whether   purely  geometrical  or  physical. 


I 


ARISTOTLE'S   METAPHYSICS.  109 

causes  for  generation  and  dissolution,  and  to  dis- 
cuss the  nature  of  all  things,  they  do  away  with 
the  cause  of  motion.  A  further  fault  is  that  they 
do  not  assume  the  essential  nature,^  or  what,  as  a 
cause  of  anything.  Another  is  the  levity  with 
which  they  call  any  one  of  the  simple  bodies 
except  earth  a  principle,  without  reflection  on  the 
process  of  their  reciprocal  generation  from  each 
other.  [I  am  speaking  of  fire,  water,  earth,  and 
air.]  Some  of  them  are  generated  from  one 
another  by  composition,  others  by  separation, 
and  this  difference  is  of  the  highest  importance  in 
deciding  the  question  of  priority  and  posteriority. 
From  one  point  of  view,  one  might  hold  that  the 
most  elementary  of  things  is  that  out  of  which  they 
are  all  ultimately  generated  by  composition,  and 
such  would  be  the  body  which  is  finest  in  texture 
and  has  the  minutest  parts.  Hence  those  who  989  a. 
assume  fire  as  their  principle  would  be  most  fully 
in  accord  with  this  line  of  thought,  and  even  each 
of  the  others  admits  that  the  element  of  bodies 
must  be  of  this  kind ;  at  least,  none  of  the  later 
thinkers  who  asserted  a  single  principle  has  ven- 
tured to  say  that  this  element  is  earth  —  the  reason 
clearly  being  the  great  size  of  its  parts  —  though 
each  of  the  three  other  elements  has  found  an 
advocate.    For  some  identify  the  primary  element 

'  TTjv  obaiav. 


no     ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

with  fire,  others  with  water,  others  with  air.  And 
yet  why  do  they  not  say  the  same  thing  about 
earth,  too,  just  as  the  mass  of  mankind  do  ?  And 
Hesiod,^  too,  says  that  earth  was  the  first  of 
bodies,  so  primitive  and  popular  is  this  belief 
found  to  be. 

According  to  this  line  of  thought,  then,  whether 
a  man  says  that  the  primary  body  is  any  one  of 
these  other  than  fire  or  assumes  that  it  is  denser 
than  air  but  finer  than  water,  he  cannot  be  right 
in  either  case.  But  if  what  is  sequent  in  the  order 
of  production  is  logically  anterior,^  then,  since  the 
compacted  and  composite  comes  later  in  the  order 
of  production,  we  should  have  an  opposite  con- 
clusion to  the  above:  water  would  be  prior  to  air; 
earth,  to  water. 

So  much,  then,  may  be  said  about  those  who 
postulate  a  single  cause  of  this  kind.  The  same 
criticisms  are  pertinent,  even  if  one  assumes  a 
plurality  of  them,  like  Empedocles,  who  says  that 
the  material  of  things  is  four  bodies.  The  same 
consequences  must  follow  in  his  system,  as  well 

*  In  the  passage  previously  referred  to,  Theogony,  1 16  ff. 

"^TTj  ^ixTSi  Ttporepov^  "prior  in  the  order  of  nature"  it  being  a 
doctrine  of  Aristotle,  ultimately  based  upon  his  biological  studies, 
that  the  completed  result  of  a  process  of  development  is  presupposed 
by,  and  therefore  logically,  and  in  the  end  temporally  also,  prior  to  its 
incomplete  stages.  For  the  different  senses  of  priority  and  posteri- 
ority, see  Metaphysics,  A  1 1 . 


ARISTOTLE'S  METAPHYSICS.  in 


as  others  peculiar  to  it.  For  we  see  these  bodies 
produced  from  one  another,  and  this  impHes  that 
fire  and  earth  do  not  always  remain  the  same  body, 
a  point  which  has  been  discussed  in  our  discourses 
on  Physics'.  And,  further,  he  cannot  be  thought 
to  have  spoken  with  entire  correctness  or  consist- 
ency on  the  question  whether  the  cause  of  motion 
is  to  be  assumed  to  be  single  or  double.  And  uni- 
versally those  who  teach  this  doctrine  are  forced 
to  deny  the  reality  of  qualitative  alteration. 
Nothing  will  become  cold  after  being  hot,  or  hot 
after  being  cold.  For  there  would  need  to  be 
something  to  be  the  subject  of  these  contrasted 
states.  And  thus  there  would  be  a  numerically 
single  entity  which  becomes  successively  fire  and 
water;  but  this  he  denies. 

As  for  Anaxagoras,  he  would  be  most  rationally 
interpreted  if  we  understood  him  to  recognize  two 
elements.  He  did  not,  indeed,  develop  this  notion 
himself,  but  would  necessarily  have  followed  an- 
other's guidance  in  this  direction.  That  all  things 
were  at  first  a  mixture^  is  indeed  a  paradoxical 

*  Reference  is  to  De  CceIo,  III.,  7;  De  Generatione,  II.,  6. 

^The  reference  is  to  Anaxagoras.  Fr.  (i)  "All  things  were  to- 
gether, infinite  both  in  number  and  smallness,"  etc.;  Fr.  (4)  "Before 
the  separating  off,  when  all  things  were  together,  there  was  not  even 
any  colour  perceptible,  for  the  commingling  of  all  things  forbade  it," 
etc.;  R.  P.,  120:  "But  Mind  is  .  .  .  not  mingled  with  anything;"  Fr. 
(6),  R.P.,  123. 


112      ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

view  on  various  grounds,  particularly  because  it 
follows  that  they  would  first  have  to  exist  in  an 
989  b.  unmixed  state,  and  also  because  it  is  not  the  nature 
of  anything  and  everything  to  admit  of  mixture 
with  everjthing  else.  Besides,  the  attributes  and 
accidents  of  things  would  be  separable  from  their 
substances  (since  things  which  can  mix  can  also 
be  separated).  Still,  if  one  followed  up  his  doctrine 
and  developed  his  meaning,  he  would  perhaps  be 
found  to  be  asserting  a  view  more  akin  to  that  of 
later  thinkers.  For  when  nothing  had  been  sepa- 
rated off,  clearly  nothing  could  be  truly  predicated 
of  the  supposed  substance.  I  mean,  e.  g.,  that  it 
could  not  be  truly  called  white,  black,  buff  [nor 
of  any  other  color],  but  must  necessarily  have 
been  colorless,  since  otherwise  it  would  have  had 
one  or  the  other  of  these  tints.  Similarly,  for  the 
same  reason  it  could  have  no  taste,  nor  any  other 
such  quality.  It  could  neither  have  been  a  quality, 
nor  a  quantity,  nor  a  thing.  If  it  had  been,  it 
would  have  had  the  form  of  some  definite  particular 
thing.  But  this  is  impossible,  on  the  assumption 
that  all  things  were  mixed  together,  for  it  would 
be  equivalent  to  being  already  separated  out.  But 
he  says  that  all  things  were  mixed  together  except 
Mind,  which  alone  was  unmixed  and  pure.  It 
follows,  then,  from  all  this  that  his  theory  amounts 
to  assigning  as  his  principles  the  One  (for  that 


ARISTOTLE'S   METAPHYSICS.  113 

is  simple  and  unmixed),  and  the  Other,  as  we' 
call  the  Indeterminate  before  it  has  been  rendered 
determinate  and  received  a  form.  Thus  what  he 
says  is  neither  correct  nor  clear;  still,  what  he 
means  is  something  similar  to  later  theories  and 
more  conformable  to  apparent  facts. 

These  thinkers,  however,  confine  themselves 
exclusively  to  the  study  of  generation,  dissolution, 
and  motion,  for  in  general  they  inquire  exclusively 
about  the  causes  and  principles  of  that  kind  of 
Being.  As  for  those  who  study  all  forms  of  Being, 
and  distinguish  between  sensible  and  non-sensible 
objects,  they  clearly  devote  their  attention  to  both 
classes.  Hence,  in  their  case,  we  may  dwell  at 
rather  greater  length  on  the  question  what  satis- 
factory or  unsatisfactory  contributions  they  have 
made  to  the  solution  of  the  problems  at  present 
before  us. 

The  so-called  Pythagoreans,  then,  employ  less 
obvious  principles  and  elements  than  the  physi- 
cists (the  reason  being  that  they  did  not  derive 
them  from  sensible  things;  for  mathematical 
objects,  with  the  exception  of  those  with  which 
astronomy  is  concerned,  are  devoid  of  motion). 

*  "We" — i.  e.,  the  school  of  Plato.  Throughout  the  present 
discussion  Aristotle  affects  to  speak  as  a  critic  of  Plato  from  wathin  the 
Platonic  circle,  a  point  of  which  we  shall  see  further  illustration  in 
ch.IX. 


114     ARISTOTLE   ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

Still,  all  their  discussions  and  investigations  are 
concerned  with  physical  Nature.  For  they  de- 
990 a.  scribe  the  formation  of  the  "Heaven, "  and  observe 
what  befalls  its  parts  [attributes  and  activities], 
and  use  up  their  causes  and  principles  upon  this 
task,  which  implies  that  they  agree  with  the  other 
physicists,  that  what  is  is  just  so  much  as  is  per- 
ceptible by  our  senses  and  comprised  by  the 
so-called  "Heaven."  Yet,  as  I  have  said,  the  causes 
and  principles  they  assign  are  adequate  for  the 
ascent  to  the  higher  classes  of  entities,^  and,  in- 
deed, more  appropriate  to  these  than  to  the  science 
of  Physics.  But  they  fail  to  explain  how  there 
can  be  motion  if  all  that  we  presuppose  in  our 
premises  is  merely  Limit,  the  Unlimited,  the  Odd 
and  the  Even,  or  how  without  Motion  and  Change 
there  can  be  Generation,  and  Dissolution,  or  the 
actions  of  the  bodies  that  traverse  the  "Heaven."  ^ 
Again,  even  if  it  were  granted  them  or  proved 
that  magnitude'^  is  composed  of  these  factors,  how 
does  this  account  for  the  existence  of  bodies,  light 

'"higher"  —  i.e.,  reqmring  a  greater  degree  of  generalising 
abstraction  for  their  comprehension;  in  Aristotle's  favorite  phrase, 
"farther  removed  from  sense." 

^i.  e.,  Res  extensa,  Body,  conceived  in  a  purely  geometrical 
fashion  and  denuded  of  all  physical  properties.  Aristotle's  point  is, 
that  just  because  the  Pythagoreans  (like  Descartes  after  them)  con- 
ceived of  Body  in  purely  geometrical  terms  they  could  give  no  expla- 
nation of  its  sensible  physical  properties. 


ARISTOTLE'S  METAPHYSICS.  115 

and  heavy?  For  they  reason  from  the  principles 
they  assume  just  as  much  about  sensible  as  about 
mathematical  bodies.  Hence  they  have  not 
taught  us  anything  about  fire  or  earth  or  other 
such  bodies,  and  naturally  not,  as  they  had  no 
special  doctrine  about  sensible  objects  as  such. 
Again,  how  can  we  understand  the  view  that 
Number  and  its  properties  are  the  causes  of  all 
that  is  and  that  comes  to  be  in  the  "Heaven,"  both 
at  the  beginning  and  now,  and  yet  that  there  is 
no  other  kind  of  number  than  this  Number  of 
which  the  universe  is  composed?  For  when, 
according  to  them,  there  is  in  this  region  of  the 
universe  Opinion  and  Opportunity,  and  a  little 
higher  or  lower  Injustice  and  Separation  or  Mix- 
ture, and  when  they  say  as  a  proof  of  this  that 
each  of  these  is  a  number,  and  when  it  also  comes 
about  that  there  is  already  in  this  region  a  col- 
lection of  composite^  magnitudes,  because  these 
properties  are  attached  each  to  a  particular  region 
—  is  it  the  same  number  as  that  in  the  "Heaven," 
which  we  are  to  suppose  to  be  each  of  these  things, 
or  some  other  kind  of  number  ?^    Plato,  to  be  sure, 

M.  e.,  extended  figures  or  bodies  (the  Pythagoreans  did  not  dis- 
tinguish the  two),  which,  according  to  them,  are  "composed"  of  the 
numerical  factors.  Limit,  the  Unlimited. 

^  In  this  difficult  sentence  I  have  followed  the  reading  and  interpre- 
tation of  Burnet,  op.  cit.  p.  316,  which  differs  from  that  of  Christ  in  the 
following  points:  990a  25,  omit  fxiv  and,  with  Bonitz,  read  aufi/iatvjj 


ii6     ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

says  it  is  a  different  kind,  though  he,  too,  thinks 
that  both  these  things^  and  their  causes  are  num- 
bers, but  beheves  that  the  causative  numbers  are 
perceived  by  thought,  the  other  kind  by  sense. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

For  the  present,  then,  we  may  dismiss  the  sub- 
ject  of   the   Pythagoreans;   the   foregoing   brief 
mention  of  them  will  be  found  adequate.    As  for 
990  b.    those  who  assume  the  Ideas  as  causes,  in  the  first 

for  (To/ji/Saj'i'ef;  line  28,  omit  ouroi;-,  with  the  MS  Ab),  though  this 
last  change  is  perhaps  unnecessary.  The  general  meaning  is,  then,  as 
follows:  Besides  their  cosmological  significance  the  Pythagorean 
"nimibers,"  had,  as  we  have  seen,  fanciful  symbolic  interpretations,  and 
apparently  it  was  held  that  the  various  immaterial  entities  thus  sym- 
bolized are  to  be  found  in  the  region  of  space  which  corresponds  to 
the  symbolic  mmiber  in  its  cosmological  interpretation;  e.g.,  "oppor- 
tunity" in  that  appropriated  to  the  nimiber  7.  Aristotle  then  asks 
is  the  number  7,  which  they  say  is  "opportunity,"  the  same  as  that  of 
which  they  say  physical  things  are  made,  or  different?  E.  g.,  is  "op- 
portunity" a  figure  made  up  of  seven  visible  points  ?  If  "opportunity," 
"injustice,"  etc.,  are  numbers,  and  bodies  are  also  nimibers,  we  must 
mean  something  very  different  by  "number"  in  the  two  cases. 
Christ,  in  his  second  edition,  retains  iiiv  ffup-fiaii^ec  and  ooToq^ 
and,  with  Zeller,  inserts  tooto  before  ijdyjin  line  26.  This  gives  us 
the  sense:  "and  when  they  say  as  a  proof  of  this  that  each  of  these  is  a 
number,  and  that  just  this  multitude  of  magnitudes  happens  to  be 
already  constituted  in  this  region,  because,"  etc.  I  cannot  understand 
the  implied  reasoning. 

