e. The fifth treatise, finally, deals with the Sophistical Elenchi (σοφιστικοὶ ἔλεγχοι), or ‘On Refutations,’ as in the unconscious escape of thought in its categories to the material side of popular conception, it arrives at constant contradiction with itself. The sophistical elenchi betray the unconscious ordinary idea into these contradictions, and make it conscious of them, in order to entrap and puzzle it; they were mentioned by us in connection with Zeno, and the Sophists sought them out, but it was the Megarics who were specially strong in them. Aristotle goes through a number of such contradictions by the way of solving them; in so doing he proceeds quietly and carefully, and spares no pains, though they might have been made more dramatic. We have before (Vol. I. pp. 456-459) found specimens of these in treating of the Megarics, and we have seen how Aristotle solves such contradictions through distinction and determination.

Of these five parts of the Aristotelian Organon, what is produced in our ordinary systems of logic is, as a matter of fact, of the slightest and most trivial description, consisting as it does mainly of what is contained in the introduction of Porphyry. More particularly in the first parts, in the Interpretation and in the Analytics, this Aristotelian logic contains these representations of universal forms of thought, such as are now dealt with in ordinary logic, and really form the basis of what in modern times is known as logic. Aristotle has rendered a never-ending service in having recognized and determined the forms which thought assumes within us. For what interests us is the concrete thought immersed as it is in externalities; these forms constitute a net of eternal activity sunk within it, and the operation of setting in their places those fine threads which are drawn throughout everything, is a masterpiece of empiricism, and this knowledge is absolutely valuable. Even contemplation, or a knowledge of the numerous forms and modes assumed by this activity, is interesting and important enough. For however dry and contentless the enumeration of the different kinds of judgments and conclusions, and their numerous limitations may appear to us to be, and though they may not seem to serve their purpose of discovering the truth, at least no other science in opposition to this one can be elevated into its place. For instance, if it is held to be a worthy endeavour to gain a knowledge of the infinite number of animals, such as one hundred and sixty-seven kinds of cuckoo, in which one may have the tuft on his head differently shaped from another, or to make acquaintance with some miserable new species of a miserable kind of moss which is no better than a scab, or with an insect, vermin, bug, &c., in some learned work on entomology, it is much more important to be acquainted with the manifold kinds of movement present in thought, than to know about such creatures. The best of what is stated respecting the forms of judgment, conclusion, &c., in ordinary logic, is taken from the works of Aristotle; as far as details are concerned, much has been spun out and added to it, but the truth is to be found with Aristotle.

