Final Cause, he proceeds to say, that most of the early philosophers recognized only the second kind of Cause, the Matter of a thing, τὰς ἐν ὕλης εἴδει μόνας ᾠήθησαν ἀρχὰς εἴναι πάντων. As his first example he specifies Thales, whom he describes as taking the lead in this view of the subject, ὁ τῆς τοιαύτης ἀρχηγὸς φιλοσοφίας, and goes on to Hippon, Anaximenes, Diogenes (of Apollonia), Hippasus of Metapontum, Heraclitus, and Empedocles. Anaxagoras, however (he proceeds to say), taught a different doctrine, as we know, and it is alleged that Hermotimus of Clazomenæ taught it before him. Anaxagoras represented, that even if these various theories of the universal material were true, there would be need of some other cause to account for the transformations of the materials, since the material can not originate its own changes: οὐ γὰρ δὴ τό γε ὑποκείμενον αὐτὸ ποιεὶ μεταβάλλειν ἑαῦτο· λέγω δ' οἱον οὔτε τὸ ξύλον οὕτε ὅ χαλκὸς αἴτος τοῦ μεταβάλλειν ἑκάτερον αὐτῶν, οὐδὲ ποιεῖ τὸ μὲν ξύλον κλίνην ὅ δέ χαλκὸς ἀνδριὰντα, ἀλλ' ἑτερόν τι τῆς μεταβολῆς αἴτιον, viz., the other kind of cause, ὅθεν ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κινήσεως—an Efficient Cause. Aristotle expresses great approbation of this doctrine (which he says made its author appear the only sober man among persons raving, οἶον νήφων ἐφάνη παρ' εἰκῆ λέγοντας τοῦς πρότερον); but while describing the influence which it exercised over subsequent speculation, he remarks that the philosophers against whom this, as he thinks, insuperable difficulty was urged, had not felt it to be any difficulty: οὐδέν ἐδυσχεράναν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς. It is surely unnecessary to say more in proof of the matter of fact which Dr. Tulloch and his reviewer disbelieve.
Having pointed out what he thinks the error of these early speculators in not recognizing the need of an efficient cause, Aristotle goes on to mention two other efficient causes to which they might have had recourse, instead of intelligence: τύχη, chance, and τὸ αὐτομάτον, spontaneity. He indeed puts these aside as not sufficiently worthy causes for the order in the universe, οὐδ' αὖ τῷ αὐτομάτῳ καὶ τῇ τύχῃ τοσοῦτον ἐπιτρέψαι πρᾶγμα καλῶς εἶχεν; but he does not reject them as incapable of producing any effect, but only as incapable of producing that effect. He himself recognizes τύχη and τὸ αὐτομάτον as co-ordinate agents with Mind in producing the phenomena of the universe; the department allotted to them being composed of all the classes of phenomena which are not supposed to follow any uniform law. By thus including Chance among efficient causes, Aristotle fell into an error which philosophy has now outgrown, but which is by no means so alien to the spirit even of modern speculation as it may at first sight appear. Up to quite a recent period philosophers went on ascribing, and many of them have not yet ceased to ascribe, a real existence to the results of abstraction. Chance could make out as good a title to that dignity as many other of the mind's abstract creations: it had had a name given to it, and why should it not be a reality? As for τὸ αὐτομάτον, it is recognized even yet as one of the modes of origination of phenomena by all those thinkers who maintain what is called the Freedom of the Will. The same self-determining power which that doctrine attributes to volitions, was supposed by the ancients to be possessed also by some other natural phenomena: a circumstance which throws considerable light on more than one of the supposed invincible necessities of belief. I have introduced it here, because this belief of Aristotle, or rather of the Greek philosophers generally, is as fatal as the doctrines of Thales and the Ionic school to the theory that the human mind is compelled by its constitution to conceive volition as the origin of all force, and the efficient cause of all phenomena.[1]
- ↑ It deserves notice that the parts of nature which Aristotle regards as representing evidence of design, are the Uniformities: the phenomena in so far as reducible to law. Τύχε and τὸ αὐτομάτον satisfy him as explanations of the variable element in phenomena, but their occurring according to a fixed rule can only, to his conceptions, be accounted for by an Intelligent Will. The common, or what may be called the instinctive, religious interpretation of nature, is the reverse of this. The events in which men spontaneously see the hand of a supernatural being, are those which can not, as they think, be reduced to a physical law. What they can distinctly connect with physical causes, and especially what they can predict, though of course ascribed to an Author of Nature, if they already recognize such an author, might be conceived, they think, to arise from a blind fatality, and in any case do not appear to them to bear so obviously the mark of a divine will. And this distinction has been countenanced by eminent writers on Natural Theology, in particular by Dr. Chalmers, who thinks that though design is present everywhere, the irresistible evidence of it is to be found not in the laws of nature but in the collocations, i.e., in the part of nature in which it is impossible to trace any law. A few properties of dead matter might, he thinks, conceivably account for the regular and invariable succession of effects and causes; but that the different kinds of matter have been so placed as to promote beneficent ends, is what he regards as the proof of a Divine Providence. Mr. Baden Powell, in his Essay entitled "Philosophy of Creation," has returned to the point of view of Aristotle and the ancients, and vigorously re-asserts the doctrine that the indication of design in the universe is not special adaptations, but Uniformity and Law, these being the evidences of mind, and not what appears to us to be a provision for our uses. While I decline to express any opinion here on this vexata quæstio, I ought not to mention Mr. Powell's volume without the acknowledgment due to the philosophic spirit which pervades generally the three Essays composing it, forming in the case of one of them (the "Unity of Worlds") an honorable contrast with the other dissertations, so far as they have come under my notice, which have appeared on either side of that controversy.
