CHAPTER VII.

THE SYSTEMATIC PHILOSOPHY OF ARISTOTLE.

I.

We have considered the Aristotelian philosophy in relation to the great concrete interests of life, morals, politics, literature, and science. We have now to ask what it has to tell us about the deepest and gravest problems of any, the first principles of Being and Knowing, God and the soul, spirit and matter, metaphysics, psychology, and logic. We saw that very high claims were advanced on behalf of Aristotle in respect to his treatment of these topics; and had we begun with them, we should only have been following the usual example of his expositors. We have, however, preferred keeping them to the last, that our readers might acquire some familiarity with the Aristotelian method, by seeing it applied to subjects where the results were immediately intelligible, and could be tested by an appeal to the experience of twentytwo centuries. We know that there are some who will demur to this proceeding, who will say that Aristotle the metaphysician stands on quite different ground from Aristotle the man of science, because in the one capacity he had, and in the other capacity he had not, sufficient facts to warrant an authoritative conclusion. They will say, with Prof. St. George Mivart, that in accumulating natural knowledge men's minds have become deadened to spiritual truth; or with Mr. Edwin Wallace, that the questions opened by Aristotle have not yet been closed, and that we may with advantage begin

our study of them under his guidance. We, on the other hand, will endeavour to show that there is a unity of composition running through the Stagirite's entire labours, that they everywhere manifest the same excellences and defects, which are those of an anatomising, critical, descriptive, classificatory genius; that his most important conclusions, however great their historical interest, are without any positive or even educational value for us, being almost entirely based on false physical assumptions; that his ontology and psychology are not what his admirers suppose them to be; and that his logic, though meriting our gratitude, is far too confused and incomplete to throw any light on the questions raised by modern thinkers.

Here, as elsewhere, we shall employ the genetic method of investigation. Aristotle's writings do not, indeed, present that gradual development of ideas which makes the Platonic Dialogues so interesting. Still they exhibit traces of such a development, and the most important among them seems to have been compiled from notes taken by the philosopher before his conclusions were definitely reasoned out, or worked up into a consistent whole. It is this fragmentary collection which, from having been placed by some unknown editor after the Physics, has received a name still associated with every kind of speculation that cannot be tested by a direct or indirect appeal to the evidence of external sense.

Whether there exist any realities beyond what are revealed to us by this evidence, and what sensible evidence itself may be worth, were problems already actively canvassed in Aristotle's time. His Metaphysics at once takes us into the thick of the debate. The first question of that age was, What are the causes and principles of things? On one side stood the materialists-the old Ionian physicists and their living representatives. They said that all things came from water or air or fire, or from a mixture of the four elements, or from the interaction of opposites, such as wet and dry, hot and cold.

Aristotle, following in the track of his master, Plato, blames them for ignoring the incorporeal substances, by which he does not mean what would now be understood-feelings or states of consciousness, or even the spiritual substratum of consciousness-but rather the general qualities or assemblages of qualities which remain constant amid the fluctuations of sensible phenomena; considered, let us observe, not as subjective thoughts, but as objective realities. Another deficiency in the older physical theories is that they either ignore the efficient cause of motion altogether (like Thales), or assign causes not adequate to the purpose (like Empedocles); or when they hit on the true cause do not make the right use of it (like Anaxagoras). Lastly, they have omitted to study the final cause of a thing-the good for which it exists.

The teleology of Aristotle requires a word of explanation, which may appropriately find its place in the present connexion. In speaking of a purpose in Nature, he does not mean that natural productions subserve an end lying outside themselves; as if, to use Goethe's illustration, the bark of corktrees was intended to be made into stoppers for ginger-beer bottles; but that in every perfect thing the parts are interdependent, and exist for the sake of the whole to which they belong. Nor does he, like so many theologians, both ancient and modern, argue from the evidence of design in Nature to the operation of a designing intelligence outside her. Not believing in any creation at all apart from works of art, he could not believe in a creative intelligence other than that of He does, indeed, constantly speak of Nature as if she were a personal providence, continually exerting herself for the good of her creatures. But, on looking a little closer, we find that the agency in question is completely unconscious, and may be identified with the constitution of each particular thing, or rather of the type to which it belongs. We have said that Aristotle's intellect was essentially descriptive, and we have here another illustration of its characteristic quality.

man.

