combination of particles, that is affinity, to be essence, Empedocles maintained that "the nature spoken of by men is only the combination of and change among particles." So that Aristotle confined the term nature to existing beings and the processes by which they are supported and perpetuated, to living and organised matter that is, while others widened its acceptation, and made it applicable to the changes continually going on through and by elementary substances. With him, in fact, it was a living principle; with others, a property or force, whereby change is a law.
"The term nature," says Cuvier, "in our own and most other tongues, signifies, sometimes the properties which a being derives from its birth (hereditarily) in contradistinction to those which it may derive from adventitious circumstances; sometimes the whole of the beings which compose the universe, and sometimes, again, the laws to which those beings are subjected. It is in this last sense that we are accustomed to personify nature, and out of respect to employ its name for that of its author."
Note 2, p. 11. Its essence as well as its accidents.] Aristotle observes that essence seems, most manifestly, to be an innate property in bodies; and, therefore, animals and plants, and parts of animals and plants, as well as natural bodies, as fire and water, air and earth, the elements, in fact, are essences; to which may be added the bodies which are derived from the elements, as the heavens, stars, sun, and moon. Some, however, regarded the boundaries of bodies, as surface, line, point, and unit, as essences, rather than bodies or solids themselves. Thus, essence, according to the first definition, seems to be scarcely distinguishable from nature. Aristotle, however, in another passage, considers it under four heads: as mode of being, as universal, genus, and subject; and subject he held to be essence in a fuller sense than the others. Plato admitted of essence in forms, mathematical abstractions, as also in sentient bodies; and the Pythagoreans first, and Plato later, adopted unity as essence. Aristotle, in fact, seems to confine his definitions of these abstract powers or entities to the outer world; and others to comprehend, under the term, the abstractions of pure science, and the immediate operations of general laws.
The term "accident" was with Aristotle, as it is with us, significant of chance or possibility, as well as what is necessary and constant. The former is exemplified by an individual, when digging, finding a treasure, as this is an occurrence neither necessary nor constant; and thus there can be no assignable cause, save chance, which itself is undefinable, he adds, for an incident so purely casual. But it also implies properties which, although not essential, are, still, inherent, inalienable from, and distinctive of particular bodies, as it is a property of the triangle to contain two right angles; these properties only are regarded as accidents in modern science, and such are implied in the passage alluded to.
Note 3, p. 12. Concerning the thing itself, &c.] This stands first in the enumeration of the categories, which comprize the ten following—thing itself; (τί ἐστι); quantity; quality; relation; when; where; position; recipiency; action; and impression. They are so designated, Aristotle says, because there must ever be, in some one of them, accident and genus, individual, and definition; for it is through them that premisses signify either individual, or quantity, or quality, or other one of those enumerated. It is made evident, thus—when it is said of a man lying down that it is a man or an animal, the party both says what it is, and points out its essence; when it is something white which is lying down, then the party designates its quality, as well. But these two exemplifications seem to shew that the terms essence, accidents, category, like the abstractions of which they are the representatives, cannot be clearly distinguished from one another; so that they may almost be regarded as derivatives from one comprehensive idea. Essence is, in the first of those instances, almost confounded with the categories, although it is the object of a special inquiry; and this seeming incongruity may have led some scholars to set it down among them.
Note 4, p. 12. Some kind of demonstration or division, &c.] Demonstration is, according to Aristotle, a scientific syllogism, and by scientific is meant, he says, the method, through which we learn, with certainty, what a subject may be; and, if the knowledge be such, it follows that demonstrative knowledge must be derived from conditions which are original, immediate, and more apprehensible and causative, than the conclusion sought for. Those conditions are, in fact, the suitable principles for ascertaining that which is to be demonstrated; as, without them, the result will be, not demonstration but, a syllogism, which cannot, with certainty, eliminate truth. Thus, while demonstration is a kind of syllogism, every syllogism is not demonstration. Division is said by Aristotleto be an imperfect syllogism, for it assumes what ought to be demonstrated, and draws conclusions from à priori reasonings. In this allusion to division, Aristotle may be supposed to have had Plato in view, "as it was by a process of dividing and subdividing that that eminent man conducted his inquiries after truth;" as, however, this method was considered by him to be a faulty or imperfect syllogism, it may be that he alluded to it as one which might be adopted, without altogether approving of it as a mental process.
