No More Learning

The distinction is
peculiar to Aristotle. No one before him had ever thought of supposing
the heavenly bodies to be made of any materials other than those of
which "bodies terrestrial" are made. In the Academic attack on
Aristotle's science of which we have already spoken the two points
singled out for reprobation are (1) his rejection of the principle that
all moving bodies, left to themselves, follow a rectilinear path, and
(2) his denial that the heavenly bodies are made of the same "elements"
as everything else. (It may just be mentioned in passing that our word
_quintessence_ gets its sense from the supposed special "nobility" of
the incorruptible "fifth body. ")

*Terrestrial Bodies*. --As we have seen already, Aristotle was out of
sympathy with the tendency to regard the sensible differences between
bodies as consequences of more ultimate differences in the geometrical
structure of their particles. Hence his whole attitude towards the
problems of that branch of natural science which we call physics is
quite unlike any view to which we are accustomed. He reverts from the
mathematical lines of thought current in Plato's Academy to the type of
view more natural to the "plain man," and, like the earliest
sixth-century men of science, regards the _qualitative_ differences
which our senses apprehend as fundamental. Among these, particular
stress is laid on the difference in sensible temperature (the hot--the
cold), in saturation (the dry--the moist), and in density (the
dense--the rare). If we consider the first two of these oppositions, we
can make four binary combinations of the elementary "opposite"
characters, viz. hot and dry, hot and moist, cold and moist, cold and
dry. These combinations are regarded as corresponding respectively to
the sensible characteristics of the four bodies which Empedocles, the
father of Greek chemistry, had treated as the ultimate components of
everything. Fire is hot and dry, air hot and moist, water moist and
cold, earth cold and dry. This reflection shows us why Aristotle held
that the most rudimentary form in which "matter" ever actually exists is
that of one of these "elements. " Each of them has _one_ quality in
common with another, and it is in virtue of this that a portion of one
element can be assimilated by and transmuted into another, a process
which seems to the untutored eye to be constantly recurring in Nature.
We also observe that the order in which the "elements" appear, when so
arranged as to form a series in which each term has one quality in
common with each of its neighbours, is also that of their increasing
density. This would help to make the conception of their
transmutability all the more natural, as it suggests that the process
may be effected by steady condensation. We must remember carefully that
for Aristotle, who denies the possibility of a vacuum, as for the
mediaeval alchemists, condensation does not mean a mere diminution of the
distances between corpuscles which remain unchanged in character, but is
a process of real qualitative change in the body which undergoes it.
Incidentally we may remark that _all_ changes of quality are regarded by
Aristotle as stages in a continuous "movement" from one extreme of a
scale to another. For example, colours, with him as with Goethe, form a
series of which the "opposites" white and black are the end-points.
Every other colour is a combination of white and black according to a
definite proportion.

The Aristotelian doctrine of weight was one of the chief obstacles which
seventeenth-century science had to contend with in establishing correct
notions in dynamics. It is a curious feature of Greek science before
Aristotle that, though the facts connected with gravity were well known,
no one introduced the notion of weight to account for them. The
difference between heavy bodies and light bodies had been previously
treated as secondary for science. Plato's treatment of the matter is
typical of the best fourth-century science. We must not try to explain
why the heavier bodies tend to move towards the earth's surface by
saying that they have a "downward" motion; their motion is not downward
but "towards the centre" (the earth, though not fixed at the centre of
the universe, being nearer to it than the rest of the solar and sidereal
system). Plato then explains the tendency in virtue of which the
heavier bodies move towards the "centre" as an attraction of like for
like. The universal tendency is for smaller masses of "earth," "water,"
"air," "fire" to be attracted towards the great aggregations of the same
materials. This is far from being a satisfactory theory in the light of
facts which were not yet known to Plato, but it is on the right lines.
It starts from the conception of the facts of gravity as due to an
"attractive force" of some kind, and it has the great merit of bringing
the "sinking" of stones and the "rising" of vapours under the same
explanation.

Aristotle, though retaining the central idea that a body tends to move
towards the region where the great cosmic mass of the same kind is
congregated, introduced the entirely incompatible notion of an absolute
distinction of "up" and "down. " He identified the centre of the
universe with that of the earth, and looked on motion to this centre as
"downward. " This led him to make a distinction between "heavy" bodies,
which naturally tend to move "down," and "light" bodies, which tend to
move "up" away from the centre. The doctrine works out thus. The
heaviest elements tend to be massed together nearest the centre, the
lightest to be furthest from it. Each element thus has its "proper
place," that of water being immediately above earth, that of air next,
and that of fire furthest from the centre, and nearest to the regions
occupied by "celestial matter. " (Readers of Dante will recollect the
ascent from the Earthly Paradise through the "sphere of fire" with which
the _Paradiso_ opens. )

In its own "proper region" no body is heavy or light; as we should say
any fluid loses its weight when immersed in itself. When a portion of
an element is out of its own region and surrounded by the great cosmic
aggregate of another element, either of two cases may occur. The body
which is "out of its element" may be _below_ its proper place, in which
case it is "light" and tends to move perpendicularly upwards to its
place, or it may be _above_ its proper place, and then it is "heavy" and
tends to move perpendicularly "down" until it reaches its place. It was
this supposed real distinction between motion "up" and motion "down"
which made it so hard for the contemporaries of Galileo to understand
that an inflated bladder rises for the same reason that a stone sinks.

