Part 7

*Grades of Psychical Life*.--If we consider the order of development, we find that some vital activities make their appearance earlier than others, and that it is a universal law that the more highly developed activities always have the less highly developed as their basis and precondition, though the less highly developed may exist apart from the more highly developed. So we may arrange vital activities in general in an ontogenetic order, the order in which they make their appearance in the individual's development. Aristotle reckons three such stages, the "nutritive," the "sensitive," and the "intelligent." The lowest form in which life shows itself at all, the level of minimum distinction between the living and the lifeless, is the power to take in nutriment, assimilate it, and grow. In vegetables the development is arrested at this point. With the animals we reach the next highest level, that of "sensitive" life. For all animals have at least the sense of touch. Thus they all show sense-perception, and it is a consequence of this that they exhibit "appetition," the simplest form of conation, and the rudiments of feeling and "temper." For what has sensations can also feel pleasure and pain, and what can feel pleasure and pain can desire, since desire is only appetition of what is pleasant. Thus in the animals we have the beginnings of cognition, conation, and affective and emotional life in general. And Aristotle adds that locomotion makes its appearance at this level; animals do not, like plants, have to trust to their supply of nutriment coming to them; they can go to it.

The third level, that of "intelligence," _i.e._ the power to compare, calculate, and reflect, and to order one's life by conscious rule, is exhibited by man. What distinguishes life at this level from mere "sensitive" life is, on the intellectual side, the ability to cognise universal truths, on the conative, the power to live by rule instead of being swayed by momentary "appetition." The former gives us the possibility of science, the latter of moral excellence.[#]

[#] _Cf._ Dante's "Fatti non foste a viver como bruti, Ma per seguir virtute e conosoenza."

*Sensation*.--Life manifests itself at the animal level on the cognitive side as sense-perception, on the conative as appetition or desire, on the affective as feeling of pleasure or pain, and in such simple emotional moods as "temper," resentment, longing. Aristotle gives sensation a logical priority over the conative and emotional expression of "animal" life. To experience appetition or anger or desire you must have an object which you crave for or desire or are angry with, and it is only when you have reached the level of presentations through the senses that you can be said to have an object. Appetition or "temper" is as real a fact as perception, but you cannot crave for or feel angry with a thing you do not apprehend.

Aristotle's definition of sense perception is that it is a "capacity for discerning" or distinguishing between "the sensible qualities of things." His conception of the process by which the discernment or distinguishing is effected is not altogether happy. In sense-perception the soul "takes into itself the _form_ of the thing perceived without its _matter_, as sealing-wax receives the shape of an iron seal-ring without the iron." To understand this, we have to remember that for Aristotle the sensible qualities of the external world, colour, tones, tastes, and the rest, are not effects of mechanical stimulation of our sense-organs, but real qualities of bodies. The hardness of iron, the redness of a piece of red wax are all primarily "in" the iron or the wax. They are "forms," or determinations by definite law, of the "matter" of the iron or the wax. This will become clearer if we consider a definite example, the red colour of the wax. In the wax the red colour is a definite combination of the colour-opposites white and black according to a fixed ratio. Now Aristotle's view of the process of sense-perception is that when I become aware of the red colour the same proportion of white to black which makes the wax red is reproduced in my organ of vision; my eye, while I am seeing the red, "assimilated" to the wax, is itself for the time actually "reddened." But it does not become wax because the red thing I am looking at is a piece of red wax. The eye remains a thing composed of living tissues. This is what is meant by saying that in seeing the colours of things the eye receives "forms" without the "matter" of the things in which those forms are exhibited. Thus the process of sense-perception is one in which the organ of sense is temporarily assimilated to the thing apprehended in respect of the particular quality cognised by that organ, but in respect of no other. According to Aristotle this process of "assimilation" always requires the presence of a "medium." If an object is in immediate contact with the eye we cannot see its colour; if it is too near the ear, we do not discern the note it gives out. Even in the case of touch and taste there is no immediate contact between the object perceived and the true organ of perception. For in touch the "flesh" is not the organ of apprehension but an integument surrounding it and capable of acting as an intermediary between it and things. Thus perception is always accomplished by a "motion" set up in the "medium" by the external object, and by the medium in our sense-organs. Aristotle thus contrives to bring correct apprehension by sense of the qualities of things under the formula of the "right mean" or "right proportion," which is better known from the use made of it in the philosopher's theory of conduct. The colour of a surface, the pitch of the note given out by a vibrating string, &c., depend on, and vary with, certain forms or ratios "in" the surface or the vibrating string; our correct apprehension of the qualities depends on the reproduction of the _same_ ratios in our sense-organs, the establishment of the "right proportion" in _us_. That this "right proportion" may be reproduced in our own sense-organs it is necessary (1) that the medium should have none of the sensible qualities for the apprehension whereof it serves as medium, _e.g._ the medium in colour-perception must be colourless. If it had a colour of its own, the "motion" set up by the coloured bodies we apprehend would not be transmitted undistorted to our organs; we should see everything through a coloured haze. It is necessary for the same reason (2) that the percipient organ itself, when in a state of quiescence, should possess none of the qualities which can be induced in it by stimulation. The upshot of the whole theory is that the sense-organ is "potentially" what the sense-quality it apprehends is actually. Actual perceiving is just that special transition from the potential to the actual which results in making the organ for the time being _actually_ of the same quality as the object.

