Thinking makes itself into passive understanding, that is, into what is for it the objective; and thus it here becomes plain to what extent the dictum nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu expresses Aristotle’s meaning. Aristotle, raising difficulties, goes on to ask, “If reason is simple and unaffected by impressions, and has nothing in common with other objects, how can it think, since thinking is certainly a state of receptivity?” That is to say, in thinking there is a reference to an object distinct from itself. “For it is when two objects have something in common that the one appears to produce and the other to receive an impression. There is a further difficulty, whether understanding can itself be the object of thought. In that case understanding would either be inherent in other things—unless it is the object of thought in a different sense from that in which other things are so, but there is only one sense in which things can be objects of thought—or, on the other hand, it would have something compounded with it, making it an object of thought as other things are. Now it has been already said that passivity is so determined that understanding is in potentiality all that thought is exercised on: but at the same time it is in actuality nothing before the exercise of thought.” That is to say, thought is implicitly the content of the object of what is thought, and in coming into existence it only coincides with itself; but the self-conscious understanding is not merely implicit, but essentially explicit, since it is within itself all things. That is an idealistic way of expressing it; and yet they say that Aristotle is an empiricist.
The passivity of understanding has therefore here only the sense of potentiality before actuality, and that is the great principle of Aristotle; in regard to this he brings forward at the end of the same chapter another much-decried illustration, which has been just as much misunderstood as the preceding. “Reason is like a book upon whose pages nothing is actually written;” that is, however, paper, but not a book. All Aristotle’s thoughts are overlooked, and only external illustrations such as this are comprehended. A book on which nothing is written everyone can understand. And the technical term is the well-known tabula rasa, which is to be found wherever Aristotle is spoken of: Aristotle is said to have alleged that the mind is a blank page, on which characters are first traced by external objects, so that thinking thus comes to it from without.[99] But that is the very opposite of what Aristotle says. Instead of the Notion being adhered to, casual comparisons such as these have been caught up here and there by the imagination, as if they expressed the matter itself. But Aristotle did not in the least intend that the analogy should be pushed to its furthest extent: the understanding is of a surety not a thing, and has not the passivity of a writing-tablet; it is itself the energy, which is not, as it would be in the case of a tablet, external to it. The analogy is therefore confined to this, that the soul has a content only in so far as actual thought is exercised. The soul is this book unwritten on, and the meaning consequently is that the soul is all things implicitly, but it is not in itself this totality; it is like a book that contains all things potentially, but in reality contains nothing before it is written on. Before real activity nothing truly exists; or “Understanding itself can enter thought, like the objects of thought in general. For in that which is without matter” (in mind), “the thinker” (the subjective) “and the thought” (the objective) “are the same; theoretical knowledge and that which comes to be known are the same. In that which is material, thinking is only in potentiality, so that understanding itself does not belong to it; for understanding is a potentiality without matter, but the object of thought exists in it,” while Nature contains the Idea only implicitly. It is plain from this that the above illustration has been taken in quite a false sense, utterly contrary to Aristotle’s meaning.
Until now we have spoken of the passive understanding, which is the nature of the soul, but also in equal degree its faculty of sense-perception and imagination. Aristotle now proceeds to distinguish active understanding from this, as follows (De Anima, III. 5): “In nature as a whole there is present in every species of things, on the one hand, matter, which in potentiality is the whole of this species, and, on the other hand, cause and energy, operative in all things, in the same way that art is related to matter. It therefore necessarily follows that in the soul also these different elements should be present. The faculty of understanding is thus, in one view of it, the capacity of becoming all things; but in another view it is the capacity of creating all things, as is done by an efficient power (ἕξις), light, for instance, which first causes the colours which exist in potentiality to exist in reality. This understanding is absolute (χωριστός), uncompounded, and not influenced from without, as it is essentially activity. For the active is always more in honour than the passive, and the principle more in honour than the matter that it forms. Knowledge, when in active exercise, is identical with the thing (πρᾶγμα) known; but what is in potentiality” (that is, external reason, imagination, sense-perception) “is certainly prior in respect of time in one and the same individual, but in the universal (ὅλως) it is not even so in respect of time. Active understanding is not such that it sometimes thinks and sometimes does not. When it is absolute, it is the one and only existence; and this alone is eternal and immortal. We, however, do not remember this process, because this understanding is unaffected from without; but the passive understanding is transitory, and without the former it is incapable of thought.”
