Section V. The Metaphysics of Aristotle

1. These remarks of Dr. Whewell’s show how necessarily the method of Aristotle obstructed the true observation and interpretation of nature. The two senses of the word Metaphysics To us they are important chiefly from the connection which has always been felt to exist between the physical treatises and those which by Aristotle himself, or some disciple, are classed under the name of Metaphysical. These latter writings have been the subject of much dispute. Some have supposed that they owe their name to an accidental juxtaposition with the books on Physics, among which it was evident that they could not conveniently be classed; some to a feeling in the mind of Aristotle, that he was ascending into a region above and beyond that in which he had been dwelling previously.

2. One of his early commentators appears to adopt both explanations of the title.¹ He says, “The object of this treatise is theological. Herein Aristotle theologises. The order is this: we make our beginning from those things which naturally are the last, seeing that these are the better known to us. For this reason, then, he discoursed to us first concerning physical matters, for these are last by nature, but to us first. But this present subject is first in nature, but to us last, since the imperishable things are older than the perishable, and the ungenerated than the generated. Old opinions on the question. Wherefore Aristotle discoursed to us first concerning those things that are moved without an order (in his book on Meteors); then again concerning those things which are moved according to an order or system (in the work on the Heavens, concerning the stars and the spheres); and finally in this treatise he discourses to us concerning those things which are in all cases immovable. Now this is theology, for such a study befits the gods. For this reason the work is inscribed After-the-Physics (Μετὰ τὰ φυσικά); seeing that he first discoursed to us concerning the physical things, then consecutively concerning this; it is proper, therefore, to read it after the physical treatises: this the title shows.” Another of the scholiasts is more decisive: “This work is entitled Μετὰ τὰ φυσικά, not in reference to the character of the book, but to the order in reading it, for he treats concerning physical principles.” These hints, if considered in connection with the books themselves, will, we conceive, explain the origin of the two theories, and in a great degree reconcile them. We shall see as we proceed in what sense Aristotle “theologises;” in what sense he treats of things “unmoved,” and therefore not physical; or in what sense he treats of physical “principles.”

3. The first book. The first Book of the Metaphysics, or that which we reasonably suppose to be the first from its style and method, ascends from an investigation of the words Art and Experience (words which we shall meet with again in the Ethics), to an examination of the word Wisdom or σοφία. Wisdom is the knowledge about certain causes and principles. The question seems to follow of course, What kinds of causes or principles? But this question Aristotle thinks that he has answered implicitly already. Experience and Wisdom. Sense and experience take cognizance of individual cases; wisdom rises to the first causes and the first principles—those that are most universal, those that lie furthest from mere casual observation. We must continue in his own very striking words: “Through Wonder, men both now and heretofore began to philosophise. At first, indeed, they wondered at the more difficult things which lay close by them, then went on by little and little, inquiring concerning greater things, as concerning the changes of the moon, or about the sun, and the stars, and the generation of the universe. But he that is at a loss and that wonders, thinks that he is ignorant. Wherefore also the lover of wisdom (the philosopher) is in some sort a lover of fables, for the fable consists of wonders. Now, seeing they philosophised for the sake of escaping ignorance, it is evident that they pursued knowledge for the sake of knowing, and not for the sake of any advantage. The fact supports this conclusion; this kind of wisdom began to be sought out, when things sufficient for occupation and leisure were already provided. Just as we say that a man is free who exists for his own sake and not for the sake of another, so this is the only knowledge which is perfectly free, for it is the only one which exists purely for its own sake. Wherefore the possession of it may be justly considered as not pertaining to man. For oftentimes the nature of men is servile; so that, according to Simonides, ‘God alone would have this prize, and it is unworthy not to seek that (to be content with that) knowledge which is appropriate to him.’

“If indeed the poets say truly that the Divine Nature is envious, Simonides must be right, and all over-learned people must be unhappy. But the Divine Nature cannot be envious; rather, as the proverb says, ‘the poets lie;’ nor is it fitting to think any study more honourable than this, for that which is most godlike is also most honourable. Now science may be godlike in two ways; godlike because it is that thing which God hath above all others, or because it is itself the knowledge of the Divine. This fulfils both these conditions, for God seems to be a sort of beginning of causes, and God will possess this kind of knowledge alone or chiefly. All kinds of knowledge then are more needful than this (for common purposes), but none is better.”

4. The “Wise Man” of Aristotle. The wise man now presented to us is not the old Greek sage who could overreach his fellows and build up a tyranny; he is not the anxious questioner in all different directions, “Where is wisdom found?” he is not the Sophist who brings all different kinds of knowledge to the market, and sells them to the highest bidder, under a pledge that they will procure him power and the fruits of power; he is not the Socratic philosopher asking all the things that he sees for the meaning or truth which is latent in them; he is not the Platonic philosopher seeking for that which keeps knowledge, society, nature, at one. He is a man who must be carefully distinguished from, and opposed to, the man of business or practice (a person, nevertheless, to be highly prized in his way), who has a function altogether his own, a function which raises him to an almost Divine level, and makes him the one fit beholder of that which is Divine. If we ask what this is, the answer we receive is, the Divine is the Cause, that which lies beneath all other causes, that which is not subject to accident, movement, the law of growth; that which is the original root of all things. Here we have the Aristotelian theology.

