Chapter XIII: Aristotle (3)

What has Aristotle in common with such a writer a Herbert Spencer? According to Spencer, evolution is a movement from the indefinite, incoherent, and homogeneous, to the definite, coherent, and heterogeneous. Aristotle has all this, though his words are different. He calls it a movement from matter to form. Form he describes as whatever gives definiteness to a thing. Matter is the indefinite substrate, form gives it definiteness. Hence for him too the higher being is more definite because it has more form. That matter is the homogeneous, form the heterogeneous, follows from this. We saw that there are in matter itself no differences, because there are no qualities. And this is the same as saying it is homogeneous. Heterogeneity, that is, differentiation, is introduced by form. Coherence is the same thing as organization. Aristotle has himself defined the form of a thing as its organization. For him, as for Spencer, the higher being is simply that which is more organized. Every theory of evolution depends fundamentally upon the idea of organism. Aristotle invented the idea and the word. Spencer carried it no further, though the more advanced physical knowledge of his day enabled him to illustrate it more copiously.

But of course the great difference between Aristotle and the moderns, is that the former did not guess, what the latter have discovered, namely that evolution is not only a logical development, but is a fact in time. Aristotle knew what was meant by the higher and lower organism as well as Darwin, but he did not know, that the latter {309} actually turns into the former in the course of years. But this, though the most obvious, is not really the most important difference between Spencer and Aristotle. The real difference is that Aristotle penetrated far more deeply into the philosophy of evolution than modern science does; that, in fact, modern science has no philosophy of evolution at all. For the fundamental problem here is, if we speak of higher and lower beings, what rational ground have we for calling them higher and lower? That the lower passes in time into the higher is no doubt a very interesting fact to discover, but it dwindles into insignificance beside the problem just indicated, because, on the solution of that problem it depends whether the universe is to be regarded as futile, meaningless, and irrational, or whether we are to see in it order, plan, and purpose. Is Spencer's doctrine a theory of development at all? Or is it not rather simply a theory of change? Something resembling an ape becomes a man. Is there development here, that is, is it a movement from something really lower to something really higher? Or is it merely change from one indifferent thing to another? Is there improvement, or only difference? In the latter case, it makes not the slightest difference whether the ape becomes man, or man becomes an ape. The one is as good as the other. In either case, it is merely a change from Tweedledum to Tweedledee. The change is meaningless, and has no significance.

The modern doctrine of evolution can only render the world more intelligible, can only develop into a philosophy of evolution, by showing that there is evolution and not merely change, and this it can only do by {310} giving a rational basis for the belief that some forms of existence are higher than others. To put the matter bluntly, why is a man higher than a horse, or a horse than a sponge? Answer that, and you have a philosophy of evolution. Fail to answer it, and you have none. Now the man in the street will say that man is higher than the horse, because he not merely eats grass, but thinks, deliberates, possesses art, science, religion, morality. Ask him why these things are higher than eating grass, and he has no answer. From him, then, we turn to Spencer, and there we find a sort of answer. Man is higher because he is more organized. But why is it better to be more organized? Science, as such, has no answer. If pressed in this way, science may of course turn round and say: "there is in the reality of things no higher and no lower; what I mean by higher and lower is simply more and less organized; higher and lower are mere metaphors; they are the human way of looking at things; we naturally call higher what is nearest ourselves; but from the absolute point of view there is no higher and lower." But this is to reduce the universe to a madhouse. It means that there is no purpose, no reason, in anything that happens. The universe, in this case, is irrational. No explanation of it is possible. Philosophy is futile, and not only philosophy, but morality and everything else. If there is really no higher and lower, there is no better and no worse. It is just as good to be a murderer as to be a saint. Evil is the same as good. Instead of striving to be saints, statesmen, philosophers, we may as well go and play marbles, because all these values of higher and lower are mere delusions, "the human way of looking at things."

{311}

Spencer then has no answer to the question why it is better to be more organized. So we turn at last to Aristotle. He has an answer. He sees that it is meaningless to talk of development, advance, higher and lower, except in relation to an end. There is no such thing as advance unless it is an advance towards something. A body moving purposelessly in a straight line through infinite space does not advance. It might as well be here as a mile hence. In either case it is no nearer to anything. But if it is moving towards a definite point, we can call this advance. Every mile it moves it gets nearer to its end. So, if we are to have a philosophy of evolution, it must be teleological. If nature is not advancing towards an end, there is no nearer and further, no higher and lower, no development. What then is the end? It is the actualization of reason, says Aristotle. The primal being is eternal reason, but this is not existent. It must come to exist. It first enunciates itself vaguely as gravitation. But this is far off from its end, which is the existence of reason, as such, in the world. It comes nearer in plants and animals. It is proximately reached in man, for man is the existent reason. But there is no question of the universe coming to a stop, when it reaches its end--(the usual objection to teleology). For the absolute end, absolute form, can never be reached. The higher is thus the more rational, the lower the less rational. Now if we try to go on asking, "why is it better to be more rational?" we find we cannot ask such a question. The word "why" means that we want a reason. And our question is absurd because we are asking a reason for reason. Why is it better to be rational means simply, "how is reason rational." To {312} doubt it is a self-contradiction. Or, to put the same thing in another way, reason is the Absolute. And to ask why it is better to be rational is to demand that the ultimate should be expressed in terms of something beyond it. Hence modern science has no philosophy of evolution, whereas Aristotle has. [Footnote 16]

