and by all the other writers of earlier antiquity, though some of the later Platonists 17
have interpreted them differently.
18
According to Aristotle, who seems to have followed the doctrine of Ocellus,
the world was
eternal; the eternal effect of an eternal cause. He found it difficult, it would seem, to conceive what could hinder the First Cause from exerting his divine energy from all eternity. At whatever time he began to exert it, he must have been at rest during all the infinite ages of that eternity which had passed before it. To what obstruction, from within or from without, could this be 19
owing? or how could this obstruction, if it ever had subsisted, have ever been removed?
His
idea of the nature and manner of existence of this First Cause, as it is expressed in the last book 20
of his Physics, and the five last chapters of his Metaphysics,
is indeed obscure and unintelligible
in the highest degree, and has perplexed his commentators more than any other parts of his writings. Thus far, however, he seems to express himself plainly enough: that the First 21
Heaven,
that of the Fixed Stars, from which are derived the motions of all the rest, is revolved by an eternal, immoveable, unchangeable, unextended being, whose essence consists in intelligence, as that of a body consists in solidity and extension; and which is therefore necessarily and always intelligent, as a body is necessarily and always extended: that this Being was the first and supreme mover of the Universe: that the inferior Planetary Spheres derived each of them its peculiar revolution from an inferior being of the same kind; eternal, immoveable, unextended, and necessarily intelligent: that the sole object of the intelligence of those beings was their own essence, and the revolution of their own spheres; all other inferior things being unworthy of their consideration; and that therefore whatever was below the Moon was abandoned 22
by the gods to the direction of Nature, and Chance, and Necessity.
For though those celestial
beings were, by the revolutions of their several Spheres, the original causes of the generation and corruption of all sublunary forms, they were causes who neither knew nor intended the effects which they produced. This renowned philosopher seems, in his theological notions, to have been directed by prejudices which, though extremely natural, are not very philosophical. The revolutions of the Heavens, by their grandeur and constancy, excited his admiration, and seemed, upon that account, to be effects not unworthy a Divine Intelligence. Whereas the meanness of 23
many things, the disorder and confusion of all things below,
exciting no such agreeable
emotion, seemed to have no marks of being directed by that Supreme Understanding. Yet, though this opinion saps the foundations of human worship, and must have the same effects upon http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/LFBooks/Smith0232/GlasgowEdition/PhilosophicalSubjects...
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society as Atheism itself, one may easily trace, in the Metaphysics upon which it is grounded, the origin of many of the notions, or rather of many of the expressions, in the scholastic theology, to which no notions can be annexed.
24
The Stoics, the most religious of all the ancient sects of philosophers,
seem in this, as in most
25
other things, to have altered and refined upon the doctrine of Plato.
The order, harmony, and
coherence which this philosophy bestowed upon the Universal System, struck them with awe and veneration. As, in the rude ages of the world, whatever particular part of Nature excited the admiration of mankind, was apprehended to be animated by some particular divinity; so the whole of Nature having, by their reasonings, become equally the object of admiration, was equally apprehended to be animated by a Universal Deity, to be itself a Divinity, an Animal; a term which to our ears seems by no means synonimous with the foregoing; whose body was the solid and sensible parts of Nature, and whose soul was that aetherial Fire, which penetrated and actuated the whole. For of all the four elements, out of which all things were composed, Fire or Aether seemed to be that which bore the greatest resemblance to the Vital Principle which informs both plants and animals, and therefore most likely to be the Vital Principle which animated the Universe. This infinite and unbounded Aether, which extended itself from the centre beyond the remotest circumference of Nature, and was endowed with the most consummate reason and intelligence, or rather was itself the very essence of reason and intelligence, had originally formed the world, and had communicated a portion, or ray, of its own essence to whatever was endowed with life and sensation, which, upon the dissolution of those forms, either immediately or sometime after, was again absorbed into that ocean of Deity from whence it had originally been detached. In this system, the Sun, the Moon, the Planets, and the Fixed Stars, were each of them also inferior divinities, animated by a detached portion of that aetherial essence which was the soul of the world. In the system of Plato, the Intelligence which animated the world was different from that which originally formed it. Neither were these which animated the celestial spheres, nor those which informed inferior terrestrial animals, regarded as portions of this plastic soul of the world. Upon the dissolution of animals, therefore, their souls were not absorbed in the soul of the world, but had a separate and eternal existence, which gave birth to the notion of the transmigration of souls. Neither did it seem unnatural, that, as the same matter which had composed one animal body might be employed to compose another, that the same intelligence which had animated one such being should again animate another. But in the system of the Stoics, the intelligence which originally formed, and that which animated the world, were one and the same, all inferior intelligences were detached portions of the great one; and therefore, in a longer, or in a shorter time, were all of them, even the gods themselves, who animated the celestial bodies, to be at last resolved into the infinite essence of this almighty Jupiter, who, at a destined period, should, by an universal conflagration, wrap up all things, in that aetherial and fiery nature, out of which they had originally been deduced, again to bring forth a new Heaven and a new Earth, new animals, new men, new deities; all of which would again, at a fated time, be swallowed up in a like conflagration, again to be re–produced, and again to be redestroyed, and so on without end.