5. The Aristotelian theology and metaphysics one. But this theology is by the definition Metaphysics. It comes after physics in the order of its discovery: after physics because it is implied in them; after physics because it is beyond them. Yet for this very reason it cannot be separated from them; you do not know what it is except by considering it in its relation to them. We have been careful hitherto to use the name as little as we might, at least in our sketch of Greek inquirers. It is dangerous to anticipate a name. The time will come, we may be sure, when it will be imposed if it is wanted. Soon a definer of boundaries will certainly appear, to say, “This is Morals;” “This is Physics;” “This is Metaphysics.” When he appears, if he is a man who shows he has a right to be heard, we must of course listen to him. But his accurate limitations will be far less intelligible to us, we shall not appreciate them as they deserve, if we have not allowed previous students to take their own course and explain themselves. In general, however grateful we may be to our teacher for telling us what we are to call and are not to call each thing that comes before us, we must be careful of taking him as the interpreter of his predecessors. He has a service of his own to render us, but it is involved in the nature of this service that he should be an overstrict disciplinarian, insisting that guerilla troops whose worth consists in their sudden and irregular appearance, should conform to the rules of regular warfare; compelling those whose order is quite as strict as his own, but altogether different from it, to adopt his signs and divisions under peril of being treated as disobedient and lawless.

6. Review of previous philosophies This remark is especially applicable to an able review of the previous Greek philosophers, which is contained in the first book of the Metaphysics. Causes, Aristotle says, are fourfold: 1. The substance of a thing, or that which constitutes it. 2. The matter of a thing, or that which is the needful condition of it. 3. The source whence the motion of anything proceeds. 4. The reason, or purpose, or good of its existence. No one can deny the value of this classification for Aristotelian purposes, nor that it may help, if used with moderation, to clear the mind of any student respecting his own objects. But Aristotle believes that one or other of these courses of inquiry was followed by each school of Greek thinkers, and was considered by that school as the only and all-sufficient method. Thus the Ionic philosophers studied the matter of things in hopes of discovering a primary element to which all other things might be referred. Those of this class who selected fire as their element, were naturally led by the effects which they observed resulting from that power, to speculate upon the meaning and mystery of Motion. Hence a new kind of inquiry was started, which proceeded, however, much in the spirit of those respecting elements, till Anaxagoras discovered the necessity of an Intelligence to set physical agents in movement. As, however, he had only recourse to this ultimate principle when other instruments failed him, the Atomic theory, which furnished a more plausible explanation of the facts of nature than his Homœomeriæ, easily supplanted them. Between this theory and that which affirmed Numbers to be the first principles of things, Aristotle appears to detect a connection, one not well supported by chronology. That doctrine of numbers he considers the first form of the inquiry after the essence or substance of things. The archetypal ideas of the Platonists, who regarded numbers as a kind of intervening powers between sensible things and pure essences, is the second and higher form of it. The inquiry respecting the object or purpose of things had not, he imagines, been pursued distinctly by any class of his predecessors, but it had entered somewhat confusedly into the speculations of them all.

7. Objection to Aristotle’s classification. Now if Socrates was, as we have maintained, the keystone of Greek speculations—an opinion which derives support from many passages in Aristotle himself—this historical sketch, however ingenious, cannot be correct. For in it Socrates is merely an interloper; of right therefore only mentioned in a parenthesis, as chiefly devoting himself to ethical inquiries, Plato’s intellectual descent being traced, not through him, to the Ionian and Heraclitan schools. Throughout this treatise Aristotle shows a want of sympathy with his predecessors, which must have made it impossible for him to understand those complicated thoughts and anxieties, even if he had not been determined to arrange them, and therefore became needlessly irritated with those whose vagrant habits defied arrangement. But his hints respecting other men are very important helps in becoming acquainted with himself. The Metaphysics of Aristotle are troublesome reading, partly from the frequent repetitions which occur in them, partly from the difficulty of discovering a sequence in the books. Nevertheless they should be read by any student who wishes to investigate the questions which have occupied men in later times. We shall illustrate our previous remarks by tracing a very rude outline of the subjects which are discussed in them, and recording some of the solutions Aristotle has given of the difficulties which he starts.

8. The theoretic and practical man. A kind of appendix which follows the first book contains a proof that causes are not infinite, that there is consequently a possibility of carrying on that inquiry in which past philosophers had engaged. The same short book contains some important remarks upon the manner in which the search was to be conducted, upon the contributions to truth which each school may have made, upon the advantages which a philosopher may derive from attending even to popular notions, upon the dislike which some have to exact mathematical reasoning, and the determination of others to have nothing else, and upon the proper limitation of mathematical accuracy to things without matter. We have here also the clear announcement of a principle which the student of Aristotle has need to keep constantly in recollection, θεωρητικῆς μὲν τέλος ἀλήθεια, πρακτικῆς δ’ ἔργον. He adds an explanation, which still further illustrates his meaning, and makes the difference between him and his master more conspicuous, that the practical man has nothing to do with the eternal or the absolute, but only with the relative. This book ends with a promise of an inquiry into the meaning of the word Nature, which is not, however, fulfilled in that which is commonly placed next to it.

9. Problems for solution. This second book is a collection of doubts or questions to be hereafter resolved. The first doubt is, whether it is the business of one science, or of more, to inquire into all kinds of causes or principles. This question involves the very subject of the whole treatise. So many different subjects seem to be included in that province to which the general name σοφία has been given—matters purely belonging to the senses, the causes of motion, the nature of Being, the reason and purpose of things—how is it possible to suppose a single science dealing with principles apparently not admitting either of analogy or contrast? Secondly, are we to look upon the most comprehensive Genera to which individual things can be referred, or upon the atoms of which they consist, as their Principles? The third question is connected with this, is there anything besides individual things? If not, how can they be known, for are not individual things infinite, and is not knowledge of that which is one and universal? Fourthly, are the principles of things perishable, and of things imperishable, the same? Fifthly (which is the great question of all), are Being and Unity the essences of things that are, and not distinguishable from them; or are we to seek for the τὸ ὄν and τὸ ἕν as if they had each a distinct nature? Sixthly, are numbers, bodies, planes, and points, substances or not? Such are the general controversies of which we are to hope for some settlement in the books that follow.

