Chapter III (9)

From these few remarks it is clear that Aristotle could not have had any thought of a so-called natural right (if a natural right be wanted), that is, the idea of the abstract man outside of any actual relation to others. For the rest, his Politics contain points of view even now full of instruction for us, respecting the inward elements of a state,[108] and a description of the various constitutions;[109] the latter, however, has no longer the same interest, on account of the different principle at the base of ancient and modern states. No land was so rich as Greece, alike in the number of its constitutions, and in the frequent changes from one to another of these in a single state; but the Greeks were still unacquainted with the abstract right of our modern states, that isolates the individual, allows of his acting as such, and yet, as an invisible spirit, holds all its parts together. This is done in such a way, however, that in no one is there properly speaking either the consciousness of, or the activity for the whole; but because the individual is really held to be a person, and all his concern is the protection of his individuality, he works for the whole without knowing how. It is a divided activity in which each has only his part, just as in a factory no one makes a whole, but only a part, and does not possess skill in other departments, because only a few are employed in fitting the different parts together. It is free nations alone that have the consciousness of and activity for the whole; in modern times the individual is only free for himself as such, and enjoys citizen freedom alone—in the sense of that of a _bourgeois_ and not of a _citoyen_. We do not possess two separate words to mark this distinction. The freedom of citizens in this signification is the dispensing with universality, the principle of isolation; but it is a necessary moment unknown to ancient states. It is the perfect independence of the points, and therefore the greater independence of the whole, which constitutes the higher organic life. After the state received this principle into itself, the higher freedom could come forth. These other states are sports and products of nature which depend upon chance and upon the caprice of the individual, but now, for the first time, the inward subsistence and indestructible universality, which is real and consolidated in its parts, is rendered possible.

Aristotle for the rest has not tried like Plato to describe such a state, but in respect of the constitution he merely points out that the best must rule. But this always takes place, let men do as they will, and hence he has not so very much to do with determining the forms of the constitution. By way of proving that the best must rule, Aristotle says this: “The best would suffer injustice if rated on an equality with the others inferior to them in virtue and political abilities, for a notable man is like a god amongst men.” Here Alexander is no doubt in Aristotle’s mind, as one who must rule as though he were a god, and over whom no one, and not even law, could maintain its supremacy. “For him there is no law, for he himself is law. Such a man could perhaps be turned out of the state, but not subjected to control any more than Jupiter. Nothing remains but, what is natural to all, quietly to submit to such an one, and to let men like this be absolutely and perpetually (ἀΐδιοι) kings in the states”[110] The Greek Democracy had then entirely fallen into decay, so that Aristotle could no longer ascribe to it any merit.

4. THE LOGIC.

On the other side of the Philosophy of Mind, we have still Aristotle’s science of abstract thought, a Logic, to consider. For hundreds and thousands of years it was just as much honoured as it is despised now. Aristotle has been regarded as the originator of Logic: his logical works are the source of, and authority for the logical treatises of all times; which last were, in great measure, only special developments or deductions, and must have been dull, insipid, imperfect, and purely formal. And even in quite recent times, Kant has said that since the age of Aristotle, logic—like pure geometry since Euclid’s day—has been a complete and perfect science which has kept its place even down to the present day, without attaining to any further scientific improvements or alteration. Although logic is here mentioned for the first time, and in the whole of the history of Philosophy that is to come no other can be mentioned (for no other has existed, unless we count the negation of Scepticism), we cannot here speak more precisely of its content, but merely find room for its general characterization. The forms he gives to us come from Aristotle both in reference to the Notion and to the judgment and conclusion. As in natural history, animals, such as the unicorn, mammoth, beetle, mollusc, &c., are considered, and their nature described, so Aristotle is, so to speak, the describer of the nature of these spiritual forms of thought; but in this inference of the one from the other, Aristotle has only presented thought as defined in its finite application and aspect, and his logic is thus a natural history of finite thought. Because it is a knowledge and consciousness of the abstract activity of pure understanding, it is not a knowledge of this and that concrete fact, being pure form. This knowledge is in fact marvellous, and even more marvellous is the manner in which it is constituted: this logic is hence a work which does the greatest honour to the deep thought of its discoverer and to the power of his abstraction. For the greatest cohesive power in thought is found in separating it from what is material and thus securing it; and the strength shows itself almost more, if thus secured when it, amalgamated with matter, turns about in manifold ways and is seen to be capable of numberless alterations and applications. Aristotle also considers, in fact, not only the movement of thought, but likewise of thought in ordinary conception. The Logic of Aristotle is contained in five books, which are collected together under the name Ὀργανον.

