B. Aristotle. (continued 2)

From this point Aristotle goes on (Phys. IV. 6, 7) to empty space, in which an old question is involved which physicists even now cannot explain: they could do so if they studied Aristotle, but as far as they are concerned there might have been no thought nor Aristotle in the world. “Vacuum, according to ordinary ideas, is a space in which there is no body, and, fancying that all Being is body, they say that vacuum is that in which there is nothing at all. The conception of a vacuum has its justification for one thing in the fact that a vacuum,” the negative to an existent form, “is essential to motion; for a body could not move in a plenum,” and in the place to which it does move there must be nothing. “The other argument in favour of a vacuum is found in the compression of bodies, in which the parts press into the empty spaces.” This is the conception of varying density and the alteration of the same, in accordance with which an equal weight might consist of an equal number of parts, but these, as being separated by vacuum, might present a greater volume. Aristotle confutes these reasonings most adroitly, and first of all in this way; “The plenum could be changed, and bodies could yield to one another even if no interval of vacuum separated them. Liquids as well as solids are not condensed into a vacuum; something that they contained is expelled, just as air is expelled if water is compressed.”

Aristotle deals more thoroughly, in the first place (Phys. IV. 8), with the erroneous conception that the vacuum is the cause of movement. For, on the one hand, he shows that the vacuum really abolishes motion, and consequently in vacuum a universal rest would reign. He calls it perfect indifference as to the greater or less distance to which a thing is moved; in vacuum there are no distinctions. It is pure negation without object or difference; there is no reason for standing still or going on. But body is in movement, and that, indeed, as distinguished; it has a positive relation, and not one merely to nothing. On the other hand, Aristotle refutes the idea that movement is in vacuum because compression is possible. But this does not happen in a vacuum; there would be established in it not one movement, but a movement towards all sides, a general annihilation, an absolute yielding, where no cohesion would remain in the body. “Again, a weight or a body is borne along more swiftly or more slowly from two causes; either because there is a difference in that through which it is borne along, as when it moves through air or water or earth, or because that which is borne along differs through excess of weight or lightness.” As regards difference of movement on account of the first difference—that in the density of the medium—Aristotle says: “The medium through which the body is borne along is the cause of the resistance encountered, which is greater if the medium is moving in a contrary direction (and less if it is at rest); resistance is increased also if the medium is not easily divided. The difference in velocity is in inverse ratio to the specific gravity of the medium, air and water, so that if the medium has only half the density, the rate of progress will be double as quick. But vacuum has to body no such relation of differences of specific gravity. Body can no more contain a vacuum within its dimensions than a line can contain a point, unless the line were composed of points. The vacuum has no ratio to the plenum.” But as to the other case, the difference in weight and lightness, which has to be considered as being in bodies themselves, whereby one moves more quickly than another through the same space: “this distinction exists only in the plenum, for the heavy body, by reason of its power, divides the plenum more quickly.” This point of view is quite correct, and it is mainly directed against a number of conceptions that prevail in our physics. The conception of equal movement of the heavy and the light, as that of pure weight, pure matter, is an abstraction, being taken as though they were inherently like, only differing through the accidental resistance of the air.

Aristotle (Phys. IV. 9) now comes to the second point, to the proof of the vacuum because of the difference in specific gravity. “Many believe that the vacuum exists because of the rare and the dense;” the former is said to be a rare body, and the latter a perfect continuity; or they at least differ quantitatively from one another through greater or less density. “For if air should be generated from a quantity of water, a given quantity of water must produce a quantity of air the same in bulk, or there must necessarily be a vacuum; for it is only on the hypothesis of a vacuum that compression and rarefaction are explicable. Now if, as they say, the less dense were that which has many separate void spaces, it is evident that since a vacuum cannot be separated any more than a space can have intervals, neither can the rare subsist in this manner. But if it is not separable, and yet a vacuum is said to exist in the body, in the first place movement could thus only be upwards; for the rare is the light, and hence they say that fire is rare,” because it always moves upwards. “In the next place the vacuum cannot be the cause of motion as that in which something moves, but must resemble bladders that carry up that which adheres to them. But how is it possible that a vacuum can move, or that there can be a place where there is a vacuum? For that into which it is carried would be the vacuum of a vacuum. In short, as there can be no movement in vacuum, so also a vacuum cannot move.” Aristotle set against these ideas the true state of matters, and states generally the ideal conception of nature: “that the opposites, hot and cold, and the other physical contraries, have one and the same matter, and that from what is in capacity that which is in energy is produced; that matter is not separable though it is different in essence[94] (τῷ εἶναι), and that it remains one and the same in number (ἀριθμῷ) even if it possesses colour, or is hot and cold. And again, the matter of a small body and a large is the same, because at one time a greater proceeds from a smaller, and at another time a smaller from a greater. If air is generated from water it is expanded, but the matter remains the same and without taking to itself anything else; for that which it was in capacity it becomes in actuality. In a similar way if air is compressed from a greater into a less volume, the process will be reversed, and air will similarly pass into water, because the matter which is in capacity both air and water, also becomes both.” Aristotle likewise asserts that increase and decrease of warmth, and its transition into cold, is no addition or otherwise of warm matter, and also one and the same is both dense and rare. This is very different from the physical conceptions which assert more or less matter to correspond with more or less density, thus comprehending the difference in specific weight as the external addition of matter. Aristotle, on the contrary, takes this dynamically, though certainly not in the sense in which dynamics are to-day understood, viz. as an increase of intensity or as a degree, for he accepts intensity in its truth as universal capacity. Undoubtedly the difference must also be taken as a difference in amount, but not as an increase and decrease, or as an alteration in the absolute quantity of the matter. For here intensity means force, but again not as being a thing of thought separated from matter, but as indicating that if anything has become more intensive, it has had its actuality diminished, having, however, according to Aristotle, attained to a greater capacity. If the intensity is again directed outwards, and compared with other things, it undoubtedly becomes degree, and therefore magnitude immediately enters in. It then is indifferent whether greater intension or greater extension is posited; more air is capable of being warmed to the same degree as less, through the greater intensity of the warmth; or the same air can thereby become intensively warmer.

As regards the investigation of time, Aristotle remarks (Phys. IV. 10, 11, 13) that if time is externally (exoterically, ἐξωτερικῶς) regarded, we are inevitably led to doubt (διαπορῆσαι) whether it has any being whatever, or whether it has bare existence, as feeble (μόλις καὶ ἀμυδρῶς) as if it were only a potentiality. “For one part of it was and is not: another part will be and is not as yet; but of these parts infinite and everlasting (ἀεὶ λαμβανόμενος), time is composed. But it now appears that time, if composed of things that are not, may be incapable of existence. And also as regards everything divisible, if it exists, either some or all of its parts must be. Time is certainly divisible; but some of the parts are past, others are future, and no part is present. For the now is no part, since a part has a measure, and the whole must consist of the parts; but time does not appear to consist of the Now.” That is to say, because the Now is indivisible, it has no quantitative determination which could be measured. “Besides it is not easy to decide whether the Now remains, or always becomes another and another. Again, time is not a movement and change, for movement and change occur in that which is moved and changed, or accompany time in its course; but time is everywhere alike. Besides change is swifter and slower, but time is not. But it is not without change and motion” (which is just the moment of pure negativity in the same) “for when we perceive no change, it appears as if no time had elapsed, as in sleep. Time is hence in motion but not motion itself.” Aristotle defines it thus: “We say that time is, when we perceive the before and after in movement; but these are so distinguished that we apprehend them to be another and another, and conceive that there is something between, as a middle. Now when we understand that the extremes of the conclusion are different from the middle, and the soul says that the Now has two instants, the one prior and the other posterior, then we say that this is time. What is determined through the Now, we call time, and this is the fundamental principle. But when we are sensible of the Now as one, and not as a prior and posterior in motion, nor as the identity of an earlier or later, then there does not appear to us to have been any time, because neither was there any motion.” Tedium is thus ever the same. “Time is hence the number of motion, according to priority and posteriority; it is not motion itself, unless so far as motion has number. We judge of the more or less through number, but of a greater or less motion by time. But we call number that which can be numbered, as well as that with which we number; but time is not the number with which we number, but that which is numbered, and, like motion, always is changing. The Now is, which is the unity of number, and it measures time. The whole of time is the same, for the Now which was is the same” (universality as the Now destroyed) “but in Being it is another. Time thus is through the Now both continuous (συνεχής) and discrete (διῇρηται). It thereby resembles the point, for that also is the continuity of the line and its division, its principle and limit; but the Now is not an enduring point. As continuity of time the Now connects the past and the future, but it likewise divides time in capacity,” the Now is only divisibility and the moments only ideal. “And in as far as it is such, it is always another; but, in as far as it unites, it is ever one and the same. Similarly, in as far as we divide the line, other and yet other points always arise for thought; but in as far as it is one, there is only one point. Thus the Now is both the division of time in capacity, and the limit and union of both” i.e. of the prior and posterior. The universally dividing point is only one as actual; but this actual is not permanently one, but ever and again another, so that individuality has universality, as its negativity, within it. “But division and union are the same, and similarly related; however their Notion (τὸ εἶναι)[95] is different.” In one and the same respect the absolute opposite of what was posited is immediately set forth as existent; in space, on the other hand, the moments are not set forth as existent, but in it first appears this being and its motion and contradiction. Thus the identity of the understanding is not a principle with Aristotle, for identity and non-identity to him are one and the same. Because the Now is only now, past and future are different from it, but they are likewise necessarily connected in the Now, which is not without before and after; thus they are in one, and the Now, as their limit, is both their union and their division.

