CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHILQgOPHY^ 
 
 NO. II. \ -f^ 
 
 Lfroh thb sbmihar m logic] ^^'"*«C~^B' •' 
 
 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONTINGENT 
 
 IN THE 
 
 ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM ARTHUR HEIDEL, Ph.D., 
 
 (dOCBKT IH PHILOSOmV IN THB OIHVBIISITr OP CHICAGO) 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 1L\t lanibfcstts of <tEfi((aBO 9<(M 
 1896 
 
''^y. 
 
 Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028999740 
 
UmVERSITY OF CHICAGO CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHILOSOPHY 
 
 No. II. 
 [from the seminar in logic] 
 
 « 
 
 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONTINGENT 
 
 IN THE 
 
 ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM ARTHUR HEIDEL, Ph.D., 
 
 (docent in philosophy in the university of Chicago) 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 1896 
 
THE NECESSARY AND "THE CONTINGENT 
 IN THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM/ 
 
 The distinctions taken between the necessary and the contingent, 
 in philosophical discussion no less than in common life, are ordi- 
 narily supposed to be so definitive and are permitted so deeply to 
 influence our conceptions that it seems well worth one's while to 
 examine them in their origin. And the Aristotelian system' will 
 best serve our purpose as a corpus vile for very obvious reasons. In 
 the first place, Aristotle is the earliest systematic philosopher who 
 essayed to treat consistently of all the greater problems of life and 
 thought, and whose works remain to be studied. His method, too, 
 was such that, standing as he did just on the verge of form alism, 
 the definitions which he attempted still bear definite traces of th& 
 purely functional meaning of those terms, while his formulation of 
 their significance has led naturally to their solidification as objective 
 facts in the world. For Aristotle was wont to preface his own con- 
 clusions by inquiring, rather superficially to be sure, into the psy- 
 chology of the conceptions in question ; yet, while the inadequacy 
 of his psychology is now admitted on all hands, the inferences as 
 to fact which he deduced therefrom are even now in part accepted 
 as conclusive. When one reflects upon it this state of the question 
 strikes one as absurd. For this reason there appears to be the 
 greater justification for an analysis of the presuppositions on which 
 these conceptions rest. If one grants their validity, the conclusions 
 and the resultant contradictions of the system must be accepted as 
 ultimate. But I am convinced that Aristotle's presuppositions and 
 his real problems were wholly unreconcilable with each other, and 
 
 'Professor Dewey's article on "The Superstition of Necessity" in The Monist, 
 III, 362-379, has given a very acute analysis of Necessity, which I take as my point 
 of departure. 
 
 'I say "the Aristotelian system" rather than "Aristotle" because I do not wish 
 here to discuss the genuineness of some of the works which I shall have to cite. 
 This is the more justifiable because, even if spurious, they merely develop Aris- 
 totle's position. 
 
4 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONTINGENT 
 
 SO his contradictions serve all the better to point out the direction 
 in which their solution lay. 
 
 Plato made the acute observation that surprise is the beginning 
 of philosophy, and Aristotle appropriated and further applied the 
 thought.' The full sweep of the truth contained in these words is 
 vastly greater, however, than they knew. The feeling of wonder is 
 indeed the point of departure for philosophy ; but what precisely 
 does it mean ? It indicates first of all that an old habit has been 
 broken up. Old conceptions, like the proverbial old bottles, have 
 become so surcharged with the new wine of meaning that they have 
 burst. But to say this is to describe the phenomenon merely as A 
 brute fact without according it any symbolic value. This state of 
 surprise must acquire an ideal worth, an indicative function, if it is 
 really to become the parent of philosophy. Briefly, then, we may 
 say : surprise indicates the need of reconstructing our supposed facts. 
 And this statement is to be taken at its full value, with all its impli- 
 cations, if philosophy is to be achieved. 
 
 First, then, as to what is implied in this demand for a recon- 
 struction of fact. Most assuredly, what is required is not the mere 
 multiplication of facts. Multiplication of facts will serve to diver- 
 sify the world, but not to unify it ; and unification of meaning is 
 the goal of philosophy. What we need, therefore, is not so much 
 more facts as a richer fact. Truth, I suppose, and reality are syn- 
 onymous, and Truth is not many, but one. Truth and reality are 
 present, if anywhere, in concrete experience ; and through the func- 
 tional (not abstract) definition of this concrete experience a richer, 
 but still unitary and concrete reality is attained in experience. The 
 falsity, the abstraction, results from the multiplying of words, — a 
 darkening of counsel with words without knowledge. Why, then, 
 this multiplicity, if multiplicity is false ? The true multiplicity is 
 that of division, not that of multiplication. It comes about natu- 
 rally and legitimately in the definition of experience, just as, and 
 for the same purpose as, in scientific experimentation. In order 
 that we may get control of the fact, in order that we may make it 
 symbolical or serviceable, it needs to be made out in detail as to its 
 value. We have, therefore, to single out this phase and that, — these 
 
 " Vide Plato, Theaetetus, 155 D, and Zeller, II, A, 6io, u. 3; Aristotle, Metaph., 
 982 b 12 : iib. yip t& Saviii^eiv 0! (itiffpuiroi Kal vvv Kal t6 irpurov rip^arro <t>i.\o(70(t>av. 
 
IN THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM 5 
 
 phases to be understood as the construction of selecting mind under 
 the direction of interest, — and to apply to each certain definite 
 tests, according to the end which for the time we have in view. When 
 we have finished our survey of the fact thus analyzed and have defi- 
 nitely noted it as answering to such and such particular ends, we 
 hasten to recompound it in the completer definition. To each of 
 these phases or aspects, thus abstracted from the concrete whole for 
 practical purposes in the definition of fact in terms of means and end, 
 we apply a name ; and after we have practically restored the unity in 
 our enriched experience of fact, our functionally erected abstractions 
 remain, as fossilized in the words, to haunt us as so many "things" 
 or as "qualities" which merely "inhere" in them. The mind's 
 economy is such that when it has once found an "open sesame" 
 with which to unlock one of life's multitudinous doors, it tends to 
 hold it fast and to use it on all occasions rather than trust to finding 
 it again on occasion. 
 
 But we must insist that this multiplication of words and so of 
 "things" is purely a practical device for practical — not theoretical — 
 ends, and is, therefore, justified only of its children ; justified, that is, 
 only in the service it actually performs in the enrichment of experience. 
 Yet this practical enrichment results in theoretical embarrassment, 
 if it merely erects new facts instead of reconstructing the one fact.^ 
 From this point of view we may judge the folly of that inane prac- 
 tice which endeavors to cashier every new experience by merely 
 naming it. My sophisticated friend, for example, who dashed my 
 youthful rapture at the sight of an extraordinary meteorological 
 phenomenon by calmly labeling it "sun-dogs" rendered me thereby, 
 if possible, somewhat less a philosopher without making me a better 
 scientist. If he could have shown me how those four seeming suns 
 were one, and how the presence of ice-crystals in the atmosphere 
 was just the meaning of that gorgeous pageantry of rival parhelia 
 and broken solar halos, he might have accompJished something 
 more worthy of his vaunted knowledge. 
 
 ' Something like to this is indicated in Royce's The Spirit of Modern Philosophy. 
 See particularly the example drawn from the experience of St. Paul on Malta, 
 ibid., p. 402. The case well admits of further analysis. If Paul's companions had 
 solved the question suggested by the natives calling him & god, they would have 
 stated fully the relation of man to God in the universe and thus have solved the 
 problem of religion by realizing it. 
 
6 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONTINGENT 
 
 If, then, surprise is thus the beginning of philosophy, its goal 
 must be the elimination of surprise : for this feeling, as we have 
 seen, indicates the need of reconstructing the fact. And this is 
 probably just what Aristotle intended by saying that this state must 
 revert into its opposite in such wise that wonder would be excited 
 «/such were not the fact, that is, if a further reconstruction were 
 required.' He states this problem in terms of possibility : if this 
 hypotenuse were commensurable with the sides of the triangle, if a 
 common unit could be found for them in terms of which it could be 
 directly measured. Even here then the implication is that we have 
 attained a necessary truth, which could not be otherwise^ It is, how- 
 ever, sufficiently clear at the outset that nothing is gained by 
 denominating it a necessary truth over and above what is meant by 
 stating it to be the truth. When we have attained the complete 
 definition of the truth, it is clear that everything inconsistent with 
 it is false : and then we say with perfect assurance that nothing else 
 can be truth, since this is precisely the truth. Every stage short of 
 this of completed description reveals its functional value in the 
 elasticity or ambiguity of its reference; it characterizes itself as 
 opinion relatively well or ill founded. When knowledge is achieved, 
 when the fact is fully made out in all its details, it merely is the 
 truth ; before its attainment this or that definition or statement 
 regarding it may or may not be true : as certainty grows upon our 
 minds, wh'ile as yet we have not quite adjusted all the elements 
 which go to make up the whole, we say it must be so. Hence 
 "contingent" and "necessary" truths relate not to objective fact at 
 all, but merely register the degrees of adjustment in our judgments 
 of fact previous to their settling down into a simple categorical 
 assertion. To say, therefore, that opinion or empirical experience 
 attains the "that," while scientific knowledge gives the "why," is to 
 utter a partial truth as viewed from the subjective side, but is 
 
 'Aristotle, Afifto/ji., 9830 12 ff., esp. 17: hii^'eh Toivavrlav ... dToreXeuT?- 
 <roi, Kaffdirep Kal iv roirois Sraii fuiSuaiv' oiSiv yap Sir BavpAaeifv outws ivifp yeu/ie- 
 TpiKhs ia% ei V^voiTO ^ SidpsTpos jCict/jtjt^. 
 
 = Aristotle calls such truths dlSia, p.^) ivSexS/iem &\\as tx""- More of this 
 anon. Knowledge is thus made coextensive with the necessary : cf. Ana!, post., 
 ch. 4 : iirel S'&Sivwrov 4\Xus ^x^'" "5 iarlv iiri.ar-^p,ti dirXSs, ivayxahv &v et-tj t6 
 iTnaT-nrbv rb Kari, t^v 4ti.Shktik^v ^tthttV')!/ . . . i^ dmyKalan S.pa avWoyurp^s 
 
IN THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM 7 
 
 wholly false when the distinction is objectified. That is to say, the 
 "that" and the "why" are more truly applicable to the degrees o£ 
 deliberate assent than to characteristics of outward things. Opinion 
 does indeed apprehend a fact, but only an incomplete and hypo- 
 thetical one ; knowledge merely goes on to state it as a fact more 
 fully defined and assured. Aristotle draws the same distinction 
 between sensation and intellection,' but this, too, holds good only 
 with the same limitations, namely, as expressing the truth that the 
 percept, as well as the concept, has meaning only in so far forth as 
 it is symbolical, that is to say, when it becomes a means to an end. 
 In its implication that the sensation is not itself a construct, and as 
 such possessed of a meaning or reference, it is radically false. To be 
 sure Aristotle inclines to view even the concepts, especially the more 
 generic, as mere facts there once for all, which the mind has no 
 power to transcend because it merely intuits them ; and so he comes 
 to regard them, despite his opposition to realism, as opposed to 
 concrete fact. 
 
 To return to our starting point after this apparent digression : 
 I have said above that Aristotle's presuppositions were fundament- 
 ally in contradiction with his real problems. In order to make clear 
 the meaning of this assertion, as well as to prepare the way for a 
 somewhat detailed examination of the Aristotelian system, it will 
 perhaps be well to sketch in as few words as possible the preceding 
 course of Greek thought which defined and conditioned the direc- 
 tion of the further advance. 
 
 Greek philosophy began with speculation rather than with 
 experiment. It may facilitate the taking a comprehensive view if 
 we state the progress in logical terms and employ the scheme of 
 the judgment. In this form the subject will be the world or 
 " things " ; the predicate will be represented by the a.pyy\, or 
 principle; and the copula will be the method of mediation by 
 which you pass from subject to predicate or from predicate to 
 subject. It is clear that in logical terms the former movement is 
 that of induction, and the latter that of deduction. In the practical^ 
 sphere, or rather in its true inner meaning, induction is only the 
 process of setting up an end by a provisional survey of the means, 
 in such wise that the quality abstracted and expressed in the predi' 
 
 ' See Anal. Post., I, 31. 
 
8 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONTINGENT 
 
 cate is precisely that mark which you are interested to realize in the 
 fact, or the subject. Deduction, then in turn, is the reversal of the 
 process, in that you begin with the end as accomplished or con- 
 ceived as accomplished, and define the means in terms of it ; see, in 
 other words, whether this particular is a means to that generic end. 
 Thus viewed, it is at once apparent that the movement pursued by 
 the Milesians, the Pythagoreans, and the Eleatics, is that of a hasty 
 induction. Very little effort is made to elaborate the copula or the 
 problem of the cosmic process.' It is even quite possible that 
 Anaximenes was the first to assert that this process was that of con- 
 densation and rarefaction, and even here we are dismissed when we 
 -attain what were later called the "elements." Anaximander, 
 indeed, seems to mark the dawning consciousness of a deeper 
 problem for philosophy; that, namely, of attaining a predicate from 
 which it is possible to explain or derive the subject. His oTrapov, 
 therefore, and the process of cKKpivea-Oai are rightly to be considered 
 as among the first truly significant problems of philosophy ; for 
 they point out the need of a fruitful method of deduction. It is at 
 least interesting, and perhaps not wholly wanting in deeper sug- 
 gestiveness, that the first consciousness of this demand should 
 have been accompanied by the original though extremely meager 
 sketch of organic evolution, which applies just this method of 
 deduction.'' As for the Pythagoreans, it is needless to insist that 
 they made no serious effort to explain or derive "things," and the 
 Eleatics employed dialectic, their copula, only as a means to explain 
 away or annihilate the subject, which was too infinitely rich to be 
 accounted for by the blank conception of immovable space-filling 
 matter. 
 
 Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the Atomists occupy much the 
 same logical position as Anaximander. They address themselves 
 
 • Windelband, pp. 47 £f., Engl. Transl., has brought together the conceptions 
 which relate to the copula in section 5, under the caption "Conceptions of Cosmic 
 Processes." 
 
 = If Anaximander really was the first to employ dpxi} as a philosophical term 
 {cf. Zeller, Is, p. 217, n. 2) this fact would fall in verywell with his logical position. 
 At all events it is clear that Thales was far more interested in the question " What 
 H the world?" than in the problem "/^uta is the v/OTld water ? " This very fact 
 marks the abrupt breaking away from the merely temporal d/>xi) as it was set forth 
 in the cosmogonies. 
 
IN THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM 9 
 
 equally to the working out of the predicate and to the derivation 
 from it of the subject. But as they ^llow only for quantitativeL 
 change they cannot account fully for things as they appear in per- 
 ception, and consequently they are driven to denounce sense as 
 fallacious. Thus they come in the end to agree with the Eleatics ; 
 the inductive movement is assured, but the deductive lags. 
 Heraclitus, however, holds a place apart ; for in his system the - 
 copula, the cosmic process, has absorbed all that is real. Subject 
 and predicate, taken as permanent entities, both completely dis- 
 appear, and m their room stands the eternal law of change. This,_ 
 his only reality, he calls dfiapitxvri, Fate, or Logos.' Amid all the 
 endless fiux of things there runs an adamantine thread of rationality, 
 and when he calls this Fate, it is sufficiently clear that necessity 
 stands with him only for the insistent "Is" which defies the vanity 
 of nothingness. And when the Atomists assert that the tumultuous 
 motion of the atoms in the void is regulated by dvayKr/, this expres- 
 sion means precisely what has been said above : it marks the 
 growing assurance of definiteness with a residue of the unexplained. 
 This residuum is indeed taken account of in the same breath, in the 
 confession of something "tumultuous" or "irregular" in their 
 motion. Anaxagoras is doubtless to be regarded as the originator _ 
 of conscious teleology' in Greek thought, and to him we must look 
 as the source of that most fruitful conception which met with great 
 favor on the part of the dramatic poets, chiefly of Euripides, and 
 through Socrates passed over into the systems of Plato and Aristotle 
 only to become the plaything of the Stoics. 
 
 The Sophists then appeared, "men of no system but surveying 
 all," only to find a multitude of ineffectual predicates applied to the 
 world. By the rivalry between the schools and the publication of 
 hand-books of dialectics like those of Zeno and Melissus, the weak- 
 nesses of the several philosophies became known to the general 
 educated public, and the appearance of the rixvai pr/TopiKai, which 
 form a complete parallel to this dialectic, disseminated still more the 
 art of logic-chopping which served only practical purposes and 
 defeated theoretical ends. Then came the application of the 
 
 ' See Heinze, Die Lehre vom Logos, pp. 1-57. 
 
 ' Diimmler in his Akademika has treated of this subject, but his work is 
 unfortunatel)' not trustworthy. 
 
10 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONTINGENT 
 
 Heraclitic doctrine to the subject after the predicate had been sum- 
 marily dismissed. Protagoras, indeed, still regarded some feelings ' 
 as valid, but he proceeded quite evidently on the supposition that a 
 . state must exist; that is, he accorded to these data of experience, as 
 he thought, an absolute reality, but still he could not vindicate it 
 for them except as they were accepted as means toward an end. 
 And herein he laid bare the only satisfactory criterion of truth and 
 reality. But his successors disclaimed this or any end as valid, and 
 so reduced vd/xoi and ^vV«t, particular and universal, to one, namely, 
 the unmeaning brute impulse of the moment. Thus there is neither 
 predicate nor copula: only a would-be subject remains to which is 
 denied all valid ulterior reference, and so in a true sense not even a 
 subject is left. 
 
 It was just here that Socrates took his stand. For he accepted 
 the challenge of the Sophists to fight the battle on their own ground, 
 conscious that in order even to defend their position they must 
 have a real subject and eo ipso a real predicate. In other words, 
 Socrates had seized upon the logic of Protagoras' demand for the 
 validity of certain data of consci ousness, and, being an intensely 
 practical man as well as a philosopher, he saw that in orde^ to right 
 action kno wledge is necessary, and a real predicate in order to 
 knowledge. "Granted," we may conceive him saying, "granted 
 that we have only the subject, the percept, our problem is then to 
 find the predicate, the concept." Socrates, that is to say, represents 
 purely and simply the attitude of the mind in surveying the means 
 at its disposal with a view to finding the end.' This is precisely the 
 
 ' These, according to Plato's Protagoras, 320 C ff., were aldiis and Ski;. 
 
 = All of the characteristic expressions and aims of Socrates fall definitely into 
 line with this position. His self-examination {airiv i^erdj^ctv), his intellectual mid- 
 wifery (^uoicuTiK^), his irony, his confession of ignorance, clearly indicate his being 
 occupied with the subject. So, too, his favorite injunction yvw9i iravriv and its 
 correlate aa<l>poirivii characterize the need of keeping close to the means in order to 
 find out just what they are or stand for. We readily see why it was that Socrates 
 did not hypostatize the concept, as Aristotle tells us ; for he had not fairly attained 
 it : he was just seeking it. Even his definitions were only tentative, like those in the 
 minor Platonic dialogues. Socrates' conviction that virtue is knowledge likewise 
 represents just this stage in the development of judgment. Intellection is not 
 coextensive with right action, but is only a moment in it. It comes in at the point 
 when the self is defining itself as means to ascertain its legitimate end and defining 
 the means, in turn, in terms of the end. It can, therefore, be made synonymous 
 
IN THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM I I 
 
 % 
 
 meaning of his search for definitions, and Aristotle was certainly- 
 right in singling out induction and djfinition as the specific con- 
 tribution of Socrates to the history of thought. 
 
 Necessary and helpful as Socrates' procedure was, it was 
 undeniably fraught with serious consequences for all subsequent 
 thought. In order to prove that certain conceptions were valid, he , 
 thought it necessary to discover them in the minds of all : but this 
 inevitably led to seeking out these notions by eliminating as non- 
 essential every mark which was not everywhere present.' The result 
 was the abstract and relatively contentless concept." This view 
 completely dominated ancient thought, and even now it is not 
 wholly a thing of the past. Socrates, however, did not hypostatize 
 the concepts, but this, as we have said, was chiefly due to his not 
 having fairly attained them. In like manner, he regarded the 
 Good as purely functional and relative, giving it no precise defini- • 
 tion;^ for his position, as we have seen, was on the side of the 
 means, or subject. But his followers did hypostatize both the Good 
 and the Ideas, the Megarians calling Virtue or the Good the only 
 real. Hence it is clear that the standpoint of his successors was 
 for the most part on the outcome of his search, on the predicate, 
 and their problem will be seen to be just the reverse of his. Aristip- 
 pus and Antisthenes are the only real exceptions, and Aristotle fitly 
 classed the former as a Sophist. 
 
 It is quite common to suppose that there was a period in Plato's 
 philosophizing when he had not reached the standpoint of his 
 
 with right action, which it assures, only if the concrete act is broken up and this 
 one phase is set off as the whole. This appears to me the truth that underlies the 
 rather complicated criticism of Socrates' views of the dicoi5<rioy in the third book of 
 the Nicotnachean Ethics. 
 
 ' This is the natural consequence of admitting, as Socrates virtually did, 
 the correctness of the Heraclitic views of sensation. Cf. Sext. Emfir., VII, 
 
 131 ff. 
 
 ^ Hence Aristotle must unite the Ka$' o6t6 and the Ka-To. ravT6s or irl Train in 
 every true KaBiXov, See Prantl, Gesck. der Logik, I, p. 167. The confusion thence 
 arising regarding general or universal notions is rather pathetically illustrated in 
 Locke's polemic. Occasionally Aristotle employs the word Ka8b\ov in the sense of 
 "indefinite" (cf. Zeller, II, B, p. 199, n.) and it is a pity that he did not see that 
 that is its precise meaning. Had he recognized this point, we should probably not 
 have been afflicted with a "formal " logic. 
 
 3 See Xen. Mem., Ill, 8. 
 
12 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONTINGENT 
 
 theory of Ideas.' This may be true so far as concerns his hypostatiz- 
 ing the Ideas, but it must be plain that from the outset he assumed, 
 in common with other Socratics, the result of Socrates' enquiry, to 
 wit, the concept as something real and of all things most important. 
 This position once attained, the further consequence was a mere 
 matter of detail;" and after the bearings of the new standpoint 
 were canvassed and brought fully to consciousness,' there was but a 
 single choice to make. Either Plato had to deny utterly the reality 
 of all individual things, as did the Megarians, or else his life problem 
 
 ^ must be the mediation of the Ideas back to the world of sense. 
 The mere fact that he refused to assent to the Megarian Good or^ 
 the undifferentiated unity of abstract Being, and insisted on postu- 
 lating a multiplicity of Ideas only teleologically, not logically, 
 subordinated to the Idea of the Good, shows unmistakably which 
 
 ^alternative he accepted. Henceforth the direction of his philosophy 
 was clearly determined. He did not indeed succeed in bridging 
 the chasm created by the dialectic of Socrates, but he spared no 
 effort in his desire to do so. Thus in the Sophist he endeavors to 
 annul the blank negation of the concrete and to charge the Ideas 
 with causality in order to make them serviceable for explanation. 
 To be sure this abstract logical effort failed ; for indeed it was pre- 
 destined to failure from the moment that Plato accepted the Socratic 
 concept for his Idea. But in the practical sphere, where futile 
 abstractions do not acquire so firm a footing, Plato, like other phi- 
 losophers, came nearer to a solution of his problem. In ^t, Republic 
 and the Laws he made a very considerable advance toward mediat- 
 ing the Idea of the Good to the concrete world of fact,* and in the 
 
 ' This supposition appears to me to be very doubtful. It could only apply to 
 the minor dialogues, in any case ; and in calling them " Socratic " we already 
 exhibit their real character as dialogues of search in which, in imitation of 
 Socrates, Plato stated no definite conclusions. Yet, even here, it must be owned 
 that he always suggests a doctrine which he does not elaborate. 
 
 = Altogether the hypostatizing of the Ideas was not Plato's absorbing interest, 
 as some take it to be. It was really only the consequence of his accepted stand- 
 point, and where other enquiries are prominent the Ideas are treated merely as 
 general notions. Cf. Shorey, Be Platonis Idearum Doctrina, etc., Munich, 1884. 
 
 3 It appears to me that this is precisely the position in Plato's philosophizing 
 which the Parmenides represents. The attacks directed against its genuineness 
 are all based upon a failure, I think, to comprehend just what Plato had to do. 
 
 " See Heinze, Lehre vom Logos, p. 65 f.: " Wie in der Republik die Gestaltung 
 
IN THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM 1 3 
 
 Philebus he essayed with equal success, in the sphere of ethics, to 
 mediate between pleasure and knowledg^e. 
 
 It is only too evident, therefore, that the logic of Plato's position 
 rendered his problem incapable of solution, just as that of Protagoras 
 excluded a valid end or ideal. As hedonism, even, was an advance 
 on the standpoint which abstracted the means, i. e., the percept and 
 the pleasure-pains, and declared them means to no self-justiying end, 
 so the partial capitulation to hedonism in the Philebus betokened the 
 abandonment of the extreme intellectualism which was the logical 
 outcome of the theory of Ideas. Aristotle merely continued to work 
 at Plato's problem with very indifferent success. His criticism of the 
 Platonic doctrine of Ideas amounts in the end only to this r that it 
 renders mediation, which he desires no more and no less than Plato 
 himself, utterly impossible,' while it contributes nothing toward a 
 knowledge of concrete things.'' Precisely, then, as Plato had assumed 
 
 des guten im Staate dargestellt wird, so soil Im Timaeus nachgewiesen werden, 
 auf welche Weise die Idee des guten im Weltall zur Verwirklichung kommt." In 
 the Timaeus this effort at mediation is confessed to be a theoretical failure, for it is 
 designated as a witty guess. The World-Soul is the chief means of mediation in 
 the world of things. In the Laws the Ideas are not mentioned as such at all, but 
 in substance the Idea of the Good is there. If Plato ever did resort to mathematics 
 to any considerable extent, and if he then placed the im9iiiuitik& between the Ideas 
 and things of sense, this would only be another illustration of the deep conscious- 
 ness of his problem. It would seem that be did not perhaps employ mathematics 
 in an altogether serious vein, but merely, as in the analogous physical disquisitions 
 of the Timaeus, to show that there was a via.y of mediation left open if one resorted 
 to the abstract speculations of the Pythagoreans. It was but natural that the Old 
 Academy took up this half-serious endeavor in full earnest. 
 