_a._ The Categories (κατηγορίαι), of which the first work treats, are the universal determinations, that which is predicated of existent things (κατηγορεῖται): as well that which we call conceptions of the understanding, as the simple realities of things. This may be called an ontology, as pertaining to metaphysics; hence these determinations also appear in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Aristotle (Categor. I.) now says: “Things are termed homonyms (ὁμώνυμα) of which the name alone is common, but which have a different substantial definition (λόγος τῆς οὐσίας); thus a horse and the picture of a horse are both called an animal.”

Thus the Notion (λόγος) is opposed to the homonym; and since Aristotle deduces herefrom τὰ λεγόμενα, of which the second chapter treats, it is clear that this last expression indicates more than mere predication, and is here to be taken as determinate Notions. “Determinate conceptions are either enunciated after a complex (κατὰ συμπλοκήν) or after an incomplex manner (ἄνευ συμπλοκῆς); the first as ‘a man conquers,’ ‘the ox runs,’ and the other as ‘man,’ ‘ox,’ ‘to conquer,’ ‘to run.’” In the first rank of this division Aristotle places τὰ ὄντα, which are undoubtedly purely subjective relations of such as exist _per se_, so that the relation is not in them but external to them. Now although τὰ λεγόμενα and τὰ ὄντα are again distinguished from one another, Aristotle yet again employs both λέγεται, and ἐστί of the ὄντα, so that λέγεται is predicated of a species, in relation to its particular; ἐστί is, on the contrary, employed of a universal, which is not Idea but only simple. For Aristotle says, “There are predicates (ὄντα) which can be assigned to a certain subject (καθ̓ ὑποκειμένον), yet are in no subject, as ‘man’ is predicated of ‘some certain man,’ and yet he is no particular man. Others are in a subject (ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ ἐστί) yet are not predicated of any subject (I mean by a thing being in a subject, that it is in any thing not as a part, but as unable to subsist without that in which it is), as ‘a grammatical art’ (τὶς γραμματική) is in a subject, ‘the soul,’ but cannot be predicated of any,’ or related as genus to a subject. Some are predicated of a subject (λέγεται) and are in it; science is in the soul and is predicated of the grammatical art. Some again are neither in, nor are predicated of any subject, as ‘a certain man,’ the individual, the one in number; but some of them can be in a subject like ‘a certain grammatical art.’” Instead of subject we should do better to speak of substratum, for it is that to which the Notion necessarily relates, _i.e._ that which is neglected in abstraction, and thus the individual opposed to the Notion. We can see that Aristotle has the difference of the genus or universal and the individual present to his mind.

The first thing which Aristotle has indicated in the foregoing is thus the genus, which is predicated of a man, but which is not in him, at least not as a particular quality; the brave man, for example, is an actual, but expressed as a universal conception. In formal logic and its conceptions and definitions there is always present opposition to an actual; and the logical actual is in itself something thought, bravery thus being, for example, a pure form of abstraction. This logic of the understanding seeks, however, in its three stages to imitate the categories of the absolute. The conception or definition is a logical actual, and thus in itself merely something thought, _i.e._ possible. In the judgment this logic calls a conception A the actual subject and connects with it another actual as the conception B; B is said to be the conception and A to be dependent on it—but B is only the more general conception. In the syllogism necessity is said to be simulated: even in a judgment there is a synthesis of a conception and something whose existence is assumed; in the syllogism it should bear the form of necessity, because both the opposites are set forth in a third as through the _medius terminus_ of reason, _e.g._ as was the case with the mean of virtue (_supra_, p. 206). The major term expresses logical being and the minor term logical potentiality, for Caius is a mere potentiality for logic; the conclusion unites both. But it is to reason that life first unfolds itself, for it is true reality. What comes second in Aristotle is the universal, which is not the genus, _i.e._ it is not in itself the unity of universal and particular—nor is it absolute individuality and hence infinitude. This is the moment or predicate in a subject certainly, but it is not absolutely in and for itself. This relation is now expressed through οὐ λέγεται; for ὅ λέγεται is that which, as universal in itself, is likewise infinite. The third is the particular which is predicated: just as science in itself is infinite and thus the genus, _e.g._ of the grammatical art; but at the same time as universal, or as not individual, it is the moment of a subject. The fourth indicated by Aristotle is what is called immediate conception—the individual. The reservation that something such as a definite grammatical art is also in a subject, has no place here, for the definite grammatical art is not really in itself individual.