ENDNOTES
[1 ] [Cf. WN V.i.f.24.]
[2 ] [See Astronomy, III.1.]
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[3 ] [Cf. Astronomy, II.7.]
[4 ] Smith gives no indication of what he means by ‘chance’ in this context. The experiments on the weight of the air were amongst the first and best documented of the ‘new experimental philosophy’.
[5 ] [Anaxagoras showed experimentally that air was corporeal (Aristotle, Physics, VI.6,213a22, and De Caelo, II.13,294b21), but it seems to be true that no ancient thinker proved that it had weight.]
[6 ] [Archimedes ‘discovered them’ in his treatise On Floating Bodies: T. L. Heath, Manual of Greek Mathematics, 332–6.]
[7 ] [Aristotle’s view of the Aether was never as widely accepted as the following account implies, being criticized not only by the Epicureans but by many of his own successors. It should not be assumed that all who accepted the concentric spheres as an astronomical hypothesis subscribed to it. See P. Moraux, article ‘Quinta Essentia’, in Pauly’s Real–Encyclopädie der classischen Alterthumswissenschaft, Halbband 47 (1963), col. 1231a ff.]
[8 ] [Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, II.10, 336a14 ff.; Metaphysics, Λ, 1071a15.]
[9 ] [Cf. Astronomy, III.2.]
[10 ] [ Theogony, 116 ff., noted by Aristotle in Metaphysics, A, 984b27–9 and 989a10–11.]
[11 ] [ Metaphysics, A, 984b15–19.]
[12 ] [Diogenes Laertius, II.6, reports that Anaxagoras was nicknamed Nous, and confirms this by some lines from the satirical poet Timon of Phlius.]
[13 ] [ Metaphysics, Λ, 1072b30–1073a3.]
[14 ] [Timaeus Locrus, 94 D, but see note 12 to Astronomy, III, above; Plato, Timaeus, 30 B, 34
B.]
[15 ] [Plato, Timaeus, 28 B, 37 D, 41 A; Timaeus Locrus, 93 A–95 A.]
[16 ] [Perhaps De Natura Deorum, I.8.19. But the work is a dialogue, and Cicero himself is not speaking.]
[17 ] [The Neoplatonists followed the interpretation of Xenocrates—that Plato used temporal language in describing the formation of the world only as a device of exposition. See A. E. Taylor, Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, 66, 68.]
[18 ] See note 12 to Astronomy, III, above.
[19 ] [This hardly represents Aristotle’s reasoning. In the text presumably referred to ( Physics, http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/LFBooks/Smith0232/GlasgowEdition/PhilosophicalSubjects...
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VIII.5), Aristotle does not ask ‘what could hinder the First Cause from exerting his divine energy from all eternity’; his argument is that the eternal motion, which is an evident fact, positively requires a First Cause, of which activity or actuality is the essence.]
[20 ] [ Physics, VIII; Metaphysics, A, 6–10, 1071b3 ff. Smith seems to forget that this is not the last book of the Metaphysics. Or he may intend to dispute the traditional order of books.]
[21 ] [The text of the original edition has ‘Heavens,’ presumably a printer’s error since the verb,
‘is revolved’, is singular.]
[22 ] [This is verbally correct, but one must consider what Nature means for Aristotle. He holds that ‘all things have by nature some part in the divine’ ( Nicomachean Ethics, VII.13,1153b32), and develops this thought in De Partibus Animalium, I.5,644b22 ff. See translation of the chapter by D. M. Balme, Aristotle’s De Partibus Animalium I and De Generatione Animalium I, Clarendon Aristotle (1972), 17–18. Further, Nature aims without conscious prevision at ends or purposes, and in this respect the human arts are said to imitate her while falling short of the accuracy of her operations ( Physics, Book II).]