[Footnote 16: See H. S. Macran's _Hegel's Doctrine of Formal Logic_ (Clarendon Press), Introduction, section on the Conception of Evolution, to which I am much indebted in the above paragraphs.]

The main idea of pantheism is that everything is God. The clod of earth is divine because it is a manifestation of Deity. Now this idea is all very well, and is in fact essential to philosophy. We find it in Aristotle himself, since the entire world is, for him, the actualization of reason, and reason is God. But this is also a very dangerous idea, if not supplemented by a rationally grounded scale of values. No doubt everything is, in a sense, God. But if we leave it at this, it would follow that, since everything is equally divine, there is no higher and lower. If the clod of earth, like the saintliest man, is God, and there is no more to say of the matter, then how is the saint higher than the clod of earth? Why should one ever struggle towards higher things, when in reality all are equally high? Why avoid evil, when evil is as much a manifestation of God as good? Mere pantheism must necessarily end in this calamitous view. And these deplorable effects explain the fact that Hinduism, with all its high thinking, finds room for the worship of cows and snakes, and, with all its undoubted moral elevation, yet allows into its fold the grossest abominations. Both these features are due to the pantheistic placing of all things on a par as equally {313} divine. Not of course that Hinduism has not a sort of doctrine of evolution, a belief in a higher and lower. As everyone knows, it admits the belief that in successive incarnations the soul may mount higher and higher till it perhaps rejoins the common source of all things. There is probably no race of man so savage that it does not instinctively feel that there is a higher and lower, a better and worse, in things. But the point is that, although Hinduism has its scale of values, and its doctrine of development, it has no rational foundation for these, and though it has the idea of higher and lower, yet, because this is without foundation, it lets it slip, it never grips the idea, and so easily slides into the view that all is equally divine. The thought that all is God, and the thought that there are higher and lower beings, are, on the surface, opposed and inconsistent theories. Yet both are necessary, and it is the business of philosophy to find a reconciliation. This Aristotle does, but Hinduism fails to do. It asserts both, but fails to bring them to unity. Now it asserts one view, and again at another time it asserts the other. And this, of course, is connected with the general defect of oriental thinking, its vagueness. Everything is seen, but seen in a haze, in which all things appear one, in which shapes flow into another, in which nothing has an outline, in which even vital distinctions are obliterated. Hence it is that, though oriental thought contains, in one way or another, practically all philosophical ideas, it grips none, and can hold nothing fast. It seizes its object, but its flabby grasp relaxes and slips off. Hinduism, like modern science, has its doctrine of evolution. But it has no philosophy of evolution.

{314}

5. Ethics.

_(a) The Individual_.

A strong note of practical moderation pervades the ethics of Aristotle. While Plato's ethical teaching transcended the ordinary limits of human life, and so lost itself in ideal Utopias, Aristotle, on the other hand, sits down to make practical suggestions: He wishes to enquire what the good is, but by this he means, not some ideal good impossible of attainment upon this earth, but rather that good which, in all the circumstances in which men find themselves, ought to be realizable. The ethical theories of Plato and Aristotle are thus characteristic of the two men. Plato despised the world of sense, and sought to soar altogether beyond the common life of the senses. Aristotle, with his love of facts and of the concrete, keeps close within the bounds of actual human experience.

The first question for ethics is the nature of the _summum bonum_. We desire one thing for the sake of a second, we desire that for the sake of a third. But if this series of means and ends goes on _ad infinitum_, then all desire and all action are futile and purposeless. There must be some one thing which we desire, not for the sake of anything else, but on its own account. What is this end in itself, this _summum bonum_, at which all human activity ultimately aims. Everybody, says Aristotle, is agreed about the name of this end. It is happiness. What all men seek, what is the motive of all their actions, that which they desire for the sake of itself and nothing beyond, is happiness. But though all agree as to the name, beyond that there is no agreement. Philosophers, {315} no less than the vulgar, differ as to what this word happiness means. Some say it is a life of pleasure. Others say it consists in the renunciation of pleasures. Some recommend one life, some another.