Aristotle, himself,[111] makes the following remarks on this matter: “When one thing is predicated (κατηγορεῖται) of another, as of a subject, whatever things are said (λέγεται) of the predicate,” _i.e._ what is related to it as a universal, “may be also said of the subject.” This is the ordinary conclusion; from this we see, since this matter is so speedily despatched, that the real conclusion has with Aristotle a much greater significance. “The different genera not arranged under one another (μὴ ὑπ̓ ἄλλμλα τεταγμένα), such as ‘animal’ and ‘science,’ differ in their species (διαφοράς). For instance, animals are divided into beasts, bird, fishes—but science has no such distinction. In subordinate genera, however, there may be the same distinctions; for the superior genera are predicated of the inferior, so that as many distinctions as there are of the predicate, so many will there be of the subject.”

After Aristotle had thus far spoken of what is enunciated respecting that which is connected, or the complex, he now comes to “that which is predicated without any connection,” or the incomplex; for as we saw (p. 212) this was the division which he laid down in the second chapter. That which is predicated without any connection he treats of more fully as the categories proper, in what follows; yet the work in which these categories are laid down is not to be regarded as complete. Aristotle[112] takes ten of them; “Each conception enunciated signifies either Substance (οὐσίαν), or Quality (ποιόν), or Quantity (ποσόν),” matter, “or Relation (πρός τι), or Where (ποῦ), or When (ποτέ), or Position (κεῖσθαι), or Possession (ἕχειν), or Action (ποιεῖν), or Passion (πάσχειν). None of these is considered by itself an affirmation (κατάφασις) or a negation (κατάφασις), _i.e._ none is either true or false.” Aristotle adds to these predicables five post predicaments, but he only ranges them all side by side.[113] The categories of relation are the syntheses of quality and quantity, and consequently they belonged to reason; but in as far as they are posited as mere relation, they belong to the understanding and are forms of finitude. Being, essence, takes the first place in them; next to it is possibility, as accident or what is caused; the two are, however, separated. In substance A is Being, B, potentiality; in the relation of causality A and B are Being, but A is posited in B as being posited in a postulation of A. A of substance is logical Being; it is its essence opposed to its existence, and this existence is in logic mere potentiality. In the category of causality the Being of A in B is a mere Being of reflection; B is for itself another. But in reason A is the Being of B as well as of A, and A is the whole Being of A as well as of B.

Aristotle[114] goes on to speak of Substance; first Substance, “in its strictest (κυριώτατα), first and chief sense” is to him the individual, the fourth class of the divisions enunciated above (pp. 212-214). “Secondary substances are those in which as species (εἴδεσι) these first are contained, that is to say, both these and the genera of these species. Of the subject both name and definition (λόγος) of all things predicated of a subject (τῶν καθ̓ ὑποκειμένον λεγομένον)—of secondary substances—are predicated; for example of the particular man, as subject, both the name and the definition of ‘man’ (living being) are also predicated. But of things which are in a subject (ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ ὄντος) it is impossible to predicate the definition of the” subordinate “subjects, yet with some we predicate the name: the definition of ‘whiteness’ thus is not of the body in which it is, but only the name. All other things however,” besides Definition (λόγος) and “in most cases name, are related to primary substances as subjects” (the individual), “or are inherent in them. Thus without the primary substances none of the rest could exist, for they are the basis (ὑποκεῖσθαι) of all else. Of secondary substances, species is more substance than genus; for it is nearer to the primary substance, and genus is predicated of the species and not the other way.” For species is here the subject, or what does not always require to be something really determined as individual, but which also signifies that which is generally speaking subordinate. “But the species are not more substance one than another, just as in primary substances one is not more substance than the other. Species and genera are likewise, before the rest” (qualities or accidents) “to be called secondary substances: the definition ‘man’ before the fact that he is ‘white’ or ‘runs.’” Abstraction has thus two kinds of objects; ‘man’ and ‘learned’ are both qualities of a certain individual; but the former only abstracts from the individuality and leaves the totality, and is thus the elevation of the individual into the rational, where nothing is lost but the opposition of reflection. “What is true of substances is also true of differences; for as synonyms (συνώνυμα) they have both name and definition in common.”