*Biology*. --Of Aristotle's biology reasons of space forbid us to say
much here. But a remark or two may be made about his theory of
reproduction, since it is constantly referred to in much modern
literature and has also played its part in theology. An interesting
point is the distinction between "perfect" and "imperfect" animals.
"Perfect" animals are those which can only be reproduced sexually.
Aristotle held, however, that there are some creatures, even among
vertebrates, which _may_ be produced by the vivifying effect of solar
heat on decomposing matter, without any parents at all. Thus
malobservation of the facts of putrefaction led to the belief that flies
and worms are engendered by heat from decaying bodies, and it was even
thought that frogs and mice are produced in the same way from
river-slime. In this process, the so-called "aequivocal generation,"
solar heat was conceived as the operative efficient cause which leads to
the realisation of an organic "form" in the decaying matter.

In sexual reproduction Aristotle regards the male parent as the agent or
efficient cause which contributes the element of form and organisation
to the offspring. The female parent supplies only the raw material of
the new creature, but she supplies the whole of this. No _material_ is
supplied by the male parent to the body of the offspring, a theory which
St. Thomas found useful in defending the dogma of the Virgin Birth.

*Psychology*. --Since the mind grows and develops, it comes under the
class of things which have a "source of motion internal to themselves,"
and psychology is therefore, for Aristotle, a branch of Physics. To
understand his treatment of psychological questions we need bear two
things in mind. (1) _Psyche_ or "soul" means in Greek more than
"consciousness" does to us. Consciousness is a relatively late and
highly developed manifestation of the principle which the Greeks call
"soul. " That principle shows itself not merely in consciousness but in
the whole process of nutrition and growth and the adaptation of motor
response to an external situation. Thus consciousness is a more
secondary feature of the "soul" in Greek philosophy than in most modern
thought, which has never ceased to be affected by Descartes' selection
of "thought" as the special characteristic of psychical life. In common
language the word _psyche_ is constantly used where we should say "life"
rather than "soul," and in Greek philosophy a work "on the _Psyche_"
means what we should call one on "the principle of life. "

(2) It is a consequence of this way of thinking of the "soul" that the
process of bodily and mental development is regarded by Aristotle as one
single continuous process. The growth of a man's intellect and
character by which he becomes a thinker and a citizen is a continuation
of the process by which his body is conceived and born and passes into
physical manhood. This comes out in the words of the definition of the
soul. "The soul is the first entelechy (or actual realisation) of a
natural organic body. " What this means is that the soul stands to the
living body as all form realised in matter does to the matter of which
it is the form, or that the soul is the "form" of the body. What the
"organic body" is to the embryo out of which it has grown, that soul is
to the body itself. As the embryo grows into the actual living body, so
the living body grows into a body exhibiting the actual directing
presence of mind. Aristotle illustrates the relation by the remark that
if the whole body was one vast eye, seeing would be its soul. As the
eye is a tool for seeing with, but a living tool which is part of
ourselves, so the body is a like tool or instrument for living with.
Hence we may say of the soul that it is the "end" of the body, the
activity to which the body is instrumental, as seeing is the "end" to
which the eye is instrumental. But we must note that the soul is called
only the "first" or initial "entelechy" of the body. The reason is that
the mere presence of the soul does not guarantee the full living of the
life to which our body is but the instrument. If we are to _live_ in
the fullest sense of the word, we must not merely "have" a soul; we
"have" it even in sleep, in ignorance, in folly. The soul itself needs
further to be educated and trained in intelligence and character, and to
exercise its intelligence and character efficiently on the problems of
thought and life. The mere "presence" of soul is only a first step in
the progress towards fullness of life. This is why Aristotle calls the
soul the _first_ entelechy of the living body. The full and final
entelechy is the life of intelligence and character actively
functioning.

From this conception of the soul's relation to the body we see that
Aristotle's "doctrine of body and mind" does not readily fall into line
with any of the typical theories of our time. He neither thinks of the
soul as a thing acting on the body and acted on by it, nor yet as a
series of "states of mind" concomitant with certain "states of body. "
From his point of view to ask whether soul and body interact, or whether
they exhibit "parallelism," would be much the same thing as to ask
whether life interacts with the body, or whether there is a
"parallelism" between vital processes and bodily processes. We must not
ask at all how the body and soul are united. They are one thing, as the
matter and the form of a copper globe are one. Thus they are in actual
fact inseparable. The soul is the soul of its body and the body the body
of its soul. We can only distinguish them by logical analysis, as we can
distinguish the copper from the sphericity in the copper globe.

*Grades of Psychical Life*. --If we consider the order of development, we
find that some vital activities make their appearance earlier than
others, and that it is a universal law that the more highly developed
activities always have the less highly developed as their basis and
precondition, though the less highly developed may exist apart from the
more highly developed. So we may arrange vital activities in general in
an ontogenetic order, the order in which they make their appearance in
the individual's development. Aristotle reckons three such stages, the
"nutritive," the "sensitive," and the "intelligent. " The lowest form in
which life shows itself at all, the level of minimum distinction between
the living and the lifeless, is the power to take in nutriment,
assimilate it, and grow. In vegetables the development is arrested at
this point. With the animals we reach the next highest level, that of
"sensitive" life. For all animals have at least the sense of touch.
Thus they all show sense-perception, and it is a consequence of this
that they exhibit "appetition," the simplest form of conation, and the
rudiments of feeling and "temper. " For what has sensations can also
feel pleasure and pain, and what can feel pleasure and pain can desire,
since desire is only appetition of what is pleasant. Thus in the
animals we have the beginnings of cognition, conation, and affective and
emotional life in general. And Aristotle adds that locomotion makes its
appearance at this level; animals do not, like plants, have to trust to
their supply of nutriment coming to them; they can go to it.

