CHAPTER III.* (continued 1)
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Grote, George
4. According to the Megaric doctrine (says Aristotle) when you are now lying down, you have no power to rise: when you are standing up, you have no power to lie down: so that the present condition of affairs must continue for ever unchanged: nothing can come into existence which is not now in being. — Here again, the Megarics would have denied his inference. The man who is now standing up, has power to lie down, if he wills to do so — or he may be thrown down by a superior force: that is, he will lie down, if some new fact of a certain character shall supervene. The Megarics do not deny that he has power, if — so and so: they deny that he has power, without the if — that is, without the farther accompaniments essential to energy.
Potential as distinguished from the Actual — What it is.
On the whole, it seems to me that Aristotle’s refutation of the Megarics is unsuccessful. A given assemblage of conditions is requisite for the production of any act: while there are other circumstances, which, if present at the same time, would defeat its production. We often find it convenient to describe a state of things in which some of the antecedent conditions are present without the rest: in which therefore the act is not produced, yet would be produced, if the remaining circumstances were present, and if the opposing circumstances were absent.58 The state of things thus described is the potential as distinguished from the actual: power, distinguished from act or energy: it represents an incomplete assemblage of the antecedent positive conditions — or perhaps a complete assemblage, but counteracted by some opposing circumstances. As soon as the assemblage becomes complete, and the opposing circumstances removed, the potential passes into the actual. The architect, when he is not building, possesses, not indeed the full or plenary power to build, but an important fraction of that power, which will become plenary when the other fractions supervene, but will then at the same time become operative, so as to produce the actual building.59
Diodôrus Kronus — his doctrine about τὸ δυνατόν.
The doctrine which I have just been canvassing is expressly cited by Aristotle as a Megaric doctrine, and was therefore probably held by his contemporary Eubulidês. From the pains which Aristotle takes (in the ‘De Interpretatione’ and elsewhere) to explain and vindicate his own doctrine about the Potential and the Actual, we may see that it was a theme much debated among the dialecticians of the day. And we read of another Megaric, Diodorus60 Kronus, perhaps contemporary (yet probably a little later than Aristotle), as advancing a position substantially the same as that of Eubulidês. That alone is possible (Diodorus affirmed) which either is happening now, or will happen at some future time. As in speaking about facts of an unrecorded past, we know well that a given fact either occurred or did not occur, yet without knowing which of the two is true — and therefore we affirm only that the fact may have occurred: so also about the future, either the assertion that a given fact will at some time occur, is positively true, or the assertion that it will never occur, is positively true: the assertion that it may or may not occur some time or other, represents only our ignorance, which of the two is true. That which will never at any time occur, is impossible.
Sophism of Diodorus — Ὁ Κυριεύων.
The argument here recited must have been older than Diodorus, since Aristotle states and controverts it: but it seems to have been handled by him in a peculiar dialectic arrangement, which obtained the title of Ὁ Κυριεύων.61 The Stoics (especially Chrysippus), in times somewhat later, impugned the opinion of Diodorus, though seemingly upon grounds not quite the same as Aristotle. This problem was one upon which speculative minds occupied themselves for several centuries. Aristotle and Chrysippus maintained that affirmations respecting the past were necessary (one necessarily true and the other necessarily false) — affirmations respecting the future, contingent (one must be true and the other false, but either might be true). Diodorus held that both varieties of affirmations were equally necessary — Kleanthes the Stoic thought that both were equally contingent.62
It was thus that the Megaric dialecticians, with that fertility of mind which belonged to the Platonic and Aristotelian century, stirred up many real problems and difficulties connected with logical evidence, and supplied matters for discussion which not only occupied the speculative minds of the next four or five centuries, but have continued in debate down to the present day.
Question between Aristotle and Diodôrus depends upon whether universal regularity of sequence be admitted or denied.
The question about the Possible and Impossible, raised between Aristotle and Diodorus, depends upon the larger question, Whether there are universal laws of Nature or not? whether the sequences are, universally and throughout, composed of assemblages of conditions regularly antecedent, and assemblages of events regularly consequent; though from the number and complication of causes, partly co-operating and partly conflicting with each other, we with our limited intelligence are often unable to predict the course of events in each particular situation. Sokrates, Plato, and Aristotle, all maintained that regular sequence of antecedent and consequent was not universal, but partial only:63 that there were some agencies essentially regular, in which observation of the past afforded ground for predicting the future — other agencies (or the same agencies on different occasions) essentially irregular, in which the observation of the past afforded no such ground. Aristotle admitted a graduation of causes from perfect regularity to perfect irregularity:—
1. The Celestial Spheres, with their included bodies or divine persons, which revolved and exercised a great and preponderant influence throughout the Kosmos, with perfect uniformity; having no power of contraries, i.e., having no power of doing anything else but what they actually did (having ἐνεργεία without δύναμις).
2. The four Elements, in which the natural agencies were to a great degree necessary and uniform, but also in a certain degree otherwise — either always or for the most part uniform (τὸ ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ) — tending by inherent appetency towards uniformity, but not always attaining it.