10. The third book may be considered an answer to the first question. There is a science which contemplates Existence as Existence, and whatever appertains to it in reference to it; not like other sciences, merely the attributes of certain particular existences. There are, he says, certain things peculiar to Being as Being, and these are things concerning which it is the philosopher’s function to investigate the truth. The Dialectician, the Philosopher, and the Sophist. The dialectician and the sophist resemble indeed the philosopher; Being is the common subject-matter to all three. They discourse concerning the subjects which are in a peculiar sense his property. The dialectical δύναμις differs from the philosophical in its nature; the sophistical in the intention of him who uses it, ἔστι δὲ ἡ διαλεκτικὴ πειραστικὴ περὶ ὧν ἡ φιλοσοφία γνωριστική, ἡ δὲ σοφιστικὴ φαινομένη, οὖσα δ᾽ οὔ. This is an important passage as illustrating the difference between the Platonic and the Aristotelian dialectics. According to Plato dialectics was the human science, the science of the philosopher as such. σοφία in its essence belongs to God. Aristotle, we see, discovers a difference between dialectics and the highest philosophy, and inevitably; for, as his dialectic treats only of the forms of human thought, as it deals with knowledge merely in the sense of the powers and means of knowing possessed by us, there must be another science concerning the objects of knowledge as such. But then, in this science also, the objects cease to be objects; they become subjects for man’s contemplation; they become Metaphysics or Ontology. The hint respecting the Sophist contained in this sentence should also be compared with the elaborate exhibition of his character and functions in the dialogue between the Eleatic stranger and Theætetus. It connects itself with the inquiry, whether mathematical axioms are subjects of inquiry for the Ontologist or highest philosopher. The answer is in the affirmative. Those axioms were assumed by the mathematician. The student of physics sometimes meddles with them, but rashly and presumptuously; they are first principles, and as such are cognizable only by the person whose office we are defining. Now as it was the especial delight of the Sophist to deny axioms, to say that the same thing could be and not be, this becomes the natural place for settling his pretensions. Consistently with their characteristic difference, Aristotle represents him, not in Plato’s manner, as one who invents counterfeit images of that which is, but as one who attributes accidents to accidents instead of to substances. We can scarcely conceive two portraits of the same person so correct and felicitous, and yet expressing so thoroughly the manner and principle of the respective artists.

11. Definitions. The fourth book is a book of definitions. We can only convey a notion of its importance by giving a list of the words defined. They are Principle (ἀρχή), Cause, Element, Nature, Necessity, Unity, Being, Substance, Sameness, Opposition, First and Last, Power, Quantity, Quality, Relation, Perfection, Limitation, Τὸ καθ᾽ὅ (secundum quid); [the meaning is easily understood from Touchstone’s words in As You Like It, “In respect that it is of the country it is a good life, but in respect that it is not of the court it is a vile life,” &c.] Disposition, Habit, Passion, Privation, Inclusion, Derivation, Part, Whole, κολοβόν (the mutilated), Kind, Falsehood, Accident. The explanations of some of these words will, it is obvious, have been repeated from the Categories and the Analytics. Some of them will be better understood from the arguments in the subsequent books than they could be from any formal definitions; still they are worthy to be read and reflected on. The one on “Nature” is perhaps the most important; but to his notions of this word the entire treatise is the only satisfactory clue.

12. Ontology: how it differs from Physics. The fifth book explains Aristotle’s view of the difference between physical and ontological science. They agree in this, that they are theoretic, not practical or poetic. They differ in this that the physical deals with that which has a capacity for change or movement, and with that which is imbedded in matter. The primary philosophy deals with the unchangeable, and with that which is separate from matter. Mathematical science lies between them, resembling ontological science in the first characteristic, physical in the second. If there be such a science as Theology, it must be a part, and the highest part, of the primary Philosophy. The Divine Nature must be pre-eminently that which is out of the circle of composite and movable things. The condition of those things whereof physical science treats, is, that they are susceptible of accidents. Not that there can be a science of accidents; as such they exclude science altogether. But there may be, and there are, principles and causes of those things which admit of accidents. Seeking these, physical science still retains its formal distinction from that higher science which deals with beings and essences as such. There is another sense in which “Being” had been used, especially by the Platonists, which it is necessary to distinguish from our notion of it. Being had been confounded with truth, Not-being with falsehood. Now truth, according to Aristotle, is not in the things but in the mind. Affirmation combines, negation separates; falsehood separates that which should be combined, combines that which should be separate. But the existences with which we are dealing are simple or uncompounded. Here again we have one of the capital and vital points of difference between the two philosophies.

13. The sixth book contains some of the most important distinctions and differences in the whole treatise. Ontology is concerned with Substance. What is to be included among substances? Are walking, sitting, being in health, substances? No; all these imply a subject to which they must be considered as referring. In this way we get rid of the notion of a substantial good, as well as a substantial warmth or whiteness, &c. All these alike are considered as qualities of some subject, and what that subject is must be sought in each individual which offers itself to our observation.

