Chapter I · THE IDEA OF PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL. THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY (continued 6)

Now all this may strike the unsophisticated as very strange. That the absolute being whence the universe flows should be described as that which lies at the end of the development of the universe, and that philosophy should proceed to justify this by asserting that the end is really prior to the beginning, this is so far removed from the common man's mode of thought, that it may appear mere paradox. It is, however, neither strange nor paradoxical. It is essentially sound and true, and it seems strange to the ordinary man only because it penetrates so much deeper into things than he can. This thought is, in fact, essential to a developed idealism, and till it is grasped no advance can be made in philosophy. Whether it is understood is, indeed, a good test of whether a man has any talent for philosophy or not. The fact is that all philosophies of this sort regard time as unreal, as an appearance. This being so, the relation of the absolute being, or God, to the world cannot be a relation of time at all. The common man's idea is that, if there is a first principle or God at all, He must have existed before the world began, and then, somehow, perhaps billions of years ago, something happened as a {282} result of which the world came into being. The Absolute is thus conceived as the cause, the world as the effect, and the cause always precedes its effect in time. Or if, on the other hand, we think that the world never had a beginning, the ordinary man's thought would lead him to believe that, in that case, it is no longer necessary to assume a first principle at all. But if time is a mere appearance, this whole way of looking at things must be wrong. God is not related to the world as cause to effect. It is not a relation of time at all. It is a logical relation. God is rather the logical premise, of which the world is the conclusion, so that, God granted, the world follows necessarily, just as, the premises granted, the conclusion follows. This is the reason why, in discussing Plato, we said that it must be possible to deduce the world from his first principle. If the Absolute were merely the cause of the world in time, it would not explain the world, for, as I have so often pointed out, causes explain nothing. But if the world be deducible from the Absolute, the world is explained, a reason, not a cause, is given for it, just as the premises constitute the reason for the conclusion. Now the conclusion of a syllogism follows from the premises, that is, the premises come first, the conclusion second. But the premise only comes first in thought, not in time. It is a logical succession, not a time-succession. Just in the same way, the Absolute, or in Aristotle's language, the form, is logically first, but is not first in order of time. And though it is the end, it is in thought the absolute beginning, and is thus the foundation of the world, the first principle from which the world flows. The objection may be, taken that if the relation of the {283} Absolute to the world is not a time-relation, then it can no more be the end than the beginning. This objection is, as we shall see, a misunderstanding of Aristotle's philosophy. Although things in time strive towards the end, yet the absolute end is not in time at all, or, in other words, the end is never reached. Its relation to the world as end is just as much a logical, and not a time-relation, as its relation to the world as beginning or absolute prius. As far as time is concerned, the universe is without beginning or end.

As the world-process is a continual elevation of matter into higher and higher forms, there results the conception that the universe exhibits a continuous scale of being. That is higher in the scale in which form predominates, that lower in which matter outweighs form. At the bottom of the scale will be absolutely formless matter, at the top, absolutely matterless form. Both these extremes, however, are abstractions. Neither of them exists, because matter and form cannot be separated. Whatever exists comes somewhere between the two, and the universe thus exhibits a process of continuous gradations. Motion and change are produced by the effort to pass from the lower to the higher under the attractive force of the end.

That which comes at the top of the scale, absolute form, is called by Aristotle, God. And the definitions of God's character follow from this as a matter of course. First, since form is actuality, God alone is absolutely actual. He alone is real. All existent things are more or less unreal. The higher in the scale are the more real, as possessing more form. The scale of being is thus also a scale of reality, shading off through infinite gradations {284} from the absolutely real, God, to the absolutely unreal, formless matter. Secondly, since the principle of form contains the formal, the final, and the efficient causes, God is all these. As formal cause, He is the Idea. He is essentially thought, reason. As final cause, He is the absolute end. He is that to which all beings strive. Each being has no doubt its own end in itself. But as absolute end, God includes all lower ends. And as the end of each thing is the completed perfection of the thing, so, as absolute end, God is absolute perfection. Lastly, as efficient cause, God is the ultimate cause of all motion and becoming. He is the first mover. As such, He is Himself unmoved. That the first mover should be itself unmoved is a necessary consequence of Aristotle's conception of it as end and form. For motion is the transition of a thing towards its end. The absolute end can have no end beyond it, and therefore cannot be moved. Likewise motion is the passage of matter into form. Absolute form cannot pass into any higher form, and is therefore unmoved. But the argument which Aristotle himself more frequently uses to establish the immovability of the first mover is that, unless we so conceive it, no cause of motion appears. The moving object is moved perhaps by another moving object. The motion of the latter demands a further cause. If this further cause is itself moving, we must again ask for the cause of its motion. If this process goes on for ever, then motion is unexplained, and no real cause of it has been shown. The real and ultimate cause must therefore be unmoved.

This last argument sounds as if Aristotle is now thinking in terms of mechanism. It sounds as if he meant that {285} the first mover is something at the beginning of time, which, so to speak, gave things a push to start them off. This is not what Aristotle means. For the true efficient cause is the final cause. And God is the first mover only in His character as absolute end. As far as time is concerned, neither the universe, nor the motion in it, ever had any beginning. Every mechanical cause has its cause in turn, and so ad infinitum. God is not a first cause, in our sense, that is, a first mechanical cause which existed before the world, and created it. He is a teleological cause working from the end. But as such, He is logically prior to all beginning, and so is the first mover. And just as the universe has no beginning in time, so it has no end in time. It will go on for ever. Its end is absolute form, but this can never be reached, because if it were, this would mean that absolute form would exist, whereas we have seen that form cannot exist apart from matter.

God is thought. But the thought of what? As absolute form, he is not the form of matter, but the form of form. His matter, so to speak, is form. Form, as the universal, is thought. And this gives us Aristotle's famous definition of God as "the thought of thought." He thinks only his own self. He is at once the subject and the object of his thought. As mortal men think material things, as I now think the paper on which I write, so God thinks thought. In more modern terms, he is self-consciousness, the absolute subject-object. That God should think anything other than thought is inconceivable, because the end of all other thought is outside the thought itself. If I think this paper, the end of my thought, the paper, is outside me. But the thought of {286} God, as the absolute end, cannot have any end outside itself. Were God to think anything else than thought, he would be determined by that which is not himself. By way of further expression of the same idea, Aristotle passes into figurative language. God, he says, lives in eternal blessedness, and his blessedness consists in the everlasting contemplation of his own perfection.

A modern will naturally ask whether Aristotle's God is personal. It does not do to be very dogmatic upon the point. Aristotle, like Plato, never discusses the question. No Greek ever did. It is a modern question. What we have to do, then, is to take the evidence on both sides. The case for personality is that the language Aristotle uses implies it. The very word God, used instead of the Absolute, or form, conveys the idea of personality. And when he goes on to speak of God living in eternal blessedness, these words, if taken literally, can mean nothing except that God is a conscious person. If we say that this language is merely figurative, it may be replied that Aristotle on principle objects to figurative language, that he frequently censures Plato for using it, that what he demands and sets out to supply is exact, literal, scientific terminology, and that he is not likely to have broken his own canons of philosophic expression by using merely poetical phrases.

To see the other side of the case, we must first ask what personality means. Now without entering into an intricate discussion of this most elusive idea, we may answer that personality at any rate implies an individual and existent consciousness. But, in the first place, God is absolute form, and form is the universal. What is universal, with no particular in it, cannot be an individual. {287} God, therefore, cannot be individual. Secondly, form without matter cannot exist. And as God is form without matter, he cannot be called existent, though he is absolutely real. God, therefore, is neither existent nor individual. And this means that he is not a person. To degrade the real to the level of the existent, to convert the universal into the individual, is exactly the fault for which Aristotle blames Plato. It is exactly the fault which it was the whole object of his philosophy to remedy. If he thought that God is a person, he committed the same fault himself in an aggravated form.

We have, then, two hypotheses, both of which involve that Aristotle was guilty of some inconsistency. If God is not a person, then Aristotle's language is figurative, and his use of such language is inconsistent with his rooted objection to its use. This, however, is, after all, merely an inconsistency of language, and not of thought. It does not mean that Aristotle really contradicted himself. It merely means that, though he set himself to express his philosophy in technical scientific terms, and to exclude figurative language, yet he found himself compelled in a few passages to make use of it. There are some metaphysical ideas so abstract, so abstruse, that it is almost impossible to express them at all without the use of figures of speech. Language was made by common men for common purposes, and this fact often forces the philosopher to use terms which he knows only figure forth his meaning without accurately expressing it. Perhaps every philosophy in the world finds itself sometimes under this necessity, and, if Aristotle did so, and was thereby technically inconsistent with himself, it is no wonder, and involves no serious blame upon him.