^  "These  things"  appears  now  not  to  mean,  as  in  the  last  sen- 
tence, opportunity,  etc.,  but  the  extended  figures  and  bodies  previously 
referred  to. 


ARISTOTLE'S   METAPHYSICS.  117 


place,  in  the  attempt  to  discover  the  causes  of  the 
entities  of  the  actual  world'  they  introduced  the 
notion  of  a  second  class  of  entities  equally  numer- 
ous with  them.^  This  is  just  as  if  one  who  wished 
to  count  certain  things  should  fancy  that  while  they 
remain  fewer  he  will  not  succeed,  but  should  first 
multiply  them  and  then  count.  For  the  Ideas 
are  pretty  nearly  as  numerous  as,  or  not  fewer 
than,  the  things  by  inquiring  into  whose  causes 
they  advanced  from  actual  objects  to  Ideas.  For 
there  is  something  synonymous  corresponding  to 
every  group  not  only  of  substances  but  of  all  other 
things  in  which  there  is  a  One  over  the  Many,' 
both  in  this  world  of  actual  things  and  in  that  of 
eternal  things. 

Again,  none  of  the  methods  of  argument  by 
which  we  try  to  prove  the  existence  of  the  Ideas 

^T(u>d\  Tuiv  ovTojv,  "entities  here"  in  the  actual  world  per- 
ceptible by  sense,  as  contrasted  with  things  tliere,  i.  e.,  in  the  "intel- 
ligible world"  of  Plato's  Ideas. 

'  The  rest  of  the  critique  of  Plato  down  to  991b  7,  "of  which  we 
Platonists  say  there  are  not  Ideas,"  appears  again  in  Metaphysics,  31, 
chs.  4,  5,  in  a  form  which  is  almost  verbally  identical  with  the 
present  chapter,  except  that  there  Aristotle  does  not,  as  here,  affect  by 
the  use  of  the  pronoun  of  the  first  person  plural  to  be  speaking  as  a 
critic  from  within  the  Platonic  circle  itself.  This  repetition  is  one  of 
many  indications  that  the  Metaphysics  is  in  no  sense  a  literary 
"work,"  prepared  by  its  author  for  circulation. 

^  The  "One  over  the  Many"  (?v  im  TznkXwv)  is  the  single 
class-concept  predicable  of  each  severally  of  a  plurality  of  indi- 
viduals. 


ii8     ARISTOTLE    ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

really  establishes  the  conclusion.  From  some  of 
them  no  necessary  conclusion  follows;  from  others, 
it  follows  that  there  would  also  be  Ideas  in  cases 
where  we  do  not  beHeve  in  them.  According 
to  the  arguments  drawn  from  the  sciences/  there 
will  be  Ideas  of  all  things  of  which  there  are 
sciences.  According  to  that  based  on  the  One 
over  the  Many,^  there  must  be  Ideas  also  of  nega- 
tives, and  according  to  that  based  on  our  ability 
to  conceive    of   what    has   perished,^    Ideas    of 

'  This  is  the  argument  that,  since  there  is  exact  and  absolute 
truth,  there  must  be  a  corresponding  class  of  objects  of  knowledge, 
viz.,  the  eternal,  immutable  Ideas.  It  occurs  in  Plato,  e.  g.,  at  Republic, 
478a;  Timmus,  51.  Aristotle  objects  that  there  are  sciences  of  objects 
for  which  the  Platonists  themselves  did  not  postulate  corresponding 
Ideas,  viz.,  negatives,  relatives,  artificial  products.  These  limitations 
do  not,  however,  occur  in  the  Platonic  dialogues.  We  read  in  the 
Cratylus  (389)  of  an  Idea  of  shuttle,  in  the  Republic  (597)  of  an  Idea 
of  bed — artificial  products;  in  the  Phcedo  and  Parmenides  of  Ideas  of 
equality  and  bigness — relations;  in  the  Parmenides  of  an  Idea  of 
inequaUty — a  negative. 

^  This  appears  to  be  what  we  might  call  the  argument  from  the 
existence  of  a  Limit,  i.  e.,  the  inference  of  Phwdo,  74  ff,  that  there  must, 
e.  g.,  be  such  a  tiling  as  absolute  equality,  which  is  never  actually  ex- 
hibited but  only  suggested  as  an  ideal  limit  by  the  examples  of  approxi- 
mate equality  presented  by  sensuous  perception.  Aristotle's  rather 
shallow  objection  would  be  most  strikingly  expressed  by  putting  it  in 
the  form  that  since  o  is  one  of  the  most  familiar  instances  of  a  limit, 
the  argument  from  the  existence  of  a  limit  requires  that  o  should  exist. 

'  The  "argument  from  our  ability  to  conceive  what  has  perished" 
is  best  illustrated  by  Aristotle's  own  previous  observation  in  ch.  6, 
that  Plato  held  that  the  objects  referred  to  in  definitions  cannot  be 
sensible  objects,  since  the  definition  is  always  equally  true,  but  all 
sensible  things  are  mutable. 


ARISTOTLE'S   METAPHYSICS.  119 


perishable  things;  for  there  is  a  memory-image*  of 
them.  Besides,  his  most  exact^  arguments  partly  j  j^vnJ^U2 1 
lead  to  Ideas  of  relatives,  of  which  there  is,  accord- 
ing to  us,  no  self-existing  class,  and  partly  bring 
the  ' '  third  man ' ' '  into  the  argument.  And,  speak- 
ing generally,  the  arguments  for  the  Ideas  lead  to 
the  denial  of  things*  whose  reality  we  Platonists 

'  (pdvTaaiia. 

'  These,  according  to  Alexander,  are  the  arguments  which  make 
the  relation  between  the  Idea  and  the  corresponding  class  of  sensible  ob- 
jects more  definite  by  saying  that  the  Idea  is  the  Original  {T:apddeiy/Jia) 
of  which  the  sensible  thing  is  a  copy  {6/io{u>fia  or  fit'pirjfia),  i.  e.,  the 
arguments  in  which  the  Idea  appears  as  an  Ideal  Limit  or  Standard. 

'  The  "third  man"  is  the  difficulty  known  in  modern  logic  as 
the  "indefinite  regress."  We  learn  from  Alexander  that  it  had  been 
originally  raised  by  the  sophist,  Polyxenus.  Plato  himself  alludes 
toit  in  Republic,  597,  and  explicitly  states  it  in  Parw<;m<:?e5,  132,  though 
without  formally  indicating  his  answer  to  it.  It  runs  thus:  If  the 
likeness  between  Socrates,  Plato,  and  other  persons  proves  that  they  are 
all  "copies"  of  a  common  archetype,  the  "Idea  of  Man,"  then  the  Hke- 
ness  between  this  Idea  and  Socrates  must  also  prove  that  both  Socrates 
and  the  Idea  are  "copies"  of  another  common  archetype,  which  will 
be  a  second  and  more  ultimate  Idea  of  Man;  and  the  Ukeness  between 
the  first  and  second  Ideas  of  Man  proves  the  existence  of  a  third  Idea, 
which  is  tJmr  common  archetype,  and  so  on  in  iitdefiuitum.  (The 
real  solution  of  the  puzzle  is  that  the  relation  between  Socrates  and 
"man"  is  not  the  same  as  the  relation  between  Socrates  and  Plato. 
Socrates  and  Plato  are  both  members  of  the  class  Jtien;  "man"  is  not  a 
member  of  the  class  "men."  Hence  the  argument  of  Polyxenus  and 
Aristotle  is  a  sophism,  and  the  difficulty  about  the  "regress"  does  not 
arise  except  in  the  case  of  those  classes  which  can  be  members  of  them- 
selves. On  these  classes,  see  Russell,  Principles  oj  Mathematics,  I., 
ch.  X.,  and  Appendix  B.) 

*  The  "things"  in  question,  Alexander  explains,  are  the  con- 
stituent elements  of  the  Ideas  themselves,  the  One  and  the  Dyad  of  the 


I20     ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

are  even  more  concerned  to  maintain  than  that 
of  the  Ideas.  For  it  follows  from  them  that  it  is 
not  the  Dyad  but  number  which  is  logically 
primary,  that  the  relative  is  prior  to  the  absolute, 
and  all  the  other  inconsistencies  between  the 
consequences  which  have  been  drawn  from  the 
theory  of  Ideas  and  its  principles.  Further,  ac- 
cording to  the  conviction  on  which  our  Ideal  theory 
is  based,  there  will  be  Ideas  not  only  of  substances, 
but  of  much  else  (for  there  are  common  concepts 
not  only  in  the  case  of  substances  but  in  other 
cases,  and  sciences  not  only  of  substances  but  of 
other  entities,  and  there  is  a  host  of  similar  conse- 
quences).   But  according  to  rigid  logic,  and  the 

Great  and  Small.  Aristotle  contends  that  the  theory  of  Ideas  leads  to 
consequences  which  are  incompatible  with  the  initial  assumption  as 
to  these  elements.  E.  g.,  if  the  Great  and  Small  is  one  of  the  two  con- 
stituents of  ever}'  Idea,  it  must  be  a  simpler  notion  presupposed  in 
every  Idea  and  thus  logically  prior  to  all  the  Ideas.  Therefore  it  must, 
of  course,  be  prior  to  the  Idea  of  Number.  But,  since  you  can  say, 
e.  g.,  '"The  Great  and  Small  are  a  pair  oj  entities"  or  "are  two  entities," 
and  two  is  a  number,  number  should  be  the  class,  or  universal,  of 
which  the  Dyad  is  one  instance,  and  it  ought  to  follow  that  nimiber  is 
logically  prior  to  what  Plato  regards  as  one  of  its  simple  constituents. 
(The  reader  will  readily  perceive  that  this,  again,  is  a  sophism,  turning 
on  the  identification  of  the  Indeterminate  Dyad  or  "Variable"  with  the 
number  2.  The  repeated  instances  of  this  identification  which  occur 
both  in  this  chapter  and  throughout  book  M  afford  a  striking  illustra- 
tion of  Aristotle's  deficiency  in  exact  mathematical  thought.)  He 
further  goes  on  to  object  that  Plato's  theory  makes  the  "relative"  prior 
to  the  "absolute."  This  is  because  the  fundamental  concepts  of  that 
theory,  "number"  and  "archetype,"  are  relative  terms.  (Every 
number  or  archetype  is  a  number  or  archetype  0/  something.) 


ARISTOTLE'S  METAPHYSICS.  121 


accepted  theory  of  the  Ideas,  if  things  are  related  to 

the  Ideas  by  ''participation"  there  can  be  Ideas 

only  of  substances.     For  things  do  not  "partake" 

of  them  per  accidens;  they  only  partake  of  each 

Idea  in  so  far  as  it  is  not  predicated  of  something  ^ 

else  as  a  sul^gti^ute.     WTiat  I  mean  is,  e.  g.,  that    ScJhi^M 

if  anything  partakes  of  the  Idea  of  ''double"  it 

also  partakes  of  something  eternal,  but  only  per 

accidens,  for  it  is  an  accident  of  the  Idea  of 

"double"    to    be    eternal.*    Hence    the    Ideas 

must  be  of  substances.^    But  the  same  terms  which 

denote  substance  here^  denote  it  also  there;  or 

what  else  can  be  meant  by  sapng  that  there  is    991a. 

besides  the  actual  things  here  something  which 

is  the  unity  corresponding  to  their  multiphcity? 

And  if  the  Ideas  and  the  things  which  partake  of 

'  The  point  is  this:  You  can  say,  e.  g.,  "a  right-hand  glove  and 
a  left-hand  glove  arc  two  gloves";  thus  in  Platonic  phrase,  the  gloves 
"partake  of  the  Idea  of  "  two.  But  though  the  Idea  of  two,  Hke  all 
Ideas,  is  eternal,  you  cannot  say  "these  two  gloves  are  eternal,"  for 
gloves,  as  we  know,  wear  out.  In  the  terminology  of  Aristotelian 
logic  the  relation  of  "participation,"  if  it  exists,  must  be  between  the 
sensible  thing  and  the  substance  of  the  corresponding  Idea,  not  bet%veen 
the  thing  and  the  accidents  of  the  Idea. 

'  Reading  with  Bonitz  in  his  Commentar>',  p.  i  I4i  and  apparently 
with  Alexander,  ootrias  in  line  34  for  MSS.  oixria  which  Christ  keeps 
The  MSS.  text  gives  the  sense,  "the  Ideas  must  be  substances,"  but 
this  is  throughout  assumed  by  Aristotle  as  admitted. 

'  "Here"  =  among  sensible  things,  "there"  =  among  the  Ideas,  in 
the  "intelligible"  world,  a  mode  of  expression  which  became  after- 
ward technical  with  the  Neoplatonists. 