_b._ The second treatise is on Interpretation (περὶ ἑρμηνείας); it is the doctrine of judgments and propositions. Propositions exist where affirmation and negation, falsehood and truth are enunciated;[115] they do not relate to pure thought when reason itself thinks; they are not universal but individual.

_c._ The Analytics come third, and there are two parts of them, the Prior and the Posterior; they deal most fully with proof (ἀπόδειξις) and the syllogisms of the understanding. “The syllogism is a reason (λόγος) in which if one thing is maintained, another than what was maintained follows of necessity.”[116] Aristotle’s logic has treated the general theory of conclusions in the main very accurately, but they do not by any means constitute the universal form of truth; in his metaphysics, physics, psychology, &c., Aristotle has not formed conclusions, but thought the Notion in and for itself.

_d._ The Topics (τοπικά) which treat of ‘places’ (τόποι) come fourth; in them the points of view from which anything can be considered are enumerated. Cicero and Giordano Bruno worked this out more fully. Aristotle gives a large number of general points of view which can be taken of an object, a proposition or a problem; each problem can be directly reduced to these different points of view, that must everywhere appear. Thus these ‘places’ are, so to speak, a system of many aspects under which an object can be regarded in investigating it; this constitutes a work which seems specially suitable and requisite for the training of orators and for ordinary conversation, because the knowledge of points of view at once places in our hands the possibility of arriving at the various aspects of a subject, and embracing its whole extent in accordance with these points of view (Vol. I. p. 358). This, according to Aristotle, is the function of Dialectic, which he calls an instrument for finding propositions and conclusions out of probabilities.[117] Such ‘places’ are either of a general kind, such as difference, similarity, opposition, relation, and comparison,[118] or special in nature, such as ‘places’ which prove that something is better or more to be desired, since in it we have the longer duration of time, that which the one wise man or several would choose, the genus as against the species, that which is desirable for itself; also because it is present with the more honourable, because it is end, what approximates to end, the more beautiful and praiseworthy, &c.[119] Aristotle (Topic VIII. 2) says that we must make use of the syllogism by preference, with the dialectician, but of induction with the multitude. In the same way Aristotle separates[120] the dialectic and demonstrative syllogisms from the rhetorical and every kind of persuasion, but he counts induction as belonging to what is rhetorical.

_e._ The fifth treatise, finally, deals with the Sophistical Elenchi (σοφιστικοὶ ἔλεγχοι), or ‘On Refutations,’ as in the unconscious escape of thought in its categories to the material side of popular conception, it arrives at constant contradiction with itself. The sophistical elenchi betray the unconscious ordinary idea into these contradictions, and make it conscious of them, in order to entrap and puzzle it; they were mentioned by us in connection with Zeno, and the Sophists sought them out, but it was the Megarics who were specially strong in them. Aristotle goes through a number of such contradictions by the way of solving them; in so doing he proceeds quietly and carefully, and spares no pains, though they might have been made more dramatic. We have before (Vol. I. pp. 456-459) found specimens of these in treating of the Megarics, and we have seen how Aristotle solves such contradictions through distinction and determination.

Of these five parts of the Aristotelian Organon, what is produced in our ordinary systems of logic is, as a matter of fact, of the slightest and most trivial description, consisting as it does mainly of what is contained in the introduction of Porphyry. More particularly in the first parts, in the Interpretation and in the Analytics, this Aristotelian logic contains these representations of universal forms of thought, such as are now dealt with in ordinary logic, and really form the basis of what in modern times is known as logic. Aristotle has rendered a never-ending service in having recognized and determined the forms which thought assumes within us. For what interests us is the concrete thought immersed as it is in externalities; these forms constitute a net of eternal activity sunk within it, and the operation of setting in their places those fine threads which are drawn throughout everything, is a masterpiece of empiricism, and this knowledge is absolutely valuable. Even contemplation, or a knowledge of the numerous forms and modes assumed by this activity, is interesting and important enough. For however dry and contentless the enumeration of the different kinds of judgments and conclusions, and their numerous limitations may appear to us to be, and though they may not seem to serve their purpose of discovering the truth, at least no other science in opposition to this one can be elevated into its place. For instance, if it is held to be a worthy endeavour to gain a knowledge of the infinite number of animals, such as one hundred and sixty-seven kinds of cuckoo, in which one may have the tuft on his head differently shaped from another, or to make acquaintance with some miserable new species of a miserable kind of moss which is no better than a scab, or with an insect, vermin, bug, &c., in some learned work on entomology, it is much more important to be acquainted with the manifold kinds of movement present in thought, than to know about such creatures. The best of what is stated respecting the forms of judgment, conclusion, &c., in ordinary logic, is taken from the works of Aristotle; as far as details are concerned, much has been spun out and added to it, but the truth is to be found with Aristotle.