14. Qualities and Substance. But does not substance when thus considered necessarily connect itself with body? Here is one of our great puzzles. Some would have the boundaries of body to be substances; some would have substances which are in nowise cognizable by the senses; some would make the One the primary substance, and suppose different sets of substances, such as numbers, magnitudes, souls, to be generated from this. Aristotle’s opinion is this:—Form and Matter. To every subject belongs, first, ὕλη, which we must translate matter; second, μορφή, or form. The matter of a thing is its necessary condition. But this matter is not its essence; something else is implied in it, something which it presents or makes manifest. Applying this principle to the questions which occupied the third class of philosophers mentioned in the introductory book—the Platonists namely, and the Pythagoreans—it appears that this form is the true εἶδος of which they dreamed. It is the essential thing in each thing; it is that in virtue of which substance is possible, without which it is inconceivable. But it does not exist apart from each particular subject; it is that which enters into the definition of every subject, and without which the definition would be no definition; obviously, therefore, it must be viewed in that subject, and cannot be contemplated as a distinct, peculiar essence. Tested by this rule it is obvious also that all notions of an ideal form of hollowness or of pugnosedness (we use Aristotle’s favourite illustration) must be out of the question; these cannot be, primarily at least, subjects for a definition; they presuppose something whereof they are properties, and in that, and that only, can you look for an εἶδος. All notion again of Being as distinct from the particular person who, or the thing which, is; falls to the ground. Socrates and the being of Socrates are identical; the αὐτοέκαστον, of which he had talked, is nothing else but this εἶδος, or form, inherent in the thing itself.

15. The mode in which this same principle is applied to another class of inquiries, those which relate to the genesis or first origin of things, requires a more minute examination.

In considering any production we find, first, something whence it has been generated; secondly, something by which it has been generated; thirdly, the result or the thing itself. Production; natural, artificial, automatic. There are three modes of production—natural, artificial, automatic. In natural productions we discern at once a matter; nay, in the largest sense, Nature itself may be defined that out of which things are produced. Everything that becomes has a nature, which is only another way of saying that it has a ὕλη; and that in each thing which might not have been is this ὕλη. Now the result formed out of this matter or nature is any given substance—a vegetable, a beast, a man. But what is the producing, generating cause in each case? Clearly something akin in kind to the result. A man generates a man. Then there is implied in the resulting thing a productive force distinct from the matter upon which it works. And this is our εἶδος. And it is the combination of this εἶδος with the ὕλη which both produces a substance and constitutes it. Look now at artificial productions. Here the εἶδος is still the producing power. It is in the soul. The art of the physician, the plan of the architect, is that εἶδος which produces actual health or an actual house. Here, however, a distinction arises. In these artificial productions is supposed a νόησις and a ποίησις. The νόησις is the perception and internal entertainment of the form; the ποίησις the creation out of the given matter. But we mentioned a third mode of production not strictly natural or artificial, but by the action of the thing itself. For instance, a cure may take place by the application of warmth; a body may become warm by rubbing; this warmth then in the body is either itself a portion of health, or something is consequent upon it like itself, which is a portion of health. Evidently this implies the previous presence either of nature or of an artificer. Evidently also there is a necessity that this kind of generative influence should combine with another. There must be a productive power, there must be something out of which it is produced. In every case, then, there will be an ὕλη and an εἶδος. That which is generated is the whole substance, consisting of matter and form. But the form, properly speaking, is not generated. It is reproduced in each particular subject in combination with a certain matter, and it becomes a new and peculiar form in virtue of that combination. There is necessary then to every production a certain form and a certain matter; and all the qualities appertaining to this substance which is produced must inhere (not actually but potentially) in the substance producing, and may belong to the form when they are produced.

16. It remains to consider how this doctrine bears upon the inquiries of those philosophers who busied themselves with the search after a primary element: the inquiries of those who sought for the τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα are reserved for another discussion. But before we can enter upon this subject several of the doubts in our second book must be resolved. Part and Whole. First, as to the meaning of the words Part and Whole. The first and most obvious signification of part has relation to quantity, but this has nothing to do with our subject. What we want to know is the connexion of the idea of Part with substance. Assuming the division of substance into ὕλη and εἶδος, we should say that in a brass statue the brass formed part of the statue, as the complex of form and matter, but not of the statue considered as a Form. Now as Form is the proper subject of a definition, seeing it can be described in itself, and since that which is material cannot be so described, it comes to pass that in certain cases we necessarily speak of the parts as constituting the whole, and in other cases not. We define a circle without reference to its parts. We define a syllable by the letters or elements which compose it; for the parts of the circle are material parts, the parts of the syllable are formal, logical parts. Of course if you look upon a syllable as composed of certain letters in wax, or even of sounds in the air, its divisions become material and do not fall within the scope of a logical definition. Again, in a material division you assume the whole as preceding the part. On the contrary, logically and formally, the part precedes the whole. For instance, if you define the life of an animal you will describe it by some of its functions. None of its other functions can be performed without sensation. This particular faculty of sensation, therefore, will be assumed in the existence of the whole animal. This principle holds equally in reference to æsthetic matter (that which the senses take account of), as in noetic (the figures of mathematics). Generally, therefore, it may be affirmed that the question as to the priority of “part” and “whole” depend upon the distinction between matter and form, and that you cannot settle it if that distinction be disregarded. At the same time, Aristotle admits the difficulty of defining simply with reference to form, and not to the complex substance, which consists of it and of matter together. He acknowledges that the attempt to divide matter from substance and to look upon things sensible as not sensible, has led to all the Pythagorean and Platonical inventions which he regards with so much dislike.