 'See Zeller, II, B, 296, ns. 2-4, and 297, n. I. When Aristotle complains that 
 the Ideas are not an efhcient cause his criticism strikes his own prime mover or God 
 equally, and hence his objection that the Ideas are not even the final cause is wholly 
 unjustified. Plato's Ideas are Ideals also, and as such they serve for his teleology 
 quite as effectively as Aristotle's God. It is only too evident that Plato was far 
 more conscious of the weak points of his system than Aristotle was of his own. If 
 critics would come to recognize this there would be less finding of mare's-nests. 
 Almost all of the arguments alleged against the genuineness of the greater Platonic 
 dialogues are born of this misunderstanding. Once it is fairly considered that 
 Plato was far more interested in mediating his Ideas back to the world than in 
 hypostatizing them, it must be apparent that he could not do otherwise than develop 
 the difficulties inherent in his doctrine. The difficulties he thus started, like the 
 now famous rpWos ivBpairoi, his critics quite naturally harped upon to the evident 
 entertainment of their modern successors. 
 
 "See the passages cited by Zeller, ibid., p. 297, ns. 2 and 3. 
 
14 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONTINGENT 
 
 as given or assured the standpoint toward which the Socratic search 
 pointed, viz., that the concepts were valid and the only objects of knowl- 
 edge,^ so Aristotle laid hold on the conclusion which plainly lay 
 immanent in Plato's persistent efforts at mediation, namely that the 
 concrete was real. There can be no question as to which of the two 
 was the more consistent. In fact, Aristotle's thorough-going dual- 
 ism and the fundamental contradiction of his system lie just in this, 
 that he accepted the outcome of both these movements as final, 
 accepted, that is to say, a fixed given concept and an equally fixed 
 given percept, and utterly failed in his endeavor, if such it may be 
 called, to attain a higher principle to which both v/ere only relative. 
 If, on the other hand, his theory of induction marks little or no 
 advance upon that of Socrates, while he elaborated the deductive 
 process or syllogistic reasoning to an all but definitive form, this 
 circumstance finds its explanation in the direction of his interest. 
 As merely continuing the movement from the universal to the par- 
 ticular which was inaugurated by Plato, his attention was centered 
 on the concrete which he regarded as the only real; and the syl- 
 logism is only the abstract formulation of the process of deducing 
 the particular from, or subordinating it to, the general. 
 
 This fact, taken in conjunction with the other that Aristotle is 
 particularly interested in empirical investigation," will serve to define 
 his standpoint still more clearly. Knowledge, he is convinced in 
 common with Plato, is to be had only on the basis of a discovery of 
 ideas, but these are to be found, he believes, not outside, not by a 
 
 ■ Aristotle is fond of asserting that demonstrative knowledge deals only with 
 the eternal, difSio, but at the same time he rallies Plato for making the Ideas only 
 " immortal sensibles," because the Idea of a man has only the same content as 
 " man in general " ! Cf. Zeller, ibid., p. 293, n. 4. This is a good example of his 
 psychological crudities. He calls "man in general " a <t>0apTtv, and yet knowledge, 
 which deals in universals, has to do only with t4 iiSia; and one really sees "man 
 in general," just as we find him asserting that the entire minor premise — a judg- 
 ment—is given in perception, particularly in the practical syllogism. Cf. Zeller, 
 p. 238, n. 2, and p. 584 for examples. With such wholesale acquisition of highly 
 complex elements by perception and an equal immediateness in the intuition of the 
 highest concepts, a special need for fertility in the intellectual process is satisfac- 
 torily set aside. 
 
 = It is perhaps worth noting here in evidence of Plato's movement toward the 
 concrete that most of his followers, not Aristotle alone, displayed a great interest 
 in scientific research. 
 
IN THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM 1 5 
 
 movement away from, but within, by a movement toward, the con- 
 crete. The concept, in other words, is to be gained by defining the 
 particular. But just here we discover the bad influence of the 
 Socratic induction, proceeding as it did by the elimination of the 
 non-essential, without being fully conscious of the meaning of this 
 exclusion. For Socrates, indeed, because he had yet to find his 
 concept, the particular still possessed a positive value. It was the 
 nature of the particular, in fact, which constituted the concept. But 
 Plato was, as it were, a traveler going over the ground for a second 
 time. The concrete things of sense had for him only a negative 
 worth, as affording the occasion or the suggestion for remembrance 
 of the end attained or enjoyed before.' Aristotle's induction also 
 is of this essentially negative and barren character, so far as he is 
 conscious of it in theory ; for by means of it he reaches only the 
 foregone conclusion of his highest intuitive principles. And it is 
 clear that this result was due not to his logical position, but to his 
 psychological bias or preconceptions. Given a psychology that 
 considers the concrete object as presented intact by sense-perception 
 and the highest genera as merely envisaged or intuited by the rea- 
 son, instead of recognizing both as mental constructs, and the con- 
 clusions of the Aristotelian system, incongruous as they are, follow 
 by a logical necessity. 
 
 Viewed from a practical standpoint the exclusion of the non- 
 essential from the concept is not only justified, but it even indicates 
 a truth which ought to lead to the destruction of the theoretical 
 category of "things" and so of the "given." When we are engaged 
 in realizing an end which we have set up after a preliminary review 
 or examination of our means, we find in our experience as presented 
 in memory certain clusters of qualities which we commonly denote 
 as things. These clusters are the net results, so to speak, of 
 innumerable previous experiences, in which these "things" did 
 service as ends in themselves or as means toward further ends. We 
 cannot too gratefully acknowledge the serviceableness of this our 
 minds' economy, by which our experience and, therefore, our whole 
 fund of materials or means for future action is definitely organized 
 so as to obviate the fatality of depending on more or less chance 
 
 • This I take to be the logical significance of Plato's doctrine of ivdnvriffis and 
 ffvrayuy^. 
 
1 6 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONtlNGENT 
 
 suggestions. The essential point, on the theoretical side, is to 
 recognize that what "man makes he breaks," or that he may and in 
 fact does readjust these clusters of qualities, according as this or 
 that content is peculiarly desirable for a particular end, though he 
 need not, and, if wise, will not, utterly destroy the whole outcome 
 of his former experience for the sake of an immediate purpose. It 
 is precisely this regrouping of qualities by discarding those that are 
 for the nonce indifferent or "non-essential," which is effected in the 
 subordination of a particular to a universal through the intervention 
 of an intermediate act. Spun out and cast into the form of judg- 
 ments this process is what we call syllogistic reasoning, in which a 
 particular conclusion is deduced from the major premise through 
 the mediation' of the minor. When our immediate end is accom- 
 plished we look back over our work and put the materials at our 
 disposal in readiness for future action. Then we reconstitute our 
 world of "things" much as it was before, except that it has become 
 enriched by the added mark of being good for such and such pur- 
 poses ; and forthwith we are confronted by a problem wholly of our 
 own making. The previously discarded qualities, now again seen 
 in the "things," are classed as "accidents" as opposed to the 
 "essence." This once done, the arena is prepared for all the fruit- 
 less battles that have been fought over substance and attribute and 
 inherence. When we say that something is "given" we mean only 
 that it is at our service ; but to infer that because it is here it has 
 always been what it is and must always remain such, is not only to 
 forget the way by which we came, but also to cut off all hope of 
 advance in the future." 
 
 Now this, I take it, is precisely what Aristotle has done. The 
 concept, as we have seen, was received as a legacy of mere fact from 
 
 'It is interesting to note what an importance Aristotle attaches to the ii.4iTov in 
 research. See, e. g.. Anal. Post., 90 a 5 ff.: avfi^alvei &pa iv airiaan rais ftjT^rreiri 
 ^riTeiv i) el iiTTL liiaov ij tI icrri t6 iiA(Tov. rb fiiv yap ainov ri ijA(rov, iv ScrrtuTi. Si 
 toCto fTjTen-ai. See also iiiii., 94 a, 20 ff. This mediation on the practical side is 
 precisely, as Aristotle half suggests, the getting of the essential, z. e., indispensable 
 means not already in our control ; and when the fact is analyzed after the attain- 
 ment of the result this means is denominated the "cause," while the other less 
 important means take rank as "conditions." The "conditions" are the "acci- 
 dental" or "non-essential." 
 
 ■I shall hope to show later on that this psychological fallacy is at the base of 
 the distinction between the necessary and the contingent. 
 
IN THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM l^ 
 
 the Socratic movement, and the percept became fixed in like man- 
 ner by the Platonic. Aristotle then assumes both these limits of 
 the intellectual process as finally set uj3^and immovable, leaving as: 
 a sphere of alleged free movement only the interval between them. 
 
 But it must be evident at first glance that a process which is 
 supposed to be vitally connected with, and bound to, these stable 
 points can accomplish a progress that is such in name only. And 
 this status is seen to present itself in manifold forms in every sphere 
 of Aristotle's system, and marks, as it were, in one word, the hope- 
 less dualism into which he had fallen. Induction and deduction, 
 as functional aspects of real intellectual advancement, cannot be 
 harmonized on this basis, and hence it was left for modern episte- 
 mology, after centuries of fruitless toil within the old barriers, to 
 prepare a way in a truer psychology for their ultimate reconciliation. 
 
 Let us stay for a moment to enquire just what this juxtaposition 
 of two fixed limits, — the concept and the percept, — stands for in the 
 practical activity of life, of which logic is only an abstract cross- 
 section. An illustration may best serve our purposes. I have 
 agreed to prepare this paper for the press by a given date. Sup- 
 pose then that I intend to complete it within the specified time. 
 This purpose is seen at once to fix one of the limits of my activity; 
 but it really determines both. For, immediately the question arises, 
 What date is this, and just how much have I already accomplished? 
 Everything will depend on that. In other words, my present end 
 and the means at my disposal for its attainment, are just what they 
 are, neither more nor less ; and, if I persist in my present intention, 
 but only if I persist, they must be thus determined or specified. 
 Both the "if" and the "must" are relative to the deliberately 
 defined activity. But the end I set up is merely my conception of the 
 meaning of what I am now doing, and my momentary status, when 
 abstracted from the whole continuous process, appears as the means 
 available towards its accomplishment. In psychological terms, 
 therefore, the immediate situation is then said to be "given" in 
 perception, although the percept is clearly a mental construct formed 
 under the influence of discriminative (abstracting) attention ; and 
 the meaning which the mind attaches to the percept is predicated 
 of it as a concept, which seems in turn to be "given," though it too 
 is determined only by the same movement of interest that selected 
 
l8 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONTINGENT 
 
 this particular phase of the general situation from which to organize 
 the percept. If, then, a single act of mind, the purposive direction 
 of discriminative attention, produces both the percept and the con- 
 cept, which, though not distinct, may be regarded from two paints 
 of view, namely as existence or as meaning; then the problem of pre- 
 dication should present no insuperable difficulties. But if the "exis- 
 tence" of the presentation is divorced from its meaning or quality, 
 pot only is the validity of synthetic judgments thereby called in 
 question, but "substance" and "inherence" forthwith stare one in 
 the face. 
 
 It is well known that the relation of the particular and the 
 general was one of Aristotle's most trying problems. All knowl- 
 edge is of the general, and all reality is in the particular. To be 
 sure Aristotle cannot consistently maintain such a doubtful posi- 
 tion.' It is his opinion that the universal exists, but only poten- 
 tially (8wa/u.et) in the concrete. There is surely no need to point 
 out that potentiality can convey no meaning unless it is understood 
 as a capacity of the mind to produce the concept, but if understood 
 in this sense it must be extended also to the power to construct 
 percepts, anql so this ultimate difference between the two breaks 
 down.'' The fixing of the two limits of the process, to which we 
 have just referred leads to a number of false positions in Aristotle's 
 logic. In the first place he claims to have found, in the concrete, 
 that which is always subject and never predicate. Again, since 
 neither of these can really pass over into the other, there must be 
 separate faculties by which they are apprehended, sense and reason, 
 fully as unreconcilable as their objects, and they must achieve their 
 content by a wholly unmediated act of intuition.' It is really un- 
 
 'According as Aristotle is following the one or the other of the two opposite 
 movements by which his system is rent in sunder, he calls now the concept, now 
 the percept, a vptlrrri oiaia. Naturally, as continuing the deductive movement 
 initiated by Plato, the general is less often so called than the particular. 
 
 ' Interpreted by a more advanced psychology Aristotle's own statement would 
 answer : De Anima, III, 8 : ti ^vxh t4 6vTa riis iari. irivra. fi yhp alaSitri ri. trra. 
 tl vo-qri, iari 8' ^ hrLCTiio) p^v rck ^irio-rijrd ttwi, i^ S' aXae-i]<ris t4 alcrSriTi. 
 
 3 See on intellectual intuition Zeller's note 4 on page 190 f. It is quite natural 
 that the concepts thus attained, the ir/jordo-eis tf/ieo-ot, when analyzed become purely 
 analytic judgments a priori, and as such are conceived to be always true, although 
 one cannot see what real advantage they could offer. 
 
IN THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM 1 9 
 
 fortunate that the entire process of knowing should not likewise be 
 immediate, for one sees no escape for it from the purely formal 
 shuttlecock movement between these s«lid battledores.' Quite in 
 the spirit of this despair is the statement that both induction and 
 deduction are incapable of being carried on ad infinitum' and that 
 the highest principles of the several sciences are fixed and separate.' 
 On such a basis there seems to be no possibility of reconciling 
 metaphysics with the pursuits in definite fields of scientific enquiry.* 
 Now there is, to be sure, a/ra^AVa/justification of Aristotle's views, 
 and it lies along the lines above suggested ; but whei) these distinc- 
 tions are introduced as final in the theoretical sphere they become 
 baneful. The limits of a science are indeed fixed and not to be 
 transcended ; but this is only because the scientist desires to work 
 out just this definite problem, and must not, if he would succeed in 
 his task, keep the boundary lines of his field of study shifting. 
 Scientific research, in a word, is a process of experimentation, and 
 experiment is nothing if not a conscious abstraction of certain 
 aspects of fact in the effort to ascertain a particular thing. To 
 objectify this abstraction is only to reinstate the fiction of natural 
 - genera and species which science is now learning to discard. 
 
