Illus t ra ted Ca me o s

o f L i t e ra t u r e . Ed i t e d
b y G e o rg e B ra n d e s

A RI S T O T L E

FRI T &
M A UTHNER
T RANSLAT ED B Y

CHARLES D G O RDO N
.

Mc c LURE PHILLIPS
, co . 1 90
7
 & M R 01) 0 01 1 0 or ,

T CANN O T 3B D ENTE D
{ba t tlz e a ca d e mi c p
ex r ess i on

“
Li ter a tur e &
is an i ll -fa vour ed
wor d . I t i nvol unta ri ly ca ll s up

I lse Anti th esi s ]

a L ifie, o
f Per
s ona l Exp eri ence f
o the Si mpl e Expressi on of
Wi & wi
,

Toot/g ist a nd Feel i ng . t: za t s corn d oes

Ver la i ne excla i ns i n b i s Poems

Jud ti e Rest i s onl

y Li ter ansr e .

Tbe w ord is not em ploy ed b er e i n Ver la i ne s

’

s ens e. W I mp
e ers ona l is to be excl ud ed
f r om

I bi s Coll ecti on . N otwi ths ta nd i ng i ts sol i d ba si s ,

tlze mod er n mode of &be Es say g i ves ful l pl ay
ona l d om
f p
o ers f r ee i n tl ze k e ndl i n
g f
o i t s

ma tter .
 I n w ri ti ng a n enti re H i s tory f
o L i ter a tur e ,
one

is una ble to ta ke equa l i nter es t i n a ll i ts deta i ls .

M uch i s i ncl uded beca us e i t bel ong s th er e, but

ha s to be des cr i bed a nd cr i ti ci s ed o
f neces s i ty ,

not des i r e . Whi l e th e Auth or concentr a tes

h i ms elf c on a more upon the pa r ts wh i ch, i n

a ccor d a nce w i th h i s tem er a ment,
p a ttr a ct hi s
sy mpa thi es , or r i vet hi s a ttenti on by th ei r

cha r a cter i s ti c ty pes ,

he p
a cce ts th e res t a s un

a voi da ble s tu fi n
g, i n or der to es ca pe th e r ep roa ch
o
f ig nor a nce or defect . I n th e Essay ther e is no
p a ddi n
g . N othi ng is put i n fi om exter na l con
s id er a ti ons . The Author her e a d mi ts no tem

p or i s i n
g w i th h i s s ub ect.
j
H ow ever foreig n the theme may be to hi m,
the r e is a l way s s ome poi nt o
f conta ct betw een

h i ms elf a nd th e s tr a n e
g Per s ona l i ty . Ther e i s
cer ta i n to be s ome crevi ce thr ou h w h i ch he ca n
g
i ns i nua te h i ms elf i nto thi s a li en na ture, a ter f the

fas f the
hi on o cunni n
g a ctor w i th h i s pa rt . He
 7
tr i es to f eel i ts eeli n s , to thi nk
f i ts th oug ht s, to
g
d i vi ne i ts i ns t i ncts , to d i s cover i ts i mpul s es a nd

i ts w i ll — th en r etr ea ts f m i t
ro once more, a nd

s ets d own w ha t he ha s g a ther ed .

O r he s teeps h i ms elf i nti ma tely i n the s ub ect,

j
ti ll h e feel s tha t the Ali en Per sona l i q i s beg i nni ng
to l i ve i n hi m I t may be months befor e th i s
.

h a ppens ; but i t comes a t la st . Another B ei ng

fills him , f or the ti me hi s s oul is ca pti ve to i t ,

a nd when he beg i ns t o p
ex res s h i mself i n wor ds ,
he is fi eed , a s
'
i t w ere, fi om '
a n e vil drea ns, the

It is a w elcome ta s k to one who f eel s

h i mself con eni a l to some Grea t or Sig nifica nt

g
Man ,
to gi ve expr es s i on to hi s cor d i a l
fl el i n s
g
an d hi s i nspi r a ti on . I t becomes an obs essi on

wi th h i m to co mmuni ca te to ot ersh wha t he sees

i n hi s I d ol, hi s D i vi ni ty . Yet i t i s not I nspir a

ti on orf hi s Subj ect a l one tha t ma kes the Ess ay i st .

Some poi nt th a t ha s no ma r ked a ttr a cti on

8

i n i ts elf may be i nexpr ess i bly preci ous to th e

Author as M a teri a l, p res enti ng i ts elf to h i m
wi th s ome ra r e s ta mp or unexpected fea ture
, ,

tha t aflord s a speci a l vehi cl e f or the expr es s i on of

hi s temper a ment Every ma n f a vour s w ha t he

.

ca n des cri be or f set or th better tha n h i s neig h bours ;

'

ea ch s eeks the S tufl tha t ca l ls out h i s capa ci ti es ,

a nd i ves h i m oppor tuni ty to s how wha t he i s

g
capa ble o f . h W
ether th e Pers ona l i q portr ay ed

be at h i s Antipodes , whether or no h e ha ve one

si n
g l e I d ea i n co mmon w i th hi m, ma tters nothi ng .

The p i ctur e may i n s ooth be mos t s ucces sful w h en

the Or igi na l i s enti r ely remotefrom the del i nea tor ,

in vi r tue f
o contra ry tem er a ment,
p or tota l ly
d ifler ent m enta l i g ,
—j u t s beca us e th e tr a i ts f
o

s uch a na tur e s ta nd out the more sha rply to th e

eye o f the tra nqui l obser ver .

Si nce M onta i
g ne w rote the fi rst Es says ,
thi s

Farm ha s per mea ted every country . I n Fr a nce,

Sa i nt s - Bea m , i n N orth Amer i ca , Emer son , ha s

 W Ro D 0 07 mm 9
f ound ed h i s School . I n Ger ma ny , Ifsl l ebr a nd t

fo l l ow s the l ea d of S a i nte B euve, w h i l e Her ma nn

-

f
o To—d ay are Leg i on .

I t i s ha r d to say whether wha t i s set out in

pm nen ce i s not excl ud ed I t i s concei va bl

. e tha t

men, w he n cond emned to ma ny month s i mpr i son ’

ment, mig ht ar m themsel ves w i th th e Wkor s

f
o

So i nte B euve for the i r pr ofita ble enter ta i n ment ,

Fr enchma n, si nce they g i ve the Q ui ntes

As to the p m
era nent va l ue o f th e Li ter a t ure of
To day , w e but
ca n
p j
con ectur es ,
-
ex ress or at

most opi ni ons , tha t a re bi nd i ng

none e upon . W
may hope tha t After Gener a ti ons wi ll i nteres t
thems el ves not mer el i n the Cl a s s i c For ms o
y f
Poetry a nd His tory , but a l so in thi s l es s monu
 19 c m 0 D ve n om
menta l M ode of the Cr i ti ci s m of our Er a A nd .

if thi s be not the ca s e w e may cons ol e ours el ves i n

Wld
,

a d va nce w i th the fl
r e ect i on tha t th e Af ter or

be clever er tha n the

is not of neces s i ty
g g oi n to

Pr es ent—Jha t w e ha ve i nd eed no
g ua r a ntee th a t

i t wi l l be a bl e to Q ua li ti es
qf our

Contempora r ies qui te a ccor d i ng to thei r meri ts .

So much tha t i s N ew , a nd to us Unknow n ,

w i ll p
occu y i t i n the Futur e 1

GEORGE B RAN D ES .
m vw e s w wm ww s wm m

H ILE E NGAGE D O N MY
“ ”
C ritique o f Language, I composed
some stud ies in the history o f
ph i losophy in which i t was my
intention to show what the most
eminen t p hi losoph e rs had done t o promote or to
hinder the progress o f thought in th is d i r ection .

This survey was too in compl ete to admit of

i ts publ ication as a whole within any assignable
ti me. I there fore am bringing out provisionally
some sepa rate consplet e d po rti on s of my wo rk, in
the h ope that the y may i nte rest the public at
large The presen t vol ume co ntains a n essay on
.

Aristotle, which I call unhistori cal becaus e in i t I

renounce all the pi ety as well as t h e hypoc risy of
histori cal pedantry , and avail myse l f o f all the rights
of the criticism o f t h e p r e sen t day
.
12 FREE /{Ce

If I have said in one p lace too much fo r the expert ,

a nd, i n ano t her t oo little fo r the ord i nary reader the

, ,

ci rcumstance under which this Essay originated wi l l,

perhaps, serve as my excuse or explanation .

T h e work might have made its ap pearance wi th an

alarm i ng display of l earn ing if I had ci ted authoriti es
fo r e very statement A few litera ry data at the end
.

o f the volume may compe nsate for this omission .

Steiner and I bse n ha ve made us familiar wi th th e

notion that we carry about with us the corpse s ,

and that our minds a re haun ted by the ghosts o f ,

our mental past T he histor i ca l pedants a n d the

.
,

Alexandrians o f our own times, take these cor pses

fo r livi ng persons a n d these ghosts for re alities
,
.It
may be urged however, that the graves o f those
,

who at any time in the course o f the centuries have

, ,

been regarded a s be nefa ct ors o f man kind are enti tled

,

at least to reverent treatment But i f we admit this

.

c laim without re servatio n, we slo wly trans form a spot

which we ought t o be cultivating into a cemetery

where we can do nothing better than kn eel down t o
say our pra ye rs But the grav es o f famous men have
.

not all t h e sa me sign i ficance fo r us There are some

.
 M ER /{C8 13

be fore which, as be fore hallowed plac es, we stand a we

struc k ; in th e se sleep men who still live for us, and
t o wh om we owe the best w e have . There are
O thers which should be preserved and care d for,
be cause, th ough their in mates are dead to many of
us, th ey are still dear and precious to the mass
o f the peo ple. But ther e a re yet other grav es which
exist o nly for themselves —s e pulchral ruins which are
pre served from utter down fall only by a vam pe d up
and artificial veneration Towards such graves piety
.

i s out of pl ace i f i t sta n d s i n t h e way of li fe an d

progress .

F M
. .
 RI ST O T ELI S L O G I CA I PSI US
Dei logica est (The logic o f Aristotle
.

is the logic o f God Himsel f ) These .

words are written in a pa ge o f my Greek

“ ”
and L a t in edition o f the Organon .

They are taken from one o f the works o f Gutlt e o f

Kolln on the Spree a ma n o f note in his d a y i ncredibly
, ,

l imi ted in h is v i ews and to an equall y incredible de

,

gree, a bel iever in Aristotle In other respects as well

.

Arist otle is not in frequently compared with God As .

a physicist he speaks the langu age of men as a moralist,

the words of God A Span ish theologi an is o f opinion

.

th a t Aristotle in penetrating the secrets o f nature s ur

passed the power o f man 5 there fore he must have had
,

the aid o f a good or an evil angel Agrippa S pe aks o f

.

him as a forerunner o f Jes us Christ Such was the .

considera tion in which Aristotle was held during the

course o f some five hundred yea rs from the twel fth
,

down to the seventeenth century Throughout the

.

v a st scholasti c movement o f this whole period he ranked

not a s one phi los opher by the side o f others b ut a s ,

e
1 8 m a s on s
“ ”
the Philos op her Individ ual oppon ents who at
.
,

this time were alre ady g i ving vent to their opinions

, ,

shrank from attacking him as they woul d have attacked

any ordinary author o f an e rroneous system even to
them he assum ed the proportions o f Antichrist The .

oppo nents o f Aristo tle however had not much less

, ,

success than the O pponents of the Bible For full fi ve .

hundred years th e Aristotelian doctrine o f God and the

world lay like an ecclesiastical dogma, with a ll its
,

weight on the spi ri ts o f men .

The fame o f Aristotle goes further back than this .

Schope nhauer is wrong when for the sake of a ,

flimsy th eo ry he asser ts that the reputati on o f

,

Aristotl e w as only established two centuri es a fter his

death T h e discip le of Plato the tea che r o f Alexander
.
,

the Great, had won celebri ty during his li fetime by

copious writings During the later Hellenic period
.

he st ill ha d rivals B ut un d er th e in fluence of the

.

culture o f Latin Christendo m his authority grew by

lea ps and bounds as h is w ri tings became kn own F i nal ly .

the Arabs completed his triumph in Weste rn Europe .

By them the heathen Aris tot le wa s en th ro ned as the

sovereign philosopher o f the Christian world Roun d .

Aristot l e raged the deepest cont roversies o f the expiri ng

Middle Ages, a nd they were con ducted in the terms
o f his p h i loso p hy For ful l tw o thou san d years, from
.
the wor ld empir e o f Alexander onwar d into the seven
-

te e n th century human thought has lain under the

,
’
i nflue nce o f this man s catchwords, an in fl ue nce which
has bee n whol ly per nicious in its resul m There is
.

no parall el instance o f the endur ing pot en cy o f a

system o f words .

The Ren aiss an ce aimed a t a return to Plato the ,

ancient and, if we are to be li eve the chatter of the

histories o f philosophy the pe rsonal antagon i st o f
,

Aris tot le Notwith standi ng, the in fallible position of

.

th e latter in the vast scholastic movem ent remained

unshaken T he scien ti fi c facts of Copernicus Kepler

.
,

and Newton first shook the edi fice w hich had defied
ev en a Gas s endi Moli ere stil l jests at the sch ool o f
.

Aristotle as at a foe wo rth re ckoning wi th Sga na re lle

.

“ ” “
F
’

( i n L e Mariage orc e ) ex c laims : On me l avait

bien dit que s on mai tr e Ar is t0te n éta i t ri en qu un
’ ’

”
b avard.

Two thousand years had to pass be fore the in fluence

o f Arist o tle expired Then like the gods o f Greece
.
, ,

he seemed to have fallen dead fo r ever Natural .

science was se eking out paths o f her ow n and philo ,

sophy wa s beginning to throw o ff the trammels o f t h e

Arist otelian cate gories Though the judgmen ts o f
.

the philosopher in morals and ae sthetics, might still

,

be nom i nal ly u p h e ld , n e w win e was e v er ywh ere

 w a s s o TL 8
poured into the old skins Care ful observers might
.

have seen easily t hat even in these fields the ol d

flag was hoisted over a new c a rgo . Neither in the
plays of Co rneille or Racine nor i n the dr amatic
,

criticism o f Less i ng was the real A ristotle a li vi n g

force. Nothing s urv i ved except the tra ditional appeal
to his authority.

Sti ll more care ful observers might have made the

discove ry that this had a lways been the case, namely,
that each successive centu ry had i nculcated its own
pecul iar spirit under the name o f Aristotle that neit h er
i n his met aphysics nor in his physics had the ph ilo
sopher anticipated the labours o f twenty centuries ;
th a t in every a ge the collective developments of
hum a n culture had been re ferred back to h im until
he m umed the propo rtions o f an intell ectual gian t .

But the recogni tion of t his fa ct a fter the fall of

,

the Aristotelian school, w as hinder ed by the rise o f a

new catchword which fo un d expression in the theory ,

then fi rst coming into fashion , o f the sacredness

“ ”
of classi cal antiquity
. According to this theory
”
Aristotle was no longe r the phil osopher ; but along
with other mani festations of the classical spirit such
,

as the obsolete symbols o f the Greek myt hology

and the stylistic exerc ises o f the Roman poe ts he ,

was treated wi th s upe rstiti o us revere nce T he m d i

.
 m z s s on s

tion went yet further A superstitious worshi pper

.

o f words su ch as no reall y great th inker i s Aristotle

, ,

co mpiled in his writi ngs a general survey o f the uni

verse This compilati on fo r two thousand ye a rs
.
, ,

held a l l other worshippers o f words in bondage and ,

even now a t this p resent hour the word worshippers

,
-

cling to the author s resou ndin g name as to an idol

’
.

Schopenh a uer the resuscitator o f t he Platonic doctrine

,

o f ideas in his criticism o f Aristotle shows li ttle

,

res pect fo r his fellow philosopher He appa rently

.

denies him the right to be considered a philoso pher

since he strikes him o ff the roll o f men o f gen ius ;
a ccuses him o f sh a ll owness ; descri bes h is meta
physics as consis ti ng fo r th e most part o f mis cel
, ,

la n eou s and c u rsory talk about the philosophi cal v iews

o f hi s pre d e e emo rs , a nd sums up the weak side o f his

m ind as a v iv a cious supe rfic i a li ty This is why he

.
,
“
sa ys the readers o f Ari stotle think so o ften : now
,
‘

we are comi ng to the poi nt ; but the point is never

’

”
reached . And yet in spite o f all th is Schopen
-

hauer expresses h i s amazement at Aristotl e s deep ’

insight, at his teleology ; admires him even as a

natu ral histor ian ; as o ften that i s to s a y as it
, ,

suits his syst em to do so So metimes he appeals to

.

his fame as a phil oso pher, a n d som e ti m es cites hi m as

an authority .
 J RI S TO TL G
‘

Lew es has written a brilli ant book upon Aristotle,

in whi ch he has exposed hi m as a thinker and an o h
server i n all his nakedn e ss The posi ti vist makes a
.

clean sweep o f the j ej une na t ural philosophy o f the

Greek Yet even Le wes, in h i s closin g chapter, pays his
.

’
humble respects to Aristotle s name the fin a l verd ict
certa inly may considerably m odi fy, but ca n scarc ely
diminish our notions o f his greatness
,
.

F A Lange, the author o f an unbiased H istory o f

. .

Materialism, recogn ises in Arist otle the archetype o f

a perverted intellect ; but even Lange stands in awe o f
the dogma o f classi c al antiqui ty and call s the Aris
,

t o te l i a n system the most per fect ex a mple that history

has yet given us o f a realised attempt to se t forth

wi th unity a nd completeness a theory o f the universe .

K irchman and Eucken proceed on the same lines .

They see all the spots, but look upon them as sun
spo ts, since, for tw o thousand years, Aristotle ha s been
believed t o be the light o f the world So firmly h as
;

Aristotle maintai ned h is sway even since th e dis

,

appearance o f h is school that criticism has never

,

ventured to approach him save in the most ce remonious

t erms and with the o we rva n ce s o f an almost Byzan tine

etiquette N ot very long ago a pro fessor o f philoso phy

.

brand e d as sa crilegious a harmless j oke agai nst Aris tot le ,

made i n t he course of casual conv e rsat i on, namel y, that
 mus r oTL €
“ ”
he w as th e s pec ial pleader fo r the dark M i dd l e
Ages .