17. Genera and Individuals. Another question, in which these philosophers are also involved, follows immediately upon this. How are substances connected with kinds? If there be certain types after which all sensible things are formed, these types would seem to be universals, and those things with which the senses converse, particulars. All possible differences and properties which can be discovered in the most marked individual of any kind must then upon this showing be included in those primitive, universal forms; but, according to logic, precisely the opposite is the case. The genus is divested of the difference which goes to the composition of the species, and of the properties which go to the composition of the individual. Your genera can never be types of the individual. By their very nature they are deficient in all that characterises him. The εἶδος then which forms the essential in each thing, which makes it be that which it is, must be looked upon as individualised by the ὕλη with which it is connected. Apart from the modification which it thus undergoes it is only a logical existence, the highest genus to which it is ultimately referred being pre-eminently that which can only be contemplated by and in the mind. Such we take to be the meaning of Aristotle, and from it the doctrine seems to follow very closely with which he winds up this book, and which applies the meaning of it to those who had dealt mainly with the ὕλη. Any fact or thing being given, I have no further occasion to trouble myself about the fact, the ὅτι. This the sense, or something corresponding to sense, supplies. I am not to ask what is the musical man when I see a musical man. He is that which I behold, and nothing else. My business is with the διότι, the cause. Why is he this or that? And the answer is in the εἶδος, the form or constitution. This is the ultimate reason of that which each thing is. Consequently I do not get nearer the cause or reason of things by reducing them into their natural elements. The seekers for an element confuted. The analysis may be physically proper or useful, but it does not lead me to that of which I am in search. Everything which is, and which I can either behold with my senses or my mind, is not the A or the B whereof it is composed, but is something else; the synthesis of the A and the B involves the presence of a form or existence, which cannot be found in either of them separately. So that find out as many primary elements as you will, you do not thereby find an ἀρχή.

18. Energies. Our main business then is to discover the meaning of this εἶδος, and the relation which exists between it and the ὕλη. The seventh book takes up this subject, and carries forward a hint which was given in the last—one which is, perhaps, the most pregnant of all the hints in Aristotle’s writings, and that which has most effect upon his whole philosophy. The εἶδος or μορφή is an energy, the ὕλη is a δύναμις or capacity, implying and requiring the action or co-operation of the energy to produce a result. Οὐσία, as we said before, is the synthesis of these: omitting the ἐνέργεια you come merely to certain material elements and combinations which do not in any way give you the actual things you are examining. The difficulty is respecting those things which appear to have no ἐνέργεια in themselves, as a house. Test of Substance: definition. Must the substances of these be considered as something distinct from them and external to them? The answer is this:—Do you mean to ask whether the material house, that is to say the stones and cement, is a substance? Certainly not: you have excluded the very notion of substance by the mode of your question. But do you mean to ask whether that house is actually something? You assume it by your very question. You cannot define anything without treating it as a substance, satisfy yourself as you will about the reason that it is so; there is something then not distinct from the house, but implied in it, which is a form or εἶδος. The test that there is, is your own attempt to define it.

19. Capacity. Proceeding upon this principle of an energy and a δύναμις in each substance, he shows how needful it is in any inquiry after causes to keep the three questions in sight. By cause do you mean capacity, δύναμις? By cause do you mean moving power? By cause do you mean the form? (The two last may always be the same, still the inquiry after the constitution of each thing is distinct from the inquiry after its productive force.) Do you mean, lastly, the οὗ ἕνεκα? (This also may be the same question with the last, though differently stated; that is to say, the constitution of each thing may determine the purpose or object of it.)

20. Capacity for contraries. But this use of the word capacity (δύναμις) suggests another doubt. Has not every subject a capacity for contraries? Must not we say that every healthy body is potentially sick? that water is potentially both wine and vinegar? The answer is, that this absence or deprivation of qualities is an accident of these qualities, and not itself a quality. For a dead body to become alive it must pass into a certain ὕλη, which has therefore the potentiality of life; for vinegar to become wine it must pass into water; nothing similar happens in the opposite case. Finally, he applies this principle to the solution of that difficulty respecting unity at which he had so often hinted, and on which he had expressed his opinion with sufficient plainness already. If the definition of a man be that he is a biped animal, how comes it that each of these—“animal,” “biped,” does not constitute a separate entity? What, in short, is the ground of our conception of each thing and person as one? Aristotle intimates that this question is hopeless and unanswerable if put in this form, for then by each variety of your definition you create a new puzzle. He would rather then assume the unity of each thing as a fact or datum of the understanding, and account for its being reduced into different constituent elements. And this is accounted for by the necessary co-presence of matter and form in each thing, and from the matter being merely a potentiality, and the form an energy. In this way the dream of a unity distinct from the individual thing is got rid of, as the dream of a substance distinct from each particular thing had been got rid of before.

21. Definition of Capacities. The eighth book is still occupied with the subject of capacities and energies. Aristotle inquires into the different senses of the word δύναμις; what we mean when we say that a thing can or cannot be. There is a use of this language in geometry, which is metaphorical, and not to our present purpose. We say that a thing can or cannot be, meaning that it is or it is not. But all δυνάμεις, in their proper sense, have reference to some primary δύναμις, which is the cause or beginning of a change in some other thing as another thing. Warmth, for instance, is a δύναμις. It is so equally in that which warms, as in that which is warmed. The δύναμις in the thing warmed hath reference or relation to the corresponding primary δύναμις in the thing warming, and this necessary implication of that which answers to itself in something besides itself, is its characteristic nature. To every capacity there will of course correspond a certain incapacity, which may be understood either as the absence of a faculty of communication, the absence of a faculty of reception, or, again, merely as a negative want, or as a positive state involving that want.

22. Division of them Δυνάμεις are divided into rational and irrational; the rational those which subsist in the reasonable soul, the irrational those that are merely physical. All art and knowledge are of the first class. Now, if we look for a radical distinction between them, we may find it in this way. Warmth, an irrational δύναμις, has the power only of producing warmth; the art of the physician has the power of producing either health or sickness. Generally, therefore, the one kind of power can produce contrary changes, the other only a certain change; and these contrary changes are wrought by the rational powers with and upon the irrational powers.