We must repeat here the warning which was found necessary in the case of Plato, who also called the _summum bonum_ happiness. Aristotle's doctrine is no more to be confused with modern utilitarianism than is Plato's. Moral activity is usually accompanied by a subjective feeling of enjoyment. In modern times the word happiness connotes the feeling of enjoyment. But for the Greeks it was the moral activity which the word signified. For Aristotle an action is not good because it yields enjoyment. On the contrary, it yields enjoyment because it is good. The utilitarian doctrine is that the enjoyment is the ground of the moral value. But, for Aristotle, the enjoyment is the consequence of the moral value. Hence when he tells us that the highest good is happiness, he is giving us no information regarding its nature, but merely applying a new name to it. We have still to enquire what the nature of the good is. As he himself says, everyone agrees upon the name, but the real question is what this name connotes.

Aristotle's solution of this problem follows from the general principles of his philosophy. We have seen that, throughout nature, every being has its proper end, and the attainment of this end is its special function. Hence the good for each being must be the adequate performance of its special function. The good for man will not consist in the pleasure of the senses. Sensation is the special function of animals, but not of man. Man's special function is reason. Hence the proper {316} activity of reason is the _summum bonum_, the good for man. Morality consists in the life of reason. But what precisely that means we have still to see.

Man is not only a reasoning animal. As the higher being, he contains within himself the faculties of the lower beings also. Like plants he is appetitive, like animals, sensitive. The passions and appetites are an organic part of his nature. Hence virtue will be of two kinds. The highest virtues will be found in the life of reason, and the life of thought, philosophy. These intellectual virtues are called by Aristotle dianoetic. Secondly, the ethical virtues proper will consist in the submission of the passions and appetites to the control of reason. The dianoetic virtues are the higher, because in them man's special function alone is in operation, and also because the thinking man most resembles God, whose life is a life of pure thought.

Happiness, therefore, consists in the combination of dianoetic and ethical virtues. They alone are of absolute value to man. Yet, though he places happiness in virtue, Aristotle, in his broad and practical way, does not overlook the fact that external goods and circumstances have a profound influence upon happiness, and cannot be ignored, as the Cynics attempted to ignore them. Not that Aristotle regards externals as having any value in themselves. What alone is good in itself, is an end in itself, is virtue. But external goods help a man in his quest of virtue. Poverty, sickness, and misfortune, on the other hand, hinder his efforts. Therefore, though externals are not goods in themselves, they may be a means towards the good. Hence they are not to be despised and rejected. Riches, friends, health, {317} good fortune, are not happiness. But they are negative conditions of it. With them happiness is within our grasp. Without them its attainment is difficult. They will be valued accordingly.

Aristotle says little in detail of the dianoetic virtues. And we may turn at once to the main subject of his moral system, the ethical virtues. These consist in the governance of the passions by reason. Socrates was wrong in supposing that virtue is purely intellectual, that nothing save knowledge is needed for it, and that if a man thinks right he must needs do right. He forgot the existence of the passions, which are not easily controlled. A man may reason perfectly, his reason may point him to the right path, but his passions may get the upper hand and lead him out of it. How then is reason to gain control over the appetites? Only by practice. It is only by continual effort, by the constant exercise of self-control, that the unruly passions can be tamed. Once brought under the yoke, their control becomes habit. Aristotle lays the utmost emphasis on the importance of habit in morality. It is only by cultivating good habits that a man becomes good.

Now if virtue consists in the control of the appetites by reason, it thus contains two constituents, reason and appetite. Both must be present. There must be passions, if they are to be controlled. Hence the ascetic ideal of rooting out the passions altogether is fundamentally wrong. It overlooks the fact that the higher form does not exclude the lower--that were contrary to the conception of evolution--it includes and transcends it. It forgets that the passions are an organic part of man, and that to destroy them is to do injury to his {318} nature by destroying one of its essential members. The passions and appetites are, in fact, the matter of virtue, reason its form, and the mistake of asceticism is that it destroys the matter of virtue, and supposes that the form can subsist by itself. Virtue means that the appetites must be brought under control, not that they must be eradicated. Hence there are two extremes to be avoided. It is extreme, on the one hand, to attempt to uproot the passions; and it is extreme, on the other, to allow them to run riot. Virtue means moderation. It consists in hitting the happy mean as regards the passions, in not allowing them to get the upper hand of reason, and yet in not being quite passionless and apathetic. From this follows the famous Aristotelian doctrine of virtue as the mean between two extremes. Every virtue lies between two vices, which are the excess and defect of appetite respectively.