Thus the su pe rstit ious be lie f i n nam es c l i ngs

from days o f old until now to the very sy llables o f
that o f Aristotle The five hundred ye ars, during
.

w hich he w as spoken o f as the un ique sour ce ,

the in fallible teacher o f all sciences, have certainly

pass ed away Yet hi s name is s till mentioned with
.

conventional respe ct as that o f the father of all sciences .

In reality he was one o f the fat he rs o f Chr istian

theol ogy , though not o f the Christian view o f the world .

Chri stendom has derived from the Neo Platon ists i ts

-

deepest i de as o f detachment from th i s worl d and o f

longi ng for the world to come The early fathers
.

were i n no wise Ari stotel ian s A ristotle was the

.

father o f Chr i sti an the ology only, of th e hai r sp litting

-
,

word worshi ppi n g, scholast ic—I might almost have

-

said Talmud istic—pe dantry o f the medi e val div ines .

In this respe ct h is fame will s uEe r no diminuti on

.
.

But when he i s ha i led in books as the father of a l l

our natural and mental sc ien ce then th e wri te rs are
simply repeatin g w ord for w ord what others have
written be fore them I t is impossible that they can
.

have read the writ ings o f Ari stotle fo r themselv es or ,

that they can have re ad them wi th inde pendent minds .

O ne claim to per pe tu i ty, ho we v e r, ca n be ful ly

24 m us r or w
established n am ely th a t Ar istotle w a s the father o f
, ,

logic ; at once its founder and i ts finisher No less an .

authority than the gre a t m aster o f philosophica l a h

.

s t rac ti o n Kant , has vouched fo r this

,
In the sec ond
.

pre fa ce to th e C ritique o f Pure Reason he s ays (in

words whi ch are o ften quoted a nd never co rrectly
quoted ) th a t since the d a ys o f Ari s totle logic has
,

never dared to t a ke a step b a ckward although up to ,

the present time it h as never been a ble to t a ke a

step forward Hegel the grea t juggler wi t h a bstract
.
,

conceptions uses the s a me l a nguage I may not be

,
.

able to follow I H von K irchman in supposing that

. .

neither K a nt nor Hege l ever once had rea d the Ana l y

tics ca re fully otherwi s e they would not h a ve made the
,

mistake o f ov e rrating them so highly but what is c e r

,

tain i s , th a t formal logic h as been expounded better

a nd with more logical consistency by subsequen t
t ea chers than by its founder himsel f a n d th a t the last
,

cen tury (from M i ll to Si g va rt and Schuppe) h a s made

considera ble adv a nce upon the merely form a l logic .

Q Q Q Q
There rem a ins yet to be written by one who would
,

h a ve to combine an imposs ible erudition wi th super

h uman a bnormal insight a n a uthen tic histo ry o f logic
, , ,

a history o f human thought an d there fore also o f the

,

evolution o f the human brain, whereby i t shoul d be

 & I RI S TOTL S

proved how mistaken in theory a nd how delusi ve in

pract ice is t h e H e ge l ia n doctrine o f the automatic move
'

ment o f ide as The history o f thought might be com

.

pared, i n some respects to the slow movement o f a flock

,

o f sheep, m a ny o f which in unequal and e t anal ogous

y ,

fashion, make their way whi thersoever a blade o f grass

entices them The h istory o f scienti fic logic on the
.
,

other hand, m ight be com pared to the movement o f

th e single sheep dog who lea ps hither and t hither
-
, ,

roun d a nd roun d th e flock barki ng lo udly and even ,

biting but who must on the whole, fo ll ow the trend

, ,

o f the flock .The only di fference is th a t the direction

o f the sheep depends in the l ast r eso rt upon the shep

herd while the direction o f thought depen ds only on

the poor blades o f grass a nd their accidental growth .

I f indeed we fa i l to perceive that even the mind o f

, ,

the shepherd must always be guided by the growt h o f

c oun tless blades o f grass which taken collectivel y are
, ,,

co nsidered good pas ture .

One thing however is clear that such a true history

, , ,

o f human thought wou ld be only a history o f human

Of
course the history o f logic has o ften bee n
,

written i ts history th a t is to say since the day be fore

, , ,

yesterday since the d ays o f Aristotle As fo r Pre

, .

Aristotelian l o gi c, a mention o f the Seven W i se Me n

 m e s on s

was beli eved to epitomise all that was t o be known on

the subject .

The idea was tha t th ere was a logi c, just as there

is a mathemat i cs which has existe d s omewhere since
,

the beg i nning o f things ; and that its history con

sisted in telling how the l aws o f this et e rnal logic,
like the laws o f mathematics were gradually discover ed
,
.

Now in the kingdom o f reality there i s neither a

mathematics nor a l og i c ; a n d though there are
invariab le relati ons o f m easure betw een th ings, there
ar e not any i nvariable r el ations be tween brains and
t h ings .

The fe w really etern a l laws o f l ogic are paltry con

cerns tautologies such as = a All e ffectu a l habits
, a .

o f t hought must be the outcome o f sel f develop -

ment And as there was a time when no brai n on

.

earth had begun to think so our habits o f thou ght

,

also must have had a begi nning And as human .

language only exists a s between man and man so

our thoughts als o exist only as be tween man an d man .

Man has thought fro m the fi rst mom ent o f hi s

existence Huma n thought raised i tsel f above the
.

level of brute thought when man be gan by means o f,

spoke n sym bols to di fferentiate in his memory his

,
“ ”
observation o f rese m blances I n the word s cattle
.

“ ”
and be ast a quan tity o f material was al ready
 man t a TL S
gathered toget her on whi c h the logic o f lat er times
could exercise itsel f Prelingual th ought in the hum a n
.
,

sense, never existed Prelogical thought certainly did

.

exist an d was no worse t han post l ogi ca l thought Ou r .

weighties t data o f the knowl edge o f nature come

down to us from the per i od of prelogical thought .

It is certa in that logi c as it existed or exists

, ,

among Wester n nations, was foun ded by Aristot le .

This slender title to fame belongs unquestion

ably to the Greek even i f it shoul d be estab
,

l i s h e d— a poin t to which I shall return present ly

that his analys is o f me n ta l conce pt i on s is on ly a mis
o

und e rstoo d analysis o f gra mmar ,

borrowed perhaps
from the cont e mporary gram matical science o f India ,

whi ch at that time had rea ched a high point o f

development The question o f pri o rity , wh en we are
.

dealing with such remote pe ri ods o f ti me, does not

admit o f solution ; such questions indeed, are often
,

insoluble in the full light o f the present Seeing .

,

however that the first movemen ts of na tural ph ilosophy

,

amon g the Greeks coincid ed in a remarkable way with

a cognate reli giou s movement in the East, there would
be nothing very aston ishing in the discovery that the
germs o f t he Aristotelian system o f logic were o f
Easte rn o ri gin. Goet he had alread y n o ti ce d a
rese mb lance bet wee n t h e Biblical exeges i s o f t h e
28 m a s on s

Talmud a n d the spiri t o f Aristotle It is unne c essary

.

to s ay that I do not take in to a ccount those silly a nd

untenable Rabbinical legends a ccording to which
A ristotl e became a c onvert to Judaism or even was
a Jew by birth and owed his pro found wisdom to
wr itings o f Solomon whi c h have since been lost .

The history of Gree k Logic before Aristotle is a

his tory o f rhetoric The Sophists were rhe toricians
.

in practice as well as in theo ry . One o f the most

fa mous a mong t hem the talented Gorgi as thought
, ,

“
nothing o f entitling one o f h i s treatises : On the
Not Being or Nature
-
, so delibe rately w as language
set topsy turvy
-
.

Sokrates who belonged to the Sophists in the same

,

sense in which Jesus belonged to the Jews had never

,

the fain tes t shadow o f an intention to esta blish a

system o f thought or logic Nevertheless he exercised
.

an extraordinary influence, o w ing to the fact th a t w i t h ,

the innocence and indiscretion o f a child he a l ways

,

preten ded not to understand the meaning o f words and ,

”
was al ways ask i ng What does this mean & H is
,

i rony consisted i n this : that he was we ll aware that he ,

i n h i s honest ignorance was on a higher l evel than

,

others in their perfect c ertitude Mo reover by dis

.
,

carding the whimsi cal , s ubjec ti ve, ingenuity of the rest

o f the Sop hi s ts and by trying to find out th e m e an ing
 29

conve ye d to peo ple by every wo rd ; further also by

, ,

go i ng back from the words to their mean ings and ,

from thei r mean ings to the sense imp ressions (with

o ut any system and qui te i n a prelogical way ) ,

Sokrates became the fi rst pioneer o f a criti que

o f language . Yet it is as di fficult to assert anyth in g
with certainty abou t the thou ght o f Sokrates as it
is to d ogmatise about the teac hing o f Jesus Chri st ;
in both cases our only sources are the memoranda
o f en thusiasti c ,
but, relatively far in feri or , disciples
,
.

Aristotle who was a pupil o f Sokrates in the second

,

generation is i mperv ious to the least breath o f his

,

spirit.

“
Pra n t l says o f Aristotle '
The best a nd de epest
features o f the Aristotelian l ogic, in v i rtue o f which it
is justl y entitled to a place among the m ost remarkable
phenomena i n the history of human culture are pre ,

c i se l those which c eas ed the soonest to be und e rstoo d

y .

For as soon as the external and more te chnical acce s

so t ies o f this dee p philosophi cally con ceived logi c were
partly torn and extracted from their context, partly
expanded by a ch eaply purchase d techn ical dexterity
and yet again extracted this now so called logic was
,
-

used almost exclusively as a m e re schoo l exercise and

the emptiest heads a fter assi milati ng its contents
,

th em se lves transm i t te d i t i n th e same form to their

,
30

scho lars The c onse que n oe was that in th is suc ces s ion of
.
,

tri vi al lo gic ians eac h one si m ply copi ed his p red ecess or,
wh i le t he sys tem in i ts entire ty was attribute d wi th i n
da c r i ba bl e na h mét o Ari st o t l e as i ts origi nal autho r and
,

fou nder The fate which has befallen Aristo tle re se m

.

”
ble s that w hich has befall en t h e N ew T a mmm t .

Pra n tl, fro m who se le arn in g all s u m equen t hi s

tor ia ns o f Western logi c ( i nclud in g mysel f have bor

)
ro we d co pio usly thus discri mina tes be twe en two
,

log i c. O ne, whi c h is at present taug ht in our

s ch oo ls , and in his Opin i on
, i s a corrupti on of the
,

a igi na l, and the auth e n ti c sys tem which he des cribe s

,

as con ceived in a deeply philos ophical sp irit I t must .

he ad mi tt e d, how ever t ha t ou r sc h ool logi c ca n be

,

tra ce d ba ck t o Ar is to tle himself t h roug h a di re ct his

t ori ca l d e scen t I t is hi s highe st title to fam e that for
.

t h ous a nds of yea rs he sh ould have sett led th e laws o f

t hough t a irre voc ably as Eucl i d se ttled t h e prin c i pl e s

of geo met r
y I f
. th e re fo re o u r sch oo l l o g i c is w o rt h le s ,

t he fa me of Ar i st ot l e i n t h i s res pe ct fa ll s t o t h e gro und,

fo r t he pro di gio us
succes s of his syste m must not be
attri buted to him, but to the me c han ical conti nuat ors
of his wo rk .Th e position then may be sta t ed thu s
, ,

Ari stotle has be co me fam ous for an ac h ievemen t w h i c h

is not his own while o n the other hand h is ge nui n e
, ,

wor k li es bu ri ed unde r mi s und erst an d in g and awa it s

resurrection I believe that I can show proo f that the
.

logic o f A ristotle di ffers from the fri ghtfully dry scho ol

logic of his cont i nuators only in certain obscurities
and in some extremely crude general conceptions
under the abstract terms of whi ch ev e ry Aristote lian ,

fo r the last two thousand years has been able to find

,

comfort able accommodati on in ea ch part icular case,

,

fo r the mental requirements o f his own age I n te l l i

.

gent re aders will not expect me to ad d that certain

portions o f this logic are entitled to and must receive
resp ect ful attenti o n apart from the purely h istorical

standpoint Even the planetary system of Ptolemy is

.

o f high intere st to the hi storian ; only as a sc ienti fic

theory it has be en ru l ed out o f court But i f we a re

.

'
to listen to our modern Alexand ri ans A ristotle s ,

explanation o f the universe i s still entitled to a bear

ing V oltai re has already expre ssed the si t uation as
.

“
well as any one can : On n e la comprend guére :
mais i l est p l us que p robabl e qu Ari s to te s e n tc nd a i t
’ ’
,

c t qu on l e n t e n da i t de son tem ps
’ ’
.

And yet on the ve ry threshold o f the system which

Aristot le has constru cted stands a warning to the
philosopher who has formed no conception o f the
rea l nature o f l a nguage — a warning to which neither
Aristotle himsel f nor any one who has come after him
h as given a n y heed .
 What I h e re touch upon i s the anti thesis between
“ ” “ ”
apodeictic and dialectic kn owledge Already .

’
be for e Aristo tle s time three kinds o f thought had bee n
distinguished : fi rs t the apodeictic or demonstrative
proc ess worked out logically from absolutely cer ta i n
,

principl es, which demons t rates clearly eternal truths

se condly the di a lecti c which no doubt is a logi c al
, , , ,

process but starts merely from i ndividual Opinion

, ,

aims at convincing the parties to the argument, and

there fore only ascerta ins probabiliti es Thirdly there .
,

is the mph is t ica l process which attempts deliberately

,

to prove untruths and i s plainly a misuse o f logic

,
.

N ow for the a podeictic as w ell as for t he d ial ec ti c

method Aristotle recognised one common instrumen t ,

namely language .

At this point he might have said to himsel f that it

was an extremely awkward circumstance that this same
i nstrument l a nguage shou ld be at one moment suitable
, ,

fo r the discovery o f truth at anothe r only fo r reachin g

,

an approximate probability that words sometimes,

convey to us the ul tim a te n a ture o f th ings, sometimes

only de fective notions o f them Here aga in also we .

see clearly the puerile a nti nomin a list conception

-

which led Aristotle to believe th a t he possessed in the

notion o f species the sec ret o f S pecies the key w ith ,

which to u nlock the riddle of the universe More .

 J RI S TOTL E 33
over, in the use o f the word l ogos, as is well known ,

a hopeless con fusion prevails In the same way

.

“ ”
even in the case o f the word di a lectical we a re ,

puzzled in what sense to understand it owing to the

fre quent ch a nges in the use especially the modern
,

use o f language The Greeks o ften used the word

,
.

“ ”
quite familiarly in the sense o f talk tittle tattle ,
-

“ ”
or a l e hou se deba te
- .

No one has taken verba l debate the traffi c i n words,

,

so s eriou sly as A ristotle Despite Pra n t l Aris totle

.

was the true a ncest or o f the schoolmen In the pro .

“ ”
position Go d ma de the world out o f not h ing ,
”
he al so woul d hav e ex pla in e d nothing as th e rea l
substance o f the world .

Pra n t l however is certainly right in clearing his

, ,

c lien t Aristotle from the suspici on o f having com posed

h i s logic merely as a set o f directions to expedite

the busi ness of thi nking as an introduction to the
,

st udy o f philosophy such as it came to be consi dered

,

soon after the days o f i t s inven tor a nd is taught to our

boys and within the l ast fe w yea rs to our girls a lso
, , .

The use wh i ch Ari stotle himsel f makes o f his own

logic has not t h e mech a nical character which it
assumed later and which Goethe was sti l l able to
parody, as ex isting in his day under th e nickname o f
,

Collegi um Log i c um Arist o tle s pri mary aim in h is

.
’
 I RJ
'

34 e/ S TO SI L S

logic was obvious ly not to lay down directions for

thinking correctly nor to answer the question H ow
,
”
ought we to think & but much rather to explain
how we do think The process o f th i nking was fo r
.

him a real object o f inqui ry an in quiry whi ch at the

prese nt time we should descri be as psychological .

Now i t i s precise ly in an inqu i ry o f thi s s ort that

Ari stotle, from the stand po i nt o f his obs ervations is ,

bound t o make shipwreck For he insi sts on treating

.

the words, which connote his hackneyed co nception s

o f men tal li fe as real forc e s
, .

C O O C Q
There i s th i s peculi arity abou t A ristotl e s reputati on
’
.

I f his collected writings had been lost more than two

thousand years ago and his authority h ad not dominated
poste rity as disas trously as it has done the sudden re
,

discovery o f his works at the present day would e nable

us to form an unprejudiced j udgment on their import
ance And I am convinced that no human being
.

wou ld suggest that this great compiler should be

numbere d am o ng the men with whom a scienti fic
inquirer at the present day wo uld have to reckon .

We might admire h i s extrao rd i nary indust ry, and we

m i ght, with his h e lp be i n a be t ter pos i tio n to give
,

a n appr ox i mat e l y c o r rec t descr ipti on o f t he th eo r o f

y
t h e Un i v erse wh i c h wa s c urre nt am ong c ul t i vate d
 PRJ
e/ S TOTL S 35
Gree ks in the days of Alexander the G reat Con .

s i d er ed thus, from the historical sta ndpo int Aristotle s

’

reputation might be en hance d But it is exactly this

.

historical estimate which is re nder ed d i fi c ul t by the

ever repeated attempt to bring the tho ught o f A ristotle ,

in one connection or an o th e r i nto line with the

,

thought o f our own time Le t us call to mind, fo r

.

—
insta n ce to re fer to a prev i ous illustra tion that th e
-

Poetics o f Aristotle formed, d uring the seventeenth

century ,
the code from which the Fre nch c lass i ea l
writers, who are sti l l held up to th e p res en t ge neration
as lite ra ry standards, never thou ght it possible to
swerve ; that a cen t ury later Lewi ng e xpounded the
m e laws of criti cism as th ough they were as in fallible
as the geomet ry o f Euclid ; and that to day, at leas t
-

in our schools they retai n a co nve n t i o nfl place in

,

the cur riculum of studi a .The above (low not

ho ld good to the sa me exte nt o f his treati ses on
po litics or natural science Yet not only historians o f
.

philosophy but even me n who are endeavouring to

,

rm ns t ru c t our theo ry o f the Universe o n the ba s is o f

cont i nue to rack their brains upon

ta ph si cs
y . Besides ,
his logic is still so highly
va l ued that we may my with truth that in our schools
t od a y th e l ogic o f Aristotle (no doubt with verbal
-

alte rat ions) is st ill taugh t wi th the same au thori t y a s

36
the geometry o f Euclid In our most widely c ircula te d
.

school books in our outlines o f the in troductory study

-
,

o f philosophy what we find page by p a ge is the old

,

Aristotelian logic Moreover the time is sti ll fa r

.
,

distan t when a calm histori cal survey can be tak e n .