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But the other hypothesis, that God is a person, means that Aristotle committed a contradiction, not merely in words, but in thought, and not merely as regards some unimportant detail, but as regards the central thesis of his system. It means that he stultified himself by making his conception of God absolutely contradict the essentials of his system. For what is the whole of Aristotle's philosophy, put in a nutshell? It is that the Absolute is the universal, but that the universal does not exist apart from the particular. Plato supplied the thought of the first clause of the sentence. Aristotle added the last clause, and it is the essential of his philosophy. To assert that God, the absolute form, exists as an individual, is flatly to contradict this. It is not likely that Aristotle should have contradicted himself in so vital a matter, and in a manner which simply means that his system falls to the ground like a house of cards.

My conclusion, then, is that it was not Aristotle's intention that what he calls God should be regarded as a person. God is thought, but not subjective thought. He is not thought existent in a mind, but objective thought, real on its own account, apart from any mind which thinks it, like Plato's Ideas. But Plato's mistake was to suppose that because thought is real and objective, it must exist. Aristotle avoids this error. The absolute thought is the absolutely real. But it does not exist. With the concept of God the metaphysics of Aristotle closes.

4. Physics, or the Philosophy of Nature.

The existent universe is a scale of being lying between the two extremes of formless matter and matterless form. But this must not be merely asserted, as a general {289} principle. It must be carried out in detail. The passage of matter into form must be shown in its various stages in the world of nature. To do this is the object of Aristotle's Physics, or philosophy of nature.

If nature is to be understood, we must keep in mind certain general points of view. In the first place, since form includes end, the entire world-process, as passage of matter into form, is essentially movement towards ends. Everything in nature has its end and function. Nothing is purposeless. Nature seeks everywhere to attain the best possible. Everywhere we find evidences of design and of rational plan. Aristotle's philosophy of nature is essentially teleological. This does not, however, exclude the principle of mechanism, and to investigate mechanical causes is part of the duty of science. But mechanical causes turn out in the end to be teleological, because the true efficient cause is the final cause.

But if nothing in nature is aimless or useless, this is not to be interpreted in a narrow anthropocentric spirit. It does not mean that everything exists for the use of man, that the sun was created to give him light by day, the moon by night, and that plants and animals exist only for his food. It is true that, in a certain sense, everything else sublunary is for man. For man is the highest in the scale of beings in this terrestrial sphere, and therefore as the higher end, he includes all lower ends. But this does not exclude the fact that lower beings have each its own end. They exist for themselves and not for us.

Another mistake which we must avoid is to suppose that the design in nature means that nature is conscious of her designs, or, on the other hand, that there is any {290} existent consciousness outside the world which governs and controls it. The latter supposition is excluded by the fact that God is not an existent conscious person, the former by its own inherent absurdity. The only being upon this earth who is conscious of his ends is man. Such animals as bees and ants appear to work rationally, and their activities are clearly governed by design. But it is not to be supposed that they are reasoning beings. They attain their ends instinctively. And when we come to inorganic matter, we find that even here its movements are purposive, but no one could suppose them deliberate and conscious. These manifold activities of lower nature are indeed the work of reason, but not of an existent or self-conscious reason. And this means that instinct, and even mechanical forces such as gravitation are, in their essence, reason. It is not that they are created by reason, but that they are reason, exhibiting itself in lower forms. In commenting upon Plato's dualism of sense and reason, I remarked that any true philosophy, though recognizing the distinction between sense and reason, must yet find room for their identity, and must show that sense is but a lower form of reason. This idea Aristotle thoroughly understood, and sought to show, not merely that sense is reason, but even that the activities of inorganic matter, such as gravitation, are so. In the result, nature, though working through reason, is not conscious of the fact, does so blindly and instinctively, and is compared to a creative artist, who forms beautiful objects by instinct, or, as we should say, by inspiration, without setting before his mind the end to be attained or the rules to be observed in order to attain it.

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In the process of nature, it is always form which impels, matter which retards and obstructs. The entire world-movement is the effort of form to mould matter, but, just because matter has in itself a power of resistance, this effort does not always succeed. This is the reason why form cannot exist without matter, because it can never wholly overcome the clogging activity of matter, and therefore matter can never be wholly moulded into form. And this explains, too, the occasional occurrence in nature of freaks, monstrosities, abortions, and unnatural births. In these the form has failed to mould the matter. Nature has failed to attain her ends. Science, therefore, should study the normal and natural rather than the abnormal and monstrous. For it is in the normal that the ends of nature are to be seen, and through them alone nature can be understood. Aristotle is fond of using the words "natural" and "unnatural," but he uses them always with this special meaning. That is natural which attains its end, that in which the form successfully masters the matter.

No doctrine of physics can ignore the fundamental notions of motion, space, and time. Aristotle, therefore, finds it necessary to consider these. Motion is the passage of matter into form, and it is of four kinds. The first is motion which affects the substance of a thing, origination and decease. Secondly, change of quality. Thirdly, change of quantity, increase and decrease. Fourthly, locomotion, change of place. Of these, the last is the most fundamental and important.

Aristotle rejects the definition of space as the void. Empty space is an impossibility. Hence, too, he disagrees with the view of Plato and the Pythagoreans that {292} the elements are composed of geometrical figures. And connected with this is his repudiation of the mechanical hypothesis that all quality is founded upon quantity, or upon composition and decomposition. Quality has a real existence of its own. He rejects, also, the view that space is a physical thing. If this were true, there would be two bodies occupying the same place at the same time, namely the object and the space it fills. Hence there is nothing for it but to conceive space as limit. Space is, therefore, defined as the limit of the surrounding body towards what is surrounded. As we shall see later, in another connexion, Aristotle did not regard space as infinite.

Time is defined as the measure of motion in regard to what is earlier and later. It thus depends for its existence upon motion. If there were no change in the universe, there would be no time. And since it is the measuring or counting of motion, it also depends for its existence upon a counting mind. If there were no mind to count, there could be no time. This presents difficulties to us, if we conceive that there was a time when conscious beings did not exist. But this difficulty is non-existent for Aristotle, who believed that men and animals have existed from all eternity. The essentials of time, therefore, are two: change and consciousness. Time is the succession of thoughts. If we object that the definition is bad because succession already involves time, there is doubtless no answer possible.

As to the infinite divisibility of space and time, and the riddles proposed thereupon by Zeno, Aristotle is of opinion that space and time are potentially divisible {293} ad infinitum, but are not actually so divided. There is nothing to prevent us from going on for ever with the process of division, but space and time are not given in experience as infinitely divided.

After these preliminaries, we can pass on to consider the main subject of physics, the scale of being. We should notice, in the first place, that it is also a scale of values. What is higher in the scale of being is of more worth, because the principle of form is more advanced in it. It constitutes also a theory of development, a philosophy of evolution. The lower develops into the higher. It does not, however, so develop in time. That the lower form passes in due time into a higher form is a discovery of modern times. Such a conception was impossible for Aristotle. For him, genus and species are eternal. They have neither beginning nor end. Individual men are born and die, but the species man never dies, and has always existed upon the earth. The same is true of plants and animals. And since man has always existed, he cannot have evolved in time from a lower being. There is no room here for Darwinism. In what sense, then, is this a theory of development or evolution? The process involved is not a time-process, it is a logical process, and the development is a logical development. The lower always contains the higher potentially. The man is in the ape ideally. The higher, again, contains the lower actually. The man is all that the ape is, and more also. What is merely implicit in the lower form is explicit in the higher. The form which is dimly seen struggling to light in the lower, has realized itself in the higher. The higher is the same thing as the lower, but it is the same thing in a more {294} evolved state. The higher presupposes the lower and rests upon it as foundation. The higher is the form of which the lower is the matter. It actually is what the lower is struggling to become. Hence the entire universe is one continuous chain. It is a process; not a time-process, but an eternal process. The one ultimate reality, God, reason, absolute form, eternally exhibits itself in every stage of its development. All the stages, therefore, must exist for ever side by side.