What is the criterion here? Who is to judge? How are we to know what is the proper mean in any matter? Mathematical analogies will not help us. It is not a case of drawing a straight line from one extreme to the other, and finding the middle point by bisection. And Aristotle refuses to lay down any rule of thumb in the matter. There is no golden rule by virtue of which we can tell where the proper mean is. It all depends on circumstances, and on the person involved. What is the proper mean in one case is not the proper mean in another. What is moderate for one man is immoderate for his neighbour. Hence the matter must be left to the good judgment of the individual. A sort of fine tact, good sense, is required to know the mean, which Aristotle calls "insight." This insight is both the cause and the {319} effect of virtue. It is the cause, because he who has it knows what he ought to do. It is the effect, because it is only developed by practice. Virtue renders virtue easy. Each time a man, by use of his insight, rightly decides upon the mean, it becomes easier for him to discriminate next time.

Aristotle attempts no systematic classification of the virtues, as Plato had done. This sort of schematism is contrary to the practical character of his thought. He sees that life is far too complex to be treated in this way. The proper mean is different in every different case, and therefore there are as many virtues as there are circumstances in life. His list of virtues, therefore, is not intended to be exhaustive. It is merely illustrative. Though the number of virtues is infinite, there are certain well-recognized kinds of good action, which are of such constant importance in life that they have received names. By the example of some of these virtues Aristotle illustrates his doctrine of the mean. For instance, courage is the mean between cowardice and rashness. That is to say, cowardice is the defect of boldness, rashness the excess, courage the reasonable medium. Munificence is the mean between pettiness and vulgar profusion, good temper between spiritlessness and irascibility, politeness between rudeness and obsequiousness, modesty between shamelessness and bashfulness, temperance between insensibility and intemperance.

Justice hardly comes into the scheme; it is rather a virtue of the State than of the individual, and it has been thought by some that the book devoted to it in the "Ethics" has been misplaced. Justice is of two kinds, distributive and corrective. Its fundamental idea {320} is the assignment of advantages and disadvantages according to merit. Distributive justice assigns honours and rewards according to the worth of the individuals involved. Corrective justice has to do with punishment. If a man improperly obtains an advantage, things must be equalized by the imposition on him of a corresponding disadvantage. Justice, however, is a general principle, and no general principle is equal to the complexity of life. Special cases cannot be foreseen, The necessary adjustment of human relations arising from this cause is equity.

Aristotle is a pronounced supporter of the freedom of the will. He censures Socrates because the latter's theory of virtue practically amounts to a denial of freedom. According to Socrates, whoever thinks right must necessarily do right. But this is equivalent to denying a man's power to choose evil. And if he cannot choose evil, he cannot choose good. For the right-thinking man does not do right voluntarily, but necessarily. Aristotle believed, on the contrary, that man has the choice of good and evil. The doctrine of Socrates makes all actions involuntary. But in Aristotle's opinion only actions performed under forcible compulsion are involuntary. Aristotle did not, however, consider the special difficulties in the theory of free will which in modern times have made it one of the most thorny of all philosophical problems. Hence his treatment of the subject is not of great value to us.

_(b) The State_.

Politics is not a separate subject from Ethics. It is merely another division of the same subject. And {321} this, not merely because politics is the ethics of the State as against the individual, but because the morality of the individual really finds its end in the State, and is impossible without it. Aristotle agrees with Plato that the object of the State is the virtue and happiness of the citizens, which are impossible except in the State. For man is a political animal by nature, as is proved by his possession of speech, which would be useless to any save a social being. And the phrase "by nature" means the same here as elsewhere in Aristotle. It means that the State is the end of the individual, and that activity in the State is part of man's essential function. The State, in fact, is the form, the individual, the matter. The State provides both an education in virtue and the necessary opportunities for its exercise. Without it man would not be man at all. He would be a savage animal.

The historical origin of the State Aristotle finds in the family. At first there is the individual. The individual gets himself a mate, and the family arises. The family, in Aristotle's opinion, includes the slaves: for, like Plato, he sees no wrong in the institution of slavery. A number of families, joining together, develop into a village community, and a number of village communities into a _polis_ (city), or State. Beyond the city, of course, the Greek idea of the State did not extend.

Such then is the historical origin of the State. But it is of capital importance to understand that, in Aristotle's opinion, this question of historical origin has nothing on earth to do with the far more important question what the State essentially is. It is no mere mechanical aggregate of families and village communities, {322} The _nature_ of the State is not explained in this way. For though the family is prior to the State in order of time, the State is prior to the family and to the individual in order of thought, and in reality. For the State is the end, and the end is always prior to that of which it is the end. The state as form is prior to the family as matter, and in the same way the family is prior to the individual. And as the explanation of things is only possible by teleology, it is the end which explains the beginning, it is the State which explains the family, and not vice versa.