As regards the real philosophic nature of the Aristotelian logic, it has received in our text-books a position and significance as though it gave expression only to the activity of the understanding as consciousness; hence it is said to direct us how to think correctly. Thus it appears as though the movement of thought were something independent, unaffected by the object of thought; in other words, as if it contained the so-called laws of thought of our understanding, through which we attain to perception, but through a medium which was not the movement of things themselves. The result must certainly be truth, so that things are constituted as we bring them forth according to the laws of thought; but the manner of this knowledge has merely a subjective significance, and the judgment and conclusion are not a judgment and conclusion of things themselves. Now if, according to this point of view, thought is considered on its own account, it does not make its appearance implicitly as knowledge, nor is it without content in and for itself; for it is a formal activity which certainly is exercised, but whose content is one given to it. Thought in this sense becomes something subjective; these judgments and conclusions are in and for themselves quite true, or rather correct—this no one ever doubted; but because content is lacking to them, these judgments and conclusions do not suffice for the knowledge of the truth. Thus by logicians they are held to be forms whose content is something entirely different, because they have not even the form of the content; and the meaning which is given to them—namely that they are forms—is found fault with. The worst thing said of them, however, is that their only error is their being formal; both the laws of thought as such, and also its determinations, the categories, are either determinations of the judgment only, or merely subjective forms of the understanding, while the thing-in-itself is very different. But in that point of view and in the blame awarded the truth itself is missed, for untruth is the form of opposition between subject and object, and the lack of unity in them; in this case the question is not put at all as to whether anything is absolutely true or not. These determinations have certainly no empirical content, but thought and its movement is itself the content—and, indeed, as interesting a content as any other that can be given; consequently this science of thought is on its own account a true science. But here again we come across the drawback pertaining to the whole Aristotelian manner, as also to all succeeding logic—and that indeed in the highest degree—that in thought and in the movement of thought as such, the individual moments fall asunder; there are a number of kinds of judgment and conclusion, each of which is held to be independent, and is supposed to have absolute truth as such. Thus they are simply content, for they then have an indifferent, undistinguished existence, such as we see in the famous laws of contradiction, conclusions, &c. In this isolation they have, however, no truth; for their totality alone is the truth of thought, because this totality is at once subjective and objective. Thus they are only the material of truth, the formless content; their deficiency is hence not that they are only forms but rather that form is lacking to them, and that they are in too great a degree content. Thus as many individual qualities of a thing are not anything, such as red, hard, &c., if taken by themselves, but only in their unity constitute a real thing, so it is with the unity of the forms of judgment and conclusion, which individually have as little truth as such a quality, or as a rhythm or melody. The form of a conclusion, as also its content, may be quite correct, and yet the conclusion arrived at may be untrue, because this form as such has no truth of its own; but from this point of view these forms have never been considered, and the scorn of logic rests simply on the false assumption that there is a lack of content. Now this content is none other than the speculative Idea. Conceptions of the understanding or of reason constitute the essence of things, not certainly for that point of view, but in truth; and thus also for Aristotle the conceptions of the understanding, namely the categories, constitute the essential realities of Being. If they are thus in and for themselves true, they themselves are their own, and thus the highest content. But in ordinary logic this is not the case, and even as these are represented in the Aristotelian works they are only universal thought-determinations, between which the abstract understanding makes distinctions. This, however, is not the logic of speculative thought, _i.e._ of reason as distinguished from understanding; for there the identity of the understanding which allows nothing to contradict itself is fundamental. However little this logic of the finite may be speculative in nature, yet we must make ourselves acquainted with it, for it is everywhere discovered in finite relationships. There are many sciences, subjects of knowledge, &c., that know and apply no other forms of thought than these forms of finite thought, which constitute in fact the general method of dealing with the finite sciences. Mathematics, for instance, is a constant series of syllogisms; jurisprudence is the bringing of the particular under the general, the uniting together of both these sides. Within these relationships of finite determinations the syllogism has now, indeed, on account of its terms being three in number, been called the totality of these determinations, and hence by Kant (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 261) also the rational conclusion; but this syllogism addressed to the intelligence as it appears in the ordinary logical form, is only the intelligible form of rationality, and, as we saw above (p. 76), is very different from the rational syllogism proper. Aristotle is thus the originator of the logic of the understanding; its forms only concern the relationship of finite to finite, and in them the truth cannot be grasped. But it must be remarked that Aristotle’s philosophy is not by any means founded on this relationship of the understanding; thus it must not be thought that it is in accordance with these syllogisms that Aristotle has thought. If Aristotle did so, he would not be the speculative philosopher that we have recognized him to be; none of his propositions could have been laid down, and he could not have made any step forward, if he had kept to the forms of this ordinary logic.