Now the form of a thing is its organization. Hence to be higher in the scale means to be more organized. The first distinction, therefore, with which nature presents us is between the organic and the inorganic. Aristotle was the discoverer of the idea of organism, as he was also the inventor of the word. At the bottom of the scale of being, therefore, is inorganic matter. Inorganic matter is the nearest existent thing to absolutely formless matter, which, of course, does not exist. In the inorganic world matter preponderates to such an extent as almost to overwhelm form, and we can only expect to see the universal exhibiting itself in it in a vague and dim way. What, then, is its form? And this is the same as asking what its function, end, or essential activity is. The end of inorganic matter is merely external to it. Form has not truly entered into it at all, and remains outside it. Hence the activity of inorganic matter can only be to move in space towards its external end. This is the explanation of what we, in modern times, call gravitation. But, according to Aristotle, every element has its peculiar and natural motion; its end is conceived merely spatially, and its activity is to move towards its "proper place," and, having thus reached its end, it rests. The natural {295} movement of fire is up. We may call this a principle of levitation, as opposed to gravitation. Aristotle has been the subject of cheap criticism on account of his frequent use of the words "natural" and "unnatural." [Footnote 15] It is said that he was satisfied to explain the operations of nature by simply labelling them "natural." If you ask a quite uneducated person why heavy bodies fall, he may quite possibly reply, "Oh! naturally they fall." This simply means that the man has never thought about the matter at all, and thinks whatever is absolutely familiar to him is "natural" and needs no explanation. It is like the feminine argument that a thing is so, "because it is." It is assumed that Aristotle was guilty of a like futility. This is not the case. His use of the word "natural" does not indicate lack of thought. There is a thought, an idea, here. No doubt he was quite wrong in many of his facts. Thus there is no such principle as levitation in the universe. But there is a principle of gravitation, and when he explains this by saying it is "natural" for earth to move downwards, he means, not that the fact is familiar, but that the principle of form, or the world-reason, can only exhibit itself here so dimly as to give rise to a comparatively aimless and purposeless movement in a straight line. Not absolutely purposeless, however, because nothing in the world is such, and the purpose here is simply the movement of matter towards its end. This may or may not be a true explanation of gravity. But has anybody since ever explained it better?

This gives us, too, the clue to the distinction between {296} the inorganic and the organic. If inorganic matter is what has its end outside itself, organic matter will be what has its end within itself. This is the essential character of an organism, that its end is internal to it. It is an inward self-developing principle. Its function, therefore, can only be the actualisation, the self-realization of this inward end. Whereas, therefore, inorganic matter has no activity except spatial movement, organic matter has for its activity growth, and this growth is not the mere mechanical addition of extraneous matter, as we add a pound of tea to a pound of tea. It is true growth from within. It is the making outward of what is inward. It is the making explicit of what is implicit. It is the making actual of what is potential in the embryo organism.

The lowest in the scale of being is thus inorganic matter, and above it comes organic matter, in which the principle of form becomes real and definite as the inward organization of the thing. This inward organization is the life, or what we call the soul, of the organism. Even the human soul is nothing but the organization of the body. It stands to the body in the relation of form to matter. With organism, then, we reach the idea of living soul. But this living soul will itself have lower and higher grades of being, the higher being a higher realization of the principle of form. As the essential of organism is self-realization, this will express itself first as self-preservation. Self-preservation means first the preservation of the individual, and this gives the function of nutrition. Secondly, it means preservation of the species, and this gives the function of propagation. The lowest grade in the organic kingdom will, therefore, be {297} those organisms whose sole functions are to nourish themselves, grow, and propagate their kind. These are plants. And we may sum up this by saying that plants possess the nutritive soul. Aristotle intended to write a treatise upon plants, which intention, however, he never carried out. All that we have from him on plants is scattered references in his other books. Had the promised treatise been forthcoming, we cannot doubt what its plan would have been. Aristotle would have shown, as he did in the case of animals, that there are higher and lower grades of organism within the plant kingdom, and he would have attempted to trace the development in detail through all the then known species of plants.

Next above plants in the scale of being come animals. Since the higher always contains the lower, but exhibits a further realization of form peculiar to itself, animals share with plants the functions of nutrition and propagation. What is peculiar to them, the point in which they rise above plants, is the possession of sensation. Sense-perception is therefore the special function of animals, and they possess, therefore, the nutritive and the sensitive souls. With sensation come pleasure and pain, for pleasure is a pleasant sensation, and pain the opposite. Hence arises the impulse to seek the pleasant and avoid the painful. This can only be achieved by the power of movement. Most animals, accordingly, have the power of locomotion, which is not possessed by plants, because they do not require it, since they are not sensitive to pleasure and pain. In his books upon animals Aristotle attempts to carry out the principle of development in detail, showing what are the higher, and what the lower, animal organisms. This he connects with the {298} methods of propagation employed by different animals. Sex-generation is the mark of a higher organism than parthenogenesis.

The scale of being proceeds from animals to man. The human organism, of course, contains the principles of all lower organisms. Man nourishes himself, grows, propagates his kind, moves about, and is endowed with sense-perception. But he must have in addition his own special function, which constitutes his advance beyond the animals. This is reason. Reason is the essential, the proper end and activity of man. His soul is nutritive, sensitive, and rational. In man, therefore, the world-reason which could only appear in inorganic matter as gravitation and levitation, in plants as nutrition, in animals as sensation, appears at last in its own proper form, as what it essentially is, reason. The world-reason, so long struggling towards the light, has reached it, has become actual, has become existent, in man. The world-process has attained its proximate end.

Within human consciousness there are lower and higher grades, and Aristotle has taken great pains to trace these from the bottom to the top. These stages of consciousness are what are ordinarily called "faculties." But Aristotle notes that it is nonsense to talk, as Plato did, of the "parts" of the soul. The soul, being a single indivisible being, has no parts. They are different aspects of the activity of one and the same being; different stages of its development. They can no more be separated than the convex and concave aspects of a curve. The lowest faculty, if we must use that word, is sense-perception. Now what we perceive in a thing is its qualities. Perception tells us that a piece of gold is {299} heavy, yellow, etc. The underlying substratum which supports the qualities cannot be perceived. This means that the matter is unknowable, the form knowable, for the qualities are part of the form. Sense-perception, therefore, takes place when the object stamps its form upon the soul. This is important for what it implies rather than what it states. It shows the thoroughly idealistic trend of Aristotle's thought. For if the form is what is knowable in a thing, the more form there is, the more knowable it will be. Absolute form, God, will be the absolutely knowable. That the Absolute is what alone is completely knowable, intelligible, and comprehensible, and the finite and material comparatively unknowable, is a point of view essential to idealism, and stands in marked contrast to the popular idea of rationalism that the Absolute is unknowable, and matter knowable. For idealism, the Absolute is reason, thought. What can be more thoroughly intelligible than reason? What can thought understand, if not thought? This, of course, is not stated by Aristotle. But it is implied in his theory of sense-perception.

Next in the scale above the senses comes the common sense. This has nothing to do with what we understand by that phrase in every-day language. It means the central sensation-ganglion in which isolated sensations meet, are combined, and form a unity of experience. We saw, in considering Plato, that the simplest kind of knowledge, such as, "this paper is white," involves, not only isolated sensations, but their comparison and contrast. Bare sensations would not even make objects. For every object is a combined bundle of sensations. What thus combines the various sensations, and in {300} particular those received from different sense-organs, what compares and contrasts them, and turns them from a blind medley of phantasms into a definite experience, a single cosmos, is the common sense. Its organ is the heart.

Above the common sense is the faculty of imagination. By this Aristotle means, not the creative imagination of the artist, but the power, which everyone possesses, of forming mental images and pictures. This is due to the excitation in the sense-organ continuing after the object has ceased to affect it.

The next faculty is memory. This is the same as imagination, except that there is combined with the image a recognition of it as a copy of a past sense-impression.

Recollection, again, is higher than memory. Memory images drift purposelessly through the mind. Recollection is the deliberate evoking of memory-images.

From recollection we pass to the specifically human faculty of reason. But reason itself has two grades. The lower is called passive reason, the higher active reason. The mind has the power of thought before it actually thinks. This latent capacity is passive reason. The mind is here like a smooth piece of wax which has the power to receive writing, but has not received it. The positive activity of thought itself is active reason. The comparison with wax must not mislead us into supposing that the soul only receives its impressions from sensation. It is pure thought which writes upon the wax.

Now the sum of the faculties in general we call the soul. And the soul, we saw, is simply the organization {301} or form, of the body. As form is inseparable from matter, the soul cannot exist without the body. It is the function of the body. It is to the body what sight is to the eye. And in the same sense Aristotle denies the doctrine of Pythagoras and Plato that the soul reincarnates itself in new bodies, particularly in the bodies of animals. What is the function of one thing cannot become the function of another. Exactly what the soul is to the body the music of the flute is to the flute itself. It is the form of which the flute is the matter. It is, to speak metaphorically, the soul of the flute. And you might as well talk, says Aristotle, of the art of flute-playing becoming reincarnate in the blacksmith's anvil, as of the soul passing into another body. This would seem also to preclude any doctrine of immortality. For the function perishes with the thing. We shall return to that point in a moment. But we may note, meanwhile, that Aristotle's theory of the soul is not only a great advance upon Plato's, but is a great advance upon popular thinking of the present day. The ordinary view of the soul, which was Plato's view, is that the soul is a sort of thing. No doubt it is non-material and supersensuous. But still it is a thing; it can be put into a body and taken out of it, as wine can be put into or taken out of a bottle. The connection between body and soul is thus purely mechanical. They are attached to each other by no necessary bond, but rather by force. They have, in their own natures, no connexion with each other, and it is difficult to see why the soul ever entered a body, if it is in its nature something quite separate. But Aristotle's view is that the soul, as form of the body, is not separable from it. You cannot have {302} a soul without a body. The connection between them is not mechanical, but organic. The soul is not a thing which comes into the body and goes out of it. It is not a thing at all. It is a function.