The true nature of the State, therefore, is not that it is a mechanical sum of individuals, as a heap of sand is the sum of its grains. The State is a real organism, and the connexion of part to part is not mechanical, but organic. The State has a life of its own. And its members also have their own lives, which are included in the higher life of the State. All the parts of an organism are themselves organisms. And as the distinction between organic and inorganic is that the former has its end in itself, while the latter has its end external to it, this means that the State is an end in itself, that the individual is an end in himself, and that the former end includes the latter. Or we may express the same thought otherwise by saying that, in the State, both the whole and the parts are to be regarded as real, both having their own lives and, in their character as ends, their own rights. Consequently, there are two kinds of views of the nature of the State, which are, according to Aristotle, fundamentally erroneous. The first is the kind of view which depends upon asserting the reality of the parts, but denying the reality of the whole, or, what is the same {323} thing, allowing that the individual is an end in himself, but denying that the State as a whole is such an end or has a separate life of its own. The second kind of false view is of the opposite kind, and consists in allowing reality only to the whole State, and denying the reality of its parts, the individuals. The opinions that the State is merely a mechanical aggregate of individuals, that it is formed by the combination of individuals or families for the sake of mutual protection and benefit, and that it exists only for these purposes, are examples of the first kind. Such views subordinate the State to the individual. The State is treated as an external contrivance for securing the life, the property, or the convenience of the individual. The State exists solely for the sake of the individual, and is not in itself an end. The individual alone is real, the State unreal, because it is only a collection of individuals. These views forget that the State is an organism, and they forget all that this implies. Aristotle would have condemned, on these grounds, the social contract theory so popular in the eighteenth century, and likewise the view of modern individualism that the State exists solely to ensure that the liberty of the individual is curtailed only by the right of other individuals to the same liberty. The opposite kind of false view is illustrated by the ideal State of Plato. As the views we have just discussed deny the reality of the whole, Plato's view, on the contrary, denies the reality of the parts. For him the individual is nothing, the State everything. The individual is absolutely sacrificed to the State. He exists only _for_ the State, and thus Plato makes the mistake of setting up the State as sole end and denying that the {324} individual is an end in himself. Plato imagined that the State is a homogeneous unity, in which its parts totally disappear. But the true view is that the State, as an organism, is a unity which contains heterogeneity. It is coherent, yet heterogeneous. And Plato makes the same mistake in his view of the family as in his view of the individual. The family, Aristotle thinks, is, like the individual, a real part of the social whole. It is an organism within an organism. As such, it is an end in itself, has absolute rights, and cannot be obliterated. But Plato expressly proposed to abolish the family in favour of the State, and by suggesting community of wives and the education of children in State nurseries from the year of their birth, struck a deadly blow at an essential part of the State organization. Aristotle thus supports the institution of family, not on sentimental, but upon philosophic grounds.

Aristotle gives no exhaustive classification of different kinds of State, because forms of government may be as various as the circumstances which give rise to them. His classification is intended to include only outstanding types. He finds that there are six such types, of which three are good. The other three are bad, because they are corruptions of the good types. These are (1) Monarchy, the rule of one man by virtue of his being so superior in wisdom to all his fellows that he naturally rules them. The corruption of Monarchy is (2) Tyranny, the rule of one man founded not on wisdom and capacity, but upon force. The second good form is (3) Aristocracy, the rule of the wiser and better few, of which the corrupt form is (4) Oligarchy, the rule of the rich and powerful few. (5) Constitutional Republic or Timocracy arises {325} where all the citizens are of fairly equal capacity, i.e., where no stand-out individual or class exists, so that all or most take a share in the government. The corresponding corrupt form is (6) Democracy, which, though it is the rule of the many, is more especially characterized as being the rule of the poor.

Unlike Plato, Aristotle depicts no ideal State. No single State, he thinks, is in itself the best. Everything must depend upon the circumstances. What is the best State in one age and county will not be the best in another. Moreover, it is useless to discuss Utopian constitutions. What alone interests the sane and balanced mind of Aristotle is the kind of constitution which we may hope actually to realize. Of the three good forms of government he considers that monarchy is theoretically the best. The rule of a single perfectly wise and just man would be better than any other. But it has to be given up as impracticable, because such perfect individuals do not exist. And it is only among primitive peoples that we find the hero, the man whose moral stature so completely exalts him above his fellows that he rules as a matter of course. The next best State is aristocracy. And last, in Aristotle's opinion, comes constitutional republic, which is, however, perhaps the State best suited to the special needs and level of development of the Greek city-states.

6. Aesthetics, or the Theory of Art.

Plato had no systematic philosophy of Art, and his views had to be collected from scattered references. Aristotle likewise has scarcely a system, though his opinions are more connected, and though he devoted a special tretise, the "Poetics", to the subject. And this {326} book, which has come down to us in a fragmentary condition, deals exclusively with poetry, and even in poetry only the drama is considered in detail. What we have from Aristotle on the subject of aesthetics may be divided roughly into two classes, firstly, reflections on the nature and significance of art in general, and, secondly, a more detailed application of these principles to the art of poetry. We shall deal with these two classes of opinions in that order.