*The Common Sensibles and the Common Sense-organ*.--Every sense has a range of qualities connected with it as its special objects. Colours can only be perceived by the eye, sounds by the ear, and so forth. But there are certain characters of perceived things which we appear to apprehend by more than one sense. Thus we seem to perceive size and shape either by touch or by sight, and number by hearing as well, since we can count _e.g._ the strokes of an unseen bell. Hence Aristotle distinguishes between the "special sensible qualities" such as colour and pitch, and what he calls the "common sensibles," the character of things which can be perceived by more than one organ. These are enumerated as size, form or shape, number, motion (and its opposite rest), being. (The addition of this last is, of course, meant to account for our conviction that any perceived colour, taste, or other quality is a reality and not a delusion.) The list corresponds very closely with one given by Plato of the "things which the mind perceives _by herself without the help of any organ_," _i.e._ of the leading determinations of sensible things which are due not to sense but to understanding. It was an unfortunate innovation to regard the discernment of number or movement, which obviously demand intellectual processes such as counting and comparison, as performed immediately by "sense," and to assign the apprehension of number, movement, figure to a central "organ." This organ he finds in the heart. The theory is that when the "special organs" of the senses are stimulated, they in turn communicate movements to the blood and "animal spirits" (_i.e._ the vapours supposed to be produced from the blood by animal heat). These movements are propagated inwards to the heart, where they all meet. This is supposed to account for the important fact that, though our sensations are so many and diverse, we are conscious of our own unity as the subjects apprehending all this variety. The unity of the perceiving subject is thus made to depend on the unity of the ultimate "organ of sensation," the heart. Further, when once a type of motion has been set up in any sense-organ at the periphery of the body it will be propagated inward to the "common sensorium" in the heart. The motions set up by stimulation, _e.g._ of the eye and of the skin, are partly different, partly the same (viz. in so far as they are determined by the number, shape, size, movement of the external stimuli). Hence in the heart itself the stimulation on which perception of number or size depends is one and the same whether it has been transmitted from the eye or from the skin! Awareness of lapse of time is also regarded as a function of the "common sense-organ," since it is the "common sensory" which perceives motion, and lapse of time is apprehended only in the apprehension of motion. Thus, in respect of the inclusion of geometrical form and lapse of time among the "common sensibles," there is a certain resemblance between Aristotle's doctrine and Kant's theory that recognition of spatial and temporal order is a function not of understanding but of "pure" sense. It is further held that to be aware that one is perceiving (self-consciousness) and to discriminate between the different classes of "special" sense-perception must also be functions of the "common sense-organ." Thus Aristotle makes the mistake of treating the most fundamental acts of intelligent reflection as precisely on a par, from the point of view of the theory of knowledge, with awareness of colour or sound.

