Note 75 — Chapter XXV · PHÆDON.

Monboddo, Ancient Metaphysics, B. 1. ch. iv. p. 32. “Plato appears to have been the first of the Ionic School that introduced formal causes into natural philosophy. These he called Ideas, and made the principles of all things. And the reason why he insists so much upon this kind of cause, and so little upon the other three, is given us by Aristotle in the end of his first book of Metaphysics, viz., that he studied mathematics too much, and instead of using them as the handmaid of philosophy, made them philosophy itself.… Plato, however, in the Phædon says a good deal about final causes; but in the system of natural philosophy which is in the Timæus, he says very little of it.”

I have already observed that Plato in the Timæus (48 A) recognises erratic or irregular Causation — ἡ πλανωμένη αἰτία. Aristotle recognises Αἰτία among the equivocal words πολλαχῶς λεγόμενα; and he enumerates Τύχη and Αὐτόματον — irregular causes or causes by accident — among them (Physic. ii. 195-198; Metaphys. K. 1065, a.) Schwegler, ad Aristot. Metaphys. vi. 4, 3, “Das Zufällige ist ein nothwendiges Element alles Geschehens”. Alexander of Aphrodisias, the best of the Aristotelian commentators, is at pains to defend this view of Τύχη — Causation by accident, or irregular.

Proklus, in his Commentary on the Timæus (ii. 80-81, p. 188, Schneider), notices the labour and prolixity with which the commentators before him set out the different varieties of Cause; distinguishing sixty-four according to Plato, and forty-eight according to Aristotle. Proklus adverts also (ad Timæum, iii. p. 176) to an animated controversy raised by Theophrastus against Plato, about Causes and the speculations thereupon.

An enumeration, though very incomplete, of the different meanings assigned to the word Cause, may be seen in Professor Fleming’s Vocabulary of Philosophy.