122     ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

them  are  members  of  the  same  class,  they  will 
have  something  in  common.  For  why  should 
duality  be  one  and  the  same  thing  in  the  case  of 
the  perishable  pairs  and  that  of  the  pairs  which 
though  many  are  eternal,  and  not  equally  so  in 
the  case  of  the  Idea  of  duality  and  a  particular 
pair  of  things?*  But  if  they  are  not  members  of 
the  same  class,  they  can  have  nothing  but  their 
name  in  common,  and  it  is  much  as  if  one  called 
both  Callias  and  a  wooden  image  men,  without 
reference  to  any  community  of  character  in  them.^ 

'  The  many  pairs  of  things  which  are  eternal  are,  of  course,  the 
instances  of  couples  which  occur  in  pure  Mathematics  (e.  g.,  pairs 
of  conjugate  diameters,  pairs  of  asymptotes).  The  argument  is  our 
old  friend,  the  "third  man."  "To  be  a  couple,"  he  contends,  is  pred- 
icable  alike  of  the  Idea  of  "two"  and  of  a  sensible  couple.  You  can 
say:  "The  Idea  of  'two'  and  this  pair  of  gloves  are  two  couples." 
Therefore,  on  Platonic  principles,  there  must  be  a  second  more  ulti- 
mate Idea  of  "two,"  in  which  both  the  first  Idea  of  "two"  and  the 
gloves  "participate."  The  sophistical  character  of  the  reasoning 
becomes  obvious  when  we  reflect  that  the  Idea  of  "two"  is  not 
itself  two  things,  but  one  thing.  Do  not  confuse  this  Idea  of  "two" 
with  the  Indeterminate  Dyad. 

'At  this  point  the  parallel  passage  of  book  /'/ (1079b  3)  adds 
the  following  paragraph: 

But  if  we  assume  that  in  general  the  universal  concept  coincides 
with  the  Idea  (e.  g.,  the  qualification  "plane  figure"  and  the  other 
constituents  of  the  definition  with  the  "Idea  of  the  circle"),  but  that, 
in  the  case  of  the  Idea,  it  must  be  further  specified  of  what  this  Idea 
is  the  archetype,  one  has  to  consider  whether  this  addition  is  not  purely 
empty.  To  which  constituent  of  the  definition  is  it  to  be  added  ? 
To  "center,"  to  "plane,"  or  to  all  alike ?  For  all  the  constituents  of 
the  essence  are  Ideas,  e.g.,  "animal"  and  "biped."  [I.  e.,  in  the  defi- 
nition of  man  as  a  two-footed  animal.  Tr.]     Besides,  clearly  it  [i.  e., 


ARISTOTLE'S  METAPHYSICS.  123 

Above  all,  it  would  be  difficult  to  explain  what 
the  Ideas  contribute  to  sensible  things,  whether  to 
those  which  are  eternaP  or  those  which  undergo 
generation  and  dissolution.  For  they  are  not 
the  causes  of  any  movement  or  change  in  them. 
But,  once  more,  they  are  also  of  no  assistance  for 
the  knowledge  of  other  things  (for  the  Ideas  are 
not  the  substance  of  things;  if  they  were,  they 
would  be  in  the  things);  nor  do  they  contribute 
to  their  Being,  since  they  are  not  present  in  the 
things  which  partake  of  them.^  If  they  were, 
they  might  perhaps  be  thought  to  be  causes  in 
the  sense  in  which  an  admixture  of  white  is  the 
cause  that  something  is  white.     But  this  line  of 

the  proposed  extra  qualification  by  which  the  Idea  is  to  be  distinguished 
from  a  mere  universal  generic  concept,  viz.,  that  it  is  "the  archetype 
of  a  class  of  sensible  things."  Tr.]  must  itself  be  an  entity,  just 
as  "plane"  is  an  entity  which  must  be  present  as  a  genus  in  all  the 
species,  [i.  e.,  he  argues  that  the  same  grounds  which  lead  the 
Platonists  to  say  that  there  is  an  Idea  of  "plane"  of  which  circles, 
elHpses,  and  all  the  other  plane  figures  "  partake"  would  equally  lead  to 
the  view  that  there  is  an  Idea  of  "archetype"  of  which  all  the  other 
Ideas  "partake" — a  fresh  appUcation  of  the  "third  man."     Tr.] 

'  i.  e.,  the  heavenly  bodies,  which,  according  to  Aristotle,  are 
ungenerated  and  incorruptible. 

'  This  is  the  essence  of  Aristotle's  most  telling  objection  to  the 
Platonic  doctrine,  viz.,  that  Plato  regarded  the  Ideas  as  "separable" 
from  the  sensible  things  which,  nevertheless,  depend  on  them  for  their 
Being.  In  modern  terminology  the  point  is,  that  Plato  holds  that  what 
we  mean  to  assert  in  a  typical  proposition  of  the  form  "A'  is  a  Y"  (e.  g., 
"Socrates  is  a  man")  is  a  relation  between  X  (Socrates)  and  a  second 
entity  Y  ("humanity,"  the  "Idea  of  Man").  Aristotle  regards  this 
as  an  impossible  analysis. 


124     ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

thought,  which  was  first  enunciated  by  Anaxag- 
oras,  and  repeated  later  by  Eudoxus  and  others, 
is  easily  refutable,  for  it  is  an  easy  task  to  collect 
many  impossible  consequences  in  opposition  to 
such  a  doctrine/ 

Once  more,  other  things  are  not  derived  from 
the  Ideas  in  any  of  the  estabHshed  senses  of  the 
term  "derivation";  to  call  them  "archetypes"  and 
to  say  that  other  things  "partake"  of  them  is 
to  employ  empty  words  and  poetical  metaphors. 
For  what  is  the  agency  which  actually  constructs 
things  with  the  Idea  as  its  model  ?  A  thing  may 
both  be  and  become  like  something  else  without 
being  imitated  from  it.  Thus  whether  Socrates 
exists  or  not,  there  may  equally  be  some  one  like 
Socrates,  and  it  is  clear  that  the  case  would  not  be 
altered  even  if  Socrates  were  eternal.  Also,  there 
will  be  many  archetypes,  and  consequently  many 
Ideas,  for  the  same  thing;  e.  g.,  "animal"  and 
''biped"  will  be  archetypes  in  the  case  of  man,  as 
well  as  the  "Idea  of  Man."     Further,  the  Ideas 

'  Plato's  friend,  Eudoxus  of  Cnidus,  the  astronomer,  had  at- 
tempted to  meet  the  objection  just  mentioned  by  saying  that  things 
are  a  "mixture"  in  which  the  Idea  is  one  ingredient.  Aristotle  regards 
this  as  analogous  to  the  doctrine  of  Anaxagoras,  according  to  which 
every  thing  contains  some  degree  of  all  the  contrasted  qualities  of 
matter,  but  exhibits  to  our  senses  only  those  of  which  it  has  most. 
The  "consequences"  are,  no  doubt,  of  the  same  kind  as  those  urged 
in  ch.  8,  against  Anaxagoras.  Alexander  says  that  Aristotle  had 
developed  them  more  at  length  in  his  lost  work,  "On  Ideas." 


ARISTOTLE'S   METAPHYSICS.  125 

will  be  archetypes  not  only  of  sensible  things, 
but  of  Ideas  themselves,  e.  g.,  the  genus  will  be 
the  archetype  of  the  species  contained  in  it.  So 
one  and  the  same  thing  will  be  both  archetype 
and  copy.*  Besides,  it  may  surely  be  regarded  as  991  b. 
an  impossibiHty  that  the  substance  of  a  thing 
and  the  thing  of  which  it  is  the  substance  should 
be  separated.  So,  how  can  the  Ideas,  if  they 
are  the  substances  of  things,  be  separate  from 
them? 

In  the  Phcedd^  we  are  told  that  the  Ideas  are 
causes  both  of  Being  and  of  Becoming.  And  yet, 
even  if  the  Ideas  exist,  the  things  which  partake 
of  them  do  not  come  into  being  unless  there  is 
something  to  set  the  process  in  motion;  and  many 
other  things  come  into  being,  e.  g.,  a  house,  a 
ring,  of  which  we  Platonists  say  there  are  not 
Ideas.  Hence,  clearly,  it  is  possible  for  other  things 
as  well  both  to  exist  and  come  into  being  through 

*He  means  that  if  from  'Socrates  i?  a  man"  you  can  infer  the 
existence  of  an  "Idea  of  Man"  of  which  Socrates  "partakes,"  you 
ought  equally  from  "  Man  is  an  animal"  to  infer  an  "Idea  of  Animal" 
of  which  "the  Idea  of  Man"  partakes. 

'Phaedo,  lood:  "When  I  am  told  that  anything  is  beautiful 
because  it  has  a  goodly  colour  or  shape,  or  anything  else  of  the  kind, 
I  pay  no  attention  to  such  talk,  for  it  only  confuses  me.  I  cling  simply, 
plainly,  perhaps  foolishly,  to  my  own  inner  conviction  that  nothing 
makes  a  thing  beautiful  but  the  presence,  or  communication,  whatever 
its  nature  may  be,  of  that  Ideal  Beauty.  Without  any  further  assertion 
as  to  the  nature  of  this  relation,  I  assert  merely  that  it  is  through  Beauty 
that  all  beautiful  things  are  beautiful." 


126     ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

the  agency  of  causes  of  the  same  kind  as  those  of 
the  objects  just  referred  to.* 

Further,  if  the  Ideas  are  numbers,  how  can 
they  be  causes?  Perhaps,  because  things  are  a 
second  set  of  numbers;  e.  g.,  this  number  is  Man, 
that  Socrates,  that  again  Callias.  But  why,  then, 
are  the  first  set  of  numbers  considered  the  causes 
of  the  others  ?  For  it  will  make  no  difference  that 
the  one  are  eternal  and  the  others  not.  But  if 
the  explanation  is  that  things  here  are  ratios 
between  numbers  —  e.  g.,  a  musical  concord  — 
plainly,  there  is  some  one  thing  of  which  they  are 
ratios.  Now,  if  there  is  such  a  thing,  viz.,  matter, 
manifestly  the  numbers  themselves  must  be  ratios 
of  one  thing  to  a  second.  I  mean  that,  e.  g., 
if  Callias  is  a  numerical  ratio  of  fire,  earth,  water, 
and  air,  the  Idea,  too,  must  be  a  number  of  some 
other  things  which  are  its  substrate,  and  the  ''Ideal 
Man,"  whether  a  number  or  not,  still  will  be  a 
numerical  ratio  of  certain  things,  and  not  simply 

'The  argument  has  two  branches,  (i)  The  mere  existence  of  the 
Idea  is  not  enough  to  guarantee  that  of  a  corresponding  group  of  sen- 
sible things.  (E.  g.,  the  existence  of  an  "Idea  of  Man"  does  not  secure 
the  existence  of  Socrates.  Socrates  must  have  had  parents,  and  his 
existence  depends  on  certain  acts  of  those  parents.)  (2)  And  artifi- 
cial products,  on  the  other  hand,  certainly  come  into  being.  Yet  the 
Platonists,  according  to  Aristotle,  say  that  there  are  no  Ideas  of  such 
products.  Why  then,  if  houses  and  rings  can  come  into  being, 
though  there  are  no  Ideas  of  them,  may  the  same  not  be  true  of  every- 
thing else  ? 


ARISTOTLE'S   METAPHYSICS.  127 

a  number,  nor  does  it  follow  on  these  grounds  that 
he  will  be  a  number.^ 

Again,  one  number  can  be  composed  of  many 
other  numbers,  but  how  can  one  Idea  be  formed 
of  many  Ideas?  If  you  say  it  is  not  composed  of 
the  numbers  themselves,  but  of  the  units  contained 
in  them,  e.  g.,  those  of  the  number  10,000,  what 
is  the  relation  between  these  units?  If  they  are 
all  homogeneous,  many  paradoxical  consequences 
must  follow;  if  they  are  not  homogeneous,  neither 
those  of  the  same  number  with  one  another  nor 
all  with  all,  what  can  make  the  difference  be- 
tween them,  seeing  that  they  have  no  qualities?^ 
Such  thinking  is  neither  rational  nor  consistent. 

'  The  paragraph  develops  further  the  contention  that  numbers 
are  relative  terms.  The  argument  is  as  follows:  He  suggests  that 
Plato  may  have  reconciled  the  assertions  that  the  Ideas  are  Numbers 
and  that  they  are  the  causes  of  things  by  the  view  that  a  sensible  thing 
(e.  g.,  the  organism  of  Callias)  is  a  combination  of  certain  materials  in 
accordance  with  a  definite  numerical  law.  This  law  would  be,  in  Aris- 
totelian phrase,  the  "  form"  or  "  formal "  cause  of  the  thing  in  question. 
Only,  in  that  case,  the  thing  in  question  (the  body  of  Callias)  is  not 
merely  a  numerical  law,  but  a  law  of  the  combination  of  certain  spe- 
cific material.  Consequently,  if  the  sensible  thing  (the  body  of  Callias) 
is  a  copy  of  a  certain  archetype  (the  "Idea  of  Man"),  this  archetype 
also  must  contain  something  corresponding  to  the  material  factor  in 
the  thing,  and  thus  even  on  Plato's  own  principles,  the  Idea  will  not 
be  merely  a  "number"  but  a  numerical  law  of  the  combination 0/ cer- 
tain material.  There  seems  to  be  an  allusion  to  the  formation  of  the 
human  organism  out  of  materials  which  are  definite  compounds  of  the 
four  "elements,"  as  described  in  the  Timoeus. 