A more legitimate function assigned to the "common sensorium" in the heart is that "fantasy," the formation of mental imagery, depends on its activity. The simplest kind of "image," the pure memory-image left behind after the object directly arousing perception has ceased to stimulate, is due to the persistence of the movements set up in the heart after the sensory process in the peripheral organ is over. Since Aristotle denies the possibility of thinking without the aid of memory-images, this function of the "common sensorium" is the indispensable basis of mental recall, anticipation, and thought. Neither "experience," _i.e._ a general conviction which results from the frequent repetition of similar perceptions, nor thought can arise in any animal in which sense-stimulation does not leave such "traces" behind it. Similarly "free imagery," the existence of trains of imagination not tied down to the reproduction of an actual order of sensations, is accounted for by the consideration that "chance coincidence" may lead to the stimulation of the heart in the same way in which it might have been stimulated by actual sensation-processes. Sleeping and waking and the experiences of dream-life are likewise due to changes in the functioning of the "common sense-organ," brought about partly by fatigue in the superficial sense-organs, partly by qualitative changes in the blood and "animal spirits" caused by the processes of nutrition and digestion. Probably Aristotle's best scientific work in psychology is contained in the series of small essays in which this theory of memory and its imagery is worked out. (Aristotle's language about the "common sensibles" is, of course, the source of our expression "common sense," which, however, has an entirely different meaning. The shifting of sense has apparently been effected through Cicero's employment of the phrase _sensus communis_ to mean tactful sympathy, the feeling of fellowship with our kind on which the Stoic philosophers laid so much stress.)

*Thought*.--Though thinking is impossible except by the use of imagery, to think is not merely to possess trains of imagery, or even to be aware of possessing them. Thinking means understanding the meaning of such mental imagery and arriving through the understanding at knowledge of the structure of the real world. How this process of interpreting mental imagery and reaching valid truth is achieved with greater and greater success until it culminates in the apprehension of the supreme principles of philosophy we have seen in dealing with the Aristotelian theory of knowledge. From the point of view of the "physicist" who is concerned with thinking simply as a type of natural process, the relation of "understanding" to the mental imagery just described is analogous to that of sensation to sensible qualities. The objects which thinking apprehends are the universal types of relation by which the world of things is pervaded. The process of thinking is one in which this system of universal relations is reproduced "by way of idea" in the mind of the thinker. The "understanding" thus stands to its objects as matter to form. The process of getting actually to understand the world is one in which our "thought" or "understanding" steadily receives completer determination and "form" from its contemplation of reality. In this sense, the process is one in which the understanding may be said to be passive in knowledge. It is passive because it is the subject which, at every fresh stage in the progress to knowledge, is being quite literally "informed" by the action of the real world through the sensation and imagery. Hence Aristotle says that, in order that the understanding may be correctly "informed" by its contact with its objects, it must, before the process begins, have no determinate character of its own. It must be simply a capacity for apprehending the types of interconnection. "What is called the intelligence--I mean that with which the soul thinks and understands--is not an actual thing until it thinks." (This is meant to exclude any doctrine which credits the "understanding" with either _furniture_ of its own such as "innate ideas," or a specific _structure_ of its own. If the results of our thinking arose partly from the structure of the world of objects and partly from inherent laws of the "structure of mind," our thought at its best would not reproduce the universal "forms" or "types" of interconnection as they really are, but would distort them, as the shapes of things are distorted when we see them through a lens of high refractive index.) Thus, though Aristotle differs from the modern empiricists in holding that "universals" realty exist "in" things, and are the links of connection between them, he agrees with the empiricist that knowledge is not the resultant of a combination of "facts" on the one side and "fundamental laws of the mind's working" on the other. At the outset the "understanding" has no structure; it develops a structure for itself in the same process, and to the same degree, in which it apprehends the "facts." Hence the "understanding" only is real in the actual process of understanding its objects, and again in a sense the understanding and the things it understands are one. Only we must qualify this last statement by saying that it is only "potentially" that the understanding is the forms which it apprehends. Aristotle does not mean by this that such things as horses and oxen are thoughts or "ideas." By the things with which "understanding" is said to be one he means the "forms" which we apprehend when we actually understand the world or any part of it, the truths of science. His point then is that the actual thinking of these truths and the truths themselves do not exist apart from one another. "Science" does not mean certain things written down in a book; it means a mind engaged in thinking and knowing things, and of the mind itself, considered out of its relation to the actual life of thinking the truths of science, we can say no more than that it is a name for the fact that we are capable of achieving such thought.

*The Active Intelligence*.--So far Aristotle's account of thought has been plain sailing. Thought has been considered as the final and highest development of the vital functions of the organism, and hence as something inseparable from the lower functions of nutrition and sensitive life. The existence of a thought which is not a function of a living body, and which is not "passive," has been absolutely excluded. But at this point we are suddenly met by the most startling of all the inconsistencies between the naturalistic and the "spiritualist" strains in Aristotle's philosophy. In a few broken lines he tells us that there is another sense of the word "thought" in which "thought" actually creates the truths it understands, just as light may be said to make the colours which we see by its aid. "And _this_ intelligence," he adds, "is separable from matter, and impassive and unmixed, being in its essential nature an _activity_.... It has no intermission in its thinking. It is only in separation from matter that it is fully itself, and it alone is immortal and everlasting ... while the passive intelligence is perishable and does not think at all, apart from this." The meaning of this is not made clear by Aristotle himself, and the interpretation was disputed even among the philosopher's personal disciples.