But to this doctrine Aristotle makes an exception in favour of the active reason. All the lower faculties perish with the body, including the passive reason. Active reason is imperishable and eternal. It has neither beginning nor end. It comes into the body from without, and departs from it at death. God being absolute reason, man's reason comes from God, and returns to him, after the body ceases to function. But before we hail this as a doctrine of personal immortality, we had best reflect. All the lower faculties perish at death, and this includes memory. Now memory is an essential of personality. Without memory our experiences would be a succession of isolated sensations, with no connecting link. What connects my last with my present experience is that my last experience was "mine." To be mine it must be remembered. Memory is the string upon which isolated experiences are strung together, and which makes them into that unity I call myself, my personality. If memory perishes, there can be no personal life. And it must be remembered that Aristotle does not mean merely that, in that future life--if we persist in calling it such--the memory of this life is obliterated. He means that in the future life itself reason has no memory of itself from moment to moment. We cannot be dogmatic about what Aristotle himself thought. He seems to avoid the question. He probably shrank from disturbing popular beliefs on the subject. We have, at any rate, no definite pronouncement from {303} him. All we can say is that his doctrine does not provide the material for belief in personal immortality. It expressly removes the material in that it denies the persistence of memory. Moreover, if Aristotle really thought that reason is a thing, which goes in and out of the body, an exception, in the literal sense, to his general doctrine of soul, all we can say is that he undergoes a sudden drop in the philosophic scale. Having propounded so advanced a theory, he sinks back to the crude view of Plato. And as this is not likely, the most probable explanation is that he is here speaking figuratively, perhaps with the intention of propitiating the religious and avoiding any rude disturbance of popular belief. If so, the statements that active reason is immortal, comes from God, and returns to God, mean simply that the world-reason is eternal, and that man's reason is the actualization of this eternal reason, and in that sense "comes from God" and returns to Him. We may add, too, that since God, though real, is not to be regarded as an existent individual, our return to Him cannot be thought as a continuation of individual existence. Personal immortality is inconsistent with the fundamentals of Aristotle's system. We ought not to suppose that he contradicted himself in this way. Yet if Aristotle used language which seems to imply personal immortality, this is neither meaningless nor dishonest. It is as true for him as for others that the soul is eternal. But eternal does not mean everlasting in time. It means timeless. And reason, even our reason, is timeless. The soul has eternity in it. It is "eternity in an hour." And it is this which puts the difference between man and the brutes.

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We have traced the scale of being from inorganic matter, through plants and animals, to man. What then? What is the next step? Or does the scale stop there? Now there is a sort of break in Aristotle's system at this point, which has led many to say that man is the top of the scale. The rest of Aristotle's physics deal with what is outside our earth, such as the stars and planets. And they deal with them quite as if they were a different subject, having little or nothing to do with the terrestrial scale of being which we have been considering. But here we must not forget two facts. The first is that Aristotle's writings have come down to us mutilated, and in many cases unfinished. The second is that Aristotle had a curious habit of writing separate monographs on different parts of his system, and omitting to point out any connexion between them, although such a connexion undoubtedly exists.

Now although Aristotle himself does not say it, there are several good reasons for thinking that the true interpretation of his meaning is that the scale of being does not stop at man, that there is no gap in the chain here, but that it proceeds from man through planets and stars--which Aristotle, like Plato, regarded as divine beings--right up to God himself. In the first place, this is required by the logic of his system. The scale has formless matter at the bottom and matterless form at the top. It should proceed direct from one to the other. It is essential to his philosophy that the universe is a single continuous chain. There is no place for such a hiatus between man and the higher beings. Secondly, it is not as if terrestrial life formed a scale, and celestial beings were all on a par, having among themselves no {305} scale of higher and lower. This is not the case. The heavenly bodies have grades among themselves. The higher are related to the lower as form to matter. Thus stars are higher than planets. So that if we suppose that evolution stops at man, what we have is a gap in the middle, a scale below it, and a scale above it. It is like a bridge over a sheet of water, the two ends of which are intact, but which is broken down in the middle. The natural completion of this scheme involves the filling up of the gap. Thirdly, we have another very important piece of evidence. With his valuable idea of evolution Aristotle combined another very curious, and no doubt, absurd, theory. This was that in the scale of the universe the lowest existence is to be found in the middle, the highest at the periphery, and that in general the higher is always outside the lower, so that the spatial universe is a system of concentric spheres, the outer sphere being related to the inner sphere as higher to lower, as form to matter. At the centre of the spherical universe is our earth. Earth, as the lowest element, is in the middle. Then comes a layer of water, then of air, then of fire. Among the heavenly bodies there are fifty-six spheres. The stars are outside the planets and are therefore higher beings. And in conformity with this scheme, the supreme being, God, is outside the outermost sphere. Now it is obvious that, in this scheme, the passage from the centre of the earth to the stars forms a spatial continuity, and it is impossible to resist the conclusion that it also forms a logical continuity, that is, that there is no break in the chain of evolution.

Noting that this is not what Aristotle in so many words says, but that it is our interpretation of his {306} intention, which is almost certainly correct, we conclude that man is not the top of the scale. Next to him come the heavenly bodies. The planets include the sun and the moon, which, revolve round the earth in a direction opposite to that of the stars. Next in the scale come the stars. We need not go into details of the fifty-six spheres. The stars and planets are divine beings. But this is only a comparative term. Man, as the possessor of reason, is also divine, but the heavenly bodies infinitely more so. And this means that they are more rational than man, and so higher in the scale. They live an absolutely blessed and perfect life. They are immortal and eternal, because they are the supreme self-realization of the eternal reason. It is only upon this earth that death and corruption occur, a circumstance which has no doubt emphasized that view of Aristotle's philosophy which holds the gap between man and the stars to be a real one. The heavenly bodies are not composed of the four elements, but of a fifth, a quintessence, which is called ether. Like all elements it must have its natural motion. And as it is the finest and most perfect, its motion must be perfect. And it must be an eternal motion, because the stars are eternal beings. It cannot be motion in a straight line, because that never comes to an end, and so is never perfect. Circular motion alone is perfect. And it is eternal because its end and its beginning are one. Hence the natural motion of ether is circular, and the stars move in perfect circles.

Leaving the stars behind, we reach the summit of the long ladder from matter to form. This is the absolute form, God. As formless matter is not an existent thing, nor is matterless form. God, therefore, is not in the {307} world of space and time at all. But it is one of the curiosities of thought that Aristotle nevertheless gives him a place outside the outermost sphere. What is outside the sphere is, therefore, not space. All space and time are inside this globular universe. Space is therefore finite. And God must be outside the outermost sphere because he is the highest being, and the higher always comes outside the lower.

We have now described the entire scale of evolution. Looking back upon it, we can see its inner significance. The Absolute is reason, matterless form. Everything in the world, therefore, is, in its essence, reason. If we wish to know the essential nature even of this clod of earth, the answer is that it is reason, although this view is not consistently developed by Aristotle, since he allows that matter is a separate principle which cannot be reduced to form. The whole universal process of things is nothing but the struggle of reason to express itself, to actualize itself, to become existent in the world. This it definitely does, for the first time proximately in man, and completely in the stars. It can only express itself in lower beings as sensation (animals), as nutrition (plants), or as gravitation and its opposite (inorganic matter).

The value of Aristotle's theory of evolution is immense. It is not the details that signify. The application of the principle in the world of matter and life could not be carried out satisfactorily in the then state of physical science. It could not be carried out with perfection even now. Omniscience alone could give finality to such a scheme. But it is the principle itself which matters. And that it is one of the most valuable conceptions in {308} philosophy will perhaps be more evident if we compare it, firstly, with modern scientific theories of evolution and secondly, with certain aspects of Hindu pantheism.

What has Aristotle in common with such a writer a Herbert Spencer? According to Spencer, evolution is a movement from the indefinite, incoherent, and homogeneous, to the definite, coherent, and heterogeneous. Aristotle has all this, though his words are different. He calls it a movement from matter to form. Form he describes as whatever gives definiteness to a thing. Matter is the indefinite substrate, form gives it definiteness. Hence for him too the higher being is more definite because it has more form. That matter is the homogeneous, form the heterogeneous, follows from this. We saw that there are in matter itself no differences, because there are no qualities. And this is the same as saying it is homogeneous. Heterogeneity, that is, differentiation, is introduced by form. Coherence is the same thing as organization. Aristotle has himself defined the form of a thing as its organization. For him, as for Spencer, the higher being is simply that which is more organized. Every theory of evolution depends fundamentally upon the idea of organism. Aristotle invented the idea and the word. Spencer carried it no further, though the more advanced physical knowledge of his day enabled him to illustrate it more copiously.

