that where one thing acts upon another the potenti- alities of the ‘agent ' (which is the cause) and of the patient (that experiences the effect) are quite distinct as potentialities, but coincide when actualized. And, moreover, this coincidence is realized in the ‘ patient,’ not in the ‘ agent.’
Now, the most telling illustration of this is to be found in the magnet and the iron filing. Aristotle himself does not give 1t (though he was acquainted with the properties of the magnet), but his medieval disciples never did him and his readers a better service than when they hit upon it. The magnet has the power of drawing an won filing (call it the ‘needle ἢ to itself, and the ncedle has the property (which a chip of wood, for instance, has not) of experiencing and answering to the pull of the magnet. ΑΒ potentialities, these two properties are distinct and inert. But when magnet and needle are brought into suitable relations of distance with each other they both actualize their potentialities simul- taneously in the single event of the motion of the needle, the effect caused by the magnet-agent being realized in the needle-patient.
Now take the case of vision. The consciousness (in virtue of its association with an organized body possessing eyes) has, even in the dark, the potentiality of seeing, A neighbouring apple, in virtue of the form and colour of its surface, has the potentiality of being seen, i.e. of producing an effect upon the consciousness. These two potentialities are distinct; but let there be light, and the two potentialities coalesce as a single actuality in the experience of * seeing,’ which is realized in the consciousness.
As regards inorganic nature little more need here xxviii INTRODUCTION be said. Aristotle understood that combinations of elements had properties that were not mere mixtures of the qualities of the elements themselves; but his presuppositions as to matLer and the material things and states that provoke our sense-experiences, generally assume a greater simplicity and continuity in them than can be detected in the impressions they produce on our senses. In the same way we moderns think of the different colour-effects as caused by different wave-lengths which could be measured off on a linear scale as a simple case of “more ’ or ‘less’ of the same thing, though no one could suppose that the sensation of ‘ red’ is simply a‘ more ’ or ‘ less’ of the sensation of ‘ yellow.’
2. The Scate of Life and Consciousness If we ‘take stock’ at this point, we have as items of Aristotle’s creed, expressed or implied: (1) Consciousness is not material. (2) In a‘ sensation’ of any kind a potentiality of a given material object or attribute and a potentiality of a given conscious- ness meet and are actualized in a psychic experience. (8) We are to accept as authentic our impression that matter exists in different and changing states in- dependently of our consciousness of it, and would so exist if no man were conscious of it. The relation of these three articles of faith with each other awaits further examination.
It will be natural to inquire first whether Aristotle believes that consciousness too, on its side, has an independent existence apart from matier and would exist if there were not a material universe δὲ all.
As to this, we note at once that it is the dominating xxix INTRODUCTION purpose of a great part at least of the Physics to prove that there are immaterial beings, and there is one supreme immaterial being subject in no way to time, place, or change, and that all these beings live a ‘ divine’ life transcending the highest experience of fruition known to man.
But this statement must be accompanied by two warnings. For (1) it must not be taken as implying any doctrine of creation. Aristotle never represents the supreme being as the creator of the material universe. On the contrary, he believes in the eternity of matter-in-motion.
And (2) he never assumes that we have a direct. and not-to-be-challenged assurance of immaterial existence, corresponding to that which he supposes us to have of the objective existence of material things. On the contrary, he holds that our belief in the immaterial and divine being of ‘ theology’ must rest on inference, since we have no direct cognisance of mentality or of any form of conscious experience or activity except in close (however mysterious) association with matter,—and that matter ‘organized’ and ‘ unified’ in some deter- mined and ἡ vital’ organism.
These terms must be more closely examined. ‘ Organs’ are differentiated parts of a single whole (the ‘ organism’) so related mutually that their several functionings are subservient to the function- ings of the organism as a whole. These functionings of an organism as a whole are something more than the mere sum of the several functionings of the organs. Health consists in the perfect balance of the activities of the several organs, considered as subservient to the ‘ life’ of the organism itself.
XXX INTRODUCTION XXX INTRODUCTION But what is ‘life’? It is a kind of functioning only found in organisms and always found in them. But it varics in its scope. At its lowest it is found in plants, which ‘ grow’ (an virtue of a principle intrinsic to themselves) by assimilation and dissimila- tion. No individual plant lives if these processes cease; aud in no case do they go on indefinitcly. All individuals, therefore, sooner or later die. But if some or all of these individuals reproduce their own kind, then that ‘kind’ may be propagated in an unlimited succession of growing and decaying individuals. ‘ Nutrition’ and ‘reproduction,’ then, constitute life in its lowest terms.
