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continually changing. Such a word as 'red' applies to many shades of colour, and if we say 'I see red', there is no reason why this should not remain true throughout the time that it takes to say it. Plato gets his results by applying to processes of continuous change such logical oppositions as perceiving and not-perceiving, knowing and not-knowing. Such oppositions, however, are not suitable for describing such processes. Suppose, on a foggy day, you watch a man walking away from you along a road: he grows dimmer and dimmer, and there comes a moment when you are sure that you no longer see him, but there is an intermediate period of doubt. Logical oppositions have been invented for our convenience, but continuous change requires a quantitative apparatus, the possibility of which Plato ignores. What he says on this subject, therefore, is largely beside the mark.

At the same time, it must be admitted that, unless words, to some extent, had fixed meanings, discourse would be impossible. Here again, however, it is easy to be too absolute. Words do change their meanings; take, for example, the word 'idea'. It is only by a considerable process of education that we learn to give to this word something like the meaning which Plato gave to it. It is necessary that the changes in the meanings of words should be slower than the changes that the words describe; but it is not necessary that there should be no changes in the meanings of words. Perhaps this does not apply to the abstract words of logic and mathematics, but these words, as we have seen, apply only to the form, not to the matter, of propositions. Here, again, we find that logic and mathematics are peculiar. Plato, under the influence of the Pythagoreans, assimilated other knowledge too much to mathematics. He shared this mistake with many of the greatest philosophers, but it was a mistake none the less.

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19

ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS

In reading any important philosopher, but most of all in reading Aristotle, it is necessary to study him in two ways: with reference to his predecessors, and with reference to his successors. In the former aspect, Aristotle's merits are enormous; in the latter, his demerits are equally enormous. For his demerits, however, his successors are more responsible than he is. He came at the end of the creative period in Greek thought, and after his death it was two thousand years before the world produced any philosopher who could be regarded as approximately his equal. Towards the end of this long period his authority had become almost as unquestioned as that of the Church, and in science, as well as in philosophy, had become a serious obstacle to progress. Ever since the beginning of the seventeenth century, almost every serious intellectual advance has had to begin with an attack on some Aristotelian doctrine; in logic, this is still true at the present day. But it would have been at least as disastrous if any of his predecessors (except perhaps Democritus) had acquired equal authority. To do him justice, we must, to begin with, forget his excessive posthumous fame, and the equally excessive posthumous condemnation to which it led.

Aristotle was born, probably in 384 B.C., at Stagira in Thrace. His father had inherited the position of family physician to the king of Macedonia. At about the age of eighteen Aristotle came to Athens and became a pupil of Plato; he remained in the Academy for nearly twenty years, until the death of Plato in 348–7 B.C. He then travelled for a time, and married either the sister or the niece of a tyrant named Hermias. (Scandal said she was the daughter or concubine of Hermias, but both stories are disproved by the fact that he was a eunuch.) In 343 B.C. he became tutor to Alexander, then thirteen years old, and continued in that position until, at the age of sixteen, Alexander was pronounced by his father to be of age, and was appointed regent during Philip's absence. Everything one would wish to know of the relations of Aristotle and Alexander is unascertainable, the more so as legends were soon invented