No More Learning

Over against determination (rpiff$t<rit), as the deduction of one concept from the higher by adding new mark, stands therefore abstraction (d^al^tru) an process of formation of class-concepts, — process which, by continually taking away individual characteristics, gains concept poorer in contents, but wi ler in its extent. Formation of concepts is, accordingly, with Aristotle, again co npletely analytic, while with Plato had been intuitive. Aristotle was the first to free himself from the optical analogy, in accordance with which the know ing process of thought had been conceived even by Democritus and Plato.
In the case of the Topict, this completeness seems even to have been at tained. Met. IV. ff.
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Chaj». 3, § 13. ] System of Development : Aristotle. 139
§ 13. The System of Development
The impression of something completely new, which the logic of Aristotle makes, as contrasted with all that had previously appeared in Greek science, rests principally upon the capacity for abstract thought, presupposed in so high a degree by this separation of the general Forms of thought from every possible content — a separa tion that evinced his genius. This genius for the formation of con ceptions by abstraction was evinced by Aristotle in all departments of his scientific work, and if the " Father of logic " became the
philosophic teacher for two thousand years, he owes this success, first of all, to the sureness, clearness, and consistency with which he formed and defined his conceptions. He fulfilled the task set by Socrates, and in so doing created the language of science. The funda mental part of the scientific conceptions and expressions everywhere in use, even to the present time, goes back to his formulations.
With this inclination to abstraction is connected the further fact that Aristotle solved the fundamental problem of Greek philosophy — viz. how behind the changing multiplicity of phenomena a uni tary and abiding Being is to be thought — by means of a concept of relation, that of development. His two great predecessors had still been seeking to assign a particular content to the conception of true Being. Democritus had regarded the atoms and their motion, Plato the Ideas and their final causation, as the causes of phenomena, —; causes different from the phenomena themselves. Aristotle, how- ercr, determined the true reality — that which is — as the essence which unfolds in the phenomena themselves. He renounced the at tempt to think out as the cause of phenomena something different from them (a second world), and taught that the Being of things which is known in conception possesses no other reality than the sum total of the phenomena in which it realises itself. So regarded, Being (oixria) takes on the character of the essence (to ri rjv ctvui), which constitutes the one, only ground of its individual formations, but is real or actual only in these themselves, and ail phenomenal appearance or coming into being becomes the realisation of the easmce. This is the concept of relation by means of which Aristotle overcame the opjwsition of the Heraclitic and Eleatic metaphysics.
1. In particular, the process of development presents itself to Aristotle as the relation of Form and Matter (cISot, nop<prj — «Aij). Plato ' had declared the world of phenomena to be a mixture of the
1 Th* main outline* of the Aristotelian metaphysics develop in the simplest w»t from that phase of the Platonic metaphysics which is presented in the n'tUbiu (ct. above, § 11, 9). Cf. J. C. Glaser, Die Metaphyiik dm Arisfttlet
Berlin. 1841).
140 The Greeks: Systematic Period. [Part I
" unlimited " and of " limitation " ; Aristotle holds to the observa tion that, in everything of the phenomenal world, formed matter lies before us. But for him this matter is, indeed, in itself indefi nite, and yet not purely indifferent, empty space, but a corporeal substratum {vttoku^vov) ; for him, this form is not merely the mathematical limit, but the form determined as to its contents by the essence. The matter or material substratum is the possibility of that which, in the complete thing, has become actual or real by means of the form. In matter, therefore, the essential nature
(oio-ia) is given only potentially (Swdfia). First, and only by means
of the form, does it exist in reality or actuality (ivtpytin, Occurrence, however, or the natural process, is that process in which the essence passes over from mere possibility, through form, into actualisation. The essence has not any second, higher reality beside and apart from the phenomena ; it exists only in the succession of its phenomenal manifestations, by means of which it realises its
own possibility. The universal is real or actual only in the partic ular; the particular is only because in it the universal realises itself.
With this transformation of the doctrine of Ideas, Aristotle solves the fundamental problem of the theoretical philosophy of the Greeks, viz. that of so thinking Being or what " is " that Becoming, or the process of Nature (das Oeschehen), may be explained from it. From the Hylozoism of the Milesians on to the opposing theories of his two great predecessors, all standpoints of Greek metaphysics are contained as elements in this doctrine of Aristotle. The Being cognised in conception is the general essence, which realises itself in its particular phenomenal manifestations from potentiality on through form, and the process of this realisation is motion. Being is that which comes to existence in the processes of Nature. This self-realisation of the essence in the phenomena,
1 Aristotle calls entelechy (jircAcx«a).
2. The central point of the Aristotelian philosophy lies, therefore,
in this new conception of the cosmic processes as the realisation of the essence in the phenomenon, and the respect in which it is op posed to the earlier explanation of Nature consists therefore in carrying through in conceptions the teleology which Plato had only set up as postulate, and developed in mythical, figurative form. While the earlier metaphysics had looked upon the mechanical process of pressure and impact as the typical fundamental relation of the cosmic processes, Aristotle regarded as this typical rela tion the development of organisms and man's building or forming activity. From these two departments he took his examples when
acta).
Chat, 3, $ 13. ] System of Development : Aristotle. 141
he wished to elucidate the metaphysical character of the cosmic
processes. 1
Nevertheless, the relation of form and matter is not completely
the same in these two kinds of purposive processes, and the differ ence between the two asserts itself everywhere in the carrying out of the Aristotelian fundamental thought. In the case of organic processes, matter and form are the two sides, separable only through abstraction, of one and the same reality identical from beginning to end ; even in the germ which in the process of development
brings the essence to its unfolding, the matter is already shaped internally by the form. In the case of artistic construction, on the contrary, the material which contains possibility exists at first by itself, and the work of the artist with its end in view is added later to produce the shape by means of motion.