Like the whole of Aristotle’s philosophy, his logic really requires recasting, so that all his determinations should be brought into a necessary systematic whole—not a systematic whole which is correctly divided into its parts, and in which no part is forgotten, all being set forth in their proper order, but one in which there is one living organic whole, in which each part is held to be a part, and the whole alone as such is true. Aristotle, in the Politics, for instance (_supra_, pp. 207-208), often gives expression to this truth. For this reason the individual logical form has in itself no truth, not because it is the form of thought, but because it is determinate thought, individual form, and to be esteemed as such. But as system and absolute form ruling this content, thought has its content as a distinction in itself, being speculative philosophy in which subject and object are immediately identical, and the Notion and the universal are the realities of things. Just as duty certainly expresses the absolute, but, as determinate, a determinate absolute which is only a moment and must be able again to abrogate its determination, the logical form which abrogates itself as this determinate in this very way gives up its claim to be in and for itself. But in this case logic is the science of reason, speculative philosophy of the pure Idea of absolute existence, which is not entangled in the opposition of subject and object, but remains an opposition in thought itself. Yet we certainly may allow that much in logic is an indifferent form.

At this point we would leave off as far as the Aristotelian philosophy is concerned, and from this it is difficult to break away. For the further we go into its details, the more interesting it becomes, and the more do we find the connection which exists among the subjects. The fulness with which I have set forth the principal content of the Aristotelian philosophy is justified both by the importance of the matter itself, because it offers to us a content of its own, and also by the circumstances already mentioned (p. 118), that against no philosophy have modern times sinned so much as against this, and none of the ancient philosophers have so much need of being defended as Aristotle.

One of the immediate followers of Aristotle was Theophrastus, born Ol 102, 2 (371 B.C.); though a man of distinction, he can still only be esteemed a commentator on Aristotle. For Aristotle is so rich a treasure-house of philosophic conceptions, that much material is found in him which is ready for further working upon, which may be put forward more abstractly, and in which individual propositions may be brought into prominence. However Aristotle’s manner of procedure, which is to take an empirical starting point of ratiocination [Raisonnement], and to comprehend this in the focus of the speculative Notion, is characteristic of his mind, without being one which, on its own account, can be freely elevated into a method and a principle. Thus of Theophrastus as of many others (Dicæarchus of Messina, for instance), amongst whom Strato of Lampsacus, the successor of Theophrastus, is best known, there is not much to tell. As regards Dicæarchus, Cicero says, (Tusc. Quæst. I. 31, 10) that he controverted the immortality of the soul, for he asserted that “the soul is no more than an empty name, and the whole of the capacities and powers with which we act and feel are equally extended over all living bodies, and inseparable from the body; for it is nothing but the body so constituted as to live and feel through a certain symmetry and proportion in its body.” Cicero gives in an historical manner a result as he made it comprehensible to himself, without any speculative conception. Stobæus (Eclog. phys. p. 796), on the other hand, quotes from Dicæarchus that he held the soul to be “a harmony of the four elements.” We have only a little general information to give of Strato, that he acquired great fame as a physicist, and that his conception of nature went upon mechanical lines, and yet not on those of Leucippus and Democritus, and later, of Epicurus; for, according to Stobæus (Eclog. phys. p. 298), he made warmth and cold into elements. Hence, if what is said of him is accurate, he was most unfaithful to the beliefs of Aristotle, because he led everything back to mechanism and chance and did away with the immanent end, without accepting the false teleology of modern times. At least, Cicero (De nat. Deor. I. 13) relates of him that he maintained that “divine strength lies altogether in nature, which has in itself the causes of origination, of growth, and of decay, but lacks all sensation and conformation.” The other Peripatetics occupied themselves more with working up individual doctrines of Aristotle, with bringing out his works in a commentated form, which is more or less rhetorical in character, though similar in content. But in practical life the Peripatetic school maintained as the principle of happiness, the unity of reason and inclination. We thus may set aside any further expansion of the Peripatetic philosophy, because it has no longer the same interest, and later on tended to become a popular philosophy (Vol. I. p. 479, Vol. II. p. 130); in this mode it no longer remained an Aristotelian philosophy, although this, too, as what is really speculative, must coincide most closely with actuality. This decay of the Aristotelian philosophy is, indeed, closely connected with the circumstance already mentioned (pp. 126-128), that the Aristotelian writings soon disappeared, and that the Aristotelian philosophy did not retain its place so much through these documents as through the traditions in the school, whereby they soon underwent material changes; and amplifications of Aristotle’s doctrines were brought about, as to which it is not known whether some may not have slipped into what pass for his works.