Aristotle (Phys. V. 1) then goes on to movement as realized in a thing, to change (μεταβολή) or to the physical processes—while before we had pure movement. “In movement there is first something which moves, also something which is moved, and the time in which it is moved; besides these, that from which, and that into which it is moved.” (Cf. supra, p. 141.) “For all motion is from something and into something; but there is a difference between that which is first moved and that into which and from which it is moved, as, for instance, wood, warmth and cold. The motion is in the wood and not in the form; for neither form nor place, nor quantity moves or is moved, but” (in the order in which they follow) “there is that which is moved and that which moves, and that into which it is moved. That to which movement is made, more than that out of which movement is made, is named change. Hence to pass into non-being is also change, although what passes away is changed from Being: and generation is a mutation into Being, even though it is from non-being.” The remark is to be interpreted as meaning that for the first time in real becoming motion, i.e. in change, the relation whereto enters, while the relation wherefrom is that in which change is still the mere ideal motion. Besides this first form of difference between motion and change, Aristotle further gives another, since he divides change into three: “into change from a subject (ἐξ ὑποκειμένον) into a subject; or from a subject into a non-subject; or from a non-subject into a subject.” The fourth, “from a non-subject into a non-subject,” which may also appear in the general division, “is no mutation, for it contains no opposition.” It may certainly be merely thought or ideal, but Aristotle indicates the actual phenomenon. “The mutation from a non-subject into a subject is generation (γένεσις); that from a subject into a non-subject is corruption (φθορά); that from a subject into a subject, is motion as such;” because that which is transformed remains the same, there is no becoming-another of the actual, but a merely formal becoming-another. This opposition of the materialized motion as mutation, and of merely formal motion, is noteworthy.

In the sixth book Aristotle comes to the consideration of the dialectic of this motion and change as advanced by Zeno, that is, to the endless divisibility which we have already (Vol. I. pp. 266-277) considered. Aristotle solves it through the universal. He says that they are the contradiction of the universal turned against itself; the unity in which its moments dissolve is not a nothing, so that motion and change are nothing, but a negative universal, where the negative is itself again posited as positive, and that is the essence of divisibility.

Of the further details into which Aristotle enters, I shall only give the following. As against atoms and their motion, he remarks (Phys. VI. 10) that the indivisible has no motion and mutation, which is the direct opposite of the proposition of Zeno that only simple indivisible Being and no motion exists. For as Zeno argues from the indivisibility of atoms against motion, Aristotle argues from motion against atoms. “Everything which moves or changes is in the first division of this time partly here and partly there. The atom, as simple indivisible Being, can, however, not have any part of it in both points in space, because it then would be divisible. The indivisible could thus only move if time consisted of the Now; this is, however, impossible, as we proved before.” Because atoms thus neither have change in themselves, nor can this come to them from without through impulse, &c., they are really without truth.

The determination of the pure ideality of change is important. Aristotle says of this (Phys. VII. 3), “That which is changed is alone the sensuous and perceptible (αἰσθητόν); and forms and figures, as also capacities, are not changed, they arise and disappear in a thing only, without being themselves changed.” In other words: the content of change is unchangeable; change as such belongs to mere form. “Virtues or vices belong, for example, to habits acquired. Virtue is the perfection (τελείωσις) in which something has reached the end of its nature. Vice, however, is the corruption and non-attainment of this. They are not changes, for they only arise and pass away while another alters.” Or the difference becomes a difference of Being and non-being, i.e. a merely sensuous difference.

From these conceptions Aristotle now comes nearer to the first real or physical motion (Phys. VIII. 6, 8, 9; De C\nlo, I. 4): The first principle of motion is itself unmoved. An endless motion in a straight line is an empty creation of thought; for motion is necessarily an effort after something. The absolute motion is the circular, because it is without opposition. For because movement has to be considered in regard to the starting-place and the end in view, in the straight movement the directions from A to B and from B to A are opposed, but in motion in a circle they are the same. The idea that heavenly bodies would of themselves have moved in a straight line, but that they accidentally came into the sphere of solar attraction, is an empty reflection which is far from occurring to Aristotle.

Aristotle then shows (De C\nlo, II. I; I. 3) that “the whole heavens neither arose nor can pass away, for they are one and eternal: they neither have beginning nor end in eternal time, for they contain infinite time shut up within them.” All the other ideas are sensuous which try to speak of essential reality, and in them there always is that present which they think they have excluded. For when they assert a vacuum before the beginning of generation, this is the quiescent, self-identical, i.e. the eternal matter, which is thus already established before origination; they will not allow that before origination nothing exists. But in fact a thing does not exist before its origination, i.e. in movement there is something to move, and where reality is, there is motion. They do not, however, bring together that vacuum, the self-identical, the un-originated matter and this nothing. “That which has this absolute circular movement is neither heavy nor light; for the heavy is what moves downwards, and the light what moves upwards.” In modern physics the heavenly bodies, on the other hand, are endowed with weight, and seek to rush into the sun, but cannot do so on account of another force. “It is indestructible and ungenerated, without decrease or increase, without any change. It is different from earth, fire, air and water; it is what the ancients called ether, as the highest place, from its continuous course (ἀεὶ θεῖν) in infinite time.” This ether thus appears to be eternal matter which does not, however, take such a definite form, but which remains as it is, just as the heavens do in our conception, although here the juxtaposition begins ever to strike us more forcibly.

Aristotle (De C\nlo, III. 6) shows further that the elements do not proceed from one body, but from one another; for in generation they neither proceed from what is incorporeal, nor from what is corporeal. In the first case they would have sprung from the vacuum, for the vacuum is the immediate incorporeal; but in that case the vacuum must have existed independently as that in which determinate corporeality arose. But neither do the elements arise from a corporeal, for else this body itself would be a corporeal element before the elements. Thus it only remains that the elements must spring from one another. Regarding this we must remark that Aristotle understands by origination, actual origination—not the transition from the universal to the individual, but the origination of one determinate corporeal, not from its principle, but from the opposite as such. Aristotle does not consider the universal as it contains the negative within it; else the universal would be the absolute matter whose universality, as negativity, is set forth, or is real.

From this point Aristotle comes (De C\nlo, IV. I-5) to a kind of deduction of the elements, which is noteworthy. He shows that there must be four of them, in the following way—because he starts from the fundamental conceptions of weight and of lightness, or what we should call attraction and centrifugal force. The corporeal, he says, in its motion is neither light nor heavy, and, indeed, it is not only relative but also absolute. The relatively light and heavy is what, while equal in volume, descends more slowly or quickly. Absolute lightness goes up to the extremity of the heavens, absolute weight down into the middle. These extremes are fire and earth. Between these there are mediums, other than they, which relate to one another like them; and these are air and water, the one of which has weight, and the other lightness, but only relatively. For water is suspended under everything except earth, and air over everything except fire. “Hence,” Aristotle concludes, “there now are these four matters, but they are four in such a way that they have one in common; more particularly, because they arise out of one another, but exist as different.” Yet it is not the ether that Aristotle designates as this common matter. We must in this regard remark that however little these first determinations may be exhaustive, Aristotle is still far further on than the moderns, since he had not the conception of elements which prevails at the present time, according to which the element is made to subsist as simple. But any such simple determination of Being is an abstraction and has no reality, because such existence would be capable of no motion and change; the element must itself have reality, and it thus is, as the union of opposites, resolvable. Aristotle hence makes the elements, as we have already seen with those who went before (Vol. I., pp. 181, 182; 290-293; 336), arise out of one another and pass into one another; and this is entirely opposed to our Physics, which understands by elements an indelible, self-identical simplicity only. Hence men are wonderfully discerning in reproaching us for calling water, air, &c., elements! Nor yet in the expression “neutrality” have the modern physicists been able to grasp a universality conceived of as a unity, such as Aristotle ascribes to the elements; in fact, however, the acid which unites with a base is no longer, as is asserted, present within it as such. But however removed Aristotle may be from understanding simplicity as an abstraction, just as little does he recognize here the arid conception of consisting of parts. Quite the contrary. He strives enough against this, as, for instance, in relation to Anaxagoras (De C\nl. III. 4).