In the latter case, therefore, the development is to be regarded under four principles. These are the Matter, the Form, the End, and the Cause of what comes to pass or comes to be.
In the former case, on the contrary, the three other principles, as set over against the Matter, are but different expressions for the came thing, since the Form constitutes the Cause and the Result of the process.
We find, accordingly, that when applied to the task of science, this fundamental relation of form and matter is carried out in a twofold way: on the one hand, individual things are regarded as self-realising forms; on the other hand, things in relation to one another are regarded, the one as matter, the other as form. These two applications of the fundamental principle go through the entire
Aristotelian system side by side, and in the general principles of the system they sometimes so collide, that it is only by their separa tion that apparent contradiction can be cleared away.
3. The former point of view yields the result, that for the Aristo telian conception of the world, in contrast with both that of Democ- ritus and that of Plato, the truly real is the individual thing, determined in itself by its form. To therefore, belongs primarily the name of essence or substance (ova-m). But the essence develops and realises itself in individual determinations, which are partly its
itates (nift)), partly its relations to other
Hf»nce knowledge has these which belong to the thing (to <rv/i/S«/i? ;- <ora) to predicate of while the individual thing itself cannot be predicated of anything else, i. e. in the proposition can be only
A*ide from iu discussion In the Metaphysics, this question chiefly treated thr Pkssics.
'Met. XIV. 1089 23.
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142 The Greeks : Systematic Period. [Part I.
subject and never predicate. 1 Of these modes in which substance manifests itself, or of the predicates that are possible with regard to Aristotle enumerates as categories, quantity (totw), quality (Votov), relation (nyxk n), determination in space and time (vov, ttoti), action (iroulv), and passion or passivity (irao^ov) and in addition, also, position (kiutOoi) and condition (ixu-v). This collection (making ten categories inclusive of substance), in which, perhaps, grammatical observations co-operated, designed to present the highest classes or genera under which the contents of all possible ideas are to be subsumed. Yet Aristotle made no methodical use of this collection, and his doctrine of the categories acquired, there fore, no importance in his metaphysics, aside from the above-noted relation of substance to its determinations.
When we consider how sharply Aristotle shaped out the scientific conception of substance in its logical and metaphysical character, may appear strange at the first glance that he has announced
neither methodical principle nor real principle applying to the nature of the thing, according to which would be possible to de cide what these truly existing individual things, in his sense of the word, are. It clear only that, on the one hand, he did not regard as essence everything whatever that occasionally appears in ex perience as thing separate from others, and, on the other hand, that he ascribed this character to organic individuals, to individual men. It would be in the"spirit of"his teaching to suppose that he could have spoken of an essence only where an inner determina tion of form constitutes the ground of the coherence of individual characteristics, where, therefore, the knowledge of this essence solves the problem of science — viz. to determine existent reality by the general conception — in so far as the abiding individual thing forms the class-concept for all its particular modes of appear ing which show themselves in perception.
But the Socratic-Platonic view of the problem of science brought with the consequence that Aristotle defined yet again the essence of the individual thing as that through which the individual thing belongs to its class or species. If substance, as contrasted with its perceptible phenomena and attributes, presents the universal, on the other hand the species (yo-os, or again Platonically, cZSot) the universal that realises itself in the individual substances. Here, too, the same relation repeated the species exists only in so far as realises itself in individual things as their truly existing essence, and the individual thing exists only as the species comes to its phe-
Analyt. Post. 22, 83 a 24.
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Chap. 3, § 13. ] System of Development: Aristotle. 143
Domenal manifestation in it. Just for this reason the species also have the claim to the metaphysical significance of being essences
By this means the conception of substance with Aristotle <-ontains a peculiarly changeable double meaning. The substances proper are individual things as determined in conception, but as a second kind of substances (Scvrcpai ouo-uu) ' we have the species which constitute the essence of individual things, just as these latter constitute the essence of perceptible phenomena.
Scientific knowledge is directed partly toward the conception of the individual thing, partly toward the conception of the species. Each of these realises itself in phenomena, and here there is found much which, as belonging directly to the conception (av^fiifiijKOTa in the narrower sense), can be deduced from it, but also much which, as foreign to the conception, appears in the particular only incident ally, as a consequence of the matter in which the conception realises itself; and of this which is conceptionally indifferent or "accidental "
<(n-nfitpjjKora in the usual sense of the word) there is, according to the presuppositions of the Aristotelian doctrine, no " theory,*' no scientific knowledge. Hence Aristotle also — and in this lies a characteristic limit of the ancient study of Nature — disclaimed on principle any scientific insight into the necessity of law, with which even the most individual and most particular follow from the gen eral. This individual instance he declared rather to be something really accidental, not to be explained by conception, and limited scientific consideration to that which is valid universally («rf oXov), or at least for the most part (eVi to iroAv).
4. In this we see decidedly a holding fast to the tradition of the doctrine of Ideas : the same attitude discloses itself also in another direction. If, that the relation of matter and form affirmed between the different things or classes of things, each of which
in iUelf already actual as formed matter, this relation becomes relative in so far as the same thing which in contrast with a lower to be regarded as form, appears as matter when contrasted with
the higher. In this aspect the conception of development becomes the principle of an ordering of things according to their metaphysical values, considering these things as rising in uninterrupted succession from the lowest formations of matter to the highest forms. In this scale every class of things assigned its metaphysical dignity
means of the test that regarded as form of the lower and as the material of the higher.
