Notes, i. I. 143 



reaches E, the conception of which was his starting-point, as its material realisation 

 is his end. 



6. (Cf. D.G. et C. ii. 9 and 10.) The following is a brief abstract of A.'s views. The 

 only motion capable of being eternal is motion in a circle ; and the only element 

 endowed with a rotatory motion is the celestial aether (cf. ii. I, Note 2). The heavenly 

 bodies consist of this ; and they alone are individually eternal. The Divinity, how- 

 ever, wishing to give the things of earth as near an approach to eternity as is com- 

 patible with their being made of other elements than aether, caused their motions to 

 be so affected by that of the celestial bodies as to simulate rotation in the only way 

 possible, namely by a cyclical arrangement of their serial phenomena. Not only is 

 this manifested in the periodicity of many phenomena (Z>. G. iv. 10) ; but still more in 

 the successive stages of the evolution of organisms, these stages being so arranged as 

 to form a circle. Germ, foetus, infant, man, and then germ again, and so on in eternal 

 succession. Thus a simulacrum of eternity is impressed on even perishable things in 

 the only way possible for them {D.A. ii. 4, 4 ; D.G. ii, I, 3); an eternity however 

 which differs from, that of the celestial bodies, in that it does not attach to the individual 

 but to the species. For in the cycle — germ, foetus, man, germ — it is not the same 

 germ, but only a similar one, in which the circle is completed. Each term in such a 

 cycle is at once the antecedent and the consequent of all the rest. Man necessarily 

 presupposes germ, and germ as necessarily presupposes m^n. Any hypothetical pro- 

 position then that states the necessary relation of any two of the terms —e.g. if there 

 is to be a man there must necessarily be a germ — is capable of simple conversion 

 —viz. if there is to be a germ there must necessarily be a man. 



By the " propositions expressing hypothetical necessity and capable of simple con- 

 version" A. means, then, all those in which two stages in the cyclical evolution 

 of an organism are placed as antecedent and consequent. By the "cause which 

 determines this " he may mean either the action of the heavenly bodies upon terrestrial 

 bodies ; or possibly, going a stage farther back, the purpose of the Divinity in the 

 construction of the world. 



6. The older physiologists held that the characters of an animal are determined by 

 the physical causes that bring about its evolution, while A. holds that the characters 

 determine the mode of evolution. The older writers therefore placed the evolution in 

 the foreground, while A. places there the characters (cf. i. i, Note 27). 



7. Very similar to this is the explanation proposed by H. Spencer {Biol. ii. ch. 15), in 

 which he attributes the segmentation of the vertebral column to the alternate pressures 

 and tensions which would necessarily be produced by the lateral undulations of an 

 animal with an originally uniform notochord. 



8. The text is doubtless corrupt in this passage, and the exact meaning difficult to 

 determine. So far as I can decipher it by the light of other passages {Phys. ii. 4 — 6. 

 Metaph. vi. 7 — 9) the general drift is as follows. The teleological position — this is 

 made as intelligent design would have made it, and therefore "was made by such — would 

 clearly be untenable, could it be shown that a similar object was undoubtedly at times 

 produced simply as the result of accident or chance. Now Aristotle admits that such 

 is sometimes the case, and gives the restoration of health as an example. 



How is this difficulty to be met ? In the first place, says Aristotle, such an occurrence 

 is quite exceptional. No chance could possibly produce a statue, or, to take Paley's 

 instance, a watch. All those results of art, that are produced from a purely inert 

 material, a material that is without any capacity for self-motion (ofe KiveTadai v<p' avT^s\ 

 are quite beyond the power of chance. It is only in the case of such bodies as possess 