Note 5, p. 12. As those of number are not those of plane surfaces, &c.] That is, the science of number differs, generically, from that of Geometry. The nature, so to say, of numbers had been a subject of deep and curious speculation long before and during the age of Aristotle, and there lie scattered through his works notices of writers and systems which, although in themselves interesting to scholars, would, even were it possible to give a clear summary of them, be foreign to the present inquiry. Aristotle, before entering upon number, defined "quantity" as being, partly definite, and partly continuous—and the former he constituted of parts which have no mutual local relation to each other; the latter of parts which have that relation. The "definite" quantity is represented "by number and by a word; the continuous by line, surface, solid, and time and place, besides." In order to shew that number is definite or discontinuous, he observes, "there is no common boundary whereon the parts of any number conjoin; as if, for instance, five or three be parts of ten, there is no common boundary whereon five or seven can conjoin to make the whole number, but each part is, for ever, a distinct number, and thus number is among definite quantities." "Words are, in like manner, among definite quantities; and it is manifest that words, uttered by the voice, are quantity, in that they are measurable by long and short syllables, and manifest too that there is no common boundary whereon the parts of a word, that is syllables, conjoin to make the whole sound, and thus that each is for ever a distinct sound. But a line, on the contrary, is continuous, as there is no common boundary whereon its parts, that is points, conjoin, as lines, to make a superficies, whereon all parts of the solid conjoin; so too time is continuous, for that which is present is conjoined with that which is past, as it is with that which is future." Aristotle, having shewn that there are these opposite conditions of quantity, in a positive as in an abstract sense, defines an unit (ἡ μόνας) as being, in direct opposition to a point, without position or place; a line as being divisible only in one way; a superficies as divisible in two, and a solid, quantitatively considered, as divisible in three, and, indeed, in all ways. Number is still regarded, of course, as a collection of units; the superficies as that which has only length and breadth; and the solid as that which has length, breadth, and depth.
Note 6, p. 12. Among entities in potentiality or whether, &c.] These terms run, like a golden thread, through all the physiological works of Aristotle, and were adopted by him in order to distinguish virtual from actual condition or existence, the capability, that is, of becoming, by innate force or power, an entelechy or reality, which is the purport of the last term. They may be briefly exemplified thus: — an egg, e.g. is alive in potentiality — it has within it, that is, a principle, whereby, under genial circumstances, it can develope into a living being; and so a seed, while alive, is capable of becoming a perfect living plant, as the egg or the caterpillar or the chrysalis is, in potentiality, the future perfect insect or butterfly. The terms comprehend, in fact, all the metamorphic conditions of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and have a range of application wide enough to include life under all degrees and forms. This was the first great idea in their adoption, and although Aristotle made them to signify an analogous transition in moral or mental faculties, (as when he speaks of a boy as a general, in potentiality,) yet their real purport is to distinguish those two universal conditions of living and sentient beings. Cicero has alluded to these terms or rather to the entelechy, (as was noted in the preface,) but, from not having contrasted it with the potentiality, he seems to have mistaken its general import; and he may thus have been led to suppose that Aristotle's intention, in this novel term, was to designate a special fifth nature, to be the source of motion and the originating cause of mental faculties and natural emotions. Montaigne, also, in modern times, following Cicero, speaks of the entelechy only, which he regards, erroneously, as the motor power of the body — "ce qui naturellement fait mouvoir le corps." A hot dispute prevailed among scholars, it may be added, before and during the age of Rabelais,(and which he has alluded to with all his wonted wit and learning,) whether the term should be ἐντελέχεια or ἐνδελέχεια; he was, evidently himself, one of the entelechists, as he says that the Lady Quint-essence, who had had Aristotle, "that paragon of all philosophy," for god-father, had been truly and correctly named Entelechy by him.
Note 7, p. 13. Whether the difference is generic or specific.] "The term Genus implies a continuous series of individuals having a like species or form, so that genus may be predicated of man, so long as there may be a continuous generation of human beings; the term again may be applied to the source whence individuals may have descended, and thus some Greeks are of the Hellenic, others of the Ionic genus, on account of their direct descent from Hellenus or from Ion. And this applies so much more to the progenitor than to external conditions, that the descendants from a female constitute a genus. Species implies the mode of being of the individual, together with the primal essence; and as the matter constitutive of the genus is in the species, so species may be regarded as parts of the genus. In modern classification, genus signifies "a distinct but subordinate group, which gives its name as a prefix to that of all the species of which it is composed." The physical sciences have been so widely developed, however, that, as those terms no longer suffice for grouping the myriads of beings which have been observed since Aristotle's time, naturalists have, in addition, adopted kingdom or class, order, sub-genus, individual, and variety.