The religion o f the G reeks comes with in the scope of

h is tori cal rev iew but Catholicism is as yet outside i t, a nd
Ari st o tle has be come a doctor o f the Catholic Ch urc h .

Any one who p roposes to read the scientific wri tings

o f the anci ents with any other object than histori c a l

instruction w ill perceive, after the perusal o f a very fe w

page s, that h is pains a re likel y to be perfectly fruitle ss.

We know th a t, except by means o f new obse rvati ons,

any advan ce in h uman knowledge is, by the c o ns t i tu
tion o f our minds an impossibili ty But the w eak side
,
.

o f the Greek mind was that they had formed no idea

o f the importance o f observa tion They were not only

.

wi thout our telescopes and microsco pe s, ou r ther

mo me te rs a nd barometers all our instruments of pre
,

c i si on ; the very conception o f our minute un its o f

measurem ent (by which our astronomers measure the

thousandth point o f a second and our chemists the
,

fractions o f a grain ) was absent from their m i nds But .

th is was not the worst Th ey were deficien t, gener ally,

.

i n the sense of obs ervation They had no insight

.
,

stran ge as it ma y so und in to the value o f a careful us e

,
 m y s r on e 37
of our s enses At the present day any magistrate will
.

cauti on witnesses that they must discr imina te between

thei r own impressions and those which they have formed
from hearsay . The Greeks o f the classical period
m a de no such distinction At least Aristotle who
.
,

perhaps fo r th is very reason, is not to be consider ed

,

one o f their best intellects des cribes pell mell what he

,
-

had himself seen superficiall y what he had read in

,

books what he had heard from ignoran t fishermen,

,

hunters, and soothsayers And i f he did make o bse r

.

va t io n s on h is own account, he was o ften more ina c cu

rate than his fishermen hunters and soothsayers In

, , .

support o f this asse rtion I shall ci te a q uanti ty o f

’
examples, foll owin g at the same time, Lewes analysis
, ,

partly for the sake o f convenience, and partly be cause

I hope to find some small support in the authority o f
a cri tic who retains so much pious r espe ct for Ar isto tle .

Lewes, in his book on Aristotle, has collected a pretty

aggregate o f chara cteristical ly incorrect observations
on the part o f the latter and has a ttri bu ted them
,

to the wan t o f a principle o f verification The .

real reason why Aristotle has be come unread able by

any one who is not a stu den t o f histo ry Lewes faile d
to disco ver because he still believed unhesitatin gly
,

that language is an ad equate organ fo r the c ommun i ca

tio n of thou ghts .
38 M I S TO TL E

The critic o f language however kno ws n ot onl y

, ,

that knowledge is advanced through o bmrva t ions alone ,

but also th a t all concepts of a language are only

symbolic abbre viations fo r sense impre ssions or obs er
-

vations Wha t in this respect holds good fo r A rist otle

.

holds good also in e sse nti als fo r all ph il osoph e rs w ho

'

saw the details o f nature d ifle re n t ly from ours e lv es I f .

we exami ne a living w ord we find that it i s a

,

mnem o n ic symbol for ou r i mp ressi ons Supposing .

therefore that this sam e word i s used by an ancient

writer as the mnemo ni c symbol fo r h i s impres sions and
t hat these impres si on s di ffer from ours, it follows
th a t we either do not un derstand h i m a t all or we
understand him in a wrong se nse W e find ourselves
.

in this dilemma as regard s Aristotle not only in his

use o f abstract terms but o fte n in the si mpl e st points
,

of natu r a l scienc e . We have l earned how hard to

“ ” “
define are such wo rds as subj ec ti ve, eX pe r i
” “ ” “ ” “ ”
ence , development, o rgan ism ,
character ,
“ ”
law o f nat ure a n d so forth we shall now see
furt her that in reading Aristotle it is just as hard
to find true equivalents for such concrete terms as
“ ” “ ” “ ” “ ”
heart, bon es, n e rves, brai n & C &c
, . .

What i s so un speakably i rksome to modern students in

their pursui t of the Greek phi los op hers is just this
persistent fe eling that th e re is o fte n no comm on ground
of thought be tween them and th e author they a re
r ea d ing
. For any one who is not occu p ied with the
purely h istorical interest this i s espe cial ly th e case in
t h e study of the wri tings o f Aristo tle on natural

sci ence He saw n othi ng correctly unless it l ay as clear

.

a s wat e r on the sur face o f things ; thus he ass ociates

th e wo rds he uses with other meanings than ours and

we find i t impossible to foll ow h im , not because we are
too stu pid fo r h im but be caus e he is too ignorant for
us On the o th er hand , i f we erroneously attach our
.

con ceptions to his words we ca n o f course manage i n

,

t his way to attr ibute to h im the m od ern i d eas o f a

N ewton or a Darwin and by so doing are guilty

o f a monstrous fal si fica ti on o f history
. Conte mptuous
things have be en spoken conce rnin g m odern research .

Compared with Aristotle and in so fa r as our know

,

ledge of nature sur pass e s his it has been likened to a

,

dwar f perched on the shoulders o f a giant It is not

.
,

however by our research that Aristotle has been out

,

strippe d in the knowl edge o f nature it is by every

,

schoolboy to whom the results o f that research have been

imparted You may call hi m i f you please, a dwar f
.
,

perched on the shoulders o f a gian t, but in this case, the

gi ant is not Aristotl e but the co llective ou tcome o f past
a ges o f inquiry.

Lewes remarks co rrectl y that Arist otle li k e al l the

,
40 M I S TO TL G

Greeks, was credulous He did not think that be was

.

in pos s m mn of all knowledge but he believed that a ll

knowledge was within the capacity o f the human
reason The contempora ry philosophy of the East
.

h a d come to the conclusion that in resignation the

spi ri t o f man had fo und the highest realisation of i t s
aspi rations The Preacher teaches that all knowledge
.

is vanity Aristotl e h a d not the faintest conception o f

.

such a feeling He stands firm on the level o f a ntiquity

.

which never knew doubt in the modern sense o f

the word I n those days it never occurred even to
.
,

the bo ldest scholar to test the facts on which his

,

logi c al concl usions rest ed When the gi fted astro nomer

.

Eratosthenes made the first meas urements o f the le ngth

o f the a r c o f a meridian, he assumed as a matter o f

course that the two opposite points o f h is measu remen t ,

the cities o f Alexandri a a n d Syene lay on the same

,

meridian but the obvious suggestion never occ urred

to him th a t he should first have tested this a mume d
fact and t hus have a voided a gross mistake in hi s
calculations He re we h a ve an instance from whi ch
.

we can see that the source o f all the mistakes o f the

an c ients—a source which has certai nly no t run dry
i s a lso the foun tain head from which all our own m is
-

takes arise I f we trust bl indly to the recollection o f

.

othe rs and do not rely upo n our o wn se nses, what

 41

else are we doing but putti ng words i n the place of

thin gs themselve s & But Aristotle was guiltier t han
others fo r as the fa ther o f Logic he drew conclusions
,

from words without h a ving first brought these con

e lusi ons to the te st o f fac ts
.

What is te rmed the expl a nation of a phenome non

by the discovery o f its cause is simply the completion
o f its descri ption by the disclosure o f some inter

mediate details which had e scap ed observation The .

phenomenon i s viewed under new relations I t is .

elm I t is no longer isolated but united on to kno wn

.

facts as when the ascent o f a flame or the fall o f an

”
apple are seen to be pa rticulars o f a genera l fact .

From this truth Aristotle perforce stood a l ong way

, ,

05 ,
s ince its first glimmerings dawned slowly only a fe w
centuries ago, and even now there are so me among
inqu i ring minds o f whom the light has not taken full
possession W
,

. hat Galilei calls an explanati on of

gra vi tation New ton o f the orbi t of the stars Darwin
, ,

o f the origin o f spec ies, was fundam e ntally only a

more accurate observati on and d escription o f these

natural occ urrences These great men thought they
.

h a d explained someth in g became they had described

nature better th a n their predecessors . Ari st ot l e also, ,

certainly bel ieved that he had explained natural

phenom e na B ut he has n eve r got so fa r as even to
.
 m e s on s

desc ri be them correctly It al most amounts to sa ying

.

t he sa me thing i f we assert th a t in al l h is endless

,

writings, Aristotle ha s not enriched natural scienc e by

the addition of even the tinies t law He expl a ins nothing
.

because he has no real descriptive facul ty Whol e .

chapters of this world famed logi c ian read like the

-

pages o f a fortune tellers Book o f D reams but with

-
’
,

a silliness exceeding that of the ordinary concoct er o f

a Book o f Dreams, he n ot only tel ls us (to keep to our
metaphor ) that the num ber 1 4 for exa mfle signifies
, ,

the birth of a girl, but he also gives a n expl anati on to

accoun t for it.

At the sa me time i n ord er to be fa i r to Aristotl e i t

,

must be expressly laid down , that not one o f hi s suc

c es so rs,even t o this hour has se ri ously taken into
,

a ccoun t the mom e ntous discovery th a t all explanation

is only a matter of language, and that all causality exists

only in words And further it must be admitted that
.

the tendency to personi fy th ose abstract conceptions, by

which we connote inconceivable cause s, and thereby to
treat them unco nsciously as ac tive and actual realities ,
is one in erad icably plante d in the human min d .

Notwi thstandi ng Aristotle is st il l fairly open t o the

,

char ge of submitti ng de l i beratel y to the bondage of

words At the pr esent day a cautious i nvestiga tor i s
.

careful to d e fin e e ve ry con ception which ad mi t s o f

 43
di ffi culty be fore applying it a n d insi sts that the con
, ,

c e pt i on thus defin e d shal l be understood in on e se n se

a nd one sense only I f h i s d efin i tion corresponds to

.

the commo n usages of language, well and good, if it

devi a t es th e re fi om no harm can accrue Every one o f
.

our i nvestigators un de rs tands more language s than on e .

Thus he knows by expe rience even wi thout the he l p

,

o f linguistic science that no reli a nce can be p lace d on

,

co mmon usage Aris to tle, w h o could not have thought

.

except in Greek, draws h is con clusions from the words

of his own language and when , fo r example, he tri e s to
,

prove logically, there from, that one thing exists in

another (the part in th e who le the i de a o f s pe cies in
,

the idea o f genus the fi nger in the h a nd sove reignty

, ,

in a king) the conviction i s force d upon us that we are

dealin g with an untranslatable and meaningl ess play
upon words The con tinue d attempts to d b cover
.

sources i o f knowledge in the Orga non of Aristotle

remind one o f the ofte n renewed endeav our s to extract
by means o f i mprov ed appliances gold and other ,

pr ecious metals from the dross heaps of worked out

-

mines Such experiments were tried for ages on t he

.

ores, they were tried fo r ages on Aristotle They .

were tried so long as our fore fathers had hope l essly

unscientific means to w ork with At last however
.
, ,

the day cam e when t he return was no longer pro fi table,

when alchemy w as fit for nothing but the us el ess e fforts
o f the labo ratory and the study o f Aristotle for noth in g

but the tasks o f the school roo m- .

The faults o f the Organon are to be found on

every page It is d ifii cu l t to classi fy them in groups
. .

Grave fundamental mistakes stare the reader in the

fac e
. Ari st o tle did not recognise that definitions
are always, properly speaking explanations o f words
, ,

and do not go beyond a certai n recognised use o f

language He was led by his conception o f D efin i
.

tion to ac centuate still m ore strongl y his over

estimate o f language He represented the mo dality
.

o f the sy ll ogi sm the degree o f su bj ecti ve truth

,

unskil fully and wrongly ; and in close connection

wi th this, perhaps, is the c i rcumstan ce that, al though in
theory he was an admi rer o f mathe mati cs yet l ike all
, ,

his contemporaries, he was in capable o f considering

na ture from any other point o f view than the qualitative .

The quantitative math e mati cal considerati on o f nature

i s of l ate r origin , and the algebraic logic which
presses ad mi rably the modality o f the sy llogism was
certain ly beyond his horizon .

The fundamental defect o f the Organon is and

alw ays wi ll be despite all that may be said to the
,

contrary the want of an y point o f view based on a

,

t h e or o f k nowl ed ge O f the theory o f knowledge, which

y .
 M I S TO TL G 45
may perhaps be regar ded si nce the rise of cri ticism,
,

as identi cal wi th phil oso phy the father o f logic

,

never caugh t so much as a glimpse Sokrates might

.

as well never have lived Ari s totle regards th e evi

.

den ce o f the sense s at the bo ttom o f the lad de r a n d ,

the conclusions o f reaso n at t he top as both al ike,

i n fal lible It is because he neve r thinks o f a theory o f

.

knowledge which would test these two bas es that his

doctrine of deduction is so formal and h is d oct ri ne o f
,

i nduction so super ficial . And fo r the sa me reason he

was led in the application o f his deducti ve as certainly,

as in that o f his inductive method to make such ,

as toundi ng mista kes.

Many o f his faulty observations prove that his was

a mediocre inte l ligence : even distingui shed men, it
is true, have ma de blunders Wh a t marks hi m out
.

in an especially un favourable manner is pre c i sely

this thraldom to words since it has the closest bear
,

ing on h is l ogi c I f he had grasped the fact t ha t a ll

. u

judgme n ts and conclusions are to be traced back to

perceptio n, an d are th ere fore contained in the words
in which th e se perc eptions are epitomised the grea t ,

formal acuteness o f his mind would have led him on

by a more logical process to a distrust o f words He per .

s i sted howe ver i n cesu ntl y in making words the start

, ,

ing po in t o f his expl anations For each percep tion he

.
 '

found di fferent words which he termed its d ifie re n t

c a uses, because they described the phenomenon under
d ifferent aspects I am quite cl e ar in my conviction when
.

I sa y that the histories o f philosophy a re wrong in taking

h i s four kinds o f causes to be a logi cal div ision o f the
conception o f cause I feel certa in that A ristotle ce n
.

c e i ve d each phenomenon as h a ving four cause s which he

te rms severall y the formal the material the e ffi cien t,

, ,

had in view the spe cific nature, the substance th e ,

se ries o f its changes or the end it was desi red to

attain in every case he used i nd iscrim i natel y the word
,

cause and this has for centuries given rise to new

con fusions This is especiall y clear with regard to
.

the form a l cause by which term he designates the

,
“ ”
quiddity or essen ce or n a ture o f a thing The
, ,
.

“ ”
word quiddity i s at last de ad and buried But the
.

“ ”
equally emp ty notion o f es sen ce or nature
remains with us stil l and we S peak o f the natu re
,

o f electricity , or the nature o f mon a rchy as i f the

term conveyed something real to our minds almost —
in the sa me way as when we Speak o f the soul o f m a n .

I nvestigators o f to day, however will be chary o f d raw

-
,
“ ”
ing con clusions from this vague express ion nature .

Aristo tle did not shri nk from d oing so , be cause in h is

system o f logic indefi n i te n otions and ge neralised
noti ons we re upon an equal footing I t seemed to
.

him tha t it belonged to t he nature o f the circle to

be the most perfect l ine ; fro m this pe rfecti on he
dre w the m omen tous conclusi on that the m oti on o f
plan et s must be circular The cen tre ap peared to h im
.
,

to be by n ature, the noblest portion o f the body ; from

this he drew the con c lusion that the heart, wrongly
regarded as be ing in the cen tre of the body must be ,

the s eat of the soul For nearly two thou sand ya rs

.

astronomers and phys i c i ans a c cepted th ose conclusions

and went round and round, a fter their tea cher, on the
most per fect li ne of the circle I n pass ages t oo many
.
,

to enumerate, we detect Aristotle in such absurdities .

I t spe aks aga inst him as stu dent o f nature that he

sho uld make wrong observati ons ; but it spea ks sti ll more
against him a s logician that he shoul d think inco rrectly .

When for example, he tries to prove the above men

,
-

t i o n e d per fection o f the circul a r line by saying that,

without retrogression per petual motion could only

,

ta ke p lace on the line of the ci rcl e, he makes our

heads reel even i f we fail to perceive that the same
,

conclusion might be drawn quite as well from th e

ellipse ;
The enumera ti on of fire water air, and earth , as
, ,

the four el e me n ts, a div i si on s till to be me t with

48 J RI S TO TL C
i n po pular ph raseology, plays a huge pa rt i n the
physics and physi ology o f Aristotle I do not i ntend
.

to enlarge on this poin t as it is clear that under the fou r

,

elements he means something quite di ffe rent from our

notions o f fire , water, air, and earth T his is one o f
.

the cases in which we cannot misun derstan d the mean

ing o f the a ncients, because we do not understa nd it at
all In no i nstance where th e clue to hi s mean ing
.

is lost to us ought we to accuse Arist otle o f talk in g

nonsense . The cord o f communication betw een his
t h ought an d ours i s cu t .

One must bear in mind that mechan ics in an c ient

t i m es had re ac h ed a high le ve l o f a tta i n m en t
. The
g rea t engineer ,
Ar c h imedes,
whose practical and the o

re t i ca l genius is much ad m i red by our modern ph ysi

cis ts lived o nly one hundr ed years a fter Aristo tle

, .

What opinion then are we to form o f Aristotle, who

, , ,

so shortly be fore Archi med e s, ventured to wri te about

me chani cs, and in speaking, fo r instance o f the lever

,

(whi c h on un e q ual a rms sustain s un eq ual weights in

equ i librium ) was cap a ble o f talking such ph ilosophi c al

nonsense as to attri bute this mechani cal acti on to the
wonderful prope rti es o f the circle &
The authori ty o f Aristotle only disap peared gradually
as the sciences ad vanced step by step Astronomy and
.

mechanics came to mat uri ty more quickly than the re st ,

FROM c a s s u me s Boo x o r
. AN IMALS
. 35 83
 a mmo 7 1 6 49
and thus Aristotle was banished more speed i from
their spheres B ut up to our own day the a ttempt has
.

bee n made to v in dicate his importance as a teacher o f

the scien ce of biology As alre ady in dicated attempts
.
,

are still made to read into his works the antici

parion or the knowledge o f more recent discoveries .