 We have already remarked that Aristotle asked the question that 
 in one form or another has occupied the thought of all philosophers 
 from the Sophists to our own time, namely. Is the concept or the 
 percept the real? The very statement of the problem contains a 
 duplicity which may indicate its solution. The real is opposed not 
 only to the potential but also to the ideal, and accordingly it is 
 regarded at different times from various points of view. This is, as 
 I conceive, precisely the ambiguity which underlies the Eleatic quib- 
 
 'It is quite true that Aristotle did not intend to render logic a science of 
 "formal" thought, (see, e. g., Anal. Post., 71 i 18 £f.); but it is undeniable that his 
 categories are purely formal (see Zeller, p. 262. n. l), and both his inductive pro- 
 cess, by which he analogically inferred the highest principles of the various sci- 
 ences, and the deductive as well, tended to end in mere barren analysis and 
 recomposition. 
 
 ° See Zeller, p. 25 1 f . This supposition, very natural from Aristotle's stand- 
 point, amounts to a denial of the reciprocal cooperation of induction and deduc- 
 tion, both of which, on his principles, must be unproductive. 
 
 3 Cf. Anal Post, I, 28, etc. 
 
 4 S*»*» f-Ti*» nnccnorp nitpd bv Zpllpr, n. ^1 A. 
 
20 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONTINGENT 
 
 bles on thai. Briefly, the two opposed senses of "being" or "real- 
 ity " may be stated as " existence " and " meaning." Something has 
 already been said on the fallacy of dissociating these in thought, 
 and we have only to add that the distinction is wholly untenable if 
 we concede, as apparently we must, that all judgments are ultimately 
 existential judgments, and that " existential " signifies only that a 
 percept has value or meaning within a definite or indicated sphere. 
 The only fallacy then of those Eleatic sophistries is due to their 
 juggling with the two senses of iivai, as above explained, without a 
 discernment of the teleological significance of "meaning." Psy- 
 chologically this may be referred to the fact that every idea tends 
 also'to be an ideal or stands for an act, and when thus formulated 
 it helps one to realize how the Megarians could identify the Good 
 with Being and why there has been in the history of thought so 
 marked a tendency to associate God with the highest or the ultimate 
 conception of a system. In Plato and Aristotle God is thus virtu- 
 ally one with the Good, or the inner meaning of the world-wide 
 teleological process. The " real " then, when opposed to the ideal, 
 is just that which has meaning as means toward an end; as contra- 
 distinguished from the potential, it indicates merely the validity of 
 functional significance of the end itself. 
 
 However apparent Aristotle's contradictions in the logical sphere, 
 they represent his fundamental difficulty only in an abstract way ; 
 but just for that reason his conceptions, though vehemently and in 
 part acutely controverted as regards their consequences, were accepted 
 as in themselves sound. We may observe, moreover, in the case of 
 Aristotle the phenomenon which recurs constantly in history that 
 the philosopher's views on more concrete matters approach some- 
 what nearer to consistency than in logical theory. Indeed in this 
 instance there are peculiar circumstances which favored this result. 
 In the first place, as we have seen, Aristotle's syllogism is only a 
 formulation of the Platonic movement, expressing the urgent demand 
 for scientific demonstration." But, secondly, the Logic appears to 
 have been his earliest serious piece of work, and hence it would seem 
 « I incline to think that Aristotle's Logic appeared in answer to a demand for 
 a methodology of scientific proof similar to that for forensic guidance met by the 
 Ttxvo., f,riTop,Kai. That his emphasis was on demonstration is shown by his elab- 
 oration of the syllogistic form and the treatment of judgment and concept only as 
 elements in deduction. 
 
IN THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM 21 
 
 quite natural that in his Psychology and the Metaphysics, probably 
 written towards the end of his life, there should be found traces of 
 a decided advance on his former views, although even there his fun- 
 damental dualism was not to be resolved. In some respects, indeed, 
 the inner conflict of motives became perhaps most apparent in this 
 field just because of the prominent part played by a new conception. 
 This conception was that of development, which differs from other 
 systems of evolution in that it is qualitative instead of quantitative. 
 Or rather, we ought perhaps to state it in somewhat different terms 
 in order to display its relation to his system as a whole. It was 
 remarked above in speaking of Anaximander that organic evolution, 
 as commonly understood, is a deductive process seeking to explain 
 the particular by the universal, the individual by the species. In 
 this movement the stress of interest is on the concrete individual 
 which it regards as the real. Aristotle's development, however, is just 
 the reverse of this : It moves from the potential to the actual, from 
 matter to form, from percept to concept, from the world to God. 
 And just herein we find merely another phrasing of Aristotle's 
 underlying conflict of motives, without discovering a higher princi- 
 ple to which both are relative. If Aristotle did not attain a spirit- 
 ual monism, towards which his system manifestly tended, his failure 
 was due to the fixed limits which we have had so frequent occasion 
 to mention ; for they thwarted the only conceivable purpose he may 
 have had in placing the teleology, which with Socrates and Plato 
 was external, and its meaning within the process : its starting point 
 and its goal, each absolute and apart, lost all significance for it. 
 
 If we view the world as a whole these limits are the ultimate 
 potentiality or unformed matter (-irputTrj vX-q), and God its wholly 
 realized meaning (Ivipycm. avoj vXjjs). The terms matter and form, 
 which in the concrete individual (otjVoXov) are purely functional and 
 correlative, are here abstracted and opposed to each other as irrecon- 
 cilably as Plato's /xij ov and wtws ov, and the problem of mediation 
 becomes as urgent for the one philosopher as for the other. As 
 Plato's efforts toward achieving a causality in his Ideas failed, so 
 also did Aristotle's to attain a real efliciency on the part of God." 
 God is indeed to be the prime mover (tt/jcotov kwovv), but he can act 
 
 'This subject has lately been canvassed anew in an interesting monograph by 
 Dr. Elser, "Die Lehre des Aristoteles iiberdas Wirken Gottes," 1893. 
 
22 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONTINGENT 
 
 only as the final cause or end, moving though himself unmoved. 
 On the other hand, all motion proceeds by impact (o<^i;), and thus 
 God is credited with the inconceivable feat of touching the utter- 
 most sphere of the world without experiencing in return a resilient 
 contact.' If God, who is to be the true source of motion, is thus 
 reduced to impotence, conversely pure matter niust be conceived 
 primarily as that which is always acted upon but itself exerts no 
 energy, excepting, as we shall see, the ungracious one of resistance. 
 Just how resistance is to be understood, however, unless as resiliency, 
 which matter cannot consistently possess, it is impossible to say. In 
 fact the logic of Aristotle's position wreaks its revenges by compell- 
 ing him to assert outright on occasion that matter has a positive 
 impulse (op/u.'^) toward form." 
 
 The effort which he made to solve these contradictions led him 
 close to the confines of spiritualism. God, he said, acts as the 
 beloved object (<us ipia/xevov) which, itself putting forth no effort and 
 remaining unmovfed, is the occasion for love in the lover. Such a 
 view, if advanced in full consciousness of its meaning, would render 
 the world a living organism (^tSov) as Aristotle with most of his 
 countrymen actually conceived it. It is evident, none the less, that 
 he did nof fully accept this conclusion in its consequences but 
 employed the foregoing terms more or less metaphorically. Yet if 
 there is one fact of which he is more convinced than another it is 
 just this that motion is real,^ and motion is in his view the specific 
 characteristic of life. When therefore Aristotle reduced all move- 
 ment ultimately to that of desire, his successor, Theophrastus, per- 
 ceiving his fickle moods, was justified in starting anew the question 
 
 ' The notion that movement can be propagated only by d^^ suffers from the 
 general absurdities of the category of causation. It comes in the end to what Venn 
 (Empirical Logic, p. 56) facetiously calls "screwing ttf the cause and the effect into 
 close juxtaposition , ' ' 
 
 = See Zeller, p. 317, n. I, and p. 349. n. 2. It is of no avail to object that this 
 applies only to matter as appearing in a aivokov, for even if this were true it would 
 only postpone the problem. 
 
 3 Motion is Aristotle's copula in the physical sphere, atid his great insistance 
 on it shows plainly how much he advanced in his more concrete discussions beyond 
 the abstractions of his Logic, in which he was not really conscious of the copula at 
 all, but confounded it with the predicate. Consequently he failed also to attain a 
 consistent theory of negation. See Zeller, p. 221, and Prantl, Gesch. der Logik, I, 
 I43ff. 
 
IN THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM 23 
 
 as to the implications of that fact. "If," said he, "there be desire, 
 and above all desire for the highest good^ this implies the principle 
 of life (/itra ^xv«); for life would seem to be coextensive with 
 motion, unless one wished to maintain that the objects moved are 
 called living (l/ii/rtixa) according to an imperfect analogy (xa^' o/xoiorijTa 
 Koi hia<j>opav.). For it is the life of those that possess it from which 
 spring the desires for any object.'" 
 
 How easy it would have been for Aristotle to translate the whole 
 of his system into one of spiritual monism may be seen by consid- 
 ering some of his usual forms of statement. Throughout the entire 
 concrete sphere he aims to recognize only relative distinctions 
 between the potential and the actual, distinctions which are relative 
 in the end to human purpose. To be sure his language is not con- 
 sistent, for he also speaks of individual ivreXix^uu, as, e. g., a man; 
 but it is plain that in his system man gua individual is not fully 
 realized. He is essentially a ^Zov ttoXitikov, and as such finds his 
 truest meaning in the state. And so it might perhaps, with perfect 
 justice to Aristotle, be said that the significance of these lower 
 entelechies is only that "things" at a certain stage of individuation 
 have acquired sufficient intrinsic value to be able to stand alone. 
 Such a standpoint is indeed quite legitimate, but when these things 
 are objectified, and are taken to be fixed entities, it marks, if any- 
 thing, our inability to show as yet precisely how God is the meaning of 
 all the world." Again, something may perhaps be gained by consid- 
 ering Aristotle's "four causes," if we remember that they stand for 
 explanation, and are not equivalent to physical causation as vulgarly 
 understood. The reason, it would seem, why he could place God 
 so entirely beyond the concrete process of the world, was that he 
 had virtually found its real meaning within it; for it proceeded on 
 its way with only the shadow of influence from without. This con- 
 sciousness of the all-sufficiency of the concrete system of develop- 
 ment was in all probability the strongest motive for the Stoic pan- 
 theism. The symbolical significance of Aristotle's fourfold principle 
 of explanation would therefore seem to be just this: the process of 
 
 ■In Wimmer's Theophraslus, III, 152. 
 
 •Aristotle himself seems at times to realize this: See, e. g., Phys., 194 b 13 £f: 
 dvOpmros ykp &v8pairov yevvf Kal tjXms. ttus S' cx" ''^ X"/"""''^'' "^"i rl iari, <pi.\<}(Toij>lai 
 TTJs Trpiirijs Sioplrai, ipyov, and cf. Met., 1076 a 13 ff. In fact, the two last books of 
 the Metaphysics deal largely with this problem. 
 
24 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONTINGENT 
 
 development, as material cause, is j-<f^-developing, or the process 
 differentiating itself into means; as efficient cause, it is seXi-active; 
 as essential cause, it is seU-defining; and as final cause it is st\i-real- 
 izing. Or, taking the simplified form, it means that this progress of 
 activity, differentiating itself into two correlative aspects as material 
 and formal cause, is self- explaining or means- and-end. Thus there 
 would be effected a perfectly functional interlacement of the real 
 and the ideal. If, therefore, Aristotle had actually brought the 
 external limits within the concrete reality, as it certainly would seem 
 to have been his practical tendency to do, he might have applied his 
 principle avBpwno'i avOpaywov yaiv^ to the whole, making it thoroughly 
 qualitative, and thus resolved his dualism. It suffices, however, to 
 say that the fixed percept and the fixed concept which he inherited 
 from the Platonic and the Socratic movements of thought respec- 
 tively, rendered the attainment of this result impossible.' 
 
 It must now have become clear just how Aristotle's teleology is 
 related to mechanism. His teleology, in a word, depending as it 
 does upon an external end, namely God, is impotent to explain the 
 fact of development except by the aid of an efficient cause which 
 acts according to purely mechanical laws. This is the significance 
 of the familiar formula avOpmTroi avOpanrov yewa, which only served to 
 conceal the real problem. For, in order that Aristotle's theory may 
 even seem to suffice for an explanation of things, he must call in the 
 assistance of efficiency which he asserts to be of a kind with the 
 essential and final forms of causation but yet numerically distinct ; 
 but surely this reintroduction of the conception of individual 
 "things" renders his attempted solution quite impossible. An 
 adequate teleology, then, cannot oppose itself to mechanism but 
 must include it, as it was Aristotle's manifest desire that it should. 
 The same concrete purposive act assumes a twofold aspect according 
 as it is viewed from before or behind.' When we look forward to it, 
 
 " Siebeck, Gesch. der Psychologie, II, pp. 1-7, states Aristotle's position 
 admirably, but he gives him credit for overcoming his dualism more thoroughly 
 than he actually did. The statement which Siebeck gives, in other vvfords, repre- 
 sents Aristotle's tendency more truly than his accomplished result. 
 
