Aristotle
indeed the truth of any proposition, to the exclusion of its
contradictory antithesis, which concession he admits would involve
_Petitio Principii_, but) the fixed and uniform signification of
terms and propositions. Aristotle contends that the opponents ought
to grant thus much, under penalty of being excluded from discussion
as incapables or mere plants.[68] I do not imagine that the opponents
themselves would have felt obliged to grant as much as he here
demands. The _onus probandi_ lay upon him, as advancing a positive
theory; and he would have found his indirect or refutative
demonstration not more available in convincing them than a direct or
ordinary demonstration. Against respondents who proclaim as their
thesis the negative of the Maxim of Contradiction, refutation and
demonstration are equally impossible. No dialectical discussion could
ever lead to any result; for you can never prove more against them
than what their own thesis unequivocally avows.[69] As against
Herakleitus and Anaxagoras, I do not think that Aristotle's qualified
vindication of the Maxim has any effective bearing.
[Footnote 68: Aristot. Metaph. [Greek: G]. iv. p. 1006, a. 11, seq.]
[Footnote 69: Ibid. a. 26: [Greek: a)nairô=n ga\r lo/gon u(pome/nei
lo/gon.]--p. 1008, a. 30.]
But Aristotle is quite right in saying that neither dialectical
debate nor demonstration can be carried on unless terms and
propositions be defined, and unless to each term there be assigned
one special signification, or a limited number of special
significations--excluding a certain number of others. This demand for
definitions, and also the multiplied use of inductive interrogations,
keeping the Universal implicated with and dependent upon its
particulars--are the innovations which Aristotle expressly places to
the credit of Sokrates. The Sokratic Elenchus operated by first
obtaining from the respondent a definition, and then testing it
through a variety of particulars: when the test brought out a
negative as against the pre-asserted affirmative, the contradiction
between the two was felt as an intellectual shock by the respondent,
rendering it impossible to believe both at once; and the unrivalled
acuteness of Sokrates was exhibited in rendering such shock
peculiarly pungent and humiliating. But the Sokratic Elenchus
presupposes this psychological fact, common to most minds, ordinary
as well as superior,--the intellectual shock felt when incompatible
beliefs are presented to the mind at once. If the collocutors of
Sokrates had not been so constituted by nature, the magic of his
colloquy would have been unfelt and inoperative. Against a
Herakleitean, who professed to feel no difficulty in believing both
sides of a contradiction at once, he could have effected nothing: and
if not he, still less any other dialectician. Proof and disproof, as
distinguished one from the other, would have had no meaning;
dialectical debate would have led to no result.
Thus, then, although Aristotle was the first to enunciate the Maxim
of Contradiction in general terms, after having previously originated
that logical distinction of contrary and contradictory Propositions
and doctrine of legitimate _Antiphasis_ which rendered such
enunciation possible,--yet, when he tries to uphold it against
dissentients, it cannot be said that he has correctly estimated the
logical position of those whom he was opposing, or the real extent to
which the defence of the Maxim can be carried without incurring the
charge of _Petitio Principii_. As against Protagoras, no defence was
needed, for the Protagorean "_Homo Mensura_" is not incompatible with
the Maxim of Contradiction; while, as against Herakleitus,
Anaxagoras, Parmenides, &c., no defence was practicable, and the
attempt of Aristotle to construct one appears to me a failure. All
that can be really done in the way of defence is, to prove the Maxim
in its general enunciation by an appeal to particular cases: if your
opponent is willing to grant these particular cases, you establish
the general Maxim against him by way of Induction; if he will not
grant them, you cannot prove the general Maxim at all. Suppose you
are attempting to prove to an Herakleitean that an universal
affirmative and its contradictory particular negative cannot be both
true at once. You begin by asking him about particular cases, Whether
it is possible that the two propositions--All men are mortal, and,
Some men are not mortal--can both be true at once? If he admits that
these two propositions cannot both be true at once, if he admits the
like with regard to other similar pairs of contradictories, and if he
can suggest no similar pair in which both propositions are true at
once, then you may consider yourself as having furnished a sufficient
inductive proof, and you may call upon him to admit the Maxim of
Contradiction in its general enunciation. But, if he will not admit
it in the particular cases which you tender, or if, while admitting
it in these, he himself can tender other cases in which he considers
it inadmissible, then you have effected nothing sufficient to
establish the general Maxim against him. The case is not susceptible
of any other or better proof. It is in vain that Aristotle tries to
diversify the absurdity, and to follow it out into collateral absurd
consequences. If the Herakleitean does not feel any repulsive shock
of contradiction in a definite particular case, if he directly
announces that he believes the two propositions to be both at once
true, then the collateral inconsistencies and derivative absurdities,
which Aristotle multiplies against him, will not shock him more than
the direct contradiction in its naked form. Neither the general
reasoning of Aristotle, nor the Elenchus of Sokrates brought to bear
in particular cases, would make any impression upon him; since he
will not comply with either of the two conditions required for the
Sokratic Elenchus: he will neither declare definitions, nor give
suitable point and sequence to inductive interrogatories.
