A Critical History of Greek Philosophy Part 14

From this, too, we can see that the form is the universal, the matter the particular. For the form is the Idea, and the Idea is the universal. To say that form and {276} matter cannot exist apart is thus the same as saying that the universal only exists in the particular, which, as we have seen, is the fundamental note of Aristotle's philosophy. But if we thus identify matter with the particular element in things, we must be careful that we do not confuse the particular with the individual. We often use these two words as practically synonymous, and there is no harm in this, but here we must be careful to separate them. For every individual is, according to Aristotle, a compound of matter and form, of the particular and the universal. And when we say that matter is the particular, we mean, not that it is such a compound, but that it is the absolutely particular which has no universal in it. But the absolutely particular and isolated does not exist. A piece of gold, for instance, only exists by virtue of its properties, yellowness, heaviness, etc., and these qualities are just what it has in common with other things. So that the particular, as such, has no existence, but this is only the same as saying, what we have already said, that matter has no existence apart from form.

A very natural mistake would be to suppose that by matter Aristotle meant the same as we do, namely, physical substance, such as wood or iron, and that by form he meant simply shape. Now although there is a kinship in the ideas, these two pairs of ideas are far from identical.

Let us begin with matter. Our ordinary idea of matter as physical substance is an absolute conception. That is to say, a thing which we call material is absolutely, once and for all, matter. It is not material from one point of view, and immaterial from another. In every possible relation it is, and {277} remains, matter. Nor does it in process of time cease to be matter. Bra.s.s never becomes anything but matter. No doubt there are in nature changes of one sort of matter into another, for example, radium into helium. And for all we know, bra.s.s may become lead. But even so, it does not cease to be matter.

But Aristotle's conception of matter is a relative conception. Matter and form are fluid. They flow into one another. The same thing, from one point of view, is matter, from another, form. In all change, matter is that which becomes, that upon which the change is wrought.

That is form towards which the change operates. What becomes is matter. What it becomes is form. Thus wood is matter if considered in relation to the bed. For it is what becomes the bed. But wood is form if considered in relation to the growing plant. For it is what the plant becomes. The oak is the form of the acorn, but it is the matter of the oak furniture.

That matter and form are relative terms shows, too, that the form cannot be merely the shape. For what is form in one aspect is matter in another. But shape is never anything but shape. No doubt the shape is part of the form, for the form in fact includes all the qualities of the thing. But the shape is quite an unimportant part of the form.

For form includes organization, the relation of part to part, and the subordination of all parts to the whole. The form is the sum of the internal and external relations, the ideal framework, so to speak, into which the thing is moulded. Form also includes function. For it includes the final cause. Now the function of a thing is just what the thing is for. And what it is for is the same as its end, or final cause. {278} Therefore function is included in form. For example, the function of a hand, its power of gripping, is part of its form. And therefore, if it loses its function by being cut off from the arm, it likewise loses its form. Even the dead hand, of course, has some form, for every individual object is a compound of matter and form. But it has lost the highest part of its form, and relatively to the living hand it is mere matter, although, relatively to the flesh and bones of which it is composed, it is still form. Clearly, then, form is not merely shape. For the hand cut off does not lose its shape.

The form includes all the qualities of the thing. The matter is what has the qualities. For the qualities are all universals. A piece of gold is yellow, and this means simply that it has this in common with other pieces of gold, and other yellow objects. To say that anything has a quality is immediately to place it in a cla.s.s. And what the cla.s.s has in common is a universal. A thing without qualities cannot exist, nor qualities without a thing. And this is the same as saying that form and matter cannot exist separately.