 ' Seen from the point of view of explanation this amounts to the same as 
 Aristotle's statement, Anal. Post., 95 a 27 : ca-Ti 51j i.TTh toO varepov 7eyoi'ATos i 
 trv\\oyi.<rn6s, i^>x^ ^^ <">' toiJtuj' ri yeyovlna, Sii xal ijrl tSu yivoiUvwv daairwi' 6,vb 
 8 roO Tpdrepov o6k %<rTLv. 
 
IN THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM 25 
 
 view it from behind, it is external teleology ; when we glance back 
 over the completed act and analyze it into time sequences, it 
 appears as a result attained by a process of efficient causation, or as 
 mechanism. Thus considered, it is a closed and perfectly defined 
 fact whose parts are precisely what they are and cannot be otherwise. 
 This is exactly the definition of mathematical necessity.' If, on the 
 other hand, we turn our eyes forward and observe the unstable 
 equilibration during the adjustment of means to the end, the end 
 alone seems fixed : the particular means to be chosen are shifting 
 and uncertain, and within given limits, indifferent." This point of 
 indifference is passed, however, the moment it is determined just 
 what is to be included in the result, precisely what sort of result we 
 are after. When this is done the whole series of means is forth- 
 with fixed as invariably as the end itself ; that is to say, z/ we insist 
 on having that precise result, then we must do this and that and may 
 not choose our methods capriciously. At this stage we have the 
 case of the hypothetical necessity. So great is our interest in 
 achieving specific results which shall be only just what they are and 
 nothing else, and so essential is it, in order to their attainment, 
 that we shall act thus and not otherwise, that our world appears to 
 us to be completely bound in the chains of an inexorable fate. 
 
 But the two partial views of fact thus obtained do not fully 
 supplement each other, though they are purely correlative ; for they 
 both ignore the unity of the living process of setting up and realiz- 
 ing ends within which they as separate moments find not only their 
 justification but also their individual extinction. In psychological 
 terms this is the law of habit. It is quite too common to designate 
 by this term the mere repetition of an act without taking account of 
 the continuous readjustment which really constitutes it and renders 
 it practically serviceable. To speak of habit in such a manner is 
 merely to hypostatize an abstraction, and gives rise to all the self- 
 contradictions of the law of causality.' Habit, in other words, like 
 every concrete process, resolves itself on analysis into a vibrating 
 
 ' This is what Aristotle calls the ii.t) IvSexipi^fOv iWus cx«i'. More of this 
 anon. 
 
 'Here precisely is the point in the development of judgment at which 
 Aristotle's dirdrep' ctvxcv stands, as we shall presently see. 
 
 " The usual statement of this so-called law is perhaps the most flagrant illustra- 
 tion of the barren absurdity which results from fixing as objective entities both the 
 
26 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONTINGENT 
 
 balance of indentity and differentia ; and it is essential to note that 
 both are equally determined by the whole and have no meaning 
 except as functionally correlated in it. It may be fairly said that 
 we never repeat an act in precisely the same way; the actual 
 appearance of sameness arises only from a similarity in the ends to 
 be subserved, while the differentise grow out of the fact that these 
 ends are only similar and not fully identical.' Martineau has pro- 
 posed to consider the laws of nature, which operate mechanically, 
 as its confirmed habits, representing that portion of its free 
 purposive process which might perhaps be called the "residual 
 precipitate" and lies beyond the sphere of its highest interests in 
 spiritual development. But, even so, matter, if set off as something 
 more than functionally distinguished as immediate means for an 
 equally immediate end, becomes an abstraction whose relation to 
 mind presents all the difficulties inherent in the extremest dualism.' 
 Aristotles's principal discussion of these points occurs in the 
 second book of the Physics. Nature (c^uo-is), he is convinced, works 
 according to ends (Iwica rov), and human beings do likewise, except 
 that they do so consciously and with deliberate purpose. It is 
 within this comprehensive sphere that chance (tw'xi?) a-i'^d spontane- 
 ous action (to avTOfiaTov) fall. "We may include under the head of 
 purposive acts," he says, "such as result from reflection and those 
 which proceied from nature. When such actions come about pe*- 
 accidens we attribute them to chance; for, just as 'being' («tv<u) 
 means now per essentiam, novr per accidens, so too in respect of cause: 
 the builder, for exarnple, is the cause /i?r essentiam of the house; he" 
 is a white or a musicianly builder on\y per accidens. Now the cause 
 per essentiam is strictly defined, but that per accidens is indefinite, 
 inasmuch as untold qualities may be predicated of an individual. 
 As has been said, then, when this falls within the scope of purposive 
 
 percept and the concept, "things" and the "law." I know of no better instance 
 to cite than that given in Girycki's Moralphihsop/iie, p. 191 f. 
 
 ' So far as I am aware, Hume was the first to recognize that the category of 
 identity arises from the consciousness of means put to "some common end or 
 purpose." See Selby-Bigge's edition of his Treatise, p. 257. Hume, to be sure, 
 did not fully seize the significance of his discovery. 
 
 ' Since writing the above I have had my attention called to the admirable 
 articles of Mr. Charles S. Peirce in the Mottist. I am not quite sure that I fully 
 understand his position, but if I mistake not it is essentially identical with that 
 
IN THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM 27 
 
 actions, it is said to result spontaneously or by chance." " The aiiro- 
 ixarov is subsequently^ defined as an act T^ich broadly speaking is 
 purposive but has not been performed with a view to the actual 
 result. In these statements we have, I believe, the essence of Aris- 
 totle's doctrine in the form best adapted to reveal its logical and 
 psychological meaning. Chance is only the practical equivalent of 
 the logical accidens and is purely relative to a process of means and 
 ends. We have previously discussed this matter on the psychologi- 
 cal side, and may now content ourselves with drawing the conclu- 
 sions. If the accidental or non-essential is only the fossilized resi- 
 due of former groupings of qualities regarded as nothing to the 
 purpose, which is represented in logic by the concept as fixing the 
 scope of one's momentary iriterest ; then chance, its counterpart in 
 the more distinctly practical sphere, is only the expression of the 
 dim "fringe" of purpose which was left undefined.' The 'admission 
 of chance, as lack of definition, then means that our scope of enquiry 
 was false, because too limited to embrace all the truth, and that the 
 actual fact, viewed as the result of the factors attended to could' 
 therefore not be fully stated in the terms we were handling. This, 
 to be sure, is again simply equivalent to saying that chance is rela- 
 tive to ignorance, but the meaning of that common phrase is more 
 definitely specified. Aristotle has himself remarked upon the unrea- 
 sonable character of chance, and his words may be instructive. " It 
 is quite true," he admits, "to say that chance is irrational; for rea- 
 son deals only with what occurs always or at least for the most part, 
 whereas chance lies in the reverse of these." 
 
 If thus we find him setting up as fixed entities the functional 
 differentia of the self-defining process of habit, in the form of 
 chance, we shall naturally expect to see the aspect of identity 
 abstracted and hypostatized as mathematical necessity. It might 
 readily be anticipated that in this ever-recurring manifestation of 
 his ultimate dualism he must fall into self-contradiction at every 
 turn. On the one hand he never grows weary of reiterating that 
 
 here presented. His Tychism and Synechism would then be correlative, answering 
 to the differentiae and identity in the teleological process which may also be viewed 
 as a continuous readjustment of habit. 
 
 ^Phys., 196* 21 ff. 'Ibid., 197 b 18 ff. 
 
 3 Zeller cites numerous passages on pp. 333-4, which show that this general 
 view was consistently held by Aristotle. 
 
1'8 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONTINGENT 
 
 nature does nothing in vain : but whenever his barren concept of 
 purpose will not account for the particular phenomenon, he charges 
 it up to chance.' It is precisely this defect that contemporary science 
 has set itself to correct, since it cannot refuse the obligation to 
 explain everything. Consequently its category of ends in nature 
 (under whatever name) is being worked out as concretely as the 
 facts themselves. In thus enriching the concept so as to include 
 even the seemingly most non-essential marks, scientists at a blow 
 break down the line of demarkation between that which happens 
 now and again fails to appear, and that which results "always or for 
 the most part." The destruction of natural species marks the first 
 step in this progress, and with their disappearance the need of admit- 
 ting chance appears to have vanished. Is necessity then to be 
 enthroned by science in its stead? 
 
 "As for the necessary," Aristotle asks," "whether is it hypotheti- 
 cal or absolute? For nowadays it is customary to think that neces- 
 sity inheres in the process of becoming, as if, e. g., one supposed that 
 a wall had come into existence of necessity, because it is the nature 
 of heavy things to tend downwards, and of light ones upwards ; for 
 which reason the stones and the foundation are below, the earth, 
 because of its lightness, above them, and the wooden beams, as the 
 lightest, uppermost of all. But the erection of the wall, while it 
 utilized these substances as indispensable, was not due to them, 
 except in so far forth as material was wanted ; ' the rather was it 
 brought about in order to conceal and protect something. In like 
 manner also in respect of such things as are of a distinctly purpo- 
 sive character, production, though not dispensing with what is of a 
 necessary nature [«'. e., with what is necessary to the matter in hand], 
 still is not for its sake save as it is material,^ but proceeds in view of 
 an end, as, e. g., we may ask. Why is the saw of such and such a 
 structure? Because it was made for this specific purpose and with 
 
 ' Aristotle appears to recognize utility alone as an end in nature and hence 
 chance products are multiplied (cf. Zeller, p. 333, n. i). The Stoics {cf, Zeller, III A., 
 171) seem to have been the first to make much of iiraa/y, which some recent scien- 
 tists (f. g., the Duke of Argyle) rank among the principal causes of variation. 
 
 ' Pkys., II, 9. The words enclosed in brackets are additions of mine. 
 
 31 take the expressions irXjjx us Si' v\iiv and dXX' f) <I)S v\i\v to mean that the 
 materials may themselves enter into the purpose since they are an integral part of 
 the result desired. This points naturally to the folly of making hard and fast dis- 
 
IN THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM 29 
 
 this peculiar object in view. Yet that precise result cannot be 
 attained unless it be made of steel ; hence it . is necessary that it 
 should be constructed of that metal if it is to be a saw and its pur- 
 pose is to be accomplished. Necessity therefore is hypothetical \i. e., 
 relative to the means'], but is not of the end, for the necessary per- 
 tains to the matter, while the purposiveness is in the conception. The 
 necessary in mathematics and in products of nature is similar, but 
 only with reservations. Given the definition of a right line, the sum 
 of the angles of a plane triangle must be equal to two right angles ; 
 but this relation of dependence cannot be reversed.' If the conse- 
 quent is not true, then the definition of a right line is not correct. 
 In respect of products of art <the reverse is true,>'' if the end exists 
 or will exist, so does or will the antecedent also ; if not, as before 
 [in the case from mathematics] if the consequent is not true the 
 premise also is not, so likewise here of the end and the purpose ; 
 for this also is a starting point, not indeed of an action but of infer- 
 ence regarding it. (In the case of mathematics the end or the con- 
 cept is the starting point of inference,' for it is a theoretical, not a 
 practical art.) Hence, if a house is to exist, then these particular ante- 
 cedents must happen or exist, or more broadly, the means towards 
 a result ; as, e. g., the bricks and stones, if there is to be a house ; 
 yet not for the sake of these things, save as materials. None the 
 less, but for them there will be neither house nor saw — neither the 
 
 tinctions between means and ends as objectively opposed to the self. At some 
 stage in the process every means is desired and is in so far forth an end ; but the 
 only true end is the experience, or more definitely still, the self experiencing it. 
 
 ' From this point onward it will be necessary to render the rather obscure pas- 
 sage somewhat freely. Scholars will observe that I have felt obliged to deviate 
 from Prantl's interpretation here and there. 
 
 'I believe that ivitriCKiv here is a corruption. The "reservation" regarding 
 the parallelism between mathematics and natural (or artistic) products I conceive 
 to refer merely to the fact that, on Aristotle's view, necessity in the former proceeds 
 from the definition or the realized end, while in the latter it inheres in matter or the 
 means. Hence in mathematics you cannot reason from a consequent back to the 
 prmciple, which is more inclusive ; and in physics, since there is free purposive 
 action, you cannot infer a result from the existence of an antecedent. The fallacy 
 of both views is apparent : given all the antecedents and the result is assured ; 
 given all the consequences, and the principle is established. In either case the 
 " all " is the concept or fact. 
 
 3 See Gen. Anim., 742 b 33 ff. 
 
30 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONTINGENT 
 
 house without the stones, nor the saw without the steel. Nor yet, in 
 the mathematical instance, will the premises be true, unless the sum 
 of the angles be equal to two right ones. It is evident, then, that 
 the necessity in natural products is that of matter and its motions. 
 Consequently the physical philosopher has to speak both of the free 
 or final cause and of the necessary or material cause, but chiefly of 
 the former; for it is the explanation of matter, and not matter of 
 the end. The end is the purpose and his starting point is the defin- 
 ition or conception, just as in matters of art : since the house is such 
 and such, this and that means towards its construction are necessary, 
 and since health is peculiarly constituted, that and the other must 
 
 needs take place before it can be realized Doubtless there is 
 
 necessity also in the conception. The function of sawing is defined 
 as a particular kind of cutting. This will not be realized, however, 
 unless the saw have teeth of a definite structure, and this in turn will 
 not be such unless the saw be made of steel ; for certain parts [or 
 marks\ enter into the concept as its matter."' 
 
