AMONG THE GREEKS 79 



man alone generalizes and forms abstractions ; he 

 is physically superior in his erect position, in his 

 purest and largest blood supply, largest brain, 

 and highest temperature. 



How was this ascending gradation effected? 



Here we come to the second feature in Aris- 

 totle's theory, which is more or less transcenden- 

 tal or metaphysical — it is the idea of the devel- 

 opment of the potentiality of p>erfection into 

 actuality, the creation of form in matter, "Na- 

 ture does nothing without an aim." "She is al- 

 ways striving after the most beautiful that is 

 possible." Aristotle perceived a most marvelous 

 adaptation in the arrangement of the world and 

 felt compelled to assume intelligent Design as 

 the primary cause of things, by the perfection 

 and regularity which he observed in Nature. 

 Nothing, he held, which occurs regularly can be 

 the result of accident. This perfection is the out- 

 come of an all-pervading movement, which w^e, 

 in twentieth-century language, speak of as an 

 'internal perfecting tendency' or 'entelechy.' In 

 Aristotle's conception of ^movement,' as outlined 

 in his Physics, we find something very analogous 

 to our modern biological conception of transfor- 

 mation in development, for he analyzes 'move- 

 ment' as every change, as every realization of 

 what is possible, consisting in: {a) substantial 

 movement, origin and decay — as we should now 