There would really be noth in g exceptionally to the

cred it o f such a multi farious writer if, among his
countl ess memora nda put toget he r enti rely without
,

regard to sys tem, he had for on ce accidentally j e tted

down a n obse rvati on whi c h was a fterwards for
gotten unti l, a t a still later time som e more recen t
,

student agai n brought i t to l ight . Le w es , how

ever has proved convincingly that th ese famous antici
,

pa t i ve disc overies o f Aristotl e amoun t to nothing . I n

particular, on h is obse rvation that some fish are placental,

Lewes makes a remark whic h i s well worth readi ng .

Aristotle had only a very vague notion of embryology

he kn ew nothing at all about the physiological fun c
tion o f the a fter bi rth So that , when he men ti ons the
-
.

existence o f fishes which bear young like mammali a ,

this observation or note has not th e sa me sense w hi ch

it woul d hav e i f m a de by a modern man o f science .

“ ”
The laws of nature were unknown to Aristotle ,

th e re fore, when he cites an instance which illustrates

for us a d eparture fr o m thos e laws, the exce p tion
D
 —
causes him no sur p rise the one
'

e fiec t all others

of

which i t should produce . I might sa y t hat the

concept fish was so vague and undefined in Aristot le s ’

mi nd that the existe nce o f placental fish made no

al teration whatever in h is notion of the ge neral term .

The lo wes t stages o f our natural science include c la wi

fic a t i on and in no single insta nce has Aristotle made
our clas sification fuller or more prec i se .

As an an a tomi s t Aristotle i s a bad obse rver an d a

worse reasoner He may have dissected many an imals
. .

He may h a ve co llected industriously the data procured ,

from butcher s and pri ests from soldiers and em bd me rs

,

o f the muscles a n d nerves , o f the v ess el s and tissues o f

the hum a n body he was qui te ignorant The famou s .

physician Ga len (some five hun dre d years after Ari stotle )
occupies a pla ce , from our standpoint fa r below that
,

o f Archimedes the engineer . Yet Aristotle cann ot

fo r a moment be compared with Galen .

The question whether Aristotle had di ss ected human

,

c orp ses or not is o f no importance

,
.His mistakes wou ld
be only the m ore gross i f it could be proved that he
had m ade them with a previous knowledge o f anatomy .

In that case we should be forced to conclude that ,

fo r the sake o f some logical or met a physical pre

m e s si
, o n he h a d shut his eyes to the most obvi ous
fac ts
. W e migh t no d ou bt, at a pi nch, und ers t and
 m e s on s 5 1

that h e had fa iled to distinguish between veins and

arteri es, but even on that su ppos iti on what he oflers ’

as the bes t a ccount of the brai n re mains i n

c om prehensi ble We kno w from ocular demonstra
.

ti o n that the brain fills up the skul l and is an organ

su p plied with an exceptionall y large n umber o f blood
’
vess els Aristotle s account is t hat the h inder part o f
.

the skull is qui te empty, an d th e brain itse l f qui te

bloodless He writes as i f at t he utmost he had had
.
, ,

be fore him the washed out brain o f a cal f or that

-

o f a cooked goose . He does not appear to have had

any conception o f the existence o f the nerves since the
word which ce rtainly he mak es use of, may mean all
,

manner o f things, s uch as sinews or muscles, but not

nerves in ou r spe c ial sense (The old mean ing s ur
.

“ ”
vi ve d in the German nervig and is still retai ned
,

in the French Again , o f the function o f

the ne rves, thei r connecti on with t he brain and t he
sp inal marrow (he i de ntifies the latter gro u p of nerves
w i th the marrow o f the bones and e ven we habi tuall y
,

use the w rong term) he had not the fain t est n otion H e .

i s aware that there is a duct l ead i ng from t he back or

t f —
the eye, and he has here ore seen if yo u can call it
—
seeing the O ptic nerve But here also his observation
.

i s no t accurate e n ough, and he d oes not des cribe th e

course of ehe o pti c nerve corre c t l y ; hi s concl us io ns s l s n
5 2

are on th is point so illogical that he ascrib es to the

optic nerve the fun ction o f nourishi ng th e eye .

So bad an anatom i st is not likely to be a good

physiologi st .

His remarks on the cause and fun ction o f the breath

are comi cal He understands so littl e about the
.

functions o f the brain that his teaching on this po int

seems to have been even retrograde He de n ies in s e t
.

terms (so that the contrary must already have be en

maintained ) that the brain is capable o f sensation I t.

is the cold est member o f the body and serves to

moderate our natu ral heat It surel y foll ows that so
.

wretched a p hysiologist could not possibly be a good

psychologist Yet here a gain we must r emembe r in
.

his favour that it is not his faul t i f w e, with pe danti c

uni formity in sist on translati ng h i s conception M &) by
,

the term soul Already in Latin an eq uival ent h a d to be

.

” ”
found so metimes in an ima sometimes in
, ,
an imus ,
”
i us t as sometimes we speak o f the soul, sometimes
”
of the vital principle Yet I hardly nee d to recall
.

”
to mind th at abst ractions such as th ese, wi th sp i rit
”
and the vi ta l principle thro wn into the bargain , are
no clearer to us to day than v ri was to Aristotle o f
- ‘

old We may laugh at the mytholo gy o f the Bible

.

with i ts story o f God havin g breath ed t he breath of

li fe, t hat i s the animus or l vxvi, i n to ma n th rough
“ ‘ ’
hi s nostrils : our sel f sa ti sfie d laughter does not make
-

us one whit the wiser .

Th i s word o f apology cannot, a t th e same ti me,

d e te r me fro m laying on Ari stotle t he responsibili ty o f
havin g s tart ed the psych ology of the Mi ddl e Ages on
its strangel y crooked paths Already we find in h i m
.

the minute h ai r split ti ng d efiniti ons co ncern in g th e

-

indivisi b il ity and pe rfe cti o n of the soul Already he

.

uses words for the varying capaci ti es of the soul ’

,
“ ” “ ”
un de rs tandin g and reason and so forth The .

pass age from Aristotle s doctri ne o f know ledge d own

’

to the most att en uated conce pti ons of the pu re reaso n

o f K an t i s made over a n e bulo us suspe ns i on bri dge, o f
-

which the chai ns and gir d e rs are c losely in ter linke d

words .

I f the pov e rty of Aris to tl e s mental p hil os ophy fai l s

’

on th e whol e to s tr ike us be cause our own psychology has

o n l y just b egun t o discard hi s ideas th e m eagr eness o f
,

his d octr i ne of the sen ses i s all th e more obv i ous

be cause here the inad equa cy o f his p hysiology cri es
to heaven To make matters worse, Ari stotle he re
.

again bri ngs his fo ur e lements in to play, and the fac t,

that t h e senses are five in number does not re frain h im
,

from conn e ct i ng each one of th e m, wh e re i t is m i m e

for h i m to do so , w i th one of t h ese mys t i c e l e men ts .

W e seem to be read i ng one o f the wri ti n gs o f th e e cstatic

me dia va l
theoso ph ists, bu t wi t hout thei r dil et tante
pro fundity an d poe try The words sou nd l i ke the
.

“
words o f a chorus o f c ountle ss foo ls : N ow it i s
evident t ha t we must in th is way as sign and adapt w eb
one o f the organs o f sense to its corresponding elem e n t .

T he eye we app rehend be longs to that of water, the

, ,

h earin g to t hat o f air th e sense of smell to that of fire

, ,

touch to that of eart h tast e is a kind of touc h

, .

The eye is closely dependent on the brain fo r the

l at ter is the most moist and the coldest portion o f the
body . When there is something ign eo us in th e
diaphan ous, there is light When non e, there i s dark
.

n ess But that wh i ch we te rm diap han ous is n ei the r

.

the prope rty o f the air nor of the wate r, nor o f any
other element ; but it is a common nature or force
which, not existing se parately is fo und in th e se and
,

o th e r bod i es , in some more in some l ess

,
.

80 enslav e d is Ari s totle by his o wn te rminol ogy

th a t he raises transparency to the rank of a living and
efie ct ua l force, jus t as he pe rs o n ifies c old
’

We must not suppose that he had formed any

not ions in the least resembl ing our ideas of acoustics
when he connects the sense o f hearing with the el e
m e nts o f air Naturall y the v i bration s o f resonan t
.

obje c ts had not escaped h is atten t ion But be yo nd

.

thi s obmrvati on he d i d not go .

 What Arist o tle says and t eaches on th e subject
of m e m o ry i s n o doubt agreeable to ou r modern

n otion s . He has some inkling that the immediate

i m pressi ons o f the world o f reali ty m ust leave tra ces
be hind them traces in the brain not as we should
, , ,

e x pe ct from his system in the heart

,
Even the l oss o f
.

memory in old people he explains mechanically by the

gradual harde n ing o f the bra i n He is also already
.

fee l i ng hi s way towards the subse que ntl y es tablished

laws of the associ a tion o f i deas W e must take .

ve ry great c are, ho wever to avoid any i mpo rt ati on

,

i nto his wor ds of our modern physi ol ogical knowl e dge ,

wh i ch i n sp i te of all sho r tc om i ngs, is, as far as i t goes,

,

t o be de pe nd ed on .

Anot her s ubj ect on w h ich Arist ot le tal ks utte r non

sense is s lee p This mos t ev e ryday occurren ce in the
.

li fe o r man re main s, it is true, even at the present time,

un ex pl ained ; that is to say our observations an d de
,

s c ri pt i on s of th is phenomenon a re sti l l impe rfec t. B ut

o nly some old herbwoma n would ventu re to day to -

endorse Aris totle s opin i on that peo pl e with big he ads

’

and small veins s le ep a great deal because the bodily

,

moisture ca n not ascend quickly enough through s mall

ve i ns, an d because big heads cause too great an evapora
tion of moisture What a satisfaction it would be to
.

be a b l e to call up the g reat Ari stotl e be for e on e and

 “
make him give a direct a nswer Yes or No to
“

the question whether he h ad ever at any time, or even

i n one single instance really made and t ested the
,

obse rvati on that a man with a big h ead sleeps more

than any other ma n .

H is huge collection o r note s which under the titl e

,
”
of The Natural H istory of Animals has bec ome so
,

famous, s eems to us so disorderly and unmethodical

that it throws the worst pos sible light on the logi cal
fa culty o f this father of all the sc i en ce s
. I t does not
help him out o f the d i fli c ul ty to assert that this di s
order h as be en introduced by later ed i tors For not
.

e ven ma l i ce pr epa re o r t h e m ost un happy acc i d ent

could have brought about so complete a con fusi on .

Besid es, the mistakes are too numerous and too gros s
to be condoned According to Ari s to tl e males have
.

more teeth than fe mal e s, not on ly among manki nd but

among shee p, goats and swine .

According to Aristotle the re is a speci es of ox which

has a bone in i ts heart Accord ing t o Aristo tle the
.

blood in the lower parts o f the body i s blacker and

thicker than in the upper ; t h e blood o f a woman i s
thicker and blacker than that o f a man ; there fore a
man is nob ler than a woman and the upper pa rts o f
,

the body nob l er than the low er Any butcher or

.

soldier might have taught h i m bet te r than that I n his.

 J RI S TO TLG 57
credulity however he serv es up s t ill more fabul ous
, ,

tales The hen partridge be comes im p regnated if the

.

wind blows from the d irection o f the male bird ; at

certa in times the same eflec t is produced simply by the
'

cry o f the ma l e bird flyi ng over her . The bite of a

mad dog produces rabi es in e very animal w i th t he sole
exce ption o f man .

His t endency to draw l og ical conclus i ons rather

than to observe n a ture is inco rrigi ble His state
.

m e nts about the visc era and the course o f the ve i ns

are evolved by relentless logic from the g reater pe r
fe c t io n of a si ngle as compared with a plural
ori gi n Hundre ds o f pass age s m i gh t be quoted i n
.

exemplifi cation of th i s pe rv e rs e process o f thought .

We have al ready mentioned that t h e seat o f the heart

is the nobl est part o f the huma n body In the brutes
.

it lies exactly in the ce ntre ; in man it l ean s a little

towards the l e ft side in order to c ommn sa t e the greater
cold in that quarter ; for in man th e l e ft side is th e
col de r o f the two H e certainly makes this statement
.

o nly be cause he co ns i ders t he right side nobl er than th e

le ft
.

Had he ever i f only wh en he was a boy, h eld a

,

fri ghtened b i rd in his hand h e c o ul d not have asserted

,

that the ph e n omen on o f the palp i tation o f the heart

th rough fear is only o bse rvable in ma n I f h e had on ly
.
5 8 M I S TO TL G

i nqu i re d of h i s cook, he could never have said that men

al one have fl es h on the i r legs H is explanation of the
.

c al f o f t h e l eg in man from the u pr ight pod t i on of

the human body is not altogether a stupid one N e i ther .

can we afiord to re proach him with his fable co n ce rning

'

the efie c ts of the u p right walk o f man seeing that fro m

,

the days o f H e rder unti l now trash o f this sort has

formed one o f the fav ouri te commonplaces of our sch ool
books I t might be we ll to re member that gees e also
.

wal k upright and hold th e ir heads on high .

I t i s not my busin ess however in this survey to cas t

, ,

r i dicule on Ar i stotle on ac coun t o f a few venial mis

takes but by ca pious i n stances to show c l early that
,

the father o f logi c and meth od not on ly obse rved

i n cor rectly but that he h a d a m i nd naturally unfitted
for obs e rvation . W e cannot expe ct him to have mas
t ere d one o f the pro foundest of m odern sciences or ,

even that he sh oul d have grasped th e si mple fact that

a l l exp lanation i s simply d escri ption Yet the re ally
.

firs t rate minds in all ages have at least inst i nc tivel y

-

ai med at gi ving good descript i ons be fore o ffering to

posterity as an explanation the analys i s o f th e ir own
s pe ci al descriptive words In th i s se n se Aristot le s mind
’
.

was so fa r from being firs t c l ass , that, on the con trary,

-

he took u p a n y w ord , no matter w hat, an d acce p ted it

as a des cri pti on .
 m a s on s

Against this is to be se t th e service rendered by Ari s

t otl e in fi xing the mou l d o f scienti fic and techni cal

lan guage But perhaps th is serv ice i s mo re apparent

.

than real per haps hi s exam ple and t he mental de fects

o f his school have only br ought about an M fica ti on

o f sc ien tific te rm i nology perhaps we are sti l l un co n

sciously schoolmen as long as we credi t Ari stotle w ith
such services to language ; we know a nd tea ch that
all real ad ditions to human knowledge are, first and last,
additions to the con tents o f human memory—contri
l —
butions to the riches of our vocabu ary that the two
are, in fact i dentical Thi s being so, i t wo ul d be
, .

remarkable i f the man to whom we owe not a single

new d i scovery not a single new observat i on o f import
,

ance, should yet in any way have i ncrease d the re sources

o f human speech . I n fact he has not done so ; he
,

has only tried pedantically to e n umerate and arrang e

them just as a lib rarian wh o cannot read might ar range
,

in outward or der the treasures of h is booksh elv es, or as

a dog migh t keep watch over the load o f hay which
never t emp ts h i s appeti te I n the writings o f an
.

admirer o f A ris totl e, Al exander von Hum bo l dt, we

meet with the sur p risi ng remark that the gro unds for
bel ie v i ng that our knowledge o f z oology was d i rectl y
i ncrease d by the military exped i tions o f A l exan der the
Great a re l i ttle be tter than le genda ry Humbol dt t rie s
.
 m o r on s

in a learn ed manner to justi fy himse l f on this point as

against t h e biograph e rs o f Ari sto tl e But we feel .

grave m i sgi v i ngs abou r a student o f natu re w h o allowed

such an opportunity to pass him by .

The deeper we look into the psychological si de o f

human thought the m ore we se e that Ari stotle even i f ,

his capaci ti es had been be t te r was n ot in a position t o

,

understand our m odern concepti ons of the theo ry o f

knowledge . Our fundam enta l po int o f view that
—
the world o f reality o r the Thi ng i I tsel i s essen
n - f—-

t i a ll y unkn owab le wa s, se lf evidentl y beyond h i s powers

-
,

of thought . He added n othing to the stores of human

memory ; he was not a d i scoverer , because he wa s
not an artist He petri fied the lan guage o f scien ce
.
,

but gave no new word to the living lan guage of men ,

since e very new word i s a discovery, a creati on o f art .

The s tanding po int from which he co n fronted the

-

worl d of real i ti es lacked the ground foundati on ,

name ly the recogniti on o f the fun ction o f the senses

,

in the theo ry o f kn owl edge .

Aristo tle w a s so lit tl e of an artist t ha t he i s, pe r

haps, chiefly to blame for the fact that the simple
discovery tha t all speech i s m e taphor i cal had to be
, ,

reac he d by a new way He observe d quite corre ctly

.

that wo rds a re constantly use d i n a me ta ph ori cal sense .

But his art i sti c capacity wa s so s mall that he had not

 M I S TO TL S 61
the faintest notion o f the all pe rvading nece ssity fo r
-

metaphor and there fore surrendered its use to the art

,

o f poetry to which he was a stranger, thus excludin g

meta phor from the sphere o f knowle dge fo r thousands

o f years . So little of an arti s t wa s he that he
coined wi thout se nse and wi thout h agina ti on the
new words t hat he c ould not dis pense w i t h, w i th
th e result tha t in th e en d his logic was the bes t that

could co me o ut o f them .

In brie f the tru t h is th i s Aristo tle wa s not an

.

o bse rver o f nature be cause he had eye s fo r books on ly ;

,

for that which in the petty language o f boo kwo rms is

,

ca lled fee bl y enough, the Book o f Nature, he had no

,

ey es at all H e was the fi rst Bi bliophile whose name

.

occurs i n the tradition o f the history o f learn ing Plato .

”
called him the Reader making fun o f h i s book
,
’
learning in a m a nner conge n ial to Plato s poe ti cal sp i rit .

“ ”
With the eyes o f a bookman Aristo tle the reader
’
c ri ticise d h i s pre deces sor s i nsight Sound c once p tions
.

of the re la t i o n o f the earth to oth e r h eave n ly bod i es he

“
rej ected , principal ly because the notion o f above
“
con fused him the n oti on o f below seemed to h i m
to be the more contemptible The un ion o f two sexes
.

i n the blossom of a plant he rejec t ed be cause plan ts

c ou l d n o t be more pe r fect than brut es He was stee ped
W
.

in book lore down to the dept hs h i s sou l

-
e shall se e
.
62 J RI S TOTL s
directly how hi s doctrinai re treatment o f this bo ok lore -

was closely conn e ct e d w ith h i s belie f in the reasonable

n e ss of creati on , and was, there fore, admirably suited
fo r a da ptation t o the Chri sti an v iew o f t h e Universe .