The seventh and eighth chapters are expositions of the maxims contained in the fourth and fifth; they begin with these maxims, and have the appearance of being from the hand of a commentator. “The soul,” says Aristotle (De Anima, III. 8), “is in a certain sense the whole of existence. For existent objects are either perceived by the senses or thought; but knowledge itself is in a manner the object of knowledge, and perception the object of perception. What are known and perceived are either the things themselves or their forms. Knowledge and sense-perception are not the things themselves (the stone is not in the soul), but their form; so that the soul is like the hand. As this is the instrument by which we grasp instruments, so the understanding is the form by which we apprehend forms, and sense-perception the form of the objects cf sense.” Before this Aristotle had remarked (De Anima, III. 4): “It has been truly said that the soul is the place of ideas (τόπος εἰδῶν): not the whole soul, but only the thinking soul, and these ideas do not exist in the soul actually, but only potentially.” That is to say, the ideas are at first only quiescent forms, not activities, and so Aristotle is not a realist. But the understanding makes these forms, like those of external nature, its objects, its thoughts, its potentiality, Aristotle therefore says in the seventh chapter: “The understanding thinks the abstract (τὰ ἐν ἀφαιρέσει λεγόμενα), just as it conceives snubnosedness not as snubnosedness that cannot be separated from the flesh, but as hollowness.” Then in the eighth chapter Aristotle goes on to say: “But as no object is separated from its perceived dimensions, so in the forms perceived by sense there are also objects of thought, both abstract conceptions and the qualities (ἕξεις) and determinations of the objects of sense. In this way he who perceives nothing by his senses learns nothing and understands nothing; when he discerns anything (θεωρῇ), he must necessarily discern it as a pictorial conception, for such conceptions are like sense-perceptions, only without matter. In what way then are our primary ideas distinguished, so as not to be mistaken for conceptions? Or is it not the case also that other thoughts even are not pictorial conceptions, but only that they are never found unassociated with such conceptions?” Since what follows contains no answer to the questions raised here at the very end, this would seem an additional indication that these portions follow later.[100] Aristotle concludes the seventh chapter with the words: “Speaking generally, the understanding is the faculty which thinks things in their real activity. Whether, however, it can think the absolute or not, unless it be itself separated from the sensuous, we shall inquire later (ὕστερον).” This “later” Buhle considers to have reference to the “highest philosophy.”[101]
This identity of the subjective and objective, which is present in the active understanding—while finite things and mental states are respectively one separated from the other, because there the understanding is only in potentiality—is the highest point which speculation can reach: and in it Aristotle reverts to his metaphysical principles (p. 147), where he termed self-thinking reason absolute Thought, divine Understanding, or Mind in its absolute character. It is only in appearance that thought is spoken of as on a level with what is other than thought; this fashion of bringing what is different into conjunction certainly appears in Aristotle. But what he says of thought is explicitly and absolutely speculative, and is not on the same level with anything else, such as sense-perception, which has only potentiality for thought. This fact is moreover involved, that reason is implicitly the true totality, but in that case thought is in truth the activity which is independent and absolute existence; that is, the thought of Thought, which is determined thus abstractly, but which constitutes the nature of absolute mind explicitly. These are the main points which are to be taken note of in Aristotle with regard to his speculative ideas, which it is impossible for us, however, to treat in greater detail.
We have now to pass on to what follows, which is a practical philosophy, and in doing so we must first establish firmly the conception of desire, which is really the turning round of thought into its negative side, wherein it becomes practical. Aristotle (De Anima, III. 7 and 6) says: “The object of knowledge and active knowledge are one and the same; what is in potentiality is in the individual prior in point of time, although not so in itself. For all that comes into being originates from that which operates actively. The object perceived by sense appears as that which causes the faculty of perception in potentiality to become the faculty of perception in actuality, for the latter is not receptive of influence, and does not undergo change. On that account it has a different kind of movement from the ordinary, for movement, as we have seen (p. 163) is the activity of an unaccomplished end (ἐνέργεια ἀτελοῦς); pure activity (ἁπλῶς ἐνέργεια), on the contrary, is that of the accomplished end (τοῦ τετελεσμένον).”—“The simple thoughts of the soul are such that in regard to them there can be no falsity; but that in which there is falsity or truth is a combination of thoughts as constituting one conception; for example, ‘the diameter is incommensurate.’ Or if by mistake white has been stated to be not white, not-white has been brought into connection with it. All this process may, however, just as well be termed separation. But that which makes everything one is reason, which in the form of its thinking thinks the undivided in undivided time and with the undivided action of the soul.”—“Sense-perception resembles simple assertion and thought, but pleasant or unpleasant sense-perception has the relation of affirmation or negation,” therefore of the positive and negative determination of thought. “And to perceive the pleasant or unpleasant is to employ the activity” (spontaneity) “of the middle state of sense-perception upon good or evil, in so far as they are such. But desire and aversion are the same in energy; it is only in manifestation that they are different. To the reasoning soul pictorial conceptions take the place of sense-perceptions, and when the mind affirms or denies something to be good or bad, it desires or avoids its object. It has the relation both of unity and limit. The understanding,” as that which determines opposites, “recognizes the forms underlying pictorial conceptions; and in the same manner as what is desirable in them and what is to be avoided have been determined for it, so it also is determined independently of actual sense-perceptions when it is in mental conceptions. And when, in dealing with conception or thought, as if seeing them, it compares the future with the present and passes judgment accordingly, and determines what is pleasant or unpleasant in this respect; it desires or seeks to avoid it, and in general it finds itself in practical operation. But independently of action true and false are of the same character as good or evil.”
[b. Practical Philosophy.]
From this the conception of will, or the practical element is shown to us, and it has to be reckoned as still belonging to the Philosophy of Mind. Aristotle has treated it in several works which we now possess.
[α. Ethics.]
We have three great ethical works: the Nicomachean Ethics (Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια) in ten books, the Magna Moralia (Ἠθικὰ μεγάλα) in two books, and the Eudemean Ethics (Ἠθικὰ Εὐδήμια) in seven books; the last deals for the most part with particular virtues, while in the first two general investigations on the principles are contained. Just as the best that we even now possess in reference to psychology is what we have obtained from Aristotle, so is it with his reflections on the actual agent in volition, on freedom, and the further determinations of imputation, intention, &c. We must simply give ourselves the trouble to understand these, and to translate them into our own form of speech, conception and thought; and this is certainly difficult. Aristotle follows the same course here as in his Physics, determining one after the other, in the most thorough and accurate fashion, the many moments which appear in desire: the purpose, the decision, voluntary or forced action, the act of ignorance, guilt, moral responsibility, &c. I cannot enter upon this somewhat psychological presentation of the subject.[102] I shall only make the following remarks on the Aristotelian definitions.