Aristotle 27 



of animal without distaste, for each and all will reveal to 

 us something natural and something beautiful. 1 Absence of 

 haphazard and conduciveness of everything to an end are to 

 be found in Nature's \vorks in the highest degree, and the 

 resultant end of her generations and combinations is a form of 

 the beautiful. 



' If any person thinks the examination of the rest of the 

 animal kingdom an unworthy task, he must hold in like dis- 

 esteem the study of man. For no one can look at the primordia 

 of the human frame blood, flesh, bones, vessels, and the like- 

 without much repugnance. Moreover, when any one of the 

 parts or structures, be it which it may, is under discussion, it 

 must not be supposed that it is its material composition to 

 which attention is being directed or which is the object of the 

 discussion, but the relation of such part to the total form. . . . 



6 As every instrument and every bodily member subserves 

 some partial end, that is to say, some special action, so the 

 whole body must be destined to minister to some plenary 

 sphere of action. Thus the saw is made for sawing, since sawing 

 is a function, and not sawing for the saw. Similarly, the body 

 too must somehow or other be made for the soul, and each part 

 of it for some subordinate function to which it is adapted.' 2 



Aristotle is, in the fullest sense a ' vitalist '. He believes 

 that the presence of a certain peculiar principle of a non- 

 material character is essential for the exhibition of any of the 

 phenomena of life. This principle we may call soul, translating 

 his word \l/v\ij. Living things, like all else in nature, have, accord- 

 ing to Aristotle, an end or object. 4 Everything that Nature 

 makes,' he says, ' is means to an end. For just as human creations 

 are the products of art, so living objects are manifestly the pro- 

 ducts of an analogous cause or principle. . . . And that the heaven, 

 if it had an origin, was evolved and is maintained by such a cause, 



1 I have somewhat abbreviated this and the previous sentence. 



2 De partibus animalium, i. 5; 644 b 21. 