As regards the real philosophic nature of the Aristotelian logic, it has received in our text-books a position and significance as though it gave expression only to the activity of the understanding as consciousness; hence it is said to direct us how to think correctly. Thus it appears as though the movement of thought were something independent, unaffected by the object of thought; in other words, as if it contained the so-called laws of thought of our understanding, through which we attain to perception, but through a medium which was not the movement of things themselves. The result must certainly be truth, so that things are constituted as we bring them forth according to the laws of thought; but the manner of this knowledge has merely a subjective significance, and the judgment and conclusion are not a judgment and conclusion of things themselves. Now if, according to this point of view, thought is considered on its own account, it does not make its appearance implicitly as knowledge, nor is it without content in and for itself; for it is a formal activity which certainly is exercised, but whose content is one given to it. Thought in this sense becomes something subjective; these judgments and conclusions are in and for themselves quite true, or rather correct—this no one ever doubted; but because content is lacking to them, these judgments and conclusions do not suffice for the knowledge of the truth. Thus by logicians they are held to be forms whose content is something entirely different, because they have not even the form of the content; and the meaning which is given to them—namely that they are forms—is found fault with. The worst thing said of them, however, is that their only error is their being formal; both the laws of thought as such, and also its determinations, the categories, are either determinations of the judgment only, or merely subjective forms of the understanding, while the thing-in-itself is very different. But in that point of view and in the blame awarded the truth itself is missed, for untruth is the form of opposition between subject and object, and the lack of unity in them; in this case the question is not put at all as to whether anything is absolutely true or not. These determinations have certainly no empirical content, but thought and its movement is itself the content—and, indeed, as interesting a content as any other that can be given; consequently this science of thought is on its own account a true science. But here again we come across the drawback pertaining to the whole Aristotelian manner, as also to all succeeding logic—and that indeed in the highest degree—that in thought and in the movement of thought as such, the individual moments fall asunder; there are a number of kinds of judgment and conclusion, each of which is held to be independent, and is supposed to have absolute truth as such. Thus they are simply content, for they then have an indifferent, undistinguished existence, such as we see in the famous laws of contradiction, conclusions, &c. In this isolation they have, however, no truth; for their totality alone is the truth of thought, because this totality is at once subjective and objective. Thus they are only the material of truth, the formless content; their deficiency is hence not that they are only forms but rather that form is lacking to them, and that they are in too great a degree content. Thus as many individual qualities of a thing are not anything, such as red, hard, &c., if taken by themselves, but only in their unity constitute a real thing, so it is with the unity of the forms of judgment and conclusion, which individually have as little truth as such a quality, or as a rhythm or melody. The form of a conclusion, as also its content, may be quite correct, and yet the conclusion arrived at may be untrue, because this form as such has no truth of its own; but from this point of view these forms have never been considered, and the scorn of logic rests simply on the false assumption that there is a lack of content. Now this content is none other than the speculative Idea. Conceptions of the understanding or of reason constitute the essence of things, not certainly for that point of view, but in truth; and thus also for Aristotle the conceptions of the understanding, namely the categories, constitute the essential realities of Being. If they are thus in and for themselves true, they themselves are their own, and thus the highest content. But in ordinary logic this is not the case, and even as these are represented in the Aristotelian works they are only universal thought-determinations, between which the abstract understanding makes distinctions. This, however, is not the logic of speculative thought, i.e. of reason as distinguished from understanding; for there the identity of the understanding which allows nothing to contradict itself is fundamental. However little this logic of the finite may be speculative in nature, yet we must make ourselves acquainted with it, for it is everywhere discovered in finite relationships. There are many sciences, subjects of knowledge, &c., that know and apply no other forms of thought than these forms of finite thought, which constitute in fact the general method of dealing with the finite sciences. Mathematics, for instance, is a constant series of syllogisms; jurisprudence is the bringing of the particular under the general, the uniting together of both these sides. Within these relationships of finite determinations the syllogism has now, indeed, on account of its terms being three in number, been called the totality of these determinations, and hence by Kant (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 261) also the rational conclusion; but this syllogism addressed to the intelligence as it appears in the ordinary logical form, is only the intelligible form of rationality, and, as we saw above (p. 76), is very different from the rational syllogism proper. Aristotle is thus the originator of the logic of the understanding; its forms only concern the relationship of finite to finite, and in them the truth cannot be grasped. But it must be remarked that Aristotle’s philosophy is not by any means founded on this relationship of the understanding; thus it must not be thought that it is in accordance with these syllogisms that Aristotle has thought. If Aristotle did so, he would not be the speculative philosopher that we have recognized him to be; none of his propositions could have been laid down, and he could not have made any step forward, if he had kept to the forms of this ordinary logic.

Like the whole of Aristotle’s philosophy, his logic really requires recasting, so that all his determinations should be brought into a necessary systematic whole—not a systematic whole which is correctly divided into its parts, and in which no part is forgotten, all being set forth in their proper order, but one in which there is one living organic whole, in which each part is held to be a part, and the whole alone as such is true. Aristotle, in the Politics, for instance (supra, pp. 207-208), often gives expression to this truth. For this reason the individual logical form has in itself no truth, not because it is the form of thought, but because it is determinate thought, individual form, and to be esteemed as such. But as system and absolute form ruling this content, thought has its content as a distinction in itself, being speculative philosophy in which subject and object are immediately identical, and the Notion and the universal are the realities of things. Just as duty certainly expresses the absolute, but, as determinate, a determinate absolute which is only a moment and must be able again to abrogate its determination, the logical form which abrogates itself as this determinate in this very way gives up its claim to be in and for itself. But in this case logic is the science of reason, speculative philosophy of the pure Idea of absolute existence, which is not entangled in the opposition of subject and object, but remains an opposition in thought itself. Yet we certainly may allow that much in logic is an indifferent form.

At this point we would leave off as far as the Aristotelian philosophy is concerned, and from this it is difficult to break away. For the further we go into its details, the more interesting it becomes, and the more do we find the connection which exists among the subjects. The fulness with which I have set forth the principal content of the Aristotelian philosophy is justified both by the importance of the matter itself, because it offers to us a content of its own, and also by the circumstances already mentioned (p. 118), that against no philosophy have modern times sinned so much as against this, and none of the ancient philosophers have so much need of being defended as Aristotle.