So. at leaat, they are called in the treatise on categories, the genuineness of which is. to be sure, not entirely uncontested yet the designation quite in '«« line of Aristotle's teaching taken as whole.
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144 The Greeks : Systematic Period. [Part I.
This system of individual things, and of their classes, has both a lower and an upper limit, the former in mere matter, the latter in pure form. Wholly unformed matter (irpwTjj v\r\) is, of course, in itself, as mere possibility, not actual ; it never exists without being somehow actualised as form. Yet it is not merely that which is not Being (the Platonic fit] 5v, or empty space), but the accessory cause, which evinces itself as such through real effects (to ov ovk dvtv, sine qua non). Its reality is shown in the fact that the forms do not completely realise themselves in individual things, and that from it side-workings (7rapa<£w£s) proceed which are without connection with the purposefully active form, or even in contradiction with it. It is, therefore, from matter that the fact is explained that the forms realise themselves only potentially {Kara t6 Sward? ) : from matter arises that which is conceptionally indeterminate (o-v/i/Je- Pr)Ko%), or the accidental (ovto/mitov), — the lawless and purposeless in Nature. Hence the Aristotelian doctrine distinguishes, in its explanation of Nature, as did Plato in the Philebus, between final causes (to oJ tvtiea) and mechanical causes (to e£ dWyKj^) : the former are the forms which realise themselves in matter ; the latter reside in matter, out of which proceed side-workings and counter-workings. Thus the cosmic processes are regarded by Aristotle ultimately under the analogy of the plastic artist, who finds in the hard material
a limit to the realisation of his formative thought. This material indeed, so far related to the Idea, that the Idea can present itself in at least in general, and yet in so far foreign, and thus
an independent, element, that in part opposes itself as retarding principle to the realising of the forms. Ancient philosophy did not overstep this dualism between the purposive activity of the form
and the resistance of matter with the demand of the teleological view of the world united the naive honesty of experience, recog nising the necessity, purposeless and contrary to design, which asserts itself in the phenomena of the actual world.
It is, on the contrary, self-evident in the case of pure form, since its conception immediately connected with that of true act uality, that possesses in itself the highest actuality without need ing any matter whatever. The assumption of such pure Form necessary according to the system of Aristotle, for the reason that matter, as the merely possible or potential, has in itself alone no principle of motion or of generation. We cannot, indeed, speak of
beginning of motion in time in this system of development, which centres about the conception of self-realising essence, since motian must be as eternal as Being itself, to the essential characteristics of which belongs but yet we must point out that property in Being
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('■Ar. 3, § 13. J System oj Development : Aristotle. 145
which is the cause of motion. This however, everywhere the action of the form upon the matter, in which, with reference to indi vidual things, Aristotle distinguishes two elements, viz. an impulse to be formed inherent in matter, and the purposive motion proceed
ing from the form itself. But in so far as the form itself moved, most be regarded in turn as matter for higher form and, since the same thing true of the latter, and so on, motion would not be understood the chain of its causes did not have first link in the pore Form which itself not moved. The first mover (irpwrov kivovv)
itself unmoved. Hence, in the case of its action upon matter, only the first of the two elements above mentioned comes into con sideration. It operates, not by means of its own activity, but only
means of the fact that its absolute actuality excites in matter the impulse to form itself according to (the prime mover), not as mechanical, but as pure, final cause (kivc? «W ipwpuvov, ol kivov-
M»or).
The prime mover, or the pure Form, means, then, in the Aristo
telian metaphysics, quite the same thing as the Idea of the Good in the Platonic, and for alone Aristotle employs all the predicates of the Platonic Idea. It eternal, unchangeable, immovable, wholly independent, separated (xuipunov) from all else, incorporeal, ud yet at the same time the cause of all generation and change.
the perfect Being (Ivipytia) in which all possibility at the suae time actuality of all that exists the highest (to rt drai
rp«ror) and best — the deity. 1
The highest Being or Essence, thus determined according to its
relations, is also characterised by Aristotle as regards its content. Soch an activity, related to no possibility, resting purely within
itself (actus purus), thought, and thought alone; not, of course, that mental process which applies itself to individual things and their changing phenomena, but the pure thought, which employed *ith itself and its eternal nature that thought which presupposes nothing else as an object, but has itself for its constant, unchang
ing content, the thought of thought (vorjo-it vorjaiwi) — self<onscious-
In these conceptions, so determined, dwells significance of "ughty import for the world's history. On the one hand, mono
The exposition of this course of thought from which the later, so-called co»- •oloyiral proof for the exintence of God essentially arose, found principally the twelfth book of the Metaphyrics. In his popular dialogues Aristotle
•*»l(r»inated with determinations of worth, by giving the following form *• diMinction between the imperfect and the more perfect which things of **J*rience show presupposes the reality of most perfect. Cf. Schol. in ArisL WTtS.
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146 The Greeks: Systematic Period. [Part I.
theism was herewith conceptionally formulated and scientifically grounded; on the other hand, it passed over from the pantheistic form, which it had with Xenophanes, and even still with Plato, into the theistic form, since God is conceived of as a self-conscious beinjj different from the world. But besides this transcendence, the doc trine that God is the absolute mind or spirit (Geist) involves at the same time the metaphysical advance that the immaterial, the incor poreal pure Being, is made equivalent to the spiritual. Spiritual monotheism is the ripe fruit of Grecian science.
