FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130  
131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   >>  
s all through the philosophy of Aristotle. The 'Realisation' of Aristotle is the 'Reminiscence' of Plato. This conception Aristotle extended to Thought, to the various forms of life, to education, to morals, to politics. _Thought_ is an entelechy, an organic whole, in which every process conditions and is conditioned by every other. If we begin with sensation, the sensation, blank as regards predication, has relations to that which is infinitely real,--the object, the real thing before us,--which relations science will never exhaust. If we start from the other end, with the datum of thought, consciousness, existence, mind, this is equally blank as regards predication, yet it has relations to another existence infinitely real,--the subject that thinks,--which relations religion and morality and sentiment and love will never exhaust. Or, as {189} Aristotle and as common sense prefers to do, if we, with our developed habits of thought and our store of accumulated information, choose to deal with things from a basis midway between the two extremes, in the ordinary way of ordinary people, we shall find both processes working simultaneously and in organic correlation. That is to say, we shall be increasing the _individuality_ of the objects known, by the operation of true thought and observation in the discovery of new characters or qualities in them; we shall be increasing by the same act the _generality_ of the objects known, by the discovery of new relations, new genera under which to bring them. Individualisation and generalisation are only opposed, as mutually conditioning factors of the same organic function. [316] This analysis of thought must be regarded rather as a paraphrase of Aristotle than as a literal transcript. He is hesitating and obscure, and at times apparently self-contradictory. He has not, any more than Plato, quite cleared himself of the confusion between the mutually contrary individual and universal in _propositions_, and the organically correlative individual and universal in _things as known_. But on the whole the tendency of his analysis is towards an apprehension of the true realism, which neither denies matter in favour of mind nor mind in favour of matter, but recognises that both mind and matter are organically correlated, and ultimately identical. {190} The crux of philosophy, so far as thus apprehended by Aristotle, is no longer in the supposed dualism of mind and matter,
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130  
131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   >>  



Top keywords:

Aristotle

 

relations

 

matter

 
thought
 
organic
 

mutually

 

things

 

infinitely

 
exhaust
 

existence


universal
 

organically

 

individual

 

ordinary

 

analysis

 

increasing

 

discovery

 

Thought

 
objects
 

predication


philosophy

 

sensation

 

favour

 

regarded

 

generality

 

hesitating

 

transcript

 

literal

 

genera

 

paraphrase


conditioning

 

opposed

 
obscure
 

generalisation

 

factors

 

function

 

Individualisation

 
correlated
 
ultimately
 

identical


recognises

 
denies
 

longer

 

supposed

 
dualism
 
apprehended
 

realism

 

apprehension

 

contradictory

 

apparently