23. Being and Becoming. This description of δυνάμεις might seem in some points to trench upon that notion of energies which Aristotle had given us in his last book. He proceeds therefore to distinguish them. The Megarian sect, in conformity with their general rule of reducing every idea into that of Being, and of excluding all distinct notion of production and becoming, had identified Power or Capacity with energy. Where there is no building, said they, there is no builder. Apply this, says Aristotle, to arts, and the man who has studied the longest ceases to have the art as soon as he ceases to exercise it. Apply it to things without reason or life, and there is nothing sweet, nor warm, nor cold, except at the moment when it is tasted or felt; an argument not, perhaps, very destructive of the proposition, in our minds, but which was very effective as against the Megarians, who had a great horror of the Protagorean doctrine. It is then possible for a thing to have the capacity of being and not to be, and to have the capacity of not being and to be; that of which it is the capacity takes place when something is superadded to it, which is Energy. Energy is analogous to motion. You cannot predicate either motion or energy of things which are not; the moment energy or motion is added to them they are; but many things which are not have a possible or potential existence.² At the same time Energy is not to be confounded with Motion. The difference does not lie where we might suspect, in that motion belongs to that which is irrational, energy to the rational, for Learning is referred to the head of Motion, sight to the head of Energy. The difference is in this, that every motion is incomplete, tending towards an end, but not including the end in itself; that energy has an end in itself, and that it does not involve a pause or a termination. Learning, building, walking, all imply a termination. Seeing, thinking, being happy, imply no termination; these are Energies.

24. Upon this showing, energy, in the order of reason and of substance, precedes δύναμις; in the order of time not always. It precedes in the order of reason because the first of all capacities or possibilities is the capacity or possibility of energising. Relation of Energies and Capacities to each other. A man who has the faculty of building, is one who has in him the capacity of using his energy in the art of building. In time it is otherwise. The primary energising power of course precedes, even in this sense, that which receives the impression of it, Form being older than Matter. But if you take the case of any particular person or thing, we say that its capacity of being that person or thing precedes its being such actually or energetically. Yet, though this is the case in each particular thing, there is always a foregone energy presumed in some other thing to which it owes its existence. And thus the principle is asserted, which we shall find afterwards turned to practical account in the Ethics, that the exercise of any particular energy precedes the habitual use of the faculty appertaining to that energy; that it is by playing on the harp we become harp players. Several important ethical doctrines are in fact developed in the course of this inquiry, but of these we shall take distinct notice hereafter. One pregnant notion more directly bearing upon our present subject occurs in the course of it. Δύναμις had been defined that which is the cause of change in some other thing as another thing. But this notion wants a resting-place, unless you believe that there is some primary δύναμις presupposed in all others, which is the beginning of motion. This is φύσις, and thus we have arrived at the most complete notion of it which we can expect. This first and primary cause of all change, Energy still precedes and surpasses.

Aristotle proceeds to show wherein Energy is better and more glorious than δύναμις; as, for instance, because δύναμις is the same of contraries. The capacity of health and sickness is the same; of stillness and movement; of being raised up and of falling down. But one of these must be good, and therefore the energy which determines which of these contraries shall have effect must be better than the Faculty or Capacity. Two consequences follow. The Energy is that which makes things be evil which have only the possibility or potentiality of evil in them. Secondly, in those things which are primary and eternal there is no evil, no fault, no decay; the capacity for evil lies in Nature. The importance of these two axioms will be felt by every moral and theological student. Another proposition, which has been extensively applied in another direction, is added respecting discovery. It is, that Discovery means the bringing things into Energy which exist potentially; because Knowing is an Energy.

25. This book concludes with another reference to the relation between truth and being, falsehood and not-being. Distinction of subjects. Truth and falsehood being the accordance or discordance of our judgment with the actual state of things, there are three cases which may fall under our notice. First, things always united and inseparable, or things always separable and never united. Respecting these the judgment must be uniform; the same will be truth in all cases, falsehood in all cases. Secondly, things which may be either separated or united. Here comes in the possibility of that being true to-day which is false to-morrow; of that being true under one aspect which is false under another. Thirdly, things perfectly simple, things admitting neither of division nor combination. To these the words true and false do not apply, but merely knowledge and ignorance. You either know such things or you do not. Respecting these there is no mistake, no deception possible; but merely the presence or absence of knowledge. All sensible objects whose existence you ascertain by touch or sight are of this kind; the want of touch or sight, not a false opinion, excluding them from you.

26. In the ninth book we come again upon the question of unity. Oneness: different definitions of it. The name One is used, he says, in four ways. It means that which is continuous by nature, a whole, an individual thing, that which is predicated of a whole. The general sense of the Indivisible is common to all these. And again unity in any of these senses we may attribute to some particular substance which is inseparable in place, in form, in thought, as well as to some actually indivisible whole. The fundamental notion of unity he conceives to be that of a measure to quantities; without such a measure quantity is inconceivable. There may be something actually indivisible; there may be that which is indivisible to our senses; an actual unity in form, and a supposititious unity in matter. Each will bear the name, because each will be used as a measure. The need of such a measure he asserts, in opposition to the Protagorean notion of man being the measure of all things, which he treats as a silly truism, putting on the form of a paradox, and producing the effects of a falsehood.

27. No absolute Unity. The existence of a distinct absolute unity is denied on precisely the same ground as the existence of a distinct absolute substance. The One is always some one thing or nature. In colours, if you suppose them all to originate from white, white is the one. In voices, the elementary vowel, and so in all other cases. Of course, then, the Ionic attempt to discover some matter, such as air or fire, which shall be unity, is as unreasonable as the Parmenidean, Pythagorean, and Platonic attempts to invest unity itself with a formal and separate character.