This divine spirituality is conceived of in a purely intellectualistic manner ; its essential nature is solely thought directed upon itself. All doing, all willing, is directed toward an object, distinct from the doer or the wilier. The divine mind, as pure form, needs no object ; he is sufficient for himself, and his knowledge of himself (Oiutpta), which has no other goal than itself, is his eternal blessedness. He acts upon the world, not through his motion or activity, but through the longing for him which the world has. The world, and what takes place in arises from the longing of matter after God.
Matter (the merely potential) that which
itself moving anything; God (the solely actual)
without itself being moved; between the two
things, which suffer motion as well as call forth and these, taken as a whole, are designated by Aristotle as Nature (<f>wns; equivalent to "world" according to present usage). Nature is, accordingly, the connected system of living beings viewed as a unity, in which matter developing ever higher, from form to form, through all the multitude of its particular shapes, approaches the resting Being of the deity, and imitating this, potentially takes up into itself.
But in this connection, the graded scale of things, in the exposition of which the Aristotelian philosophy of Nature consists, shows two fold standard for estimating relative worth. The scale therefore developed in two different series, which find their union only at the end in manner which is, indeed, consistent with the fundamental conceptions of the system, but which nevertheless, in itself sur prising.
In the conception of the deity, according to Aristotle, there meet, as chief characteristics, that of Being, resting within itself, and remaining like itself (itSutv), and that of spirituality or rationality
Hence the individual " forms " of Nature take a higher rank in proportion as they contain the one or the other of these elements which constitute the highest worth. In the one line, the series of phenomena ascends from the unordered change of the terrestrial world to the ever-uniform revolution of the stars; in the
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Cha*. 3, § 13. ] System of Development : Aristotle. 147
other line, we are led from the merely mechanical change of place to the activities of the soul and its most valuable develop ment, rational knowledge; and both series have the same terminus, inasmuch as the stars that are in most uniform motion are con ceived of as the highest intelligences, the most rational spirits.
7. In relation to the first of these two aspects Aristotle, taking np the astronomical views of Plato, adopted the old Pythagorean antithesis between the earthly and the heavenly world, and it is to be ascribed to the victorious influence of his philosophy that the matorer ideas of the later Pythagoreans did not prevail in antiquity, in spite of their recognition by those learned in astronomy in the following period. As the whole universe has the most perfect form, everywhere the same, — that of the sphere, — so among all motions the most perfect is the circular motion, which returns into itself. This belongs to the aether, the celestial element, out of which the •tars are formed, and the transparent hollow spheres, in which the stars move with ever-unchanged uniformity. Farthest out, and in an absolute changelessness that comes nearest the divine Being, is
tiie heaven of the fixed stars, beneath that the planets, the sun, and ih<? moon, whose apparent deviation from the circular movement was explained by a complicated theory of hollow spheres placed one within another, the theory which Eudoxus, an astronomer sustaining a close relation to the Academy, and his disciple Callippus had propounded. 1 The stars themselves were, however, for Aristotle wings of superhuman intelligence, incorporate deities. They ap
peared to him as the purer forms, those more like the deity, and from them a purposive, rational influence upon the lower life of earth seemed to proceed, — a thought which became the root of mediaeval astrology.
The lower " forms " of terrestrial life, on the other hand, are the four element* (of Empedocles), which are characterised by the ten dency to rectilinear motion. But rectilinear motion involves at once
the opposition of two tendencies, — the centrifugal, which belongs to Fire; and the centripetal, which belongs to Earth. The first of the two tendencies is also attributed in a lesser degree to Air, and the lister in a lesser degree to Water, and so the central mass, our earth,
* Scbiaparelli, Lt Sftrr Omocentrichr <li Kudomo, Callippo, ed AriHotele (Mi lan. 1870). Cf. alto (). Gruppe, Die kotmiirhen Systeme der Grirchtn (Berlin,
A* a principle of method, the following prescription for the proposal of tv*e qorations has been preserved from the Old Academy, typical of the matli- 'salico-metaphysical presup|>o8ltion of the speculative explanation of Nature : •a to ducover the uniformly ordered motions of the stars by means of which i£#ir apparent motions may be explained (3io»<if«i»). Siuipl. in Arist. tit L'eclo
! %il).
i Karat. ;. 119.
148 The Greek* : Systematic Period. [Part £
in a state of rest as a whole, is composed in such a way that about the earthy material is disposed at first Water and then Air, while Fire strives toward the celestial outer world. The changing combi nations, however, into which the four elements enter, constitute the imperfect, that which cannot be conceived, that which is accidental in the terrestrial world. Here the side-working and counter-work ing of matter are stronger than in the celestial region where the
mathematical determinateness of undisturbed circular motion real ises itself.
8. In the changes of the terrestrial world, mecluxnical, chemical, and organic processes are built up upon each other in such a way that the higher always presupposes the lower as its condition. Without change of place (<f>opd or kivjjo-is in the narrowest sense), change of qualities (dXA. otW«) is not . possible, and the organic transformation which consists in growth and decay (au^o-is — <f>6i<ri<;) is not possible without both the preceding. The higher form is, however, never merely a product of the lower, but is something self- subsistent, by means of which those lower forms can be employed only in a purposive manner.
From this develops an important principle in which Aristotle is opposed to Democritus, — a principle which the former esteemed very highly in regard to detailed research in natural science, and used a great deal, even with express mention. Aristotle' protests against the attempt to reduce all qualitative to quantitative deter minations, — an attempt ultimately accepted even by Plato. He combats the contrasting from an epistemological and metaphysical point of view, of secondary and primary qualities ; to the former he accords not a less but rather a higher reality than to the latter, and in the succession of " forms " the inner conceptional character or determination is evidently of more worth for him than the outer determination which is capable of mathematical expression. ' Thf attempt of Democritus to raise to the rank of a principle fcr explaining the world the reduction of all qualitative to quantitative differences, found its victorious opponent in Aristotle and his doctrine of the " entelechies," the inner Forms of things.
