204 



NATURE 



[April 24, 19 13 



Plato, Leibnitz, Spinoza, or Descartes. Moreover, it 

 is not only the special training or prior avocation of 

 the philosopher that so affects his mind. In divers 

 historical periods the rapid progress or the diffused 

 study of a particular science has moulded the philo- 

 sophy of the time. So on a great scale in the present 

 day does biology ; so did an earlier phase of evolu- 

 tionary biology affect Hegel ; and in like manner, in 

 the great days of Dalton and Lavoisier, did chemistry 

 help, according to John Stuart Mill, to suggest a 

 "chemistry of the mind" to the "association " psycho- 

 logists? A certain philosopher, 6 in dealing with this 

 theme, begins by telling us that "Mathematics was 

 the only science that had outgrown its merest in- 

 fancy among the Greeks." Now it is my particular 

 purpose to-day to show, from Aristotle, that this is 

 not the case. Whether Aristotle's biological fore- 

 runners were many or few, whether or not the Hippo- 

 cratics (for instance) had failed to raise physiology 

 and anatomy to the dignity of a science, or, having 

 done so, had only reserved them, as a secret cult, to 

 their own guild; in short, whether Aristotle's know- 

 ledge is in the main the outcome of his solitary 

 labours, or whether, as Leibnitz said of Descartes, 

 praeclare in rem suam vcrtit aliorum cogitata, it is 

 at least certain that biology was in his hands a true 

 and comprehensive science only second to the mathe- 

 matics of his age. 



The influence, then, of scientific study, and in par- 

 ticular of biology, is not far to seek in Aristotle's case. 

 It has ever since been a course or plan to compare 

 the State, the body politic, with an organism, but it 

 was Aristotle who first employed the metaphor. 

 Again, in his exhaustive accumulation and treatment 

 of facts, his method is that of the observer, of the 

 scientific student, and is in the main inductive. Just 

 as, in order to understand fishes, he gathered all 

 kinds together, recording their forms, their structure, 

 and their habits, so he did with the constitutions of 

 cities and of States. Those two hundred and more 

 CToXiTfim which Aristotle laboriously compiled, after 

 a method of which Plato would never have dreamed, 

 were to form a natural history of constitutions and 

 governments. And if we see in his concrete, objective 

 treatment of the theme a kinship with Spencer's 

 descriptive sociology, again, I think, a difference is 

 soon apparent between Spencer's colder catalogue of 

 facts and Aristotle's more loving insight into the 

 doings* and into the hearts, into the motives and the 

 ambitions, of men. 



But whatever else Aristotle is, he is the great 

 Vitalist, the student of the body with the life thereof, 

 the historian of the soul. 



Now we have already seen how and where Aristotle 

 fixed the soul's seat and local habitation. But the 

 soul has furthermore to be studied according to its 

 attributes, or analysed into its "parts." Its attri- 

 butes can be variously analysed, as in his " Ethics " 

 Aristotle shows. But it is in the light of biology 

 alone that what amounts to a scientific analysis, such 

 as is developed in the " De Anima," becomes possible ; 

 and in that treatise, it is only after a long preliminary 

 physiological discussion that Aristotle at length for- 

 mulates his distinctive psychology. There is a prin- 

 ciple of continuity, a trvvex*ia that runs through the 

 scale of structure in living things, and so, little by 

 little, by imperceptible steps, does nature make the 

 passage from plant, through animal, to man : it is 

 with all the knowledge summarised in a great 

 passage of the "Natural History," and embodied in 

 this broad generalisation, that he afterwards proceeds 

 to indicate the same gradation in psychology - , and to 

 draw from it a kindred classification of the soul. 



« Ritchie, " Darwin and Hegel, " p. 39. 



NO. 2269, VOL. 91] 



But observe that, though Aristotle follows the com- 

 parative method, and ends by tracing in the lower 

 forms the phenomena incipient in the higher, he does 

 not adopt the method so familiar to us all, on which 

 Spencer insisted, of first dealing with the lowest, and 

 of studying in successive chronological order the suc- 

 cession of higher forms. The historical method, the 

 realistic method of the nineteenth century, the method 

 to which we insistently cling, is not the only one. 

 Indeed, even in modern biology, if we compare, for 

 instance, the embryology of to-day with that of thirty 

 years ago, we shall see that the pure historical method 

 is relaxing something of its fascination and its hold. 

 Rather has Aristotle continually in mind the highest of 

 organisms, in the light of the integral and constituent 

 phenomena of which must the less perfect be under- 

 stood. So was it with one whom the Lord Chancellor 

 of England has called "the greatest master of abstract 

 thought since Aristotle died." For Hesjel, as I feel 

 sure for Aristotle, Entwicklung was not a "time- 

 process but a thought-process." To Hegel, an actual, 

 realistic, outward, historical evolution seemed but a 

 clumsy and materialistic philosophy of nature. In a 

 sense, the "time-difference has no interest for 

 thought." And if the lower animals help us to 

 understand ourselves, it is in a light reflected from 

 the studv of man. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



Cambridge. — At a meeting of the electors to the 

 Plumian professorship of astronomy held on April 19 

 Mr. A. S. Lddington, chief assistant at the Royal 

 Observatory, Greenwich, was elected into the pro- 

 fessorship, in succession to the late Sir George Dar- 

 win. 



The adjudicators of the Adams Prize for the period 

 1911-12 consider that the two essays submitted to 

 them with the following titles are of distinction : 

 "The Theory of Radiation," by Mr. S. B. McLaren, 

 and "The Fundamental Spectra of Astrophysics," by 

 Dr. J. VV. Nicholson, between whom the prize is 

 divided in equal shares. 



Oxford. — The Romanes lecture will be delivered 

 on Thursday, May 8, at 3 p.m., by Sir W. M. Ram- 

 say. The subject is "The Imperial Peace: an Ideal 

 Pervading European History." 



The Halley lecture will be delivered on Thursday, 

 May 22, at 8.30 p.m., by Dr. Louis A. Bauer, of the 

 Carnegie Institution of Washington, U.S.A. Sub- 

 ject, "The Earth's Magnetism." The lecture will be 

 illustrated by lantern slides. 



On Tuesday, April 22, Convocation authorised the 

 expenditure of a sum not exceeding 6000/. for the 

 erection of additional buildings forming an extension 

 of the School of Rural Economy. The money will 

 be provided partly by a grant from the Development 

 Fund of the Treasury, and partly out of»the sum 

 presented to the University in 1912 by Mr. Walter 

 Morrison for the promotion of the study of agricul- 

 ture. 





Under the title Educagao, a new fortnightly twelve- 

 page magazine has been started in Portugal, dealing 

 with elementary education, and we have now received 

 the current issues, which commence with January. 

 It contains original articles and reviews, an interest- 

 ing feature being the series of experiments in elemen- 

 tary physics classed under two categories, namely 

 experiments performed with simple apparatus (such 

 as coffee-pots, kitchen utensils, and the like) and ex- 

 periments suited for a laboratory. 