Nor is anything gained, as Aristotle supposes, by reminding the
Herakleitean of his own practice in the daily concerns of life and in
conversation with common persons: that he feeds himself with bread
to-day, in the confidence that it has the same properties as it had
yesterday;[70] that, if he wishes either to give or to obtain
information, the speech which he utters or that which he acts upon
must be either affirmative or negative. He will admit that he acts in
this way, but he will tell you that he has no certainty of being
right; that the negative may be true as well as the affirmative. He
will grant that there is an inconsistency between such acts of detail
and the principles of the Herakleitean doctrine, which recognize no
real stability of any thing, but only perpetual flux or process; but
inconsistency in detail will not induce him to set aside his
principles. The truth is, that neither Herakleitus, nor Parmenides,
nor Anaxagoras, nor Pythagoras, gave themselves much trouble to
reconcile Philosophy with facts of detail. Each fastened upon some
grand and impressive primary hypothesis, illustrated it by a few
obvious facts in harmony therewith, and disregarded altogether the
mass of contradictory facts. That a favourite hypothesis should
contradict physical details, was noway shocking to them. Both the
painful feeling accompanying that shock, and the disposition to test
the value of the hypothesis by its consistency with inductive
details, became first developed and attended to in the dialectical
age, mainly through the working of Sokrates. The Analytic and the
First Philosophy of Aristotle were constructed after the time of
Sokrates, and with regard, in a very great degree, to the Sokratic
tests and conditions--to the indispensable necessity for definite
subjects and predicates, capable of standing the inductive scrutiny
of particulars. In this respect the _Philosophia Prima_ of Aristotle
stands distinguished from that of any of the earlier philosophers,
and even from that of Plato. He departed from Plato by recognizing
the _Hoc Aliquid_ or the definite Individual, with its essential
Predicates, as the foundation of the Universal, and by applying his
analytical factors of Form and Matter to the intellectual generation
of the Individual ([Greek: to\ su/nolon--to\ sunampho/teron]); and
thus he devised a First Philosophy conformable to the habits of
common speech as rectified by the critical scrutiny of Sokrates. We
shall see this in the next Chapter. * * * *
[Footnote 70: Aristot. Metaph. K. vi. p. 1063, a. 31.]
[The Author's MS. breaks off here. What follows on the next page, as
Chapter XII, is the exposition of Aristotle's Psychology, originally
contributed to the third edition of Professor Bain's work 'The Senses
and the Intellect,' in 1868.]
CHAPTER XII.
DE ANIMÂ, ETC.
To understand Aristotle's Psychology, we must look at it in
comparison with the views of other ancient Greek philosophers on the
same subject, as far as our knowledge will permit. Of these ancient
philosophers, none have been preserved to us except Plato, and to a
certain extent Epikurus, reckoning the poem of Lucretius as a
complement to the epistolary remnants of Epikurus himself. The
predecessors of Aristotle (apart from Plato) are known only through
small fragments from themselves, and imperfect notices by others;
among which notices the best are from Aristotle himself.
In the Timæus of Plato we find Psychology, in a very large and
comprehensive sense, identified with Kosmology. The Kosmos, a scheme
of rotatory spheres, has both a soul and a body: of the two, the soul
is the prior, grander, and predominant, though both of them are
constructed or put together by the Divine Architect or Demiurgus. The
kosmical soul, rooted at the centre, and stretched from thence
through and around the whole, is endued with self-movement, and with
the power of initiating movement in the kosmical body; moreover,
being cognitive as well as motive, it includes in itself three
ingredients mixed together:--(1) The Same--the indivisible and
unchangeable essence of Ideas; (2) The Diverse--the Plural--the
divisible bodies or elements; (3) A Compound, formed of both these
ingredients melted into one. As the kosmical soul is intended to know
all the three--_Idem_, _Diversum_, and _Idem_ with _Diversum_ in one,
so it must comprise in its own nature all the three ingredients,
according to the received Axiom--Like knows like--Like is known by
Like. The ingredients are blended together according to a scale of
harmonic proportion. The element _Idem_ is placed in an even and
undivided rotation of the outer or sidereal sphere of the Kosmos; the
element _Diversum_ is distributed among the rotations, all oblique,
of the seven interior planetary spheres, that is, the five planets,
with the Sun and Moon. Impressions of identity and diversity, derived
either from the ideal and indivisible, or from the sensible and
divisible, are thus circulated by the kosmical soul throughout its
own entire range, yet without either voice or sound. Reason and
Science are propagated by the circle of _Idem_: Sense and Opinion, by
those of _Diversum_. When these last-mentioned circles are in right
movement, the opinions circulated are true and trustworthy.[1]
[Footnote 1: See this doctrine of the Timæus more fully expounded in
'Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates,' III. xxxvi.
pp. 250-256, seq.]
It is thus that Plato begins his Psychology with Kosmology: the
Kosmos is in his view a divine immortal being or animal, composed of
a spherical rotatory body and a rational soul, cognitive as well as
motive. Among the tenants of this Kosmos are included, not only gods,