in contrary directions and in oblique orbits; they serve the fixed stars, and are ruled by their motion. Lastly, the earth is in the centre of the universe, farthest removed from the first mover, and hence partaking in the smallest degree of the Divine. There are thus three kinds of being, exhibiting three stages of perfection, and necessary for the explanation of nature; first, the absolute spirit or God, an immaterial being, who, himself unmoved, produces motion; second, the super-terrestrial region of the heavens, a being which is moved and which moves, and which, though not without matter, is eternal and unchangeable, and possesses ever a circular motion; and, lastly, in the lowest course this earth, a changeful being, which has only to play the passive part of being moved.

3. Nature in a strict sense, the scene of elemental working, represents to us a constant and progressive transition of the elementary to the vegetative, and of the vegetative to the animal world. The lowest step is occupied by the inanimate bodies of nature, which are simple products of the elements mingling themselves together, and have their entelechy only in the determinate combinations of these elements, but whose energy consists only in striving after a fitting place in the universe, and in resting there so far as they reach it unhindered. But now such a mere external entelechy is not possessed by the living bodies; within them dwells a motion as organizing principle by which they attain to actuality, and which as a preserving activity develops in them towards a perfected organization,—in a word they have a soul, for a soul is the entelechy of an organic body. In plants we find the soul working only as persevering and nourishing energy: the plant has no other function than to nourish itself and to propagate its kind; among animals-where we find a progress according to the mode of their reproduction-the soul appears as sensitive; animals have sense, and are capable of locomotion; lastly, the human soul is at the same time nutritive, sensitive, and cognitive.

4. Man, as the end of all nature, embraces in himself the different steps of development in which the life of nature is ex

hibited.

The division of the faculties of the soul must therefore be necessarily regulated, according to the division of living creatures. As the nutritive faculty is alone the property of vegeta bles, and sensation, of animals, while to the more perfect animals locomotion also belongs, so are these three activities also development steps of the human soul, the antecedent being the necessary condition of, and presupposed in time by, the subsequent, while the soul itself is nothing other than the union of these different activities of an organic body in one common end, as the entelechy of the organic body. The fourth step, thought or reason, which, added to the three others, constitutes the peculiarity of the human soul, forms alone an exception from the general law. It is not a simple product of the lower faculties of the soul, it does not stand related to them simply as a higher stage of development, nor simply as the soul to the body, as the end to the instrument, as actuality to possibility, as form to matter. But as pure intellectual activity, it completes itself without any mediation of a bodily organ; as the reason comes into the body from without, so is it separable from the body, and therefore has it no inner connection with the bodily functions, but is something wholly foreign in nature. True, there exists a connection between thought and sensation, for while the sensations are outwardly divided, according to the different objects of sense, yet internally they meet in one centre, as a common sense. Here they become changed into images and representations, which again become transmuted into thoughts, and so it might seem as if thought were only the result of the sensation, as if intelligence were passively determined; (here we might notice the proposition falsely ascribed to Aristotle: nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu, and also the well-known though often misunderstood comparison of the soul with an unwritten tablet, which only implies this much, viz., that as the unwritten tablet is potentially but not actually a book, so does knowledge belong potentially though not actually to the human reason; fundamentally and radically the thought may have in itself universal conceptions, so far as it has the capacity to form them, but not actually,

nor in a determined or developed form). But this passivity presupposes rather an activity; for if the thought in its actuality, in that it appears as knowledge, becomes all forms and therefore all things, then must the thought constitute itself that which it becomes, and therefore all passively determined human intelligence rests on an originally active intelligence, which exists as selfactualizing possibility and pure actuality, and which, as such, is 'wholly independent of the human body, and has not its entelechy in it but in itself, and is not therefore participant in the death of the body, but lives on as universal reason, eternal and immortal. The Aristotelian dualism here again appears. Manifestly this active intelligence stands related to the soul as God to nature. The two sides possess no essential relation to each other. As the Divine spirit could not enter the life of the world, so is the human spirit unable to permeate the life of sense; although it is determined as something passionless and immaterial, still must it as soul be connected with matter, and although it is pure and selfcontemplative form, still it should be distinguished from the Divine spirit which is its counterpart; the want of a satisfactory mediation on the side of the human and on that of the Divine, is in these respects unmistakable.