The keen logician saw that it is never possible to develop qualities analytically from quantitative relations, and that, on the contrary, the quality (by which ever sense it may be perceived) is something new, which presup poses the entire body of quantitative relations as its occasion only.
1 Cf. especially the third book of the treatise De Caeto.
* For this reason Aristotle also characterises the elements not only by the different tendencies of their motions, but also by primitive qualities ; and he develops them out of a meeting of the contrasted pairs, warm and cold, dry and moist. Meteor. IV. 1, 378 b 11.
Cmaw. 3, § 13. ] System of Development : Aristotle. 149
9. With logical consistency the same view is applied by Aristotle to the relation of the psychical and bodily activities ; the latter are but the matter for which the former furnish the forms. There is, with Aristotle, no such dependence of psychical upon corporeal func tions as Democritus, in accordance with the procedure of the older metaphysics, and even Plato, is part (in the Timceus), had taught.
For Aristotle the soul is rather the entelechy of the body, i. e. the Form which realises itself in the motions and changes of the organic
The soul is the cause of bodily formation and motion, a cause acting from ends ; itself incorporeal, it is yet actual or real only as the power moving and controlling the body.
But the psychical life itself is also, according to Aristotle, built up as it were in successive grades or strata, each of which, in turn, presents matter for the higher. The first Form of organic life is the vegetative soul (dpexTucov), which "forms" the mechanical and chemical changes to the purposive functions of assimilation and
body.
The soul of plants is restricted to this purely physio logical significance of a vital force; to this is added in the whole animal kingdom,1 the animal soul, whose constitutive characteristics ire spontaneous motion in space (kivtjtikw Kara rairov) and sensation
tmia&rfTiMoy).
The purposive, spontaneous motion of the animal body proceeds
from desire (ooc&f )< which arises from the feelings of pleasure and pain, in the form of an effort to procure or shun. But these pre suppose everywhere the idea of their object, and are at the same time bound together with the thought that this object is worthy to be striven for or to be shunned. The view of the dependence of all desire upon ideas, peculiar to all Greek psychology, is so strong with Aristotle, that he even sets forth these relations expressly, accord ing to the logical function of judgment and inference. In the practical sphere, also, there is affirmation and denial,1 there is the process of drawing a conclusion from a general aim to a particular mode of action.
The proper seat, or home, as it were, of the entire animal life of ideation is found in sensation. In the physiological psychology which treats this subject8 Aristotle has used in comprehensive
1 Aristotle's History of Animals (cf. J. B. Meyer. Berlin. 1856) treat* in ex- capUrr manner, and with admirable care of detailed investigation, anatomical, pbruoloeica), morpholofrical, and biological problems, and also the questions of •vstraa. The parallel work on plants is indeed lost, but in compensation we ■•«* the work of his friend and disciple Theophrastus.
• fV»ide* the sections which treat this subject, in the treatise on the Soul, the mailer treatises attached to this are also to be compared, viz : on Pereejrtt'on, in Memory, ou Dreams, etc.
propagation.
' Elk Vie. VI. 2, 1139 a 21.
150 The Greeks : Systematic Period. [Part I.
manner all the particular information and theories which his prede cessors, especially Democritus, possessed on this point; but he overcame the common inadequacy of all earlier doctrines by conced ing a much greater importance to the self-activity of the soul in the
process in which perception arises. Not satisfied to adopt the old theory that perception consists in a co-operation of object and sub ject, he pointed to the unity of consciousness (EinheitUclikeit, fievorryi), with which the animal soul unites what is given in the individual perceptions of the individual senses to form collective perceptions, or perceptions that perceive the object as a whole, and in so doing grasps also the relations of number, situation, and motion. Thus above the individual senses we must assume the common sense
which is also the seat of recollection, both of the involuntary or memory (/uoj/o;) and the voluntary (dra/u^o-is),
by virtue of the circumstance that in it the perceptions remain as imaginative representations (<pavrao-Cai) ; at the same time, however, it is also the seat of our knowledge of our own states. 2
10. Vegetative and animal souls, however, form in man but the matter for the realisation of the Form peculiar to him, — the reason
(koivov alvOriTTipiov),1
(vow — bavoturOu).
(/3ou\>;<ro) ; imaginative representation becomes knowledge
By its operation, impulse (opcfc) becomes will
(ori- It comes as a something new and higher (" from without,"
a-TTjiir]).
$vpaOiv) to all the psychical activities which develop from perception even among the beasts. Aristotle expressed this relation by desig nating the pure rational activity itself as the active reason {vms irotr/TtKos), and, on the contrary, as passive reason (vovs iruft/riicos), the material of perceptions, which arises from the bodily existence, furnishes possibilities and occasions for reason, and is subsequently worked over and formed by it.
Accordingly the " passive " reason signifies the individual phase (Erscheinungsweise) given in the natural disposition of the individ
ual man, and determined by the occasions of his personal experience, — the "active" reason, on the contrary, signifying the pure reason considered as a unity in its nature and principles (principielle Ein- heitlichkeit), common to all individuals. The latter is imperishable, as it is without beginning, while the former passes away with the
1 With regard to physiological localisation Aristotle found the psychical activity to be attached to the vital warmth (fiupvTor 0ep>i6r), which as animating breath (n-reC^a) is mingled with the blood, and his school developed this doc trine still further. Cf. H. Siebeck, Zeitschrifl fur Volkerpsycholngi? , 1881, pp. 364 ff. In consequence of this he regarded the heart as the seat of' the common sense and so supplanted the better insight with which Alcmaeon, Diogeties of Apollonia, Democritus, and Plato had recognised the importance of the brain.