^  Aristotle's  point  is,  that  any  two  numbers  can  be  added  together 
and  their  sum  will  be  a  third  number  of  the  same  kind.     But  Ideas, 


128     ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

Again,  it  becomes  necessary  to  construct  a 
second  kind  of  number  which  is  the  object  of 
Arithmetic^  and  all  the  studies  which  have  been 
called  "  intermediate."  How  or  out  of  what 
principles  can  this  be  constructed  ?  And  on  what 
grounds  must  it  be  regarded  as  "intermediate" 
between  things  here  and  the  ideal  numbers?* 
Again,  each  of  the  uHits  in  the  Dyad^  must  be 

or  class-concepts,  he  thinks,  cannot  be  added.  If  they  are  num- 
bers, they  must  be  numbers  composed  of  units  which,  unlike  those 
of  Arithmetic,  are  not  all  of  the  same  kind,  and  therefore  cannot 
always  be  added  so  as  to  produce  a  resultant  of  the  same  kind  as  the 
factors.  He  thinks  that  you  may  then  suppose  either  that  each  of 
the  units  which  compose  one  and  the  same  "Ideal  nvimber"  may  be  of 
the  same  kind  as  all  the  other  units  of  that  number,  but  different  in  kind 
from  any  of  the  units  of  a  different  "  Ideal  number, "  or  that  even  the 
units  of  one  and  the  same  "Ideal  number"  may  be  all  different  in  kind 
from  one  another,  the  former  being  the  more  natural  hypothesis.  The 
two  forms  of  the  supposition,  which  are  here  curtly  dismissed,  are 
discussed  at  length  in  M,  ch.  7,  8,  loSia  i-io83a  20.  The  reader 
will  see  that  Aristotle's  philosophy  of  nimiber  is  doubly  defective,  since 
(i)  he  has  no  conception  of  the  dependence' of  arithmetical  addition 
on  the  more  fundamental  process  of  logical  addition  (for  which  see 
Russell,  Principles  0}  Mathematics,  I.,  ch.  XII.);  (2)  and  he  has,  also, 
no  conception  of  any  class  of  numbers  except  the  integers.  (On  this 
point,  seeMilhaud,  Les  Philosophes-Ceometres de  la  Grece,  pp.  359-365, 
who  well  asks  by  what  addition  of  integers  Aristotle  could  have 
obtained  such  numbers  as  a/ 2,  a/ 2,) 

'  For  a  detailed  attack  on  the  conception  of  mathematical  ob- 
jects as  "intermediate"  between  Ideas  and  sensible  things,  see  M. 
ch.  2,  p.  1076a  37  ff. 

*  I.  e.,  the  Indeterminate  Dyad  of  the  Great  and  Small.  The  argu- 
ment is,  that  since  this  is  a  dyad  or  "pair, "  it  must  consist  of  two  mem- 
bers; whence,  then,  are  these  derived?  (You  must  not  say  that  they 
are  repetitions  of  the  other  element,  the  One,  because  in  the  Platonic 


ARISTOTLE'S  METAPHYSICS.  129 

derived  from  a  prior  Dyad;  but  this  is  impossible. 
Again,  why  is  a  number  of  units  when  formed    ^^^  ^' 
into  a  collection  one  thing  ?^     Again,    in    addi-  . 

tion  to  all  this,  if  the  units  differ,  the  Platonists^  ^  tw*-*^ 
have  followed  the  example  of  those  who 
maintain  four  or  two  elements.  Each  of  these 
thinkers  gives  the  name  of  element  not  to  their 
common  substrate,  e.  g.,  body  —  but  to  fire  and 
earth,  whether  they  have  a  common  substrate, 
viz.,  body,  or  not.  But  the  One  is  in  fact  spoken 
of  as  if  it  were  as  homogeneous  as  fire  or  water. 
But  if  it  is  homogeneous  in  this  sense,  the  numbers 

system  the  "Great  and  Small"  is  regarded  as  being  logically  no  less 
ultimate  and  elementary  than  the  One.)  Here,  again,  we  have,  as 
Bonitz  observes,  an  unfair  identification  of  the  "IndetemiinatejDyad" 
with  the  number  2.  It  is  only  the  latter,  not  the  former,  which  can 
be  said  to  consist  of  two  units.  And  even  in  the  case  of  the  latter  such 
an  expression  is  a  loose  and  inaccurate  way  of  saying  that  2  is  the 
number  determined  by  the  addition  of  i  to  i,  or  the  number  of  the 
terms  of  a  class  formed  by  uniting  in  one  class  the  terms  of  the  classes 
a  and  h,  when  a  and  h  each  have  only  one  term  and  their  terms  are 
not  identical. 

^i.  e.,  each  Idea  is  one  thing  or  unit,  an  entity  corresponding  to 
one  determinate  class  or  type.  How  then,  can  it  also  be  a  number, 
which  is  a  collection  of  units?  Cf.  //,  1044a  2,  where  the  same  com- 
plaint is  made  that  the  Platonists  cannot  explain  what  it  is  that  makes 
a  number  ojie  thing,  and  My  1082a  15,  where  he  asks,  "how  can  the 
nxmiber  2  be  an  entity  distinct  from  its  two  units?"  This  and 
many  other  passages  of  M  show  how  very  literally  and  naively  Aristotle 
conceives  of  integers  as  formed  by  addition.  WTiat  he  does  not  see 
is,  that  "addition  is  not  primarily  a  method  of  forming  numbers,  but 
of  forming  classes  or  collections.  If  we  add  B  io  A  we  do  not  obtain 
the  number  2,  but  we  obtain  A  and  B,  which  is  a  collection  of  two 
terms,  or  a  couple."     (Russell,  op-  cit.  p.  135.) 


I30     ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

cannot  be  substances;  rather,  it  is  manifest  that 
if  there  is  a  self-existing  One  and  this  One  is  a 
first  principle,  "one"  is  an  equivocal  term/  In 
any  other  case  it  is  an  impossibility. 

When  we^  wish  to  refer  our  substances  to  their 
principles  we  derive  length  from  the  Short  and 
Long,  a  special  case  of  the  Small  and  Great,  the 
plane  from  the  Broad  and  Narrow,  body  from 
the  High  and  Low.  Yet,  how  can  the  line  be 
contained  in  the  plane,  or  the  line  and  plane  in 
the  solid  ?  The  Broad  and  Narrow  is  a  different 
genus  from  the  High  and  Low.  So,  just  as  num- 
bers are  not  contained  in  these  classes,  because 
the  Many  and  Few  is  a  different  class  from  them, 
clearly  no  other  of  the  higher  genera  will  be  con- 
tained in  the  lower.  ^    Nor,  again,  is  the  Broad 

*  i.  e.,  the  kind  of  number  meant  by  the  Platonists  when  they 
speak  of  their  Ideas  as  numbers  must  be  something  quite  different 
from  what  the  arithmetician  means  by  number. 

^i.  e.,  "we  Platonists." 

^  The  argument  is  aimed  at  the  Platonic  application  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  the  One  and  the  Great  and  Small  to  deiine  geometrical  exten- 
sion in  one,  two,  three  dimensions.  The  point  is,  that  whereas, 
according  to  Aristotle,  a  solid  contains  surfaces,  a  surface  lines,  and  a 
line  points,  this  could  not  be  the  case  on  the  Platonic  principles,  accord- 
ing to  which  each  of  the  three  dimensions  consists  of  magnitudes  of  a 
different  kind.  (Cf.  M,  9,  1085a  7-31.)  Hence,  he  holds,  a  Platonist 
ought  not  to  be  able  to  define  a  plane  in  terms  of  the  definition  of  a 
straight  line,  nor  a  solid  in  terms  of  the  definition  of  a  plane,  or  vice 
versa.  Now,  Aristotle  holds  that  you  can  do  the  latter.  A  plane  is, 
e.  g.,  the  boundary  of  a  soUd;  a  straight  line  is  the  boundary  o{  a  plane 
(as  we  should  say,  the  intersection  of  two  planes).     This  is  what  he 


ARISTOTLE'S   METAPHYSICS.  131 

the  genus  of  which  the  High  is  a  species,  for  if 
it  were  so,  body  would  be  a  kind  of  plane. 

Again,  how  will  it  be  possible  for  points  to  "be 
in"  figures?  Plato,  in  fact,  rejected  this  class  of 
entities  as  a  mere  fiction  of  the  geometers.  He 
used  to  speak  of  them  as  the  "beginning  of  the 
line,"  for  which  he  often  employed  the  expression 
"indivisible  line."  But  even  these  lines  must 
have  a  limit,  so  that  the  same  argument  which 
proves  the  existence  of  the  line  proves,  also,  that 
of  the  point.* 

means  by  planes  being  "in"  solids,  and  lines  "in"  planes.  He  does  not, 
of  course,  mean  that,  as  the  Pythagoreans  had  thought,  a  soHd  is  actu- 
ally made  up  of  superposed  laminfe,  or  a  plane  of  juxtaposed  strips. 
The  argument  is,  however,  fallacious;  since,  e.  g.,  a  plane  may  quite 
well  be,  as  the  Platonists  held,  a  different  kind  of  magnitude  from  a 
straight  line  and  yet  be  definable  in  terms  of  the  definition  of  a  straight 
line.  Aristotle  has,  in  fact,  been  led  astray  by  his  inadequate  theory 
of  definition  as  being  exclusively  by  genus  and  difference.  "Higher" 
genera  means,  of  course,  those  which  require  for  their  conception  a 
higher  degree  of  abstraction  and  analysis. 

*  Aristotle  is  referring  to  a  view,  known  from  the  commentators 
to  have  been  held  by  Xenocrates,  and  here  attributed  by  him  to 
Plato  himself,  that  there  are  really  no  such  entities  as  points,  what  we 
call  a  point  being,  in  fact,  not  a  magnitude  but  the  "starting  point" 
i/^PX^i)  or  "beginning"  of  a  magnitude,  viz.,  of  the  line.  There  is 
no  trace  of  this  doctrine  in  the  dialogues  of  Plato,  and  the  imperfect 
tense  {ixdXti)  shows  that  Aristotle  is  referring  not  to  any  Platonic 
passage,  but  to  verbal  statements  made  by  Plato  in  his  lectures.  Since 
the  view  in  question  was  adopted  by  Xenocrates,  the  actual  president 
of  the  Academy  during  Aristotle's  activity  in  Athens  as  a  teacher,  it  is 
natural  that  he  should  have  treated  it  to  special  criticism;  among  the 
extant  works  ascribed  to  him  there  is,  in  fact,  a  special  tract,  "On 


132      ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

To  speak  generally,  though  it  is  the  business  of 
wisdom  to  discover  the  cause  of  visible  things, 
we  have  neglectedth  at  task  (for  we  have  nothing 
to  say  about  the  cause  by  which  change  is  initiated), 
but  in  the  fancy  that  we  are  describing  their  sub- 
stance we  assert  the  existence  of  a  second  class  of 
substances,  though  our  explanation  of  the  way 
in  which  they  are  substances  oj  the  former  set  is 
empty  verbiage,  for  ''participation,"  as  I  have 
said,  is  nothing  at  all.  Nor  do  the  Ideas  stand  in 
any  connection  with  the  kind  of  cause  which  we 
observe  in  the  practical^  sciences,  the  cause  jor  the 
sake  oj  which  all  Mind  and  all  Nature  act,  and 
which  we  have  included  among  our  first  principles. 
tuoA^AfiC  Mathematics  has  been  termed  by  our  present- 
day  thinkers  into  the  whole  of  Philosophy,  in 


Indivisible  Lines. '  *    Plato's  difl&culty,  no  doubt,  was  that  the  point  has 

^  no  dimensions;  it  is  a  zero  magnitude.     The  error  of  refusing  to  admit 

tt~M«  J«<*«»^  t^^  point,  or  zero  dimension,  is  exactly  analogous  to  the  universal 

^  error  of  Greek  arithmeticians  in  regarding  i ,  not  o,  as  the  first  of  the 

iljr  n**   **^  integers.  Though,  since  the  definition  of  a  point,  often  cited  by  Aristotle 

^  as  a  "unit  having  position,"  seems  to  come  from  Pythagorean  and 

W^**  r*^  Platonic  sources  (Cf.   31,  8,  1084b  26,  33),  it  seems  possible  that 

^  ^  ,   1^  Aristotle  (and  Xenocrates  ?)   may  have  misunderstood  what  Plato 

r\^   "  ^^  meant  by  calling  the  point  an  "indivisible  line,"  as  is  maintained  by 

'ISLm*  -  ^  Milhaud,  op.  cit.  p.  341-2.      The    reader   will   note   that,  though 

^'^      ^         ,.  Aristotle's  conclusion  that  Geometry  requires  the  point  is  sound, 

fuj,%^uJ^ ''^      T  his  argument  is  a  petitio  principii,  since  it  assumes  the  existence 

.f^  of  the  limit. 

'  I  follow  Zeller  in  making  the  necessary  addition  of  noirjTixds 
Jt  J  ijnl'^  ^^■•'^efore  iTt'-irr-^ixas  in  line  29. 


ARISTOTLE'S  METAPHYSICS.  133 

spite  of  their  declaration  that  it  ought  to  be  stud- 
ied for  the  sake  of  something  further.*  992  b. 