V. THE ARISTOTELIAN ETHICS. 1. RELATION OF ETHICS TO PHYSICS.-Aristotle, guided by his tendency towards the natural, has more closely connected ethics and physics than either of his predecessors, Socrates or Plato, had done. While Plato found it impossible to speak of the good in man's moral condition, disconnected from the idea of the good in itself, Aristotle's principal object is to determine what is good for man solely; and he supposes that the good in itself, the idea of the good, in no way facilitates the knowledge of that good, which alone is attainable in practical life. It is only the latter, the moral element in the life of men, and not the good in the great affairs of the universe, with which ethics has to do. Aristotle therefore considers the good especially in its relation to the natural condition of men, and affirms that it is the end towards which nature herself tends. Instead of viewing the moral element as something purely intel

lectual, he rather apprehends it as only the bloom of the physi cal, which here becomes spiritualized and ethical; instead of making virtue to be knowledge, he treats it as the normal perfection of the natural instinct. That man is by nature a political animal, is his fundamental proposition for the doctrine of the

state.

From this connection of the ethical and the physical, arose the objections which Aristotle urged against the Socratic conception of virtue. Socrates had looked to the dialectical exclusively for the ground of all morality, and had accordingly made virtue and knowledge one. But in this, said Aristotle, the pathological element which is associated by nature with every moral act, is destroyed. It is not reason, but the circumstances and natural bias of the soul which are the first ground of virtue. There is an instinct in the soul which at first strives unconsciously after the good, which is only subsequently sought with the full moral insight. Moral virtue arises first from that which is natural. It is on this ground, also, that Aristotle combats the notion that virtue may be learned. It is not through the perfection of knowledge, but by exercise that we become acquainted with the good. It is by a practice of moral acts that we become virtuous, just as by a practice of building and of music we become architects and musicians; for the habit which is the ground of moral constancy, is only a fruit of the abundant repetition of a moral action. Hence it is that originally we have our virtuous or our vicious dispositions in our power, but as soon as they are formed either to virtue or to vice, we are no longer able to control them. It is by three things, therefore, nature, habit, and reason, that man becomes good. The stand-point of Aristotle is in these respects directly opposed to that of Socrates. While Socrates regarded the moral and the natural as two opposites, and made the moral conduct to be the consequent of a rational enlightenment, Aristotle treated both as different steps of development, and reversing the order of Socrates, made the rational enlightenment in moral things consequent upon the moral conduct.

2. THE HIGHEST GOOD.-Every action has an end; but since

every end is only itself a means to some other, we need therefore something after which we can strive for its own sake, and which is a good absolutely, or a best. What now is this highest good and supreme object of human pursuit? In name, at least, all men are agreed upon it, and call it happiness, but what happiness is, is a much disputed point. If asked in what human happiness consists, the first characteristic given would be that it belongs alone to the peculiar being of man. But sensation is not peculiar to man, for he shares this with the brute. A sensation of pleasure, therefore, which arises when some desire is gratified, may be the happiness of the brute, but certainly does not constitute the essential of human happiness. Human happiness must express the completeness of intelligent existence, and because intelligence is essentially activity, therefore the happiness of man cannot consist in any merely passive condition, but must express a completeness of human action. Happiness therefore is a well-being, which is at the same time a well-doing, and it is a well-doing which satisfies all the conditions of nature, and which finds the highest contentment or well-being in an unrestrained energy. Activity and pleasure are thus inseparably bound together by a natural bond, and happiness is the result of their union when they are sustained through a perfect life. Hence the Aristotelian definition of happiness. It is a perfect practical activity in a perfect life.

Although it might seem from this as though Aristotle placed the happiness of man in the natural activity of the soul, and regarded this as self-sufficient, still he is not blind to the fact that perfect happiness is dependent on other kinds of good whose possession is not absolutely within our power. It is true he expresses an opinion that outward things in moderation are sufficient, and that only great success or signal reverses materially influence the happiness of life; still he holds that wealth, the possession of friends and children, noble birth, beauty of body, etc., are more or less necessary conditions of happiness, though these are partly dependent on accidental circumstances. These wavering and inconsistent views of Aristotle respecting the nature of happiness, naturally rise from his empirical method of investi