The third level, that of "intelligence," _i. e. _ the power to compare,
calculate, and reflect, and to order one's life by conscious rule, is
exhibited by man. What distinguishes life at this level from mere
"sensitive" life is, on the intellectual side, the ability to cognise
universal truths, on the conative, the power to live by rule instead of
being swayed by momentary "appetition. " The former gives us the
possibility of science, the latter of moral excellence. [#]


[#] _Cf. _ Dante's "Fatti non foste a viver como bruti,
Ma per seguir virtute e conosoenza. "


*Sensation*. --Life manifests itself at the animal level on the cognitive
side as sense-perception, on the conative as appetition or desire, on
the affective as feeling of pleasure or pain, and in such simple
emotional moods as "temper," resentment, longing. Aristotle gives
sensation a logical priority over the conative and emotional expression
of "animal" life. To experience appetition or anger or desire you must
have an object which you crave for or desire or are angry with, and it
is only when you have reached the level of presentations through the
senses that you can be said to have an object. Appetition or "temper"
is as real a fact as perception, but you cannot crave for or feel angry
with a thing you do not apprehend.

Aristotle's definition of sense perception is that it is a "capacity for
discerning" or distinguishing between "the sensible qualities of
things. " His conception of the process by which the discernment or
distinguishing is effected is not altogether happy. In sense-perception
the soul "takes into itself the _form_ of the thing perceived without
its _matter_, as sealing-wax receives the shape of an iron seal-ring
without the iron. " To understand this, we have to remember that for
Aristotle the sensible qualities of the external world, colour, tones,
tastes, and the rest, are not effects of mechanical stimulation of our
sense-organs, but real qualities of bodies. The hardness of iron, the
redness of a piece of red wax are all primarily "in" the iron or the
wax. They are "forms," or determinations by definite law, of the
"matter" of the iron or the wax. This will become clearer if we
consider a definite example, the red colour of the wax. In the wax the
red colour is a definite combination of the colour-opposites white and
black according to a fixed ratio. Now Aristotle's view of the process of
sense-perception is that when I become aware of the red colour the same
proportion of white to black which makes the wax red is reproduced in my
organ of vision; my eye, while I am seeing the red, "assimilated" to the
wax, is itself for the time actually "reddened. " But it does not become
wax because the red thing I am looking at is a piece of red wax. The
eye remains a thing composed of living tissues. This is what is meant
by saying that in seeing the colours of things the eye receives "forms"
without the "matter" of the things in which those forms are exhibited.
Thus the process of sense-perception is one in which the organ of sense
is temporarily assimilated to the thing apprehended in respect of the
particular quality cognised by that organ, but in respect of no other.
According to Aristotle this process of "assimilation" always requires
the presence of a "medium. " If an object is in immediate contact with
the eye we cannot see its colour; if it is too near the ear, we do not
discern the note it gives out. Even in the case of touch and taste
there is no immediate contact between the object perceived and the true
organ of perception. For in touch the "flesh" is not the organ of
apprehension but an integument surrounding it and capable of acting as
an intermediary between it and things. Thus perception is always
accomplished by a "motion" set up in the "medium" by the external
object, and by the medium in our sense-organs. Aristotle thus contrives
to bring correct apprehension by sense of the qualities of things under
the formula of the "right mean" or "right proportion," which is better
known from the use made of it in the philosopher's theory of conduct.
The colour of a surface, the pitch of the note given out by a vibrating
string, &c. , depend on, and vary with, certain forms or ratios "in" the
surface or the vibrating string; our correct apprehension of the
qualities depends on the reproduction of the _same_ ratios in our
sense-organs, the establishment of the "right proportion" in _us_. That
this "right proportion" may be reproduced in our own sense-organs it is
necessary (1) that the medium should have none of the sensible qualities
for the apprehension whereof it serves as medium, _e. g. _ the medium in
colour-perception must be colourless. If it had a colour of its own,
the "motion" set up by the coloured bodies we apprehend would not be
transmitted undistorted to our organs; we should see everything through
a coloured haze. It is necessary for the same reason (2) that the
percipient organ itself, when in a state of quiescence, should possess
none of the qualities which can be induced in it by stimulation. The
upshot of the whole theory is that the sense-organ is "potentially" what
the sense-quality it apprehends is actually. Actual perceiving is just
that special transition from the potential to the actual which results
in making the organ for the time being _actually_ of the same quality as
the object.