 It is sufficiently clear that Aristotle recognizes only a conditional or 
 hypothetical necessity in nature in so far as it proceeds purely in accord- 
 ance with purpose. This necessity is merely the reflex of the stress 
 in the adjustment of means to ends, and since the means constitute 
 the end they are the object of free teleological desire as o-vvatria' 
 quite as much as the end itself, and hence are not in any true sense 
 forced upon the process from without. Aristotle came to recognize, 
 moreover, at the close of the above selection, that it is the end which 
 conditions the necessity of the means, although he had before main- 
 tained, and generally was quite consistent in asserting, that the 
 necessity lay in matter as such. It is obvious that this view alone 
 comports with his conception of purpose, and is in reality the true 
 one. 
 
 This thought of Aristotle's that nevertheless matter is the cause 
 of necessity is curiously set off by his equally firm conviction that it 
 is also the source of all chance occurrence. In fact it is only the 
 reverse side of the same false position. Matter, even on his own 
 principles, cannot strictly be a cause at all.^ It is merely an abstrac- 
 
 ' This is only the logical recognition of the fact pointed out above, p. 28, u. 3. 
 = Zeller (p. 331, n. i) has gathered many passages which serve to illustrate 
 this aspect of necessity. 
 
 'See Be Gen. el Corrupt., 324* 18 : 7 S' vKi) J iiXij iraeiiTiKtii. 
 
IN THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM 3 1 
 
 tion, as we have seen, from the concrete whole of experience, purely 
 relative to the teleological process of means and ends, and serves to 
 designate certain qualities as not singly*or merely in themselves 
 desired, but still available' for recomposition into a concrete end; 
 and only as it becomes hypostatized as an objective entity unrelated 
 to any definite pursuit, can it be said to be the basis of all that is 
 non-purposive. But this is precisely what we have remarked of Aris- 
 totle's position from the beginning, as being the ground of all his 
 self-contradictions. All this appears most strikingly in the second 
 form of necessity which he distinguishes as "restraint," "hindrance," 
 or "resistance."' This amounts, in modern psychological terms, 
 only to "inhibition," and represents the purely negative aspect of a 
 partial definition of fact. If, in defining a thing or an act, we take 
 account of certain qualities as present but not particularly desirable 
 and essential, they fall, so to speak, just outside the field of distinct 
 vision and appear later as accidents. But it is also possible to ignore 
 a factor completely in the organization of the means to a certain 
 end, and therefore in the process of its realization a hitch will occur. 
 Just because the actual result was not, in anticipation, foreshadowed 
 ^completely in the steps proposed for its attainment, an element wholly 
 unexpected and alien to the purpose appears in it, which may be of 
 sufficient importance to frustrate the expected enjoyment. It is 
 what the Germans so expressively call "ein Strich durch die Rech- 
 nung." Democritus was right when he said, " Men have invented 
 the image of Fortune to palliate their own imprudence." 
 
 Aristotle distinctly recognizes the relativity of this inhibition 
 to action according to ends.^ It would have no meaning whatever 
 were it not as the sheer negation of purposiveness. Yet he accords 
 it a very important place in his system, since without it he could 
 
 ■This is what I take to be the aspect of truth from which Aristotle's Simius 
 was abstracted and hypostatized. 
 
 "This form of necessity is variously denominated by Aristotle; among the 
 expressions most frequently occurring are these : ri plaiov, §la, rb kuKvov, t4 iitito- 
 Sl^ov, and rd Ka\vriKbv. 
 
 ^Met., lOlS a 26 ff.: irirb piaiov Kal i; pta {sc. dvayKatop X^vcrai)' tovto S' iarl 
 t6 irapb, Tijv bpii^v Kal ri/v rpoaipeaiv i^iToSl^ov xal kw\vtik6v. See also Phys., 215 
 a, I: TrpSiTOP piv obv, irt Trdffa Klvri<ns ij pif fl Kara ifiiaiv. ivdyKri S' &v irep B filaios, 
 ehcu Kal T^v Kari. <t>i<rLV rj /iiv yap jSiaios vapb. (piaiv iarlv, fi Si irapb, ipiaiv iaripa 
 TTj^ Kark <t>i<nv. Other important passages are Phys., 230 a 29 ff., and 255 i S ff. 
 
32 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONTINGENT 
 
 not account for a potentiality remaining unrealized. Accordingly 
 it is seen to be only the reverse aspect of that hypostatized availa- 
 bility for utilization as means in the teleological process which we 
 characterized above as the significance of his 8uVo/iw or v\r). The 
 latter, however, was previously shown to be the prolific parent of 
 chance as the summation of all non-purposiveness in nature. Quite 
 naturally, therefore, Aristotle at times practically identifies chance 
 and necessity.' 
 
 We have now canvassed two aspects in which the spectre of 
 necessity presents itself, and have found that even on Aristotle's 
 own showing they have no meaning except in relation to, are in 
 fact constituted as functional elements within itself by, the free pur- 
 posive process which distinguishes itself as means and end. But 
 there is another sense in which he supposes necessity to be absolute.' 
 It is that, in brief, which is eternal. " In a word," he says, " all 
 that exists necessarily is eternal, having neither beginning nor end."' 
 We seem to be listening to Plato, and we are not altogether mis- 
 taken. " If it is true to say of a given object," he writes in another 
 passage,* "that it is a man, it must necessarily be a biped ; for that 
 is what ' man ' signifies. But if this be necessary, it cannot be said of 
 that same object that it is not a biped ; for that is precisely what is 
 meant in saying that it cannot but be a man." " For the necessary does 
 not admit of being this or that indifferently, so that if a thing be 
 necessary, it cannot be both so and otherwise."^ It is clear that the 
 necessary in this sense refers merely to the KaB' ovrd or the essence, 
 the hypostatized "meaning" which Plato sought to preserve from 
 the mischances of our mundane sphere by removing it to the intel- 
 ligible world of Ideas. In the list of these immortals Aristotle 
 enrolls mathematics and the highest principles that are discovered 
 in his opinion by a process of analogical induction which is the 
 theoretical counterpart of Plato's flight from the distracting world 
 of sense. Their attainment is in fact so immediate that it may be 
 
 • See, c. g., Phys., igS * i6 £f. 
 
 ''Met., 1072 i5 II [£.: t6 ■ykp dmyKoiov roiravToxSs, rb fiiv ^ig. in irapk Ti\v 
 opii-fiv, Tb Si oB oiK ivev tA eB, t6 Si fiij ivSexif^vov iWm dXX' dirXus. 
 
 ^£e/i. Nic, 1 1 39 i 23. Cf. also De Gen. et Corrupt., 335 a 32 £f., and many 
 other passages. 
 
 « Met., 1006 ii 28 ff. 5 ll,icl., 1 010 * 28 ff. 
 
IN THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM 33 
 
 called spiritual intuition. We have had occasion previously to 
 point out that this conclusion was forced upon Aristotle by his 
 psychology, as the direct outgrowth of the twofold philosophic 
 movement — the Socratic and the Platonic — the results of which he 
 inherited. He did not perceive that the distinct subject and the 
 distinct predicate, the percept and the concept, were functional 
 products or stages of one continuous self-reconstructing process of 
 intellection. Hence he regarded both as immediately "given" and 
 unchangeable. He was only half-aware that these presumtively 
 eternal meanings owe their perpetuity to the persistence of pur- 
 posive intention, as marking the underlying and fundamental lines 
 of development along which the intellectual definition of experience 
 is proceeding. 
 
 He did remark, however, that there is a certain similarity in 
 respect of the compulsion exercised by the final cause in nature and 
 by the definition in mathematics.' The process of the former he 
 conceived under the form of time and so distinguished it from the 
 latter which is timeless. Hence he recognized a certain reaction of 
 the means in nature upon the end, but was apparently quite uncon- 
 scious of any modification of mathematical definitions due to 
 "deductions" made from them. Had he lived to witness the 
 doubt of modern mathematicians as to the absolute certainty of his 
 inference from the definition of a right line, that the sum of the 
 angles of a plane triangle is precisely equal to two right angles, he 
 might have changed his attitude toward necessity. If the con- 
 sequent is a legitimate deduction from the premiss, but is itself 
 possibly false, the absolute validity of the definition, in the form 
 given it in the Euclidean geometry, is itself called in question. All 
 that can be conveyed by the term necessity, used of such principles 
 as these, is, therefore, that it expresses the conviction of the truth of 
 fact so far as it is made out, together with the lingering sense that 
 they are as yet beyond the reach of demonstration. When the fact 
 is fully ascertained, as was said at the beginning, it neither may be 
 nor must be, it simply is. There is, therefore, no necessity even 
 here, except that which is functionally constituted by the actual 
 living process of a purposive definition of experience, and this, as 
 having a meaning or value only within it, is so far from being a 
 
 ■ See above, p. 29, n. 2. 
 
34 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONTINGENT 
 
 contradiction of freedom that it becomes the most effective means 
 towards its realization. 
 
 Now, according to Aristotle, only the completed science is truly 
 apodictic, for only then would phenomena be reduced to "laws" 
 which operate invariably. Naturally this holds in his view simply 
 of individual sciences ; for, with his doctrine that every discipline 
 starts from its peculiar ultimate opxai, he had not risen to the con- 
 ception of one concrete principle capable of explaining the world. 
 The consciousness of the limits of science in his own day led him, 
 as we have just seen, to postulate, on the one hand, necessary 
 TrpordtreK which are exempt from the requirement of being proved 
 because they are presuppositions of intelligible experience and 
 intuitively certain. This sense of necessity we have remarked to be 
 itself hypothetical, since it arises in the process of experimentation, 
 when we must regard our theory as absolutely true in order to test 
 it in its application. But this same consciousness of incompleteness 
 in the explanation of things showed itself positively in Aristotle's 
 assertion that knowledge can deal not only with the "eternal" and 
 with those phenomena which, like those of astronomy, recur always, 
 but also with such as appear ordinarily or " for the most part," like 
 those of nature in general. It is to the existence of this ws inl 
 TO irokv that he attributes the possibility of chance and freedom, 
 and he accounts for it by referring it to the incalculable nature of 
 matter.' Nothing could, apparently, be more manifest than that 
 these two aspects, of chance and necessity, are purely correlative, 
 and both equally relative to a midway stage in science and the 
 growth of the judgment." Up to a certain point the causal 
 nexus is complete ; beyond that, so far as we know, it may as well 
 be that as this.^ It was this conviction that led Aristotle to main- 
 tain that there are limits to proof in either direction ; which merely 
 states the dilemma of common logic that in induction you fail of 
 attaining necessary principles, and in deduction there remains a vast 
 surplus of marks which do not flow from the premisses. And this 
 break in the logical process we have before traced to the psychol- 
 ogical abstraction of fixed percepts and concepts. 
 
 ' See on this point, PrantI, GescA. der Logik, I, p. 175 ff. 
 
 ' 1 borrow this apt expression from the article by Professor Dewey mentioned 
 above. 
 
 3See Met., 1027 b 11. 
 
IN THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM 35 
 
 As Aristotle seized upon the fact of motion in nature as the 
 aspect of fact which was most fruitful for explanation and defended 
 it, though rather unsuccessfully from the logical standpoint, against 
 the arguments of Zeno, so he bent all his energies toward vindicat- 
 ing man's freedom in action. Human action is to him only a higher 
 form of that purposive movement from potentiality to actuality 
 which appears throughout nature. Its distinguishing characteristics 
 are consciousness and chiefly intelligence. Man is constituted of 
 soul and body, the soul being the entelechy or realization of the 
 body's possibilities. As such it belongs to that class of beings which, 
 as "form," are initial causes of final or purposive action. When 
 one has traced a train of causation back to a human being, one has 
 come to the limit of his enquiry : his being a man is sufficient 
 explanation for the origination of the act. The reason, more 
 specifically, why it is useless to continue the quest, is that, being 
 rational, man has within him the capacity of contradictory actions ; 
 for it is the characteristic of reason, as against irrational Swajueis, to 
 take cognizance of opposites, though it does grasp the real more 
 firmly than the unreal.' Thus, while a physical Svra./u$, say the 
 potentially warm, can develop only into the actually warm, and will 
 immediately do so unless there is some external hindrance, the 
 physician, or the art of medicine, being rational Svi/a/icis, can pro- 
 duce health or sickness. It is to this aspect of man's nature, then, 
 that Aristotle makes appeal in order to defend freedom in action." 
 Since human beings are subject to no external constraint, and pos- 
 sess an equal capacity for doing things contradictorily opposed one 
 to the other, predetermination at least is excluded. 
 
 But, anxious as Aristotle is to maintain at all hazards this exemp- 
 tion from external compulsion, he by no means teaches indetermin- 
 ism in the modern sense. Freedom with him means primarily the 
 freedom of reason, not that of the " will," for he had not attained 
 to the scholastic pigeon-hole doctrine of independent faculties. 
 The will or choice,^ rather, is a function of intellection, and hence, 
 
 ' On the rational and irrational Swd/ias see Me/., 1046 a 36 ff. 
 
 'The whole case of Swifteu juerd 'Kiyov and the indifference supposed to 
 result from them is plainly one more instance of the fallacy o£ the Plularity of 
 Causes. 
 
 ^Aristotle calls it irpoalpejis, and the subject is treated at great length in the 
 JVic. Ethics, especially in Book III. 
 