Note 8, p. 13. The term animal, however, in an universal sense, &c.] This passage, which, in the original, is even more elliptical than its version, has engaged much of the attention of commentators without having been satisfactorily elucidated — some have explained it as a criticism of the ideas or archetypes of Plato; and others as an objection to every universal term, which, although an abstraction, is to typify actual beings; and this is, probably, the purport of the criticism. Thus, "the origin of the controversy, during the middle ages, between the nominalists and realists, may be traced down to Aristotle and his followers." Wording so elliptical must, of course, be subject, according to the bias of opinions, to different interpretations; but if it imply objection to every abstract term which is to embody, so to say, realities, this version may be accepted as its interpretation. The Latin version, however, is, "Animal autem universale aut nihil est aut posterius est, et quicquid itidem aliud communiter prædicatur;" and the French, "C'est que l'animal pris en un sens universel ou n'est rien, ou bien n'est que quelque chose de très ultérieur."
Note 9, p. 13. The mind before thought, &c.] Aristotle says that among the philosophers who were engaged upon first causes, Anaxagoras and his predecessor Hermoticus had maintained that, as in animals there is a motor principle, so in nature there is mind, and that it is the cause as well of the universe as of universal order; and thus "they assumed at once that mind is the cause of the beautiful, the origin of being, and the source whence motion is derived for every thing living." Anaxagoras, in fact, regarded mind as the first cause of things (which Empedocles was rather disposed to assign to the principle of attraction, which he designated φιλία, and held to be an universal element), and maintained that, while all else is but a combination of particles, it is homogeneous, impassive, isolated, and pure. We are incapable, Aristotle observes, in his comment upon these opinions, of continuous thought and reflexion, because these are recreations too lofty to be continuously maintained; but, on this account, watching (not being asleep, that is), feeling and thinking are our most genial conditions, because from and through them, we derive our hopes and recollections. Notwithstanding, however, this acknowledgement, so to say, of mind, as a sovereign principle, and its attributes, there is no attempt to define its nature and its relations, or to shew in what it was identified with or different from the vital principle; and this want of critical distinction between them is the more apparent as several epithets (προγϵνϵστατός – θϵωρητικός – πρακτικός – παθητικός) are introduced in the course of these physiological treatises, which cannot but have modified the parent term.
Note 10, p. 15. Whether all the emotions of Vital Principle, &c.] These passages shew clearly the suggestive power and perspicacity of Aristotle's intellect, and they point so clearly to doctrines which had yet to be developed, that they cannot be studied without feelings of surprise as well as admiration. The brain was, in that age, supposed to be merely a supplementary organ to respiration; and, from its not giving out sensation when touched, and from imperfect anatomy, it was supposed to have no relation whatever with the sentient organs or spinal cord. The nerves, as cords of sensation, were unknown; the very term (νϵῦρον), which has been transferred to them as nerve, meant then tendon or sinew. Hence it is that, in modern languages, a man is said to be nervous in the one sense, and a delicate female to be nervous in the other. It was thus, from intuition and study, that Aristotle drew this train of suggestive reasoning upon the influences exercised over our passions and emotions by the organs of the body; that he discerned, that is, the seat and source of the temperaments. Bichat, having a far wider range of anatomical knowledge was able, by assigning to the brain and ganglionic system their proper offices, to distinguish intellectual faculties from passions and emotions, which although human, still are temperamental and functional — to distinguish, that is, the animal from the organic life.
Note 11, p. 15. In the same way all the emotions, &c.] These passages are quite in accordance with all that physiology now teaches; for although but repetition, it may be said that Aristotle places the passions and emotions in the organic life, and shews "that every individual must be influenced by his particular temperament." Thus, as organs predominate, or may be more or less active, individuals are affected and modified, so to say, in temper as in character. The temperaments ought to be subordinated, of course, to the higher faculties; but those organs are abiding powers, and they are ever exercising an influence which it is for reason to control or subdue. Plato, in the Timæus, has discerned this great truth—a mortal principle (ὅτε τὸ θνητὸν ἐπεστέλλε γένος) is there assigned to the body, as the seat of the passions and coarser appetites, while the brain is represented as a soil fit for the divine seed of wisdom; and this will suffice to shew that this most gifted man, although but imperfectly acquainted with physiology, had perceived the co-existence in the human being of an intellectual and, so to say, a functional existence. Descartes seems to have adopted opinions concerning the "passions of the soul," which have much in common with those of Aristotle; but although so well acquainted with his writings, he does not appear to have studied this treatise.
