!

*

human will;) and, lastly, the results to which it tends, namely, the performing of just actions, which is its final cause. We said that a completely philosophical account of any object would be one which described it under each of its causes. But there are very few objects of science which, in the imperfect state of human knowledge, can be fully treated in accordance with every principle of investigation. Some, therefore, are treated more in accordance with one principle, some more in accordance with another and a division of the various parts of philosophy may be made, founded upon the principles of which each is susceptible. Thus, metaphysics, considered as the science which endeavours to penetrate the mysteries of existence, takes cognizance of the formal cause, Logic and rhetoric direct how certain effects are to be produced, and therefore proceed upon the efficient cause. Moral philosophy, which embraces the ends of human action, is treated by the method of final cause; and, according to modern views, physical philosophy, having for its subject-matter the phenomena of nature, and their invariable sequences, would as certainly be conversant with the material cause.

We return to our point when we say that Aristotle, however, regarded physical science as inquiring into the formal cause, or essence, of things; not as having fulfilled its work when it has simply pointed out the invariable antecedents of the phenomena which may be under discussion. This was consistent with his belief: first, that every natural object had one particular essence or definition, and no more; secondly, that this was discoverable. Bacon, more correct in his conception of the sphere of physical philosophy, was by no means so consistent in his nomenclature. His discussion of the Aristotelian doctrine of the Four Causes, at the opening of the second book of the Novum Organum, is confused and unsatisfactory. He says very truly, that the discovery of form, or essence, may be considered desperate; yet, in deference to ancient usage, he adopts the word 'form' to designate the function and method of physical philosophy. His value as a philosopher consists in having clearly perceived that physical philosophy takes no account of the essence or complete nature of things in themselves; but that, having traced an invariable

èv

* It would be an instructive exercise to examine some of Aristotle's definitions with the view of discovering how exactly they may often be made to fall in with the scheme of the Four Causes. Take, e. g., his definition of happiness, in Eth. Nic., i., Ενέργεια ψυχῆς κατ' ἀρετὴν ἀρίστην ἐν βίῳ τελείῳ; i. e., a life passed in pursuit of the highest virtue during a sufficient time for its attainment.' Here the whole definition is the formal cause ; the words ενέργεια ψυχής express the material cause; κατ ̓ ἀρετὴν ἀρίστην express the efficient or motive cause ; ἐν βίφ τελείφ, the final cause.

Aristotelian and Baconian Conception of Nature. 381

sequence in certain classes cf phenomena, it has accomplished its utmost, and can only register its observation as a law of nature. Nothing, he observes, exists in nature, except individual bodies, exhibiting clear individual effects, according to particular laws; and in each branch of science this law is to be ascertained, in order that it may become the foundation of future theory and practice. It is to he regretted that he chose the inappropriate word 'form' for the law of nature. But Bacon was by no means free from the metaphysical tendency of Aristotle; and (in Aph. 4., lib. ii.) almost immediately after identifying the term 'form with ́law of nature,' in the modern signification, he describes its meaning in words only suitable to its Aristotelian sense.” Yet the inconsistency may be pardoned even to the mighty intellect of Bacon; for the limit that separated physics from metaphysics continues to advance and recede to this day; and the question is still agitated, What is that common nature by virtue of possessing which individual objects are grouped together in classes? In other words, What is species?

The discovery of 'form' was, then, the object of physical science according to both Aristotle and Bacon. Form' was, with the latter, identical with law of nature; with the former it was identical with the conceptions of the mind as to what really exists in nature. Nature, therefore, was with each of these great thinkers, so to speak, the material on which physical science was to be exercised, the antecedent to the existence of physical science, and the foundation of the mighty edifice. It remains, therefore, to inquire into the conception which each of them had of nature. That of Aristotle was the wider of the two. One of the applied significations of the word 'nature,' in his works, makes it identical with the term being.' The investigation of being' is, according to him, the object of metaphysics. The investigation of being is equally the subject of physics: the difference between the two sciences consisting in their manner of regarding the subject matter. But elsewhere he says that things that have their being by nature' are the object of physical philosophy.† Did he then regard' being as co-extensive with nature, or not? It seems easy to answer, that he regarded being as the wider term; nature as being' under modification, as conjoined, e.g., with matter. He did so logically, no doubt, but not actually; and his reader finds in him the extraordinary incongruity that, whilst he declares the object of metaphysics to be being' in its highest abstraction, eternal, immutable, necessary, intelligent, separate from matter,

و

* Metaphysics, iii. 1. VOL. XVII. NO. XXXIV.

† Physics, ii. 1.

C C

Metaphysics, iii. 1,

+

and consisting in 'pure action; whilst he terms it Deity,' and the science itself Theology; he does not conceive it to have any existence beyond and outside of the universe. Here the pantheism, from which he could not escape, came in the way, and prevented him from perceiving that personal existence, beyond the limits of time and space, is indispensable to any coherent account of the origin of things, that is not grounded on the assumption of the eternity of matter. Without revelation, Aristotle had no alternative; and assuming the eternity of matter, of course, he consistently denied the supra-mundane existence of the great First Cause.' He endeavours to reduce being,' as the object of metaphysics, to a very high state of abstraction;⠀⠀ but cannot entirely separate it from a material existence. Consequently his account of the respective objects of metaphysical and physical philosophy is liable to inevitable confusion.

It was different with Bacon: the Christian religion enabled him to stand on higher ground, and it is not too much to say that the whole Baconian philosophy is rooted upon the revelation of the Deity as the Infinite Person. Nature became limited to the creation of God, and the province of physical philosophy determined.