Besides,  we  may  fairly  regard  the  entity  which 
they  assume  as  .matter  as  being  more  properly  of  a 
mathematical  kind,  and  as  being  rather  a  predi- 
cate and  a  specific  difference  of  substance  and 
matter  than  identical  with  matter  itself.  I  mean 
the  Great  and  the  Small;  just  as  the  physicists, 
when  speaking  of  rarity  and  density,  say  that 
these  are  the  primary  specific  differences  of  the 
material  substrate,  for  they  are  a  kind  of  excess 
and  defect.  And  as  to  motion,  if  these  elements^ 
are  to  constitute  motion,  plainly  the  ideas  will 
be  in  motion  f  if  they  are  not  to  constitute  it, 
whence  has  it  come?  Thus  the  whole  study  of 
physical  Nature  is  abolished.  And  even  the 
proof,  which  is  fancied  to  be  so  easy,  that  all  things 
are  one,  does  not  follow.  Their  method  of 
''exposition,"*  even  if  one  grants  all  their  assump- 

'  The  reference  is  specially  to  the  place  assigned  to  Mathematics 
as  a  propaedeutic  to  the  study  of  the  Ideas  in  Republic,  VII.,  particularly 
to  53id:  "All  these  are  mere  preludes  to  the  hymn  which  has  to  be 
learned.  For  you  surely  do  not  consider  those  who  are  proficients  in 
them  as  dialecticians." 

^  viz.,  the  Great  and  Small. 

'  Because  the  Great  and  Small  is  a  constituent  of  every  Idea. 
That  the  Ideas  should  "be  in  motion"  is  impossible,  on  Platonic  prin- 
ciples, because  one  chief  characteristic  of  them  is  their  immutabilit)'. 

*The  method  here  and  elsewhere  called  by  Aristotle  "exposi- 
tion" {exdsaiqi)  is  the  familiar  Platonic  procedure  of  inferring  from 


134     ARISTOTLE   ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

tions,  does  not  prove  that  all  things  are  one,  but 
only  that  there  is  a  self-existing  One,  and  does 
not  even  prove  this  unless  it  is  granted  that  the 
universal  is  a  genus;  but  in  som,e  cases  that  is 
impossible.  And  as  for  the  objects  they  consider 
logically  posterior  to  the  numbers,  viz.,  lines  and 
planes  and  solids,  no  rational  grounds  can  be  pro- 
duced to  show  how  they  exist  or  can  exist,  nor  what 
character  they  possess.  They  cannot  be  Ideas 
(for  they  are  not  numbers),  nor  the  "interme- 
diate" class  of  objects  (for  these  are  mathematical 
figures),  nor  yet  can  they  be  identical  with  perish- 
able things.  Manifestly,  we  have  here,  again,  a 
fresh  and  a  fourth  class  of  objects.^ 

In  general,  it  is  impossible  to  discover  the  ele- 

(jT  the  existence  of  many  individual  things  possessing  some  common  pred- 

**        icate  the  existence  of  a  single  supersensible  entity,  the  Idea,  which 
is  their  common  archetjT)e^    He  objects  (i)  that  the  argument,  in  any 
case,  does  not  prove  that  all  the  individual  things  are  one  thing,  but 
J  ;i     °"^y  ^^^'''  b^^i^^  them,  there  is  one  ideal  archet3^e  of  v?hich  they  are  all 
^4a.  */'*^  copies;  (2)  it  does  not  even  prove  this  unless  the  common  predicate 

I  i    J  *  l\^  ^^  *^^  name  of  a  "  real  kind  "  or  genus.     This  is  a  corollary  from  his 

V  M-  "^  previous  conclusion  that  if  there  are  Ideas  they  can  only  be  Ideas  of 


u3 


C  Ac^yv>*l 


substances. 


,  »  '  The  point  is  this:    The  Plato nists  hold  that  the  many  lines. 

Tit  planes,  solids,  of  Geometry  are  copies  of  certain  single  archetypal 

IP     .   I— ^    <  entities — the  line,  the  plane,  ilte  solid.     These  are  the  "objects  pos- 

_  terior  to  the  "Numbers"  here  spoken  of.     But  what  are  these  objects  ? 

II&  6'^'*^,  ^°*  Ideas  (since  they  are  not  numbers,  and  every  Idea  is  a  number); 
not  geometrical  figures  (since  geometrical  figures  are  copies  of  them); 
not  physical  things,  since  they  are  immutable.  Thus  they  must  be  a 
fourth  class  of  objects,  not  provided  for  in  the  Platonic  classification  of 


ARISTOTLE'S   METAPHYSICS.  135 

merits  of  existing  things  if  one  does  not  first  distin- 
guish the  different  "senses  of  existence,"  especially 
when  the  inquiry  is  directed  towards  the  problem 
of  what  elements  existing  things  are  composed. 
For  one  certainly  cannot  discover  what  are  the 
elements  of  which  activity  or  passivity  or  straight- 
ness  is  composed.  If  the  problem  is  soluble  at 
all,  it  is  only  soluble  in  the  case  of  substances.^ 
So  it  is  an  error  to  ask  after,  or  to  think  one  has 
found,  the  elements  of  everything.     How,  indeed, 

objects  into  Ideas,  mathematical  objects,  and  sensible  things.  This 
argiiment  is  further  developed  in  great  detail  in  ch.  2,  of  book 
31,  given  in  appendix  D. 

>  He  concludes  his  polemic  by  an  attack  on  the  general  theory 
of  the  nature  of  science  which  is  tacitly  impUed  in  the  Platonic  doc- 
trine, viz.,  that  the  objects  of  all  the  sciences  are  composed  of  the 
same  constituent  elements.  He  has  already  explained  that  Plato 
thought  that  the  elements  of  the  Ideas  are  the  elements  of  ever>-thing. 
It  follows  that  there  is  ultimately  only  one  science,  viz..  Dialectic, 
which,  as  we  learn  from  Republic,  VI.,  511,  cognizes  the  ultimate  axioms 
from  which  all  scientific  truth  can  be  deduced.  Aristotle  holds  that 
there  is  no  such  supreme  science  of  first  principles;  every  science  has 
its  own  special  subject-matter,  and  consequently  its  own  special  a.-doms 
{Analytica  Poskriora,  I.,  76a  16).  In  this  passage  he  urges  two  objec- 
ions  to  the  Platonic  view.  ( i )  Analysis  into  constituent  elements  is  only 
possible  in  the  case  of  substances.  In  a  substance  you  have  always 
the  two  constituent  logical  elements  of  matter  and  jorm  (which  appear 
in  its  definition  as  genus  and  difference),  but  these  elements  cannot 
be  found  in  a  quality,  an  action,  or  a  state.  Cf.  H.  10444b  8: 
"Things  which  exist  in  nature,  but  are  not  substances,  have  no  mat- 
ter, but  their  substrate  is  their  substance.  E.  g.,  what  is  the  cause  of 
an  eclipse?  What  is  its  matter  ?  There  is  none,  but  the  moon  is  the 
thing  affected."  He  means,  then,  that  Plato  thinks  that  in  the  end 
all  objects  of  knowledge  are    made  of  the  same  ingredients,   and 


136     ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

could  one  possibly  learn  the  elements  of  every- 
thing ?  For  it  is  clear  that  one  could  not  possibly 
have  been  in  previous  possession  of  any  informa- 
tion at  all.  Just  as  he  who  is  learning  geometry 
may  very  well  have  previous  knowledge  about 
other  things,  but  has  no  previous  acquaintance 
with  the  truths  which  belong  to  that  science,  and 
which  he  is  about  to  learn,  so  it  is  in  all  other 
cases.  So,  if  there  is,  as  some  assert,  a  universal 
science  of  everything,  he  who  learns  it  must  have 
no  previous  acquaintance  with  anything.  And 
yet  all  learning  is  effected  through  previous 
acquaintance  with  some  or  all  of  the  matters  con- 
therefore  there  is  only  one  science  of  them  all;  but  Aristotle  says 
there  is  no  sense  in  asking  what  qualities  or  activities  are  made  of. 
(2)  The  second  objection  depends  on  the  principle  that  all  learning 
of  anything  depends  on  and  requires  previous  knowledge.  (See 
Appendix  A.)  To  learn  the  truth  by  devionstration,  you  must  pre- 
viously know  the  premises  of  the  proof;  to  learn  it  from  a  defi^iition, 
you  must  know  the  meaning  of  the  terms  employed;  to  learn  it 
by  induction,  i.  e.,  comparison  of  instances,  you  must  previously 
be  acquainted  with  the  individual  instances.  Hence  if  all  truths  con- 
stituted a  single  science,  before  learning  that  science  you  would  know 
no  truths  at  all,  and  therefore  the  process  of  learning  itself  would  be 
impossible.  To  meet  the  retort  which  a  Platonist,  who  held  wdth 
Plato  that  all  knowledge  is  really  recollection,  would  be  sure  to  make, 
viz.,  that  the  knowledge  of  the  ultimate  axioms  is  "innate,"  and  not 
acquired  at  all  (Cf.  Plato,  Meno,  8ic,  etc.),  he  argues  that  if  we  had 
such  innate  cognitions  we  could  not  be  unconscious  of  having  them  — 
the  same  argument  afterward  employed  by  Locke. 

As  an  argument  against  the  doctrine  of  an  all-embracing  science 
the  reasoning  seems  a  pure  peliiio  principii,  since  it  merely  goes  to 
prove  the  necessity  of  some  self-evident  truths. 


ARISTOTLE'S   METAPHYSICS.  137 

cerned.  This  is  true  both  of  learning  from 
demonstration  and  of  learning  from  definitions. 
The  parts  which  compose  the  definition  must  be 
previously  known  and  familiar.  The  same  is 
true,  also,  of  learning  from  induction.  But  if  it  993  a. 
be  suggested  that  this  knowledge  is  really  innate, 
it  is  surely  a  mystery  how  we  can  possess  the  most 
excellent  of  sciences  and  yet  be  unconscious  of 
the  fact.  Besides,  how  are  we  to  recognize  what 
existence  consists  of?  How  can  the  result  be 
established?^  There  is  a  difficulty  implied  here, 
since  the  same  doubt  might  be  suggested  as  about 
certain  syllables.  Some  say  that  the  syllable  ZA 
consists  of  r,  j,  and  A,  others  that  it  is  a  distinct 
sound,  different  from  those  already  familiar. 
Besides,  how  could  one  become  acquainted  with 
the  objects  of  sense-perception,  without  pos- 
sessing the  corresponding  form  of  sense-percep- 
tion ?    Yet,  this  ought  to  be  possible  if  all  things 

M.  e.,  even  when  you  have  analysed  everything  back  into  its 
simple  elements,  how  are  you  to  recognize  the  fact  that  they  are  simple 
and  that  the  analysis  cannot  be  carried  any  further? — an  objection 
which,  one  might  think,  is  as  much  or  as  little  applicable  to  Aristotle's 
own  analysis  of  a  thing  into  matter  and  form  as  to  Plato's  analysis  of 
everything  into  the  One  and  the  Great  and  the  Small.  The  illus- 
tration about  the  analysis  of  a  syllable  into  its  simple  constituent 
sounds  is  from  Plato,  Thcaetetus,  203a,  where,  however,  the  application 
of  it  is  rather  different  Aristotle's  point  is,  that  while  some  gram- 
marians regard  the  sound  of  the  Greek  letter  Z  (which  appears  to  have  ■  .  . 
been  equivalent  to  our  A)  as  simple,  others  hold  that  it  can  be  '  ^ 
analysed  further  into  the  two  sounds  of  -  and  A. 


138     ARISTOTLE   ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

are  composed  of  the  same  constituent  elements/ 
as  composite  articulate  sounds  are  composed  of 
their  own  special  elements.^ 


CHAPTER  X. 

It  is  clear,  then,  even  from  the  preceding  review, 
that  all  philosophers  seem  to  be  investigating  the 
forms  of  cause  enumerated  in  our  discourses  on 
Physics,  and  that  we  can  specify  no  further  form 
of  cause  beside  these.  But  their  treatment  of 
them  was  obscure,  and  though  in  one  sense  all  the 
causes  had  been  previously  recognized,  in  another 
sense  this  had  not  been  done  at  all.  For  at  first, 
and  in  its  beginnings,  owing  to  its  youth,  the 
earliest  philosophy  resembled  in  its  utterances  on 
all  topics  the  lisping  speech  of  an  infant.  Thus 
even  Empedocles  says  that  the  existence  of  botie 
depends  on  a  ratio, ^  but  this  ratio  is,  in  fact,  the 

'  i.  e.,  if,  for  instance,  a  visible  object,  such  as  a  shade  or  color,  is 
ultimately  constituted  by  a  combination  of  purely  logical  categories, 
like  the  One  and  the  Great  and  Small  (as  must  be  the  case  if  the 
"elements  of  the  Ideas  are  the  elements  of  all  things"),  a  Platon'c 
philosopher,  even  though  blind  from  birth,  ought  to  be  able  to  have 
"pure  anticipated  cognitions"  of  all  the  colors  of  the  spectrum. 

'  This  clause  is  plausibly  regarded  by  Christ  as  a  misplaced  gloss 

onthewordsof  the  sentence:  "Some  say  that  the  syllable Z,  J, 

and  A,"  above. 

'  Xoyoq,  The  reference  is  to  Empedocles,  iggff ,  where  bone  is 
said  to  consist  of  fixed  proportions  of  the  elementary  bodies.     The 


ARISTOTLE'S   METAPHYSICS.  139 

essential  nature  or  essence^  of  the  object.  But  it 
follows  with  equal  necessity  that  there  must  also  be 
a  ratio  for  flesh,  and  every  other  individual  thing, 
or  for  none  at  all.  This,  then,  and  not  the  matter, 
of  which  Empedocles  speaks,  viz.,  fire,  and  earth 
and  water  and  air,  will  be  the  true  ground  of  the 
existence  of  flesh  and  bone  and  everything  else. 
If  another  had  explained  this  he  would  have  had 
no  alternative  but  to  admit  it,  but  he  did  not 
express  it  clearly  himself.  These  and  similar 
points,  then,  have  been  explained  above,  but  we 
may  now  return  to  the  consideration  of  the  diffi- 
culties which  might  be  raised  about  these  same 
topics.  Perhaps  a  study  of  them  may  pave  the 
way  for  an  answer  to  our  subsequent  difficulties. 

point  is,  simply,  that  Empedocles  is  recognizing  that  what  a  thing  is 
depends  primarily  on  its  jorm  or  formal  cause,  or,  as  we  should  say,  the 
law  of  its  composition,  and  not  merely  on  the  nature  of  the  stuff  of 
which  it  is  made. 