’
Plato s remark admits o f a ge neral application The .

”
phi l os ophers o f the school o f Arist otle were readers,
men w i th eyes for books only They thought that
.

they sa w what was to be found in Ari st otle What .

was not to be found there they ra w , but w e re d e ter

mined nar to see i t It is related o f C re mo n i ni, the
.

co ntemporary and colleague o f Gal ilei , that he re

fuse d to go on l ooking through the newly invente d-

telescope because t h e moons o f Jupiter, which had j ust

bee n discovered , had no pl a ce in the astronomy o f
Aristotle To such an extent were the Aristot eli ans
.

subse rvient to the wo rds o f thei r maste r .

‘

I mi g h t have known
tha t some of the pictures inserted in
t his volume would be regar ded s imply as decora tive illus
t ra t i ons .

The geographical and zoolog ical drawings are taken from

scienti fic works whi ch ha d a wide circula tion in the ear ly
days of the Printing Press ; one is from an a tla s in the
eo
g g r a phy of P tolemy ; a noth er fr o m the zoology of the
remarkably meritorious writer Conra d Gesner ; a third
,

from the Natural Phil osophy of Mege nb erg . The prints of

imagh ary and fa bul ous crea tures and those of erroneous
 M I S TO TL G 6
3
The great number o f h is astonishing mistakes would
not te ll so much against his men tal capac i ty i f one
ma p s (one of t he la tter i n which th e African coasts are
,

prolonged east wards as far a s Ch in a thus placing the Ind ian

,

Oce an i n a positi on anal ogo us to tha t of th e Medi terran ea n ,

w as unfor tu na tely not ac c es sible wh i le these pag es wer e in

the pr ess) are intended to ill ustra te the unsci enti fic a ttitude
towa rds na ture result ant from th e asc ende ncy of Ari s totl e as
a tea cher The Ari s totelia n Sc hool i s not trea ted unj ustl y in
.

thi s coll ection I have tr ied to show with wha t sort of eyes
.

its teacher s looke d a t n a ture Mege nberg g ener al ly a ppeals

.

di rectly to Ari stotle as the a uthority for each of hi s

fabulous animals Gesner cer tai nl y in the ca se of t h e
, , ,

Unicorn But eve n i n thi s i nstance Ari stotle did not

.

omit to furnish proofs where there was noth ing to prove

and assigns a hi gher di gni ty to t h e sing le horn on account o f
its central pos ition in the anima l s forehea d The photo
’
.

g r a ph from an antique st a tue shows h ow a n a ncient

sculpt or represente d Ari st otle i f tha t i s the letters of the
, , ,

inscription do not poi n t to the concl usi on th a t the a rti s t

meant to represent Arist ides or Ari stippus a nd i f the
hea d and the body of the s ta tue belong to ea ch other How .

Rapha e l portr ayed t he e art hly Ari st ot le besi de the more

he avenl y Pla to i s ma de known to us by the c entr al group i n
t he Schools of Athens Here I a m taking as proven wh a t
.
”

is in t he hi ghest degre e proba ble tha t in the Schools of

,

”
Athens (this name i s not muc h more than two hundre d years
64 M I S TOTL S

we re able to put down to h i s account a n equal number

o f instances in which he had hit the mark But th i s .

i s precisely what we are unable to do B esides it .

,

is a ma t te r for serious conside rati on to w hat e x ten t

some very minute e rror may, occasionally i nvalidate ,

a man s claim to the possession of any scien tific

’

t hought whatever W hen for ex ample, he mys that

.
,

old) Ar istotle is represente d a s Trende lenburg and S pringer

ha ve decl ared and tha t Herma nn G rimm s defence of the old ’

mi sconce ption th a t Raph ae l h a d here g iven a portr ai t of

,

S t Paul is not to be take n seriously

.
, .

Some carica tur es also were necessary in order tha t the

reader mi ght see for hi msel f in wha t manner of form the
sch olast ic phi l osopher a ppeared to t h e imag in a ti ve a rti s ts of
the age o f the Reforma ti on I n the fine woodcut o f Gri en s
.
’

we see Aris totle as a squi re of d ames He i s bridled like

.

”
a sa d dle horse a woman i s sea ted on h is back The motif “

is one tha t oft en rec urs W

.
,

. e fin d it i n a d rawi ng by an

anonymous m aster i n the Amst erd am museum It wa s in .

keeping with popular t a s te in th ose ti mes to turn the

, ,

intellectu al Heroes of a ntiquity even the mag i c ian V irg il

, ,

into heroes of a morous a dventure The ins ign ifi cant .

kal end ar d r awi ng of Holbein shows the philosophe r of the

~

scholastic theol ogy in nearly t h e same aspect as t ha t in whi ch

Lut her sa w hi m as a Pri nce of D arknes s At t he hea d of
.

t h e Clergy Ari stotle falls hea dlong into the Abyss .

 65
a drop o f wine in a l arge vessel o f water becomes
wate r such an asserti on might be pardoned i n any
,

pe rson en gage d in busin ess, such as a coo k, or a win e

merchan t, or a physician But the fath e r o f l ogic an d
.

me t ho d has no righ t to l et slip such a state m ent, i f he

is not to lose h is reputation among h is con tempo
raries as a sc i entific th inker .
—
Ari s totl e sa w a nd,
consi deri ng the im pe rfect i nstruments of investi ga
ti on a t men s dis pos al i n his day saw righ tly—that
’
,

a drop o f w i ne i n fused in a vessel o f water was o f no

experimental sign i fi can ce it had th er efore, no interest
,

fo r h i m, and he al lo ws the change of wi ne in to wat er

to be assume d T h e ch i ef abs urdi ti es of h is wri ti ngs
.

on natural sci ence may be tra ced back to the c hi ldish

att em p t to p rove t hat throughout nature there exists
some such princi pl e o f utility which to him a ppe ars o f
,

ex c l usive importan ce . I t is true that this teleol ogi cal

con c ept io n o f the un i v erse was fi rst upse t, for the best
thinke rs by Sp i noza, a n d that it st il l ob tains accept
,

ance amon g the mass of manki nd B ut we sel dom .

m eet w i th suc h a striking instan ce of the c onstantly

bli ndin g efiec t o f such an imagi nary utili ty as in t he
case of Ari stot le A man of h i s cali br e na tura ll y,does not
. ,

stand on the same foo ti ng wi th the c harlatan who, for

the sa k e of pers ona l advan tage, vo l un tarily all o ws h i m

se lf to be mi sle d .B ut in te lle c tually he is no t muc h

a
bet ter when in d e alin g with the anatomy o f an i mals
, ,

he sees in a fals e light whatever ap pears to his credul ous

simp li ci ty to be o f un i vers al use fulness in th e animal
ki ngdom .

T his e ternal se arch fo r the po i n t o f u ti l i ty, th i s no ti on

o f the end or o f design brings us, ho wever, a t las t to
,

the kerne l of his fallac i es .

I l ook upon the curren t d e ri va tion o f the word

m etaphysics (what comes after physics)as a prim e val
j oke of t h e learned Aristotl e, at all e ve nts , al ways calls
.

”
this part of h i s system the Fi r st p hil oso phy ; fi rst
“

not in ord er of time bu t of v a lue H i s metaphysic is

, .

t o h i m t he m os t i m portan t pa rt of h i s p h il os op hy .Ye t,
i n truth, i t is only an ini tial essay wh i ch calls fo r
,
'

apology rather than admirati on The efiec ts o f this

.

book (in which the unprejudiced read e r, according to

Lew es, misses the co ordi nation and sys tematic d evelop
-

m e nt of the subj ect which one would ex pect in a moder n

,

wo rk) w er e not small For cen turi es i t held in check

.

th e mater ia li s ti c t h eory of t he wo rld , wh i ch is not t h e

fi nal nor the bes t stage of knowl edge, but is yet one
through wh i ch we must pass in order to reach at last
t h e ulti mate stan dpoint o f a cri ti cal ph i loso phy .

I n the long run the meta physics o f Ar isto tle and t he

,

ra t io nal i sed de-chr i st i an i s e d sys tem of d ivi ni ty, w h i ch

'

us urp ed th e name of Ch ristia n t h eology, beca me full y

 M I S TOTL S

amalgama ted Even the e ig h tee nt h c e n t ury religion

.
o

o f r easo n takes its stand on the me ta physics o f Aristo tl e .

'

T h e scofier V oltai re himsel f i s under its sway when ,

al ays with an exclus i v e re fe rence to h is trea t men t of

( w
morals, and w i th a tou ch of supercil i ou sness) he says
La m orale d Ari sto te est, co mm e to utes les autres
’

,
’
fort bo nne : car i l n y a pas deux moral es Dieu a mis
.

dans tous l es coeurs la co nna ima nce du bien av ec que lque

”
inclinati on po ur le mal .

The God of Ar i stotl e a nd o f th i s theology is not the

maker of the world on ly ; no, he is the w orker of the
miracle o f metaphysi cs, i nasm uch as he i s at onc e firs t
cause o f the un i verse a n d i ts final e nd at once i ts ,

subs ta nce and i ts fo rm, i ts potentiality and its actuality .

Ari stotle wa s the fi rst to teach how to p lay catch ball -

wi th the noti on o f potent ial ity I f the pot enti al i s

.

ac t ual or act i ve, t he n ce rta i n l y t h e who le scholas ti c

syste m is acqu i tted on the charge of sens e l essnes , and
a ll tel eolo gy as w e ll has a c l ear mean in g .

“
Mol iere ma km hi s Ar i stot e l ian ask : Si la fin nous
peut emou vo i r par s on etre réel, ou par son etre i nten
t i onn el H is Fre nch ex positors treat th is as a mad ca p
j est dev oid of m e aning Th is it certai nly is not
. .

M ol i ere has nailed to the coun ter with one sh ort °

sharp blow t h e d is ti ncti ve puz z l e headedn ess of th e

Ar ist otel ian .
“
Are fina l caus es some thin g ac tual i n
themselves, or do they operate aft er the mann er of
human in tenti ons
’
I t was not Ari st otle s be lief i n concep ti ons alon e
that was conge nia l to th e Ch rist ian v i ew of the world
s ti ll more co nge n ial was the way in wh i c h he b rought

natu ral phenomena under noti ons of val u e T h e .

Aristot elian con cep tion o f des ign is a conc e pt i on of

value, and goes very fa r be yo nd t he natural conce pti
o f d e sign which human spe ech in i ts anth ropomorphic

way usu all y att ributes to nat ure Ari s totle crea te d
.

tel eolo gy in its coarsest form, a n d rath e r prides h i ms e lf

on hav ing sought for traces o f d esign eve ryw here At .

the sa me ti m e, he n ever lai d a ge n e ral founda t i on

for his co n ce pti on o f d esign, bu t borrow e d i t, without
e xam i n a ti o n, fro m co mmo n s pee c h . W
e ce rta inly

owe countless sugg esti ons and beauti ful obser vat i ons
to the teleolo gi cal view o f nature : on l y, in suc h
cases, t he not i on of de sign inv a riably su pplies me re ly

a stimulating ques tion and not a satis factory ans wer .

Arist ot l e, ho wever, with a c hildl i ke confid ence alrea dy

sees the answer in t h e quest ion He always se ts his
.

mind at re st too soon .

H is o fte n re peated ass e rt ion t hat na ture does

no th i ng i n vai n s ee ms to me to con ta i n the pi t h o f

h is erron eous natural ph i losop hy . Aristotle th i nks t hat

he knows so me th i ng w he re no ot he r man has a ny
 I
&
RI S s o ns
know ledge at all The as ser ti on o nly sounds more
.

impress iv e, but is quite as unver ifi ed and unve rifia ble as

the exactly equivalent di ctum t h at nature al wa ys
p ursues an e nd The whole theory is d ra wn fro m the
.

n otion o f des ign as i t is found in curre nt s peec h Al l

.

the mons trosities o f later teleology are thus al r ea dy to

be foun d in Aristot le .Already he ha s the maxim that
nature always makes the best o f poss i biliti es, in fact
that optimism which V oltai re rega rded as ridiculous
a nd Scho penhauer as ruthless .Already he has the con
t e mpt i bl e d octrine that plan ts exist on eart h fo r the

s ake o f the b rutes, and the bru te s for the sa ke o f men .

H is w h ol e at titude tow ar ds nature is grounded o n the

a rrogant a ssum m i on that na tu re i s to be appraise d in
pro portion to the s e rvice which it can rende r to man .

That might be me rely a commonplace In th ought or

.

s pe ech we never get out o f the an t hropomorphic groove .

Aristotle alone contrives to s e t up a standard valuat ion

on a sti l l narrower and mo re restricte d scale He values
.

the brutes i n p roportion to their resemblance to ma n .

But then the male s ex is h is sole cri terion , and wo man

appear s to him as muti lated man Then a gain as the
.
,

free born Greek, he sets up another standard, and the

-

slave appears to h i m as a slave from bi rth, made by

nat ure of in fe rior val ue Hen ce we are not astonish ed
'

“ ” “
when w e m ee t wi th in fe ri or numbers, i nferior
 ” ” ”
vei ns, “ in ferior dim e nsi o ns ; be fo re is su perior
“

“ “ ” “ ”
to be hind a h ve is su perior to below .

T h e cr i terion o f val u e is the we ak point o f teleolo gy .

For the res t, we are t o day about as wise as we

-

we re tw o th ous and years ago and, wi th an i nc om

,

p e t e n ce li ke th at of Arist otl e, we term phenomena

“ ”
a ccid e ntal wh i ch at the ti me o f their occurrence
we ar e unab le to explai n in their cause or e nd I
.

“ ”
hav e, in my Criti que of Language (I I I .

sought to sh ow why the not i on o f d esign , even in our

mo d e rn natural sc i e nce, has not yet bec ome obsolete .

C on form i ty to law is the latest myth ol ogy whi ch man

has foisted u pon nature I t i s the fundamental error
.

o f m odern natural science that it has turned n e ce ssity

‘

”
and con formi ty to law i nto inte rchangeable terms .

Q Q Q Q C

The criticism of language has at las t recognise d that

the two highways which must lea d us to the summits
of h uman knowledge — d educti on and induction are—
onl y t wo paths at t he j unct i on o f wh i ch s ta nd the words

o r co nce p ts o f human s peech ; in such a wa y ind ee d

that i nduct i on fo rms the w ord just as aqueous

’
va pour a scen di ng under the in fluence o f th e s un s
rays is conden sed by th em, while d educti on analyses
the wo rd an d con cep t, j ust as th e mountai n
s p r i ng s en ds d ow n i ts wate rs from above a nd d is
tri butes them through th e vall ey below Thi s dis tri
.

buti on of the wor d, this analys i s of t he con ce pt,

Aristotl e has str i v en to commes s wi thin th e chann e ls
of h i s sy llogist i c me t h od
. And because he hel d th i s
meth od to be t he essent ial factor in the process of
thought and yet at the same time ac knowl edged that
,

mankind also thought inductively, there was no ot h er

c ours e o pe n to hi m than to red uc e, i n an unintelligen t

wa y, inducti on, whi ch h e had also rightly discov e red ,

to t h e form of a sy llo gi sm . He asse rts that the
inducti ve m ethod, w hich asce nds from particulars to
gene rals, d e sce nds from gen e rals to pa rti culars But,
.

at t h e sam e tim e, b e completely fails to pe rce ive th e

psych ol ogical antecedents of induction , w h ich wi th
him is ce rtai nly no t th e ri pe result of inte ll e ctual
activity but a groping about a mid accidental analo gies ,
,

a dilettan te attempt at gui dan ce or persuasion by m ea ns

of illustrati o ns. He never saw cl ear ly the distinct i on
be tw u n a ge nuin e induct i on and th e syllogi stic
fo rmula . Under the name a t i nduct i on he draws
utter ly puerile analogi c al concl usions wi th all t he
nonchalance o f an ignoramus An d hi s reason for so
.

doing is that he se es a pervad ing analogy bet ween the

conscious tho ugh t o f mankind and th e unconsc i ous
o pera ti ons o f nature . The n oti on o f des i gn , already
re fe rred to, misl eads hi m in to taking i ll u strat i ons for
proofs ; for since he i s unable to pierce below the
surface o f nature in the pl ace o f living nature he
,

subs ti tutes his dead lo gic I f he prov es lo gicall y

.

in this way that th e re must be i n habitants of the

moon who cor res pond to the ign eous element in that
planet, such teaching i s not worse than a hund red
chimeras of th e same sort which are to be met with i n
the visio naries o r the Middle Ages Only in his case.

th ey shock us more bec ause he is in no sense a

,

visionary, but a commo n place sel l c on fide n t pe rson

- -

who thinks that he is only applying h is logical method

i n the most matter of fact way N ie tsc h e has cal l ed
- -
.

”
h i m a bo urgeo i s.

The applied l ogic o f Ar i stotle co nsists in the general

i sa t io n o f ex a mfles. H e thinks like the En glishman
who, because the fi rst person he came acros s on
land i ng in France happe n ed to be a red haired -
,

de for med waiter, wrote in h is diary The French are,

red hai red a n d de fo rmed

- N ot even in mathe
.

ma t i cs, although there the si ngle exa mfle is some

thing more than an exa mw e, w ould such a co n c lusion

be approved ; fo r the ground o f knowledge i s se ldom

or never the groun d o f reality In nat ural science,
.

where perhaps no general gro und o f knowle dge exists,

w he re a l l ex planati on ca n only be des cr i pti on, suc h
induct i ons a re cri mi nal .
FROM C GES N ER S BOO K OF AN
.
’
IMALS . 1 5 83

Th e S ea Monk
 If the ap p li e d logic o f Aristotl e startles us to suc h a
de gree by reason of the contrast bet ween the scien ti fic
claims of his m e th od and h is inv in ci ble creduli ty, th e
principle o f hi s th eo retic lo gic leaves us in hopelm
be wilde rment There are dec i sive inst ances in w hi ch
.

thi s o ften acu t e intellect be trays an am azing obtuse

n ess Th is phen omenon may perhaps be a ccoun te d
.

for on psychol ogi cal grounds i f we m ume the cor

,

rec tn ess o f a supposition , the be tter es tabli s hm e nt or

refutati on o f which I should li ke t o reco mm en d to the

earnest attenti on o f S anskrit scholars I t ap pears that
.