Note 12, p. 16. But the physiologist and the metaphysician would, &c.] The difference here dwelt upon in the mode of accounting for the same phenomena, according to the bias given by studies or pursuits, will, it may be assumed, be of constant recurrence; for, as physical science advances, it will become more and more difficult for the same party to attain to a large and solid acquaintance with the attributes of mind (abstractions, that is), and the knowledge of "external nature." The self-same differences, in fact, which were delineated so graphically by Aristotle, are still to be traced in our almost exclusive attention to the physical sciences, and our disinclination to admit, in our inquiries, of any proof but such as can be tested through and by the senses and observation. The terms here rendered physiologist and metaphysician (terms unknown, by the way, to Aristotle) in the Latin version are naturalis, and disserendi artifex; that of artisan is faber; builder, artifex; and transcendental philosopher is primus philosophus.
Prelude to Chapter II.
This chapter is a review of the opinions of earlier and contemporaneous writers upon the Vital Principle, and as Aristotle has never failed at the outset of each subject of inquiry to record the principal writers upon it, he may be regarded as the founder of tradition in science. The writers here cited may be divided into those who made motion, and those who supposed feeling to be the essential characteristic of that which imparts life to matter; although there were some who attributed to it both motion and feeling.
CHAPTER II.
As we are now entering upon the study of Vital Principle, and are encompassed with doubts which ought to be resolved, it will be incumbent upon us to gather the opinions of such of the earlier writers as have suggested any thing concerning it, in order that we may be able as well to adopt their happier conceptions as to be on our guard against their errors. The suitable opening for this inquiry into the Vital Principle is to lay down the properties which appear, most especially, to belong to it. The animated being, then, seems to be especially distinguished from whatever is inanimate by the two properties of motion and feeling; and these two are almost the only distinctions which have been transmitted to us by the earlier writers upon the subject. Thus, some of them maintain that the Vital Principle is in the largest, fullest sense a motor power; and as they believed that nothing can impart motion unless it be self-motive, they assumed that the Vital Principle must be among beings which are self-moved. Hence Democritus says that it is a kind of fire and heat, and as forms and atoms are, according to him, infinite, he speaks of those which are spherical and apparent in the sun's beams, while passing through chinks in doors, as fire and Vital Principle; and further says, that those atoms, collectively, are the elements of universal nature. Leucippus, in like manner, is disposed to regard the spherical atoms as Vital Principle, both on account of those forms being best adapted for penetrating every where, and best able, from being self-motive, to give motion to other things; and thus they both assume that it is Vital Principle which imparts motion to living beings. Hence, too, they make breathing to be the boundary of life—for they maintain that the envelopment of animal bodies crushes by its contraction those forms of atoms which, from never being at rest, give motion, and that compensation is afforded for their exit by the entrance of other like forms, during inspiration; and that these forms, while entering, resist the contracting and solidifying power, and preclude the expulsion of all the atoms which are essential to life. They further maintain that animals can live only so long as they can support this process. The opinion adopted by the Pythagoreans seems to be to the same purport—for some of them have maintained that Vital Principle is the motes in the air, and others that it is that which gives motion to the motes; and it has thus been said of those corpuscles, because of their appearing to be constantly moving, although the air may be quite still.
To the same point do they also come who say that the Vital Principle is self-motive; for all these philosophers seem to have assumed that motion is the most characteristic property of the Vital Principle; and that, while all other things are moved by it, it is self-moved, and the more so, as they do not see any motor which is not self-moved.
Anaxagoras, in like manner, says that the Vital Principle is a motive force, and the same opinion may be attributed to any one who, with him, may have maintained that the mind has given motion to the universe; and yet his opinion is not altogether in accordance with that of Democritus. Democritus, in fact, maintains that Vital Principle and mind are absolutely identical; that the apparent is the true; and that Homer, therefore, has done well in representing Hector as "changing his mind while he lay." Thus he does not employ the term mind as a faculty for the attainment of truth, but makes mind to be identical with the Vital Principle. Anaxagoras is less explicit upon these points; for, in many places, he speaks of mind as the source of the beautiful and the true, while, elsewhere, he says that it is identical with the Vital Principle, and innate in all creatures, larger or smaller, higher or lower, in the scale of being; but it is manifest that mind, in the sense of intellect, is not equally allotted to all animals, nor even to all men.
