The Greek Philosophers, Vol. 1 (of 2)Benn, Alfred William
Philosophy
The Greek Philosophers, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Benn, Alfred William
Philosophy, Ancient
experience, has the changeless consistency once attributed exclusively
to the stellar spheres.
When Aristotle passes from the whole cosmos to the philosophy of life,
his method of systematic division is less distinctly illustrated, but
still it may be traced. The fundamental separation is between body
and soul. The latter has a wider meaning than what we associate with
it at present. It covers the psychic functions and the whole life of
the organism, which, again, is not what we mean by life. For life
with us is both individual and collective; it resides in each speck
of protoplasm, and also in the consensus of the whole organism. With
Aristotle it is more exclusively a central principle, the final cause
of the organism, the power which holds it together, and by which it
was originally shaped. Biology begins by determining the idea of the
whole, and then considers the means by which it is realised. The
psychic functions are arranged according to a system of teleological
subordination. The lower precedes the higher in time, but is logically
necessitated by it. Thus nutrition, or the vegetative life in general,
must be studied in close connexion with sensation and impulse, or
animal life; and this, again, with thought or pure reasoning. On
the other hand, anatomy and physiology are considered from a purely
chemical and mechanical point of view. A vital purpose is, indeed,
assigned to every organ, but with no more reference to its specifically
vital properties than if it formed part of a steam engine. Here, as
always with Aristotle, the idea of moderation determines the point of
view whence the inferior or material system is to be studied. Organic
tissue is made up of the four elemental principles—hot, cold, wet, and
dry—mixed together in proper proportions; and the object of organic
function is to maintain them in due equilibrium, an end effected by
the regulating power of the soul, which, accordingly, has its seat in
the heart or centre of the body. It has been already shown how, in
endeavouring to work out this chimerical theory, Aristotle went much
further astray from the truth than sundry other Greek physiologists
less biassed by the requirements of a symmetrical method.
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