Since Aristotle’s leading thought has penetrated all spheres of consciousness, and this isolation in the determination through the Notion, because it is likewise necessary, contains in every sphere the profoundest of true thoughts, Aristotle, to anticipate here the external history of his philosophy as a whole, for many centuries was the constant mainstay of the cultivation of thought. When in the Christian West science disappeared amongst the Christians, the fame of Aristotle shone forth with equal brilliance amongst the Arabians, from whom, in later times, his philosophy was again passed over to the West. The triumph which was celebrated upon the revival of learning, on account of the Aristotelian philosophy having been expelled from the schools, from the sciences, and specially from theology, as from the philosophy which deals with absolute existence, must be regarded in two different aspects. In the first place we must remember that it was not the Aristotelian philosophy which was expelled, so much as the principle of the science of theology which supported itself thereon, according to which the first truth is one which is given and revealed—an hypothesis which is once for all a fundamental one, and by which reason and thought have the right and power to move to and fro only superficially. In this form the thought which was awakened in the Middle Ages reconstructed its theology more especially, entered into all dialectic movements and determinations, and erected an edifice where the material that was given was only superficially worked up, disposed and secured. The triumph over this system was thus a triumph over that principle, and consequently the triumph of free, spontaneous thought. But another side of this triumph is the triumph of the commonplace point of view that broke free from the Notion and shook off the yoke of thought. Formerly, and even nowadays, enough has been heard of Aristotle’s scholastic subtleties; in using this name, men thought that they had a right to spare themselves from entering on abstraction, and, in place of the Notion, they thought that it justified them in seeing, hearing, and thus making their escape to what is called healthy human understanding. In science, too, in place of subtle thoughts, subtle sight has commenced; a beetle or a species of bird is distinguished with as great minuteness as were formerly conceptions and thoughts. Such subtleties as whether a species of bird is red or green in colour, or has a more or less perfect tail, are found more easy than the differences in thought; and in the meantime, until a people has educated itself up to the labour of thought, in order to be able thus to support the universal, the former is a useful preparation, or rather it is a moment in this course of culture.

But inasmuch as the deficiency in the Aristotelian philosophy rests in the fact, that after the manifold of phenomena was through it raised into the Notion, though this last again fell asunder into a succession of determinate Notions, the unity of the absolute Notion which unites them was not emphasized, and this is what succeeding time had to accomplish. What now appears is that the unity of the Notion which is absolute existence, makes its appearance as necessity, and it presents itself first as the unity of self-consciousness and consciousness, as pure thought. The unity of existence as existence is objective unity, thought, as that which is thought. But unity, as Notion, the implicitly universal negative unity, time as absolutely fulfilled time, and in its fulfilment as being unity, is pure self-consciousness. Hence we see it come to pass, that pure self-consciousness makes itself reality, but, at the same time, it first of all does so with subjective significance as a self-consciousness that has taken up its position as such, and that separates itself from objective existence, and hence is first of all subject to a difference which it does not overcome.