*The Common Sensibles and the Common Sense-organ*. --Every sense has a
range of qualities connected with it as its special objects. Colours
can only be perceived by the eye, sounds by the ear, and so forth. But
there are certain characters of perceived things which we appear to
apprehend by more than one sense. Thus we seem to perceive size and
shape either by touch or by sight, and number by hearing as well, since
we can count _e. g. _ the strokes of an unseen bell. Hence Aristotle
distinguishes between the "special sensible qualities" such as colour
and pitch, and what he calls the "common sensibles," the character of
things which can be perceived by more than one organ. These are
enumerated as size, form or shape, number, motion (and its opposite
rest), being. (The addition of this last is, of course, meant to account
for our conviction that any perceived colour, taste, or other quality is
a reality and not a delusion. ) The list corresponds very closely with
one given by Plato of the "things which the mind perceives _by herself
without the help of any organ_," _i. e. _ of the leading determinations of
sensible things which are due not to sense but to understanding. It was
an unfortunate innovation to regard the discernment of number or
movement, which obviously demand intellectual processes such as counting
and comparison, as performed immediately by "sense," and to assign the
apprehension of number, movement, figure to a central "organ. " This
organ he finds in the heart. The theory is that when the "special
organs" of the senses are stimulated, they in turn communicate movements
to the blood and "animal spirits" (_i. e. _ the vapours supposed to be
produced from the blood by animal heat). These movements are propagated
inwards to the heart, where they all meet. This is supposed to account
for the important fact that, though our sensations are so many and
diverse, we are conscious of our own unity as the subjects apprehending
all this variety. The unity of the perceiving subject is thus made to
depend on the unity of the ultimate "organ of sensation," the heart.
Further, when once a type of motion has been set up in any sense-organ
at the periphery of the body it will be propagated inward to the "common
sensorium" in the heart. The motions set up by stimulation, _e. g. _ of
the eye and of the skin, are partly different, partly the same (viz. in
so far as they are determined by the number, shape, size, movement of
the external stimuli). Hence in the heart itself the stimulation on
which perception of number or size depends is one and the same whether
it has been transmitted from the eye or from the skin! Awareness of
lapse of time is also regarded as a function of the "common
sense-organ," since it is the "common sensory" which perceives motion,
and lapse of time is apprehended only in the apprehension of motion.
Thus, in respect of the inclusion of geometrical form and lapse of time
among the "common sensibles," there is a certain resemblance between
Aristotle's doctrine and Kant's theory that recognition of spatial and
temporal order is a function not of understanding but of "pure" sense.
It is further held that to be aware that one is perceiving
(self-consciousness) and to discriminate between the different classes
of "special" sense-perception must also be functions of the "common
sense-organ. " Thus Aristotle makes the mistake of treating the most
fundamental acts of intelligent reflection as precisely on a par, from
the point of view of the theory of knowledge, with awareness of colour
or sound.

A more legitimate function assigned to the "common sensorium" in the
heart is that "fantasy," the formation of mental imagery, depends on its
activity. The simplest kind of "image," the pure memory-image left
behind after the object directly arousing perception has ceased to
stimulate, is due to the persistence of the movements set up in the
heart after the sensory process in the peripheral organ is over. Since
Aristotle denies the possibility of thinking without the aid of
memory-images, this function of the "common sensorium" is the
indispensable basis of mental recall, anticipation, and thought. Neither
"experience," _i. e. _ a general conviction which results from the
frequent repetition of similar perceptions, nor thought can arise in any
animal in which sense-stimulation does not leave such "traces" behind
it. Similarly "free imagery," the existence of trains of imagination
not tied down to the reproduction of an actual order of sensations, is
accounted for by the consideration that "chance coincidence" may lead to
the stimulation of the heart in the same way in which it might have been
stimulated by actual sensation-processes. Sleeping and waking and the
experiences of dream-life are likewise due to changes in the functioning
of the "common sense-organ," brought about partly by fatigue in the
superficial sense-organs, partly by qualitative changes in the blood and
"animal spirits" caused by the processes of nutrition and digestion.
Probably Aristotle's best scientific work in psychology is contained in
the series of small essays in which this theory of memory and its
imagery is worked out. (Aristotle's language about the "common
sensibles" is, of course, the source of our expression "common sense,"
which, however, has an entirely different meaning. The shifting of
sense has apparently been effected through Cicero's employment of the
phrase _sensus communis_ to mean tactful sympathy, the feeling of
fellowship with our kind on which the Stoic philosophers laid so much
stress. )

*Thought*. --Though thinking is impossible except by the use of imagery,
to think is not merely to possess trains of imagery, or even to be aware
of possessing them. Thinking means understanding the meaning of such
mental imagery and arriving through the understanding at knowledge of
the structure of the real world. How this process of interpreting
mental imagery and reaching valid truth is achieved with greater and
greater success until it culminates in the apprehension of the supreme
principles of philosophy we have seen in dealing with the Aristotelian
theory of knowledge. From the point of view of the "physicist" who is
concerned with thinking simply as a type of natural process, the
relation of "understanding" to the mental imagery just described is
analogous to that of sensation to sensible qualities. The objects which
thinking apprehends are the universal types of relation by which the
world of things is pervaded. The process of thinking is one in which
this system of universal relations is reproduced "by way of idea" in the
mind of the thinker. The "understanding" thus stands to its objects as
matter to form. The process of getting actually to understand the world
is one in which our "thought" or "understanding" steadily receives
completer determination and "form" from its contemplation of reality.
In this sense, the process is one in which the understanding may be said
to be passive in knowledge. It is passive because it is the subject
which, at every fresh stage in the progress to knowledge, is being quite
literally "informed" by the action of the real world through the
sensation and imagery. Hence Aristotle says that, in order that the
understanding may be correctly "informed" by its contact with its
objects, it must, before the process begins, have no determinate
character of its own. It must be simply a capacity for apprehending the
types of interconnection. "What is called the intelligence--I mean that
with which the soul thinks and understands--is not an actual thing until
it thinks. " (This is meant to exclude any doctrine which credits the
"understanding" with either _furniture_ of its own such as "innate
ideas," or a specific _structure_ of its own. If the results of our
thinking arose partly from the structure of the world of objects and
partly from inherent laws of the "structure of mind," our thought at its
best would not reproduce the universal "forms" or "types" of
interconnection as they really are, but would distort them, as the
shapes of things are distorted when we see them through a lens of high
refractive index. ) Thus, though Aristotle differs from the modern
empiricists in holding that "universals" realty exist "in" things, and
are the links of connection between them, he agrees with the empiricist
that knowledge is not the resultant of a combination of "facts" on the
one side and "fundamental laws of the mind's working" on the other. At
the outset the "understanding" has no structure; it develops a structure
for itself in the same process, and to the same degree, in which it
apprehends the "facts. " Hence the "understanding" only is real in the
actual process of understanding its objects, and again in a sense the
understanding and the things it understands are one. Only we must
qualify this last statement by saying that it is only "potentially" that
the understanding is the forms which it apprehends.
Aristotle does not
mean by this that such things as horses and oxen are thoughts or
"ideas. " By the things with which "understanding" is said to be one he
means the "forms" which we apprehend when we actually understand the
world or any part of it, the truths of science. His point then is that
the actual thinking of these truths and the truths themselves do not
exist apart from one another. "Science" does not mean certain things
written down in a book; it means a mind engaged in thinking and knowing
things, and of the mind itself, considered out of its relation to the
actual life of thinking the truths of science, we can say no more than
that it is a name for the fact that we are capable of achieving such
thought.