The matter, then, is the absolutely formless. It is the substratum which underlies everything. It has, in itself, no character. It is absolutely featureless, indefinite, without any quality. Whatever gives a thing definiteness, character, quality, whatever makes it a this or that, is its form. Consequently, there are no differences within matter. One thing can only differ from another by having different qualities. And as matter has no qualities, it has no difference. And this in itself shows that the Aristotelian notion of matter is not the same as our notion of physical substance. For, according {279} to our modern usage, one kind of matter differs from another, as bra.s.s from iron. But this is a difference of quality, and for Aristotle all quality is part of the form. So in his view the difference of bra.s.s from iron is not a difference of matter, but a difference of form. Consequently, matter may become anything, according to the form impressed upon it. It is thus the possibility of everything, though it is actually nothing. It only becomes something by the acquisition of form. And this leads directly to a most important Aristotelian ant.i.thesis, that between potentiality and actuality. Potentiality is the same as matter, actuality as form. For matter is potentially everything. It may become everything. It is not actually anything. It is a mere potentiality, or capacity of becoming something. But whatever gives it definiteness as a this or that, whatever makes it an actual thing, is its form. Thus the actuality of a thing is simply its form.

Aristotle claims, by means of the ant.i.thesis of potentiality and actuality, to have solved the ancient problem of becoming, a riddle, propounded by the Eleatics, which had never ceased to trouble Greek thinkers. How is becoming possible? For being to pa.s.s into being is not becoming, for it involves no change, and for not-being to pa.s.s into being is impossible, since something cannot come out of nothing.

For Aristotle, the sharp line drawn between not-being and being does not exist. For these absolute terms he subst.i.tutes the relative terms potentiality and actuality, which shade off into each other.

Potentiality in his philosophy takes the place of not-being in previous systems. It solves the riddle because it is not an absolute not-being. It is {280} not-being inasmuch as it is actually nothing, but it is being because it is potential being. Becoming, therefore, does not involve the impossible leap from nothing to something. It involves the transition from potential to actual being. All change, all motion, is thus the pa.s.sage of potentiality into actuality, of matter into form.

Since matter is in itself nothing, a bare unrealised capacity, while form is actuality, the completed and perfected being, it follows that form is something higher than matter. But matter is what becomes form.

In order of time, therefore, matter is earlier, form later. But in order of thought, and in reality, it is otherwise. For when we say that matter is the potentiality of what it is to become, this implies that what it is to become is already present in it ideally and potentially, though not actually. The end, therefore, is already present in the beginning. The oak is in the acorn, ideally, otherwise the oak could never come out of it. And since all becoming is towards the end, and would not take place but for the end, the end is the operative principle and true cause of becoming. Motion is produced not by a mechanical propulsive force, pushing from behind, so to speak, but by an ideal attractive force, drawing the thing towards its end, as a piece of iron is drawn to the magnet. It is the end itself which exerts this force. And, therefore, the end must be present at the beginning, for if it were not present it could exert no force. Nay, more. It is not only present in the beginning, it is anterior to it.

For the end is the cause of the motion, and the cause is logically prior to its consequence. The end, or the principle of form, is thus the absolute first in thought and reality, though it may be the last in time. If, then, {281} we ask what, for Aristotle, is that ultimate reality, that first principle, from which the entire universe flows, the answer is, the end, the principle of form. And as form is the universal, the Idea, we see that his fundamental thesis is the same as Plato's. It is the one thesis of all idealism, namely, that thought, the universal, reason, is the absolute being, the foundation of the world. Where he differs from Plato is in denying that form has any existence apart from the matter in which it exhibits itself.

Now all this may strike the unsophisticated as very strange. That the absolute being whence the universe flows should be described as that which lies at the end of the development of the universe, and that philosophy should proceed to justify this by a.s.serting that the end is really prior to the beginning, this is so far removed from the common man's mode of thought, that it may appear mere paradox. It is, however, neither strange nor paradoxical. It is essentially sound and true, and it seems strange to the ordinary man only because it penetrates so much deeper into things than he can. This thought is, in fact, essential to a developed idealism, and till it is grasped no advance can be made in philosophy. Whether it is understood is, indeed, a good test of whether a man has any talent for philosophy or not. The fact is that all philosophies of this sort regard time as unreal, as an appearance. This being so, the relation of the absolute being, or G.o.d, to the world cannot be a relation of time at all. The common man's idea is that, if there is a first principle or G.o.d at all, He must have existed before the world began, and then, somehow, perhaps billions of years ago, something happened as a {282} result of which the world came into being. The Absolute is thus conceived as the cause, the world as the effect, and the cause always precedes its effect in time. Or if, on the other hand, we think that the world never had a beginning, the ordinary man's thought would lead him to believe that, in that case, it is no longer necessary to a.s.sume a first principle at all. But if time is a mere appearance, this whole way of looking at things must be wrong. G.o.d is not related to the world as cause to effect. It is not a relation of time at all. It is a _logical_ relation. G.o.d is rather the logical premise, of which the world is the conclusion, so that, G.o.d granted, the world follows necessarily, just as, the premises granted, the conclusion follows.