[23 ] ‘Disorder and confusion’ is a travesty of Aristotle’s views on ‘all things below’. See De Partibus Animalium, 645a, and also the editor’s Introduction, 23–4.
[24 ] [Smith writes again, in TMS I.ii.3.4, of the religious character of the Stoic doctrine of cosmic harmony. His long account of Stoic ethics, in TMS VII.ii.1.15–47, also contains frequent references to religion.]
[25 ] [A similar judgment recurs in Ancient Logics, 9, below. It is perhaps derived from Cicero’s statements ( De Finibus, III.3,10; IV.2,3) that Zeno was not justified in founding a new school since he had little to contribute but a novel vocabulary. The originality of Stoic formal logic was not appreciated until the twentieth century. Expositions which emphasize the originality of many Stoic doctrines have been given by M. Pohlenz, Die Stoa (1948), and S. Sambursky, The Physics of the Stoics (1959).]
THE PRINCIPLES WHICH LEAD AND DIRECT PHILOSOPHICAL ENQUIRIES;
ILLUSTRATED BY THE HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT LOGICS AND METAPHYSICS
In every transmutation, either of one element into another, or of one compound body, either into 1
the elements out of which it was composed, or into another compound body, it seemed evident, that, both in the old and in the new species, there was something that was the same, and something that was different. When Fire was changed into Air, or Water into Earth, the Stuff, or Subject–matter of this Air and this Earth, was evidently the same with that of the former Fire or Water; but the Nature or Species of those new bodies was entirely different. When, in the same manner, a number of fresh, green, and odoriferous flowers were thrown together in a heap, they, in a short time, entirely changed their nature, became putrid and loathsome, and dissolved into a confused mass of ordure, which bore no resemblance, either in its sensible qualities or in its effects, to their former beautiful appearance. But how different soever the species, the subject–
matter of the flowers, and of the ordure, was, in this case too, evidently the same. In every body, therefore, whether simple or mixed, there were evidently two principles, whose combination http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/LFBooks/Smith0232/GlasgowEdition/PhilosophicalSubjects...
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constituted the whole nature of that particular body. The first was the Stuff, or Subject–matter, out of which it was made; the second was the Species, the Specific Essence, the Essential, or, as the schoolmen have called it, the Substantial Form of the Body. The first seemed to be the same in all bodies, and to have neither qualities nor powers of any kind, but to be altogether inert and imperceptible by any of the senses, till it was qualified and rendered sensible by its union with some species or essential form. All the qualities and powers of bodies seemed to depend upon their species or essential forms. It was not the stuff or matter of Fire, or Air, or Earth, or Water, which enabled those elements to produce their several effects, but that essential form which was peculiar to each of them. For it seemed evident, that Fire must produce the effects of Fire, by that which rendered it Fire; Air, by that which rendered it Air; and that in the same manner all other simple and mixed bodies must produce their several effects, by that which constituted them such or such bodies; that is, by their specific Essence or essential forms. But it is from the effects of bodies upon one another, that all the changes and revolutions in the material world arise. Since these, therefore, depend upon the specific essences of those bodies, it must be the business of 1
philosophy, that science which endeavours to connect together all the different changes that occur in the world, to determine wherein the specific Essence of each object consists, in order to foresee what changes or revolutions may be expected from it. But the specific Essence of each individual object is not that which is peculiar to it as an individual, but that which is common to it, with all other objects of the same kind. Thus the specific Essence of the Water, which now stands before me, does not consist in its being heated by the Fire, or cooled by the Air, in such a particular degree; in its being contained in a vessel of such a form, or of such dimensions. These are all accidental circumstances, which are altogether extraneous to its general nature, and upon which none of its effects as Water depend. Philosophy, therefore, in considering the general nature of Water, takes no notice of those particularities which are peculiar to this Water, but confines itself to those things which are common to all water. If, in the progress of its enquiries, it should descend to consider the nature of Water that is modified by such particular accidents, it still would not confine its consideration to this water contained in this vessel, and thus heated at this fire, but would extend its views to Water in general contained in such kind of vessels, and heated to such a degree at such a fire. In every case, therefore, Species, or Universals, and not Individuals, are the objects of Philosophy. Because whatever effects are produced by individuals, whatever changes can flow from them, must all proceed from some universal nature that is contained in them. As it was the business of Physics, or Natural Philosophy, to determine wherein consisted the Nature and Essence of every particular Species of things, in order to connect together all the different events that occur in the material world; so there were two other sciences, which, though they had originally arisen out of that system of Natural Philosophy I have just been describing, were, however, apprehended to go before it, in the order in which the knowledge of Nature ought to be communicated. The first of these, Metaphysics, considered the general nature of Universals, and the different sorts or species into which they might be divided.
