Chapter XII

THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ATHENS (continued).

THE SOCRATIC SCHOOL (continued).

ARISTOTLE.

Aristotle was born at Stagira, a Greek colony of Thrace, B.C. 384. His father, Nicomachus, was a physician in the Court of Amyntas II., King of Macedonia, and is reported to have written several works on Medicine and Natural History. From his father, Aristotle seems to have inherited a love for the natural sciences, which was fostered by the circumstances which surrounded him in early life, and which exerted a determining influence upon the studies of his riper years.

Impelled by an insatiate desire for knowledge, he, at seventeen years of age, repaired to Athens, the city of Plato and the university of the world. Plato was then absent in Sicily; on his return Aristotle entered his school, became an ardent student of philosophy, and remained until the death of Plato, B.C. 348. He therefore listened to the instructions of Plato for twenty years.

The mental characteristics of the pupil and the teacher were strikingly dissimilar. Plato was poetic, ideal, and in some degree mystical. Aristotle was prosaic, systematic, and practical. Plato was intuitive and synthetical. Aristotle was logical and analytical. It was therefore but natural that, to the mind of Aristotle, there should appear something confused, irregular, and incomplete in the discourses of his master. There was a strange commingling of questions concerning the grounds of morality, and statements concerning the nature of science; of inquiries concerning "real being," and speculations on the ordering of a model Republic, in the same discourse. Ethics, politics, ontology, and theology, are all comprised in his Dialectic, which is, in fact, the one grand "science of the idea of the good." Now to the mind of Aristotle it seemed better, and much more systematic, that these questions should be separated, and referred to particular heads; and, above all, that they should be thoroughly discussed in an exact and settled terminology. To arrange and classify all the objects of knowledge, to discuss them systematically and, as far as possible, exhaustively, was evidently the ambition, perhaps also the special function, of Aristotle. He would survey the entire field of human knowledge; he would study nature as well as humanity, matter as well as mind, language as well as thought; he would define the proper limits of each department of study, and present a regular statement of the facts and principles of each science. And, in fact, he was the first who really separated the different sciences and erected them into distinct systems, each resting upon its own proper principles. He distributed philosophy into three branches:--(i.) Theoretic; (ii.) Efficient; (iii.) Practical. The Theoretic he divided into--1. Physics; 2. Mathematics; 3. Theology, or the Prime Philosophy--the science known in modern times as Metaphysics. The Efficient embraces what we now term the arts,--1. Logic; 2. Rhetoric; 3. Poetics. The Practical comprises--1. Ethics; 2. Politics. On all these subjects he wrote separate treatises. Thus, whilst Plato is the genius of abstraction, Aristotle is eminently the genius of classification.

Such being the mental characteristics of the two men--their type of mind so opposite--we are prepared to expect that, in pursuing his inquiries, Aristotle would develop a different Organon from that of Plato, and that the teachings of Aristotle will give a new direction to philosophic thought.

ARISTOTELIAN ORGANON.

Aristotle will reverse this process. He will commence with sensation, and proceed, by induction, from the known to the unknown.

The points of contrast between the two methods may now be presented in a few sentences. Plato held that all our cognitions are reducible to two elements--one derived from sense, the other from pure reason; one element particular, contingent, and relative, the other universal, necessary, and absolute. By an act of immediate abstraction Plato will eliminate the particular, contingent, and relative phenomena, and disengage the universal, necessary, and absolute ideas which underlie and determine all phenomena. These ideas are the thoughts of the Divine Mind, according to which all particular and individual existences are generated, and, as divine thoughts, they are real and permanent existences. Thus by a process of immediate abstraction, he will rise from particular and contingent phenomena to universal and necessary principles, and from these to the First Principle of all principles, the First Cause of all causes--that is, to God.

ARISTOTELIAN LOGIC.

Pure Logic is the science of the formal laws of thought. Its office is to ascertain the rules or conditions under which the mind, by its own constitution, reasons and discourses. The office of Applied Logic--of logic as an art--is "to form and judge of conclusions, and, through conclusions, to establish proof. The conclusions, however, arise from propositions, and the propositions from conceptions." It is chiefly under the latter aspect that logic is treated by Aristotle. According to this natural point of view he has divided the contents of the logical and dialectic teaching in the different treatises of the Organon.