*The Active Intelligence*. --So far Aristotle's account of thought has
been plain sailing. Thought has been considered as the final and
highest development of the vital functions of the organism, and hence as
something inseparable from the lower functions of nutrition and
sensitive life. The existence of a thought which is not a function of a
living body, and which is not "passive," has been absolutely excluded.
But at this point we are suddenly met by the most startling of all the
inconsistencies between the naturalistic and the "spiritualist" strains
in Aristotle's philosophy. In a few broken lines he tells us that there
is another sense of the word "thought" in which "thought" actually
creates the truths it understands, just as light may be said to make the
colours which we see by its aid. "And _this_ intelligence," he adds,
"is separable from matter, and impassive and unmixed, being in its
essential nature an _activity_. . . . It has no intermission in its
thinking. It is only in separation from matter that it is fully itself,
and it alone is immortal and everlasting . . . while the passive
intelligence is perishable and does not think at all, apart from this. "
The meaning of this is not made clear by Aristotle himself, and the
interpretation was disputed even among the philosopher's personal
disciples.

One important attempt to clear up the difficulty is that made by
Alexander of Aphrodisias, the greatest of the commentators on Aristotle,
in the second century A. D. Alexander said, as Aristotle has not done,
that the "active intelligence" is numerically the same in all men, and
is identical with God. Thus, all that is specifically human in each of
us is the "passive intelligence" or capacity for being enlightened by
God's activity upon us. The advantage of the view is, that it removes
the "active intelligence" altogether from the purview of psychology,
which then becomes a purely naturalistic science. The great Arabian
Aristotelian, Averroes (Ibn Roschd) of Cordova, in the twelfth century,
went still further in the direction of naturalism. Since the "active"
and "passive" intelligence can only be separated by a logical
abstraction, he inferred that men, speaking strictly, do not think at
all; there is only one and the same individual intelligence in the
universe, and all that we call our thinking is really not ours but
God's. The great Christian scholastics of the following century in
general read Aristotle through the eyes of Averroes, "_the_
Commentator," as St. Thomas calls him, "Averrois che il gran commento
feo," as Dante says. But their theology compelled them to disavow his
doctrine of the "active intelligence," against which they could also
bring, as St. Thomas does, the telling argument that Aristotle could
never have meant to say that there really is no such thing as human
intelligence. Hence arose a third interpretation, the Thomist,
according to which the "active intelligence" is neither God nor the same
for all men, but is the highest and most rational "part" of the
individual human soul, which has no bodily "organ. "




*CHAPTER V*

*PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY*


Hitherto we have been concerned with the speculative branches of
knowledge, we have now to turn to practice. Practice, too, is an
activity of thought, but an activity which is never satisfied by the
process of thinking itself. In practice our thinking is always directed
towards the production of some result other than true thought itself.
As in engineering it is not enough to find a solution of the problem how
to build a bridge over a given river capable of sustaining a given
strain, so in directing our thought on the problems of human conduct and
the organisation of society we aim at something more than the
understanding of human life. In the one case what we aim at is the
construction of the bridge; in the other it is the production of
goodness in ourselves and our fellow-men, and the establishment of right
social relations in the state. Aristotle is careful to insist on this
point throughout his whole treatment of moral and social problems. The
principal object of his lectures on conduct is not to tell his hearers
what goodness is, but to make them good, and similarly it is quite plain
that _Politics_ was intended as a text-book for legislators. In close
connection with this practical object stands his theory of the kind of
truth which must be looked for in ethics and politics. He warns us
against expecting precepts which have the exact and universal rigidity
of the truths of speculative science. Practical science has to do with
the affairs of men's lives, matters which are highly complex and
variable, in a word, with "what may be otherwise. " Hence we must be
content if we can lay down precepts which hold good in the main, just as
in medicine we do not expect to find directions which will effect a cure
in all cases, but are content with general directions which require to
be adapted to special cases by the experience and judgment of the
practitioner. The object of practical science then is to formulate
rules which will guide us in obtaining our various ends. Now when we
consider these ends we see at once that some are subordinate to others.
The manufacture of small-arms may be the end at which their maker aims,
but it is to the military man a mere means to _his_ end, which is the
effective use of them. Successful use of arms is again the end of the
professional soldier, but it is a mere means among others to the
statesman. Further, it is the military men who use the arms from whom
the manufacturer has to take his directions as to the kind of arms that
are wanted, and again it is the statesman to whom the professional
soldiers have to look for directions as to when and with what general
objects in view they shall fight. So the art which uses the things
produced by another art is the superior and directing art; the art which
makes the things, the inferior and subordinate art. Hence the supreme
practical art is politics, since it is the art which uses the products
turned out by all other arts as means to its ends. It is the business
of politics, the art of the statesman, to prescribe to the practitioners
of all other arts and professions the lines on which and the conditions
under which they shall exercise their vocation with a view to securing
the supreme practical end, the well-being of the community. Among the
other professions and arts which make the materials the statesman
employs, the profession of the educator stands foremost. The statesman
is bound to demand certain qualities of mind and character in the
individual citizens. The production of these mental and moral qualities
must therefore be the work of the educator. It thus becomes an
important branch of politics to specify the kind of mental and moral
qualities which a statesman should require the educator to produce in
his pupils.