I shall further mention the moments of the real process in relation to motion, in which Aristotle finally passes on (De gen. et corr. II. 2-4) to the “principles of perceptible body”; we here see the elements in process, as formerly in their restful determinateness. Aristotle excludes the relations which concern sight, smell, &c., and brings forward the others as being those which are of sensible weight or lightness. He gives as these fundamental principles—warmth and cold, dryness and moisture; they are the sensible differences for others, while weight and lightness are different for themselves. Now in order to prepare for the transition of the elements into sensible relations, Aristotle says: “Because there are those four principles, and four things have properly six relations to one another, but the opposite cannot here be connected (the moist cannot be connected with the dry, or the warm with the cold), there are four connections of these principles, warm and dry, warm and moist, cold and moist, cold and dry. And these connections follow those first elements, so that thus fire is warm and dry, air warm and moist (vapour), water cold and moist, earth cold and dry.” From this Aristotle now makes the reciprocal transformation of the elements into one another comprehensible thus: Origination and decay proceed from the opposite and into the opposite. All elements have a mutual opposite; each is as non-being to the Being of the other, and one is thus distinguished from the other as actuality and capacity. Now amongst these some have an equal part in common; fire and water, for example, have warmth; thus if in fire dryness were overcome by moisture, out of fire air would arise. On the contrary, as regards those which have nothing in common with one another, like earth, which is cold and dry, and air, which is warm and moist, the transition goes more slowly forward. The transition of all elements into one another, the whole process of nature, is thus to Aristotle the constant rotation of their changes. This is unsatisfactory, because neither are the individual elements comprehended nor is the remainder rounded into a whole.

As a matter of fact, Aristotle now goes on, in meteorology, to the consideration of the universal process of nature. But here we have reached his limits. Here, in the natural process, the simple determination as such—this system of progressive determination—ceases to hold good, and its whole interest is lost. For it is in the real process that these determinate conceptions always lose their signification again and become their opposite, and in it also this contingent succession is forced together and united. In determining time and motion, we certainly saw Aristotle himself uniting opposite determinations; but movement, in its true determination, must take space and time back into itself; it must represent itself as being the unity of these its real moments and in them; that is, as the realization of this ideal. But still more must the following moments, moisture, warmth, &c., themselves come back under the conception of process. But the sensuous manifestation here begins to obtain the upper hand; for the empirical has the nature of the isolated form, which is to fall out of relation. The empirical manifestation thus outstrips thought, which merely continues everywhere to stamp it as its own, but which has no longer power to permeate the manifestation, since it withdraws out of the sphere of the ideal, while it is still in the region of time, space and movement.

3. The Philosophy of Mind.

As regards the other side from the Philosophy of Nature, the Philosophy of Mind, we find that Aristotle has constituted in it also a separation into special sciences, in a series of works which I shall name. In the first place, his three books “On the Soul” deal partly with the abstract universal nature of the soul, though mainly in an antagonistic spirit; and even more, and in a fashion both profound and speculative, they deal with the soul’s essential nature—not with its Being, but with the determinate manner and potentiality of its energy; for this is to Aristotle the Being and essence of the soul. Thus there are several different treatises, viz.: On Sense-perception and the Sensible, On Memory and Recollection, On Sleeping and Waking, On Dreams, On Divination (μαντική) through Dreams, besides a treatise on Physiognomy; there is no empirical point of view or phenomenon, either in the natural or the spiritual world, that Aristotle has considered beneath his notice. With respect to the practical side, he in like manner devotes his attention to man in his capacity of householder, in a work on economics (οἰκονομικά); then he takes into his consideration the individual human being, in a moral treatise (ἠθικά), which is partly an inquiry into the highest good or the absolute end, and partly a dissertation on special virtues. The manner of treatment is almost invariably speculative, and sound understanding is displayed throughout. Finally, in his Politics, he gives a representation of the true constitution of a state and the different kinds of constitution, which he deals with from the empirical point of view; and in his Politics an account is given of the most important states, of which we are, however, told very little.

a. Psychology.

In Aristotle’s teaching on this subject we must not expect to find so-called metaphysics of the soul. For metaphysical handling such as this really pre-supposes the soul as a thing, and asks, for example, what sort of a thing it is, whether it is simple, and so on. Aristotle did not busy his concrete, speculative mind with abstract questions such as these, but, as already remarked, he deals rather with the manner of the soul’s activity; and though this appears in a general way as a series of progressive determinations which are not necessarily blended into a whole, each determination is yet apprehended in its own sphere with as much correctness as depth.

Aristotle (De Anima, I. 1) makes in the first place the general remark that it appears as if the soul must, on the one hand, be regarded in its freedom as independent and as separable from the body, since in thinking it is independent; and, on the other hand, since in the emotions it appears to be united with the body and not separate, it must also be looked on as being inseparable from it; for the emotions show themselves as materialized Notions (λόγοι ἔνυλοι), as material modes of what is spiritual. With this a twofold method of considering the soul, also known to Aristotle, comes into play, namely the purely rational or logical view, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the physical or physiological; these we still see practised side by side. According to the one view, anger, for instance, is looked on as an eager desire for retaliation or the like; according to the other view it is the surging upward of the heart-blood and the warm element in man. The former is the rational, the latter the material view of anger; just as one man may define a house as a shelter against wind, rain, and other destructive agencies, while another defines it as consisting of wood and stone; that is to say, the former gives the determination and the form, or the purpose of the thing, while the latter specifies the material it is made of, and its necessary conditions.

Aristotle characterizes the nature of the soul more closely (De Anima, II. 1) by referring to the three moments of existence: “First there is matter (ὕλη), which is in itself no individual thing; secondly, the form and the universal (μορφὴ καὶ εἶδος), which give a thing individuality; thirdly, the result produced by both, in which matter is potentiality and form is energy (ἐντελέχεια);” matter thus does not exist as matter, but only implicitly. “The soul is substance, as being the form of the physical organic body which is possessed potentially of life; but its substance is energy (ἐντελέχεια), the energy of a body such as has been described” (endowed with life). “This energy appears in twofold form: either as knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) or as active observation (τὸ θεωρεῖν). But it is evident that here it is to be regarded as the former of these. For the soul is present with us both when we sleep and when we wake; waking corresponds with active observation, and sleep with possession and passivity. But knowledge is in origination prior to all else. The soul is thus the first energy of a physical but organic body.” It is in respect of this that Aristotle gives to the soul the definition of being the entelechy (supra, pp. 143, 144).

In the same chapter Aristotle comes to the question of the mutual relation of body and soul. “For this reason” (because soul is form) “we must no more ask if soul and body are one than we ask if wax and its form are one, or, in general, if matter and its forms are one. For though unity and Being are used in various senses. Being is essentially energy.” Were we, namely, to pronounce body and soul one in the same way that a house, which consists of a number of parts, or as a thing and its properties, or the subject and predicate, and so on, are called one, where both are regarded as things, materialism results. An identity such as this is an altogether abstract, and therefore a superficial and empty determination, and a term which it is a mistake to employ, for form and material do not rank equally as regards Being; identity truly worthy of the name is to be apprehended as nothing else than energy such as has been described. The only question that now arises is whether activity and the organ it employs are one; and our idea is to answer in the affirmative. The more definite explanation of this relation is to be found in the following; “The soul is substance, but only according to the Notion (κατὰ τὸν λόγον); but that is the substantial form (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι)[96] for such and such a body. For suppose that an instrument, such as an axe, were a natural body, this form, this axehood, would be its substance, and this its form would be its soul, for if this were to be taken away from it, it would no longer be an axe, the name only would remain. But soul is not the substantial form and Notion of such a body as an axe, but of a body which has within itself the principle of movement and of rest.” The axe has not the principle of its form in itself, it does not make itself an axe, nor does its form, its Notion, in itself constitute its substance, as its activity is not through itself. “If, for instance, the eye were in itself a living thing, vision would be its soul, for vision is the reality which expresses the Notion of the eye. But the eye, as such, is only the material instrument of vision, for if vision were lost, the eye would be an eye only in name, like an eye of stone or a painted eye.” Thus to the question, What is the substance of the eye? Aristotle answers: Are the nerves, humours, tissues, its substance? On the contrary, sight itself is its substance, these material substances are only an empty name. “As this is the case in the part, so it also holds good of the body as a whole. The potentiality of life is not in any such thing as has lost its soul, but in that which still possesses it. The seed or the fruit is such and such a body potentially. Like hewing and seeing,” in the axe and the eye, “waking” in general “is activity; but the corporeal is only potentiality. But as the” living “eye is both vision and the eyeball” (the two being connected as actuality and potentiality), “so also are soul and body the living animal, the two are not to be separated. But it is not yet clear whether the soul is the activity of the body in the same way as the steersman is of the ship.” That the active form is the true substance, while matter is so only potentially, is a true speculative Notion.