In order to know what art is, we must first know what it is not. It must be distinguished from kindred activities. And firstly, it is distinguished from morality in that morality is concerned with action, art with production. Morality consists in the activity itself, art in that which the activity produces. Hence the state of mind of the actor, his motives, feelings, etc., are important in morality, for they are part of the act itself. But they are not important in art, the only essential being that the work of art should turn out well, however it has been produced. Secondly, art is distinguished from the activity of nature, which it in many respects resembles. Organic beings reproduce their own kind, and, in the fact that it is concerned with production, generation resembles art. But in generation, the living being produces only itself. The plant produces a plant, man begets man. But the artist produces something quite other than himself, a poem, a picture, a statue.

Art is of two kinds, according as it aims at completing the work of nature, or at creating something new, an imaginary world of its own which is a copy of the real world. In the former case, we get such arts as that of {327} medicine. Where nature has failed to produce a healthy body, the physician helps nature out, and completes the work that she has begun. In the latter case, we get what are, in modern times, called the fine arts. These Aristotle calls the imitative arts. We saw that Plato regarded all art as imitative, and that such a view is essentially unsatisfactory. Now Aristotle uses the same word, which he perhaps borrowed from Plato, but his meaning is not the same as Plato's, nor does he fall into the same mistakes. That in calling art imitative he has not in mind the thought that it has for its aim merely the faithful copying of natural objects is proved by the fact that he mentions music as the most imitative of the arts, whereas music is, in fact, in this sense, the least imitative of all. The painter may conceivably be regarded as imitating trees, rivers, or men, but the musician for the most part produces what is unlike anything in nature. What Aristotle means is that the artist copies, not the sensuous object, but what Plato would call the Idea. Art is thus not, in Plato's contemptuous phrase, a copy of a copy. It is a copy of the original. Its object is not this or that particular thing, but the universal which manifests itself in the particular. Art idealizes nature, that is, sees the Idea in it. It regards the individual thing, not as an individual, but in its universal aspects, as the fleeting embodiment of an eternal thought. Hence it is that the sculptor depicts not the individual man, but rather the type-man, the perfection of his kind. Hence too, in modern times, the portrait painter is not concerned to paint a faithful image of his model, but takes the model merely as a suggestion, and seizes upon that essential and eternal {328} essence, that ideal thought, or universal, which he sees shining through the sensuous materials in which it is imprisoned. His task is to free it from this imprisonment. The common man sees only the particular object. The artist sees the universal in the particular. Every individual thing is a compound of matter and form, of particular and universal. The function of art is to exhibit the universal in it.

Hence poetry is truer, more philosophical, than history. For history deals only with the particular as the particular. It tells us only of the _fact_, of what has happened. Its truth is mere correctness, accuracy. It has not in it, as art has, the living and eternal truth. It does not deal with the Idea. It yields us only the knowledge of something that, having happened, having gone by, is finished. Its object is transient and perishable. It concerns only the endless iteration of meaningless events. But the object of art is that inner essence of objects and events, which perishes not, and of which the objects and events are the mere external drapery. If therefore we would arrange philosophy, art, and history, in order of their essential nobility and truth, we should place philosophy first, because its object is the universal as it is in itself, the pure universal. We should place art second, because its object is the universal in the particular, and history last, because it deals only with the particular as such. Yet because each thing in the world has its own proper function, and errs if it seeks to perform the functions of something else, hence, in Aristotle's opinion, art must not attempt to emulate philosophy. It must not deal with the abstract universal. The poet must not use his verses as a vehicle of abstract thought. His proper {329} sphere is the universal as it manifests itself in the particular, not the universal as it is in itself. Aristotle, for this reason, censures didactic poetry. Such a poem as that of Empedocles, who unfolded his philosophical system in metre, is not, in fact, poetry at all. It is versified philosophy. Art is thus lower than philosophy. The absolute reality, the inner essence of the world, is thought, reason, the universal. To contemplate this reality is the object alike of philosophy and of art. But art sees the Absolute not in its final truth, but wrapped up in a sensuous drapery. Philosophy sees the Absolute as it is in itself, in its own nature, in its full truth; it sees it as what it essentially is, thought. Philosophy, therefore, is the perfect truth. But this does not mean that art is to be superseded and done away with. Because philosophy is higher than art, it does not follow that a man should suppress the artist in himself in order to rise to philosophy. For an essential thought of the Aristotelian philosophy is that, in the scale of beings, even the lower form is an end in itself, and has absolute rights. The higher activities presuppose the lower, and rest upon them. The higher includes the lower, and the lower, as an organic part of its being, cannot be eradicated without injury to the whole. To suppress art in favour of philosophy would be a mistake precisely parallel to the moral error of asceticism. In treating of Aristotle's ethics we saw that, although the activity of reason is held in highest esteem, the attempt to uproot the passions was censured as erroneous. So here, though philosophy is the crown of man's spiritual activity, art has its rights, and is an absolute end in itself, a point which Plato failed to see. In the human organism, the head is the {330} chief of the members. But one does not cut off the hand because it is not the head.