It is this branch of politics which Aristotle discusses in his _Ethics_.
He never contemplates a study of the individual's good apart from
politics, the study of the good of the society. What then is the good or
the best kind of life for an individual member of society? Aristotle
answers that as far as the mere name is concerned, there is a general
agreement to call the best life, _Eudaimonia_, Happiness. But the real
problem is one of fact. What kind of life deserves to be called
happiness? Plato had laid it down that the happy life must satisfy three
conditions. It must be desirable for its own sake, it must be
sufficient of itself to satisfy us, and it must be the life a wise man
would prefer to any other. The question is, What general formula can we
find which will define the life which satisfies these conditions? To
find the answer we have to consider what Plato and Aristotle call the
work or function of man. By the work of anything we mean what can only
be done by it, or by it better than by anything else. Thus the work of
the eye is to see. You cannot see with any other organ, and when the
eye does this work of seeing well you say it is a good eye. So we may
say of any living being that its work is to live, and that it is a good
being when it does this work of living efficiently. To do its own work
efficiently is the excellence or virtue of the thing. The excellence or
virtue of a man will thus be to live efficiently, but since life can be
manifested at different levels, if we would know what man's work is we
must ask whether there is not some form of life which can _only_ be
lived by man. Now the life which consists in merely feeding and growing
belongs to all organisms and can be lived with equal vigour by them all.
There is, however, a kind of life which can only be lived by man, the
life which consists in conscious direction of one's actions by a rule.
It is the work of man to live this kind of life, and his happiness
consists in living it efficiently and well. So we may give as the
definition of human well-being that it is "an active life in accord with
excellence, or if there are more forms of excellence than one, in accord
with the best and completest of them"; and we must add "in a complete
life" to show that mere promise not crowned by performance does not
suffice to entitle man's life to be called happy. We can see that this
definition satisfies Plato's three conditions. A vigorous and active
living in a way which calls into play the specifically human capacities
of man is desirable for its own sake, and preferable to any other life
which could be proposed to us. It too is the only life which can
permanently satisfy men, but we must add that if such a life is to be
lived adequately certain advantages of fortune must be presupposed. We
cannot fully live a life of this kind if we are prevented from
exercising our capacities by lack of means or health or friends and
associates, and even the calamities which arise in the course of events
may be so crushing as to hinder a man, for a time, from putting forth
his full powers. These external good things are not constituents of
happiness, but merely necessary conditions of that exercise of our own
capacities which is the happy life.

In our definition of the happy life we said that it was one of activity
in accord with goodness or excellence, and we left it an open question
whether there are more kinds of such goodness than one. On
consideration we see that two kinds of goodness or excellence are
required in living the happy life. The happy life for man is a life of
conscious following of a rule. To live it well, then, you need to know
what the right rule to follow is, and you need also to follow it. There
are persons who deliberately follow a wrong rule of life--the wicked.
There are others who know what the right rule is but fail to follow it
because their tempers and appetites are unruly--the morally weak. To
live the happy life, then, two sorts of goodness are required. You must
have a good judgment as to what the right rule is (or if you cannot find
it out for yourself, you must at least be able to recognise it when it
is laid down by some one else, the teacher or lawgiver), and you must
have your appetites, feelings, and emotions generally so trained that
they obey the rule. Hence excellence, goodness, or virtue is divided
into goodness of intellect and goodness of character (moral goodness),
the word _character_ being used for the complex of tempers, feelings,
and the affective side of human nature generally. In education goodness
of character has to be produced by training and discipline before
goodness of intellect can be imparted. The young generally have to be
trained to obey the right rule before they can see for themselves that
it is the right rule, and if a man's tempers and passions are not first
schooled into actual obedience to the rule he will in most cases never
see that it is the right rule at all. Hence Aristotle next goes on to
discuss the general character of the kind of goodness he calls goodness
of character, the right state of the feelings and passions.

The first step towards understanding what goodness of character is is to
consider the way in which it is actually produced. We are not born with
this goodness of tempers and feelings ready made, nor yet do we obtain
it by theoretical instruction; it is a result of a training and
discipline of the feelings and impulses. The possibility of such a
training is due to the fact that feelings and impulses are rational
capacities, and a rational capacity can be developed into either of two
contrasted activities according to the training it receives. You cannot
train stones to fall upwards, but you can train a hot temper to display
itself either in the form of righteous resentment of wrong-doing or in
that of violent defiance of all authority. Our natural emotions and
impulses are in themselves neither good nor bad; they are the raw
material out of which training makes good or bad character according to
the direction it gives to them. The effect of training is to convert
the indeterminate tendency into a fixed habit. We may say, then, that
moral goodness is a fixed state of the soul produced by habituation. By
being trained in habits of endurance, self-mastery, and fair dealing, we
acquire the kind of character to which it is pleasing to act bravely,
continently, and fairly, and disagreeable to act unfairly, profligately,
or like a coward. When habituation has brought about this result the
moral excellences in question have become part of our inmost self and we
are in full possession of goodness of character. In a word, it is by
repeated doing of right acts that we acquire the right kind of
character.