As settling the question asked in the above-mentioned metaphor, we may quote what Aristotle says later (De Anima, II. 4): “As the principle of motion and as end (οὗ ἕνεκα), and as substance of living bodies, the soul is the cause. For substance is to all objects the cause of their existence, but life is the existence of the living, and its cause and principle is the soul; and further, its energy is the existing Notion of what has potential existence. The soul is cause also as end,” that is, as self-determining universality, “for nature, like thought, acts for the sake of an object, which object is its end, but in living beings this is soul. All the parts of the body are thus the organs of the soul, and hence exist for its sake.” In like manner Aristotle shows that the soul is the cause of motion.

Aristotle (De Anima, II. 2, 3) further states that the soul is to be determined in three ways, namely as nutrient or vegetable, as sensitive, and as intelligent, corresponding with plant life, animal life and human life. The nutrient soul, when it is alone, belongs to plants; when it is at the same time capable of sense-perception, it is the animal soul; and when at once nutrient, sensitive and intelligent, it is the mind of man. Man has thus three natures united in himself; a thought which is also expressed in modern Natural Philosophy by saying that a man is also both an animal and a plant, and which is directed against the division and separation of the differences in these forms. That difference has also been revived in recent times in the observation of the organic, and it is highly important to keep these sides separate. The only question (and it is Aristotle who raises it) is how far these, as parts, are separable. As to what concerns more nearly the relation of the three souls, as they may be termed (though they are incorrectly thus distinguished), Aristotle says of them, with perfect truth, that we need look for no one soul in which all these are found, and which in a definite and simple form is conformable with any one of them. This is a profound observation, by means of which truly speculative thought marks itself out from the thought which is merely logical and formal. Similarly among figures only the triangle and the other definite figures, like the square, the parallelogram, &c., are truly anything; for what is common to them, the universal figure, is an empty thing of thought, a mere abstraction. On the other hand, the triangle is the first, the truly universal figure, which appears also in the square, &c., as the figure which can be led back to the simplest determination. Therefore, on the one hand, the triangle stands alongside of the square, pentagon, &c., as a particular figure, but—and this is Aristotle’s main contention—it is the truly universal figure. In the same way the soul must not be sought for as an abstraction, for in the animate being the nutritive and the sensitive soul are included in the intelligent, but only as its object or its potentiality; similarly, the nutritive soul, which constitutes the nature of plants, is also present in the sensitive soul, but likewise only as being implicit in it, or as the universal. Or the lower soul inheres only in the higher, as a predicate in a subject: and this mere ideal is not to be ranked very high, as is indeed the case in formal thought; that which is for itself is, on the contrary, the never-ceasing return into itself, to which actuality belongs. We can determine these expressions even more particularly. For if we speak of soul and body, we term the corporeal the objective and the soul the subjective; and the misfortune of nature is just this, that it is objective, that is, it is the Notion only implicitly, and not explicitly. In the natural there is, no doubt, a certain activity, but again this whole sphere is only the objective, the implicit element in one higher. As, moreover, the implicit in its sphere appears as a reality for the development of the Idea, it has two sides; the universal is already itself an actual, as, for example, the vegetative soul. Aristotle’s meaning is therefore this: an empty universal is that which does not itself exist, or is not itself species. All that is universal is in fact real, as particular, individual, existing for another. But that universal is real, in that by itself, without further change, it constitutes its first species, and when further developed it belongs, not to this, but to a higher stage. These are the general determinations which are of the greatest importance, and which, if developed, would lead to all true views of the organic, &c., since they give a correct general representation of the principle of realization.

α. The nutritive or vegetative soul is therefore, according to Aristotle (De Anima, II. 4), to be conceived as the first, which is energy, the general Notion of the soul itself, just as it is, without further determination; or, as we should say, plant life is the Notion of the organic. What Aristotle goes on to say of nourishment, for instance, whether the like is nourished by the like, or by the opposite, is of little importance. It may, however, be mentioned that Aristotle (De Anima, II. 12) says of the vegetative soul that it is related only to matter, and that only after a material manner, as when we eat and drink, but that it cannot take up into itself the forms of sensible things: we, too, ourselves in practical matters are related as particular individuals to a material existence here and now, in which our own material existence comes into activity.

β. There is more to interest us in Aristotle’s determination of sense-perception (De Anima, II. 5), as to which I shall make some further quotations. Sense-perception is in general a potentiality (we should say a receptivity), but this potentiality is also activity; it is therefore not to be conceived as mere passivity. Passivity and activity pertain to one and the same, or passivity has two senses. “On the one hand a passivity is the destruction of one state by its opposite; on the other hand, it is a preservation of what is merely potential by means of what is actual.” The one case occurs in the acquisition of knowledge, which is a passivity in so far as a change takes place from one condition (ἕξις) into an opposite condition; but there is another passivity, in which something only potentially posited is maintained, therefore knowledge is knowing in an active sense (supra, p. 182). From this Aristotle concludes: “There is one change which is privative; and another which acts on the nature and the permanent energy (ἕξις). The first change in the subject of perception (αἰσθητικοῦ) is caused by that which produces the perception; but, once produced, the perception is possessed as knowledge (επιστήμη).” Because that which produces the change is different from the result, perception is passivity; but it is just as much spontaneity, “and sense-perception, like knowledge (θεωρεῖν), has to do with this aspect of activity. But the difference is, that what causes the perception is external. The cause of this is that perceptive activity is directed on the particular, while knowledge has as its object the universal; but the universal is, to a certain extent, in the soul itself as its substance. Everyone can therefore think when he will,” and for this very reason thought is free, “but perception does not depend on him, having the necessary condition that the object perceived be present.” The influence from without, as a passivity, comes therefore first; but there follows the activity of making this passive content one’s own. This is doubtless the correct point from which to view perception, whatever be the manner of further development preferred, subjective idealism, or any other way. For it is a matter of perfect indifference whether we find ourselves subjectively or objectively determined; in both there is contained the moment of passivity, by which the perception comes to pass. The monad of Leibnitz appears, it is true, to be an idea opposed to this, since every monad, every point of my finger, as atom or individual, is an entire universe, the whole of which develops in itself without reference to other monads. Here seems to be asserted the highest idealistic freedom, but it is of no avail to imagine that all in me develops out of me; for we must always recollect that what is thus developed in me is passive, and not free. With this moment of passivity Aristotle does not fall short of idealism; sensation is always in one aspect passive. That is, however, a false idealism which thinks that the passivity and spontaneity of the mind depend on whether the determination given is from within or from without, as if there were freedom in sense-perception, whereas it is itself a sphere of limitation. It is one thing when the matter—whether it be sensation, light, colour, seeing or hearing—is apprehended from the Idea, for it is then shown that it comes to pass from the self-determination of the Idea. But it is different when, in so far as I exist as an individual subject, the Idea exists in me as this particular individual; there we have the standpoint of finitude established, and therefore of passivity. Thus there need be no standing on ceremony with sense-perception, nor can a system of idealism be based on the theory that nothing comes to us from without: as Fichte’s theory about himself was, that when he put on his coat, he constituted it in part by drawing it on, or even by looking at it. The individual element in sensation is the sphere of the individuality of consciousness; it is present therein in the form of one thing as much as of another, and its individuality consists in this fact, that other things exist for it. Aristotle continues: “Speaking generally, the difference is that potentiality is twofold; as we say a boy may become a general, and a grown man may also become so,” for the latter has the effective power. “This is the nature of the faculty of sense-perception (αἰσθητικόν); it is in potentiality what the object of sense (αἰσθητόν) is in actuality. Sense-perception is therefore passive, in so far as it does not resemble its object, but after the impression has been made it becomes similar to its object, and is identified with it.” The reaction of sense-perception consists therefore in this active receiving into itself of that which is perceived; but this is simply activity in passivity, the spontaneity which abrogates the receptivity in sense-perception. Sense-perception, as made like to itself, has, while appearing to be brought to pass by means of an influence working on it, brought to pass the identity of itself and its object. If then subjective idealism declares that there are no external things, that they are but a determination of our self, this must be admitted in respect to pure sense-perception, since sense-perception is a subjective existence or state in me, which yet, however, is not for that reason freedom.