This is the reason why, in discussing Plato, we said that it must be possible to _deduce_ the world from his first principle. If the Absolute were merely the cause of the world in time, it would not explain the world, for, as I have so often pointed out, causes explain nothing. But if the world be deducible from the Absolute, the world is explained, a reason, not a cause, is given for it, just as the premises const.i.tute the reason for the conclusion. Now the conclusion of a syllogism follows from the premises, that is, the premises come first, the conclusion second. But the premise only comes first in thought, not in time. It is a logical succession, not a time-succession. Just in the same way, the Absolute, or in Aristotle's language, the form, is logically first, but is not first in order of time. And though it is the end, it is in thought the absolute beginning, and is thus the foundation of the world, the first principle from which the world flows. The objection may be, taken that if the relation of the {283} Absolute to the world is not a time-relation, then it can no more be the end than the beginning. This objection is, as we shall see, a misunderstanding of Aristotle's philosophy. Although things in time strive towards the end, yet the absolute end is not in time at all, or, in other words, the end is never reached. Its relation to the world as end is just as much a logical, and not a time-relation, as its relation to the world as beginning or absolute prius. As far as time is concerned, the universe is without beginning or end.

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

That which comes at the top of the scale, absolute form, is called by Aristotle, G.o.d. And the definitions of G.o.d's character follow from this as a matter of course. First, since form is actuality, G.o.d alone is absolutely actual. He alone is real. All existent things are more or less unreal. The higher in the scale are the more real, as possessing more form. The scale of being is thus also a scale of reality, shading off through infinite gradations {284} from the absolutely real, G.o.d, to the absolutely unreal, formless matter.

Secondly, since the principle of form contains the formal, the final, and the efficient causes, G.o.d is all these. As formal cause, He is the Idea. He is essentially thought, reason. As final cause, He is the absolute end. He is that to which all beings strive. Each being has no doubt its own end in itself. But as absolute end, G.o.d includes all lower ends. And as the end of each thing is the completed perfection of the thing, so, as absolute end, G.o.d is absolute perfection. Lastly, as efficient cause, G.o.d is the ultimate cause of all motion and becoming. He is the first mover. As such, He is Himself unmoved. That the first mover should be itself unmoved is a necessary consequence of Aristotle's conception of it as end and form. For motion is the transition of a thing towards its end. The absolute end can have no end beyond it, and therefore cannot be moved. Likewise motion is the pa.s.sage of matter into form. Absolute form cannot pa.s.s into any higher form, and is therefore unmoved. But the argument which Aristotle himself more frequently uses to establish the immovability of the first mover is that, unless we so conceive it, no cause of motion appears. The moving object is moved perhaps by another moving object.

The motion of the latter demands a further cause. If this further cause is itself moving, we must again ask for the cause of its motion.

If this process goes on for ever, then motion is unexplained, and no real cause of it has been shown. The real and ultimate cause must therefore be unmoved.

This last argument sounds as if Aristotle is now thinking in terms of mechanism. It sounds as if he meant that {285} the first mover is something at the beginning of time, which, so to speak, gave things a push to start them off. This is not what Aristotle means. For the true efficient cause is the final cause. And G.o.d is the first mover only in His character as absolute end. As far as time is concerned, neither the universe, nor the motion in it, ever had any beginning. Every mechanical cause has its cause in turn, and so _ad infinitum_. G.o.d is not a first cause, in our sense, that is, a first mechanical cause which existed before the world, and created it. He is a teleological cause working from the end. But as such, He is logically prior to all beginning, and so is the first mover. And just as the universe has no beginning in time, so it has no end in time. It will go on for ever.

Its end is absolute form, but this can never be reached, because if it were, this would mean that absolute form would exist, whereas we have seen that form cannot exist apart from matter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Physics, or the Philosophy of Nature.