28. Plurality. “The One” is the undivided, or the indivisible; this is the primary notion of it, to which all others may be reduced. “The many” then will mean the divided or the divisible; from which, as more cognizable by the senses, the One will be inferred. The question occurs next, how the one and the many are opposed to each other; whether the “many” and the “few” are not equally opposed, and whether, if this be the case, unity is not merely an element of plurality. This question introduces a discussion respecting the different modes of opposition; the opposition of contradiction, of things in relation, of privation, of strict contrariety. Possibly there has been some confusion of different lectures or reports in this part of the book; for in the lengthened explanation we seem to lose sight of the original subject. Our readers cannot fail to have remarked how much the idea of a “law of opposition” in things entered into all Greek speculations, so as to seem to many the foundation of them. Aristotle contemplates the subject from the logical side; the forms of opposition which he discovers in our minds determine his view of the actual opposition which exists in nature. And in this way his remarks on this point, though apparently irrelevant, throw considerable light on his doctrine respecting unity. What our understanding wants in order to explain to itself the existence of multitude, this he called “the One.” Unity was therefore, in his mind, identical with Singleness.

29. The next book is for the most part a recapitulation of puzzles and solutions already given; not, however, to be passed over on that account, for Aristotle’s repetitions of himself, or the reports of his different pupils, generally clear away many difficulties: and here, especially, the remarks on the nature and limitations of the primary philosophy, and his confutation of the two cardinal sophisms of Protagoras, are, in many respects, more complete than those in the third book. Motion. We shall, however, notice merely his analysis of Motion and his remarks on the idea of the Infinite. Motion is neither an energy nor yet merely a potency; but it must be contemplated, alternately, as each. A lump of brass is potentially a statue; the energy which is to make it one is in the mind of the sculptor. The motion, i.e. the transition from its condition as brass to its condition as a statue, is not found in the brass, neither is it found in the mind; it is that which gives the potentiality of the brass its meaning and connects it with the energy. Or to express this in a formula: “Motion is the entelechy (the perfecting power or principle) of the potential as potential.” He admits the difficulty of finding an expression for this idea; but he shows, by an examination of previous attempts, that his own, however awkward, is the only one which is satisfactory.

30. The Infinite. On the subject of the Infinite, which had so much exercised the minds of previous Greek speculators, and had been resorted to as an ultimate solution of so many difficulties, he aims at no precision of language. By its very nature it excludes precision. To bring it into a scheme, or regard it as a helpful definition of nature or the universe, is, in his judgment, absurd; it can only be looked upon as marking the ne plus ultra to which human thoughts and inquiries can reach, or, at least, have already reached. The limitations by which alone you are able to deal with the subjects that fall under human cognizance it excludes by its very name. His opinion on this point is characteristic of his mind, and it has an important bearing upon the history of metaphysics. Scarcely any more interesting question occupied the Greek mind than that which was at issue between the schools of Pythagoras and Xenophanes, whether it is more true and reverential to speak of God as the τὸ πέρας, or as the Infinite. Aristotle’s concluding remark on the subject of the Infinite should be quoted for the casual light which the latter clause of it throws on his idea of Time, an idea which the student of modern philosophy has so much need to reflect on:—τὸ δ᾽ ἄπειρον οὐ ταὐτὸν ἐν μεγέθει καὶ κινήσει καὶ χρόνῳ ὡς μία τις φύσις, ἀλλὰ τὸ ὕστερον λέγεται κατὰ τὸ πρότερον, οἷον κίνησις κατὰ τὸ μέγεθος ἐφ᾽ οὗ κινεῖται ἢ ἀλλοιοῦται ἢ αὔξεται, χρόνος δὲ διὰ τὴν κίνησιν.

31. Number of first principles. Book eleventh opens with an attempt to ascertain the number of causes or first principles. There is in every sensible substance a capacity of change: these changes are four: changes in respect of substance, of quality, of quantity, and of place. Generation and corruption are the names for the first kind of change, growth and decay for the second, alteration (ἀλλοίωσις) for the third, transference (φορά) for the fourth. These are changes into contraries. But contraries themselves do not change; there must be something which undergoes the change from one to the other of them. This something must be Matter. Being does not arise from not-being; but being in potency is changed into being in energy; and being in potency is matter. Assuming this, there are three ἀρχαί or first principles; the two contraries Form and Privation (στέρησις), and the Matter which passes from one to the other.

32. The Cause. But Aristotle says that this enunciation is strictly applicable only to material things; in these the element (στοιχεῖον) and the principle (ἀρχή) are the same. You have heat, the εἶδος; cold, the στέρησις; that which has the potency of being either (ὕλη); the resulting substance, the flesh, bone, or whatever it may be. But in those things which are apprehended by the mind, another idea intrudes itself. Besides the two opposites, health and sickness, and the matter, which is susceptible of both, you have the health-making art of the physician. The principle in this use of it acquires a double meaning which does not belong to the element. It must be contemplated both as the stationary Form and the moving Power. There must in a sense be four ἀρχαί, though only three elements. These conclusions have been, the reader will perceive, partly anticipated, but it is needful to repeat them here; for here is the link between Aristotle’s Metaphysics and his Theology; this is the road, or at least one step of the road, by which he arrives at the conception of a First Moving Cause. To the unfolding of this conception the greater part of this remarkable book is devoted. We can but give our readers the results of an argument which Aristotle evidently felt to be the summing up of his metaphysical series. There must be an eternal, immovable Substance, which is at the same time the source of all movement. The primary notion of this substance is that it is an Energy. The notion of potentiality is excluded from it, for the highest form of Being is incompatible with the mere capacity of Being. And seeing Matter and Potentiality are convertible terms, it must be immaterial. There is no refuge from the notion that all things proceeded from darkness and nothingness, except in this belief. Energy being anterior to mere potency, eternity must be predicated of the chaos or night out of which things are supposed to be formed, in a different sense from that in which it is affirmed of the Primeval Being.