In speaking of sense-perception, Aristotle (De Anima, II. 12) makes use of his celebrated simile, which has so often occasioned misapprehension, because it has been understood quite incorrectly. His words are: “Sense-perception is the receiving of sensible forms without matter, as wax receives only the impress of the golden signet ring, not the gold itself, but merely its form.” For the form is the object as universal; and theoretically we are in the position, not of the individual and sensuous, but of the universal. The case is different with us in our practical relations, where the influence working upon us pre-supposes in return the contact of the material, for which reason, as Aristotle asserts, plants do not perceive (supra, p. 186). On the other hand, in receiving form, the material is lost sight of; for the receiving of form indicates no positive relation to the matter, which is no longer something offering resistance. If, therefore, sense-perceptions are termed in general sensuous impressions, we, in matter-of-fact fashion, do not get beyond this crude way of putting it; and in making the transition to soul, we take refuge behind popular conceptions, which are partly ill-defined Notions, and partly not Notions at all. Thus it is said that all sense-perceptions are impressed on the soul by external things, just as the matter of the signet ring works on the matter of the wax; and then we hear it alleged that this is Aristotle’s philosophy. It is the same with most other philosophers; if they give any sort of illustration that appeals to the senses, everyone can understand it, and everyone takes the content of the comparison in its full extent: as if all that is contained in this sensuous relationship should also hold good of the spiritual. No great importance is therefore to be attached to this conception, as it is only an illustration, professing to show by a side comparison that the passive element in sense-perception is in its passivity for pure form only; this form alone is taken up into the percipient subject, and finds a place in the soul. It does not, however, remain in the same relation to it as that in which the form stands to the wax, nor is it as in chemistry where one element is permeated by another as regards its matter. The chief circumstance, therefore, and that which constitutes the difference between this illustration and the condition of the soul is altogether overlooked. That is to say, the wax does not, indeed, take in the form, for the impression remains on it as external figure and contour, without being a form of its real Being; if it were to become such, it would cease to be wax; therefore, because in the illustration there is lacking this reception of form into the Being, no thought is given to it. The soul, on the contrary, assimilates this form into its own substance, and for the very reason, that the soul is in itself, to a certain extent, the sum of all that is perceived by the senses (infra, p. 198): as it was said above (p. 183), if the axe had its form in the determination of substance, this form would be the soul of the axe. The illustration of the wax has reference to nothing but the fact that only the form comes to the soul; and has nothing to do with the form being external to the wax and remaining so, or with the soul having, like wax, no independent form. The soul is by no means said to be passive wax and to receive its determinations from without; but Aristotle, as we shall soon see (p. 194), really says that the spirit repels matter from itself, and maintains itself against it, having relation only to form. In sense-perception the soul is certainly passive, but the manner in which it receives is not like that of the wax, being just as truly activity of the soul; for after the perceptive faculty has received the impression, it abrogates the passivity, and remains thenceforth free from it (supra, p. 187). The soul therefore changes the form of the external body into its own, and is identical with an abstract quality such as this, for the sole reason that it itself is this universal form.

This description of sense-perception Aristotle explains more fully in what follows (De Anima, III. 2), and expatiates upon this unity and its contrasts, in the course of which explanation there appear many clear and far-reaching glimpses into the Nature of consciousness. “The bodily organ of each sense-perception receives the object perceived without matter. Hence, when the object of sense is removed, the perceptions and the images which represent them remain in the organs. In the act of sense-perception the object perceived is no doubt identical with the subject that perceives, but they do not exist[97] as the same; for instance, sound and the hearing are the same when in active exercise, but that which has hearing does not always hear, and that which has sound is not always sounding. When that which is the potentiality of hearing comes into exercise, and likewise that which is the potentiality of sound, hearing and sound, being in full activity, coincide,” they do not remain separate energies. “If then movement and action, as well as passivity, have a place in the object on which activity is exercised (ἐν τῷ ποιουμένῳ), it follows necessarily that the energy of hearing and sound is contained in that which potentially is hearing, for the energy of the active and moving is in the passive. As therefore activity and passivity are manifested in the subject which receives the effect, and not in the object which produces it (ποιοῦντι), the energy both of the object and of the faculty of sense-perception is in the faculty itself. For hearing and sounding there are two words, for seeing only one; seeing is the activity of the person who sees, but the activity of the colour is without name. Since the energy of that which is perceived and that which perceives is one energy, and the aspect they present is alone different, the so-called sounding and hearing must cease simultaneously.” There is a body which sounds and a subject which hears; they are twofold in the aspect they present, but hearing, taken by itself, is intrinsically an activity of both. In like manner, when I have by sense the perception of redness and hardness, my perception is itself red and hard: that is, I find myself determined in that way, even though reflection says that outside of me there is a red, hard thing, and that it and my finger are two; but they are also one, my eye is red and the thing. It is upon this difference and this identity that everything depends; and Aristotle demonstrates this in the most emphatic way, and holds firmly to his point. The later distinction of subjective and objective is the reflection of consciousness; sense-perception is simply the abrogation of this separation, it is that form of identity which abstracts from subjectivity and objectivity. What is simple, the soul proper or the I, is in sense-perception unity in difference. “Further, every sense-perception is in its organ, and distinguishes everything that is perceived, like black and white, and so on. It is thus not possible for separate perceptions, white and sweet, to be distinguished as separate indifferent moments, for both must be present (δῆλα) to one subject. This one subject must therefore determine one thing to be different from another. This, as distinguished, can also not be in a different place or time, for it must be undivided and in undivided time. But it is impossible that one and the same thing should be affected by contrary movements, in so far as it is undivided and in undivided time. If sweetness affects sense-perception in one way, and bitterness in the contrary way, and whiteness in yet another way, the power of judging is numerically not discrete nor divisible, but according to the Notion (τῷ εἶναι)[98] it is distinguished. That which is the same and indivisible thus possesses in potentiality opposite qualities; but with its true existence (τῷ εἶναι) that cannot be the case, for in its activity it is separable, and cannot at the same time be both white and black. Sense-perception and thinking are like that which some term a point, which, in so far as it is one, is inseparable, and in so far as it is two, is separable. So far as it is undivided, the judging faculty is one and acts in a single point of time, but so far as it is divided” (not one) “it employs the same sign twice simultaneously. So far as it employs two, it by limitation distinguishes two, and separates them as having separate origin; but so far as it is one, it judges by one act in one single point of time” (supra, p. 172). For as the point in time, which resembles the point in space, contains future and past, and thus is something different and at the same time one and the same, since it is in one and the same respect separation and union; sense-perception is also one and at the same time separation, separated and not separated, seeing that the faculty of perception has before it in one unity the distinct sense-perception, which by this means receives for the first time a determinate content. Another example is that of number; one and two are different, and, at the same time, even in two one is used and posited as one.

γ. From sense-perception Aristotle passes on to thought, and becomes here really speculative. “Thinking,” he says (De Anima, III. 4) “is not passive (ἀπαθές), but receptive of the form, and is in potentiality similar to it. Therefore the understanding (νοῦς), because it thinks all things, is free from all admixture (ἀμιγής), in order that it may overcome (κρατῇ), as Anaxagoras says, that is, in order that it may acquire knowledge; for, coming forth in its energy (παρεμφαινόμενον), it holds back what is alien to it, and fortifies itself against it (ἀντιφράττει). Therefore the nature of the understanding is none other than this potentiality.” But potentiality itself is here not matter; that is to say, the understanding has no matter, for potentiality pertains to its very substance. For thinking is really the not being implicit; and on account of its purity its reality is not the being-for-another, but its potentiality is itself a being-for-self. A thing is real because it is this determinate thing; the opposite determination, its potentiality to be, for instance, smoke, ashes, and so on, is not posited in it. In the corporeal, therefore, matter, as potentiality, and external form, as reality, are opposed to one another; but the soul is, in contrast with this, universal potentiality itself, without matter, because its essence is energy. “Understanding, then, in the soul, as that which possesses consciousness, is nothing in reality before it thinks;” it is absolute activity, but exists only when it is active. “It is therefore not incorporated with the body. For what should it be like, warm or cold? Or should it be an organ? But it is none of these. That it is, however, different from the faculty of sense-perception is clear. For sense-perception cannot perceive after a violent perception; for instance, it cannot smell nor see after experiencing strong smells or colours. But the understanding, after it has thought something which can only be thought with difficulty, will not have more but less difficulty in thinking of something that is easier. For there is no sense-perception independent of the body, but the understanding is separable from it. When it has then become something individual, like him who is really possessed of a faculty of knowing (and this happens when he can energize through himself), it then is also in a certain degree according to potentiality, but yet not so in the same manner as it was before learning and finding.” (Cf. supra, pp. 182, 187.)

Thinking makes itself into passive understanding, that is, into what is for it the objective; and thus it here becomes plain to what extent the dictum nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu expresses Aristotle’s meaning. Aristotle, raising difficulties, goes on to ask, “If reason is simple and unaffected by impressions, and has nothing in common with other objects, how can it think, since thinking is certainly a state of receptivity?” That is to say, in thinking there is a reference to an object distinct from itself. “For it is when two objects have something in common that the one appears to produce and the other to receive an impression. There is a further difficulty, whether understanding can itself be the object of thought. In that case understanding would either be inherent in other things—unless it is the object of thought in a different sense from that in which other things are so, but there is only one sense in which things can be objects of thought—or, on the other hand, it would have something compounded with it, making it an object of thought as other things are. Now it has been already said that passivity is so determined that understanding is in potentiality all that thought is exercised on: but at the same time it is in actuality nothing before the exercise of thought.” That is to say, thought is implicitly the content of the object of what is thought, and in coming into existence it only coincides with itself; but the self-conscious understanding is not merely implicit, but essentially explicit, since it is within itself all things. That is an idealistic way of expressing it; and yet they say that Aristotle is an empiricist.

