TWO:We have considered the Aristotelian philosophy in relation to the great concrete interests of life, morals, politics, literature, and science. We have now to ask what it has to tell us about the deepest and gravest problems of any, the first principles of Being and Knowing, God and the soul, spirit and matter, metaphysics, psychology, and logic. We saw that very high claims were advanced on behalf of Aristotle in respect to his treatment of these topics; and had we begun with them, we should only have been following the usual example of his expositors. We have, however, preferred keeping them to the last, that our readers might acquire some familiarity with the Aristotelian method, by seeing it applied to subjects where the results were immediately intelligible, and could be tested by an appeal to the experience of twenty-two centuries. We know that there are some who will demur to this proceeding, who will say that Aristotle the metaphysician stands on quite different ground from Aristotle the man of science, because in the one capacity he had, and in the other capacity he had not, sufficient facts to warrant an authoritative conclusion. They will say, with Prof. St. George Mivart, that in accumulating natural knowledge mens minds have become deadened to spiritual truth; or with Mr. Edwin Wallace, that the questions opened by Aristotle have not yet been closed, and that we may with advantage begin331 our study of them under his guidance. We, on the other hand, will endeavour to show that there is a unity of composition running through the Stagirites entire labours, that they everywhere manifest the same excellences and defects, which are those of an anatomising, critical, descriptive, classificatory genius; that his most important conclusions, however great their historical interest, are without any positive or even educational value for us, being almost entirely based on false physical assumptions; that his ontology and psychology are not what his admirers suppose them to be; and that his logic, though meriting our gratitude, is far too confused and incomplete to throw any light on the questions raised by modern thinkers.
