Birmingham state herald., 1895-12-22

preceded him. His philosophy must be viewed in it's proper setting. There are several conditions of Greek thought that must be kept before us. In the first place
 the object of Greek philosophy is the inn
 provement of the citizen. It was national
 in it's character and restricted to the
 state. Modern thought regards humanity as its object. Again, the trend of Greek
 thought was aesthetic. Artistic taste
 governed his philosophy The canons of art were applied to this ethics, where the
 moderns speak of right and wrong, the
 Greek speaks of the beautiful and the ugly. Again,s the tendency of Greek
 thought was to read the characteristics of human nature into the world and uni- verse, while modern philosophers too of
 ten manifest an anxiety to avoid this and to read all spirit out of nature and philosophy. It is an error to suppose that the development implied in the philoso- phy of Aristotle is equivalent to the eVo- lution of the school of Spencer. The evo- lutionary school accepts as a premise the Darwinian theory of the origin of species. Aristotle taught on the other hand that species and genera were unchangeable, that the universal is eternal, while change affects only the particular and the individual. The difference between Aristotle and Phato is. often miscon strued. Ideas, according to Plato. consti- tute world by themselves, separate and apart from phenomena. Ideas are the only realities, having no relation to phe- nomenal appearances except that vague ly expressed by causation. Aristotle accepts this doctrine, but denies the ab- sence of relation. He admits that uni versals are the only realities, but that they are real only as they realize them selves in particulars. a+f
 Plato's philosophy is subjective in it's character; is based upon human con- sciousness, and consists of gems of thought that are scattered, without con- nection, throughout his dialogues. Aris- totle collects and systematiZes these gems, but constructs a science that is objective in it's nature. Plato deals with the internal; Aristotle with the external.- One of the objects of philosophy Is the deduction of the elementary facts of na- ture by generalization and abstraction; the resolution of phenomena into their ultimate clements. These elements are given by Aristotle from the objective standpoint, and are known as the cate gories. These consist in the different moods of substance, and all that may be thought as predicated of that substance. Kant, he said, -generalized the elements of knowledge from subjective stand point, and presented his famous catego- ries as subjective forms imposed by the mind upon the objects of knowledge He then compared the categorles of Aristotle with those of Kant One of the most in- tereSting points in all ancient philosophy is Aristotle's famous cosmological argu- ment for the existence of a divine being. The two leading principles of his philoso- phy are matter and form. At one end of the chain is formless matter, being moved, but moving nothing itself; i'm pressed with form, 1t becomes the mat ter for a still higher form. This in turn Is moved by form still higher, and so on, until the highest link in the cosmo- logical chain is reached, which is pure form, unchangeable and eternal. This fe Nfrft itself, but moving all things else. The activity of this divine being, however, is not directly exercised upon the forms of matter beneath, but indirectly, through it's absolute aotuality, 1t gener- ates and stimulates an impulse in all in- ferior forms of matter to aspire to higher form. Matter thus, though in- active, Is imbued with an inherent inn pulse, and an activity is exercised only through the imposition of form. Be- tween matter, the lowest link in the chain, and pure form, the highest, exists all the varied forms of nature and the universe. This argument has an i'm portant significance in the history Of the world For the first time, without the aid of revelation, an argument has been formulated and scientifically grounded for the existence of God In the midst of polytheism the monotheistic idea has been established, and in contrast with the pantheistic ideas of his predecessors, Aristotle has attained the idea of per sonal and spiritual divine being. But, as this being exercised only an indirect in- fluence upon the world and nature, the Aristotelan system precludes the ideas of providence and of prayer. The life of God is life of pure thought. He cannot
 think of an object inferior to Himself
 without suffering change and degrada-
 tion. Hence it Is a God of eternal self
 contemplation.
 Aristotle was the first philosopher to
 establish the three distinct faculties of
 the human mind as known today. The
 soul consists of the negative found in plants and controls nutrition and repro
 duction, the animal, which implies the further element of locomotion in animal life, and the rational soul, found in man. The impulse implanted in the matter be- comes desire in the animal and will in man. He thus develops volition in man from simple impulse in matter. The soul he further divides into the active and the passive. The passive soul in- cludes the perceptive faculties, memory and imagina ton and all that is distinct ly individual. The active soul is imper- sonal, incapable of receiving impress sons and at death is absorbed by uni versal reason. It is questionable then, whether Aristotle really believed in the immortality of the personal soul, since that consists in the passive soul, which perishes like the body. The active soul, II IS true, IS, lHperlshdpie anu lIi- mortal, but not being subject to impress sions includes none of the characteris- tics of the individual soul
 Aristotle's idea of ethics is nferor to that of Plato. He did not ask what is right, what Is duty or what is the ground of obligation but what is good for man as man in his present environment. Plato on the other hand, believed that there was in man divine sense which ponted out the rght Aristotle, follow ing the lead of aesthetic Greek thought, introduces here his doctrine of the mean