468 



PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHY PERJURY. 



privation, inasmuch as the existence of a certain form 

 is founded on the exclusion of others. All change 

 or motion takes place in regard to substance, 

 quantity, quality, and place. There are three kinds 

 of substances those alternately in motion and at 

 rest, as the animals ; those perpetually in motion, as 

 the sky ; und those eternally stationary. The last, 

 in themselves immovable and imperishable, are 

 tin 1 source and origin of all motion. Among them 

 there must be one first being, unchangeable, which 

 acts without the intervention of any other being. 

 All that is proceeds from it ; it is the most perfect 

 intelligence God. The immediate action of this 

 first mover happy in the contemplation of himself 

 extends only to the heavens ; the other inferior 

 spheres are moved by other incorporeal and eternal 

 substances, which the popular belief adores as gods, 

 and to which it attributes bodies, contrary to their 

 nature. The soul is the principle of life in the 

 organic body, and is inseparable from the body. 

 As faculties of the soul, Aristotle enumerates the 

 faculty of generation and nutrition ; of sensation, 

 memory, and recollection ; the faculty of thinking, 

 or the understanding ; and the faculty of desiring, 

 which is divided into appetite and volition. The 

 ethical principles of Aristotle liave been often mis- 

 understood, partly on account of the degeneracy of 

 his school ; and he lias been considered a supporter 

 of the philosophy whose principle 'is pleasure; but 

 to Aristotle, the best and highest (i. e. that which is 

 desirable for itself) is the happiness which originates 

 from virtuous actions. Virtue, according to him, 

 consists in acting according to nature : by the 

 expression " according to nature," he means, keep- 

 ing the mean between the two extremes of the too 

 much and the too little. Thus valour, in his view 

 the first of virtues, is a mean between cowardice and 

 rashness ; temperance is an observance of the menn 

 in respect to sensual enjoyments. Human actions, 

 to be called moral, must be independent of external 

 motives; otherwise they are but phenomena, the 

 laws of whicli belong to physics, and are therefore 

 indifferent to the practical philosopher. Self-action, 

 and consequently the power to act or not to act, to 

 act in one way or another, is the condition of all 

 morality. Perfect happiness can be attained only in 

 political society or the state ; but the best form of 

 state polity must be determined by circumstances. 



The school of Aristotle (the peripatetic school) 

 continued at Athens uninterruptedly till the time of 

 Augustus. Among those who proceeded from it are 

 Theophrastus, author of several works on natural 

 history; Strato of Lampsacus, whose views are but 

 imperfectly known to us from some fragments pre- 

 served by Cicero and Plutarch; and Demetrius Pha- 

 lereus. No one of the philosophical schools of an- 

 tiquity maintained its influence so long as the peri- 

 patetic. Even down to modern times, its principles 

 served as the rule in philosophical inquiries, and some 

 countries still honour Aristotle as an infallible master 

 of wisdom. The Arabians did not first make him 

 known to the philosophers of modern Europe, but 

 they extended his authority. The acuteness and 

 profoundness which appear in his works, his dogma- 

 tic tone, his subtile distinctions, and the technical 

 language, first introduced by him into philosophy, 

 pleased them more than Plato's philosophical doubts 

 and allegorical language. But we find him in the 

 Christian church as early as the time of the Arian 

 controversy; and while the influence of Plato was 

 diminished by the heresies of Platonizing teachers, 

 that of Aristotle, which the commentaries of Boe- 

 thins on his translation of Aristotle's works contri- 

 buted to extend, was continually increasing. (See 

 ScAolatiics.) When the works of Aristotle again 



began to be read in the original language, a peripa 

 U-tic sect, differing from the scholastic, arose, in the 

 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which was divided 

 into the Averroists and Alexandrians (so called from 

 celebrated commentators on Aristotle). To the 

 former belonged Alex. Achillinus, Zimara, and Cae- 

 salpinus; to the latter, the famous Pomponatius and 

 others. 



PERIPETIA; an unexpected change which takes 

 place in the condition of the chief person of an epic 

 or dramatic poem, a novel, &c. Aristotle gives, as 

 an instance, the scene in CEdipus, in which the news 

 intended to relieve the king's fears, and to cheer him, 

 produces the contrary effect, by discovering to him 

 his origin. Necessary as the peripetia is for giving 

 interest to great compositions, a ludicrous effect is 

 often produced by young poets heaping misfortunes 

 upon their heroes, to surprise the reader with an 

 unexpected deliverance. The Germans call such 

 compositions Rettungsstucke (saving-pieces.) 



PERIPHERY. See Circle. 



PERIPNEUMONY. See Pneumony. 



PERIPTERAL TEMPLE. See Architecture. 



PERISTYLE. See Architecture. 



PERIZONIUS, JAMES, a learned Dutch philolo- 

 gian of the seventeenth century, born at Damme in 

 1651, studied at Deventer and Leyden, and became 

 professor of history, rhetoric, and Greek, at the latter 

 place, where he died in 1715. His historical and 

 philological works are numerous. The principal are 

 Animadversiones Historicee (1685), a treasure of 

 learning; Origines Babylonica et JEgyptiacas (1711); 

 editions of ./Elian's Various Histories, of the Minerva 

 of Sanctius, &c. 



PERJURY, by the common law of England, is a 

 crime committed by one who, being lawfully required 

 to depose the truth in any judicial proceeding, wil 

 fully swears falsely in a point material to the ques- 

 tion in dispute. It has, however, been held, that a 

 man may be indicted for perjury for swearing that he 

 believed a fact to be true, which he knew to be false. 

 The common law takes no notice of any false swear- 

 ing, but such as is committed in some court of jus- 

 tice, having power to administer the oath, or before 

 some officer or magistrate invested with similar 

 authority, in some proceeding relative to a civil. suit 

 or criminal prosecution; for the law esteems all other 

 oaths unnecessary, at least, and hence will not pun- 

 ish the breach of them. Thus, if a person swears 

 falsely in a voluntary affidavit in any extrajudicial 

 matter, he is not liable to any punishment. By nu- 

 merous statutes in England, the penalties of perjury 

 have been extended to false oaths by electors, bank- 

 rupts, insolvent debtors, &c. By the English law, 

 the evidence of one witness alone is not sufficient to 

 convict on an indictment for perjury; in such case, 

 there would be only one oath against another; but 

 it is sufficient, if corroborated by other independent 

 evidence. Subornation of perjury is the offence of 

 procuring a man to commit perjury. By the law of 

 Moses (Deuteronomy xix. 19), if a man testify falsely 

 against his brother, it shall be done unto him as he 

 had thought to do against his brother. And this is 

 the principle adopted in the laws of many of the 

 states of modern Europe. By the law of the Twelve 

 Tables, '' perjurii poena divina, exitium; hnmana, 

 dedecus." Gellius, xx. 1, mentions, that some per- 

 sons who had perjured themselves by giving false 

 testimony, were thrown from the Tarpeian rock. 

 The civil law punished perjury committed in swear- 

 ing by the name of God, in civil cases, by infamy 

 (Digest, lib.ii. tit. 4; Code, lib. xii. tit. 1); but the 

 punishment of perjury committed in swearing by the 

 safety of the emperor, was death (Code, iv. 1:2); by 

 the genius of the prince, beating and scourging (Dig. 