The passivity of understanding has therefore here only the sense of potentiality before actuality, and that is the great principle of Aristotle; in regard to this he brings forward at the end of the same chapter another much-decried illustration, which has been just as much misunderstood as the preceding. “Reason is like a book upon whose pages nothing is actually written;” that is, however, paper, but not a book. All Aristotle’s thoughts are overlooked, and only external illustrations such as this are comprehended. A book on which nothing is written everyone can understand. And the technical term is the well-known tabula rasa, which is to be found wherever Aristotle is spoken of: Aristotle is said to have alleged that the mind is a blank page, on which characters are first traced by external objects, so that thinking thus comes to it from without.[99] But that is the very opposite of what Aristotle says. Instead of the Notion being adhered to, casual comparisons such as these have been caught up here and there by the imagination, as if they expressed the matter itself. But Aristotle did not in the least intend that the analogy should be pushed to its furthest extent: the understanding is of a surety not a thing, and has not the passivity of a writing-tablet; it is itself the energy, which is not, as it would be in the case of a tablet, external to it. The analogy is therefore confined to this, that the soul has a content only in so far as actual thought is exercised. The soul is this book unwritten on, and the meaning consequently is that the soul is all things implicitly, but it is not in itself this totality; it is like a book that contains all things potentially, but in reality contains nothing before it is written on. Before real activity nothing truly exists; or “Understanding itself can enter thought, like the objects of thought in general. For in that which is without matter” (in mind), “the thinker” (the subjective) “and the thought” (the objective) “are the same; theoretical knowledge and that which comes to be known are the same. In that which is material, thinking is only in potentiality, so that understanding itself does not belong to it; for understanding is a potentiality without matter, but the object of thought exists in it,” while Nature contains the Idea only implicitly. It is plain from this that the above illustration has been taken in quite a false sense, utterly contrary to Aristotle’s meaning.

Until now we have spoken of the passive understanding, which is the nature of the soul, but also in equal degree its faculty of sense-perception and imagination. Aristotle now proceeds to distinguish active understanding from this, as follows (De Anima, III. 5): “In nature as a whole there is present in every species of things, on the one hand, matter, which in potentiality is the whole of this species, and, on the other hand, cause and energy, operative in all things, in the same way that art is related to matter. It therefore necessarily follows that in the soul also these different elements should be present. The faculty of understanding is thus, in one view of it, the capacity of becoming all things; but in another view it is the capacity of creating all things, as is done by an efficient power (ἕξις), light, for instance, which first causes the colours which exist in potentiality to exist in reality. This understanding is absolute (χωριστός), uncompounded, and not influenced from without, as it is essentially activity. For the active is always more in honour than the passive, and the principle more in honour than the matter that it forms. Knowledge, when in active exercise, is identical with the thing (πρᾶγμα) known; but what is in potentiality” (that is, external reason, imagination, sense-perception) “is certainly prior in respect of time in one and the same individual, but in the universal (ὅλως) it is not even so in respect of time. Active understanding is not such that it sometimes thinks and sometimes does not. When it is absolute, it is the one and only existence; and this alone is eternal and immortal. We, however, do not remember this process, because this understanding is unaffected from without; but the passive understanding is transitory, and without the former it is incapable of thought.”

The seventh and eighth chapters are expositions of the maxims contained in the fourth and fifth; they begin with these maxims, and have the appearance of being from the hand of a commentator. “The soul,” says Aristotle (De Anima, III. 8), “is in a certain sense the whole of existence. For existent objects are either perceived by the senses or thought; but knowledge itself is in a manner the object of knowledge, and perception the object of perception. What are known and perceived are either the things themselves or their forms. Knowledge and sense-perception are not the things themselves (the stone is not in the soul), but their form; so that the soul is like the hand. As this is the instrument by which we grasp instruments, so the understanding is the form by which we apprehend forms, and sense-perception the form of the objects cf sense.” Before this Aristotle had remarked (De Anima, III. 4): “It has been truly said that the soul is the place of ideas (τόπος εἰδῶν): not the whole soul, but only the thinking soul, and these ideas do not exist in the soul actually, but only potentially.” That is to say, the ideas are at first only quiescent forms, not activities, and so Aristotle is not a realist. But the understanding makes these forms, like those of external nature, its objects, its thoughts, its potentiality, Aristotle therefore says in the seventh chapter: “The understanding thinks the abstract (τὰ ἐν ἀφαιρέσει λεγόμενα), just as it conceives snubnosedness not as snubnosedness that cannot be separated from the flesh, but as hollowness.” Then in the eighth chapter Aristotle goes on to say: “But as no object is separated from its perceived dimensions, so in the forms perceived by sense there are also objects of thought, both abstract conceptions and the qualities (ἕξεις) and determinations of the objects of sense. In this way he who perceives nothing by his senses learns nothing and understands nothing; when he discerns anything (θεωρῇ), he must necessarily discern it as a pictorial conception, for such conceptions are like sense-perceptions, only without matter. In what way then are our primary ideas distinguished, so as not to be mistaken for conceptions? Or is it not the case also that other thoughts even are not pictorial conceptions, but only that they are never found unassociated with such conceptions?” Since what follows contains no answer to the questions raised here at the very end, this would seem an additional indication that these portions follow later.[100] Aristotle concludes the seventh chapter with the words: “Speaking generally, the understanding is the faculty which thinks things in their real activity. Whether, however, it can think the absolute or not, unless it be itself separated from the sensuous, we shall inquire later (ὕστερον).” This “later” Buhle considers to have reference to the “highest philosophy.”[101]

This identity of the subjective and objective, which is present in the active understanding—while finite things and mental states are respectively one separated from the other, because there the understanding is only in potentiality—is the highest point which speculation can reach: and in it Aristotle reverts to his metaphysical principles (p. 147), where he termed self-thinking reason absolute Thought, divine Understanding, or Mind in its absolute character. It is only in appearance that thought is spoken of as on a level with what is other than thought; this fashion of bringing what is different into conjunction certainly appears in Aristotle. But what he says of thought is explicitly and absolutely speculative, and is not on the same level with anything else, such as sense-perception, which has only potentiality for thought. This fact is moreover involved, that reason is implicitly the true totality, but in that case thought is in truth the activity which is independent and absolute existence; that is, the thought of Thought, which is determined thus abstractly, but which constitutes the nature of absolute mind explicitly. These are the main points which are to be taken note of in Aristotle with regard to his speculative ideas, which it is impossible for us, however, to treat in greater detail.

We have now to pass on to what follows, which is a practical philosophy, and in doing so we must first establish firmly the conception of desire, which is really the turning round of thought into its negative side, wherein it becomes practical. Aristotle (De Anima, III. 7 and 6) says: “The object of knowledge and active knowledge are one and the same; what is in potentiality is in the individual prior in point of time, although not so in itself. For all that comes into being originates from that which operates actively. The object perceived by sense appears as that which causes the faculty of perception in potentiality to become the faculty of perception in actuality, for the latter is not receptive of influence, and does not undergo change. On that account it has a different kind of movement from the ordinary, for movement, as we have seen (p. 163) is the activity of an unaccomplished end (ἐνέργεια ἀτελοῦς); pure activity (ἁπλῶς ἐνέργεια), on the contrary, is that of the accomplished end (τοῦ τετελεσμένον).”—“The simple thoughts of the soul are such that in regard to them there can be no falsity; but that in which there is falsity or truth is a combination of thoughts as constituting one conception; for example, ‘the diameter is incommensurate.’ Or if by mistake white has been stated to be not white, not-white has been brought into connection with it. All this process may, however, just as well be termed separation. But that which makes everything one is reason, which in the form of its thinking thinks the undivided in undivided time and with the undivided action of the soul.”—“Sense-perception resembles simple assertion and thought, but pleasant or unpleasant sense-perception has the relation of affirmation or negation,” therefore of the positive and negative determination of thought. “And to perceive the pleasant or unpleasant is to employ the activity” (spontaneity) “of the middle state of sense-perception upon good or evil, in so far as they are such. But desire and aversion are the same in energy; it is only in manifestation that they are different. To the reasoning soul pictorial conceptions take the place of sense-perceptions, and when the mind affirms or denies something to be good or bad, it desires or avoids its object. It has the relation both of unity and limit. The understanding,” as that which determines opposites, “recognizes the forms underlying pictorial conceptions; and in the same manner as what is desirable in them and what is to be avoided have been determined for it, so it also is determined independently of actual sense-perceptions when it is in mental conceptions. And when, in dealing with conception or thought, as if seeing them, it compares the future with the present and passes judgment accordingly, and determines what is pleasant or unpleasant in this respect; it desires or seeks to avoid it, and in general it finds itself in practical operation. But independently of action true and false are of the same character as good or evil.”

b. Practical Philosophy.