Coming now to Aristotle's special treatment of the art of poetry, we may note that he concentrates his attention almost exclusively upon the drama. It does not matter whether the plot of a drama is historical or fictitious. For the object of art, the exhibition of the universal, is just as well attained in an imaginary as in a real series of events. Its aim is not correctness, but truth, not facts, but the Idea. Drama is of two kinds, tragedy and comedy. Tragedy exhibits the nobler specimens of humanity, comedy the worse. This remark should be carefully understood. It does not mean that the hero of a tragedy is necessarily a good man in the ordinary sense. He may even be a wicked man. But the point is that, in some sense, he must be a great personality. He cannot be an insignificant person. He cannot be a nonentity. Be he good or bad, he must be conceived in the grand manner. Milton's Satan is not good, but he is great, and would be a fit subject for a tragedy. The soundness of Aristotle's thought here is very noteworthy. What is mean and sordid can never form the basis of tragedy. Modern newspapers have done their best to debauch this word tragedy. Some wretched noteless human being is crushed to death by a train, and the newspapers head their paragraph "Fearful Tragedy at Peckham Rye." Now such an incident may be sad, it may be dreadful, it may be horrible, but it is not tragic. Tragedy no doubt deals with suffering. But there is nothing great and ennobling about this suffering, and tragedy is concerned with the sufferings of greatness. In the same way, Aristotle does not mean that the comic {331} hero is necessarily a wicked man, but that he is, on the whole, a poor creature, an insignificant being. He may be very worthy, but there is something low and ignoble about him which makes us laugh.

Tragedy brings about a purification of the soul through pity and terror. Mean, sordid, or dreadful things do not ennoble us. But the representation of truly great and tragic sufferings arouses in the beholder pity and terror which purge his spirit, and render it serene and pure. This is the thought of a great and penetrating critic. The theory of certain scholars, based upon etymological grounds, that it means that the soul is purged, not _through_, but _of_ pity and terror, that by means of a diarrhoea of these unpleasant emotions we get rid of them and are left happy, is the thought of men whose scholarship may be great, but whose understanding of art is limited. Such a theory would reduce Aristotle's great and illuminating criticism to the meaningless babble of a philistine.

7. Critical Estimate of Aristotle's Philosophy.

It is not necessary to spend so much time upon criticising Aristotle as we spent upon doing the same for Plato, and that for two reasons. In the first place, Plato with his obvious greatness abounded in defects which had to be pointed out, whereas we have but little adverse criticism for Aristotle. Secondly, Aristotle's main defect is a dualism almost identical with that of Plato, and what has been said of the one need only be shortly applied to the other.

At bottom Aristotle's philosophy is the same as Plato's, with some of the main defects and crudities removed. Plato was the founder of the philosophy of the Idea. {332} But in his hands, idealism was clogged with unessentials, and overgrown with excrescences. His crude theory of the soul as a thing mechanically forced in and out of the body, his doctrines of reincarnation and recollection, the belief that this _thing_ the soul can travel to some place far away where it will see those _things_ the Ideas, and above all, what is the root of all these, the confusion between reality and existence, with its consequent degradation of the universal to a mere particular--these were the unessentials with which Plato connected his essential idealism. To take the pure theory of Ideas--albeit not under that name--to purge it of these encumbrances and to cast them upon the rubbish heap, to cleanse Plato's gold of its dross, this was the task of Aristotle. Thought, the universal, the Idea, form--call it what you will--this is the ultimate reality, the foundation of the world, the absolute prius of all things. So thought both Plato and Aristotle. But whereas Plato began to draw mental pictures of the universal, to imagine that it existed apart in a world of its own, and so might be experienced by the vision of the wandering soul, Aristotle saw that this was to treat thought as if it were a thing, to turn it into a mere particular again. He saw that the universal, though it is the real, has no existence in a world of its own, but only in this world, only as a formative principle of particular things. This is the key-note of his philosophy. Aristotle registers, therefore, an enormous advance upon Plato. His system is the perfected and completed Greek idealism. It is the highest point reached in the philosophy of Greece. The flower of all previous thought, the essence and pure distillation of the Greek philosophic spirit, the gathering {333} up of all that is good in his predecessors and the rejection of all that is faulty and worthless--such is the philosophy of Aristotle. It was not possible for the Greek spirit to advance further. Further development could be only decay. And so, in fact, it turned out to be.