The teleology which he parades with so much pomp adds nothing to our knowledge of causes, implies nothing that a positivist need not readily accept. It is a mere study of functions, an analysis of statical relations. Of course, if there were really any philosophers who said that the connexion between teeth and mastication was entirely accidental, the Aristotelian doctrine was a useful protest against such an absurdity; but when we have established a fixed connexion between organ and function, we are bound to explain the association in some more satisfactory manner than by reaffirming it in general terms, which is all that Aristotle ever does. Again, whatever may be the relative justification of teleology as a study of functions in the living body, we have no grounds for interpreting the phenomena of inorganic nature on an analogous principle. Some Greek philosophers were acute enough to perceive the distinction. While admitting that plants and animals showed traces of design, they held that the heavenly bodies arose spontaneously from the movements of a vortex or some such cause; ' just as certain religious savants of our own day reject the Darwinian theory while accepting the nebular hypothesis. But to Aristotle the unbroken regularity of the celestial movements, which to us is the best proof of their purely mechanical nature, was, on the contrary, a proof that they were produced and directed by an absolutely reasonable purpose; much more so indeed than terrestrial organisms, marked as these are by occasional deviations and imperfections; and he concludes that each of those movements must be directed towards the attainment of some correspondingly consummate end; while, again, in dealing with those precursors of Mr. Darwin, if such they can be called, who argued that the utility of an organ does not disprove its spontaneous origin, since only the creatures which, by a happy accident, came to possess it would survive-he

1

Phys., II., viii., p. 198, b, 24. 2 The late Father Secchi, for example. 3 Phys., II., iv., p. 196, a, 28; De Coel., II., xii.

answers that the constant reproduction of such organs is enough to vindicate them from being the work of chance;' thus displaying his inability to distinguish between the two ideas of uniform causation and design.

As a result of the foregoing criticism, Aristotle distinguishes four different causes or principles by which all things are determined to be what they are-Matter, Form, Agent, and Purpose. If, for example, we take a saw, the matter is steel; the form, a toothed blade; the agent or cause of its assuming that shape, a smith; the purpose, to divide wood or stone. When we have enumerated these four principles, we have told everything that can be known about a saw. But Aristotle could not keep the last three separate; he gradually extended the definition of form until it absorbed, or became identified with, agent and purpose. It was what we should call the idea of function that facilitated the transition. If the very essence or nature of a saw implies use, activity, movement, how can we define it without telling its purpose? The toothed blade is only intelligible as a cutting, dividing instrument. Again, how came the saw into being? What shaped the steel into that particular form? We have said that it was the smith. But surely that is too vague. The smith is a man, and may be able to exercise other trades as well. Suppose him to be a musician, did he make the saw in that capacity? No; and here comes in a distinction which plays an immense part in Aristotle's metaphysics, whence it has passed into our every-day speech. He does not make the saw quâ musician but quâ smith. He can, however, in the exercise of his trade as smith make many other tools—knives, axes, and so forth. Nevertheless, had he only learned to make saws it would be enough. Therefore, he does not make

1 Phys., II., viii., p. 199, b, 14.

Metaph., I., iii., sub in. ; Anal. Post., II., xi., sub in. Bekker. (cap. x., in the Tauchnitz ed.); Phys. II., iii.; De Gen. An., I., i. sub in.

Metaph., VIII., iv., p. 1044, b, 1 ; De Gen. An., I., i., p. 715, a, 6; ib. II., i., 732, a, 4; Phys., II., vii., p. 198, a, 24 ff.