Thus they who have looked upon living beings with respect to motion, have assumed that the Vital Principle is the most motive of entities, and so many as have looked upon them with respect to knowledge and sentient perception, have said that the Vital Principle comprises all first causes; of which, while some admit of several, others maintain that there is only this one. Empedocles, for instance, seems to maintain that the Vital Principle is derived from all the elements, and that each element is Vital Principle, as he says that " by earth we perceive earth, by water water, by air air, by fire destructive fire, by attraction attraction, and by repulsion dire repulsion."
Plato, in a like manner, in the Timaeus, derives the Vital Principle from the elements—for like, therein, is known by like, and things are derived from first causes; and so, likewise, have things been denned by him in the treatises "upon philosophy." According to them, animal, in itself, is derived from the abstract idea of unity, and primal length, and breadth, and depth; and other things in a somewhat similar manner. It is besides maintained, but in a different sense, that the mind is unity, and knowledge duality, although, as one branch, it is unity; and that the number of the surface is opinion, that of the solid sensation, for numbers were spoken of by him as forms and first causes, and as derivatives from the elements. Thus, some things are discriminated by mind, some by knowledge, some by opinion, and others by sensation; as the numbers which represent those faculties are the forms of things.
Since the Vital Principle has to some appeared to be both motive and capable of knowing, there are writers who have combined motion and intelligence, and then represented the Vital Principle as a number endowed with self-motion.
Philosophers differ with respect to first causes, both as to their nature and number; but they who make them corporeal differ most from those who hold them to be incorporeal; and from these again they differ who make them to be a combination both of corporeal and incorporeal molecules. They differ also with respect to the number of such causes, as some adopt only one while others admit of several; and, in accordance with these conclusions, they form their estimate of the Vital Principle; but yet they have all assumed, and not unreasonably, that it is of the nature of first causes to be motive. Hence, the Vital Principle has to some appeared to be fire, as fire, besides being the most attenuated and most incorporeal of the elements, is both self-motive and a primal cause of motion in other things.
Democritus has expressed himself more clearly than any other writer in specifying the causes of each of those properties: for he says that the Vital Principle is identical with the mind, and to be placed among primal and indivisible bodies; that it is motive, owing to the tenuity of its parts and its form; that of forms the spherical is the most mobile, and that this is the form both of mind and fire.
Anaxagoras seems, as we have already said, to distinguish the mind from the Vital Principle, although he employs both terms as if synonymous; excepting that he sets down the mind as being, in the fullest sense, the origin of all things. Thus he says that the mind alone of all entities is homogeneous, unmixed, and pure; and to the same principle he attributes the properties both of knowing and imparting motion, as he maintains that it is the mind which has given motion to the universe.
Thales, too, from what has been recorded of him, seems to have assumed that the Vital Principle is something motive, since he said that the loadstone must have a Vital Principle because it gives motion to iron.
Diogenes, together with some other writers, held the Vital Principle to be air, because air was believed to be the most attenuated of the elements, as well as an originating cause; and that, through these properties, the vital principle is able both to recognise things and to impart motion to them. They argued that Vital Principle, as being a first cause and the origin of other things, is able to recognise them; and that, as being the most attenuated of entities, it is motive.
Heraclitus also maintains that the Vital Principle is a first cause, since, in his system, it is the exhalation out of which he constitutes every thing else; he regards it too as the most incorporeal of entities, and as being "in a constant state of flux;" and further says, that the moved must be known to the motor. He agreed, in fact, with most others in believing all things to be in motion.
The opinions of Alcmaeon upon the Vital Principle seem to be very like those just cited—for he says that it is immortal, on account of its resemblance to the immortals, and that this resemblance is manifested by its being continuously in motion; for all divine bodies, he argues, the moon, sun, stars, and heavens, are continuously moving.
Some writers of smaller pretension—and Hippo was one of them—have ventured to represent the Vital Principle as water; and they seem to have been led to this persuasion by the nature of semen, which, in all creatures, is fluid. Hippo, indeed, reproves those who assert that the Vital Principle is blood, because blood is not semen; and semen is, according to him, the first principle of life.
Others have maintained, as did Critias, that the Vital Principle is blood, from their assuming that the most peculiar property of blood is feeling, and that feeling is imparted to us through the nature of blood. All the elements, in fact, have had their partisans, excepting earth; and no one has adopted it, unless such an opinion may be attributed to those who have derived the Vital Principle from all, or made it to be all the elements.