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

If nature is to be understood, we must keep in mind certain general points of view. In the first place, since form includes end, the entire world-process, as pa.s.sage of matter into form, is essentially movement towards ends. Everything in nature has its end and function.

Nothing is purposeless. Nature seeks everywhere to attain the best possible. Everywhere we find evidences of design and of rational plan.

Aristotle's philosophy of nature is essentially teleological. This does not, however, exclude the principle of mechanism, and to investigate mechanical causes is part of the duty of science. But mechanical causes turn out in the end to be teleological, because the true efficient cause is the final cause.

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

Another mistake which we must avoid is to suppose that the design in nature means that nature is conscious of her designs, or, on the other hand, that there is any {290} existent consciousness outside the world which governs and controls it. The latter supposition is excluded by the fact that G.o.d is not an existent conscious person, the former by its own inherent absurdity. The only being upon this earth who is conscious of his ends is man. Such animals as bees and ants appear to work rationally, and their activities are clearly governed by design.

But it is not to be supposed that they are reasoning beings. They attain their ends instinctively. And when we come to inorganic matter, we find that even here its movements are purposive, but no one could suppose them deliberate and conscious. These manifold activities of lower nature are indeed the work of reason, but not of an existent or self-conscious reason. And this means that instinct, and even mechanical forces such as gravitation are, in their essence, reason.

It is not that they are created by reason, but that they are reason, exhibiting itself in lower forms. In commenting upon Plato's dualism of sense and reason, I remarked that any true philosophy, though recognizing the distinction between sense and reason, must yet find room for their ident.i.ty, and must show that sense is but a lower form of reason. This idea Aristotle thoroughly understood, and sought to show, not merely that sense is reason, but even that the activities of inorganic matter, such as gravitation, are so. In the result, nature, though working through reason, is not conscious of the fact, does so blindly and instinctively, and is compared to a creative artist, who forms beautiful objects by instinct, or, as we should say, by inspiration, without setting before his mind the end to be attained or the rules to be observed in order to attain it.

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

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

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

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

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

After these preliminaries, we can pa.s.s on to consider the main subject of physics, the scale of being. We should notice, in the first place, that it is also a scale of values. What is higher in the scale of being is of more worth, because the principle of form is more advanced in it. It const.i.tutes also a theory of development, a philosophy of evolution. The lower develops into the higher. It does not, however, so develop in time. That the lower form pa.s.ses in due time into a higher form is a discovery of modern times. Such a conception was impossible for Aristotle. For him, genus and species are eternal. They have neither beginning nor end. Individual men are born and die, but the species man never dies, and has always existed upon the earth. The same is true of plants and animals. And since man has always existed, he cannot have evolved in time from a lower being. There is no room here for Darwinism. In what sense, then, is this a theory of development or evolution? The process involved is not a time-process, it is a logical process, and the development is a logical development.

The lower always contains the higher potentially. The man is in the ape ideally. The higher, again, contains the lower actually. The man is all that the ape is, and more also. What is merely implicit in the lower form is explicit in the higher. The form which is dimly seen struggling to light in the lower, has realized itself in the higher.

The higher is the same thing as the lower, but it is the same thing in a more {294} evolved state. The higher presupposes the lower and rests upon it as foundation. The higher is the form of which the lower is the matter. It actually is what the lower is struggling to become.

Hence the entire universe is one continuous chain. It is a process; not a time-process, but an eternal process. The one ultimate reality, G.o.d, reason, absolute form, eternally exhibits itself in every stage of its development. All the stages, therefore, must exist for ever side by side.