36 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONTINGENT 
 
 since reason is the highest realization of human capacities, men's 
 actions will be truly free, in his sense, only when they are wholly 
 governed by rational purpose. Consistently with the views of 
 Socrates and Plato, Aristotle therefore makes freedom virtually an 
 ideal rather than an actual posession of the majority of mankind, 
 and to that extent, it may safely be said, the Stoics concurred with 
 him. So long as we confine our inquiry to his intention, there can- 
 not be much difificulty in his doctrine ; but we shall find that his 
 psychology conflicted hopelessly with the conditions essential to 
 the problem of freedom in action. Yet this is only what was to 
 have been expected after what has previously been said of his 
 fundamental dualism,' which here manifests itself almost as clearly 
 as in his Logic. 
 
 According to Aristotle's system of development, there must be 
 a constant progress from sensation to reason, mediated by imagina- 
 tion, memory and reflection, in which series the lower is always the 
 " matter " to the " form " appearing in the next higher. The voDs 
 or reason, as the highest of all, and that which most truly consti- 
 tutes a man, is of course the "iorm" par excellence. Not to mention 
 other difficulties which crop out just here in superabundance, the 
 voOs, as pure form, can consistently act only as th.^. final cause of the 
 body, while the pleasure-pains, giving rise to desires, must take the 
 place of the mechanical cause. The latter, to use Kant's language, 
 are "blind" without the influence of intellect, the reason, on the 
 other hand, is " empty," without receiving a content from them. 
 This is only a recurrence of our old problem that all the teleology 
 is found in the end, all the efficiency at the beginning of the series. 
 Yet the reason is said to be the rightful ruler over the irrational desires, 
 though they only too frequently revolt and carry the day. The diffi- 
 culty is increased, rather than diminished, by a division in the rea- 
 son itself. Situated as it is as the coping-stone, so to speak, of the 
 two-fold edifice of man's nature, consisting of the cognitive and the 
 motive elements, it is called into requisition both for theory and for 
 practice. Since, then, Aristotle inherited the intellectualism of 
 Socrates, aggravated in the philosophy of Plato, he naturally 
 ranked the theoretical reason above the practical, and with so dis- 
 tinct a bias in its favor it was but natural that he distinguished it 
 
 ' On the following see Zeller, pp. 592 £f. 
 
IN THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM 37 
 
 completely from the latter. So far did he proceed along this path, 
 that he marked it off completely from»the remainder of man's 
 soul and, like God in the macrocosm, called the theoretical reason 
 X^pttTTos, " apart," as entering into man from without. 
 
 Thus secluded and undisturbed in its blissful and eternal con- 
 templation, the active reason is, in its relation to the concrete 
 human life, a precise analogue of God in reference to the world.' 
 It is the only part of man that could properly define his duty, but 
 its dictum could be at most a blank categorical imperative, with 
 no specifications and with no power to secure its enforcement in 
 conduct. The passive reason was a mere stop-gap introduced sur- 
 reptitiously to perform the impossible office of mediator. Just 
 how will or choice is related to it Aristotle fails to tell us, possibly 
 because he could give no answer. Zeller has pointed out the hope- 
 less breach in the system at this point, and scholars have essayed in 
 vain to construct a consistent and intelligible theory of volition on 
 the basis of the various assertions scattered through the works of 
 Aristotle. The crucial question is whether volition, as a function of 
 reason, can have efficiency in initiating activity, and this question must 
 be answered in the negative." 
 
 While thus it appears that Aristotle's cosmological and psycho- 
 logical arguments for freedom, if we may so call them, both were 
 doomed to failure because of the presuppositions of his system 
 with its unresolved dualism, he was still far from abandoning its 
 defense. In the ninth chapter of the work De Inter pretatione^ 
 another direction was taken. The Principle of Contradiction, or 
 
 ' The relation of the active reason to God has been the subject perhaps of more 
 discussion than any other question arising from Aristotle's system. It occupied 
 the thoughts chiefly perhaps of mediaeval philosophers, but the Neo-Platonists also 
 made much ot it. Aristotle's successor, Theophrastus, was certainly among the 
 first to notice it particularly, and it appears to me not unlikely that the Pseudo- 
 Platonic dialogue Alcibiades I, on which Proclus wrote an elaborate commentary, 
 covertly treated of it in the discussion of the empirical and the absolute self, under 
 the analogy of the eye-seeing eye. 
 
 °See Zeller, pp. 598-601. Heman, Des Aristoteles Lehre von der Freiheit des 
 menschlichen Willens, Leipzig, 1887, has summed up his subject very well in the 
 main ; but he has tried to obviate difficulties raised by Zeller (p. 599, nn. 3 and 4), 
 and in so doing has shown that he has not yet grasped the logic of Aristotle's 
 position. See particularly p. 40, note ; pp. 98 ff.; and p. 103. 
 
 3 The genuineness of this brief logical and grammatical treatise has been 
 
38 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONTINGENT 
 
 more specifically the law of the Excluded Middle, because of its 
 assertion that of two perfectly contradictory statements one must be 
 true and the other false, might be employed to uphold fatalism, to 
 the exclusion of all freedom, chance or indifference. Hence an 
 exception to its application is made in favor of particular judg- 
 ments relative to futurity. Of the past or present it is unreservedly 
 true that the validity of one contradictory excludes that of the other ; 
 but to extend this proposition so as to cover future events would 
 lead to patent absurdity. Truth and falsity are terms applicable 
 only to judgments, and appeal must be made in the last resort to 
 fact. In respect of what is still to come there exists as yet no test ; 
 therefore it is, indeed, quite admissible to assert that an event will 
 or will not occur, but since it is not apparent which alternative is to 
 be substantiated by the actual result, it cannot be conceded that 
 either of the two assertions, " it will occur," or, "it will not occur," 
 propounded separately, expresses truth or fact. All that it would 
 be strictly allowable to say is that the event is in prospect,^ not that 
 it will be. To say more would be presumption. 
 
 " It is indeed necessary that that which is should be when it is, 
 and that which is not should not be when it is not, yet it is not nec- 
 essary that everything which is should transpire, nor that everything 
 which is not should not transpire ; for it is not the same to say that 
 everything necessarily is when it is and to assert in general that 
 everything is necessarily." These words' sufiiciently indicate Aris- 
 totle's thought. To say that a thing is necessary means only that it 
 is just what it is and nothing else, and entitles one in no way to 
 infer how it came to be. In other words, the Principles of Contra- 
 diction and of the Exclded Middle have value only within the 
 judgment, which is itself a teleological process. Both serve only 
 to draw the legitimate or implied inferences from the Principle of 
 Identity. This principle means merely that A, analyzed as means 
 or percept and synthesized as end or concept, is just equal to or 
 valid for A : as means constituting the end, A as subject, must be 
 
 called in question ; but, whatever the fact may be in regard to its authorship, there 
 can be no doubt as to its representing Aristotelian doctrine on this point. 
 
 ' So I prefer to render in iiiKKei as opposed to in itrrai in De Gener. et Cor- 
 rupt, 337 * 3 £f. At any rate it is clear that it is intended to convey the idea o£ 
 indefiniteness and the possibility of change. Compare De Interpr., iga jS. 
 
 ' De Interpret., ig a 23 ff. 
 
IN THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM 
 
 39 
 
 taken to be equivalent for the nonce to just A, the end. On reflec- 
 tion one sees that it cannot be non-A, which states the Principle of 
 Contradiction, and that there is neither *n B, nor in any other non- 
 A, a middle term or anything outside of A that it can stand for, 
 which formulates the Principle of the Excluded Middle. But since 
 these principles, one and all, arise in the definition of ends, it is 
 absurd to turn them against free teleology in order to hypostatize 
 the necessity which is only functional in its progress.' Aristotle's 
 failure to appreciate this fact led him into his untenable position as 
 to a distinction in respect to time, and is one more illustration of 
 his tendency toward an abstract and formal view of thinking. I 
 may here quote from Mr. Bosanquet:" "Schopenhauer rightly 
 maintains that absolute necessity is a contradictio in adjecto, because 
 all necessity is ^^ A_y/«JA4M/ conditional. . . . Absolute necessity 
 was a false ideal, and produced a fallacious preference of necessity 
 to reality. For 2. part, necessity is a higher point of view than mere 
 perceptive reality, because necessity involves relation to the whole, 
 whereas perceptive reality, being isolated, is only formal or poten- 
 tial reality. For the whole, reality is a higher point of view than 
 necessity, for reality is its self-dependence as a whole, while neces- 
 sity would at once depress it into a part." 
 
 Aristotle makes much use, in the argument to which we have 
 just referred, of the existence of an oTrorep' Ituxe or the indifference 
 of chance.^ Its existence is due, as we have seen, to the nature of 
 that potentiality which inheres primarily in matter, but it finds its 
 fullest expression in human action. Nevertheless he cannot conceal 
 the fact that there are varying degrees of probability as well in 
 respect of truth as also in the courses which men are likely to pur- 
 sue.* The former is so manifestly a contradiction of the possibility 
 of pure indifference that we may pass it by without further notice. 
 But even the indeterminism in moral action, which is thus practi- 
 cally asserted, is decidedly limited in its scope by two considera- 
 
 ' On the meaning of the Principle of Contradiction and the law of the 
 Excluded Middle, in their relations to the Principle of Identity, compare Bosan- 
 quet's Logic, II, pp. 205 ff. It will be readily seen how my statement difiEers from 
 Mr. Bosanquet's. 
 
 ^Ibid., p. Z13. 
 
 3 See above, p. 25 ff. 
 
 < See De Interpret., 19 a 20 ff. 
 
40 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONTINGENT 
 
 tions. In the first place, in so far as acts are truly free they are 
 intentional, and as such they are subject to the regulation of the 
 reason. But on the other hand, though habits are originally due 
 to purposive action, they may become so fixed that they control 
 conduct to the exclusion of a momentary interference of rational 
 preference. Hence we see even here the beginnings of that break 
 in man's active nature which led in the end to such paradoxes as a 
 will not cooperating in an act free from external compulsion and 
 a noumenal freedom set over against phenomenal necessity. 
 
 Now these patent inconsistencies could not escape detection in 
 the vigorous intellectual activity at Athens. And among all the 
 difficult and vague conceptions in the Aristotelian system none was 
 so shifting and impossible to grasp as that of potentiality. It 
 appears in a thousand different forms, and was conceded by Aris- 
 totle to be in many cases metaphorical ; yet it is compelled to do 
 service in all of the most trying situations. Hence it formed the 
 natural point of attack for all opponents of his doctrine. Among 
 these we have to mention chiefly the Stoics who virtually denied the 
 existence of the contingent and reduced all things to necessity. 
 Everything in their system emphasizes the reality of an universal 
 law which maintains the order of the world amid the flux and flow 
 of particular things. This appears in its most characteristic form 
 in their Logic. The categorical judgment is no longer the type, 
 and the only forms of syllogism which they appear to have consid- 
 ered were the hypothetical and the disjunctive. In like manner 
 they identified the definition and the concept and regarded the 
 particular only as subsumed under the general.' There can be no 
 reasonable doubt as to the meaning of all this. The keynote to the 
 system of the earlier Stoics is their moral earnestness, their intense 
 preoccupation with an ideal. If we keep this in mind it will go far 
 toward explaining their philosophy. Suppose that a schoolboy is 
 homesick and wants to visit his parents during the approaching 
 holidays : how he will husband the money necessary to his purpose! 
 This desperate clutching of the means is what I suppose their mate- 
 rialism and its accompanying sensationalism to stand for, and the 
 eager pursuit of their end represents their teleology. The stress of 
 adjusting means and end shows itself in the law of fate, which was 
 
 ' See PrantI, Gesch. der Logik, I, p. 426. 
 
IN THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM 4 1 
 
 not, in their thought, a limitation so much as an index to duty. 
 In this closed and taut-drawn system o| means and end there can 
 be no duplicity of reference nor ambiguity in action. Everything 
 merely potential \% excluded.' 
 
 Now, it was in this effort on the part of the Stoics to correlate'' 
 and organize the world of fact Completely in one homogeneous 
 system, that they naturally came to view individual inferences as 
 interdependent, and so they dwelt, as I have said, all but exclusively 
 on hypothetical disjunctive syllogisms. This seems so clearly the 
 expression of their standpoint that we cannot understand why Prantl 
 should have regarded their logic as a mere formalization of the 
 Peripatetic Another, and a most significant, result of their merg- 
 ing the particular moment in the all-inclusive system, was that they 
 thus broke down the conventional distinctions of time into past, 
 present, and future, finding the meaning of all within the present.* 
 
 ' We noticed before that chance represents only that surplus of means to a 
 given end which is connoted by the term <n;/xj3e/3»;K6s or what is purely indiffer- 
 ent. Just this fiction is destroyed by viewing the whole as one system. The par- 
 ticular is thus accounted of only in relation to the universal, as the Stoics practi- 
 cally did. Besides the concept is only an incomplete definition of a particular, and 
 when the particular as such vanishes in the whole the completed concept is the 
 definition.. 
 
 ' If, as it would seem probable from all accounts, the Stoics meant " correla- 
 tion " by their fourth category (vpbi ti irrijs ^x'"' iroAv ivomlfuivov — the examples 
 given are parent and child, right and left), this also would be an interesting 
 evidence of their desire to put everything into a closed system ; for a fact was sup- 
 posed to be completely defined only when stated in that category. 
 