Pfin ini , the pe rfec ter of the Ind ian gra mmar, and a
c on temporary of Aristo tle, manufactu re d out o f the
na ti o nal catego ri es o f h is pr edece ss ors a syste m of
formal grammati cal categori es . The science of
etymo logy as p ractise d among the In dians o f Ari s totl e s ’

t ime (a science which subseq uen tly i n th e n in eteent h

century made good i ts clai m to form a com p lete
bran c h of Western cul ture) would have be en , with its
i nqu i ri es i nto the parts of speec h , into the roots and
constructive elem e nts o f language, im pos sib l e had it

no t bee n prece de d by an accurate analysi s o f co nce p

ti ons, what we now, perhaps, call logi c N ow it . -

would be quite wi t hin the bounds of pos s i bil i ty , a nd

amusing as well, to su p pose that Aris totle by some
me a ns or oth er had bec ome ac qu a i n te d w ith th i s
contem porary Indian grammar, which took for gr anted,
with ou t makin g any more e xpress m en t ion of i t, the
logical analys is o f conce pti ons a nd had , amid mis takes
,

and confusion s, agai n contorte d this syste m of grammar

back in to a s ystem o f logic On this assumption h i s
.

logic is founded on a grammar which he did not

understand That his logic is based on an elementary
.

phi loso p hy of language has, as a matter of fact bee n

,

ri ghtly perceiv ed T o i l lustrate in connection wi th

.
,

Ind ian gram mar the above mentioned obtuseness o f

,
-

Aristotle, a single example or su ggest ion will suffice .

I n the seventh chap ter o f his Categori es he uses the

wo rd which in th e later West e rn gramm a rs signifies
th e cases of the substantive he us es it st i ll in the
“
ge neral se nse o f an e l e m ent o f construction but
w h i le t h e contem porary Sanskrit gram mari ans had
al re ady th o roughly investi gated the formative elemen ts
of words Arist o t l e ad opts what is obviou sly a te c hnical

te rm w i th out clear ly understanding i ts techni cal m ean

i ng
. In i nstan ces such as th ese Ari stotl e ta l ks
n onsense . Just as i n natur al sci ence he makes
aston ishing mistakes, be cause he treats the noti ons of
spec i es and the physical notion s of the common
s peech as i f they co rrespo nded exactl y with reality, so
in prec ise ly the same way, i n h i s Me chan ic o f
T hought, he re prese nts the abstract and more abstract
 75
notions wrongly because he assum es, in good faith that
, ,

t h e accidental anal ogies o f his m other tongue, i e , the

. .

Greek grammar the cate go ries o f the spoken se ntence

,

a re necess a ry and generally valid cate go ries o f th ought .

But that h e was acquain ted with the me th odicall y

arranged g ra mmar of an Indo Europe an language ap pears
-

to me t o be an hypo th e sis which cannot be rej e c ted For

.

only thus can i t be explain ed that whi l e, on t he one

hand he wa s unable to differentiate the parts o f s peec h
,

of his own language, he yet, on t h e other, s et up logical

cate gories which in most po ints corres pond to a subtly

elaborate d grammar I t would be qui te in ke e pi ng
.

with the speculative tendency o f the Greek mind i f

Aristo tle had bee n acquai n t ed wi th some such monstrous
Indian grammar and had misunderstood it logi cal ly a n d
me taphys ically from beginn ing to end and had uncon
sci ous ly trans formed it So me test instance s must
.

be given to ill ustrate my as sumptions , which at fi rst

sight a re bound to appear me re moonshine to cla mi ca l
philologi sts .

First of al l, there is the p hen omenon of th e n e gative

i n human s peech .

On his notion o f the negative, Ari st otl e has

constructed the largest portion of h is lo gi c almos t
,

his enti re te aching concer ni ng j udgment and th e

in ference M oreove r h is m eta ph ysic s w eary us a d
.
,
na usea »: by their ever recurrin g opposition betwe en
-

be in g and not being I n h is pres entation the conce pt s

-
.

n egati on, contradi ct ion and Opposi tion j ostle eac h

,

o the r in compl e te con fus ion .He trans fers verbal

n egation to the world of real i ty, cal ls it contr adict i on ,
and even o ut o f thi s n onenti ty crea te s his world .

I do not thi nk that the fa ct pro poun ded can be mor e

clearly e x prewe d The negativ e, as ex prea e d by the
.

“ ”
li ttle word no and i ts corre lati ves is a ru l ity but
, ,

s till o nl a reali ty o f human sp ee ch

y I
. n the las t res ort

— as I obse rve in other pla ces— th is negat i ve i s th e

strongest express ion o f our subjectivity, o f o ur
“ ”
ego ism , o f our I . W hen a ch i l d re fuses food
by a determined shake o f the h ead he makes use o f ,

the m ost ex premive symbol o f negation Al l negation .

“ ”
means ess entially I w i ll not, o r, what comes to
“
exactly the sa me thing ,
I can not .When al l is
said and do ne, al l negation s involve refusals of th is
so rt If i t is sugg es ted t o me tha t I s houl d ca ll some
.

'

thing b lac k white, a dish is ofle red to my i ntell ec tual

”
“
Ego
’
wh i ch I don t like I try fo r instan ce, to
.
,

associate men ta lly the word raven wi th the notion

“ ”
of whiteness . My brain neither can nor will admit
the ass ociat ion And just l ike the child I vigo rous ly
.

s hake my hea d at it .

Aris tot le, bes i de s, li ke many me n afte r h i m, allo ws

 M I S TO TLE

h i msel f to be deceived, by an accide nt o f language,

.

i n t o thinking that all the difiere n t ia t i ons of spee ch

'

rest u po n a real foundation (as i f th ere existed in t h e

high est regions of t hough t, as the phi losophe rs sup pos e,
a m e ta p hys ical popu lar e tym ology ) In t he ins ta n ce
.

we are S pe aking of we m eet wi th cert ai n contrasts

” “ ”
i n sp ee ch wh i ch are expres se d by no, not, the
“ ”
prefix nu, and so forth a n d others in w hich we
,

e mploy positive t e rms . In my opi nion , the d eci s i on

wheth er we shall e mploy one or ot he r ki n d of n egativ e
depe nds en tirely on our own egoisti c conveni e n c e .

T h e man w h o is use ful to us (t hat is, in the long run ,

to our social co nd i tions), and the man who i s inj urious
to us, have bo th such an import ant be ar i ng on our
“
we ll being that we use distin c ti v e words, good and
-
,
”
bad, to d escribe th e t wo types of ch a racte r We .

are s o sensi tive to t h e impress ion s of light that w e find

it fitting to ex pres our sense of the i r m ost extreme
” ”
contrasts by t he t wo words black and white .

We do not sa y un lmd or unblack S i nce our know

.

l edge o f ztruth i s less int imate we have as the negative

“ ” “ ” ”
of true untrue as well as false .

Thus it is a matt e r o f chance tha t i s to sa y, de

,

pe nde n t u pon loos el y c o ordinated obse rvat ions wheth er,

-

i n our language we employ a n egat i ve or not to ex press

,

any rela ti on shi p wh i ch we have ex peri e n ced as co ntras t

7 3 a m s s on s

or contrad iction In the outer world o f reality how

.
,

e ver no such negat i ve

, ,
no such c ontrariety exists at
any tim e or under any circum stan ces I f I call some
.

’
person positi vely a crimi nal o r negatively a ne er do -

”
we ll, t he same person , in the world o f real ity is n ever, ,

at any ti me or under any circumstanc es t he n egati v e ,

of the r espectable man but i s , i n the most re al sense,

,

quite as positive as the latter .Odd numbe rs are

not l es s pos itiv e than e ven numbe rs Aristotle on
.
,

the other hand treats the negations o f language as

,

a form o f the phenomena of reali ty a n d, in h is logic ,

em p loys n ega ti ve j udgments, as if t h e negati v e co rre

s ponded i n som e wa t o s o m eth i ng i n reali ty
y .

A l ucky i nstinct (or the discretion o f his Indian

s o urce s) r es trained Ari s to tl e, h owev e r , from in c l uding
th e con ce p t i on o f the negative in his ten ca tego ri es .

Tha t was an i nco nsist ency He had alread y d one so

.

much for the n e gati ve that there re ma i n ed hardl y any

thing more for h im to do He le ft it to our ow n Kant
.

to take th e las t s t e p , i n wh ose highl y sus pi ci o us tabl e o f

categori es th e negati v e is quite ser ious ly i ns ta ll ed i n t he

fi fth p la ce The categori es o f Ari stotle i n s h ort, are
.
,

the mos t gla ri ng i ns tance of h is se rvile submi ssi o n to

wo rds a nd further, ac cording to my unv e ri fied hypo
,

t h e s i s of h i s de pen dence on a sys te m o f grammar

,

wh i c h h e di d not un de rs ta nd .
FRO M 0 a s s u m
. e s BOO K O F AN IMALS . t so3
 M I S TO TL G 79
I adm i t at once that t h ese ca tegories are cert ainl y o f
great i mportan ce fo r a hist o ry o f Logic, as wel l as for
historical cri ti cis m of thought or of la n guage,
but that, over and above th is, t hey a r d a s trik
ing exam pl e of the fo rce of indol ence, of the
v i tality inh er en t in t he mere sound o f wo rd s ev en ,

a ft er th ey have l ong cease d to be assoc iate d w i th a

cle ar and d e finite meaning Wh oeve r has any se nse
.

o f the sub tl e st h umour o f the human min d of the ,

unspo ntaneous humour of ph il ow ph i ca l c once ptions,

may find occas i on in the hi s to ry o f the no ti o ns o f the

,

catego ri e s, fo r the frees t and hearti est m i rt h .

T rende le nburg rea c h es th e core of the q ues ti on

wh e n he remarks that Aristot le wi th h is catego ri es
i n ten ded the parts o f s peec h (or rather ha d con fuse d
the on e with the other) fi be rweg v e ry s hre wdl y
.

adds that hi s anal ysis was that o f the part s of the s en

te nce (subj ect, pre di cate a nd so forth ) rather than o f
the par ts of speec h , and I w oul d make ye t another
“ ”
s ugge st i o n : that inst ead o f analys is we should
“ ”
um th e l ess re spe c t ful word con fus i on
. Le t us
re ali se the pos i tion once for all : Ar i stot l e foun d in,

h is u nkn own , probabl y I ndia n, sources, human lan

guage divide d i nto parts of Speech He first o f all
.

makes the mi sta k e of mixin g up theee pa rts o f speech

/

h i s he a na lo gi es co ns tru c ted by grammar)

( t a t to sa
y t
80 a m
s r on e

wi th the anal ogie s cons tr ucted by syn tax The con

.

fusion is not carri e d ou t c omfle t el y : he had a vague

”
pe rce p tion, that his firs t catego ry th at of the quid ,
,
“ ”
th e l ate r so -call e d qu i ddi tas, stood in th e relation
of na tu ral subj ec t to a l l the rest o f his catego ries
. But
then he made his s econ d mi s take : th a t o f p roj ect i ng
these i n any case, mer ely verbal di stinctions into the
,

world o f re al ities , and o f atte m p ting to fas h ion his

conception o f the world, a nd that o f all w ho were to
fo llow him in accordance with them
, . It was lucky fo r
Aristotle that his sources we re at lea st in the grammar
o f an I ndo Eu ro pe an language ; i f, by chanc e, (for h e
-

cert ai nly co ul d have n o i nkl ing o f the rese mblance

be t wee n Greek a nd Sanskrit) he had worked on a
—
Chinese grammar the result from the s tandpoint o f
—
a E uropean brai n woul d have bee n such as might
have come out o f Be dlam .

T h e psych ological o rig i n of the Aris tote lian cate

o ri es h as n ot yet howe ver be en qui te ri g h tl ex pla i ned,
g , , y
al though the subs tantial facts have be en known for
lo ng to men o f learning I have in mi nd in th is co n
nec t i on Arist ot le s i nnocen c e of gram ma tical science
’
.

He wa s still in ignorance of our di s tr i bution o f the

pa rt s of s pe ec
. h He c o ul d not
, th e re fo re, as Tren

de le n burg part i cularly po in ts out, have changed t h e

par ts of s pee ch in to m eta p hys i ca l categorie s wi t h any
 a n y on e 81

conscious inte nt . He took th is step rather, i f the

phrase may be forgiven thro ugh s heer stupidity He
,
.

mistook an a logies o f lan guage fo r the highest id e as

“ ”
in the universe . Catego ry even has remai ned
untransl a ta ble because his own noti on o f i t s mean
ing wa s complet ely vague The fi rst catego ry, that
.

“ ”
o f the
,
quid wavers obsc ure ly am idst our con
“ ” “ ” “ ”
c e pt i o ns name
,
subject and real ity
,
.The
third category that o f qual ity wavers quite as obsc urely
, ,
” '
” “
between adjective, s pecific d i fler en ce and sense ,
”
impression . The four last categ o ries grope with sti ll
greater uncertainty about the forms o f the verb He .

see ms to try a t haphazard to provide speci al ca te gori es

for intransitive and transitive verbs , fo r the act i ve an d
the passive voice Speci a l cate gories fo r the se para te
.

cases o f the noun fo r the tenses and perso ns of the

,
—
verb he does n ot give a n omi ss ion arising more from
ignor a nce than for any be tter reason .

His doctrine of the categories is the found a tion o f

hi s lo gic and o f his metaphysic ; but it was con
structed out of prelogi cal pre gra mma t ica l though t
, ,

only to fall again under the ban o f common speech ,

in spite o f all efforts to fo rm clearer con cep t ions

than those which common s peech conv eyed The .

system o f categor ies is pr el ogical because it fal ls pe r

s i s t e n tl
y into the sc hoolbo ’
y s blun der o f making hasty

F
 m us r oe e

gener alisat ions, because it i s sat isfied in c o un tlem

,

instances, with correct or in correct illustrations where

proo f ought to have been demanded A nd this very .

book which has supplied the terminology fo r a porten

tous mass o f literature whi c h has al so tempted
,

Kan t to outbid it wa s only after all , an unlucky

, , .

attempt to convert t he common a bstractions o f

c urrent speech into a supposed science o f real i ty .

So weak i s this attempt that even K i rchmann wi th ,

a l l his reverence fo r Aristotle , is forced to say that the

process o f thought is sometimes poor and sometimes

superficial while philological exponents are placed
,

in the d i lemma of havi ng to accoun t for the wh ol e as

’
a work o f the philosopher s you th or as a popular
treatise or even to regard single chapters as forge ries .

This prc g ra mma t i ca l menta l attitude o f Aristotle

seems to me to accoun t s ufli c i e n t ly fo r the m eagre
ness o f his system o f categories We must con fine
.

ourselves to him and not con si der the later Aristotel ian
logic Already among the Romans who were pra c
.
,

tically the inventors o f our gram mar, category had

” ”
been rendered by pra e d i ea me n tum o r pr ae d i ca bil e
“

— the hai r splitting di fference between th ese two words

-

concerns us as littl e as that be tween category and

categorem — and bore a meaning somewhat s i milar
to that o f our pred icate It is p lain however, that in
.
,
'
the writings of Ar istotle xa n ryopt a is not ye t used as a
 83

technical expression but rather si gni fies that which

,
”
may be said concerning a thi ng What may be said
.
,

be it well understood I repeat : the whole logic of

.

this period was a n in troduction to rhetoric : it was

t a ught in order to give the learners proficiency in
speaking fully and m ethodically upon any su bject
whatsoever The system of categories in its enti ret y
.

“ ”
under lies the Topics o f Aristotle, a tissue of a h
surdities which supplied a branch o f i ns tm c ti o n which
'

philosophy has no longer the e flrontery to upho ld Th is

.

work, whi ch once upon a time had a reputation equal

to that o f the Logic belongs to the class of books which
,

undertake to te ach the art o f poetry in t wen ty four -

hours It is a talker s manual , a guide to the art o f

.
’

turni ng out stereot ype d phrases on any subject which

the s peaker chooses The categories form the most
.

advanced syllabus o f this school o f talki ng N othing

.

is easi e r than to keep the tongue in mo tion when one

has learned by heart th a t one must first pos i t one s ’

horse and one s journey as a fa ct a n d then add in

’

consecutive order the character i s ti cs of quan t ity and

quality space and ti me
,
.

It would be su perfl uous to sa y anything about these

“ ”
exploded Topics of Ari s totle did they no t reflect
,

very clearly the general feature s of ancient th ought

and its phi losophies Up ti ll now we have seen that
.

Aristotle, in the two fundamental posit i o n s o( S ke w e ,

the doct rine o f the negative and the doctrine o f the
categories, made the extant forms o f S peech the objects
o f a supersti tious cult a s though they had be en a ctual

deities ; fo r he blindly transposed i nto the world o f

reality the No — th a t i s our subjective re jection o f
,

i —
a proposit on and also h o no ured a s categori es ge neral,

forms o f speech o f which he h a d no cle ar under

,

standing bringi ng them o fferings a nd above a ll the

, , ,
'

in tellectual ofle ri ng o f h is fa r famed realism I f any

- .

one re fuses to a gree with me that A ristotle, in the

instances cited in h i s doctrine o f the negati ve judg
,

ment and o f the categories, has shown himse l f to be a

con fus e d th i nker a nd h as never r i sen above a soph isti cal

a na lysis o f trad itional abstract words , let him as his

”
punishment be condemned to read the Topics .

I f Aristotle h a d only wri tten th is work as a pas t i me as ,

purposely intended to teac h beginners the first steps in

the art o f disputation i f he h a d brea thed a di fferent spirit
,

into h is metaphys ical and logical writi ngs t h e n w e mi g ht

,

have supposed that here we ha d an instance o f a great

philosopher condescend i ng to compose a manual o f
pra ctical instruction suited to the needs o f his own day .

Even Schopenhauer began to wri te such a tre atise

on eristi cs (the art o f disputation ) But the work o f
.

