not to pay you until I had gained it; and if I gain it, my demand is, that I may not pay you. The master retorted the argument, saying-If you lose, you must pay; if you gain, you must also pay; for our bargain is, that you shall pay me after the first cause that you have gained. It is evident that all this turns on an ambiguity. Aristotle teaches how to remove it, by putting the necessary terms in the argument. A sum is not due until the day appointed for its payment: The day appointed is that when a cause shall have been gained: No cause has yet been gained: Therefore the day appointed has not yet arrived:- ple instituted a ridiculous action. The master, too, had no right to demand anything, since the day appointed had not arrived. He must wait until the disciple had pleaded some other cause. Suppose a conquering people were to stipulate that they would restore to the conquered only one half of their ships; then to have them sawed in two, and having thus given back the exact half, were to pretend that they had fulfilled the treaty. It is evident that this would be a very criminal equivocation. Aristotle did, then, render a great service to mankind, by preventing all ambiguity; for this it is which causes all misunderstandings in philosophy, in theology, and in public affairs. The pretext for the unfortunate war of 1756 was an equivocation respecting Acadia.* It is true that natural good sense, combined with the habit of reasoning, may dispense with Aristotle's rules. A man who has a good ear and voice may sing well without musical rules; but it is better to know them. * Now Nova Scotia.-T. His Physics. They are but little understood; but it is more than probable that Aristotle understood himself, and was understood in his own time. We are strangers to the language of the Greeks; we do not attach to the same words the same ideas. For instance, when he says, in his seventh chapter, that the principles of bodies are matter, privation, and form, he seems to talk egregious nonsense; but such is not the case. Matter, with him, is the first principle of everything-the subject of everything-indifferent to everything. Form is essential to its becoming any certain thing. Privation is that which distinguishes any being from all those things which are not in it. Matter may, indifferently, become a rose or an apple; but, when it is an apple or a rose, it is deprived of all that would make it silver or lead. Perhaps this truth was not worth the trouble of repeating; but we have nothing here but what is quite intelligible, and nothing at all impertinent. 66 expres The act of that which is in power," also appears a ridiculous phrase, though it is no more so than the one just noticed. Matter may become whatever you will-fire, earth, water, vapour, metal, mineral, animal, tree, flower. This is all that is meant by the sion, act in power. So that there was nothing ridiculous to the Greeks in saying that motion was an act of power, since matter may be moved; and it is very likely that Aristotle understood thereby that motion was not essential to matter. Aristotle's physics must necessarily have been very bad in detail. This was common to all philosophers, until the time when the Galileos, the Torricellis, the Guerickes, the Drebels, and the Academy del Cimento, began to make experiments. Natural philosophy is a mine which cannot be explored without instruments which were unknown to the ancients. They remained on the brink of the abyss, and reasoned upon without seeing its contents. Aristotle's Treatise on Animals. His researches relative to animals were, on the contrary, the best book of antiquity, because here Aristotle made use of his eyes. Alexander furnished him with all the rare animals of Europe, Asia, and Africa. This was one fruit of his conquests. That hero spent in this way immense sums, which at this day would terrify all the guardians of the royal treasury, and which should immortalise Alexander's glory, of which we have already spoken. At the present day, a hero, when he has the misfortune to make war, can scarcely give any encouragement to the sciences; he must borrow money of a Jew, and consult other Jews, in order to make the substance of his subjects flow into his coffer of the Danaïdes, whence it escapes through a thousand openings. Alexander sent to Aristotle elephants, rhinoceroses, tigers, lions, crocodiles, gazelles, eagles, ostriches, &c.; and we, when by chance a rare animal is brought to our fairs, go and admire it for sixpence, and it dies before we know anything about it.* Of the Eternal World. Aristotle expressly maintains, in his book on heaven, chap. xi., that the world is eternal: this was the opinion of all antiquity, excepting the Epicureans. He admitted a God-a first mover; and defined him to be "one, eternal, immoveable, indivisible, without qualities."+ He must, therefore, have regarded the world as emanating from God, as the light emanates from the sun and is co-existent with it. About the celestial spheres, he was as ignorant as all the rest of the philosophers. Copernicus was not yet come. The French government has effectually wiped away this reproach by the establishment of the National Museum, and the Jardin des Plantes, the finest collection in the world.-T. + Book vii. chap. 12. His Metaphysics. God being the first mover, he gives motion to the soul. But what is God, and what is the soul, according to him? The soul is an entelechia.* It is, says he, a principle and an act-a nourishing, feeling, and reasoning power. This can only mean that we have the faculties of nourishing ourselves, of feeling, and of reasoning. The Greeks no more knew what an entelechia was than the South-sea islanders; nor have our doctors any more knowledge of what a soul is. His Morals. Aristotle's morals, like all others, are very good; for there are not two systems of morality. Those of Confucius, of Zoroaster, of Pythagoras, of Aristotle, of Epictetus, of Antonine, are absolutely the same. God has placed in every breast the knowledge of good, with some inclination for evil. Aristotle says, that to be virtuous, three things are necessary nature, reason, and habit; and nothing is more true. Without a good disposition, virtue is too difficult: reason strengthens it; and habit renders good actions as familiar as a daily exercise to which one is accustomed. He enumerates all the virtues, and does not fail to place friendship among them. He distinguishes friendship between equals, between relatives, between guests, and between lovers. Friendship springing from the rights of hospitality is no longer known amongst us. That which among the ancients was the sacred bond of society, is, with us, nothing but an innkeeper's reckoning; and as for lovers, it is very rarely now-a-days that virtue has any thing to do with love. We think we owe nothing to a woman to whom we have a thousand times promised everything. It is a melancholy reflection, that our first doctors have never ranked friendship among the virtues-have scarcely ever recommended friendship; but, on the *Book ii. chap. 2. contrary, have often seemed to breathe enmity, like tyrants, who dread all associations. It is, moreover, with very good reason that Aristotle fixes all the virtues between the two extremes. He was, perhaps, the first who assigned them this place. He expressly says, that piety is the medium between atheism and superstition. His Rhetoric. It was, probably, his rules for rhetoric and poetry that Cicero and Quintilian had in view. Cicero, in his Orator, says, that "no one had more science, sagacity, invention, or judgment." Quintilian goes so far as to praise, not only the extent of his knowledge, but also the suavity of his elocution-suavitatem eloquendi. Aristotle would have an orator well-informed respecting laws, finances, treaties, fortresses, garrisons, provisions, and merchandise. The orators in the parliaments of England, the diets of Poland, the states of Sweden, the pregadi of Venice, &c. would not find these lessons of Aristotle unprofitable; to other nations, perhaps, they would be so. He would have his orator know the passions and manners of men, and the humours of every condition. I do not think there is a single nicety of the art which has escaped him. He particularly recommends the citing of instances where public affairs are spoken of; nothing has so great an effect on the minds of men. What he says on this subject proves that he wrote his Rhetoric long before Alexander was appointed captain-general of the Greeks against the Great King. If, says he, any one had to prove to the Greeks that it is their interest to oppose the enterprises of the King of Persia, and to prevent him from making himself master of Egypt, he should first remind them, that Darius Ochus would not attack Greece until Egypt was in his power; he should remark that Xerxes had pursued the same course; he should add, that it was |