 3 Prantl, 0. c, p. 402, speaking of the logic of the Stoics and Epicureans, says : 
 "Darum beruhen auch in Bezug auf die Logik alle Verschlechteningen, welche 
 uns von hier an durchgreifend begegnen, nicht mehr, wie bei den alteren Peripa- 
 tetikem, in einer unbewussten Schwache der Spekulation in Bezug auf Zusam- 
 menhang und Bedeutung der aristotelischen Gesammt-Fhilosophie, sondern in den 
 positiven Verstossen einer Richtung, welche bloss den subjectiv-praktischen 
 Bediirfnissen durch doctrinares Gerede geniigen will, und fiir welche daher das 
 platonisch-aristotelische Princip einer mit der Philosophic Hberhaupt verkniipften 
 Logik gar nicht vorhanden isi." Surely such a view of the history of thought is 
 fully as formal as Prantl would represent the logic of the Stoics to be. It seems 
 to me that this subject deserves more sympathetic treatment, however great the 
 formalism was which they introduced into the doctrine of the syllegism. Victor 
 Brochard, Sur la Logique des Stoi'ciens, in the Arckiv f. Gesch. der Philosophic, V, 
 1892, pp. 449 ff., has treated of Stoic nominalism quite appreciatively. 
 
 * On this, see Prantl, p. 451, note 136, and p. 459. 
 
42 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONTINGENT 
 
 When this view was once taken, it is clear that they had to attack 
 Aristotle's exception to the law of the Excluded Middle. This they 
 did, and thereafter this topic formed the principal point of con- 
 tention between the Stoics who employed it to establish their 
 thorough-going fatalism, and their opponents, who sought to defend 
 freedom of action.' Among those defenders of freedom against the 
 arguments of the Stoics are to be numbered not only the Peripa- 
 tetics, Academics, and Sceptics, but also the Epicureans ; and the 
 fact that Epicurus" himself found it necessary to take his stand 
 expressly with Aristotle, shows that the Stoics must have assumed 
 this position from the beginning.' 
 
 Among the arguments most frequently urged against the Stoic 
 doctrine of fatalism was the so-called \oyos d/>yos, namely, that the 
 principle would lead to sloth, since action and prudence would be 
 unavailing. Aristotle himself adduces this consideration,* for he is 
 supremely interested in deliberate conduct. Accordingly, the fact 
 of deliberation, the weighing of means, occupies a great share of his 
 
 ' This fact is shown not only by the frequency with which mention is made of 
 the law of Excl. Middle in all of the rather voluminous writings of the ancients on 
 the subjects of Fate, Divine Foreknowledge, Divination, Astrology, etc., but also 
 by the importance attached to Aristotle's dictum by all of his commentators. Thus 
 Ammonius : toOto iUv toi rh BedpiiiM rb vvv iv' 'ApiffToriXovs Kivoiixevov, SokcT /jiv 
 elvai \oyiK6vj Kard. &\-^6eiav di wpbs wdvra fi6pia r^$ tf>L\offotf>las iffrlv dvayKotov 
 jvard re yhp t^v '^dtKijv ipiXoffoipiav iraffav ivdyKij Trpotrkafi^dvetv^ us oO irdvra iffri 
 re KoX ylverai i^ dyiy/njj, 4XX' iari rivh. Kal i4>' ^pXv. Another commentator praises 
 Aristotle for not confining himself to purely logical consideration in this logical 
 treatise and giving scope to the largest and most important considerations of 
 philosophy. Simplicius in his Comment, on the Categories, 103 B, expressly states 
 that the Stoics (presumably first) applied the law also to futures. In my Disserta- 
 tion Pseudo-Platonica, p. 26, 1 have collected some of the references to this con- 
 troversy. I could now add many others if it seemed desirable. 
 
 ' See Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, I, XXV, 69 f ., with Mayor's note, esp. 70 : 
 " Idem facit (Epicurus) contra dialecticos ; a quibus cum traditum sit in omnibus 
 disjunctionibus in quibus ' aut etiam aut non ' poneretur, alterum utrum esse verum, 
 pertimuit, ne, si concessum esset hujus modi aliquid, ' Aut vivet eras aut non vivet 
 Epicurus,' alterutrum fieret necessarium, etc." There is a slight inaccuracy here 
 which Cicero himself corrects De Fato. c. 37. Indirectly Epicurus' attitude serves 
 to confirm the age if not the genuineness of the tract De Interpretatione. 
 
 3 Schmekel's Philosophic der mittleren Stoa, 1892, pp. 155-184, has done good 
 service in tracing back later arguments against Fate, like Cicero's, etc., to the 
 school of Carneades. There is, however, still much to do in this direction. 
 
 * De Interpret., 18^31: Siarc oSre pov\e6e<r6ai Sioi &v oUre vpay/iareifirSai. 
 
IN THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM 43 
 
 attention in the Rhetoric and the Ethics. "The great majority of 
 matters with which decisions and enquiries have to deal are of such 
 nature as to admit of being different ; for men consult and institute 
 investigations regarding what they do, and actions are altogether of 
 this class, none of them, practically, being governed by necessity." " 
 It is upon such facts as these, and with such a comparatively naive 
 consciousness of freedom, that Aristotle proceeds to develop his 
 ethical theory. But this view must be shaken the moment that the 
 nature of time is more critically examined. We cannot enter here 
 into an elaborate history of ancient conceptions of time in general, 
 but some remarks may be quite in place. Respecting the present 
 there could be no serious question until the full development of 
 Scepticism, but regarding the past and the future the case was 
 different. Aristotle, of course, considered the past as a potentiality 
 realized in the present, and the future as existing potentially in the 
 present moment.' But in the gradual effacement which the con- 
 ception of potentiality suffered, this answer could not long be 
 accepted as satisfactory. 
 
 We have already remarked that the Stoics, in their energetic 
 effort to sum up all the particular objects of experience in one self- 
 consistent system, practically drew past and future into the present : 
 and we have an express statement of Chrysippus' doctrine concern- 
 ing time. "Past and future time have a certain reality, but do not 
 really exist, save as accidental qualities are said to exist, as, e. g., 
 'walking' is a fact when I am walking, but when I sit or lie down, it 
 is not."^ Epicurus defined time as a quality two removes from reality, 
 t. e., the atoms.'' Critolaus, a contemporary of Carneades, declared 
 it to be a mental instrument of measurement, according it no 
 objective existence.^ If thus the dogmatic schools tended more and 
 more to deprive it of substantial validity, the Sceptics of the third 
 and second centuries B. C. ended by denying it altogether, or at 
 least making it wholly unknowable." 
 
 ^Rhet., 135J a23fi. 
 
 ' This would be clear even from general considerations of his system ; but see 
 also De Interpret., ig i 2, where he speaks of futures as tSi' jui; Svtwj' Smaruv Si 
 elmi ^ nil ehai. It required only the disintegration of the SvmT6p to reach the M C". 
 
 3ln Wachsmuth's Stobaeus, I, p. I06. '■Ibid,, p. 103, and Sext. Empir. X, 219. 
 
 iStobaeus, ibid., p. 103. 
 
 'Sextus Empiricus has two lengthy discussions of Time, Pyrrhon., Ill, 136 ff.; 
 
44 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONTINGENT 
 
 Considering the important part which the thought of futurity- 
 plays in all ethical theory, it is not strange that it should have been 
 most keenly criticised and the results of its supposed annihilation 
 drawn out in their relation to conduct. This is done in two 
 spurious dialogues, Demodocus and Sisyphus, which found their way 
 into the manuscripts of Plato, but which I believe to have originated 
 in the period after Carneades," and in two orations of Dio Chrysos- 
 tomus.° In the Sisyphus and Demodocus the argument turns upon 
 the question whether deliberation is possible, and a general denial 
 is practically reached by showing that in giving or taking counsel 
 a knowledge of the things under discussion would be necessary, 
 which, however, is rendered impossible by the conditions of the 
 case. Deliberation has to do with futures, and they are non-existent.^ 
 The conclusion, therefore, is purely sceptical. The twenty-sixth 
 oration of Dio follows the argument of the Sisyphus very closely, 
 except that the parts are somewhat transposed. But the sceptical 
 movement has spent itself, and Dio comes at the last to the curious 
 conclusion, that, though the discussion proves the futility of 
 deliberation because of our inability to know the future, one must 
 learn and devote himself to study, in order that he may give com- 
 petent advice and not fall into error. Such doubts are those only 
 of a litUrateur and travelling teacher who wishes to recommend 
 himself and the cause of education.* In the other oration, he says 
 of the philosophers, among whom he includes himself, that they, in 
 contrast to vain rhetoricians, have a real foreknowledge of events 
 and have long ago taken counsel with themselves regarding them.' 
 
 All these questionings, however, were primarily due to the Pla- 
 tonic-Aristotelian distinctions in intellection arising from the fixed 
 juxtaposition of the eternal and necessary on the one hand, and the 
 
 and Adv. Math., X, 176 ff. His arguments against it doubtless go back to the 
 earlier Sceptics. He quotes Timon, X, 197, and we must conclude from this fact 
 that the subject began to be thoroughly canvassed not many generation after 
 Aristotle. 
 
 ' See my Dissertation, above mentioned, pp. 22 £E. 
 
 = Orations XXII and XXVI. 
 
 3 All of these works, Sisyphus, Demodocus, Dio, and Sextus Empir. call futures 
 /tij 8cTo without qualification. 
 
 ■* This conclusion is only playfully suggested in Sisyphus, 390 A. 
 
 5 Orat. XXII, p. SI I, Reiske. 
 
IN THE ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM 45 
 
 contingent and not really intelligible on the other.' " Let us postu- 
 late," says Aristotle,' "that there are two parts of the rational faculty; 
 one with which we contemplate that soft of real existence whose 
 principles do not admit of being different, and one with which we 
 contemplate what may vary. For, in relation to objects which are 
 generically different, we must assume equally separate and distinct 
 parts of the soul naturally related each to its appropriate object, if 
 indeed, as we believe, knowledge belongs to them in virtue of sim- 
 ilarity and kinship. The first of these we may call the cognitive, the 
 second the inferential;^ for deliberating and drawing inferences are 
 one and the same, and no one deliberates about matters that do not 
 admit of variation. Hence the inferential is a subdivision of the 
 rational faculty.'' Deliberation, he then proceeds to say, is a form of 
 search or enquiry, and wisdom in counsel is not scientific knowledge, 
 nor yet is it merely a matter of good luck. Rather it is to be called 
 a species of prudence — for prudent men are good counsellors — the 
 right perception of that which is advantageous for the procurement 
 of an end, whereof prudence is the right apprehension. 
 
 It is clear that Aristotle's own dictum with regard to the future 
 rendered his utterances on deliberation self-contradictory. If one 
 cannot truthfully say that this particular result will follow, but must 
 abide the actual event before one's statement can be true, then a 
 foreknowledge of the right means is also impossible. His difficulty 
 lay in believing that certain judgments are absolutely true, as con- 
 taining predicates which are fixed and eternal in their meaning. 
 Could he have seen that the principles of mathematics and astron- 
 omy, in which he reposed so much confidence, would themselves suf- 
 fer a continual reconstruction as knowledge advanced, he might 
 have perceived that all individual judgments are incomplete and 
 provisional. As such there can be no radical distinctions between 
 scientific and practical judgments : both still proceed from a sub- 
 ject which is not fully defined. But the recognition of previously 
 
 ■ Plato said that matter was at the very best aTtTov Xtr/iaiiQ rivl vb8if, /1x671s irur- 
 tI)v, Tim., 52 B ; and Aristotle, Met., 1036 a 8, says : ti Si v\i] iyvasToi KaB' avT-^v, 
 In both systems matter is the contingent or its source, and is the fi^ iipiaiiimv or 
 the &Trapov. 
 
 'Eth. Nic, 1 1 390 6£f. 
 
 3 So I render, for convenience, iruj-Tritwi'iKSv and \oyiiTTi,K6v. Aristotle else- 
 where defines ^ov\eic<r0ai as avWoyurii6s tis. 
 
46 THE NECESSARY AND THE CONTINGENT 
 
 undefined qualities in the subject which vitiate or rather demand the 
 re-formation of the predicate, ordinarily impresses us less in science 
 than in practice. Perhaps the reason lies in the less subjective 
 character of theory. Scientists are more devoted to truth than to a 
 particular theory. Hence there are not such heart-burnings over 
 negative instances, refusing to be explained by our hypotheses, as we 
 experience when, through lack of foresight, " ein Strich durch die 
 Rechnung" frustrates our most cherished plans. Yet the case is 
 really the same : only, because we are so eager to act, our defini- 
 tions of the means in practice are perhaps relatively more incom- 
 plete. Now and then, however, the disclosure of the inadequacy of 
 a theory will shock the world quite as much as the conviction that 
 one has been reckoning without his host. The discoveries of Kep- 
 ler and Galileo, all things considered, doubtless produced a greater 
 effect in France than the failure of the late war with Germany. 
 
 Thus we are at length brought back, after long wanderings, to 
 our point of departure. Theory is only a phase of action, and the 
 keynote of action is progress toward organization and unity. To 
 set up fixed limits to this process is to falsify fact, and the doing so 
 can lead only to self-contradiction. It is in fact only a transference 
 of the functional boundaries, set up by the individual act, to reality 
 at large : what is true of the part is not equally true of the whole. 
 Thus the contingent and the necessary, which possess a true mean- 
 ing only within a limited scope defined by a particular end, are 
 generalized and erected into absolute fact. But, really, absolute 
 necessity is as unmeaning as absolute contingency. For both concep- 
 tions we shall do well to substitute that of less or greater com- 
 pleteness in the definition of fact. 
 
I Cornell University Library 
 
 B491.N3 H46 
 
 I Necessary and the contingent in thie Aris 
 
 folin 
 
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