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By Root 3297 0

To a modern mind, it would seem that the cause of a change must be a previous change, and that, if the universe were ever wholly static, it would remain so eternally. To understand what Aristotle means, we must take account of what he says about causes. There are, according to him, four kinds of causes, which were called, respectively, material, formal, efficient, and final. Let us take again the man who is making a statue. The material cause of the statue is the marble, the formal cause is the essence of the statue to be produced, the efficient cause is the contact of the chisel with the marble, and the final cause is the end that the sculptor has in view. In modern terminology, the word 'cause' would be confined to the efficient cause. The unmoved mover may be regarded as a final cause: it supplies a purpose for change, which is essentially an evolution towards likeness with God.

I said that Aristotle was not by temperament deeply religious, but this is only partly true. One could, perhaps, interpret one aspect of his religion, somewhat freely, as follows:

God exists eternally, as pure thought, happiness, complete self-fulfilment, without any unrealized purposes. The sensible world, on the contrary, is imperfect, but it has life, desire, thought of an imperfect kind, and aspiration. All living things are in a greater or less degree aware of God, and are moved to action by admiration and love of God. Thus God is the final cause of all activity. Change consists in giving form to matter, but, where sensible things are concerned, a substratum of matter always remains. Only God consists of form without matter. The world is continually evolving towards a greater degree of form, and thus becoming progressively more like God. But the process cannot be completed, because matter cannot be wholly eliminated. This is a religion of progress and evolution, for God's static perfection moves the world only through the love that finite beings feel for Him. Plato was mathematical, Aristotle was biological; this accounts for the differences in their religions.

This would, however, be a one-sided view of Aristotle's religion; he has also the Greek love of static perfection and preference for contemplation rather than action. His doctrine of the soul illustrates this aspect of his philosophy.

Whether Aristotle taught immortality in any form, or not, was a vexed question among commentators. Averroes, who held that he did not, had followers in Christian countries, of whom the more extreme were called Epicureans, and whom Dante found in hell. In fact, Aristotle's doctrine is complex, and easily lends itself to misunderstandings. In his book On the Soul, he regards the soul as bound up with the body, and ridicules the Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration (407b). The soul, it seems, perishes with the body: 'it indubitably follows that the soul is inseparable from its body' (413a); but he immediately adds: 'or at any rate certain parts of it are'. Body and soul are related as matter and form: 'the soul must be a substance in the sense of the form of a material body having life potentially within it. But substance is actuality, and thus soul is the actuality of a body as above characterized' (412a). Soul 'is substance in the sense which corresponds to the definitive formula of a thing's essence. That means that it is the "essential whatness" of a body of the character just assigned' (i.e. having life) (412b). The soul is the first grade of actuality of a natural body having life potentially in it. The body so described is a body which is organized (412a). To ask whether soul and body are one is as meaningless as to ask whether the wax and the shape given it by the stamp are one (412b). Self-nutrition is the only psychic power possessed by plants (413a). The soul is the final cause of the body (414a).

In this book, he distinguishes between 'soul' and 'mind', making mind higher than soul, and less bound to the body. After speaking of the relation of soul and body, he says: 'The case of mind is different; it seems to be an independent substance