The first treatise is the "Categories" or "Predicaments"--a work which treats of the universal determinations of Being. It is a classification of all our mental conceptions. As a matter of fact, the mind forms notions or conceptions about those natures and essences of things which present an outward image to the senses, or those, equally real, which utter themselves to the mind. These may be defined and classified; there may be general conceptions to which all particular conceptions are referable. This classification has been attempted by Aristotle, and as the result we have the ten "Categories" of Substance, Quantity, Quality, Relation, Time, Place, Position, Possession, Action, Passion. He does not pretend that this classification is complete, but he held these "Predicaments" to be the most universal expressions for the various relations of things, under some one of which every thing might be reduced.

The second treatise, "On Interpretation," investigates language as the expression of thought; and inasmuch as a true or false thought must be expressed by the union or separation of a subject and a predicate, he deems it necessary to discuss the parts of speech--the general term and the verb--and the modes of affirmation and denial. In this treatise he develops the nature and limitations of propositions, the meaning of contraries and contradictions, and the force of affirmations and denials in possible, contingent, and necessary matter.

The third are the "Analytics," which show how conclusions are to be referred back to their principles, and arranged in the order of their precedence.

1. In regard to deductive or syllogistic reasoning, the views of Aristotle are very distinctly expressed.

2. General principles being thus furnished by induction, we may now inquire whence, according to Aristotle, are the materials for induction derived? What is the character of that "anterior knowledge" which is the basis of the inductive process?

This classification, however, is based upon a very superficial acquaintance with the philosophy of Aristotle as a whole. The practice, so commonly resorted to, of determining the character of the Aristotelian philosophy by the light of one or two passages quoted from his "Metaphysics," is unjust both to Aristotle and to the history of philosophic thought. We can not expect to attain a correct understanding of the views of Aristotle concerning the sources and grounds of all knowledge without some attention to his psychology. A careful study of his writings will show that the terms "sensation" (αὶσθησις) and "experience" (ἐµπειρία) are employed in a much more comprehensive sense than is usual in modern philosophic writings.

(i.) The immediate or intuitive perceptions of sense,

(ii.) The immediate or intuitive apperceptions of pure reason,

The objects of sense-perception are external, individual, "nearest to sense," and occasionally or contingently present to sense. The objects of the intellect are inward, universal, and the essential property of the soul. They are "remote from sense," "prior by nature;" they are "forms" essentially inherent in the soul previous to experience; and it is the office of experience to bring them forward into the light of consciousness, or, in the language of Aristotle, "to evoke them from potentiality into actuality." And further, from the "prior" and immediate intuitions of sense and intellect, all our secondary, our scientific and practical knowledge is drawn by logical processes.

The Aristotelian distribution of the intellectual faculties corresponds fully to this division of the objects of knowledge. The human intellect is divided by Aristotle into,

2. The Active or Creative Intellect (νοῦς ποιητικός).--This is the power or faculty which, by its own inherent power, impresses "form" upon the material of thought supplied by sense-perception, exactly as the First Cause combines it, in the universe, with the recipient matter.

This "Active or Creative Intellect" is again further subdivided, by Aristotle--

The correlatives noetic and dianoetic, says Hamilton, would afford the best philosophic designation of these two faculties; the knowledge attained by the former is an "intuitive principle"--a truth at first hand; that obtained by the latter is a "demonstrative proposition"--a truth at second hand.

"That it is impossible to have scientific knowledge through demonstration without a knowledge of first immediate principles, has been elucidated before." This being established, he proceeds to explain how that "knowledge of first, immediate principles" is developed in the mind.

1. The knowledge of first principles is attained by the intuition of sense--the immediate perception of external objects, as the exciting or occasional cause of their development in the mind.

"Now there appears inherent in all animals an innate power called sensible perception (αἴσθησις); but sense being inherent, in some animals a permanency of the sensible object is engendered, but in others it is not engendered. Those, therefore, wherein the sensible object does not remain have no knowledge without sensible perception, but others, when they perceive, retain one certain thing in the soul,... with some, reason is produced from the permanency (of the sensible impression), [as in man], but in others it is not [as in the brute]. From sense, therefore, as we say, memory is produced, and from the repeated remembrance of the same thing we get experience.... From experience, or from every universal remaining in the soul--the one besides the many which in all of them is one and the same--the principles of art and science arise. If experience is conversant with generation, the principles of art; if with being, the principles of science.... Let us again explain: When one thing without difference abides, there is then the first universal (notion) [developed] in the soul; for the singular indeed is perceived by sense, but sense is [also] of the universal"--that is, the universal is immanent in the sensible object as a property giving it "form." "It is manifest, then, that primary things become necessarily known by induction, for thus sensible perception produces [develops or evokes] the universal." 2. The knowledge of first principles is attained by the intuition of pure intellect (νοῦς)--that is, "intellect itself is the principle of science" or, in other words, intellect is the efficient, essential cause of the knowledge of first principles.