But what general characteristics distinguish right acts and right habits
from wrong ones? Aristotle is guided in answering the question by an
analogy which is really at the bottom of all Greek thinking on morality.
The thought is that goodness is in the soul what health and fitness are
in the body, and that the preceptor is for the soul what the physician
or the trainer is for the body. Now it was a well-known medical theory,
favoured by both Plato and Aristotle, that health in the body means a
condition of balance or equilibration among the elements of which it is
composed. When the hot and the cold, the moist and the dry in the
composition of the human frame exactly balance one another, the body is
in perfect health. Hence the object of the regimen of the physician or
the trainer is to produce and maintain a proper balance or proportion
between the ingredients of the body. Any course which disturbs this
balance is injurious to health and strength. You damage your health if
you take too much food or exercise, and also if you take too little.
The same thing is true of health in the soul. Our soul's health may be
injured by allowing too much or too little play to any of our natural
impulses or feelings. We may lay it down, then, that the kind of
training which gives rise to a good habit is training in the avoidance
of the opposite errors of the too much and the too little. And since
the effect of training is to produce habits which issue in the
spontaneous performance of the same kind of acts by which the habits
were acquired, we may say not merely that goodness of character is
produced by acts which exhibit a proper balance or mean, but that it is
a settled habit of acting so as to exhibit the same balance or
proportion. Hence the formal definition of goodness of character is that
it is "a settled condition of the soul which wills or chooses the mean
relatively to ourselves, this mean being determined by a rule or
whatever we like to call that by which the wise man determines it. "

There are several points in this definition of the mean upon which moral
virtue depends of which we must take note unless we are to misunderstand
Aristotle seriously. To begin with, the definition expressly says that
"moral goodness is a state of will or choice. " Thus it is not enough
that one should follow the rule of the mean outwardly in one's actions;
one's personal will must be regulated by it. Goodness of character is
inward; it is not merely outward. Next we must not suppose that
Aristotle means that the "just enough" is the same for all our feelings,
that every impulse has a moral right to the same authority in shaping
our conduct as any other. How much or how little is the just enough in
connection with a given spring of action is one of the things which the
wise man's rule has to determine, just as the wise physician's rule may
determine that a very little quantity is the just enough in the case of
some articles of diet or curative drugs, while in the case of others the
just enough may be a considerable amount. Also the right mean is not
the same for every one. What we have to attain is the mean relatively
to _ourselves_, and this will be different for persons of different
constitutions and in different conditions. It is this relativity of the
just enough to the individual's personality and circumstances which
makes it impossible to lay down precise rules of conduct applicable
alike to everybody, and renders the practical attainment of goodness so
hard. It is my duty to spend some part of my income in buying books on
philosophy, but no general rule will tell me what percentage of my
income is the right amount for me to spend in this way. That depends on
a host of considerations, such as the excess of my income above my
necessary expenses and the like. Or again, the just enough may vary
with the same man according to the circumstances of the particular case.
No rule of thumb application of a formula will decide such problems.
Hence Aristotle insists that the right mean in the individual case has
always to be determined by immediate insight. This is precisely why
goodness of intellect needs to be added to goodness of character. His
meaning is well brought out by an illustration which I borrow from
Professor Burnet. "On a given occasion there will be a temperature which
is just right for my morning bath. If the bath is hotter than this, it
will be too hot; if it is colder, it will be too cold. But as this just
right temperature varies with the condition of my body, it cannot be
ascertained by simply using a thermometer. If I am in good general
health I shall, however, know by the feel of the water when the
temperature is right. So if I am in good moral health I shall know,
without appealing to a formal code of maxims, what is the right degree,
_e. g. _ of indignation to show in a given case, how it should be shown
and towards whom. " Thus we see why Aristotle demands goodness of
character as a preliminary condition of goodness of intellect or
judgment in moral matters. Finally, if we ask by _what_ rule the mean
is determined, the answer will be that the rule is the judgment of the
legislator who determines what is the right mean by his knowledge of the
conditions on which the well-being of the community depends. He then
embodies his insight in the laws which he makes and the regulations he
imposes on the educators of youth. The final aim of education in
goodness is to make our immediate judgment as to what is right coincide
with the spirit of a wise legislation.

The introduction of the reference to will or choice into the definition
of goodness of character leads Aristotle to consider the relation of
will to conduct. His main object is to escape the paradoxical doctrine
which superficial students might derive from the works of Plato, that
wrong-doing is always well-meaning ignorance. Aristotle's point is that
it is the condition of will revealed by men's acts which is the real
object of our approval or blame. This is because in voluntary action
the man himself is the efficient cause of his act. Hence the law
recognises only two grounds on which a man may plead, that he is not
answerable for what he does. (1) Actual physical compulsion by _force
majeure_. (2) Ignorance, not due to the man's own previous negligence,
of some circumstances material to the issue. When either of these pleas
can be made with truth the man does not really contribute by his choice
to the resulting act, and therefore is not really its cause. But a plea
of ignorance of the general laws of morality does not excuse. I cannot
escape responsibility for a murder by pleading that I did not know that
murder is wrong. Such a plea does not exempt me from having been the
cause of the murder; it only shows that my moral principles are
depraved.

More precisely will is a process which has both an intellectual and an
appetitive element. The appetitive element is our wish for some result.
The intellectual factor is the calculation of the steps by which that
result may be obtained. When we wish for the result we begin to consider
how it might be brought about, and we continue our analysis until we
find that the chain of conditions requisite may be started by the
performance of some act now in our power to do. Will may thus be
defined as the deliberate appetition of something within our power, and
the very definition shows that our choice is an efficient cause of the
acts we choose to do. This is why we rightly regard men as responsible
or answerable for their acts of choice, good and bad alike.