Now this ‘life’ strikes Aristotle as so marvellous that, though he has been content to consider that Ρ ywan ὅτι tha nronavtions ond modar of snamhinina JUD bd Upuls Llc SCMSCS Vi δια, Δι ALLE 9 Pose te | so forth, yet when it comes to matter itself exhibiting ‘vital’ phenomena, he seems to feel the necessity of enlarging this material basis. In his extant works there is only a single passage 5 which gives us direct light on this matter, and it is not where we should naturally have expected to find it. But Jam not aware that its authenticity has ever been challenged, and I am far from being disposed to challenge it myself. In the passage in question Aristotle declares that into the composition of all organisms (that is to say all living things) there enters, in addition to the four terrestrial elements, a fifth and ‘ celestial’ element, which element is no other than the substance of which the revolving firmament xxxi INTRODUCTION and the heavenly bodies are composed.* This fifth element shares in the dimensionality and im- penetrability of the other four, but not in their contractility. Moreover, its potentiality of motion differs from theirs.
But plants, according to Aristotle, do not feel; so we have not yet reached the proper mecting-ground of matter and consciousness. Animals, however, in addition to sharing the nutritive and (in all cases that we need consider) the reproductive life of plants, add to these powers susceptibility to sensa- tions and (in most cases) powers of locomotion. Here, then, we encounter consciousness in associa- tion with matter; for a sensation, we have seen, is a psychic experience, not a material event.
We must resist the temptation to linger over the many fascinating subjects discussed by Aristotle in relation to the special senses and their organs. He knows, for instance, that ‘touch’ is common to all animals, and that some have no other sense. Also that under the denomination of ‘touch’ we really include more than one distinct sense. He is interested in the growing refinement and, as it were, tenuity of the physical impacts on the sense organs as we pass from touch up through taste, smell, hearing, and sight. And he notes the significance of ‘the material composition of the organs of sense, in re~ lation to their functions. Further, he attempts to supplement and define our imperfect and confused vocabulary, which uses ‘ sight,’ for instance, to mean indifferently what we see, our power of seeing it, and the organs through which we exercise this power. But all this and much else we must pass over as not Xxxil INTRODUCTION strictly necessary to our general line of advance. We will, therefore, go on at once to a special docirine of Aristotle’s that is of central importance and also in great need of clear exposition.
How do we distinguish between the sensations we receive through different organs, and how do we combine them? If we know that honey is yellow and sweet and that gall is yellow and bitter, this information is not given us by the laste, which takes no cognisance of colour, nor by sight, which takes no cognisance of savour. Yet these distinctions and combinations pertain to sense. There must, then, be a general or ‘ common’ sense which receives, adopts as its own, and assimilates the reports of all the special senses, and combines these reports, as well as distinguishing between them.
It is of the greatest importance to note that the special senses already discriminate, each on its own ground, This discrimination rests upon the contrasts of change or ‘ passing’ from this to that. If there were no change, we should note and distinguish nothing. ‘This ‘ passing’ or change, then, of which change of place or position is the simplest form, is noted by all the senses. Colours, tastes, ete., all change, and the several senses discriminate between that from which and that to which they pass. These changes may be in quality (from red to yellow, or sweet to bitter) or they may be in intensity. In this latter case, therefore, each sense discriminates between the more-or-less-ness of its special percepts. This may be conceived as their great-or-small-ness, magnitude, or quantity. Again, the sensation, even if of uniform quality and intensity, may be inter- mittent or continuous, by whatever sense discerned.
xxx INTRODUCTION Thus the strokes of a clock are discrete and inter- mittent, but each one of them is continuous, though perhaps varying, as long as it dwells upon the ear. And so too each other sense discriminates on its own ground between unity and plurality and between the discrete and the continuous. And lastly each sense ean distinguish between different orders of succession, or arrangement and position, as the case may be.
Thus the ‘common sensibles’—the things of which each of the senses makes us aware on its own ground—are typified by movement, magnitude, figure (i.e. position and arrangement of parts), plurality and unity.