2 This beginning for a doctrine of tuner i>erception is found in Arist. De. An. III. 2, 425 b 12.
Cbaf. 3, § 13. ] System of Development : Aristotle. 151
individuals in whom it appears. Personal immortality is put in question by this conclusion just as in the Platonic Timceus, where it was claimed only for the " rational " " part " of the soul, i. e. that part which is everywhere alike and impersonal. It is clear that we have here no longer to do with empirical psychology, but with such doctrines as have been taken from the systematic connection of the whole work, and grafted upon psychology in consequence of ethical and epistemological postulates.
11. In the conception of the reason as the Form peculiar to the human soul, Aristotle found the key to the solution of that feature of the ethical problem which even Plato had sought in vain, i. e. that of the content of the Good. Man's happiness or well-being (tiiaLfiona), which in Aristotle's system also is regarded as the supreme end of all endeavour (riXos), indeed, dependent in part upon external fortune not complete until this has afforded its good things; but ethics has to do only with that which stands in our power (to itf ijutf), only with the happiness which man gains
his own activity (vpaxroy iyaOov). Every being, however, be comes happy by the unfolding of his own nature and of his own peculiar activity — man, therefore, through reason. The virtue of
man is, accordingly, that habitude or permanent state of mind (*&«) through which he made capable of the practice of rational activ ity develops out of the endowments of his natural disposition, *nd has for its fruit, satisfaction, pleasure.
As in the animal soul impulse and perception were to be dis tinguished as different expressions, so, too, the reason develops itself, partly as rational action, partly as rational thought as per fection, on the one hand, of the character or disposition {f/Ovs), on the other, of the faculty of intelligence (cuVrfaW&u in the broadest sense of the word). Thus there result, as the excellence or ability of the rational man, the ethical and the intellectual or dianoetic vir tues.
12. The ethical virtues grow out of that training of the will by Thf-h becomes accustomed to act according to right insight (^■ijirn — SpBot Aoyot). It enables man, in his decisions, to follow
reason, i. e. insight into what correct or projxer. With this doctrine Aristotle transcends the principles of Socrates, — with evident regard to the facts of the ethical life not that he ttoigned to the will psychological independence as over against knowledge the point, rather, is, that he gave up the opinion that
tL* determination of the will arising from rational insight must of cs*lf be stronger than the desire arising from defective knowledge. Since experience often shows the reverse of this, man must gain by
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152 Tlie Greeks : Systematic Period. [Part I
practice that self-control (iyKparua) by means of which he follows under all circumstances that which is rationally known, even against the strongest desires. 1
While to ethical virtue in general belong natural disposition, insight, and habitude, the individual virtues are distinguished by the different relations of life to which they refer. A systematic development of these is not given by Aristotle, but we have, rather, a comprehensive and delicate treatment of the individual virtues. The general principle is that rational insight always finds the right mean between the unreasonable extremes to which the natural impulsive life leads. Thus courage is the right mean between cowardice and rashness. A particularly detailed exposition is given to friendship 2 as the common striving for all that is good and beautiful, and also to justice as the basis of the political community.
13. For Aristotle, like Plato, was convinced that the moral excel lence of man, since it always relates to activities which prosper in the life of a community, can find its fulfilment only in the life of a community ; for him, too, there is ultimately no perfect moral life outside the state, the essential end of which was considered by Aristotle, also, to be the ethical training of its citizens. As, never theless, in the case of the individual man, virtue ought to develop out of the natural disposition, so the political relations also are treated by Aristotle from the point of view, that tile historically given relations are to be used for the highest possible fulfilment of that highest end.
Every constitution is right if the government has the ethical weal of the community as its highest goal ; every constitution has failed if this is not the case. The good of the state, therefore, does not depend upon the external form, which is defined by the number of those who rule. 3 The rule of a single individual may be right as a kingdom (fiao-ikiia), bad if a despotism (rvpaww) ; the rule of few may be good if an aristocracy of culture and disposition, if an oligarchy of birth or property, bad; the rule of all as a republic of law and order (woAiTtta) ir. ay be good, as mob-rule
(SrjiiOKpaTia), bad. With profound political intelligence, Aristotle brings together in these expositions' the experiences of Grecian history, and on the ground of bhes>e enters upon the philosophy of
1 In the polemic against the Socratic doctrine which Aristotle brings forward in this line, Eth. . Vic III. 1-8, are developed the first beginnings of the problem of freedom.
• A point of view which ths dialogue the Statesman, passing under Plato's name, had already emphasised, while Plato himself in the Republic constructed the " bad " constitutions Iron, psychological analogies of a predominance of the lower parts of the soul.
a In the eighth book of the Wtcumarhiean Ethic*.
Chap. 3, § 13. ] System of Development : Aristotle. 153
littory in giving intimations as to the necessity with which individ ual forms of constitutions pass over into one another and develop out of one another.
After these presuppositions we can understand that Aristotle could not think of projecting in detail the constitution of an ideal state in Plato's manner. He contented himself with a critical emphasising of those elements which had proved requisite in indi vidual constitutions for fulfilling the general task of the state. In this connection he agrees with the Platonic demand for a public system of education ; the ethical community must itself take the care of fitting for their place the elements of which it will in future consist, and it is the task of education (in the treatment of which the fragment of the Politics breaks off) to lead man out of his rude state of nature with the help of the noble arts, to ethical and intel
lectual culture.