From the analysis of goodness of character, we proceed to that of
goodness of intellect. The important point is to decide which of all
the forms of goodness of intellect is that which must be combined with
goodness of character to make a man fit to be a citizen of the state.
It must be a kind of intellectual excellence which makes a man see what
the right rule by which the mean is determined is. Now when we come to
consider the different excellences of intellect we find that they all
fall under one of two heads, theoretical or speculative wisdom and
practical wisdom.

Theoretical wisdom is contained in the sciences which give us universal
truths about the fixed and unalterable relations of the things in the
universe, or, as we should say, which teach us the laws of Nature. Its
method is syllogism, the function of which is to make us see how the
more complex truths are implied in simpler principles. Practical wisdom
is intelligence as employed in controlling and directing human life to
the production of the happy life for a community, and it is this form of
intellectual excellence which we require of the statesman. It is
required of him not only that he should know in general what things are
good for man, but also that he should be able to judge correctly that in
given circumstances such and such an act is the one which will secure
the good. He must not only know the right rule itself, which
corresponds to the major premiss of syllogism in theoretical science,
but he must understand the character of particular acts so as to see
that they fall under the right rule. Thus the method of practical
wisdom will be analogous to that of theoretical wisdom. In both cases
what we have to do is to see that certain special facts are cases of a
general law or rule. Hence Aristotle calls the method of practical
wisdom the practical syllogism or syllogism of action, since its
peculiarity is that what issues from the putting together of the
premisses is not an assertion but the performance of an act. In the
syllogism of action, the conclusion, that is to say, the performance of
a given act, just as in the syllogism of theory, is connected with the
rule given in the major premiss by a statement of fact; thus _e. g. _ the
performance of a specific act such as the writing of this book is
connected with the general rule what helps to spread knowledge ought to
be done by the conviction that the writing of this book helps to spread
knowledge. Our perception of such a fact is like a sense-perception in
its directness and immediacy. We see therefore that the kind of
intellectual excellence which the statesman must possess embraces at
once a right conception of the general character of the life which is
best for man, because it calls into play his specific capacities as a
human being, and also a sound judgment in virtue of which he sees
correctly that particular acts are expressions of this good for man.
This, then, is what we mean by practical wisdom.

So far, then, it would seem that the best life for man is just the life
of co-operation in the life of the state, which man, being the only
political animal or animal capable of life in a state, has as his
peculiar work, and as if the end of all moral education should be to
make us good and efficient citizens. But in the _Ethics_, as elsewhere,
the end of Aristotle's argument has a way of forgetting the beginning.
We find that there is after all a still higher life open to man than
that of public affairs. Affairs and business of all kinds are only
undertaken as means to getting leisure, just as civilised men go to war,
not for the love of war itself, but to secure peace. The highest aim of
life, then, is not the carrying on of political business for its own
sake, but the worthy and noble employment of leisure, the periods in
which we are our own masters. It has the advantage that it depends more
purely on ourselves and our own internal resources than any other life
of which we know, for it needs very little equipment with external goods
as compared with any form of the life of action. It calls into play the
very highest of our own capacities as intelligent beings, and for that
very reason the active living of it is attended with the purest of all
pleasures. In it, moreover, we enter at intervals and for a little
while, so far as the conditions of our mundane existence allow, into the
life which God enjoys through an unbroken eternity. Thus we reach the
curious paradox that while the life of contemplation is said to be that
of our truest self, it is also maintained that this highest and happiest
life is one which we live, not in respect of being human, but in respect
of having a divine something in us. When we ask what this life of
contemplation includes, we see from references in the _Politics_ that it
includes the genuinely aesthetic appreciation of good literature and
music and pictorial and plastic art, but there can be no doubt that what
bulks most largely in Aristotle's mind is the active pursuit of science
for its own sake, particularly of such studies as First Philosophy and
Physics, which deal with the fundamental structure of the universe.
Aristotle thus definitely ends by placing the life of the scholar and
the student on the very summit of felicity.

It is from this doctrine that mediaeval Christianity derives its
opposition between the _vita contemplativa_ and _vita activa_ and its
preference for the former, though in the mediaeval mind the contemplative
life has come to mean generally a kind of brooding over theological
speculations and of absorption in mystical ecstasy very foreign to the
spirit of Aristotle. The types by which the contrast of the two lives
is illustrated, Rachael and Leah, Mary and Martha, are familiar to all
readers of Christian literature.

+The Theory of the State+. --Man is by nature a political animal, a being
who can only develop his capacities by sharing in the life of a
community. Hence Aristotle definitely rejects the view that the state
or society is a mere creature of convention or agreement, an institution
made by compact between individuals for certain special ends, not
growing naturally out of the universal demands and aspirations of
humanity. Mankind, he urges, have never existed at all as isolated
individuals. Some rudimentary form of social organisation is to be
found wherever men are to be found. The actual stages in the
development of social organisation have been three--the family, the
village community, the city state. In the very rudest forms of social
life known to us, the patriarchal family, not the individual, is the
social unit. Men lived at first in separate families under the control
of the head of the family. Now a family is made up in its simplest form
of at least three persons, a man, his wife, and a servant or slave to do
the hard work, though very poor men often have to replace the servant by
an ox as the drudge of all work. Children when they come swell the
number, and thus we see the beginnings of complex social relations of
subordination in the family itself. It involves three such distinct
relations, that of husband and wife, that of parent and child, that of
master and man.