33. Eternity, how predicable of Matter. We must attribute a continual negative existence to this potency, but a continual operative existence can only be attributed to the First Cause. We want the one to account for Corruption and Decay. We want the other to account for actual Existence and Life. Matter is in no sense a cause either to itself or to any other thing; and to a First Cause we necessarily attribute self-causation. Other things impart motion, having first received it; this must be its own Mover. The next step in the apprehension of this Being we obtain by the consideration of our own intellect and volition. There is an object of cognition or thing to be known; an object of volition or thing to be desired. By these respectively the intellect and the volition in us are set in motion. That which appears good to each Understanding or Will actuates it; that which primarily actuates, must be that which is good. In this we discover the union of the faculty of knowledge with that which is to be known, the union of the faculty of will with that which is to be desired. Thus self-contemplation and self-delight must be the essentials of Deity…³ By other processes of reasoning he arrives at the conclusion that the Being must be without parts (ἀμερής), without passions (ἀπαθές: our readers will perceive the change of gender, and will easily believe that τὸ θεῖον is the more common antecedent than ὁ θεός), and subject to no vicissitude (ἀναλλοίωτον).

34. One cause, not many. We then approach the grand question, whether there is one such cause, or many. In nothing is the difference between Aristotle and his master more remarkable than here. We have seen with what tenderness Plato treated the mythology of his countrymen, not from cowardice, but because he felt that it contained a latent truth for which no philosophical abstractions or generalities could offer a substitute. Aristotle, having satisfied himself that the argument was in favour of a one cause, sweeps away all notions which interfered with it, considers the gods whom his country worshipped as derived from certain astrological notions, and merely as setting forth the secondary sensible substances which proceed from the first immaterial Cause.

35. Previous teachers. With equal decision he denounces (upon this new ground) the different philosophical schemes which had been substituted for the old cosmogonies; attributing to them these two common vices, that they had acknowledged an antithesis and contradiction in things, but had not taken account of that third element, matter, which is the only explanation of the evil and disorder in the universe, and that they had substituted many original principles for the one.

36. Real object of all these books. In the two last books, their doctrines (respecting ideas and numbers) are again discussed at great length, and with Aristotle’s wonted ingenuity. It cannot be expected that we should go over arguments to which we have so often adverted, and which we are less anxious to present fully and formally than to fit our readers for studying them in the places where they occur. But we may take this opportunity of remarking, that the continual renewal of these discussions with the Platonists and Pythagoreans is very important in helping us to determine the nature and connection of these particular treatises, as well as the character of Aristotle’s whole mind and system. It is evident that he felt the refutation of these opinions, and the substitution of something else for them, to be in a manner the business of his life. At all events, it was the needful preliminary to his more positive proceedings: while his mind was haunted with these notions, the system—physical, metaphysical, or moral—which he proposed to rear, had, it seemed to him, a dubious and infirm foundation. We look, therefore, upon the metaphysical treatises (whether capable or not of being reduced into a formal sequence and unity) as having this subject for their centre. To show what ideas are not, and what they are; to establish the doctrine, that the εἶδος is not distinct from the particular individual substance—existing apart and connecting it with some higher substance—but merely its inherent form; to connect the εἶδος, which is the constituent principle of each thing, with the ἐνέργεια, whereby it is called into existence, and thus to make the same answer satisfactorily to the two Greek inquiries respecting the nature of being and origin of matter; to explain the nature and conditions of the ὕλη, and by depriving it of all intrinsical substantial properties, and reducing it into a mere potency, practically to get rid of the old Ionic investigations; then finally to hint at a principle of which his moral writings are the full exposition, that the final Cause, or the οὗ ἕνεκα, is also connected with the εἶδος and ἐνέργεια; that the good or purpose of each class of substances is known when we know what its nature and proper energy are: this is the object at which he is aiming most consistently amidst all his windings and recapitulations in the books of Metaphysics.

37. Metaphysics—how connected with Logic. But this object is connected on the one side with Logic, on the other (as the scholiast is so anxious to inform us) with Theology. Though we have not seen our way to adopt Ritter’s method of identifying the logical treatises with the metaphysical (a plan inconsistent with the very words of the third book); though, as it seems to us, we should sacrifice by such a course much insight into the habits of the philosopher’s mind, and the growth of his opinions, which we obey by studying them distinctly, and yet acknowledging the most intimate connection between them, we believe Aristotle to be primarily and at heart a logician; to have become thoroughly enamoured of the forms of logic, and convinced that they supplied a satisfactory exposition of the facts of the world; and then gradually to have worked out in his mind an Ontological system, which gave the rationale of those forms and interpreted their relation to different phenomena. Now, if it be true, as we have maintained, that the mathematician has another set of laws, discovered to him in the course of his inquiries, from those with which the logician is conversant, we need not be surprised either that the arguments of Aristotle against Ideas should be so constantly mixed with allusions to the Pythagorean study of Lines or Numbers, or that that study should actually have been the base of the principle which he is endeavouring to subvert.

38. How connected with Theology. It is on all accounts a more important inquiry how Theology became interwoven with either set of speculations. We think it cannot be denied that the recognition of an absolute Being, of an absolute Good, was that which gave life to the whole doctrine of Plato, and without which it is unmeaning; that, on the contrary, it is merely the crowning result, or at least the necessary postulate, of Aristotle’s philosophy. In strict consistency with this difference, it was a Being to satisfy the wants of Man which Plato sighed for; it was a first Cause of Things to which Aristotle did homage. The first would part with no indication or symbol of the truth that God has held intercourse with men, has made himself known to them; the second was content with seeking in nature and logic for demonstrations of his attributes and his unity. When we use personal language to describe the God of whom Plato speaks, we feel that we are using that which suits best with his feelings and his principles, even when, through reverence or ignorance, he forbears to use it himself. When we use personal language to describe the Deity of Aristotle, we feel that it is improper and unsuitable, even if, through deference to ordinary notions, or the difficulty of inventing any other, he resorts to it himself. Theology then can have no connection with the ethics of Aristotle.