But of course the great difference between Aristotle and the moderns, is that the former did not guess, what the latter have discovered, namely that evolution is not only a logical development, but is a fact in time. Aristotle knew what was meant by the higher and lower organism as well as Darwin, but he did not know, that the latter {309} actually turns into the former in the course of years. But this, though the most obvious, is not really the most important difference between Spencer and Aristotle. The real difference is that Aristotle penetrated far more deeply into the philosophy of evolution than modern science does; that, in fact, modern science has no philosophy of evolution at all. For the fundamental problem here is, if we speak of higher and lower beings, what rational ground have we for calling them higher and lower? That the lower passes in time into the higher is no doubt a very interesting fact to discover, but it dwindles into insignificance beside the problem just indicated, because, on the solution of that problem it depends whether the universe is to be regarded as futile, meaningless, and irrational, or whether we are to see in it order, plan, and purpose. Is Spencer's doctrine a theory of development at all? Or is it not rather simply a theory of change? Something resembling an ape becomes a man. Is there development here, that is, is it a movement from something really lower to something really higher? Or is it merely change from one indifferent thing to another? Is there improvement, or only difference? In the latter case, it makes not the slightest difference whether the ape becomes man, or man becomes an ape. The one is as good as the other. In either case, it is merely a change from Tweedledum to Tweedledee. The change is meaningless, and has no significance.

The modern doctrine of evolution can only render the world more intelligible, can only develop into a philosophy of evolution, by showing that there is evolution and not merely change, and this it can only do by {310} giving a rational basis for the belief that some forms of existence are higher than others. To put the matter bluntly, why is a man higher than a horse, or a horse than a sponge? Answer that, and you have a philosophy of evolution. Fail to answer it, and you have none. Now the man in the street will say that man is higher than the horse, because he not merely eats grass, but thinks, deliberates, possesses art, science, religion, morality. Ask him why these things are higher than eating grass, and he has no answer. From him, then, we turn to Spencer, and there we find a sort of answer. Man is higher because he is more organized. But why is it better to be more organized? Science, as such, has no answer. If pressed in this way, science may of course turn round and say: "there is in the reality of things no higher and no lower; what I mean by higher and lower is simply more and less organized; higher and lower are mere metaphors; they are the human way of looking at things; we naturally call higher what is nearest ourselves; but from the absolute point of view there is no higher and lower." But this is to reduce the universe to a madhouse. It means that there is no purpose, no reason, in anything that happens. The universe, in this case, is irrational. No explanation of it is possible. Philosophy is futile, and not only philosophy, but morality and everything else. If there is really no higher and lower, there is no better and no worse. It is just as good to be a murderer as to be a saint. Evil is the same as good. Instead of striving to be saints, statesmen, philosophers, we may as well go and play marbles, because all these values of higher and lower are mere delusions, "the human way of looking at things."

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Spencer then has no answer to the question why it is better to be more organized. So we turn at last to Aristotle. He has an answer. He sees that it is meaningless to talk of development, advance, higher and lower, except in relation to an end. There is no such thing as advance unless it is an advance towards something. A body moving purposelessly in a straight line through infinite space does not advance. It might as well be here as a mile hence. In either case it is no nearer to anything. But if it is moving towards a definite point, we can call this advance. Every mile it moves it gets nearer to its end. So, if we are to have a philosophy of evolution, it must be teleological. If nature is not advancing towards an end, there is no nearer and further, no higher and lower, no development. What then is the end? It is the actualization of reason, says Aristotle. The primal being is eternal reason, but this is not existent. It must come to exist. It first enunciates itself vaguely as gravitation. But this is far off from its end, which is the existence of reason, as such, in the world. It comes nearer in plants and animals. It is proximately reached in man, for man is the existent reason. But there is no question of the universe coming to a stop, when it reaches its end--(the usual objection to teleology). For the absolute end, absolute form, can never be reached. The higher is thus the more rational, the lower the less rational. Now if we try to go on asking, "why is it better to be more rational?" we find we cannot ask such a question. The word "why" means that we want a reason. And our question is absurd because we are asking a reason for reason. Why is it better to be rational means simply, "how is reason rational." To {312} doubt it is a self-contradiction. Or, to put the same thing in another way, reason is the Absolute. And to ask why it is better to be rational is to demand that the ultimate should be expressed in terms of something beyond it. Hence modern science has no philosophy of evolution, whereas Aristotle has. [Footnote 16]

The main idea of pantheism is that everything is God. The clod of earth is divine because it is a manifestation of Deity. Now this idea is all very well, and is in fact essential to philosophy. We find it in Aristotle himself, since the entire world is, for him, the actualization of reason, and reason is God. But this is also a very dangerous idea, if not supplemented by a rationally grounded scale of values. No doubt everything is, in a sense, God. But if we leave it at this, it would follow that, since everything is equally divine, there is no higher and lower. If the clod of earth, like the saintliest man, is God, and there is no more to say of the matter, then how is the saint higher than the clod of earth? Why should one ever struggle towards higher things, when in reality all are equally high? Why avoid evil, when evil is as much a manifestation of God as good? Mere pantheism must necessarily end in this calamitous view. And these deplorable effects explain the fact that Hinduism, with all its high thinking, finds room for the worship of cows and snakes, and, with all its undoubted moral elevation, yet allows into its fold the grossest abominations. Both these features are due to the pantheistic placing of all things on a par as equally {313} divine. Not of course that Hinduism has not a sort of doctrine of evolution, a belief in a higher and lower. As everyone knows, it admits the belief that in successive incarnations the soul may mount higher and higher till it perhaps rejoins the common source of all things. There is probably no race of man so savage that it does not instinctively feel that there is a higher and lower, a better and worse, in things. But the point is that, although Hinduism has its scale of values, and its doctrine of development, it has no rational foundation for these, and though it has the idea of higher and lower, yet, because this is without foundation, it lets it slip, it never grips the idea, and so easily slides into the view that all is equally divine. The thought that all is God, and the thought that there are higher and lower beings, are, on the surface, opposed and inconsistent theories. Yet both are necessary, and it is the business of philosophy to find a reconciliation. This Aristotle does, but Hinduism fails to do. It asserts both, but fails to bring them to unity. Now it asserts one view, and again at another time it asserts the other. And this, of course, is connected with the general defect of oriental thinking, its vagueness. Everything is seen, but seen in a haze, in which all things appear one, in which shapes flow into another, in which nothing has an outline, in which even vital distinctions are obliterated. Hence it is that, though oriental thought contains, in one way or another, practically all philosophical ideas, it grips none, and can hold nothing fast. It seizes its object, but its flabby grasp relaxes and slips off. Hinduism, like modern science, has its doctrine of evolution. But it has no philosophy of evolution.

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5. Ethics.

(a) The Individual.

A strong note of practical moderation pervades the ethics of Aristotle. While Plato's ethical teaching transcended the ordinary limits of human life, and so lost itself in ideal Utopias, Aristotle, on the other hand, sits down to make practical suggestions: He wishes to enquire what the good is, but by this he means, not some ideal good impossible of attainment upon this earth, but rather that good which, in all the circumstances in which men find themselves, ought to be realizable. The ethical theories of Plato and Aristotle are thus characteristic of the two men. Plato despised the world of sense, and sought to soar altogether beyond the common life of the senses. Aristotle, with his love of facts and of the concrete, keeps close within the bounds of actual human experience.

The first question for ethics is the nature of the summum bonum. We desire one thing for the sake of a second, we desire that for the sake of a third. But if this series of means and ends goes on ad infinitum, then all desire and all action are futile and purposeless. There must be some one thing which we desire, not for the sake of anything else, but on its own account. What is this end in itself, this summum bonum, at which all human activity ultimately aims. Everybody, says Aristotle, is agreed about the name of this end. It is happiness. What all men seek, what is the motive of all their actions, that which they desire for the sake of itself and nothing beyond, is happiness. But though all agree as to the name, beyond that there is no agreement. Philosophers, {315} no less than the vulgar, differ as to what this word happiness means. Some say it is a life of pleasure. Others say it consists in the renunciation of pleasures. Some recommend one life, some another.

We must repeat here the warning which was found necessary in the case of Plato, who also called the summum bonum happiness. Aristotle's doctrine is no more to be confused with modern utilitarianism than is Plato's. Moral activity is usually accompanied by a subjective feeling of enjoyment. In modern times the word happiness connotes the feeling of enjoyment. But for the Greeks it was the moral activity which the word signified. For Aristotle an action is not good because it yields enjoyment. On the contrary, it yields enjoyment because it is good. The utilitarian doctrine is that the enjoyment is the ground of the moral value. But, for Aristotle, the enjoyment is the consequence of the moral value. Hence when he tells us that the highest good is happiness, he is giving us no information regarding its nature, but merely applying a new name to it. We have still to enquire what the nature of the good is. As he himself says, everyone agrees upon the name, but the real question is what this name connotes.