Aristotle was altogether d i fier en t

'

. It cannot be t e
t e d o ften en ough that G r eek phi l oso phy in many
p ea ,

cas es, was not much better than rhetoric the art ,
 M I S TOTL S 85

of the debating club, the petty chicanery o f the law

courts It was a n endles s stri fe o f words to w h ich
.
,

Sokrates alone among all the rest o f the So phi sts, ga ve

,

enti rely n ew di rec tion Amid the banter o f h i s

.

conversation there is always to be heard a not e o f

longing to test the mean ing o f words in their rela tion
to reality . Notwithstan ding Plato an d Aristotle
,

again pay homage and allegiance to words No .

where is so stri ki ng a n illustration to be found o f the

levi ty o f the Greek thinkers o f their sa tis fa ction in
,

the mere fact o f excelling i n verbal debate as in the ,

miscellaneous Topics o f the great Aristotle Just as a .

legal practitioner without any scruples aims a i noth ing

, ,

except the de feat o f the opposite side no matter what

,

means he employs, so Aristotle, in like manner in his ,

Topics has no larger end in vi e w th a n to teach one

how to get the better o f one s opponents and reduce them
’

to si lence Now this ignoble bra nch o f instruction

.
,

which was in force for cen turies which the arch talker
,
-

C icero at a later date st il l a ssiduously cultivated has ,

fo r i ts tw o c h i e f implemen ts just those two foundati ons

which we have learned to know as the spu ri ous main
stays o f logic— th e neg a tive proposition wi th its fine
,
q

spun distinctions o f the contradictory an d the syst em

,

o f the categories .

I n their moral be aring only are the Topi cs o f

Aristotl e dist inctly in ferior to hi s formal Logi c T h . e .
Logic has no greater value as a con tribu tion to our
th eory o f knowledge I ts method o f argument is, to
.

our noti ons, a juggling with words oriental, Talmud ,

i st i c, but the Logic at least, conceives its obj ecti ve to

,
“ ”
be truth That o f the
. Topics is admittedly , ,

the gratificati on o f personal vanity and victory

over an a dversa ry The Greeks were passion a te
.

debaters Aristotle en dowed their lust fo r disputation

.

with an a rt of dialectic, which he ranks expressly along , ,

with that o f the physician and the orator Yet he .

gi ves no ru l es o f universal validity No ; b e merely .

gives the rules o f a gam e the game o f Greek dialectics

,
.

I n th is pas tim e the r ain o f th e pro pounder and

a nswer er o f the question are apportioned l ike the parts

in a play I f the latter repli es in a m a n ner out o f

.

keeping with his part the former is entitled to wi thd raw

,

from the game The Topics are a code o f etiquette

.

of the antique duel with words A code o f honour it

.

can not be called Aristotle l ays down the rul es o f

.

fence common to both parti es alike .

Owing to the incompleteness o f his presentation, it is

nat ural that Aristotle should introduce occasion a lly into
the T e pics fur ther ampli fications o f the Logic It .

is precisely at t h is point, however th a t his conception

,

o f the modality o f the syllogism that is o f the degree

, ,

of the subjecti vity of truth plays h im a so rry trick

, .

Where noth i ng i s at stake but the satis facti on o f van ity

 87

a nd an unsu bstant i al tri umph over an opponent it is a ,

matter o f in d iEere nc e whether subj ective probability or

objective t ruth is fi nall y r eached The p ro fessional
.

d isputant becom es s i mply a li a r and a deceiver The .

court o f highest instance to which he appeals i s

”
“
public opi nion (m Topics, i .
Quin tilian who ,

as a pr o fessor o f liter a tu re, lect ured on style

un der one o f the Roman empe rors, had already in a
pm sa
ge o f his boo k turned the Aristo t elians into ri dicule
on a ccount o f the pride wi th whi ch they rega rded the i r
schools of deba te We o f t o day who are the posthu
.
-

“ ”
mous scholars of the Topics o f which the business
,

from begi nning to en d i s onl y words have every reason

,

—
to pass a yet sharper sentence But a s said be fore
.

the Topics and the Lo gic are n ot unworthy of one

another .

One and the sel f same spi rit dictated both I t

- .

cannot be called t he Hol y Spirit The day too must

.
, ,

come when the logic of Aristotle along with the cate

“ ”
i es will be cast out to foll ow the Topics i n t o d ee pes t
g o r

oblivion In his translation o f the latter Kirchm a nn

.
,

has alre ady pointed out that this branch o f teaching has
vanished from the world o f scientific thought d espite ,

the circumst a nce that at the presen t time th e practi ce

o f public d isputation is carried on to a much greater

extent than i n ancien t times But the exagger ated

.

terms o f respect in whi ch Kirchmann ba s s ook Qx“

as J RI STOTL G
‘

war of words engaged in by the Re fo rmers and the

p m l i a m e n ta r
y debaters o f the present day,
has prevented
him from pe rceiving the di fference which separates
such controversy from th a t o f antiqui ty I n the six .

t e e n t h century the philoso p hical interest in the know

led ge o f the un iverse wa s wanti ng j ust as it is wanting

,

in the men o f our own day No d oubt t he Re formers

.

claim ed to be the po sses so rs or the inv estigators o f the

truth No doubt th e agents fo r class or local inte rests
.

who, since 1 7 89 have called th emse lves the representa

,

t i ves o f the peo p le c la i m to be the ch a m m

,
on a of truth
bu t even the m ost sincer e among them advocate
on ly pr ac ti cal truth s, not truths w h i ch c on cer n our
kno wledge o f the uni verse .

For even th e Re formers we re exclusi vely occupied

wi th the pre e m i n ently practica l question o f re g ula t
-

i ng the relations betw een man a n d God It was

.

o f the highest practi cal importance whether me nwere

to escape t h e pi ncers and glowi ng caul drons o f t he

devi l by m eans of i ndulgence fee s by good works, or
,

by the more econ omical process o f sav ing fa ith The .

decis ion de pe nded on the correct inter pretation o f the

word o f God None of th e se worthies had a dou bt as
.

to the divine character o f the Bible From this s tand

.

point, there fo re th ey were quite j ust ifie d i n re fusing to

,

cumber themselv es with questi ons as to i ts origin T he .

philos ophical and d i alecti cal art o f Ar isto tle was o f no

 M I S TO TL S 89

use to th em for they were stil l onl y in the position o f

,

two greedy litigants wra ngling over t h e mea ni n g o f

a given deed The deed itsel f was not disputed
. .

O f an eq ually practical character are the questions

over which our Deputies fight to day , only they are -

—
q uestio n s o f bread a n d butter in fa ct I f considera .
,

tions o f a un iversal ki nd a re in troduced they are me rely

,
'

put up fo r efie c t, and are seldom mean t seriously .

But neither a Conserv a tive nor a Liberal could a rgue

”
a du ck ou t o f the w a ter by t h e u s e o f the Aris
t ot e l ia n art o f dialecti c
. The modern point o f vi e w has
be en compressed by our parliamentary system into
”
the cry o f question . Aristotle s disputan ts had no
’

conception that it was possi ble , or even obligatory to ,

”
speak to the questi on and no Greek or Roman ever
,

interrupted the Speech o f a disciple o f A ristotle with

“ ”
the interpellation o f questi on .I n the criticism o f
lan guage th is is exactly what is now t aking p lace For .

“ ”
t h e fi rst time since Locke s Essa y the call o f
’
,

question is being addressed to words .

But even when the Re formers and Pa r li amen

tari an a disput e d only for th e sake o f disputation ,

onl y in order to silence opponents, a retu rn to th e

“ ”
arc haic method o f the Topics was impossi ble .

More modern treatises o f this kind contain conscious

rhetori c The Organon o Aristotl e La the Logic,
. f — ,
— c o n n i s\s e n e m
“
along with the Topics “ as
 “ ”
rhetor ic The Topics in particular , are no longer
.
,

suited to our palates Nour ishment, which has once

.

been rejected with na usea, ca n never again be considered

in the ligh t o f food .

And yet one last trac e o f this archaic schooling

linge rs among us It is certai nly to be foun d in the
.

“ ”
so cal le d
- C b ri e
,
wh ich fo rms ev e n to day, more or -

le ss ostensibly the groundwork o f the class room essay

,
-

in Ge rm a n schools I at any ra te between the age s

.
, ,

o f sixteen and nineteen had to compos e some such

,
“ ”
C hrie n ear ly once a month Ea ch exercise was
.

concocted with imbecile uni formity accordi ng to the ,

“ ”
rules o f chatter l a id down in the Topics Thes e rul es .

had also the same end in view as the m e tri cal list of
questions
Qu i s q ui d e ubi quibus a uxil ii s c ur quomodo
quando
Chatter in con formity to rules is a lso the objec t o f
s o cal led Homiletics
-
, the rhetoric
.
o f the pulpit,
in
accordance with which the greatest dullard can weld
toget her a methodically ordered discour se .

”
It was necessa ry to re fer to the Topics o f A ristotle ,
“ ”
because the categories o f the Logic and the loci o f ,
”
the Topics, twist and turn them as you w i ll, indicate
one a nd t h e same obscure conce ption I will show .

’
this briefly a nd I sh a ll not be to blame i f the reader s
,
 H AN S I
BAL D UN G G R EN

ARI S TOTLE AN D PR ‘ IL L W
:
 J RI S TO TLe 9 1

res pect for Ari stot le s depth of thought i s n ot thereby

’

e nhan ced .

His intention, in the Topi cs is to gi ve direct ions

,

how to find out what may be said on any given su bject

“ ”
o f di sc m on .From the expression to find ou t
unless i t had been used by others before him in a
—
techni cal sense he may have got the i dea o f cal ling
'
“ ”
t h e d ifler e n t poin ts o f view places or mi rror I call
,
.

att en tion to the circumstance that in our l anguag e also

”
poin t of vi ew pri mar ily signifies a place ; so that
the Greek e xpremi o n is by no means so stran ge as it
seems Now i f we express somewhat more lea m e d ly
.
,
“ ”
the obj ect o f Aristotl e s Top i cs, we may cal l i t a
’

g u i de to the discovery o f the points o f v iew from

w h ich this or that may be said or pre d icat ed a bout a
“ ”
subject But sin ce ca tegory also simply means a
.

general pre dication or general point o f view the

, ,
“ ”
definition o f the Topics results in this absu rdity ,

that they teach how to fi nd out g eneral points o f

v iew about general poi n ts o f view Any trite phrase
.
,

which no longer a tt ra cts the least attention is now ,

“
ad ays termed a commonplace I n Pra n tl s H i story o f
.
’

”
Log i c I have not met wi th the history o f this expres
“ ”
sion But cl early common places loci communes
.
, ,

are nothin g else than a translation o f Aristo tle s ’

”
r oa m , which again coincide con fus edly wi th
his categ ories Thus al ready among t h e a d d ess e
. r s
9 2 M a s on s

the categori es o f Aristotle had beco me common

places .

The father o f log ic busied h imsel f as little about

sh a rply defined words as about cle arly di Ee re nti a te d
g rammatical n o tions The
. id o l o f hi s w ors h ip was th e
c ommon s p eech o f m en .

He was not without a certain pu rbl ind percepti on o f

this fact ; but he hardly looked upon it as a defect .

“ ”
In h is terminol o gy he uses analyt ical in the se nse
“
i n which we at the present day use
, ,
log i c al what
“
he means by log ical is approxima tely the same as
”
rhetorical .

V ery a tt e nti ve rea de rs wi ll h e re mee t me with a

weighty objecti on . In my opinion Aristotle must
h ave tried to draw up his cate gories on an analogy
with the parts o f speech without however havin g
, ,

a clear notion o f the l a tter whatever may have bee n

,

the source from which he got thei r di stri buti on / .

I f, then Aristotle s scheme o f categories is itsel f mis

’

taken it may be argued that it sho uld be possi ble to draw

,

up an i mpr oved scheme based on an im p rove d scien ce

o f grammar . B ut with this v iew I am in entire
disagreement, since I deny i n a m that t h e forms of
grammar are anything more than accidental analog ies
o f individual languages, and I furth e rmore ass ert
that the actual world of re al ities i s as little classifie d
a cco rding to categ o ries o f the m i nd as the primi
 J RI S TO TL E 93
tive languages were accor ding to cate gories o f
grammar .

A r i stotle s dependence on the usag es o f common

’

speech betrays itsel f in almost every sentence o f the

Organon This is shown especially by his uncertain ty
.

when the number o f the categories comes i n que s

tion Pran tl has made an exhaustive collection o f th e
.

”
passag es bearing on this point (I Anm e rk “
.

I pass over the cases in which Aristotle evidently only

wishes to refer to the first three categories, and con
”
tents himsel f with a sort o f et cetera But there a re
.

other instances also in which he repeatedly hesitates

”
over the categor i es o f who or wh a t o f quantity ,

a nd quality and gropes after an impossible inclusive

,

formula fo r the re m a inder A most importan t point o f

.

v iew with h i m e vi d en tl y is the passive form of the verb

, , ,

and the undefined activity o f motion But he i s unable

.
,

for exa mple t o reco gnise i n every instance the act ive
,

mean ing o f a verb when (as so o ften in Greek) it has

“
a passive form Thus, the two statements he has
.
,
“ ”
consumption and he is consum ptiv e in spite o f ,

their identi cal meaning h e would have brought und e r

,
'

two di fiere n t points o f vi e w or categories, since in the ,

“ ” ”
one ca se, having and in the other case be ing
, ,

is predi cat ed His teaching on the categories is th e

.

Topics in a mo de st fo rm
M
.

fl w i c d r ead e r a m ak e. Q R .
 J RI S TOTLS
the really puerile tal k in w h ich Ari stotle could indulg e
I will here quote from the last c hapter o f h i s doctr i n e
o f the cate gori e s in which he ba s s ummed up w h at h e
,
“ ”
has to say on the categ ory o f h a vi ng I need not .

e x p lain that he is thi nki ng solely and exclusively o f

”
the Greek use o f t he word E x a u to have W er e
,
.

I since Ar istotle s whole method o f thi n ki ng cl ai ms

,
’

to have a pe rmanent aut hori ty in a l l ag es and among

all people to translate this passage accord i ng to the

,

sense in whi ch it would have bee n un d erstood by

G reeks , it woul d lend i tsel f to yet wilder absurdi ty .

So that in usi ng the version o f Kirch mann , w ho has

,

s pare d no pa ins to bring a m odern m eani ng in to t he

th i ng, I am really doing the ancient master of philosophy
y e t another kindn e ss In this t rans lation
. the complete
chapter reads as follows
Ha ve is use d in different sense s some ti mes it means a ,

property or a cond ition or any othe r circ umst ance for we sa y ,

th a t such an one has a sci e nce or a vi rtue ; sometime s the

wor d i s used of size : for exa mme when any one ha s certai n ,

magnitu de : fo r then we say o f hi m tha t he h as a magni tude

of t h re e or four ya rd s z me t i mes
so th e wor d i s us ed of

bod ily clothi ng , eg . . or a coa t ; some

, of a mantl e
t imes of t ha t whi ch a man h as pa rt of his pers onon some ,

rg
. . of t he finger ring
, on h i s hand ; some times of a
-

man s me mbers eg
’
the h and and the foot ; so me
, ,

ti mes oi tha t which i s contai ned i n a vessel ; thus cg , ,

 95
t he bushel h as the whea t or th e j ug h a s the wi ne ; for
we say tha t the j ug h a s (hold s) t h e wi ne and the bus he l
,

the whea t ; we use have for all sorts of thi ngs in the
‘ ’

same wa y as in the c ase o f a ves se l Also h av is used

.
‘
e
’

i n respec t of proper ty for we say so me one ha s a house or

a field W
,

. e also spe ak of ha vi ng a wife and say tha t

the wife h as a hus band .Th i s mean ing of h ave i s ‘ ’

the mos t fore i gn for by h aving a wife we und e r s tand

,
‘ ’

ne ith er more no r l e s s tha n to coh a bit wi th her Pe rhaps .

othe r me ani ngs of h ave might be po inted ou t b ut t he

’
,

examples c ited a bove give a summa ry of t h e me a n ings mos t

”
co mmonly used .

All atte m p ts, eve n th os e of Pran t l , to g i ve to the

categori es o f Aris totle any deeper significance t h a n a
verbal one must in the course o f ti me cease to make
,

any serious i mpress ion I f I were to try and compress

.

my critica l remarks on the categories into a s mall

compass they would amount to th is : Aristotl e s plan
,
’

o f bri n gin g the most a bstract analogi e s o f l anguage

into correspondence with the most general a n alogies o f

reali ty broke down and w as bound to break down,
,

lamentabl y because o f h is innocen ce o f any theory o f

knowledge a n innocence wh i ch was as entire in
,

the domain o f language as it was in th a t o f real ity .

I f we infinitely better equipped with knowledge

,

in bo th th ese directions, attem pt to revive the old

plan, we rea c h — i a accordance with our se veral
 e
m
A s r o r Ls

conceptions o f the universe— the same or a stil l more

importa nt result the conclusion namely that the most
, , ,

general conceptions o f l a nguage do not a n d cannot

correspond to the m os t general an a logi es o f reali ty that ,

Catego ries o f Reali ty do not exist A fter thus con

.

s i de ri ng the foundations o f A ristotle s Logic I ought

’

t o restate cri ti cally h i s repr esentation o f the doctrine

o f t h o u h t i ts e l f
g . I h a ve endeavoured to disch a rge this
task i n my Critique o f La ngu a ge when speaking o f
the Current Logi c For the subs eque ntly cod ified logic
.

which t o day , is sti ll tr e ated with general respe ct is,

,
-

even in its merely tec h n ical features, much more a

cre ati on o f Aristotle than Pra n t l i s wil li ng to a dmit .

’
He delights only in turn ing his mas ter s obscuri ties
into pro fundities I fee l certai n that Aristotle in
.
,

accordance with the whole bent o f his mind would ,

have greatly admired h is successors fo r having as a rul e , ,

reached th rough their m e chan ical system what he h ad

, ,

tried to reach by in a deq uate means .

Aristotle cannot help seeing in mental concep tion s

the founda tions o f all thinkin g But because he was
.

not in a pos it i on to distinguish cl early betw ee n l anguage

a n d re ality because he con fuse d a t every step, languag e
, , ,

the alle ged instrument o f know ledg e with re ali ty , ,

the object o f knowledge there be fell hi m exactly

,

what be fell Plato Men tal conceptions were to him

.

sometimes logical sometimes real, or, in customary

,
phraseology ontolo gical
,
. Appare ntly he inte nded
hone stl y to o verthrow the Platonic doc trine o f ideas
a nd to den y to me nta l conce ptions a ny c ra ti ve
fi c ul t y . But he always ret urns to the fairyla nd of the
Ph t on ic theory , a nd s ea ag ain re a l i t i w in the con
m pt i ons o f the m in d . He is a pa ra ted by th e wi dth of
the ha vens , fro m the nom i nalist te ac hin g . At t he
ti me he h idm himself behind tra nsparen t words .

