Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/571

PERIPATETICS 545 PERIPATETICS was the name given in antiquity to the followers of Aristotle, from their master s habit of walking up and down as he lectured conversationally to his pupils. Others derive the name from the TrepiTraros, or covered walk of the Lyceum. An account of the Aristotelian philosophy will be found in the articles ARISTOTLE, ETHICS, LOGIC, and METAPHYSIC. Here it must suffice to recall those features of the system which mainly conditioned the development of the school. Aristotle s central conception is the correlative opposition of form and matter. This may be called the supreme category under which he views the world ; it is the point where, as Zeller puts it, Aris totle s system at once refutes and completes the Platonic doctrine of the "idea" in its relation to phenomena. But Aristotle did not succeed in expelling the dualism which he blamed in Plato. His deity is pure form, and dwells in abstract self-contemplation withdrawn from the actual life of the world. The development of the world remains, therefore, unrelated to the divine subject. In Aristotle s doctrine of man, precisely the same difficulty is experienced in connecting the active or passionless reason with the in dividual life, the latter being a process of development bound up with sense, imagination, and desire. The soul is originally denned as the entelechy of the body, and, more over, not of body in general but of its particular body. It is impossible, therefore, from this point of view to speak of soul and body as separate entities. Yet Aristotle holds that besides the individual mind, which is all things potentially which becomes all things there is superinduced upon the process of development the active or creative reason, the pure actuality (eVepyeia) which the development pre supposes as its necessary jyrius, just as the world-process presupposes God. This reason is "separable," and is said to enter " from without " when it unites itself to the pro cess of individual life. It must therefore exist before the individual, and it alone outlasts the death of the body ; to it alone properly belong the titles of "immortal" and "divine." But its relation to the universal divine reason was not handled by Aristotle at all. The question was destined to become the crux of his commentators. In general it is evident that, if reason in man be identified with the process of natural development (and there is Aristotelian warrant for declaring these to be simply two aspects of the same thing), we drift into a purely naturalistic or materialistic doctrine. On the other hand, the doctrine of the "active reason " may be maintained, but what Aristotle left vague may be further defined. The rational soul of each indi vidual may be explicitly identified with the divine reason. This leads to the denial of individual immortality and the doctrine of one immortal impersonal reason, such as we find, for example, in the rationalistic pantheism of Averroes. A third position is possible, if the statements of Aristotle be left in their original vagueness. Aristotle may then be interpreted as supporting monotheism and the immortality of separate rational souls. This was the reading adopted by the orthodox scholastic Aristotelians, as well as by those early Peripatetics who contented themselves with para phrasing their master s doctrine. Aristotle s immediate successors, Theophrastus, who pre sided over the Lyceum from 322 to 288 B.C., and Eudemus of Rhodes, were distinguished by a learned diligence rather than by original speculative power. They made no inno vations upon the main doctrines of their master, and their industry is chiefly directed to supplementing his works in minor particulars. Thus they amplified the Aristotelian logic by the theory of the hypothetical and disjunctive syllogism, and added to the first figure of the categorical syllogism the five moods out of which the fourth figure was afterwards constructed. The impulse towards natural science and the systematizing of empirical details which distinguished Aristotle from Plato was shared by Theo phrastus. His two works on the History of Plants and Causes of Plants prove him to have been a careful and acute observer. The same turn for detail is observable in his ethics, where, to judge from the imperfect evidence of the Characters, he elaborated still further Aristotle s portraiture of the virtues and their relative vices. In his doctrine of virtue the distinctive Peripatetic position regarding the importance of external goods was defended by him with emphasis against the assaults of the Stoics. He appears to have laid even more stress on this point than Aristotle himself, being doubtless led to do so, partly by the heat of controversy and partly by the importance which leisure and freedom from harassing cares naturally assumed to a man of his studious temperament. The metaphysical diropiai of Theophrastus which have come down to us show that he was fully alive to the difficulties that start up round many of the Aristotelian definitions. But we are ignorant how he proposed to meet his own criticisms ; and they do not appear to have suggested to him an actual departure from his master s doctrine, much less any radical transformation of it. In the difficulties which he raises with reference to the relation of the active and the passive reason, as well as in his ascription of the physical predicate of motion to the activity of the soul, we may perhaps detect a leaning towards a naturalistic interpreta tion. The tendency of Eudemus, on the other hand, is more towards the theological or Platonic side of Aristotle s philosophy. The Eudemian Ethics (which, with the possible exception of the three books common to this treatise and the Nicomachean Ethics, there need be no hesitation in ascribing to Eudemus) expressly identify Aristotle s ultimate ethical ideal of $eco/cna with the know ledge and contemplation of God. And this supplies Eudemus with a standard for the determination of the mean by reason, which Aristotle demanded, but himself left vague. Whatever furthers us in our progress towards a knowledge of God is good ; every hindrance is evil. The same spirit may be traced in the author of the chapters which appear as an appendix to book i. of Aristotle s Metaphysics. They have been attributed to Pasicles, the nephew of Eudemus. For the rest, Eudemus shows even less philosophical independence than Theophrastus. Among the Peripatetics of the first generation who had been personal disciples of Aristotle, the other chief names are those of Aristoxenus of Tarentum and Dicsearchus of Messene. Aristoxenus, " the musician," who had formerly belonged to the Pythagorean school, maintained the posi tion, already combated by Plato in the Phsedo, that the soul is to be regarded as nothing more than the harmony of the body. Dicrearchus agreed with his friend in this naturalistic rendering of the Aristotelian entelechy, and is recorded to have argued formally against the immortality of the soul. The naturalistic tendency of the school reached its full expression in Strato of Lampsacus, who succeeded Theo phrastus as head of the Lyceum, and occupied that posi tion for eighteen years (287-269 B.C.). His predilection for natural science earned for him in antiquity the title of "the physicist." He is the most independent, and was prob ably the ablest, of the earlier Peripatetics. His system is based upon the formal denial of a transcendent deity. Cicero attributes to him the saying that he did not require the aid of the gods in the construction of the universe ; in other words, he reduced the formation of the world to the operation of natural forces. We have evidence that he did not substitute an immanent world-soul for Aristotle s extra-mundane deity; he recognized nothing beyond natural necessity. He Avas at issue, however, with the atomistic materialism of Democritus in regard to its twin assump- XVIII. 69