Here we have concluded the first division of Greek philosophy, and we have now to pass to the second period. The first period of Greek philosophy extended to Aristotle, to the attainment of a scientific form in which knowledge has reached the standing of free thought. Thus in Plato and Aristotle the result was the Idea; yet we saw in Plato the universal made the principle in a somewhat abstract way as the unmoved Idea; in Aristotle, on the other hand, thought in activity became absolutely concrete as the thought which thinks itself. The next essential, one which now is immediately before us, must be contained in that into which Philosophy under Plato and Aristotle had formed itself. This necessity is none other than the fact that the universal must now be proclaimed free for itself as the universality of the principle, so that the particular may be recognized through this universal; or the necessity of a systematic philosophy immediately enters in, what we formerly called one in accordance with the unity of the Notion. We may speak of the Platonic and Aristotelian systems, but they are not in the form of a system; for that it is requisite that one principle should be maintained and consistently carried through the particular. In the perfect complex of the conception of the universe as it is to Aristotle, where everything is in the highest form of scientific knowledge led back to what is speculative, however empiric may be his manner of setting to work, there certainly is one principle brought forward, and that a speculative one, though it is not brought forward as being one. The nature of the speculative has not been explicitly brought to consciousness as the Notion—as containing in itself the development of the manifold nature of the natural and spiritual universe, consequently it is not set forth as the universal, from which the particular was developed. Aristotle’s logic is really the opposite of this. He in great measure passes through a series of the living and the dead, makes them confront his objective, that is, conceiving thought, and grasps them in his understanding; each object is on its own account a conception which is laid open in its determinations, and yet he also brings these reflections together, and thereby is speculative. If even Plato on the whole proceeded in an empiric way, taking up this and that idea, each of which is in turn examined, with Aristotle this loose method of procedure appears still more clearly. In the Aristotelian teaching the Idea of the self-reflecting thought is thus grasped as the highest truth; but its realization, the knowledge of the natural and spiritual universe, constitutes outside of that Idea a long series of particular conceptions, which are external to one another, and in which a unifying principle, led through the particular, is wanting. The highest Idea with Aristotle consequently once more stands only as a particular in its own place and without being the principle of his whole philosophy. Hence the next necessity in Philosophy is that the whole extent of what is known must appear as one organization of the Notion; that in this way the manifold reality may be related to that Idea as the universal, and thereby determined. This is the standpoint which we find in this second period.

A systematic philosophy such as this becomes in the first place dogmatism, in antagonism to which, because of its one-sided character, scepticism immediately arises. In the same way the French call what is dogmatic _systématique_, and _système_ that in which all the conceptions must consistently proceed from one determination; hence to them _systématique_ is synonymous with one-sided. But the philosophies that ensue are one-sided, because in them it was only the necessity of one principle that was recognized, without their meanwhile developing from themselves, as might well have come to pass in and for itself, the Idea as the real universal, and thus comprehending the world in such a way that the content is only grasped as the determination of the self-reflective thought. Hence this principle stands up formally and abstractly, and the particular is not yet deduced from it, for the universal is only applied to the particular and the rules for this application sought out. In Aristotle the Idea is at least implicitly concrete, as the consciousness of the unity of subjective and objective, and therefore it is not one-sided. Should the Idea be truly concrete, the particular must be developed from it. The other relation would be the mere bringing of the particular under the universal, so that both should be mutually distinguished; in such a case the universal is only a formal principle, and such a philosophy is therefore one-sided. But the true difficulty is that the two endeavours, the development of the particular from the Idea, and the bringing of the particular under the universal, collide with one another. The manifestations of the physical and spiritual world must first, from their respective sides, be prepared for and worked into the Notion, so that the other sciences can form therefrom universal laws and principles. Then for the first time can speculative reason present itself in determinate thoughts, and bring perfectly to consciousness the inwardly existing connection between them. As dogmatic, however, those philosophies, it may be further said, are assertive likewise, because in such a method the principle is only asserted and is not truly proved. For a principle is demanded under which everything is subsumed; thus it is only pre-supposed as the first principle. Before this we have had abstract principles such as pure Being, but here the particular, with which begins the distinction from what is different, became posited as the purely negative. That necessity, on the other hand, makes for a universal which must likewise be in the particular, so that this should not be set aside, but should have its determinate character through the universal.

This demand for a universal, even though still unproved principle, is henceforth present to knowledge. What answers to this demand now appears in the world through the inward necessity of mind—not externally, but as being in conformity with the Notion. This necessity has produced the philosophy of the Stoics, Epicureans, New Academy, and Sceptics, which we have now to consider. If we have remained too long in the consideration of this period, we may now make amends for this protraction, for in the next period we may be brief.