Aristotle's solution of this problem follows from the general principles of his philosophy. We have seen that, throughout nature, every being has its proper end, and the attainment of this end is its special function. Hence the good for each being must be the adequate performance of its special function. The good for man will not consist in the pleasure of the senses. Sensation is the special function of animals, but not of man. Man's special function is reason. Hence the proper {316} activity of reason is the summum bonum, the good for man. Morality consists in the life of reason. But what precisely that means we have still to see.

Man is not only a reasoning animal. As the higher being, he contains within himself the faculties of the lower beings also. Like plants he is appetitive, like animals, sensitive. The passions and appetites are an organic part of his nature. Hence virtue will be of two kinds. The highest virtues will be found in the life of reason, and the life of thought, philosophy. These intellectual virtues are called by Aristotle dianoetic. Secondly, the ethical virtues proper will consist in the submission of the passions and appetites to the control of reason. The dianoetic virtues are the higher, because in them man's special function alone is in operation, and also because the thinking man most resembles God, whose life is a life of pure thought.

Happiness, therefore, consists in the combination of dianoetic and ethical virtues. They alone are of absolute value to man. Yet, though he places happiness in virtue, Aristotle, in his broad and practical way, does not overlook the fact that external goods and circumstances have a profound influence upon happiness, and cannot be ignored, as the Cynics attempted to ignore them. Not that Aristotle regards externals as having any value in themselves. What alone is good in itself, is an end in itself, is virtue. But external goods help a man in his quest of virtue. Poverty, sickness, and misfortune, on the other hand, hinder his efforts. Therefore, though externals are not goods in themselves, they may be a means towards the good. Hence they are not to be despised and rejected. Riches, friends, health, {317} good fortune, are not happiness. But they are negative conditions of it. With them happiness is within our grasp. Without them its attainment is difficult. They will be valued accordingly.

Aristotle says little in detail of the dianoetic virtues. And we may turn at once to the main subject of his moral system, the ethical virtues. These consist in the governance of the passions by reason. Socrates was wrong in supposing that virtue is purely intellectual, that nothing save knowledge is needed for it, and that if a man thinks right he must needs do right. He forgot the existence of the passions, which are not easily controlled. A man may reason perfectly, his reason may point him to the right path, but his passions may get the upper hand and lead him out of it. How then is reason to gain control over the appetites? Only by practice. It is only by continual effort, by the constant exercise of self-control, that the unruly passions can be tamed. Once brought under the yoke, their control becomes habit. Aristotle lays the utmost emphasis on the importance of habit in morality. It is only by cultivating good habits that a man becomes good.

Now if virtue consists in the control of the appetites by reason, it thus contains two constituents, reason and appetite. Both must be present. There must be passions, if they are to be controlled. Hence the ascetic ideal of rooting out the passions altogether is fundamentally wrong. It overlooks the fact that the higher form does not exclude the lower--that were contrary to the conception of evolution--it includes and transcends it. It forgets that the passions are an organic part of man, and that to destroy them is to do injury to his {318} nature by destroying one of its essential members. The passions and appetites are, in fact, the matter of virtue, reason its form, and the mistake of asceticism is that it destroys the matter of virtue, and supposes that the form can subsist by itself. Virtue means that the appetites must be brought under control, not that they must be eradicated. Hence there are two extremes to be avoided. It is extreme, on the one hand, to attempt to uproot the passions; and it is extreme, on the other, to allow them to run riot. Virtue means moderation. It consists in hitting the happy mean as regards the passions, in not allowing them to get the upper hand of reason, and yet in not being quite passionless and apathetic. From this follows the famous Aristotelian doctrine of virtue as the mean between two extremes. Every virtue lies between two vices, which are the excess and defect of appetite respectively.

What is the criterion here? Who is to judge? How are we to know what is the proper mean in any matter? Mathematical analogies will not help us. It is not a case of drawing a straight line from one extreme to the other, and finding the middle point by bisection. And Aristotle refuses to lay down any rule of thumb in the matter. There is no golden rule by virtue of which we can tell where the proper mean is. It all depends on circumstances, and on the person involved. What is the proper mean in one case is not the proper mean in another. What is moderate for one man is immoderate for his neighbour. Hence the matter must be left to the good judgment of the individual. A sort of fine tact, good sense, is required to know the mean, which Aristotle calls "insight." This insight is both the cause and the {319} effect of virtue. It is the cause, because he who has it knows what he ought to do. It is the effect, because it is only developed by practice. Virtue renders virtue easy. Each time a man, by use of his insight, rightly decides upon the mean, it becomes easier for him to discriminate next time.

Aristotle attempts no systematic classification of the virtues, as Plato had done. This sort of schematism is contrary to the practical character of his thought. He sees that life is far too complex to be treated in this way. The proper mean is different in every different case, and therefore there are as many virtues as there are circumstances in life. His list of virtues, therefore, is not intended to be exhaustive. It is merely illustrative. Though the number of virtues is infinite, there are certain well-recognized kinds of good action, which are of such constant importance in life that they have received names. By the example of some of these virtues Aristotle illustrates his doctrine of the mean. For instance, courage is the mean between cowardice and rashness. That is to say, cowardice is the defect of boldness, rashness the excess, courage the reasonable medium. Munificence is the mean between pettiness and vulgar profusion, good temper between spiritlessness and irascibility, politeness between rudeness and obsequiousness, modesty between shamelessness and bashfulness, temperance between insensibility and intemperance.

Justice hardly comes into the scheme; it is rather a virtue of the State than of the individual, and it has been thought by some that the book devoted to it in the "Ethics" has been misplaced. Justice is of two kinds, distributive and corrective. Its fundamental idea {320} is the assignment of advantages and disadvantages according to merit. Distributive justice assigns honours and rewards according to the worth of the individuals involved. Corrective justice has to do with punishment. If a man improperly obtains an advantage, things must be equalized by the imposition on him of a corresponding disadvantage. Justice, however, is a general principle, and no general principle is equal to the complexity of life. Special cases cannot be foreseen, The necessary adjustment of human relations arising from this cause is equity.

Aristotle is a pronounced supporter of the freedom of the will. He censures Socrates because the latter's theory of virtue practically amounts to a denial of freedom. According to Socrates, whoever thinks right must necessarily do right. But this is equivalent to denying a man's power to choose evil. And if he cannot choose evil, he cannot choose good. For the right-thinking man does not do right voluntarily, but necessarily. Aristotle believed, on the contrary, that man has the choice of good and evil. The doctrine of Socrates makes all actions involuntary. But in Aristotle's opinion only actions performed under forcible compulsion are involuntary. Aristotle did not, however, consider the special difficulties in the theory of free will which in modern times have made it one of the most thorny of all philosophical problems. Hence his treatment of the subject is not of great value to us.

(b) The State.

Politics is not a separate subject from Ethics. It is merely another division of the same subject. And {321} this, not merely because politics is the ethics of the State as against the individual, but because the morality of the individual really finds its end in the State, and is impossible without it. Aristotle agrees with Plato that the object of the State is the virtue and happiness of the citizens, which are impossible except in the State. For man is a political animal by nature, as is proved by his possession of speech, which would be useless to any save a social being. And the phrase "by nature" means the same here as elsewhere in Aristotle. It means that the State is the end of the individual, and that activity in the State is part of man's essential function. The State, in fact, is the form, the individual, the matter. The State provides both an education in virtue and the necessary opportunities for its exercise. Without it man would not be man at all. He would be a savage animal.

The historical origin of the State Aristotle finds in the family. At first there is the individual. The individual gets himself a mate, and the family arises. The family, in Aristotle's opinion, includes the slaves: for, like Plato, he sees no wrong in the institution of slavery. A number of families, joining together, develop into a village community, and a number of village communities into a polis (city), or State. Beyond the city, of course, the Greek idea of the State did not extend.

Such then is the historical origin of the State. But it is of capital importance to understand that, in Aristotle's opinion, this question of historical origin has nothing on earth to do with the far more important question what the State essentially is. It is no mere mechanical aggregate of families and village communities, {322} The nature of the State is not explained in this way. For though the family is prior to the State in order of time, the State is prior to the family and to the individual in order of thought, and in reality. For the State is the end, and the end is always prior to that of which it is the end. The state as form is prior to the family as matter, and in the same way the family is prior to the individual. And as the explanation of things is only possible by teleology, it is the end which explains the beginning, it is the State which explains the family, and not vice versa.