*To  Ti  ^v  elvac  xa\  rj  ouffta. 


APPENDIX. 


APPENDIX. 


On  the  Cognition  of  Universal  Axioms,  as  a  product  of 
Experience.  (Cf.  Met.,  A,  i,  gSoa  27-b29,  9,  992b  25flf.) 
Analytica  Postcriora,  2,  71a  1-16. 

All  instruction  and  all  processes  of  intellectual'  learning 
depend  upon  the  presence  of  antecedent  cognitions.  This 
will  become  manifest  if  we  consider  the  various  cases  seri- 
atim} The  mathematical  sciences  and  every  one  of  the 
other  arts  are  acquired  in  this  manner.  The  same  is  true 
of  logic,  both  syllogistic  and  inductive;  in  both  cases  the 
instruction  is  derived  from  antecedent  cognitions.  In  the 
former  premises  are  assumed,  with  the  implication  that 
their  sense  is  understood;  in  the  latter  a  universal  is  estab- 
lished by  the  manifest  truth  of  the  individual  instances. 

'  The  qualifying  epithet  is  intended  to  exclude  cognition  through 
immediate  sense-perception  on  the  one  hand  and  the  immediate 
intuition  of  ultimate  axioms  on  the  other. 

^  The  argument  which  follows  is  a  typical  Aristotelian  "induc- 
tive syllogism,"  i  e.,  a  demonstration  that  a  predicate  a  belongs  univer- 
sally to  a  genus  A  by  showing  that  it  belongs  separately  to  each  of 
the  subordinate  species  into  which  A  can  be  exhaustively  subdivided. 
Mathematical  and  scientific  reasoning,  Xoyot  or  philosophic  science 
not  aided  by  sensuous  diagrams,  rhetorical  reasoning,  are  treated 
as  the  three  species  of  the  genus  "inferential  knowledge." 

143 


144     ARISTOTLE   ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

Rhetorical  arguments,  again,  produce  conviction  in  the 
same  way,  either  by  means  of  examples  (and  this  is  induc- 
tion) or  by  means  of  enthymemes^  (and  this  is  syllogism). 
The  antecedent  cognition  necessary  may  be  of  two  kinds. 
In  some  cases  we  require  previous  recognition  of  the  truth 
of  a  statement,  in  others,  previous  understanding  of  the 
sense  of  a  term;  in  others  again,  both  are  needed.  E.  g., 
in  the  case  of  the  proposition  that  "every  proposition  can 
either  be  truly  affirmed  or  truly  denied" '  we  have  to  pre- 
suppose the  truth  of  a  statement;  in  the  case  of  "triangle," 
the  meaning  of  a  term;  in  the  case  of  "the  number  i,"  both 
the  meaning  of  the  term  and  the  existence  of  the  thing 
denoted.^ 

Analytica  Posteriora,  II.,  19,  99b  20-ioob  17. 

We  have  already  said  that  it  is  impossible  to  have  scien- 
tific knowledge  as  the  result  of  demonstration  without  cog- 
nition of  the  ultimate  axiomatic  principles.'  But  a  diffi- 
culty might  be  raised  as  to  the  cognition  of  these  axioms 
themselves.  Is  it  of  the  same  kind  as  the  cognition  of  dem- 
onstrated truth.  Tr.],  or  of  a  different  kind  ?  Are  both  the 
objects  of  science,  or  is  the  one  the  object  of  science,  the 
other  of  a  different  form  of  cognition?  Also,  does  the 
cognition  of  axioms  make  its  appearance  in  consciousness, 
having  previously  been  absent,  or  is  it  unconsciously  present 

*  "Enthymemes"  not  in  the  modern  but  in  the  Aristotelian 
sense  of  "inference  from  Ukelihood  or  presumptive  evidence." 

'This  is  meant  for  a  formulation  of  the  law  of  Excluded 
Middle. 

'rdij  7zp<oTa':  ^PX"^^  '^^'^  Aixioouq^  "first  and  immediate  princi- 
ples," i.  e.,  axioms  incapable  of  being  syllogistically  deduced, 
through  a  middle  term,  from  any  more  general  and  ultimate 
principles. 


APPENDIX.  145 


from  the  first  ?*  It  is  certainly  strange  if  we  possess  it  from 
the  first.  For  it  follows  that  we  possess  cognitions  which 
are  more  accurate  than  demonstration,  and  yet  are  uncon- 
scious of  the  fact.  Yet,  if  we  do  not  at  first  possess  themt 
but  afterward  acquire  them,  how  come  we  to  apprehend 
and  learn  them,  except  on  a  basis  of  antecedent  cognition? 
For  that,  as  was  said  in  speaking  of  demonstrative  proof, 
is  impossible.  It  is  plain,  then,  that  we  can  neither  possess 
them  from  the  first  nor  could  they  appear  in  consciousness 
if  we  were  ignorant  of  them  and  had  no  disposition  to 
acquire  them.  One  is  thus  driven  to  conclude  that  we  have 
a  certain  faculty  of  acquiring  them,  but  not  of  such  a  kind 
as  to  rank  higher  than  demonstrated  truth  in  respect  of 
accuracy.^  Now,  such  a  faculty  is  obviously  present  in  all 
animals.  They  have  a  congenital  faculty  of  discrimination, 
which  is  called  sense-perception.  On  the  occurrence  of 
sensation  there  supervenes  in  some  animals  retention  of  Wtj  ^  (^  '^^^Itt 
the  sense-percept,  in  others  not.  Where  it  does  not  occiu 
universany,  or  with  respect  to  certain  sensations,  the  animal 
has  no  cognition  beyond  the  sensation;  where  it  does  occur         r*»*#li»» 

*  The  two  alternatives,  both  of  which  he  finds  unsatisfactory, 
are  pure  Empiricism  and  the  Platonic  doctrine  of  recollection,  which 
he  interprets  as  a  theor\'  of  "innate  ideas."  He  proceeds  to  mediate 
between  these  alternatives  much  as  Leibniz  did  between  the  doctrines 
of  Locke  and  Descartes. 

'  TouTU)'/j  in  line  33,  I  take  to  mean  rajy  aTZodei^icav. 
The  meaning  of  the  "accuracy"  or  "exactness"  here  spoken  of 
will  be  perceived  by  reference  to  Analytica  Post.,  I.,  27,  87a  33, 
where  we  are  told  that  a  science  which  deals  with  universal  relations 
in  abstraction  is  more  "exact"  than  one  which  considers  their  appli- 
cation to  a  special  subject-matter  (e.  g.,  Arithmetic  than  Harmonics), 
and  a  science  which  makes  few  initial  postulates  than  one  which 
makes  more  (e.  g.,  Arithmetic  than  Geometry). 


^ 


146     ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

the  animal  can,  after  sensation  is  over,  preserve  some 
result  of  it  in  consciousness.  When  this  process  is  frequently 
repeated  a  further  distinction  makes  its  appearance;  in 
some  animals  such  retention  leads  to  rational  cognition,  in 
others  not.  Thus,  as  I  say,  sense-perception  gives  rise  to 
memory,  and  repeated  memories  of  the  same  object  to  ex- 
perience; for  the  numerically  many  memories  form  a  single 
experience.  And  experience,  i.  e.,  any  establishment  in 
consciousness  of  a  universal,  or  one  over  and  above  the 
many,  which  is  a  point  of  identity  present  in  them  all,*  leads 
to  the  principles  of  Art  and  Science;  of  Art  if  it  is  concerned 
vi^ith  Production,  of  Science  if  it  is  concerned  with  Being. 

These  axiomatic  cognitions  thus  are  neither  there  from 
the  first  in  a  determinate  form  nor  yet  are  they  derived  from 
other  cognitions  of  a  higher  type,^  but  from  sense-percep- 
tion. The  process  is  like  what  occurs  in  battle  after  a  rout, 
when  first  one  man  makes  a  stand,  and  then  a  second  and 
a  third  follow  his  example,  and  so  at  last  order  is  estab- 
lished. The  constitution  of  consciousness  is  such  as  to 
permit  of  this  process.^ 

Let  me  repeat  an  explanation  which  has  already  been 

1  This  clause  is  added  to  show  that  by  the  "one  over  and  above 
the  many"  he  means  merely  a  subjective  "general  concept,"  not  a 
Platonic  Idea. 

^  yvu)(TTCxu)T£()(ov  "naturally  more  knowable,"  i.  e.,  logically 
simpler  and  therefore  more  ultimate. 

^  The  point  of  the  comparison  lies  in  the  fact  that  in  the  rally 
order  and  discipline  come  to  be  spontaneously  re-established  with- 
out the  direct  ''ssuing  of  instructions  to  that  effect  by  a  superior.  So, 
owing  to  the  implicit  generalising  character  of  all  cognition,  axioms 
come  spontaneously  to  be  recognized  in  consequence  of  our  percep- 
tion of  their  validity  in  special  applications,  vdthout  any  process  of 
conscious  formal  deduction. 


APPENDIX.  147 


given,  though  without  due  precision.  When  a  conviction 
has  been  established  about  any  class  of  objects  which  are 
indistinguishable  in  kind,  we  have  the  earliest  universal 
in  consciousness;  (for  in  fact,  though  the  object  perceived 
is  an  individual  thing,  sense  perception  is  of  the  universal; 
e.  g.,  of  man,  not  of  the  man  Callias).  Generalisations  are 
then  established  among  these  classes,  and  so  we  proceed, 
until  we  come  to  the  establishment  of  the  unanalysable 
universals.  E.  g.,  we  pass  from  generalisations  about  "such 
and  such  a  species  of  animal"  to  generalisations  about  "ani- 
mal," and  treat  that  concept  in  the  same  way.  For  even 
sense-perception  in  this  way  gives  rise  to  universal  cogni- 
tions.* 

*  Translation  of  the  highly  condensed  expressions  of  this  para- 
graph necessarily  involves  some  amount  of  interpretative  para- 
phrase, but  I  have  endeavoured  to  keep  as  closely  as  possible  to  the 
actual  words  of  the  text.  The  key  to  its  meaning  is  given  by  the 
parenthetical  remark  about  the  implicit  universality  of  sense-percep- 
tion. The  spontaneous  inductive  process  which  leads  from  the 
simplest  generalisations  about  the  more  obvious  classes  of  sensible 
objects,  through  axiomata  media — to  use  Bacon's  familiar  phrase — 
to  the  most  universal  of  axioms,  which  are  quite  incapable  of  adequate 
representation  by  sensible  illustrations,  depends  for  its  possibility 
upon  the  principle  that  though  the  object  cognized  in  sense-per- 
ception itself  is  always  a  particular  individual  (the  man  Callias),  the 
content  of  the  perception,  that  which  is  cognized  about  the  object, 
is  always  a  universal,  or  complex  of  universals.  The  use  of  the 
expression  d/iep^  "indivisibles"  (rendered  in  the  text  "unanalysable") 
for  the  axioms  of  highest  generality  is,  I  suppose,  explained  by  the 
fact  that  in  Aristotle's  theory  of  definition  by  genus  and  difference,  the 
genus  appears  as  a  "part"  of  the  intension  of  the  species.  (Meta- 
physics, A  25,  1023b  24:  "Hence  the  genus  is  also  called  a  part  of 
the  species,  though  in  another  sense  the  species  is  part  of  the  genus. ") 
Thus  an  "unanalysable"  genus  is  one  which  cannot  be  regarded  as 
a  species  of  a  higher  class,  an  indefinable  summum  genus  or  highest 
universal. 


148     ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

Thus  it  is  clear  that  we  need  to  apprehend  ultimate 
axioms  by  a  process  of  induction.^  And  since  of  the  intel- 
lectual conditions  by  which  we  perceive  truth  some  are 
always  truthful,  while  others  admit  of  error  (e.  g.,  Opinion 
and  Computation,  whereas  Science  and  Rational  Intuition 
are  always  truthful);  since,  further.  Rational  Intuition^  is 
the  only  type  of  cognition  which  is  more  exact  than  Science, 
while  the  principles  of  demonstration  are  "more  knowable" ' 
than  the  results  of  demonstration,  and  all  Science  involves 
inference,  the  cognition  of  axiomatic  principles  cannot  be 
Science.  Hence,  since  the  only  form  of  cognition  which  can 
have  a  higher  truth  than  Science  is  Rational  Intuition,  it 
must  be  by  Rational  Intuition  that  axiomatic  principles 
are  cognized.  This  result  follows,  also,  from  the  considera- 
tion that  since  the  principles  of  demonstration  are  not  them- 
selves demonstration,  those  of  Science  cannot  be  themselves 
Science.  So,  if  we  have  no  type  of  true  cognition  except 
Science,  Rational  Intuition  must  be  the  principle  from  which 
Science  starts.* 

Eihica  Nicomachea,  vi.-xi.,  1143a  35 — h$. 

*  Induction,  that  is,  in  the  Socratic  sense;  i.  e.,  the  general  princi- 
ple of  the  axiom  is  made  clear  to  us  in  consequence  of  our  previous 
recognition  of  its  validity  in  particular  classes  of  instances. 