Now the form of a thing is its organization. Hence to be higher in the scale means to be more organized. The first distinction, therefore, with which nature presents us is between the organic and the inorganic. Aristotle was the discoverer of the idea of organism, as he was also the inventor of the word. At the bottom of the scale of being, therefore, is inorganic matter. Inorganic matter is the nearest existent thing to absolutely formless matter, which, of course, does not exist. In the inorganic world matter preponderates to such an extent as almost to overwhelm form, and we can only expect to see the universal exhibiting itself in it in a vague and dim way. What, then, is its form? And this is the same as asking what its function, end, or essential activity is. The end of inorganic matter is merely external to it. Form has not truly entered into it at all, and remains outside it. Hence the activity of inorganic matter can only be to move in s.p.a.ce towards its external end. This is the explanation of what we, in modern times, call gravitation. But, according to Aristotle, every element has its peculiar and natural motion; its end is conceived merely spatially, and its activity is to move towards its "proper place," and, having thus reached its end, it rests. The natural {295} movement of fire is up. We may call this a principle of levitation, as opposed to gravitation. Aristotle has been the subject of cheap criticism on account of his frequent use of the words "natural" and "unnatural." [Footnote 15] It is said that he was satisfied to explain the operations of nature by simply labelling them "natural." If you ask a quite uneducated person why heavy bodies fall, he may quite possibly reply, "Oh! _naturally_ they fall." This simply means that the man has never thought about the matter at all, and thinks whatever is absolutely familiar to him is "natural" and needs no explanation.

It is like the feminine argument that a thing is so, "because it is."

It is a.s.sumed that Aristotle was guilty of a like futility. This is not the case. His use of the word "natural" does not indicate lack of thought. There is a thought, an idea, here. No doubt he was quite wrong in many of his facts. Thus there is no such principle as levitation in the universe. But there is a principle of gravitation, and when he explains this by saying it is "natural" for earth to move downwards, he means, not that the fact is familiar, but that the principle of form, or the world-reason, can only exhibit itself here so dimly as to give rise to a comparatively aimless and purposeless movement in a straight line. Not absolutely purposeless, however, because nothing in the world is such, and the purpose here is simply the movement of matter towards its end. This may or may not be a true explanation of gravity. But has anybody since ever explained it better?

[Footnote 15: See, _e.g._ Sir Alexander Grant's _Aristotle_ in the Ancient Cla.s.sics for English Readers Series (Blackwood), pages 119-121.]

This gives us, too, the clue to the distinction between {296} the inorganic and the organic. If inorganic matter is what has its end outside itself, organic matter will be what has its end within itself.

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

The lowest in the scale of being is thus inorganic matter, and above it comes organic matter, in which the principle of form becomes real and definite as the inward organization of the thing. This inward organization is the life, or what we call the soul, of the organism.

Even the human soul is nothing but the organization of the body. It stands to the body in the relation of form to matter. With organism, then, we reach the idea of living soul. But this living soul will itself have lower and higher grades of being, the higher being a higher realization of the principle of form. As the essential of organism is self-realization, this will express itself first as self-preservation. Self-preservation means first the preservation of the individual, and this gives the function of nutrition. Secondly, it means preservation of the species, and this gives the function of propagation. The lowest grade in the organic kingdom will, therefore, be {297} those organisms whose sole functions are to nourish themselves, grow, and propagate their kind. These are plants. And we may sum up this by saying that plants possess the nutritive soul.

Aristotle intended to write a treatise upon plants, which intention, however, he never carried out. All that we have from him on plants is scattered references in his other books. Had the promised treatise been forthcoming, we cannot doubt what its plan would have been.

Aristotle would have shown, as he did in the case of animals, that there are higher and lower grades of organism within the plant kingdom, and he would have attempted to trace the development in detail through all the then known species of plants.

Next above plants in the scale of being come animals. Since the higher always contains the lower, but exhibits a further realization of form peculiar to itself, animals share with plants the functions of nutrition and propagation. What is peculiar to them, the point in which they rise above plants, is the possession of sensation.

Sense-perception is therefore the special function of animals, and they possess, therefore, the nutritive and the sensitive souls. With sensation come pleasure and pain, for pleasure is a pleasant sensation, and pain the opposite. Hence arises the impulse to seek the pleasant and avoid the painful. This can only be achieved by the power of movement. Most animals, accordingly, have the power of locomotion, which is not possessed by plants, because they do not require it, since they are not sensitive to pleasure and pain. In his books upon animals Aristotle attempts to carry out the principle of development in detail, showing what are the higher, and what the lower, animal organisms. This he connects with the {298} methods of propagation employed by different animals. s.e.x-generation is the mark of a higher organism than parthenogenesis.