The true nature of the State, therefore, is not that it is a mechanical sum of individuals, as a heap of sand is the sum of its grains. The State is a real organism, and the connexion of part to part is not mechanical, but organic. The State has a life of its own. And its members also have their own lives, which are included in the higher life of the State. All the parts of an organism are themselves organisms. And as the distinction between organic and inorganic is that the former has its end in itself, while the latter has its end external to it, this means that the State is an end in itself, that the individual is an end in himself, and that the former end includes the latter. Or we may express the same thought otherwise by saying that, in the State, both the whole and the parts are to be regarded as real, both having their own lives and, in their character as ends, their own rights. Consequently, there are two kinds of views of the nature of the State, which are, according to Aristotle, fundamentally erroneous. The first is the kind of view which depends upon asserting the reality of the parts, but denying the reality of the whole, or, what is the same {323} thing, allowing that the individual is an end in himself, but denying that the State as a whole is such an end or has a separate life of its own. The second kind of false view is of the opposite kind, and consists in allowing reality only to the whole State, and denying the reality of its parts, the individuals. The opinions that the State is merely a mechanical aggregate of individuals, that it is formed by the combination of individuals or families for the sake of mutual protection and benefit, and that it exists only for these purposes, are examples of the first kind. Such views subordinate the State to the individual. The State is treated as an external contrivance for securing the life, the property, or the convenience of the individual. The State exists solely for the sake of the individual, and is not in itself an end. The individual alone is real, the State unreal, because it is only a collection of individuals. These views forget that the State is an organism, and they forget all that this implies. Aristotle would have condemned, on these grounds, the social contract theory so popular in the eighteenth century, and likewise the view of modern individualism that the State exists solely to ensure that the liberty of the individual is curtailed only by the right of other individuals to the same liberty. The opposite kind of false view is illustrated by the ideal State of Plato. As the views we have just discussed deny the reality of the whole, Plato's view, on the contrary, denies the reality of the parts. For him the individual is nothing, the State everything. The individual is absolutely sacrificed to the State. He exists only for the State, and thus Plato makes the mistake of setting up the State as sole end and denying that the {324} individual is an end in himself. Plato imagined that the State is a homogeneous unity, in which its parts totally disappear. But the true view is that the State, as an organism, is a unity which contains heterogeneity. It is coherent, yet heterogeneous. And Plato makes the same mistake in his view of the family as in his view of the individual. The family, Aristotle thinks, is, like the individual, a real part of the social whole. It is an organism within an organism. As such, it is an end in itself, has absolute rights, and cannot be obliterated. But Plato expressly proposed to abolish the family in favour of the State, and by suggesting community of wives and the education of children in State nurseries from the year of their birth, struck a deadly blow at an essential part of the State organization. Aristotle thus supports the institution of family, not on sentimental, but upon philosophic grounds.

Aristotle gives no exhaustive classification of different kinds of State, because forms of government may be as various as the circumstances which give rise to them. His classification is intended to include only outstanding types. He finds that there are six such types, of which three are good. The other three are bad, because they are corruptions of the good types. These are (1) Monarchy, the rule of one man by virtue of his being so superior in wisdom to all his fellows that he naturally rules them. The corruption of Monarchy is (2) Tyranny, the rule of one man founded not on wisdom and capacity, but upon force. The second good form is (3) Aristocracy, the rule of the wiser and better few, of which the corrupt form is (4) Oligarchy, the rule of the rich and powerful few. (5) Constitutional Republic or Timocracy arises {325} where all the citizens are of fairly equal capacity, i.e., where no stand-out individual or class exists, so that all or most take a share in the government. The corresponding corrupt form is (6) Democracy, which, though it is the rule of the many, is more especially characterized as being the rule of the poor.

Unlike Plato, Aristotle depicts no ideal State. No single State, he thinks, is in itself the best. Everything must depend upon the circumstances. What is the best State in one age and county will not be the best in another. Moreover, it is useless to discuss Utopian constitutions. What alone interests the sane and balanced mind of Aristotle is the kind of constitution which we may hope actually to realize. Of the three good forms of government he considers that monarchy is theoretically the best. The rule of a single perfectly wise and just man would be better than any other. But it has to be given up as impracticable, because such perfect individuals do not exist. And it is only among primitive peoples that we find the hero, the man whose moral stature so completely exalts him above his fellows that he rules as a matter of course. The next best State is aristocracy. And last, in Aristotle's opinion, comes constitutional republic, which is, however, perhaps the State best suited to the special needs and level of development of the Greek city-states.

6. Aesthetics, or the Theory of Art.

Plato had no systematic philosophy of Art, and his views had to be collected from scattered references. Aristotle likewise has scarcely a system, though his opinions are more connected, and though he devoted a special tretise, the "Poetics", to the subject. And this {326} book, which has come down to us in a fragmentary condition, deals exclusively with poetry, and even in poetry only the drama is considered in detail. What we have from Aristotle on the subject of aesthetics may be divided roughly into two classes, firstly, reflections on the nature and significance of art in general, and, secondly, a more detailed application of these principles to the art of poetry. We shall deal with these two classes of opinions in that order.

In order to know what art is, we must first know what it is not. It must be distinguished from kindred activities. And firstly, it is distinguished from morality in that morality is concerned with action, art with production. Morality consists in the activity itself, art in that which the activity produces. Hence the state of mind of the actor, his motives, feelings, etc., are important in morality, for they are part of the act itself. But they are not important in art, the only essential being that the work of art should turn out well, however it has been produced. Secondly, art is distinguished from the activity of nature, which it in many respects resembles. Organic beings reproduce their own kind, and, in the fact that it is concerned with production, generation resembles art. But in generation, the living being produces only itself. The plant produces a plant, man begets man. But the artist produces something quite other than himself, a poem, a picture, a statue.

Art is of two kinds, according as it aims at completing the work of nature, or at creating something new, an imaginary world of its own which is a copy of the real world. In the former case, we get such arts as that of {327} medicine. Where nature has failed to produce a healthy body, the physician helps nature out, and completes the work that she has begun. In the latter case, we get what are, in modern times, called the fine arts. These Aristotle calls the imitative arts. We saw that Plato regarded all art as imitative, and that such a view is essentially unsatisfactory. Now Aristotle uses the same word, which he perhaps borrowed from Plato, but his meaning is not the same as Plato's, nor does he fall into the same mistakes. That in calling art imitative he has not in mind the thought that it has for its aim merely the faithful copying of natural objects is proved by the fact that he mentions music as the most imitative of the arts, whereas music is, in fact, in this sense, the least imitative of all. The painter may conceivably be regarded as imitating trees, rivers, or men, but the musician for the most part produces what is unlike anything in nature. What Aristotle means is that the artist copies, not the sensuous object, but what Plato would call the Idea. Art is thus not, in Plato's contemptuous phrase, a copy of a copy. It is a copy of the original. Its object is not this or that particular thing, but the universal which manifests itself in the particular. Art idealizes nature, that is, sees the Idea in it. It regards the individual thing, not as an individual, but in its universal aspects, as the fleeting embodiment of an eternal thought. Hence it is that the sculptor depicts not the individual man, but rather the type-man, the perfection of his kind. Hence too, in modern times, the portrait painter is not concerned to paint a faithful image of his model, but takes the model merely as a suggestion, and seizes upon that essential and eternal {328} essence, that ideal thought, or universal, which he sees shining through the sensuous materials in which it is imprisoned. His task is to free it from this imprisonment. The common man sees only the particular object. The artist sees the universal in the particular. Every individual thing is a compound of matter and form, of particular and universal. The function of art is to exhibit the universal in it.

Hence poetry is truer, more philosophical, than history. For history deals only with the particular as the particular. It tells us only of the fact, of what has happened. Its truth is mere correctness, accuracy. It has not in it, as art has, the living and eternal truth. It does not deal with the Idea. It yields us only the knowledge of something that, having happened, having gone by, is finished. Its object is transient and perishable. It concerns only the endless iteration of meaningless events. But the object of art is that inner essence of objects and events, which perishes not, and of which the objects and events are the mere external drapery. If therefore we would arrange philosophy, art, and history, in order of their essential nobility and truth, we should place philosophy first, because its object is the universal as it is in itself, the pure universal. We should place art second, because its object is the universal in the particular, and history last, because it deals only with the particular as such. Yet because each thing in the world has its own proper function, and errs if it seeks to perform the functions of something else, hence, in Aristotle's opinion, art must not attempt to emulate philosophy. It must not deal with the abstract universal. The poet must not use his verses as a vehicle of abstract thought. His proper {329} sphere is the universal as it manifests itself in the particular, not the universal as it is in itself. Aristotle, for this reason, censures didactic poetry. Such a poem as that of Empedocles, who unfolded his philosophical system in metre, is not, in fact, poetry at all. It is versified philosophy. Art is thus lower than philosophy. The absolute reality, the inner essence of the world, is thought, reason, the universal. To contemplate this reality is the object alike of philosophy and of art. But art sees the Absolute not in its final truth, but wrapped up in a sensuous drapery. Philosophy sees the Absolute as it is in itself, in its own nature, in its full truth; it sees it as what it essentially is, thought. Philosophy, therefore, is the perfect truth. But this does not mean that art is to be superseded and done away with. Because philosophy is higher than art, it does not follow that a man should suppress the artist in himself in order to rise to philosophy. For an essential thought of the Aristotelian philosophy is that, in the scale of beings, even the lower form is an end in itself, and has absolute rights. The higher activities presuppose the lower, and rest upon them. The higher includes the lower, and the lower, as an organic part of its being, cannot be eradicated without injury to the whole. To suppress art in favour of philosophy would be a mistake precisely parallel to the moral error of asceticism. In treating of Aristotle's ethics we saw that, although the activity of reason is held in highest esteem, the attempt to uproot the passions was censured as erroneous. So here, though philosophy is the crown of man's spiritual activity, art has its rights, and is an absolute end in itself, a point which Plato failed to see. In the human organism, the head is the {330} chief of the members. But one does not cut off the hand because it is not the head.