'vt»t)?,  "Mind;"  i.  e.,  a  cognition  which  is  at  once  rational  and 
universal,  and  also  like  sense-perception  at  the  other  end  of  the  series, 
immediate  See  the  passage  from  the  Ethics,  which  immediately 
follows. 

^i.  e.,  "naturally,  in  the  logical  order  of  concatenation  of  truths, 
more  knowable;"  that  is,  are  simpler  and  more  ultimate  universal 
truths. 

*  Aristotle's  view  is  thus  twofold.  The  process  by  which  the 
individual  mind,  as  a  fact  in  its  psychological  history,  comes  by  the 
apprehension  of  the  axioms  is  one  of  generalising  induction  from 


APPENDIX.  149 


It  is  Rational  Intuition  which  apprehends  the  ultimates 
m  both  directions.  For  both  the  first  and  the  last  terms  of 
our  reasoning  are  apprehended  by  Rational  Intuition,  not 
by  discursive  reasoning.  In  demonstrations  this  intuition 
is  of  the  primary  and  immutable  principles,  in  the  study  of 
questions  of  conduct  it  is  of  contingent  ultimate  facts  and 
minor  premises,  for  these  are  the  starting-point  of  pur- 
posive action,  since  its  universal  rules  are  based  on  par- 
ticular cases.  Of  these  cases,  then,  we  must  have  an  im- 
mediate perception,  and  that  is  Rational  Intuition. 


B. 

The  Four  Senses  of  Cause. 

Aristotle,  Metaphysics,  -I  2,  ioi3a24 — h2S.  =  Physics 
^3.  194b  23-i95a  26. 

A  cause  signifies  in  one  of  its  meanings  that  out  oj  which 
anything  is  formed  and  which  continues  to  exist  in  it;  e.  g., 
the  bronze  of  the  statue,  the  silver  of  the  goblet,  and  the 
universal  classes  of  these  materials;  in  another  meaning 

examples.  We  are  individually  led  up  to  the  recognition  of  the  princi- 
ple by  being  familiarised  with  examples  of  its  truth  in  concrete  cases. 
But  the  "induction"  in  no  sense  proves  the  axiom;  it  merely  calls 
attention  to  it.  (Cf.  91b  33.  "He  who  produces  an  example 
does  not  prove  the  conclusion,  though  he  does  point  aid  something.)" 
The  axiom  is,  in  fact,  neither  proved  nor  provable.  \\'hen  the  requi- 
site illustrations  have  been  produced,  you  simply  have  directly  to  see 
what  the  implied  principle  is,  and,  if  you  do  not  see  it,  no  proof  can 
make  you  see.  Aristotle's  view  thus  turns  out  to  be  simply  the 
Platonic  doctrine  of  "innate  ideas"  minus  its  imaginative  psycholog- 
ical background  of  pre-existence.  Whether  the  removal  of  this 
background  is  an  improvement  is  a  point  on  which  opinions  may 
possibly  differ.  The  ultimate  germ  of  the  whole  theon'  is  the  treat- 
ment of  association  as  a  source  of  suggestion  in  Phcedo,  p.  73  ff. 


ISO     ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

it  signifies  the  jorm  and  the  archetype/  i.  e.,  the  formula 
expressive  of  the  essential  nature^  and  its  universal  classes. 
E.  g.,  that  of  the  octave  is  the  ratio  2:1,  and  universally 
number  and  the  constituent  parts  of  the  definitory  formula 
are  causes  of  this  kind.  It  signifies  also  the  first  source  of 
change  or  of  rest,  e.  g.,  the  giver  of  advice  is  the  cause  of  its 
consequences,  the  father  of  his  offspring,  and  universally 
the  agent  of  the  act,  the  producer  of  change  of  the  change 
produced.  Also,  the  term  is  used  in  the  sense  of  the  end, 
i.  e.,  the  purpose  for  the  sake  of  which  anything  is  done;  e.  g., 
health  is  the  cause,  in  this  sense,  of  walking.  For  why  does 
the  man  take  walks?  We  answer,  "in  order  to  keep  in 
health,"  and  when  we  have  said  this  we  believe  ourselves 
to  have  assigned  the  cause  of  his  action.  This  applies  also 
to  what  occurs  under  the  agency  of  another  in  the  process 
of  attaining  the  end;  e.  g.,  in  the  case  of  health,  the  lower- 
ing treatment,  the  purgation,  the  physician's  drugs  and  im- 
plements; they  are  all  there  for  the  sake  of  the  end,  though 
there  is  this  difference  among  them  that  some  of  them  are 
implements,  others  their  effects.  These,  then,  are  the  prin- 
cipal different  senses  of  the  term  "cause."  It  follows  that 
since  the  term  is  an  equivocal  one,  there  may  be  many 
causes  of  the  same  effect,  and  that  not  merely  in  an  acci- 
dental sense.  Thus,  e.  g.,  both  the  sculptor's  art  and  the 
bronze  are  causes  of  the  statue,  and  that  not  in  respect  of 
some  further  characteristic  but  in  its  character  of  a  statue. 
But  they  are  not  its  causes  in  the  same  sense  of  the  term; 
the  one  is  its  cause  in  the  sense  of  its  material,  the  other 
in  the  sense  of  the  source  of  movement.  Things  may  also 
be  reciprocally  causes  of  each  other;  for  instance,  exertion 

'  TzapddefjTfia. 
'ro  Ti  rjv  elvai. 


APPENDIX.  151 


of  good  bodily  condition,  and  this  of  exertion,  but  not  in  the 
same  sense;  the  one  is  cause  in  the  sense  of  end,  the  other 
in  the  sense  of  the  source  of  motion. 

Further,  the  same  thing  may  in  some  cases  be  the  cause 
of  opposite  results.  When  a  thing,  by  its  presence,  is  the 
cause  of  a  given  result,  we  sometimes  regard  it  as  being, 
by  its  absence,  the  cause  of  the  opposite  result.  Thus  the 
cause  of  a  vessel's  capsizing  is  said  to  be  the  absence  of  the 
captain,  whose  presence  was  the  cause  of  her  previous 
safety.  And  here  both  the  presence  and  its  negation  are 
causes  in  the  sense  of  sources  of  motion. 

All  the  senses  of  cause  which  have  now  been  enumerated 
fall  into  four  most  obvious  classes.  Letters  of  the  alphabet 
are  causes  of  syllables,  raw  materials  are  causes  of  manu- 
factured products,  fire,  earth,  and  the  like  of  bodies,  the 
parts  of  the  whole,  the  premises  of  the  conclusion,  in  the 
sense  that  they  are  the  factors  from  which  they  are  formed. 
Of  such  factors,  some  are  of  the  character  of  the  substrate, 
e.  g.,  the  parts,  others  of  that  of  the  essential  nature,*  e.  g., 
the  totality,  the  synthesis  of  parts,  the  form.'  The  seed, 
the  physician,  the  giver  of  advice,  and  universally  the  agent, 
are  all  instances  of  the  source  of  change  or  quiescence. 
Other  examples  are  instances  of  the  end  or  good  to  which 
something  else  is  relative.  For  that  for  the  sake  of  which 
something  takes  place  claims  to  be  the  best  state  and  the 
end  of  something  else.     (We  need  not  raise  the  question 

'  Tu  T£  ^v  elvat. 

'The  structure  of  the  Greek  sentence  is  awkward,  since  it 
opens  at  "letters  of  the  alphabet."  as  if  reference  were  going  to  be 
made  to  the  material  "factor,"  or  substrate,  only,  and  is  then 
unexpectedly  enlarged  so  as  to  include  the  "form"  and  "essential 
nature"  under  the  general  rubric  of  "factors  from  which  things 
are  formed." 


152     ARISTOTLE   ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

whether  it  ought  to  be  called  the  real  good  or  the  apparent 
good.)' 

'  Aristotle's  account  of  the  Four  Causes  may  be  most  readily 
understood  by  bearing  in  mind  the  etymological  connection  of  the 
word  atrtov  ahia,  "cause,"  with  the  adjective  al'rcuq,  "respon- 
sible for,"  "accountable  for."  The  aiTtuv  of  any  state  of  things  is 
that  to  which,  in  the  EngHsh  vernacular  idiom,  the  state  of  things 
in  question  can  be  "blamed."  Now,  when  we  ask,  "what  is  respon- 
sible for  the  fact  that  such  and  such  a  state  of  things  now  exists, 
there  are  four  obvious  partial  answers  to  be  given,  corresponding  to 
the  four  Aristotelian  senses  of  "  cause."  We  may  mention  ( i )  the  fac- 
tors out  of  which  the  thing  has  been  constructed  —  the  matter  or 
material  cause  of  the  thing;  (2)  the  law  according  to  which  those  fac- 
tors have  been  combined — the  jorni  or  formal  cause;  (3)  the  agent 
with  whose  initiating  impulse  the  process  of  combination  or  develop- 
ment began —  the  source  0]  motion  or  efficient  cause,  (4)  the  conscious 
and  deliberate,  or  instinctive  and  subconscious  purpose  which  the 
process  of  development  has  realized  —  the  end  or  final  cause.  Had 
any  one  of  these  four  been  different,  the  resultant  state  of  things 
would  also  have  been  in  some  degree  different.  Hence  they  all  are 
"responsible  for"  the  result,  that  is,  are  lis  causes.  The  most  obvious 
illustrations,  given  as  such  by  Aristotle,  are  to  be  found  in  the  case  of 
artificial  products  of  human  skill,  such  as,  e.  g.,  a  statue.  The  statue 
would  not  be  what  it  is  if  (a)  its  matter  had  been  different,  e.  g.,  if  the 
sculptor  had  used  bronze  or  wood  instead  of  marble;  a  (b)  if  its  form 
had  been  different,  e.  g.,  if  he  had  hewed  the  marble  into  the  linea- 
ments of  Hercules  instead  of  Apollo;  (c)  or  if  the  material  had  been 
subjected  to  a  different  series  of  movements  on  the  part  of  the  artificer, 
e.  g.,  if  he  had  cut  it  into  blocks  for  pediments,  or  (4)  if  he  had  not 
aimed  at  producing  this  result  but  some  other;  e.  g.,  if  he  or  his 
patron  had  wanted  an  obelisk,  and  not  a  statue.  It  seems  clear, 
however,  that  the  analysis  was  originally  suggested  rather  by  Aris- 
totle's interest  as  a  biologist  in  the  facts  of  organic  development. 
Suppose  we  ask,  e.  g.,  what  was  requisite  in  order  that  there  should 
now  be  an  oak  on  this  particular  spot.  We  may  say  (i)  there  must 
previously  have  been  a  germ  from  which  the  oak  has  grown,  and  this 
germ  must  have  had  certain  actual  physical  and  chemical  properties 
characteristic  of  the  germs  from  which  oaks  in  particular  grow,  or  there 


APPENDIX.  153 


C. 

A  Popular  Resume  of  the  main  arguments  against  the 
Platonic  Ideas,  with  special  reference  to  the  "Idea  of  Good." 

Ethica  Nicomachea,  i,  6,  io6a  n — by. 

It  is  perhaps  better  to  examine  the  notion  of  a  universal 
good,  and  to  state  the  difficulties  it  raises,  though  such  an 
investigation  is  distasteful  to  me,  owing  to  my  personal 
friendship  for  the  inventors  of  the  doctrine  of  Ideas.  Still, 
it  will  surely  be  allowed  that  it  is  commendable  and  even 
obligatory  in  defence  of  truth  to  abandon  even  one's  own 
cherished  convictions,  especially  in  a   philosopher.    For 

would  have  been  no  oak.  This  is  the  material  cause.  (2)  This 
germ,  though  in  many  respects  perhaps  not  distinguishable  from 
those  of  other  species,  must  have  followed  certain  special  laws  in  its 
development;  it  must  have  had  an  initial  tendency  to  grow  in  the 
way  characteristic  of  oaks,  not  that  of  elms  or  planes,  etc.  This  is 
the  Jorm  or  formal  cause.  (3)  There  must  have  been  an  initial 
movement  by  which  the  germ  was  brought  into  contact  with  the 
external  surroundings  requisite  in  order  that  the  process  of  develop- 
ment may  begin  —  an  efficient  cause.  (4)  And  there  must  be  an 
uhimate  or  final  stage  in  the  process,  a  stage  in  which  the  germ  is  no 
longer  developing  into  something  that  one  day  will  be  an  oak,  but 
actually  has  grown  into  an  adult  oak.  This  is  the  oid  or  final  cause, 
in  the  perfectly  hteral  sense  of  "end,"  as  the  last  stage  of  the  process. 
Aristotle's  biological  interest  leads  him  to  conceive  of  this  final  stage 
of  the  development  as  in  all  cases  a  conscious  or  subconscious  pur- 
pose immanent  throughout  all  the  previous  stages.  (Thus  in  organic 
development  the  formal  and  final  causes  regularly  tend  to  coalesce 
in  a  single  conception  of  an  immanent  law  of  growth,  which  is  at  the 
same  time  a  teleological  law  of  a  thing's  purposive  activity.)  It  will 
be  seen  that  individual  agency  is  an  indispensable  element  in  his 
notion  of  causation,  and  that  he  has  no  sense  of  "cause"  exactly 
corresponding  to  the  famihar  modern  notion  of  a  mere  uniform  law 
of  the  sequence  of  events.  For  an  excellent  brief  exposition  of  the  sub- 
ject, see  Siebeck,  Aristoteles  (Frohmann's  Classiker  der  Philosophie, 
Vol.  8,  pp.  32-42). 