1

Let us now rapidly go over the ground traversed in this comparison of Aristotle and Bacon. Philosophy, with each of them, was an inquiry into the causes of things. They both termed the cause which accounts philosophically for an object being what it is, the form of that object; although they did not attach the same meaning to that expression. They both regarded nature as the province of physical philosophy; but the Greek conception of nature was wider and vaguer than the modern conception.

One further point of comparison remains; but our article has already reached so considerable a length that we can scarcely do more than institute and leave it. We have seen that Aristotle and Bacon agreed closely in their views of science; but there lay one remarkable difference between them. The one began where the other ended. The one started from the highest abstractions, the other from the lowest facts, both dealing with

イ

So we translate évépyeia. (Metaphysics, iv., 7.) Compare Bacon's actus purus. * Φανερὸν δὲ καὶ ἐκ τοῦδε ὅτι ἀναγκὴ εἶναι τι ἂν καὶ ἀΐδιον τὸ πρῶτον κινοῦν δέδεικται γὰρ ὅτι ἀνάγκη ἀεὶ κίνησιν εἶναι. Εἰ δὲ ἀεί, ἀνάγκῃ καὶ συναχῆ εἶναι· καὶ γὰρ τὸ ἀεὶ συνεχές, τὸ δὲ ἐφεξῆς οὐ συνεχες. ̓Αλλὰ μὴν εἴ γε συνεχές, μία μία δ ̓, εἰ ὑφ ̓ ενός τε τοῦ κινοῦντος καὶ ἑνὸς τοῦ κινουμένου. (Physics, viii. 6.) The prime motor then, which in other passages he describes in such abstract terms, is here mixed up 0 ' what moves,' and 'what is moved,'-metaphysics confounded with physics.

Method of Aristotle That of Bacon.

888

the same object matter. Now what was the method of each? They were both seeking for the forms of things, how did they seek? They were both dealing with nature,in what way?

Aristotle (in Nat Ausplays down the three most abstract principles under which we can conceive of an object; and two of these three are his instruments in the discovery of form' Since 5 form? was, in his eyes, the complete mental and abstract conception of an object under inspection, it was consistent to investigate it by mental and abstract methods. His three principles are, matter, form, privation. These are the ultimate conceptions under which the mind can contemplate the objects of the sensible universe. Matter, which is expressed by various phrases in his works, is simply that antecedent without which there could be no form. It means simply given subject of investigation. Now every subject in the universe is under the influence of the other two principles, form and privation. Form is its actual essence; privation is the essence or essences of the possibility of assuming which it has been deprived by taking the form that it has. This doctrine originated with the Pytha goreans. How futile it was as an instrument in discovery Aristotle himself seems to have perceived.

!

But let us interrupt ourselves to compare these famous prin ciples with those of Bacon. Matter, or subject, would seem to correspond with tolerable accuracy to the instantia of the great Englishman; which, as all the world knows, were specimens of the individual objects in which the form or law under investigation was supposed to occur, enumerated and arranged according to particular directions. Privation, again, is analogous to the abscissio infiniti' of modern inductive philosophy. The latter term expresses a process of continued rejection of characteristics which do not contain the proper nature of a subject and the attaining of an ultimate fact.

To return, however, to Aristotle. He perceived, we say, the futility of the ancient doctrine of form and privation in giving an account of the essence of things. He, therefore, refined upon it. To interpret nature he again appealed to man and human affairs. He knew that what was the essence of the character of man, as an individual, at one time, ceased to be so at another. Disinterested heroism was at first an essential characteristic of Dion the Syracusan; afterwards he lost (privation) that characteristic, and in becoming an usurping tyrant acquired another. So of societies. Barbarism may at one time be characteristic of a state; but the same state may advance to civili

Arist. Met., A., 5; Eth. Nic i, 4; Phys., iii., 2,

zation. Aristotle applied this theory to nature; and argued that forms in nature are, not attained at once; nor do neces+ sarily remain always the same. Philosophy, therefore, should be able to enumerate the various steps of progress made by nature in attaining forms; to catalogue the various conceivable kinds of change. Hence his endless disquisitions on motion? and 'change; and their subdivisions into generation, dissolution, alteration, mixture, and other varieties, which it would be alike tedious and profitless to recapitulate. Hence his definition of nature itself as a principle of motion." Hi omi nul sarwah

Such an explanation agreed with, Aristotle's pantheistic conception of nature. He regarded nature as self moving and selfsupporting; and tending by continuous instinct to obtain by degrees the best forms of life in each case, But its abstracted, ness rendered abortive this last attempt of the Stagyrite to erect a physical philosophy. He had only given the world a dictionary in which the different words denoting change) or motion were accurately distinguished from one another. lle had not given the means for detecting a single form in nature, An observer finding, e. g., that a piece of copper wire, had suddenly become possessed of magnetic properties, and applying to the Aristotelian for explanation, would not have been aided. He would have been told under what species of change such a phenomenon was most accurately to be included; but, on turning to the records of that species of change, would have found no positive assertions about its properties, but merely the marks by which it was distinguished from other species of change as a conception of the mind. There is something analogous to change' in the Baconian philosophy; but this has been fruitful of discovery. Bacon knew nothing of an universal instinct in nature to perfect herself; but he knew that trees grew, that stones and rocks changed their contours, that the stomach assi milates food, that one substance is sometimes transformed into another. He, therefore, affirmed a general law of nature; applicable to all such cases, which he terms the 'latens processus ad formam,' or, the gradation of movements in the molicula of bodies when they either keep or change their form. This kind of inquiry, he truly says, is of greater promise than the ancient one: For all their investigations take into consideration certain particular and special habits of nature, and not those fundamental and general laws which constitute form.' to on muoque We have been led into these remarks from a contemplation of the most celebrated cosmical theories of the ancients. That

* Novum Organumz Ïí‹ ́õ,