ARISTOTELIAN THEOLOGY

2. The Formal Cause (τὴν οὐσίαν καὶ τό τι εἶναι)--the being or abstract essence of a thing--that primary nature on which all its properties depend. To this Aristotle gave the name of εἶδος--the form or exemplar according to which a thing is produced.

3. The Moving or Efficient Cause (ὃθεν ἦ ἆρχη τῆς κινήσεως)--the origin and principle of motion--that by which a thing is produced.

Causes are, therefore, the elements into which the mind resolves its first rough conception of an object. That object is what it is, by reason of the matter out of which it sprang, the moving cause which gave it birth, the idea or form which it realizes, and the end or object which it attains. The knowledge of a thing implies knowing it from these four points of view--that is, knowing its four causes or principles.

These four determinations of being are, on a further and closer analysis, resolved into the fundamental antithesis of MATTER and FORM.

The opposition of matter and form, with Aristotle, corresponds to the opposition between the element of generality and the element of particularity. Matter is indeterminate; form is determinate. Matter, abstracted from form, in thought, is entirely without predicate and distinction; form is that which enters into the definition of every subject, and without which it could not be defined. Matter is capable of the widest diversity of forms, but is itself without form. Pure form is, in fact, that which is without matter, or, in other words, it is the pure conception of being. Matter is the necessary condition of the existence of a thing; form is the essence of each thing, that in virtue of which substance is possible, and without which it is inconceivable. On the one side is passivity, possibility of existence, capacity of action; on the other side is activity, actuality, thought. The unity of these two in the realm of determined being constitutes every individual substance. The relation of matter and form, logically apprehended, is thus the relation of POTENTIALITY and ACTUALITY.

The relation of actuality to potentiality is the subject of an extended and elaborate discussion in book viii., the general results of which may be summed up in the following propositions:

And now having laid down these fundamental principles of metaphysical science, as preparatory to Theology, Aristotle proceeds to establish the conception of the Absolute or Divine Spirit as the eternal, immutable Substance, the immaterial Energy, the unchangeable Form of Forms, the first moving Cause.

3. The Moral Form of Proof.--So far as the relation of potentiality and actuality is identical with the relation of matter and form, the argument for the existence of God may be thus presented: The conception of an absolute matter without form, involves the supposition of an absolute form without matter. And since the conception of form resolves itself into motion, conception, purpose or end, so the Eternal One is the absolute principle of motion (the πρῶτον κινοῦν), the absolute conception or pure intelligence (the pure τί ἦν εἶναι), and the absolute ground, reason, or end of all being. All the other predicates of the First Cause follow from the above principles with logical necessity.

The theology of Aristotle may be summed up in the following sentences selected from book xi. of his "Metaphysics:"

"This motionless cause of motion is a necessary being; and, by virtue of such necessity, is the all-perfect being. This all-pervading principle penetrates heaven and all nature. It eternally possesses perfect happiness; and its happiness is in action. This primal mover is immaterial; for its essence is in energy. It is pure thought--thought thinking itself--the thought of thought. The activity of pure intelligence--such is the perfect, eternal life of God. This primal cause of change, this absolute perfection, moves the world by the universal desire for the absolute good, by the attraction exercised upon it by the Eternal Mind--the serene energy of Divine Intelligence."

Morality has no basis in the Divine nature, no eternal type in the perfections and government of God, and no supports and aids from above. The theology of Aristotle foreshadows the character of the

ARISTOTELIAN ETHICS.

It will at once be seen that this classification has no stable foundation. It furnishes no ultimate standard of right. The mean is a wavering line. It differs under different circumstances and relations, and in different times and places. That mean which is sufficient for one individual is insufficient for another. The virtue of a man, of a slave, and of a child, is respectively different. There are as many virtues as there are circumstances in life; and as men are ever entering into new relations, in which it is difficult to determine the correct method of action, the separate virtues can not be limited to any definite number.