One of the immediate followers of Aristotle was Theophrastus, born Ol 102, 2 (371 B.C.); though a man of distinction, he can still only be esteemed a commentator on Aristotle. For Aristotle is so rich a treasure-house of philosophic conceptions, that much material is found in him which is ready for further working upon, which may be put forward more abstractly, and in which individual propositions may be brought into prominence. However Aristotle’s manner of procedure, which is to take an empirical starting point of ratiocination [Raisonnement], and to comprehend this in the focus of the speculative Notion, is characteristic of his mind, without being one which, on its own account, can be freely elevated into a method and a principle. Thus of Theophrastus as of many others (Dicæarchus of Messina, for instance), amongst whom Strato of Lampsacus, the successor of Theophrastus, is best known, there is not much to tell. As regards Dicæarchus, Cicero says, (Tusc. Quæst. I. 31, 10) that he controverted the immortality of the soul, for he asserted that “the soul is no more than an empty name, and the whole of the capacities and powers with which we act and feel are equally extended over all living bodies, and inseparable from the body; for it is nothing but the body so constituted as to live and feel through a certain symmetry and proportion in its body.” Cicero gives in an historical manner a result as he made it comprehensible to himself, without any speculative conception. Stobæus (Eclog. phys. p. 796), on the other hand, quotes from Dicæarchus that he held the soul to be “a harmony of the four elements.” We have only a little general information to give of Strato, that he acquired great fame as a physicist, and that his conception of nature went upon mechanical lines, and yet not on those of Leucippus and Democritus, and later, of Epicurus; for, according to Stobæus (Eclog. phys. p. 298), he made warmth and cold into elements. Hence, if what is said of him is accurate, he was most unfaithful to the beliefs of Aristotle, because he led everything back to mechanism and chance and did away with the immanent end, without accepting the false teleology of modern times. At least, Cicero (De nat. Deor. I. 13) relates of him that he maintained that “divine strength lies altogether in nature, which has in itself the causes of origination, of growth, and of decay, but lacks all sensation and conformation.” The other Peripatetics occupied themselves more with working up individual doctrines of Aristotle, with bringing out his works in a commentated form, which is more or less rhetorical in character, though similar in content. But in practical life the Peripatetic school maintained as the principle of happiness, the unity of reason and inclination. We thus may set aside any further expansion of the Peripatetic philosophy, because it has no longer the same interest, and later on tended to become a popular philosophy (Vol. I. p. 479, Vol. II. p. 130); in this mode it no longer remained an Aristotelian philosophy, although this, too, as what is really speculative, must coincide most closely with actuality. This decay of the Aristotelian philosophy is, indeed, closely connected with the circumstance already mentioned (pp. 126-128), that the Aristotelian writings soon disappeared, and that the Aristotelian philosophy did not retain its place so much through these documents as through the traditions in the school, whereby they soon underwent material changes; and amplifications of Aristotle’s doctrines were brought about, as to which it is not known whether some may not have slipped into what pass for his works.

Since Aristotle’s leading thought has penetrated all spheres of consciousness, and this isolation in the determination through the Notion, because it is likewise necessary, contains in every sphere the profoundest of true thoughts, Aristotle, to anticipate here the external history of his philosophy as a whole, for many centuries was the constant mainstay of the cultivation of thought. When in the Christian West science disappeared amongst the Christians, the fame of Aristotle shone forth with equal brilliance amongst the Arabians, from whom, in later times, his philosophy was again passed over to the West. The triumph which was celebrated upon the revival of learning, on account of the Aristotelian philosophy having been expelled from the schools, from the sciences, and specially from theology, as from the philosophy which deals with absolute existence, must be regarded in two different aspects. In the first place we must remember that it was not the Aristotelian philosophy which was expelled, so much as the principle of the science of theology which supported itself thereon, according to which the first truth is one which is given and revealed—an hypothesis which is once for all a fundamental one, and by which reason and thought have the right and power to move to and fro only superficially. In this form the thought which was awakened in the Middle Ages reconstructed its theology more especially, entered into all dialectic movements and determinations, and erected an edifice where the material that was given was only superficially worked up, disposed and secured. The triumph over this system was thus a triumph over that principle, and consequently the triumph of free, spontaneous thought. But another side of this triumph is the triumph of the commonplace point of view that broke free from the Notion and shook off the yoke of thought. Formerly, and even nowadays, enough has been heard of Aristotle’s scholastic subtleties; in using this name, men thought that they had a right to spare themselves from entering on abstraction, and, in place of the Notion, they thought that it justified them in seeing, hearing, and thus making their escape to what is called healthy human understanding. In science, too, in place of subtle thoughts, subtle sight has commenced; a beetle or a species of bird is distinguished with as great minuteness as were formerly conceptions and thoughts. Such subtleties as whether a species of bird is red or green in colour, or has a more or less perfect tail, are found more easy than the differences in thought; and in the meantime, until a people has educated itself up to the labour of thought, in order to be able thus to support the universal, the former is a useful preparation, or rather it is a moment in this course of culture.