Coming now to Aristotle's special treatment of the art of poetry, we may note that he concentrates his attention almost exclusively upon the drama. It does not matter whether the plot of a drama is historical or fictitious. For the object of art, the exhibition of the universal, is just as well attained in an imaginary as in a real series of events. Its aim is not correctness, but truth, not facts, but the Idea. Drama is of two kinds, tragedy and comedy. Tragedy exhibits the nobler specimens of humanity, comedy the worse. This remark should be carefully understood. It does not mean that the hero of a tragedy is necessarily a good man in the ordinary sense. He may even be a wicked man. But the point is that, in some sense, he must be a great personality. He cannot be an insignificant person. He cannot be a nonentity. Be he good or bad, he must be conceived in the grand manner. Milton's Satan is not good, but he is great, and would be a fit subject for a tragedy. The soundness of Aristotle's thought here is very noteworthy. What is mean and sordid can never form the basis of tragedy. Modern newspapers have done their best to debauch this word tragedy. Some wretched noteless human being is crushed to death by a train, and the newspapers head their paragraph "Fearful Tragedy at Peckham Rye." Now such an incident may be sad, it may be dreadful, it may be horrible, but it is not tragic. Tragedy no doubt deals with suffering. But there is nothing great and ennobling about this suffering, and tragedy is concerned with the sufferings of greatness. In the same way, Aristotle does not mean that the comic {331} hero is necessarily a wicked man, but that he is, on the whole, a poor creature, an insignificant being. He may be very worthy, but there is something low and ignoble about him which makes us laugh.

Tragedy brings about a purification of the soul through pity and terror. Mean, sordid, or dreadful things do not ennoble us. But the representation of truly great and tragic sufferings arouses in the beholder pity and terror which purge his spirit, and render it serene and pure. This is the thought of a great and penetrating critic. The theory of certain scholars, based upon etymological grounds, that it means that the soul is purged, not through, but of pity and terror, that by means of a diarrhoea of these unpleasant emotions we get rid of them and are left happy, is the thought of men whose scholarship may be great, but whose understanding of art is limited. Such a theory would reduce Aristotle's great and illuminating criticism to the meaningless babble of a philistine.

7. Critical Estimate of Aristotle's Philosophy.

It is not necessary to spend so much time upon criticising Aristotle as we spent upon doing the same for Plato, and that for two reasons. In the first place, Plato with his obvious greatness abounded in defects which had to be pointed out, whereas we have but little adverse criticism for Aristotle. Secondly, Aristotle's main defect is a dualism almost identical with that of Plato, and what has been said of the one need only be shortly applied to the other.

At bottom Aristotle's philosophy is the same as Plato's, with some of the main defects and crudities removed. Plato was the founder of the philosophy of the Idea. {332} But in his hands, idealism was clogged with unessentials, and overgrown with excrescences. His crude theory of the soul as a thing mechanically forced in and out of the body, his doctrines of reincarnation and recollection, the belief that this thing the soul can travel to some place far away where it will see those things the Ideas, and above all, what is the root of all these, the confusion between reality and existence, with its consequent degradation of the universal to a mere particular--these were the unessentials with which Plato connected his essential idealism. To take the pure theory of Ideas--albeit not under that name--to purge it of these encumbrances and to cast them upon the rubbish heap, to cleanse Plato's gold of its dross, this was the task of Aristotle. Thought, the universal, the Idea, form--call it what you will--this is the ultimate reality, the foundation of the world, the absolute prius of all things. So thought both Plato and Aristotle. But whereas Plato began to draw mental pictures of the universal, to imagine that it existed apart in a world of its own, and so might be experienced by the vision of the wandering soul, Aristotle saw that this was to treat thought as if it were a thing, to turn it into a mere particular again. He saw that the universal, though it is the real, has no existence in a world of its own, but only in this world, only as a formative principle of particular things. This is the key-note of his philosophy. Aristotle registers, therefore, an enormous advance upon Plato. His system is the perfected and completed Greek idealism. It is the highest point reached in the philosophy of Greece. The flower of all previous thought, the essence and pure distillation of the Greek philosophic spirit, the gathering {333} up of all that is good in his predecessors and the rejection of all that is faulty and worthless--such is the philosophy of Aristotle. It was not possible for the Greek spirit to advance further. Further development could be only decay. And so, in fact, it turned out to be.

Aristotle deserves, too, the credit of having produced the only philosophy of evolution which the world has ever seen, with the exception of that of Hegel; and Hegel was enabled to found a newer theory of evolution only by following largely in the footsteps of Aristotle. This was perhaps Aristotle's most original contribution to thought. Yet the factors of the problem, though not its solution, he took from his predecessors. The problem of becoming had tortured Greek thought from the earliest ages. The philosophy of Heracleitus, in which it was most prominent, had failed to solve it. Heracleitus and his successors racked their brains to discover how becoming could be possible. But even if they had solved this minor problem, the greater question still remained in the background, what does this becoming mean? Becoming for them was only meaningless change. It was not development. The world-process was an endless stream of futile and purposeless events, "a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Aristotle not merely asked himself how becoming is possible. He showed that becoming has a meaning, that it signifies something, that the world-process is a rationally ordered development towards a rational end.

But, though Aristotle's philosophy is the highest presentation of the truth in ancient times, it cannot be accepted as anything final and faultless. Doubtless no philosophy can ever attain to finality. Let us apply our {334} two-fold test. Does his principle explain the world, and does it explain itself? First, does it explain the world? The cause of Plato's failure here was the dualism in his system between sense and thought, between matter and the Ideas. It was impossible to derive the world from the Ideas, because they were absolutely separated from the world. The gulf was so great that it could never be bridged. Matter and Idea lay apart, and could never be brought together. Now Aristotle saw this dualism in Plato, and attempted to surmount it. The universal and the particular, he said, do not thus lie apart, in different worlds. The Idea is not a thing here, and matter a thing there, so that these two incommensurables have to be somehow mechanically and violently forced together to form a world. Universal and particular, matter and form, are inseparable. The connexion between them is not mechanical, but organic. The dualism of Plato is thus admitted and refuted. But is it really surmounted? The answer must be in the negative. It is not enough by a tour de force to bring matter and form together, to assert that they are inseparable, while they remain all the time, in principle, separate entities. If the Absolute is form, matter ought to be deduced from form, shown to be merely a projection and manifestation of it. It must be shown that form not only moulds matter but produces it. If we assert that the one primal reality is form, then clearly we must prove that all else in the world, including matter, arises out of that prime being. Either matter arises out of form or it does not. If it does, this arising must be exhibited. If it does not, then form is not the sole ultimate reality, for matter is equally an ultimate, underivative, {335} primordial substance. In that case, we thus have two equally real ultimate beings, each underived from the other, existing side by side from all eternity. This is dualism, and this is the defect of Aristotle. Not only does he not derive matter from form, but he obviously sees no necessity for doing so. He would probably have protested against any attempt to do so, for, when he identifies the formal, final, and efficient causes with each other, leaving out the material cause, this is equivalent to an assertion that matter cannot be reduced to form. Thus his dualism is deliberate and persistent. The world, says Aristotle, is composed of matter and form. Where does this matter come from? As it does not, in his system, arise out of form, we can only conclude that its being is wholly in itself, i.e., that it is a substance, an absolute reality. And this is utterly inconsistent with Aristotle's assertion that it is in itself nothing but a mere potentiality. Thus, in the last resort, this dualism of sense and thought, of matter and Idea, of unlimited and limiting, which runs, "the little rift within the lute," through all Greek philosophy, is not resolved. The world is not explained, because it is not derived from a single principle. If form be the Absolute, the whole world must flow out of it. In Aristotle's system, it does not.