From this the conception of will, or the practical element is shown to us, and it has to be reckoned as still belonging to the Philosophy of Mind. Aristotle has treated it in several works which we now possess.

α. Ethics.

We have three great ethical works: the Nicomachean Ethics (Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια) in ten books, the Magna Moralia (Ἠθικὰ μεγάλα) in two books, and the Eudemean Ethics (Ἠθικὰ Εὐδήμια) in seven books; the last deals for the most part with particular virtues, while in the first two general investigations on the principles are contained. Just as the best that we even now possess in reference to psychology is what we have obtained from Aristotle, so is it with his reflections on the actual agent in volition, on freedom, and the further determinations of imputation, intention, &c. We must simply give ourselves the trouble to understand these, and to translate them into our own form of speech, conception and thought; and this is certainly difficult. Aristotle follows the same course here as in his Physics, determining one after the other, in the most thorough and accurate fashion, the many moments which appear in desire: the purpose, the decision, voluntary or forced action, the act of ignorance, guilt, moral responsibility, &c. I cannot enter upon this somewhat psychological presentation of the subject.[102] I shall only make the following remarks on the Aristotelian definitions.

Aristotle[103] defines the principle of morality or the highest good, as happiness (εὐδαιμονία), which later on became a much disputed expression. It is good generally, not as abstract idea, but in such a way that the moment of realization is what actually answers to it. Aristotle thus does not content himself with the Platonic idea of the good, because it is only general; with him the question is taken in its determinateness. Aristotle then says that the good is what has its end in itself (τέλειον). If we tried to translate τέλειον by “perfect” here, we should translate it badly; it is that which, as having its end (τὸ τέλος) in itself, is not desired for the sake of anything else, but for its own sake (supra, pp. 162, 201). Aristotle determines happiness in this regard as the absolute end existing in and for itself, and gives the following definition of it: It is “the energy of the life that has its end in itself in accordance with absolute virtue (ζωῆς τελείας ἐνέργεια κατ̓ ἀρετὴν).” He makes rational insight an essential condition; all action arising from sensuous desires, or from lack of freedom generally, indicates lack of insight; it is an irrational action, or an action which does not proceed from thought as such. But the absolute rational activity is alone knowledge, the action which in itself satisfies itself, and this is hence divine happiness; with the other virtues, on the contrary, only human happiness is obtained, just as from a theoretic point of view feeling is finite as compared with divine thought. Aristotle goes on to say much that is good and beautiful about virtue and the good and happiness in general, and states that happiness, as the good attainable by us, is not to be found without virtue, &c.; in all of which there is no profound insight from a speculative point of view.

In regard to the conception of virtue I should like to say something more. From a practical point of view, Aristotle[104] first of all distinguishes in soul a rational and an irrational side; in the latter reason only exists potentially; under it come the feelings, passions and affections. On the rational side understanding, wisdom, discretion, knowledge, have their place; but they still do not constitute virtue, which first subsists in the unity of the rational and the irrational sides. When the inclinations are so related to virtue that they carry out its dictates, this, according to Aristotle, is virtue. When the perception is either bad or altogether lacking, but the heart is good, goodwill may be there, but not virtue, because the principle—that is reason—which is essential to virtue, is wanting. Aristotle thus places virtue in knowledge, yet reason is not, as many believe, the principle of virtue purely in itself, for it is rather the rational impulse towards what is good; both desire and reason are thus necessary moments in virtue. Hence it cannot be said of virtue that it is misemployed, for it itself is the employer. Thus Aristotle, as we have already seen (Vol. I. pp. 412-414), blames Socrates, because he places virtue in perception alone. There must be an irrational impulse towards what is good, but reason comes in addition as that which judges and determines the impulse; yet when a beginning from virtue has been made, it does not necessarily follow that the passions are in accordance, since often enough they are quite the reverse. Thus in virtue, because it has realization as its aim, and pertains to the individual, reason is not the solitary principle; for inclination is the force that impels, the particular, which as far as the practical side of the individual subject is concerned, is what makes for realization. But then the subject must, in this separation of his activity, bring likewise his passions under the subjection of the universal, and this unity, in which the rational is pre-eminent, is virtue. This is the correct determination; on the one hand this definition is opposed to these ideals of the utter subjection of the passions, by which men are guided from their youth up, and, on the other, it is opposed to the point of view that declares desires to be good in themselves. Both these extreme views have been frequent in modern times, just as sometimes we hear that the man who by nature is beauteous and noble, is better than he who acts from duty; and then it is said that duty must be performed as duty, without taking into account the particular point of view as a moment of the whole.

Aristotle then passes through the particular virtues at great length. Because the virtues, considered as the union of the desiring or realizing with the rational, have an illogical moment within them, Aristotle places[105] their principle on the side of feeling in a mean, so that virtue is the mean between two extremes; e.g. liberality is the mean between avarice and prodigality; gentleness between passion and passive endurance; bravery between rashness and cowardice; friendship between egotism and self-effacement, &c. For the good, and specially that good which has to do with the senses, which would suffer if affected to an excessive degree (supra, p. 195), is therefore a mean, just because the sensuous is an ingredient in it. This does not appear to be a sufficient definition, and it is merely a quantitative determination, just because it is not only the Notion that determines, but the empirical side is also present. Virtue is not absolutely determined in itself, but likewise has a material element, the nature of which is capable of a more or a less. Thus if it has been objected to Aristotle’s definition of virtue as a difference in degree, that it is unsatisfactory and vague, we may say that this really is involved in the nature of the thing. Virtue, and determinate virtue in its entirety, enters into a sphere where that which is quantitative has a place; thought here is no more as such at home with itself, and the quantitative limit undetermined. The nature of particular virtues is of such a kind, that they are capable of no more exact determination; they can only be spoken of in general, and for them there is no further determination than just this indefinite one.[106] But in our way of looking at things, duty is something absolutely existent in itself, and not a mean between existent extremes through which it is determined; but this universal likewise results in being empty, or rather undetermined, while that determinate content is a moment of being that immediately involves us in conflicting duties. It is in practice that man seeks a necessity in man as individual, and endeavours to express it; but it is either formal, or as in particular virtues, a definite content, which, in so being, falls a prey to empiricism.

β. Politics.

We have still to speak of Aristotle’s Politics; he was conscious more or less that the positive substance, the necessary organization and realization of practical spirit, is the state, which is actualized through subjective activity, so that this last finds in it its determination and end. Aristotle hence also looks on political philosophy as the sum total of practical philosophy, the end of the state as general happiness. “All science and all capacity (δύναμις),” he says (Magn. Mor. I. 1), “have an end, and this is the good: the more excellent they are, the more excellent is their end; but the most excellent capacity is the political, and hence its end is also the good.” Of Ethics Aristotle recognizes that it indubitably also applies to the individual, though its perfection is attained in the nation as a whole. “Even if the highest good is the same for an individual and for a whole state, it would yet surely be greater and more glorious to win and maintain it for a state; to do this for an individual were meritorious, but to do it for a nation and for whole states were more noble and godlike still. Such is the object of practical science, and this pertains in a measure to politics.”[107]

Aristotle indeed appreciates so highly the state, that he starts at once (Polit. I. 2) by defining man as “a political animal, having reason. Hence he alone has a knowledge of good and evil, of justice and injustice, and not the beast,” for the beast does not think, and yet in modern times men rest the distinction which exists in these determinations on sensation, which beasts have equally with men. There is also the sense of good and evil, &c., and Aristotle knows this aspect as well (supra, p. 202); but that through which it is not animal sensation merely, is thought. Hence rational perception is also to Aristotle the essential condition of virtue, and thus the harmony between the sensational point of view and that of reason is an essential moment in his eudæmonism. After Aristotle so determines man, he says: “The common intercourse of these, forms the family and the state; in the understanding, however, that the state, in the order of nature” (i.e. in its Notion, in regard to reason and truth, not to time) “is prior to the family” (the natural relation, not the rational) “and to the individual among us.” Aristotle does not place the individual and his rights first, but recognizes the state as what in its essence is higher than the individual and the family, for the very reason that it constitutes their substantiality. “For the whole must be prior to its parts. If, for example, you take away the whole body, there is not a foot or hand remaining, excepting in name, and as if anyone should call a hand of stone a hand; for a hand destroyed is like a hand of stone.” If the man is dead, all the parts perish. “For everything is defined according to its energy and inherent powers, so that when these no longer remain such as they were, it cannot be said that anything is the same excepting in name. The state is likewise the essence of the individuals; the individual when separate from the whole, is just as little complete in himself as any other organic part separated from the whole.” This is directly antagonistic to the modern principle in which the particular will of the individual, as absolute, is made the starting-point; so that all men by giving their votes, decide what is to be the law, and thereby a commonweal is brought into existence. But with Aristotle, as with Plato, the state is the prius, the substantial, the chief, for its end is the highest in respect of the practical. “But whoever was incapable of this society, or so complete in himself as not to want it, would be either a beast or a god.”