14. To the practical activity of the reason (koyurriKov), in the
broader sense of the word, Aristotle reckoned also " making " (nui») in addition to "acting" (rrpu£i? ) ; yet, on the other hand, he made so great distinction between this creative activity, which presents itself in art, and the action directed toward the ends of daily life, that he occasionally set the science of art, poietic phi losophy, as a third independent science, side by side with the theo retical and practical. Of this poietic philosophy, there is preserved besides the Rhetoric only the fragment of his theory of the art of poetry, under the name of the Poetic. This sets out, indeed, from principles relating to the nature of art in general, but in its particu lar subject offers only the outlines of a theory of tragedy. In this, such peculiar relations of this science of art to the two other principal parts of philosophy appear, that it becomes difficult to sub
ordinate this branch under either of the other two.
Art is imitative production, and the arts are distinguished as well
by the objects which they imitate as by the material with which they imitate. The objects of poetic art are men and their actions ; its means are language, rhythm, and harmony. Tragedy, in particu lar, represents an important action as performed immediately by ■peaking and acting persons. 1
Bat the purpose of this imitative representation is an ethical one : the passions of man, in particular in the case of tragedy, fear and fmpathtf, are to be so excited, that by their excitation and en hancement purification of the soul (xo&ifxrtc) from these passions is brought about
> Poet. 6, 1449 b 24.
154 The Greeks: Systematic Period. [Par* £.
On the doctrine of the Catharsis, which became so important for the later theory of art, and on the literature concerning cf. A. Doling, Die Kunstlehre des Aristoteles (Jena, 1876).
The attainment of this end is, however, accomplished in such a way, that in artistic representation the particular brought to our view, not as a particular, but in its universal nature or essence- Art, like science, has for its object the universal in its particular realisation offers kind of knowledge, and with this the pleas ure which attends upon knowledge. 1
15. The highest perfection of its development finally achieved by the rational nature of man in knowledge. The dianoetic virtues are the highest, and those which bring complete happiness. The activity of the theoretical reason (eVio-Trjixoviicov) directed to the immediate apprehension of the highest truths, i. e. of the concep tions and judgments which the inductive search of scientific inves tigation only leads up to without being able to prove, and from which all deduction must take its beginning (cf. 12, 4). "
But knowledge of these, the full unfolding of the "active reason in man, again designated by Aristotle as "beholdhig" (Oiwpla) and with this beholding of the highest truth man gains participa tion in that pure thought, in which the essence of the deity consists, and thus, also, in the eternal blessedness of the divine self-conscious ness. For this " beholding " which exists only for its own sake and has no ends of will or deed, this wishless absorption in the perception of the highest truth, the blessedest and best of all.
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PART II.
THE HELLENISTIC-ROMAN PHILOSOPHY.
Aj regards the general literature, the same works serve for this part that were cited at the beginning of Part I.
With the age of Aristotle, Grecian civilisation stepped out from its national restrictions and into the great general movement in which the peoples of antiquity that dwelt about the Mediter ranean, through interchange and adjustment of their ideas, became fused into one common civilisation. This process began through the union of Oriental with Greek thought, in the Hellenistic states of Alexander's successors. It found its external completion in the Roman Empire, its internal completion in Christianity. Hellen ism, Romanism, and Christianity were the three stages in which the world's future civilisation developed from antiquity.
The intellectually determining element in this union was Greek science, and herein consists its significance for the world's history. It became, like Greek art, the common possession of ancient civili sation. To it were joined step by step the highest movements in the inner life of the peoples, and it became the forming power for all the longings and impulses that lived within their souls. It was with the fall of its political independence, with its absorp tion into the Empire, that the Greek nation bought the accomplish ment of its task of civilisation; by their dispersal over the world the Greeks became the teachers of the world.
But in connection with this entrance into more extended relations, Greek science experienced a separation of the different elements which were united in it. Together with the purely theoretical interest in which it had originated, and which had found so clear an expression in the personality and teaching of Aristotle, a practi cal interest had in time developed, which sought in science the '"onviction that should govern life. In Plato's philosophy the two
were inseparately fused together, but now these two tendencies of vience became separated.
Scientific thought, which had come to a knowledge of its own
processes in the Aristotelian logic, had arrived at the consciousness 166
156 Hellenistic-Roman Philosophy. [Part IX
of fundamental conceptions, with the aid of which it could use the abundance of phenomena. The principal opposing theories of the interpretation of the world had developed in the great systems, and in this way a fixed frame or setting was formed for the scientific treatment of detail. But beginning, as it did, with so slightly ex tended a knowledge of detail, the more successful Greek science was
in the development of principles, the more it now experienced crippling, at once of metaphysical interest and metaphysical force.
In consequence of this, however, the theoretical tendency of sci ence was toward details, and the fundamental scientific character of the Hellenistic-Roman time is erudition and the development of the special sciences. The individual man of science, by entrance into one of the great schools, gained a firm support of collective opinion, and a ruling principle for the treatment of separate questions and subjects which interested him. And indifference toward general metaphysical theories was the greater, the more it appeared that fruitful investigation in special provinces, extension of knowledge of facts, and comprehension of special departments of science were possible, independently of the strife of metaphysical systems. The separation of problems, which had been completed typically in the Aristotelian teaching and school, led necessarily to specialisation, and the purely theoretical interest in knowledge for its own sake developed, during the Hellenistic-Roman period, essentially in the individual sciences. The great savants of later antiquity stand, it is true, in loose relations with one school or another, but they always show themselves indifferent to metaphysics. So it happens that during this time production, so far as the theoretical principles of philosophy were concerned, was extremely small, while investiga tion into mathematics, natural science, grammar, philology, literary and general history, had rich and comprehensive results to record. With the great mass of those names which are reckoned as " philos ophers," whether heads of schools or associates in the schools, and which are continued in the schematic treatment of the " History of Philosophy," only literary-historical notices are connected, as that they worked specially in this or that department ; or it may be per sonal information, of no importance to philosophy, as that they attached themselves to this or that one among the earlier teachers, — almost never do we find any formation of new and original con ceptions. So far as theoretical knowledge was concerned, this period turned the old problems of the Greeks hither and thither, and moved along the track which it found already laid down.