”
I n men ta l conce pts, he se a the m en t ial being
or wm nt l ich e se in o f thin g s and although t he
“
,
”
two Gree k words fo r sein and n are i f
,

possi ble st i ll mor e clw ly identi ca l than the Ge

te rm s he d oa not pe rce i ve the tautology If we
, .

wis h to make the bu t o f the Ari stote l ia n doctri ne of

m en tal co n c eption s, and the whole Log ic, we m y
my that th ei r author left the Greek the o ry o f know
le dge cl m er than h e foun d it The So phist s as
.
,

t he chai rwome n o f phi l os o phy ha d prec e ded him wi t h a

,

gru t p re ten ce o f sco uring the language, an d in doing

m h a d ma d e pl e n t y o f no ise, di rt and lim The ho use,
.

a s I h ave mi d l ook e d c lm e r after Aristo tle than it

,

d i d befo re ; but i ts pove rty was, t here by, made only

mor e appa rent .

I f i n h is doctr i ne of me n ta l conceptions Arist ot l e

9 8 J RI S TO TL S
living organism w h ich, i n contact wi th other con
,

ce pti o n s and espe ci ally with that o f the middle term,

has the power to bring new an d kindred be ings into

the world I f t h is phantasy conta ined a grain o f
.

truth, then the original Aristotel ian d octrine of

“ ”
thought intertwi n ed as it is, wi th the Topi cs
, , ,

would be in every way more valuable than t h e

late r logic built upo n A ristotle as it has slowly
, ,

developed i tsel f up to the present day This later

.

logic, with its much more precise a n d sharpl y defined

formul a leads to no fresh knowledge ; the conclusion
,

never advan ces beyond the premisses, the men t a l con

c ept i on
,
as I have sh o wn nev er ends in anything
,

except tautology . I f the existence o f producti ve

mental conceptions possessing the creative faculty
could be proved our i ntellect ual possessions would
be beauti fully enriched But as a matter o f fact,
.
,

this assumption o f Aristotle i s i n sorry case By .

the aid o f formal logi c we have indeed got no

further than a survey o f our know ledge, than
“ ”
so ca ll ed
- Laws, which a ctual ly are nothin g
mor e than convenient verbal generalisations o f un
explained but more or less correctly described phe
nome na, which through cer tain r esemblances have
impressed th e mselves i n common on our memory .

B ut Aristotl e, w i th his m ental conceptions, did not

“
even arrive at suc h poor laws as these . He
 e/ {RI S TO TL S 99
h as not even th e scient i fic impulse o f our investi
gators and expounders o f t h e laws o f nature He .

i s in the strict est sense o f the e xp ression as use d

,

by us, an unscienti fic thinke r Quite mechan ically

.

he is always strivi ng to subo rdinate h is ment al con

c e pt i on s to others o f a higher and more general order ,

so th a t each bran ch o f his syst em may culminate in

some one sovereign conception or rather pro position ;
We are sti ll juggling to day, in a ll our modern
-

lan guages, with the words us ed by Aristot l e to d escr ibe

such first princi ple s, or w i th bad translations o f them .

Some o f them maxim for example— have w i t hdrawn

—
themsel ves in to the a nt i quated s ph ere o f Eth i cs .

—
Others s uch as axi om a n hypothesis were no t
d —
examined critically on their merits till the nin e tee nth
century For us there can be no doubt whatsoever
. ,

that th ese ultimate principles are only words or else

propositions by means o f whi ch we make solem n
de finitions o f highly abstract words w h i le s ecretl y
,

fitt ing them into t h e current language of one or other

branch o f knowledge . I put it thus : a x i om: are
such highly abst ract words in the inexplicable
value o f whi c h the learn ed and the vulgar al ike
believe impli citly Hypothes es a re si mi lar words in
.
,

the value of whi ch the l earned only pret end to

.
—
beli eve Partit io ns which have also taken refuge ,

w i th or wi t hout s hame , in the sphere of Et hi cs

 M 18TO TLG

are hypothe ses in which prope rly S peaki ng no

, ,
o ne

be li ev es
.

“ ”
In many pa ssa ges o f my Criti que o f Language I
have bee n obli g ed to d e clare that the branches o f le arn
i n g which be long especially to th is subj ect, ac qui re a
deceptive importan ce from the fact that the clevernes s
,

e xpe nded upon them is out o f all pr o porti on to t he

abstra ct thi nking capacity of the average man Ety .

mol ogy on the one hand a nd l ogic on t h e other play

such a brilliant and entertaini ng game with w ords that
in quisitive ch il dren and sages are for a long ti me,
,

d el ighted w i th th ese vari ega ted fire work s Be fore a

.

man sees through the delusiveness o f the whole pro

c eed i n g, be fo re he despairs o f the value o f such sport

as a means of acquiring real knowledge, the poor

dev il has t o die And thus from age to age the pa stime
.

is reverently handed down, until after many genera

tions the t empes t breaks, and a m ental revolution sets
in which seeks t o discriminate clearly be twe en spo rt
,

and s cience .

W e have an instruct ive example o f the wa if manner

i n which , in class ical times th e boundari es be tween
,

logic the nominal basis o f all phil os ophy, and childish

,

pasti me could be wiped out, in the le arned theory o f

the ridd le a s pro pounded by an immed iate disc i ple of
Ari stotle . Eve ry wo rd ridd le const ituted a l ogical
-
 m a s on s

quest i on or problem whi ch had to be tr ea t ed exactly

“ ”
like the other problems o f the Topics Such was
.

th e pl easure taken by the ancien ts in s ophistical debates

that the setting o f problems fo rmed a part o f soci a l

entertainments In educated circles it was a favourite
.

amusemen t to raise questions in this way and to

devot e all the devices o f semi cultivated t alk to their
-

d iscussi o n The sett i ng o f riddles also was one o f

.

these j mx dc red i d or table games Among the more

-
.

i n telligen t young fo l k o f our educated classes the sa me

sort o f pretty game is sometimes played at soci al gather
ings in which some one, by means o f questions a n d
“ ” “ ”
a nswers, restri cted al ways to yes or no has to ,

find out a hidden word al ready fixed on I f the you ng .

que sti on er has some com mand o f language and is q uick

at cat c hing amoc ia t io ns of thoughts he is able wi thout
, ,

too much ex penditure o f time to guess not only

,

such concrete th ings as th e little pearl on the head o f

’
Mi ss Dora s pin but even abstract qual ities such as ,

the virtue o f Lucretia Our young people t hink this

.

a capital way o f whi ling away an hour, a n d have not

the sligh test idea that they are thus indulging in
logical exe rcises in the spirit o f the school o f Aristotle .

It may sound hard to bri ng down the li fe work o f

the m ost fam ous philosopher the pride o f two thousa nd
,

ye ars to the level o f a drawi ng room game But it

,
-
.

must be state d in plai n la nguage , t o w h a t am “ w x a

 Aristotle has be come a dead l e tter in the in te llectual
li fe of the pre sent day, when the re sources, mat eri a l
and intellectual o f an Academy o f Sciences are bein g
,

expended at th is hour in a man ner worthy o f the

,

Alexandrians, on the study o f his philoso phy .

—
Aristotle is dead fo r us even fo r thos e among us who
still stick fast to the h istori a l standpoint he can no
,

longer be considered living He really believed that

.

hi s a ge had reached the final lim it o f human develop

ment the final limit in political and social li fe, i n
,

science and art He beheld wi th wo nder and a dm i ra

.

tion the glorious extent o f human advancement The .

ph i losopher who proposed to g i ve a general exp lanati on

”
of being by becoming had no conception o f the
,

process o f becoming in the human mind For him .

it was a set tled qu e stion that man poss esses all se ns e s

possible fo r him He had not the fa intest notion that
.

even t h e human s enses are only accidental .

Aristotle is d ead for us because he had no sense o f

personal i ty , that supreme h a ppiness o f such matu re
children o f earth as Goethe It is not only that the
.

Greek knew nothing of the mode rn conce pt ion o f the

rights of man that he was the apologist o f slavery no
,

— i n art and li fe his ideal was the normal man subj ect
to vulgar l aws o f thought The med i a zval nominalists
.

who regarded the individual as the only real en ti ty ,

a n d t h us un c on sc i ously extolle d pers onality appe al ed

,
 doubt to Aristotle but only in the sense in which
at that time all the world appeal ed to hi m In contrast
.

t h the poeti cal doctrine o f ideas o f P lato he was dry

a n d prosa ic enough to for feit a l l claim to be co ns id e re d

an ideal i st But fo r a consiste nt nominali s m he had

.

not a single qualification He h a d no sense o f the

.

nobility o f personality . I n spite o f his fa r reaching -

scien tific activi ties be was himsel f in nowise a

philos ophic perso nali ty T h e man o f the mid dle
.

course the thinker wi thout creative power the au thor

, ,

w i thout convi nci ng force was no philosopher .

Aris totle is dead because he was more than per,

ha ps any ot her not able w ri te r i n t he wh ole h i story o f

“
Phi loso phy supers ti t iousl y devoted to words
,
The.

voice o f the publi c although it consists exclusively o f

,

ordinary minds is for him authorit a tive and worthy

,
”
o f respect . There fore even in the invest igation o f
the most di ffi cult questi o ns he pre fers to start from the
opinion and the speech o f the common people .

General agreem ent may be presumed to be an

approximation to the truth Ev e n in his l ogic even
.
,

in h is do ctrine o f categori es although there the

,

whole point was to use a deeper method of i nqui ry

t han t h at supplied by common speech h e is absolu t ely
,

dependen t on the accidents o f language, on the

acciden ts of his mother tongue And perhaps it is
.

owi ng preci sely to this linguistic servility o f Mi s t a k e

that th e language o f science has fo r such a long time
re mai ned under the bondage o f hi s logical terminology .

For indee d he has i n fluenced the technical languag e

o f phil os op hy m ore than any man befo re or aft er him .

He ap pears to rule while he himsel f i s subj e ct . H is

su pe rsti ti ous reverence fo r wor ds was ne ver out o f
season .

’
The sti ll secretly potent i nfluence o f H egel s con
ce pti on o f histo ry and phil osophy, and also his word

w ors h i p, a s shown in his bel i e f in a reason in h i sto ry does

,

no t allow th rice dead Ari s totle to rest in peace . There

fore i t is not, perha ps us e l ess , i n spe aking of Ari st otl e to
, ,

d i scard all re ve ren ce for the esti mati on i n w hi c h he is

held in h istory The hist ory of great reputat ions is a
.

portion , and not the smal le st portion o f the h istory o f

human culture The h i stor y o f great names is yet to
.

—
be written o f such names as Homer and V i rgi l ,

or lat er as Shakespeare and Spinoz a

,
. But the
history o f great reputation s like that o f other things ,
,

is an ou tco me o f accidental circumstanc es, and the

history of Aristotle s twen ty centuries o f fame is a
’

history o f a series o f accidents .

It was a remarkable accident that o f all the Gr eek

writings which gave a broa d survey o f the ancient
world in his days precise ly those o f Ari stotle shoul d
—
,

have surv i ved . Another acci dent using the word

al ways as op pos ed to t he idea of a reason in histo ry
 M I S TO TL G 1 05

prov ided that the decadence o f Helle nism, that

.

Alexandri a n ism and its commentators followed imme

d ia te l y on the fo otsteps o f the t eacher o f Alexande r
the Great Yet another historical accident al lowed
.

the suprem a cy o f Western culture to pass i nto the

hands o f the Rom a ns who copied alm ost whol es ale
from the Gree ks, and thus adopted Aristotle also, i n
h is A lexandrian guise , and bequ eathed him as the
universa l lexicon o f kn owl edge to their heirs the
newly civilised na tions o f Eu rope Yet another .

a ccident brought the verbal distinction s o f Aris totle

into touch wi th Christendom which from lowly

,

be gin n ings had beco me a s p iri tual and pol i ti cal po we r .

Yet another a ccident placed ce rtai n wri tings o f the

philosopher in the h a nds o f the Arabs b rought them,

un der rev ision by Semitic students o f nature, and thus

by strange a nd round a bout paths e nliste d the m in the
service o f C hristi an scholasticism Thus Aristotle
.

became a great phil osopher fo r a ntiquity thus for ,

”
th e Middle Ages h e became rummur hi l oso h e r
p p .

Ancient and C h ri stian scholasticism di ffer i n man y

po i nts The ancient system was not yet subjec t to any
.

Catholic or universal C hurch dogma There fore the

.

Renaissance in i ts attitude o f hostility to the Church

, ,

was able to pl a y 0 5 antiquity a gai nst C h ristendom,

Plato against Ari st otle in accord a nce with the relati ve
estim a te o f their respective reputa t i o ns w hi ch w as
1 06 m a s on s

then the vogue Nowadays the Ren a issa nce h as said

.

its l as t word We are now so indi fferent to the

.

Church that we are hardly any longer a ntagonistic .

Co n fronted by our trend o f knowledge whi ch through ,

investigations o f the theories o f knowledge has

reached the cri tici sm o f langua ge ancient philosophy
,

and Christian scholasticism blend together in one

uni form ma ss o f word worship Out o f this mass
-
.

gi fted men o f genius, pioneers o f the new vision o f

the uni verse li ft thei r heads Among such pion e ers
,
.

Aris to tle is not num bered .

Goet he was very likely o f this opinion also,

for in h i s h i s t ory o f the theo ry o f colour he s peaks
, ,
'

wi th aflec ti on o f Plato, while despite his tone o f

,

traditio n a l respect he directs his p ro found i rony on

,

Aristotle, the man o f matter o f fact Pla to s atti tude .

’

towards the world is that o f a bl e ssed spiri t, whose

pl easure it is to sojourn here fo r a while He ex .

p l ore s the depths in order to fill them with his nature ,

ra th er l it h a n to se a rch through them for kn owledge .

“
Ar i stotle on the contrary looks on the world with
the eyes o f a ma n—o f an architect He i s here .

once fo r all and here he must work and c reat e

,
.

He makes inquiries abou t the surface ; bu t with no

further object than to secure a si t e From th a t point
.

to the mi d dle o f the earth all t h e rest is i ndi ffer en t

”
to him .
 M a r a TL S

I n still stronger terms has the other great German ,

Luther whose Chri sti an ze al sa feguarded him against

,

the dogma o f classical antiqui ty deno unced A ristotle

,
.

Once he call s him ap positely the Prince o f Darkness

a n d in his spl e ndid letter To the Christ ian nobles o f
the Ge rman nation he utters h is opin ion w i thou t
r ese rve
The unive rsities also h ave nee d of reforma tion root and
br anch I must s ay this l e t who wi ll t ake ofie nce the rea t
.
, .

Th i s then is my counse l Let the books of Arist ot le

.
,

Physics Me ta physics d e Anima Ethic s whi ch hithe rto h ave

, , , ,

been thoug ht the best be utterly a boli shed with all others
,

whi ch boast the mselves concerni ng na tur al things although ,

nothin g is to be le arn e d from the m concer ning e ithe r

n a tur al or spiritual thi ngs Besi des no one ever ye t ha s

.

understood the ir meaning and so much preci ous time and so

many pr ecious souls h ave bee n bur d ened with useless toi l ,

st udy and cost I d are say th a t any pot t er knows more of

.

na tur al th in gs t h an is writt e n i n th ese books It makes my .

hea rt ache tha t thi s damned arrog ant rogue of a hea the n
, ,

s houl d seduce and befool so many is the best Chri s ti an s ,

.

”
God has plagued us with him thus beca use of our sins
, .

And Luther also replies at the same time, by antici

pa t i o
,
n to the familiars o f the schools the pro fe ssion,a l
men o f learning . N o one need accuse me o f talking
too much or taunt me with knowi ng no thing Dear .

Friend I know wel l what I am saying Ari stotle is

,
.
 M I S TO TL 6

as well known to me as he is to thee and thy fello w s .

I also have read him and liste ned to him with more
unde rstanding th a n St Thomas or Scotus This I
. .

can boast of withou t arrogance a n d can prove it i f

, ,

needs be I care not th a t fo r so many hundred years

.

so much high inte llect has worked upon him I am.

no longer troubled by such objections as I may once

have been For i t is clear that more error than this
.
,

has preva iled for several hun dre ds o f years i n the

wo rld and the Univ e rsiti es
.
 Oper a Gr acec Theophr asti
. dc H ist ori a Pla nta rum,
l i bri L , et De Causi s Pl an ta rum, li br i vi . Venet ii s unpre u .

du t eri t at e Aedi Manucii , 1 49 5 - 9 8, 5 vol s . in Sol .

1 O rg anon , Nov
. .
,

II .

III . De H ist . Ani ma l , l i b ri . novem , 1 497

IV .

Al exand er Aph rod i t i ens i s

V Et hi cor um ad N i comac h um,

. lib . x ., 1 49 8

Aristotel es Gr acec (et La tine i nterpr et y ar n s) ex recen a . .

1mm Bekke ri edit Aca demi a Borussi ca Be rol i ni 1 830 37

.
, .
,
-
,

Oper a Omni a Gr e t La t cum indi ce nomen

. . . et rer .

abs ol ut i s si mo . Pa ris A F D i do t
,
.
4 vol
. s gr , . . 8y o .
 QR I TH T e/

We k G riechisch and Deu ts ch und

r e, mi t Sache r kl ar .

Anmerkungen 1 5 Lei pzig 1 85 3 7 4

,
-
.
,
- .

662
1 83 -
.

S mtt s ar t . 1 85 5 7 3 -

Mmsi is 1 5 84 »

Ue bersetz ungen and Erli u t e rungen von H . v .

A S t ah r
. Arist ot eles be i d ea me rn Lei pzig 1 834
. . , .

Ari stoteli a Ber li n 1 832 , , .

G Gort i na Log iez di vi ne sen pen pa tet i ere l ibri d uo

. .
, .

Ber l in 1 631
, .

G H Lewes Aristo teles deuts ch von J 0 Ca m

. . .
,
. . .

14 5 m 1 865
R Eucheo
. . Ub er den Spa a chge b r a ud i
-
des Arist ot el es .

Be r lin , 1 868 .
 B I B LI O QRg
/ I PH T 1 1 1

A S pringer Rafia e ls Schule von Athen (Gra phis che

Wien 1 883
. .

K il nst e J
a hrg ang , .

S chr ift an den Chris tlichen Ade l De utscher

Goethe . Gesc hich te d e r Far benlehre .

-
Pri nte d by Ba n a nan un 0 Co Ll a . m a

S
Ta vi s t oc k we e t , l m d o n