The ‘common sense’ has no special relation to the ‘common sensibles’ (though many expositors, betrayed by the terms, have supposed that it has), fox its office is identical with respect to the ‘ common ’ and to the special or ‘ proper’ sensibles (colour, sound, ete.), namely to lay them side by side, and to associate and combine them while distinguishing between them, but without adding to them. The common sensibles are common to all the senses; and the ‘common’ sense, therefore, has access to them through all the senses, but through the senses only; just as it has access to the special ‘ sensible,’ (say) colour, by vision, but by vision only.
Thus, in the case of special sensibles, sight may say ‘ there is yellow,’ touch ‘ there is stickiness,’ and taste ‘ there is sweetness.’ But these senses cannot make these reports to each other, and so far as they are concerned there is no relation or combination between them possible. But when they all report to the ‘common’ sense, that sense can at once distinguish between them and pronounce that they XXxXiv INTRODUCTION co-exist in associated combination. It funetions in exactly the same way in relation to the ‘ common sensibles.’ Sight may report either changes of intensity (.e. more-or-less-ness) or continuities and discontinuities (1,6. one-or-more-than-one-ness) in its impressions. And the hke with taste and touch. But only the common sense can report coincident more-or-less-nesses or coincident one-or-more-than- one-nesses, which are just as unlike each other as colour and sound. The common sense, then, gives us direct perception of a new kind of oneness, lhe oneness of an associated combination of different orders of sensation. On this Aristotle lays express and emphatic stress.
Add to this that the common sense can tell us of a combination in which some of the factors hold together in continuous association, while others change, and we shall see something, which Aristotle does not (I think) expressly tell us, but which we can see very clearly for ourselves, namely that. it 1s the common sense (not the special senses) that objectifies the world for us; for it incidentally asserts the existence of a number of concrete entities outside ourselves, which would be there though we were not. When sight says ‘ there is yellow,’ in the last resort it means only ‘ there is a certain sensation.’ But the common sense, which can take cognisance of other sense impressions, says ‘ there is something that hus colour, but, without the reports of the other special senses, I don’t know what it tastes or feels hke.’ Metaphysicians may reasonably quarrel with Aristotle for taking what either the common sense or the special senses tell us as a direct perception of ultimate truth, but I think it is quite clear that it XXXV INTRODUCTION is to his ‘ common’ or synthetic sense that he would have to trace the direct and inevitable impression of objectivity and of concrete objects.
This will explain his frequent assertion that the proper senses never err. ‘This is only intelligible if we understand their testimony to be ‘ there is this sensation,’ and no more than that. Whereas the common sense can err, because the report of common sense is really an assertion, though it does not appear to be so. For when the common sense receives the visual impression of whiteness and the combined visual and tactual impression of fine granulation, it spontaneously objectifies a ‘something’ that ‘ has ’ these qualities, and it may hastily announce that it will taste sweet and call it sugar, whereas, if it had waited for the special report of taste, it would have called it salt.
We are now prepared to understand how, on the basis of the synthetic sense (as we shall henceforth call it, to avoid ambiguity), we may trace not only changes of sensation but changes and developments of things; for if we can trace any sufficient continuity in the group of associated sensible qualities of a defined object, we think of ‘it’ as retaining its identity while changing, at once or successively, one or more of its qualities. An acorn that we have seen develop into root, stem, and leaves, while suspended in a glass vessel, and have then planted out and watched till it becomes a robust sapling, retains its identity for us throughout. Only when we cease to be able to trace any continuous ‘ association of attributes ’ at all do we say that a thing has alto- gether ‘ceased to be.’ Though even so we may believe, as Aristotle did, that the ultimate ‘ matter ’ Xxxvi INTRODUCTION of the thing really has a continuous existence still, so that in strict truth nothing ever begins to exist or ceases to exist in its entirety.