2
The second of these, Logics, was built upon this doctrine of Metaphysics; and from the general nature of Universals, and of the sorts into which they were divided, endeavoured to ascertain the general rules by which we might distribute all particular objects into general classes, and determine to what class each individual object belonged; for in this, they justly enough apprehended, consisted the whole art of philosophical reasoning. As the first of these two sciences, Metaphysics, is altogether subordinate to the second, Logic, they seem, before the time of Aristotle, to have been regarded as one, and to have made up between them that ancient Dialectic of which we hear so much, and of which we understand so little: neither does this separation seem to have been much attended to, either by his own followers, the ancient http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/LFBooks/Smith0232/GlasgowEdition/PhilosophicalSubjects...
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Peripatetics, or by any other of the old sects of philosophers. The later schoolmen, indeed, have distinguished between Ontology and Logic; but their Ontology contains but a small part of what is the subject of the metaphysical books of Aristotle, the greater part of which, the doctrines of Universals, and every thing that is preparatory to the arts of defining and dividing, has, since the 3
4
days of Porphery, been inserted into their Logic.
5
According to Plato and Timaeus, the principles out of which the Deity formed the World, and which were themselves eternal, were three in number. The Subject–matter of things, the Species or specific Essences of things, and what was made out of these, the sensible objects themselves.
These last had no proper or durable existence, but were in perpetual flux and succession. For as 6
Heraclitus had said, that no man ever passed the same river twice, because the water which he had passed over once was gone before he could pass over it a second time; so, in the same manner, no man ever saw, or heard, or touched the same sensible object twice. When I look at the window, for example, the visible species, which strikes my eyes this moment, though resembling, is different from that which struck my eyes the immediately preceding moment.
When I ring the bell, the sound, or audible species which I hear this moment, though resembling in the same manner, is different, however, from that which I heard the moment before. When I lay my hand on the table, the tangible species which I feel this moment, though resembling, in the same manner, is numerically different too from that which I felt the moment before. Our sensations, therefore, never properly exist or endure one moment; but, in the very instant of their generation, perish and are annihilated for ever. Nor are the causes of those sensations more permanent. No corporeal substance is ever exactly the same, either in whole or in any assignable part, during two successive moments, but by the perpetual addition of new parts, as well as loss of old ones, is in continual flux and succession. Things of so fleeting a nature can never be the objects of science, or of any steady or permanent judgment. While we look at them, in order to consider them, they are changed and gone, and annihilated for ever. The objects of science, and of all the steady judgments of the understanding, must be permanent, unchangeable, always 7
existent, and liable neither to generation nor corruption, nor alteration of any kind. Such are the species or specific essences of things. Man is perpetually changing every particle of his body; and every thought of his mind is in continual flux and succession. But humanity, or human nature, is always existent, is always the same, is never generated, and is never corrupted. This, therefore, is the object of science, reason, and understanding, as man is the object of sense, and of those inconstant opinions which are founded upon sense. As the objects of sense were apprehended to have an external existence, independent of the act of sensation, so these objects of the understanding were much more supposed to have an external existence independent of the act of 8
understanding. Those external essences were, according to Plato, the exemplars, according to which the Deity formed the world, and all the sensible objects that are in it. The Deity comprehended within his infinite essence, all these species, or eternal exemplars, in the same manner as he comprehended all sensible objects.
Plato, however, seems to have regarded the first of those as equally distinct with the second from 3
*
what we would now call the Ideas or Thoughts of the Divine Mind , and even to have supposed, that they had a particular place of existence, beyond the sphere of the visible corporeal world; though this has been much controverted, both by the later Platonists, and by some very judicious 12
modern critics,
who have followed the interpretation of the later Platonists, as what did most
honour to the judgment of that renowned philosopher. All the objects in this world, continued he, are particular and individual. Here, therefore, the human mind has no opportunity of seeing any http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/LFBooks/Smith0232/GlasgowEdition/PhilosophicalSubjects...
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Species, or Universal Nature. Whatever ideas it has, therefore, of such beings, for it plainly has them, it must derive from the memory of what it has seen, in some former period of its existence, 15
when it had an opportunity of visiting the place or Sphere of Universals.