So much the more powerfully, during these centuries of appropri ation and elaboration, did the practical significance of philosophy
a,
Hellenistic- Roman Philosophy. 157
unfold itself. The need of a scientific doctrine of the ends of human life, of such a wisdom as should guarantee the happiness of
the individual, could but become more urgent as the ideal structure of Greek life fell in pieces, as the religion of the people sank ever more and more to an external tradition, as the crumbling political life, robbed of its independence, no longer awakened devotion, and the individual in his inner life felt thrown back upon himself. Thus tcisdom for the conduct of life became the fundamental problem of the philosophy which followed that of the Greeks, and the nar rowing in the statement of the philosophical problem which Socrates, and after him the Cynic and Cyrenaic schools of Sophistic thought,
had begun, is the general character of the succeeding period.
This did not exclude general theoretical doctrines and their
sharply championed contests from assuming airs of great impor tance during this period ; but, on the one hand, they met with no original interest for their own sake, and consequently developed only in the directions which were determined by the real end in view, i. e. that of wisdom for the conduct of life; on the other hand, they were lacking in originality, they were throughout only the old traditions shifted about, conditioned by the fundamental practical thoughts. Even such comprehensive systems as the Stoic and the Xeo-Platonic work only with the conceptions of Greek philosophy, in order to gain a theoretical basis for their practical ideal. The key to their theoretical doctrines lies always in the fundamental practical conviction, and in so far they are all of them character istic types of the mingling of problems.
With this predominance of practical importance is connected the fact that the dependence of philosophy upon the general movement of civilisation, which had already with the Sophists made its entrance into the quiet circle of disinterested investigation, became in the Hellenistic-Roman period a permanent phenomenon, and this appears most decisively in the changing attitude of this phi losophy toward religion.
The development which Greek philosophy had taken, and the ever more sharply pronounced opposition to the religion of the people into which it had come, brought with it the result that the special task of that wisdom for the conduct of life which the post- Aristotelian philosophy sought, was to find a compensation
for The cultured world, which had lost the support
rttigiouM faith.
afforded by religion, and was obliged to give up that of the state il*o, sought it in philosophy. As a result, the point of view of the
Hellenistic-Roman wisdom for the conduct of life was primarily that of individual morality, and the philosophy which busied itself
158 Hellenistic-Roman Philosophy. [Part II.
with this had, consequently, a thoroughly ethical stamp. The sharpness of the opposition of this individualistic ethics to religion appears most clearly among the Epicureans. But in the other schools, also, the doctrines of the deity have a purely ethical, or perhaps a theoretical interest, but none that is specifically religious.
This essentially ethical development of philosophy reached its completion in Greece, especially, indeed, in Athens, which, amid all the spread of Greek culture eastward and westward, formed for centuries the centre of scientific life. But soon new centres par ticularly for erudite detailed investigation, arose in the great libra ries and museums, in Rhodes, in Pergamum, in Alexandria, in Tarsus, in Rome, and later, in Antioch and Byzantium. Of these, Alexandria became especially important, where not only did elabora- tive erudition experience so typical a development, that the entire direction of this period is generally called " literary-historical " in accordance with but where, also, the philosophical direction of the time experienced its decided change.
For as time went on philosophy could not remain indifferent to that deep feeling of dissatisfaction which had seized the ancient world in the midst of all the glory of the Roman Empire. This huge empire offered to the peoples which had welded together into mighty unit, no compensation for the loss of their national independence; granted them neither inner worth nor outer for tune. The draught from the life of earth had become insipid to ancient peoples, and they thirsted after religion. So they groped after the different cults and religious practices which individual peoples had brought with them, and the religions of the Orient became mixed with those of the Occident.
Into this movement philosophy was the more drawn, the more became clear that could not satisfy the cultured man by the presentation of its ethical ideal of life, — could not secure for him the promised happiness. It followed then — at first, in Alexandria — that the mingling, surging flood of religious ideas emptied itself into philosophy, which now sought to build up upon a scientific basis, not only an ethical conviction, but religion as well. Philos ophy employed the conceptions of Greek science to clarify and put in order religious ideas, to give to the importunate demand of religious feeling an idea of the world that should be satisfactory to and so created the systems of religious metaphysics, in more or less intimate connection with the contending religions.
Accordingly, in the Hellenistic-Roman philosophy there are two distinct periods to be distinguished, the ethical and the religious. The last century b. c. to be designated as the time in which the one gradually passed over into the other.
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CHAPTER I. THE ETHICAL PERIOD.
Thk two schools of the great masters of Attic philosophy, the Academic and the Peripatetic, followed the tendency of the time which separated science into the two branches, ethical philosophy and learned investigation. While in the first generation of the
Academy — that contemporary with Aristotle — a Pythagoreanising metaphysics had predominated, this made room in the next period (or fiopular moralising (cf. p. 101). In the Lyceum, indeed.