But we are anticipating; and we must go back, to ask whether the synthetic sense has an organ of its own. The modern reader will at once suggest the brain, and that was Plato’s answer. Aristotle too says in one passage that ‘ some people’ think it is the brain. In another passage he treats it as indifferent to the special point he is discussing whether it is the brain or the heart. But in yet a third passage he himself pronounces definitely for the heart. Naturally this has been regarded as showing great perversity or want of intelligence on his part by those ‘ moderns’ who judge of the in- telhgence of an ‘ ancient’ by the measure in which his conclusions coincide with those of modern science or diverge from them, rather than by the way in which he handled the materials that were at his command. From this latter point of view it is interesting to note that Professor D’Arcy Thompson tells us that, in the then state of anatomical and embryological science, Aristotle could give a very good account of the grounds of his belief on this matter.
Be this as it may, the further examination of the relations of the special and the synthetic senses to each other will throw much light on Aristotle’s general philosophy; but before we try to develop it we must take a rapid survey of the psychic super- structure which, according to Aristotle, is built up in animals (to different heights in different cases) on the basis of the life of sense.
The modern reader will find it best to regard these xxxvii INTRODUCTION developments as taking place in direct connexion with the organ of the synthetic sense (to us the brain), considcred as that to which all the others make their reports—remembering, however, that it is entirely dependent upon these special senses for the materials which it combines.
Sensations, then, are provoked by external objects. But as a fact some kind of impression is apt to remain upon the consciousness when these objects are withdrawn; and such impressions, even when no longer present to the consciousness, can sometimes be recalled. This is to say (though not to explain) that the life of some animals includes memory and recollection and, further, a power of forming ‘images’ of absent objects and of the sensations they might provoke and have provoked when present. ‘Image-forming ’ (whence our ‘ imagina- tion ') is, however, a misleading term, in so far as it has felt the ‘ tyranny ’ (as it has been called) of the visual sense, which in virtue of its vividness asserts a kind of primacy in determining our language. It must be understood, then, that to recall or ‘ conjure up’ sounds, or tastes, or other sense-impressions, is as much to be included in our conception of image- forming as if these impressions were visual.
But further, sensations are pleasant or unpleasant. Also our image-forming may be anticipatory as well as retrospective. Hence desires, loves, fears, and so forth.
Moreover we can move, and by moving can often avoid or secure painful or pleasant experiences.
We are now already in the region of desires, pur- poses, and even passions; and it will repay us to re-examine, with reference to the richer psychic life Kxxvili INTRODUCTION we are now dealing with, the relations (mysterious as they must always remain) into which the physical and psychic factors of existence enter with each other in a vital organism.
In the case of mere sensations we recognized the object perceived as the cause and the sensation as the effect, while guarding against the blunder of supposing that the vibrating gong, or the vibrating air outside or inside the ear, zs the sensation.
When we come to the passions and affections, we can, at any rate in some cases, trace the associated physical and psychic events and describe them each in terms appropriate to its nature; but the difference between them becomes easier to see, and their causal relations far more complex, than in the case of the senses.
Aristotle tells us * that anger might be defined by the biologist as ‘the seething of the blood, or heat, in the region of the heart,’ and by the psychologist as ‘a desire to hit back’; but he leaves us in no doubt that, in his opinion, the psychologist really is trying to tell us what anger is, and the physiologist only to describe physical events that are concomitant with it. But can we now say that the physical event is the cause of the psychic experience? Might we not equally well say that my being angry is what makes the blood seethe? Neither statement is all the truth. I may be angry because a man has used insulting language to me, and that feeling may literally stir my blood. Or my blood may be stirred by some physical process, and that may make me (if not actually angry) so irritable that the most trivial provocation makes me dangerous. Here we have XXXIX INTRODUCTION two causal chains of succession, one physical and one psychic, each of which may be traced along its own hme irrespective of the other, but which are con- stantly reacting both ways (not only one way, as with the senses) upon each other.* Fear (also cited by Aristotle) is, perhaps, a still better example than anger of psychical causes producing physical effects that seem to have no physically causal antecedents, or physical causes producing psychical effects that seem to have no psychically causal antecedents.
There is another aspect of the reactions we are considering, which has only been touched on as yet incidentally. We men, and all the higher animals, can move our limbs. Thereby we can change the positions of things amongst themselves and so modify their reactions upon each other, and we can also change our own position with reference to them and so modify the reactions between ourselves and them. All we can say about this mysterious power is that it does not appear to be of the order of physical impacts by which a body already in motion sets or keeps another body in motion, but is rather a case of a psychic fact, of the order of desires or the like, which produces a physical effect subservient in its turn to the gratification of some psychic impulse or desire. All the higher animals, then, can adapt their actions to the satisfaction of their impulses and desires.