For some time after it
is immersed in the body, during its infancy, its childhood, and a great part of its youth, the violence of those passions which it derives from the body, and which are all directed to the particular and individual objects of this world, hinder it from turning its attention to those Universal Natures, with which it had been conversant in the world from whence it came. The Ideas, of these, therefore, seem, in this first period of its existence here, to be overwhelmed in the confusion of those turbulent emotions, and to be almost entirely wiped out of its remembrance. During the continuance of this state, it is incapable of Reasoning, Science and Philosophy, which are conversant about Universals. Its whole attention is turned towards particular objects, concerning which, being directed by no general notions, it forms many vain and false opinions, and is filled with error, perplexity, and confusion. But, when age has abated the violence of its passions, and composed the confusion of its thoughts, it then becomes more capable of reflection, and of turning its attention to those almost forgotten ideas of things with which it had been conversant in the former state of its existence. All the particular objects in this sensible world, being formed after the eternal exemplars in that intellectual world, awaken, upon account of their resemblance, insensibly, and by slow degrees, the almost obliterated ideas of these last. The beauty, which is shared in different degrees among terrestrial objects, revives the same idea of that Universal Nature of beauty which exists in the intellectual world: particular acts of justice, of the universal nature of justice; particular reasonings, and particular sciences, of the universal nature of science, and reasoning; particular roundnesses, of the universal nature of roundness; particular squares, of the universal nature of squareness. Thus science, which is conversant about Universals, is derived from memory; and to instruct any person concerning the general nature of any subject, is no more than to awaken in him the remembrance of what he formerly knew about it. This both Plato and Socrates imagined they could still further confirm, by the fallacious experiment, which shewed, that a person might be led to discover himself, without any information, any general truth, of which he was before ignorant, merely by being asked a 16
number of properly arranged and connected questions concerning it.
The more the soul was accustomed to the consideration of those Universal Natures, the less it 4
was attached to any particular and individual objects; it approached the nearer to the original perfection of its nature, from which, according to this philosophy, it had fallen. Philosophy, which accustoms it to consider the general Essence of things only, and to abstract from all their particular and sensible circumstances, was, upon this account, regarded as the great purifier of the soul. As death separated the soul from the body, and from the bodily senses and passions, it restored it to that intellectual world, from whence it had originally descended, where no sensible Species called off its attention from those general Essences of things. Philosophy, in this life, habituating it to the same considerations, brings it, in some degree, to that state of happiness and perfection, to which death restores the souls of just men in a life to come.
Such was the doctrine of Plato concerning the Species or Specific Essence of things. This, at least, 5
is what his words seem to import, and thus he is understood by Aristotle, the most intelligent and the most renowned of all his disciples. It is a doctrine, which, like many of the other doctrines of abstract Philosophy, is more coherent in the expression than in the idea; and which seems to 17
have arisen, more from the nature of language, than from the nature of things.
With all its
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remote from the truth, than many others which have since been substituted in its room by some of the greatest pretenders to accuracy and precision. Mankind have had, at all times, a strong 18
propensity to realize their own abstractions, of which we shall immediately see an example, in
the notions of that very philosopher who first exposed the ill–grounded foundation of those Ideas, or Universals, of Plato and Timaeus. To explain the nature, and to account for the origin of general Ideas, is, even at this day, the greatest difficulty in abstract philosophy. How the human mind, when it reasons concerning the general nature of triangles, should either conceive, as Mr.
19
Locke imagines it does,
the idea of a triangle, which is neither obtusangular, nor rectangular,
nor acutangular; but which was at once both none and all of those together; or should, as 20
Malbranche thinks necessary for this purpose,
comprehend at once, within its finite capacity,
all possible triangles of all possible forms and dimensions, which are infinite in number, is a question, to which it is surely not easy to give a satisfactory answer. Malbranche, to solve it, had recourse to the enthusiastic and unintelligible notion of the intimate union of the human mind with the divine, in whose infinite essence the immensity of such species could alone be comprehended; and in which alone, therefore, all finite intelligences could have an opportunity of viewing them. If, after more than two thousand years reasoning about this subject, this ingenious and sublime philosopher was forced to have recourse to so strange a fancy, in order to explain it, can we wonder that Plato, in the very first dawnings of science, should, for the same purpose, adopt an hypothesis, which has been thought, without much reason, indeed, to have some affinity to that of Malbranche, and which is not more out of the way?
What seems to have misled those early philosophers, was, the notion, which appears, at first, 6
natural enough, that those things, out of which any object is composed, must exist antecedent to that object. But the things out of which all particular objects seem to be composed, are the stuff or matter of those objects, and the form or s