Aristotle deserves, too, the credit of having produced the only philosophy of evolution which the world has ever seen, with the exception of that of Hegel; and Hegel was enabled to found a newer theory of evolution only by following largely in the footsteps of Aristotle. This was perhaps Aristotle's most original contribution to thought. Yet the factors of the problem, though not its solution, he took from his predecessors. The problem of becoming had tortured Greek thought from the earliest ages. The philosophy of Heracleitus, in which it was most prominent, had failed to solve it. Heracleitus and his successors racked their brains to discover how becoming could be possible. But even if they had solved this minor problem, the greater question still remained in the background, what does this becoming mean? Becoming for them was only meaningless change. It was not development. The world-process was an endless stream of futile and purposeless events, "a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Aristotle not merely asked himself how becoming is possible. He showed that becoming has a meaning, that it signifies something, that the world-process is a rationally ordered development towards a rational end.

But, though Aristotle's philosophy is the highest presentation of the truth in ancient times, it cannot be accepted as anything final and faultless. Doubtless no philosophy can ever attain to finality. Let us apply our {334} two-fold test. Does his principle explain the world, and does it explain itself? First, does it explain the world? The cause of Plato's failure here was the dualism in his system between sense and thought, between matter and the Ideas. It was impossible to derive the world from the Ideas, because they were absolutely separated from the world. The gulf was so great that it could never be bridged. Matter and Idea lay apart, and could never be brought together. Now Aristotle saw this dualism in Plato, and attempted to surmount it. The universal and the particular, he said, do not thus lie apart, in different worlds. The Idea is not a thing here, and matter a thing there, so that these two incommensurables have to be somehow mechanically and violently forced together to form a world. Universal and particular, matter and form, are inseparable. The connexion between them is not mechanical, but organic. The dualism of Plato is thus admitted and refuted. But is it really surmounted? The answer must be in the negative. It is not enough by a _tour de force_ to bring matter and form together, to assert that they are inseparable, while they remain all the time, in principle, separate entities. If the Absolute is form, matter ought to be deduced from form, shown to be merely a projection and manifestation of it. It must be shown that form not only moulds matter but produces it. If we assert that the one primal reality is form, then clearly we must prove that all else in the world, including matter, arises out of that prime being. Either matter arises out of form or it does not. If it does, this arising must be exhibited. If it does not, then form is not the sole ultimate reality, for matter is equally an ultimate, underivative, {335} primordial substance. In that case, we thus have two equally real ultimate beings, each underived from the other, existing side by side from all eternity. This is dualism, and this is the defect of Aristotle. Not only does he not derive matter from form, but he obviously sees no necessity for doing so. He would probably have protested against any attempt to do so, for, when he identifies the formal, final, and efficient causes with each other, leaving out the material cause, this is equivalent to an assertion that matter cannot be reduced to form. Thus his dualism is deliberate and persistent. The world, says Aristotle, is composed of matter and form. Where does this matter come from? As it does not, in his system, arise out of form, we can only conclude that its being is wholly in itself, i.e., that it is a substance, an absolute reality. And this is utterly inconsistent with Aristotle's assertion that it is in itself nothing but a mere potentiality. Thus, in the last resort, this dualism of sense and thought, of matter and Idea, of unlimited and limiting, which runs, "the little rift within the lute," through all Greek philosophy, is not resolved. The world is not explained, because it is not derived from a single principle. If form be the Absolute, the whole world must flow out of it. In Aristotle's system, it does not.

Secondly, is the principle of form self-explanatory? Here, again, we must answer negatively. Most of what was said of Plato under this head applies equally to Aristotle. Plato asserted that the Absolute is reason, and it was therefore incumbent on him to show that his account of reason was truly rational. He failed to do so. Aristotle asserts the same thing, for form is only {336} another word for reason. Hence he must show us that this form is a rational principle, and this means that he must show us that it is necessary. But he fails to do so. How is form a necessary and self-determining principle? Why should there be such a principle as form? We cannot see any necessity. It is a mere fact. It is nothing but an ultimate mystery. It is so, and that is an end of it. But why it should be so, we cannot see. Nor can we see why there should be any of the particular kinds of form that there are. To explain this, Aristotle ought to have shown that the forms constitute a systematic unity, that they can be deduced one from another, just as we saw that Plato ought to have deduced all the Ideas from one another. Thus Aristotle asserts that the form of plants is nutrition, of animals sensation, and that the one passes into the other. But even if this assertion be true, it is a mere fact. He ought not merely to have asserted this, but to have deduced sensation from nutrition. Instead of being content to allege that, as a fact, nutrition passes into sensation, he ought to have shown that it must pass into sensation, that the passage from one to the other is a logical necessity. Otherwise, we cannot see the reason why this change occurs. That is to say, the change is not _explained_.