But there is a region which we shall, perhaps, still be safe in claiming, as Aristotle claimed it, as 9 [Using ‘ cause’ in Aristotle’s sense, which covers the internal constituents of a thing as well as its antecedents, anger can be called the formal, seething of the blood the material ‘ cause ’ (or aspect) of a single event—C.]
xl INTRODUCTION accessible to man alone of earthly beings. Does anyone claim for dog, elephant, or ape a love of truth inthe abstract? Aristotle (somewhat rashly) claimed it for every human being. ‘All men by nature desire to know,’ he says, and by ‘ knowing ’ he meant not ‘ being familiar with’ or ‘knowing how to deal with,’ but ‘ understanding,’ to the limit of human capacity, the nature and truth of things, for the sake of understanding it, apart from any material utilities it may bring with it. This is what I mean by love of ‘ truth in the abstract’; and the power of seeking it Aristotle regarded as an aspect, or factor, or activity of human ‘aliveness’ not shared by any other terrestrial animal. We shall not be far from Aristotle's own terminology if we call it ‘ mind’ or ‘mentality,’ ¢ The stress laid on it by Aristotle is characteristically Greek, and he is so deeply impressed by its signifi- cance that as he demanded a fifth and celestial element when he came to life, so here he demands, not another element but a contact of man, and man alone, with a divine mind or mentality that already enjoys in actuality all, and more than all, the potenti- alities which constitute the human mind. On this subject we have but a few broken and mysterious phrases, which Aristotle’s immediate disciples could but imperfectly interpret; they will be best treated under the heading of Cosmography. But as to the nature, as distinct from the origin, of this mental faculty in man, we are perfectly well informed. It lies in the word ‘ abstract,’ already used, and we must approach it historically.
The early Greek thinkers had felt that truth must ® See below, p. ᾿χαν xli INTRODUCTION in its nature be always the same and always true, whereas things and people, and all that our senses and sense-experiences reveal to us, are perpetually changing; and since our minds can get at nothing outside themsclves except through the senses, how can we extract the abiding and changeless from the fleeting and variable, or build the permanent truth upon passing shows? One answer was: We cannot. The very permanence of truth warns us against looking for it in passing shows. If it is anywhere, it is in the mind. Whatever is or appears to be changing (that is to say, all the world of sense) is un- true and illusory. Another was: We cannot, because there is nothing permanent, and the mind that vaunts its superiority over the senses is absolutely dependent upon them and, if they are false, is doubly false itself.
The great philosophers of the fifth and fourth centuries 8.0. inherited this problem and found both answers unsatisfactory. According to Aristotle, it was Socrates who first put us on the right track by calling our attention to classes oy hinds of actions and qualities which we group together because of their resemblances in spite of their manifest differences. Their differences are observed, their resemblances are felt, and in virtue of those resemblances we give them collective names. Wherein exactly does that resemblance consist?
If answers could be found to the questions thus raised, we should have in the goodness of things good, in the beauty of things beautiful, in the con- vincingness of convincing arguments, in the materi- ality of material things, in the straightness of straight things, in the equality of equal things, in the virtue xii INTRODUCTION of virtuous acts and the rightness of right disposi- tions, possibly also in the tableness of tables and the vitality of things living, something that does not change and that can give us the feeling that we are not only acquainted with beautiful things and so on, but understand why they are beautiful, or whatever it may be. This would be true knowledge of permanent and abiding truth reached by the mind, even if the material out of which the mind extracted it were all of it fleeting.
It was in the field of the moral, social, and in- tellectual life that Socrates sought for the abiding and essential truth, but it was under the stimulus of his search that the general conception of ‘ classes’ ov ‘kinds’ in which there was a group resemblance amid individual differences first distinctly emerged. It has ever since remained at the basis of science and philosophy alike, for it is the principle of generalization and classification.
The many-sided genius of Plato inherited this problem from Socrates, and according to some recent writers he also inherited from him the attempted solution known as the ‘ philosophy of Ideas.’ But in this exposition I follow, with great confidence, the express testimony of Aristotle, who assigns the philosophic system to Plato himself.