But inasmuch as the deficiency in the Aristotelian philosophy rests in the fact, that after the manifold of phenomena was through it raised into the Notion, though this last again fell asunder into a succession of determinate Notions, the unity of the absolute Notion which unites them was not emphasized, and this is what succeeding time had to accomplish. What now appears is that the unity of the Notion which is absolute existence, makes its appearance as necessity, and it presents itself first as the unity of self-consciousness and consciousness, as pure thought. The unity of existence as existence is objective unity, thought, as that which is thought. But unity, as Notion, the implicitly universal negative unity, time as absolutely fulfilled time, and in its fulfilment as being unity, is pure self-consciousness. Hence we see it come to pass, that pure self-consciousness makes itself reality, but, at the same time, it first of all does so with subjective significance as a self-consciousness that has taken up its position as such, and that separates itself from objective existence, and hence is first of all subject to a difference which it does not overcome.

Here we have concluded the first division of Greek philosophy, and we have now to pass to the second period. The first period of Greek philosophy extended to Aristotle, to the attainment of a scientific form in which knowledge has reached the standing of free thought. Thus in Plato and Aristotle the result was the Idea; yet we saw in Plato the universal made the principle in a somewhat abstract way as the unmoved Idea; in Aristotle, on the other hand, thought in activity became absolutely concrete as the thought which thinks itself. The next essential, one which now is immediately before us, must be contained in that into which Philosophy under Plato and Aristotle had formed itself. This necessity is none other than the fact that the universal must now be proclaimed free for itself as the universality of the principle, so that the particular may be recognized through this universal; or the necessity of a systematic philosophy immediately enters in, what we formerly called one in accordance with the unity of the Notion. We may speak of the Platonic and Aristotelian systems, but they are not in the form of a system; for that it is requisite that one principle should be maintained and consistently carried through the particular. In the perfect complex of the conception of the universe as it is to Aristotle, where everything is in the highest form of scientific knowledge led back to what is speculative, however empiric may be his manner of setting to work, there certainly is one principle brought forward, and that a speculative one, though it is not brought forward as being one. The nature of the speculative has not been explicitly brought to consciousness as the Notion—as containing in itself the development of the manifold nature of the natural and spiritual universe, consequently it is not set forth as the universal, from which the particular was developed. Aristotle’s logic is really the opposite of this. He in great measure passes through a series of the living and the dead, makes them confront his objective, that is, conceiving thought, and grasps them in his understanding; each object is on its own account a conception which is laid open in its determinations, and yet he also brings these reflections together, and thereby is speculative. If even Plato on the whole proceeded in an empiric way, taking up this and that idea, each of which is in turn examined, with Aristotle this loose method of procedure appears still more clearly. In the Aristotelian teaching the Idea of the self-reflecting thought is thus grasped as the highest truth; but its realization, the knowledge of the natural and spiritual universe, constitutes outside of that Idea a long series of particular conceptions, which are external to one another, and in which a unifying principle, led through the particular, is wanting. The highest Idea with Aristotle consequently once more stands only as a particular in its own place and without being the principle of his whole philosophy. Hence the next necessity in Philosophy is that the whole extent of what is known must appear as one organization of the Notion; that in this way the manifold reality may be related to that Idea as the universal, and thereby determined. This is the standpoint which we find in this second period.

A systematic philosophy such as this becomes in the first place dogmatism, in antagonism to which, because of its one-sided character, scepticism immediately arises. In the same way the French call what is dogmatic systématique, and système that in which all the conceptions must consistently proceed from one determination; hence to them systématique is synonymous with one-sided. But the philosophies that ensue are one-sided, because in them it was only the necessity of one principle that was recognized, without their meanwhile developing from themselves, as might well have come to pass in and for itself, the Idea as the real universal, and thus comprehending the world in such a way that the content is only grasped as the determination of the self-reflective thought. Hence this principle stands up formally and abstractly, and the particular is not yet deduced from it, for the universal is only applied to the particular and the rules for this application sought out. In Aristotle the Idea is at least implicitly concrete, as the consciousness of the unity of subjective and objective, and therefore it is not one-sided. Should the Idea be truly concrete, the particular must be developed from it. The other relation would be the mere bringing of the particular under the universal, so that both should be mutually distinguished; in such a case the universal is only a formal principle, and such a philosophy is therefore one-sided. But the true difficulty is that the two endeavours, the development of the particular from the Idea, and the bringing of the particular under the universal, collide with one another. The manifestations of the physical and spiritual world must first, from their respective sides, be prepared for and worked into the Notion, so that the other sciences can form therefrom universal laws and principles. Then for the first time can speculative reason present itself in determinate thoughts, and bring perfectly to consciousness the inwardly existing connection between them. As dogmatic, however, those philosophies, it may be further said, are assertive likewise, because in such a method the principle is only asserted and is not truly proved. For a principle is demanded under which everything is subsumed; thus it is only pre-supposed as the first principle. Before this we have had abstract principles such as pure Being, but here the particular, with which begins the distinction from what is different, became posited as the purely negative. That necessity, on the other hand, makes for a universal which must likewise be in the particular, so that this should not be set aside, but should have its determinate character through the universal.