From these few remarks it is clear that Aristotle could not have had any thought of a so-called natural right (if a natural right be wanted), that is, the idea of the abstract man outside of any actual relation to others. For the rest, his Politics contain points of view even now full of instruction for us, respecting the inward elements of a state,[108] and a description of the various constitutions;[109] the latter, however, has no longer the same interest, on account of the different principle at the base of ancient and modern states. No land was so rich as Greece, alike in the number of its constitutions, and in the frequent changes from one to another of these in a single state; but the Greeks were still unacquainted with the abstract right of our modern states, that isolates the individual, allows of his acting as such, and yet, as an invisible spirit, holds all its parts together. This is done in such a way, however, that in no one is there properly speaking either the consciousness of, or the activity for the whole; but because the individual is really held to be a person, and all his concern is the protection of his individuality, he works for the whole without knowing how. It is a divided activity in which each has only his part, just as in a factory no one makes a whole, but only a part, and does not possess skill in other departments, because only a few are employed in fitting the different parts together. It is free nations alone that have the consciousness of and activity for the whole; in modern times the individual is only free for himself as such, and enjoys citizen freedom alone—in the sense of that of a bourgeois and not of a citoyen. We do not possess two separate words to mark this distinction. The freedom of citizens in this signification is the dispensing with universality, the principle of isolation; but it is a necessary moment unknown to ancient states. It is the perfect independence of the points, and therefore the greater independence of the whole, which constitutes the higher organic life. After the state received this principle into itself, the higher freedom could come forth. These other states are sports and products of nature which depend upon chance and upon the caprice of the individual, but now, for the first time, the inward subsistence and indestructible universality, which is real and consolidated in its parts, is rendered possible.

Aristotle for the rest has not tried like Plato to describe such a state, but in respect of the constitution he merely points out that the best must rule. But this always takes place, let men do as they will, and hence he has not so very much to do with determining the forms of the constitution. By way of proving that the best must rule, Aristotle says this: “The best would suffer injustice if rated on an equality with the others inferior to them in virtue and political abilities, for a notable man is like a god amongst men.” Here Alexander is no doubt in Aristotle’s mind, as one who must rule as though he were a god, and over whom no one, and not even law, could maintain its supremacy. “For him there is no law, for he himself is law. Such a man could perhaps be turned out of the state, but not subjected to control any more than Jupiter. Nothing remains but, what is natural to all, quietly to submit to such an one, and to let men like this be absolutely and perpetually (ἀΐδιοι) kings in the states”[110] The Greek Democracy had then entirely fallen into decay, so that Aristotle could no longer ascribe to it any merit.

4. The Logic.

On the other side of the Philosophy of Mind, we have still Aristotle’s science of abstract thought, a Logic, to consider. For hundreds and thousands of years it was just as much honoured as it is despised now. Aristotle has been regarded as the originator of Logic: his logical works are the source of, and authority for the logical treatises of all times; which last were, in great measure, only special developments or deductions, and must have been dull, insipid, imperfect, and purely formal. And even in quite recent times, Kant has said that since the age of Aristotle, logic—like pure geometry since Euclid’s day—has been a complete and perfect science which has kept its place even down to the present day, without attaining to any further scientific improvements or alteration. Although logic is here mentioned for the first time, and in the whole of the history of Philosophy that is to come no other can be mentioned (for no other has existed, unless we count the negation of Scepticism), we cannot here speak more precisely of its content, but merely find room for its general characterization. The forms he gives to us come from Aristotle both in reference to the Notion and to the judgment and conclusion. As in natural history, animals, such as the unicorn, mammoth, beetle, mollusc, &c., are considered, and their nature described, so Aristotle is, so to speak, the describer of the nature of these spiritual forms of thought; but in this inference of the one from the other, Aristotle has only presented thought as defined in its finite application and aspect, and his logic is thus a natural history of finite thought. Because it is a knowledge and consciousness of the abstract activity of pure understanding, it is not a knowledge of this and that concrete fact, being pure form. This knowledge is in fact marvellous, and even more marvellous is the manner in which it is constituted: this logic is hence a work which does the greatest honour to the deep thought of its discoverer and to the power of his abstraction. For the greatest cohesive power in thought is found in separating it from what is material and thus securing it; and the strength shows itself almost more, if thus secured when it, amalgamated with matter, turns about in manifold ways and is seen to be capable of numberless alterations and applications. Aristotle also considers, in fact, not only the movement of thought, but likewise of thought in ordinary conception. The Logic of Aristotle is contained in five books, which are collected together under the name Ὀργανον.

a. The Categories (κατηγορίαι), of which the first work treats, are the universal determinations, that which is predicated of existent things (κατηγορεῖται): as well that which we call conceptions of the understanding, as the simple realities of things. This may be called an ontology, as pertaining to metaphysics; hence these determinations also appear in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Aristotle (Categor. I.) now says: “Things are termed homonyms (ὁμώνυμα) of which the name alone is common, but which have a different substantial definition (λόγος τῆς οὐσίας); thus a horse and the picture of a horse are both called an animal.”

Thus the Notion (λόγος) is opposed to the homonym; and since Aristotle deduces herefrom τὰ λεγόμενα, of which the second chapter treats, it is clear that this last expression indicates more than mere predication, and is here to be taken as determinate Notions. “Determinate conceptions are either enunciated after a complex (κατὰ συμπλοκήν) or after an incomplex manner (ἄνευ συμπλοκῆς); the first as ‘a man conquers,’ ‘the ox runs,’ and the other as ‘man,’ ‘ox,’ ‘to conquer,’ ‘to run.’” In the first rank of this division Aristotle places τὰ ὄντα, which are undoubtedly purely subjective relations of such as exist per se, so that the relation is not in them but external to them. Now although τὰ λεγόμενα and τὰ ὄντα are again distinguished from one another, Aristotle yet again employs both λέγεται, and ἐστί of the ὄντα, so that λέγεται is predicated of a species, in relation to its particular; ἐστί is, on the contrary, employed of a universal, which is not Idea but only simple. For Aristotle says, “There are predicates (ὄντα) which can be assigned to a certain subject (καθ̓ ὑποκειμένον), yet are in no subject, as ‘man’ is predicated of ‘some certain man,’ and yet he is no particular man. Others are in a subject (ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ ἐστί) yet are not predicated of any subject (I mean by a thing being in a subject, that it is in any thing not as a part, but as unable to subsist without that in which it is), as ‘a grammatical art’ (τὶς γραμματική) is in a subject, ‘the soul,’ but cannot be predicated of any,’ or related as genus to a subject. Some are predicated of a subject (λέγεται) and are in it; science is in the soul and is predicated of the grammatical art. Some again are neither in, nor are predicated of any subject, as ‘a certain man,’ the individual, the one in number; but some of them can be in a subject like ‘a certain grammatical art.’” Instead of subject we should do better to speak of substratum, for it is that to which the Notion necessarily relates, i.e. that which is neglected in abstraction, and thus the individual opposed to the Notion. We can see that Aristotle has the difference of the genus or universal and the individual present to his mind.

The first thing which Aristotle has indicated in the foregoing is thus the genus, which is predicated of a man, but which is not in him, at least not as a particular quality; the brave man, for example, is an actual, but expressed as a universal conception. In formal logic and its conceptions and definitions there is always present opposition to an actual; and the logical actual is in itself something thought, bravery thus being, for example, a pure form of abstraction. This logic of the understanding seeks, however, in its three stages to imitate the categories of the absolute. The conception or definition is a logical actual, and thus in itself merely something thought, i.e. possible. In the judgment this logic calls a conception A the actual subject and connects with it another actual as the conception B; B is said to be the conception and A to be dependent on it—but B is only the more general conception. In the syllogism necessity is said to be simulated: even in a judgment there is a synthesis of a conception and something whose existence is assumed; in the syllogism it should bear the form of necessity, because both the opposites are set forth in a third as through the medius terminus of reason, e.g. as was the case with the mean of virtue (supra, p. 206). The major term expresses logical being and the minor term logical potentiality, for Caius is a mere potentiality for logic; the conclusion unites both. But it is to reason that life first unfolds itself, for it is true reality. What comes second in Aristotle is the universal, which is not the genus, i.e. it is not in itself the unity of universal and particular—nor is it absolute individuality and hence infinitude. This is the moment or predicate in a subject certainly, but it is not absolutely in and for itself. This relation is now expressed through οὐ λέγεται; for ὅ λέγεται is that which, as universal in itself, is likewise infinite. The third is the particular which is predicated: just as science in itself is infinite and thus the genus, e.g. of the grammatical art; but at the same time as universal, or as not individual, it is the moment of a subject. The fourth indicated by Aristotle is what is called immediate conception—the individual. The reservation that something such as a definite grammatical art is also in a subject, has no place here, for the definite grammatical art is not really in itself individual.