One important attempt to clear up the difficulty is that made by Alexander of Aphrodisias, the greatest of the commentators on Aristotle, in the second century A.D. Alexander said, as Aristotle has not done, that the "active intelligence" is numerically the same in all men, and is identical with God. Thus, all that is specifically human in each of us is the "passive intelligence" or capacity for being enlightened by God's activity upon us. The advantage of the view is, that it removes the "active intelligence" altogether from the purview of psychology, which then becomes a purely naturalistic science. The great Arabian Aristotelian, Averroes (Ibn Roschd) of Cordova, in the twelfth century, went still further in the direction of naturalism. Since the "active" and "passive" intelligence can only be separated by a logical abstraction, he inferred that men, speaking strictly, do not think at all; there is only one and the same individual intelligence in the universe, and all that we call our thinking is really not ours but God's. The great Christian scholastics of the following century in general read Aristotle through the eyes of Averroes, "_the_ Commentator," as St. Thomas calls him, "Averrois che il gran commento feo," as Dante says. But their theology compelled them to disavow his doctrine of the "active intelligence," against which they could also bring, as St. Thomas does, the telling argument that Aristotle could never have meant to say that there really is no such thing as human intelligence. Hence arose a third interpretation, the Thomist, according to which the "active intelligence" is neither God nor the same for all men, but is the highest and most rational "part" of the individual human soul, which has no bodily "organ."

*CHAPTER V*

*PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY*

Hitherto we have been concerned with the speculative branches of knowledge, we have now to turn to practice. Practice, too, is an activity of thought, but an activity which is never satisfied by the process of thinking itself. In practice our thinking is always directed towards the production of some result other than true thought itself. As in engineering it is not enough to find a solution of the problem how to build a bridge over a given river capable of sustaining a given strain, so in directing our thought on the problems of human conduct and the organisation of society we aim at something more than the understanding of human life. In the one case what we aim at is the construction of the bridge; in the other it is the production of goodness in ourselves and our fellow-men, and the establishment of right social relations in the state. Aristotle is careful to insist on this point throughout his whole treatment of moral and social problems. The principal object of his lectures on conduct is not to tell his hearers what goodness is, but to make them good, and similarly it is quite plain that _Politics_ was intended as a text-book for legislators. In close connection with this practical object stands his theory of the kind of truth which must be looked for in ethics and politics. He warns us against expecting precepts which have the exact and universal rigidity of the truths of speculative science. Practical science has to do with the affairs of men's lives, matters which are highly complex and variable, in a word, with "what may be otherwise." Hence we must be content if we can lay down precepts which hold good in the main, just as in medicine we do not expect to find directions which will effect a cure in all cases, but are content with general directions which require to be adapted to special cases by the experience and judgment of the practitioner. The object of practical science then is to formulate rules which will guide us in obtaining our various ends. Now when we consider these ends we see at once that some are subordinate to others. The manufacture of small-arms may be the end at which their maker aims, but it is to the military man a mere means to _his_ end, which is the effective use of them. Successful use of arms is again the end of the professional soldier, but it is a mere means among others to the statesman. Further, it is the military men who use the arms from whom the manufacturer has to take his directions as to the kind of arms that are wanted, and again it is the statesman to whom the professional soldiers have to look for directions as to when and with what general objects in view they shall fight. So the art which uses the things produced by another art is the superior and directing art; the art which makes the things, the inferior and subordinate art. Hence the supreme practical art is politics, since it is the art which uses the products turned out by all other arts as means to its ends. It is the business of politics, the art of the statesman, to prescribe to the practitioners of all other arts and professions the lines on which and the conditions under which they shall exercise their vocation with a view to securing the supreme practical end, the well-being of the community. Among the other professions and arts which make the materials the statesman employs, the profession of the educator stands foremost. The statesman is bound to demand certain qualities of mind and character in the individual citizens. The production of these mental and moral qualities must therefore be the work of the educator. It thus becomes an important branch of politics to specify the kind of mental and moral qualities which a statesman should require the educator to produce in his pupils.