«It is clear then from what has been said that there is a substance which is eternal and unmovable and separate from sensible things, It has been shown that this substance cannot have any magnitude, but is without parts and indivisible. . . . But it has also been shown that it is impassive and unalterable; for all the other changes are posterior to change of place» (1073a).
God does not have the attributes of a Christian Providence, for it would derogate from His perfection to think about anything except what is perfect, i.e. Himself. «It must be of itself that the divine thought thinks (since it is the most excellent of things), and its thinking is a thinking on thinking.» (1074b). We must infer that God does not know of the existence of our sublunary world. Aristotle, like Spinoza, holds that, while men must love God, it is impossible that God should love men.
God is not definable as «the unmoved mover.» On the contrary, astronomical considerations lead to the conclusion that there are either forty-seven or fifty-five unmoved movers (1074a). The relation of these to God is not made clear; indeed the natural interpretation would be that there are forty-seven or fifty-five gods. For after one of the above passages on God Aristotle proceeds: «We must not ignore the question whether we are to suppose one such substance or more than one,» and at once embarks upon the argument that leads to the fortyseven or fifty-five unmoved movers.
The conception of an unmoved mover is a difficult one. To a mod-
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ern mind, it would seem that the cause of a change must be a previous change, and that, if the universe were ever wholly static, it would remain so eternally. To understand what Aristotle means, we must take account of what he says about causes. There are, according to him, four kinds of causes, which were called, respectively, material, formal, efficient, and final. Let us take again the man who is making a statue. The material cause of the statue is the marble, the formal cause is the essence of the statue to be produced, the efficient cause is the contact of the chisel with the marble, and the final cause is the end that the sculptor has in view. In modern terminology, the word «cause» would be confined to the efficient cause. The unmoved mover may be regarded as a final cause: it supplies a purpose for change, which is essentially an evolution towards likeness with God.
I said that Aristotle was not by temperament deeply religious, but this is only partly true. One could, perhaps, interpret one aspect of his religion, somewhat freely, as follows:
God exists eternally, as pure thought, happiness, complete selffulfilment, without any unrealized purposes. The sensible world, on the contrary, is imperfect, but it has life, desire, thought of an imperfect kind, and aspiration. All living things are in a greater or less degree aware of God, and are moved to action by admiration and love of God. Thus God is the final cause of all activity. Change consists in giving form to matter, but, where sensible things are concerned, a substratum of matter always remains. Only God consists of form without matter. The world is continually evolving towards a greater degree of form, and thus becoming progressively more like God. But the process cannot be completed, because matter cannot be wholly eliminated. This is a religion of progress and evolution, for God’s static perfection moves the world only through the love that finite beings feel for Him. Plato was mathematical, Aristotle was biological; this accounts for the differences in their religions.
This would, however, be a one-sided view of Aristotle’s religion; he has also the Greek love of static perfection and preference for contemplation rather than action. His doctrine of the soul illustrates this aspect of his philosophy.
Whether Aristotle taught immortality in any form, or not, was a vexed question among commentators. Averroes, who held that he did not, had followers in Christian countries, of whom the more
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extreme were called Epicureans, and whom Dante found in hell. In fact, Aristotle’s doctrine is complex, and easily lends itself to misunderstandings. In his book On the Soul, he regards the soul as bound up with the body, and ridicules the Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration (407b). The soul, it seems, perishes with the body: «it indubitably follows that the soul is inseparable from its body» (413a); but he immediately adds: «or at any rate certain parts of it are.» Body and soul are related as matter and form: «the soul must be a substance in the sense of the form of a material body having life potentially within it. But substance is actuality, and thus soul is the actuality of a body as above characterized» (412a). Soul «is substance in the sense which corresponds to the definitive formula of a thing’s essence. That means that it is the ‘essential whatness’ of a body of the character just assigned» (i.e. having life) (412b). «The soul is the first grade of actuality of a natural body having life potentially in it. The body so described is a body which is organized (412a). To ask whether soul and body are one is as meaningless as to ask whether the wax and the shape given it by the stamp are one (412b). Self-nutrition is the only psychic power possessed by plants (413a). The soul is the final cause of the body (414a).
In this book, he distinguishes between «soul» and «mind,» making mind higher than soul, and less bound to the body. After speaking of the relation of soul and body, he says: «The case of mind is different; it seems to be an independent substance implanted within the soul and to be incapable of being destroyed» (408b). Again: «We have no evidence as yet about mind or the power to think; it seems to be a widely different kind of soul, differing as what is eternal from what is perishable; it alone is capable of existence in isolation from all other psychic powers. All the other parts of soul, it is evident from what we have said, are, in spite of certain statements to the contrary, incapable of separate existence» (413b). The mind is the part of us that understands mathematics and philosophy; its objects are timeless, and therefore it is regarded as itself timeless. The soul is what moves the body and perceives sensible objects; it is characterized by self-nutrition, sensation, thinking, and motivity (413b); but the mind has the higher function of thinking, which has no relation to the body or to the senses. Hence the mind can be immortal, though the rest of the soul cannot.
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To understand Aristotle’s doctrine of the soul. we must remember that the soul is the «form» of the body, and that spatial shape is one kind of «form.» What is there in common is hte conferring of unity upon a certain amount of matter. The part of a block of marble which afterwards becomes a statue is, as yet, not sparated from the rest of the marble; it is not yet a «thing,» and has not yet any unity. After the sculptor has made the statue, it has unity, which it derives from its shape. Now the esential feature of the soul, in virtue of which it is the «form» of the body, is that it makes the body an organic whole, having purposes as a unit. A single organ has purposes lying outside itself; the eye, in isolation, cannot see. Thus many things can be said in which an animal or plant as a whole is the subject, which cannot be said about any part of it. It is in this sense that organization, or form, confers substantiality. That which confers substantiality upon a plant or animal is what Aristotle calls it «soul.» But «mind» is something different, less intimately bound up with the body; perhaps it is a part of the soul, but it is possessed by only a small minority of living beings (415a). Mind as speculation cannot be the cause of movement, for it never thinks about what is practicable, and never says what is to be avoided or what pursued (432b).
A similar doctrine, though with a slight change of terminology, is set forth in the Nicomachean Ethics. There is in the soul one element that is rational, and that is irrational. The irrational part is twofold: the vegetative, which is found in everything living, even in plants, and the appetitive, which exists in all animals (1102b). The life of the rational soul consists in contemplation, which is the completehappiness of man, though not fully attainable. «Such a life would be too high for man; for it is not in so far as he is man that he will live so, but in so far as something divine is present in him; and by so much as this is superior to our composite nature is its activity superior to that which is the exercise of the other kind of virtue (the practical kind). If reason is divine, then, in comparison with man, the life in accordance with it is divine in comparison in human life. But we must not follow those who advise us, being men, to think of human things, and being mortal, of mortal things, but must, so far as