154     ARISTOTLE   ON  HIS  PREDECESSORS. 

though  both  are  dear  to  us,  it  is  a  sacred  duty  to  give  the 
preference  to  truth.*  Well,  the  devisers  of  the  theory 
did  not  profess  to  recognize  Ideas  of  aggregates  in  which 
there  is  an  order  of  priority  and  posteriority  (and  for  this 
reason  they  constructed  no  Idea  of  the  class  of  numbers). 
Now,  "good"  is  predicated  alike  in  the  categories  of  Sub- 
stance, of  Quality,  and  of  Relation.  But  the  absolute,  i.  e., 
Substance,  is  logically  prior  to  the  Relative  (which  seems 
rather  to  be  an  accessory  or  accident  of  substance),  so  that 
there  cannot  be  a  common  Idea  applicable  to  all  these 
instances. 

Again,  "good"  has  as  many  meanings  as  "Being."  It 
is  predicated  in  the  categories  of  Substance,  e.  g.,  of  God  or 
Mind;  in  that  of  Quality,  e.  g.,of  the  virtues;  in  that  of 
Quantity,  e.  g.,  of  the  due  mean;  in  that  of  Relation,  e.g., 
of  the  useful;  in  that  of  Time,  e.  g.,of  the  favourable  oppor- 
tunity; in  that  of  Place,  e.  g.,of  favourable  climate,  etc.  So 
it  clearly  has  no  one  single,  universal  sense.  If  it  had,  it 
would  not  be  predicable  in  all  the  categories,  but  only  in  one. 

Again,  since  the  things  which  fall  under  a  single  Idea 
form  the  objects  of  a  single  science,  there  ought  to  be  a 
single  science  of  all  "goods"  universally.  But  there  are  in 
fact  many  sciences  even  of  the  "goods"  which  come  under 
a  single  category.  E.  g.,  the  favourable  opportunity  in  war 
is  the  object  of  Strategy,  in  disease  of  Medicine;  the  due 
mean  in  diet  is  the  object  of  Medicine,  in  exercise  of  Gym- 
nastics. 

'  He  adroitly  excuses  his  attack  by  the  same  apology  which 
Plato  had  employed  for  his  attack  on  Homer  in  Republic,  595c:  "I 
must  speak,  said  I,  and  yet  I  am  restrained  by  the  love  and  admiration 
I  have  felt  for  Homer  ever  since  my  childhood.  .  .  .  But,  after 
all,  a  man  should  not  be  honoured  at  the  expense  of  truth;  so,  as  I 
say,  I  must  speak." 


APPENDIX.  155 


One  may  also  be  puzzled  even  to  know  what  they  mean  by 
an  "Ideal  so-and-so,' '  since  it  is  one  and  the  same  definition 
of  man  which  applies  alike  to  the  "Ideal  Man"  and  to  an 
ordinary  man.  In  so  far  as  both  are  "men,"  there  is  no 
difiference  between  them.  Consequently,  there  is  no  differ- 
ence either  in  the  case  of  "good."  Nor,  again,  will  the 
Idea  be  any  more  truly  good  because  it  is  eternal,  just  as 
a  thing  which  lasts  a  long  time  is  not  on  that  account  any 
whiter  than  one  which  only  lasts  a  day. 

D. 

The  alleged  Difficulty  in  the  Connection  of  Mathematics 
with  the  Doctrine  of  Ideas.     (Cf.  A,  9,  g92b  12-17.) 

Metaphysics,  M^  2,  1076b  11 — 39. 

Yet,  it  is  not  even  possible  that  there  should  be  such  sep- 
arate and  independent'  entities.  For  if,  over  and  above  the 
solids  our  senses  perceive,  there  is  to  bea  further  set  of  solids 
separate  from  and  independent  of  the  former,  and  logically 
prior  to  them,  manifestly  there  must  also  be  separate  and 
independent  planes,  over  and  above  the  planes  our  senses 
perceive,  and  similarly  in  the  case  of  points  and  lines;  it  is 
all  part  of  the  same  theory.  But,  so  much  being  admitted, 
once  again,  there  must  be  yet  further  separate  and  inde- 
pendent planes,  lines,  and  points,  over  and  above  those  con- 
tained in  geometrical  solid  figures.  For  isolated  entities  are 
logically  prior  to  the  same  entities  in  combination;  and  if 

*  xejj^WjOj<T/jic>ac,  " separatedj "  i.  c,  existing  as  distinct  objective 
entities,  not  merely  as  products  of  subjective  mental  abstraction 
without  a  real  separate  existence  of  their  own.  T  have  employed 
the  double  expression  "separate  and  independent"  to  represent  the 
one  Greek  word,  which  it  is,  however,  very  tempting  to  translate 
simply  by  "  transcendent." 


156      ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

bodies  which  are  not  perceptible  to  the  senses  are  logically 
prior  to  bodies  which  are  so  perceptible,  it  follows  by  the 
same  argument  that  independent,  self-existing  planes  are 
logically  prior  to  the  planes  of  the  motionless'  solids.  So 
that  these  planes  and  lines  are  classes  distinct  from  those 
postulated  along  with  the  separate  and  independent  solids. 

X^The  latter  are  postulated  with  the  mathematical  solid  figures; 

^     the  former  are  logically  prior  to  these  figures./* 

Similarly  once  more,  the  planes  just  referred  to  will  con- 
tain lines,  and  by  the  same  reasoning  there  must  be  yet 
other  lines  and  points  prior  to  these,  and  besides  the  points 
of  these  "prior"  lines  there  must  be  yet  other  points,  prior 
to  them,  but  beyond  which  there  is  no  further  prior  class  of 
points.  Now,  surely,  this  accumulation  of  entities  becomes 
an  absurdity.  For  it  follows  that  there  is  only  one  class  of 
solids  besides  those  our  senses  perceive,  but  three  such 
classes  of  planes  (viz.,  those  which  are  "beside"  the  sensi- 
ble planes,  those  contained  in  the  mathematical  solids, 
those  which  are  "beside"  these),  four  classes  of  lines,  five 
of  points.  Now  which  of  all  these  are  to  be  the  objects  of 
the  mathematical  sciences?  For  it  will  surely  not  be  said 
that  it  is  the  planes,  lines,  and  points  which  are  in  the  mo- 
tionless geometrical  solid  which  are  the  objects  of  these 
sciences,  since  it  is  always  the  logically  prior  classes  which 
are  the  objects  of  science.* 

'i.  e.,  purely  geometrical,  as  distinguished  from  physical 
"bodies."  The  difference,  according  to  Aristotle,  between  the  objects 
of  Mathematics  and  those  of  Physics  is  precisely  that  the  former, 
though  "inseparable  from  matter,"  are  not  capable  of  motion,  the 
latter  are  "inseparable  from  matter  but  not  incapable  of  motion." 
Metaphysics,  E,  1026a  18. 

2  The  character  of  the  reasoning  will  become  clearer  if  we 
consider  the  simplest  of   the  cases   mentioned,  that  of   the   plane. 


APPENDIX.  157 


The  same  argument  is  applicable  also  to  the  case  of 
numbers.    For  each  class  of  points  there  will  be  a  different 

Aristotle  contends  that  on  a  realist  theory,  like  that  of  Plato,  which 
regards  the  plane  surfaces  of  Geometry  not  as  mere  logical  abstrac- 
tions but  as  objective  entities,  there  must  be  not  only  one  but  three 
classes  of  such  entities,  over  and  above  the  perceptible  surfaces  of 
physical  bodies,  viz.:  (i)  The  single  archetypal  "Idea"  of  the  plane, 
i.  e.,  the  entity  to  which  we  refer  in  giving  the  definition  of  the  plane 
as  such;  (2)  the  entities  which  figure  as  constituents  in  the  definition 
of  the  geometrical  solid,  e.  g.,  as  determined  or  bounded  by  four  planes; 
(3)  the  infinitely  numerous  "mathematical  planes"  which  appear  in 
Geometry.  It  is  of  these  last  that  "physical"  plane  surfaces  are 
immediately  "copies."  Thus  he  arrives  at  the  following  series  of 
entities  as  all  implied  in  the  Platonic  theory: 

3  classes  of  plane,  viz.:     (a)    The  plane  as  represented  by  its 

definition. 

(b)  The  plane  as  a  boundary  of  solids 

(c)  "Mathematical"  planes. 

4  classes  of  line,  viz. :        (a)    The    line    as    represented    by   its 

definition. 

(b)  The  line  as  boundary,  or  rather 

as  intersection,  of  planes. 

(c)  The  line  as  intersection  of  planes 

which  are  boundaries  of  solids. 

(d)  "Mathematical"  lines. 

5  classes  of  point,  viz. :      (a)    The  point  as  represented  by  its 

definition. 

(b)  The  point  as  intersection  of  lines. 

(c)  The  point  as  intersection  of  lines 

which  are  intersections  of  planes. 

(d)  The  point  as  intersection  of  lines 

which  are  intersections  of  planes, 
which  are  boundaries  of  solids. 

(e)  "Mathematical"  points. 

I  must  leave  the  reader  to  decide  whether  the  ingenuity  of  all 
this  is  not  equalled  by  its  perversity,  merely  observing  that  "by  the 
same  reasoning,"  there  should  be  two  and  not,  as  Aristotle  says,  only 
one  class  of  "solids"  over  and  above  "physical"  solids. 

«(C  ^n«*w«'<|»^.:  jyii#,»frJU,|£  J,»,>.^,.<<«it 


158     ARISTOTLE  ON  HIS   PREDECESSORS. 

corresponding  class  of  units/  and  so  again  for  each  class  of 
sensible  objects,  and  again  for  each  class  of  conceptual 
objects.^  Thus  the  numbers  of  classes  of  mathematical 
numbers  will  be  infinite. 

[Aristotle]^  De  Lineis  Insecabilibiis,  968a  9 — 14.  (Text  of 
Apelt  in  the  Teubner  series.)  If  there  is  an  "Idea  of  Line," 
and  the  Idea  is  the  archet\^e  of  all  the  objects  which  fall 
under  the  same  concept,  while  the  parts  of  an  object  are 
logically  prior  to  the  whole  which  they  constitute,  the  "Ideal 
Line"  must  be  indivisible.  The  same  will  be  true  of  the 
"Ideal  square"  and  "triangle,"  and  all  the  other  figures^ 
and  universally  of  the  "Ideal  plane"  and  "Ideal  solid;" 
for  otherwise  it  would  follow  that  there  are  things*  which 
are  logically  prior  to  these  entities. 

ib.  969a  17-21.  Those  who  construct  indivisible  lines 
among  the  Ideas  make  an  assvunption — viz.,  in  postulat- 
ing Ideas  of  such  objects — which  is  perhaps  of  less  ex- 
tended scope  than  that  now  under  examination,*  and  in 

1  Because  a  point  is  simply  a  "  unit  having  position  " 

^  Because  each  object  of  sense  or  thought  is  a  "  unit,"  and  also  a 
"copy"  of  a  simple  "transcendent"  unit. 

^  The  author  of  the  essay,  though  certainly  not  Aristotle,  is 
almost  equally  certainly  one  of  his  immediate  disciples,  possibly 
Theophrastus.  See  Apelt,  Beitrage  zur  Geschichte  der  Griechischen 
Philosophic,  p.  269. 

*  viz.,  the  lines  or  planes  into  which  the  '  'Ideal  plane,"  or  "solid," 
if  divisible,  may,  according  to  the  Platonists  under  discussion,  be 
divided. 

'  The  assumption  under  discussion  is  that  there  is  a  whole  in- 
finitely numerous  class  of  indivisible  "mathematical"  lines,  or  "infini- 
tesimal" Unes,  which  are,  in  fact,  the  entities  commonly  called 
points.  "Aristotle's"  objection,  as  Apelt  {Loc.  cit.  p.  274,  note  2) 
explains,  is  that  you  cannot  infer  the  indivisibility  of  "mathematical" 
lines  from  the  supposed  indivisibility  of  the  "Ideal  Une;"  on  the 


APPENDIX.  159 


a  sense  they  destroy  the  force  of  the  very  assumptions  on 
which  their  proof  rests.  For  such  arguments  are,  in  fact, 
subversive  of  the  Ideas. 

contrary,  the  only  valid  ground  for  calling  the  "  Ideal  line"  indivisible 
would  be  your  previous  knowledge  that  "mathematical"  Unes,  as  a 
class,  are  indivisibles.  You  have  no  right,  on  Platonic  principles,  to 
assume  an  Idea  except  when  you  already  know  of  an  existing  class  of 
coresponding  individual  things.  There  can  be  no  idea  corresponding 
to  any  class  which  is  inconceivable.  Hence,  if  it  can  be  shown  that 
all  "mathematical"  hnes  are  di\'isible,  there  can  be  no  reason  to 
postulate  an  "Idea"  of  the  indivisible  line. 


INDEX  OF  PROPER  NAMES. 


Alcmaeon,  94-5. 

Anaxagoras,    82-3,  86,  88,   106, 

111-113,  124. 
Anaximenes,  82. 

Cratylus,  100. 

Democritus,  90,  loi  n. 
Diogenes,  82. 

Empedocles,  82,  87-90,  106,  iio- 

III,  138,  139. 
Endoxus,  124. 

Heraclitus,  82. 
Hermotimus,  86. 
Hesiod,  86,  no. 
Hippasus,  82. 
Hippo,  82. 


Leucippus,  90. 
Melissus,  96,  97. 

Parmenides,  84,  86,  96,  97. 
Plato,  100-105,  106,  115,  116  ff. 
Polus,  68. 
Pythagoras,  95. 

Pythagoreans,  The,  91  ff,  98-99, 
loin.,  103,  106,  113-116. 

Simonides,  76. 
Socrates,  100,  loi  n. 

Thales,  80-82. 
Xenophanes,  96,  97. 


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