CHAPTER IX.
THE METAPHYSICS OF ARISTOTLE.
Some of Aristotle’s earliest attempts at writing were on a strictly metaphysical subject, when he attacked the Platonic doctrine of “Ideas.” He doubtless went on from this beginning, and thought of metaphysical questions all his life, till he had framed for himself a more or less complete metaphysical system, traces of which show themselves in many forms of expression and leading thoughts in all his various scientific works. But it seems as if he had put off to the last the undertaking of a direct and complete exposition of that system; and hence arose the name “Metaphysics,” which is a mere title signifying “the things which follow after physics”—a title given by Aristotle’s school to a mass of papers which they edited after his death, and with regard to which they wished to indicate that chronologically these papers were composed after the physical treatises, and also, perhaps, that the subject of which they treated was above[1] and beyond the mere physical conditions of things. The word “Meta-
- ↑ Thus Shakespeare speaks of “Fate and metaphysical aid,” meaning “supernatural.”