The word ‘Idea,’ in this connexion, is open to legitimate challenge, and easily lends itself to mis- conception. In any case it seems clear that the ‘Ideas’ sank into the background of Plato’s mind in the later and perhaps most characteristic phase of his thought. Moreover the dialogue, which is Plato’s favourite literary form, makes it difficult definitely to commit him to the utterances of any VOL, I d xiii INTRODUCTION interlocutor, however strongly we may suspect such utterances to be the unqualified expression of his own belief; and the iridescent beauty of his sug- gestive and elusive handling of the ineffable makes it the extreme of rashness to translate his vision into dogma, But this is exactly what Aristotle is accused (and I think justly accused) of doing; and as our main business is with Aristotle, and Aristotle’s polemic against Plato is generally directed specifically against the doctrine of Ideas, I must try to give such an account of that doctrine as will enable us to understand Anslotle’s dissent from it. Such an account must not pretend to adequacy or complete- ness, but it must aim at complete fidelity as far as it goes.
I think it is safe to say that, according to the doctrine of Ideas, there is an order of reality higher than that of the phenomenal world of things and concrete experiences. In this order truth is nothing but Truth’s self, beauty nothing but Beauty’s self, and so forth, whereas the beautiful things we know are beautiful things, or poems, or thoughts, that is to say they are poems, or whatever it may be, that participate in real and absolute Beauty and are beautiful in virtue of such participation, but are not Beauty's self.
But how do we know thal they participate in Beauty if we never saw or knew Beauty herself? At least two suggestions of an answer are made by Plato in different dialogues.
Had we, before we were born into this material order of things, actually experienced a life of converse with absolute Truth, Beauty and the rest, and did birth bring with it forgetfulness, but yet leave us xliv INTRODUCTION a reminiscent inslinct by which we can recognize its traces, or its more or less distorted reflections, in the phenomenal world, as recalling some far-away we-know-not-what that claims our delighted allegi- ance? This would make a mathematical demonstra- tion, for instance, less an acquiring of fresh know- ledge than a recalling to distinctness of knowledge that had been obscured.
Or should we rather say that the things we call beautiful are really beautiful only because they partake of Beauty’s self, and they really attract us in virtue of this participation; but in our material and immature state it is only when embodied in comparatively gross things that Beauty can attract us αἱ all? And is there a discipline, intellectual and moral, that can teach us to apprehend beauty in ever more refined and noble forms till at last Beauty herself reveals herself to us unassociated with any- thing meaner than herself and we are rid at last of illusions and touch upon the eternal and changeless reality?
Now I shall try to show presently that Aristotle had been profoundly and permanently influenced by Plato’s vision of life in the realm of Ideas. But his own specific contribution to philosophy consisted, in his own mind, in a demonstration that the Ideas have no such absolute existence as Plato claims for them, that the hypothesis of their existence is quite gratuitous and explains nothing, and that what they were vainly designed to find is within our grasp without them.
What then is his own teaching on the subject of access to the permanent truth in a world of constant changes? It is very simple, and the plain man will xlv INTRODUCTION probably adopt it as his own as soon as he under- stands it and will wonder why anything so obvious ever needed to be ‘ found out ’ at all.
Let us go back to the common or synthctic sense and the special senses. In a remarkable passage, after he has introduced us to the synthetic sense, Aristotle emphasizes the value of the special senses in spontaneously, and in a way objectively, separating out and disengaging from their concomitants certain sense-impressions. Colour is seen, not felt, smelt, tasted, or touched. Colour does not and cannot exist except as the colour of something, but we are aware of it in itself as distinct from all the other sensations that the ‘ something ’ may or does provoke in us. Now we have noticed already that, though Aristotle assumes (without proving) the objectivity of things, yet, in assigning to the common sense the direct perccption of a concrete ‘ oneness’ that he does not find revealed by any of the special senses, he comes very near to declaring objectivity to be a direct datum of the common sense. It would seem, then, that, though we are tempted to call the common sense ‘synthetic’ because we have been introduced to it as the putting together of the data of the special senses, we shall probably be nearer Aristotle’s. fundamental thought if we regard the common sense as giving us direct cognisance of concrete objects, and the special senses as barring out all the orders of impressions which the object is capable of pro- voking except one, simply because it is incapable of being provoked by them. Thus the special senses are spontaneously and inevitably analytical. Now