A Critical History of Greek Philosophy by W. T. Stace (short story to read txt) 📖

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 identity, 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 retards 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, space, and time. Aristotle, therefore, finds it necessary to consider these. Motion is the passage 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 quantity, increase and decrease. Fourthly, locomotion, change of place. Of these, the last is the most fundamental and important.

Aristotle rejects the definition of space as the void. Empty space 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 quantity, or upon composition and decomposition. Quality has a real existence of its own. He rejects, also, the view that space 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 space it fills. Hence there is nothing for it but to conceive space as limit. Space 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 space 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 space and time, and the riddles proposed thereupon by Zeno, Aristotle is of opinion that space 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 space and time are not given in experience as infinitely divided.

After these preliminaries, we can pass 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 constitutes 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 passes 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, God, 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 space 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 assumed 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 Classics 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,