3. Besides these there were two other varieties of Causes accidental, or perfectly irregular — Chance and Spontaneity: powers of contraries, or with equal chance of contrary manifestations — essentially capricious, undeterminable, unpredictable.64 This Chance of Aristotle — with one of two contraries sure to turn up, though you could never tell beforehand which of the two — was a conception analogous to what logicians sometimes call an Indefinite Proposition, or to what some grammarians have reckoned as a special variety of genders called the doubtful gender. There were thus positive causes of regularity, and positive causes of irregularity, the co-operation or conflict of which gave the total manifestations of the actual universe. The principle of irregularity, or the Indeterminate, is sometimes described under the name of Matter,65 as distinguishable from, yet co-operating with, the three determinate Causes — Formal, Efficient, Final. The Potential — the Indeterminate — the May or May not be — is characterised by Aristotle as one of the inherent principles operative in the Kosmos.
Source notes
Dr. Thomas Brown observes, in his inquiry into Cause and Effect — “From the mere silence of any one, we cannot infer that he is dumb in consequence of organic imperfection. He may be silent only because he has no desire of speaking, not because speech would not have followed his desire: and it is not with the mere existence of any one, but with his desire of speaking, that we suppose utterance to be connected. A man who has no desire of speaking, has in truth, and in strictness of language, no power of speaking, when in that state of mind: since he has not a circumstance which, as immediately prior, is essential to speech. But since he has that power, as soon as the new circumstance of desire arises — and as the presence or absence of the desire cannot be perceived but in its effects — there is no inconvenience in the common language, which ascribes the power, as if it were possessed at all times, and in all circumstances of mind, though unquestionably, nothing more is meant than that the desire existing will be followed by utterance.” (Brown, Essay on the Relation of Cause and Effect, p. 200.)
This is the real sense of what Aristotle calls τὸ δὲ (λέγεται) δυνατόν, οἷον δυνατὸν εἶναι βαδίζειν ὅτι βαδισειεν ἂν, i.e. he will walk if he desires to do so (De Interpret. p. 23, a. 9-15).
58 Hobbes, in his Computation or Logic (chaps. ix. and x. Of Cause and Effect. Of Power and Act) expounds this subject with his usual perspicuity.
“A Cause simply, or an Entire Cause, is the aggregate of all the accidents, both of the agents, how many soever they be, and of the patient, put together; which, when they are all supposed to be present, it cannot be understood but that the effect is produced at the same instant: and if any one of them be wanting, it cannot be understood but that the effect is not produced” (ix. 3).
“Correspondent to Cause and Effect are Power and Act: nay, those and these are the same things, though for divers considerations they have divers names. For whensoever any agent has all those accidents which are necessarily requisite for the production of some effect in the patient, then we say that agent has power to produce that effect if it be applied to a patient. In like manner, whensoever any patient has all those accidents which it is requisite it should have for the production of some effect in it, we say it is in the power of that patient to produce that effect if it be applied to a fitting agent. Power, active and passive, are parts only of plenary and entire power: nor, except they be joined, can any effect proceed from them. And therefore these powers are but conditional: namely, the agent has power if it be applied to a patient, and the patient has power if it be applied to an agent. Otherwise neither of them have power, nor can the accidents which are in them severally be properly called powers: nor any action be said to be possible for the power of the agent alone or the patient alone.”
59 Aristotle does in fact grant all that is here said, in the same book and in the page next subsequent to that which contains his arguments against the Megaric doctrine, Metaphys. Θ. 5, 1048, a. 1-24.
In this chapter Aristotle distinguishes powers belonging to things, from powers belonging to persons — powers irrational from powers rational — powers in which the agent acts without any will or choice, from those in which the will or choice of the agent is one item of the aggregate of conditions. He here expressly recognises that the power of the agent, separately considered, is only conditional; that is, conditional on the presence and suitable state of the patient, as well as upon the absence of counteracting circumstances. But he contends that such absence of counteracting circumstances is plainly implied, and need not be expressly mentioned in the definition.
ἐπεὶ δὲ τὸ δυνατὸν τὶ δυνατὸν καὶ ποτὲ καὶ πῶς καὶ ὅσα ἄλλα ἀνάγκη προσεῖναι ἐν τῷ διορισμῷ —
τὸ δυνατὸν κατὰ λόγον ἅπαν ἀνάγκη, ὅταν ὀρέγηται, οὖ τ’ ἔχει τὴν δύναμιν καὶ ὡς ἔχει, τοῦτο ποιεῖν· ἔχει δὲ παρόντος τοῦ παθητικοῦ καὶ ὡδὶ ἔχοντος ποιεῖν· εἰ δὲ μή, ποιεῖν οὐ δυνήσεται. τὸ γὰρ μηθενὸς τῶν ἕξω κωλύοντος προσδιορίζεσθαι, οὐθὲν ἔτι δεῖ· τὴν γὰρ δύναμιν ἔχει ὥς ἔστι δύναμις τοῦ ποιεῖν, ἔστι δ’ οὐ πάντως, ἀλλ’ ἐχόντων πῶς, ἐν οἷς ἀφορισθήσεται καὶ τὰ ἕξω κωλύοντα· ἀφαιρεῖται γὰρ ταῦτα τῶν ἐν τῷ διορισμῷ προσόντων ἔνια. The commentary of Alexander Aphr. upon this chapter is well worth consulting (pp. 546-548 of the edition of his commentary by Bonitz, 1847). Moreover Aristotle affirms in this chapter, that when τὸ ποιητικὸν and τὸ παθητικὸν come together under suitable circumstances, the power will certainly pass into act.
Here then, it seems to me, Aristotle concedes the doctrine which the Megarics affirmed; or, if there be any difference between them, it is rather verbal than real. In fact, Aristotle’s reasoning in the third chapter (wherein he impugns the doctrine of the Megarics), and the definition of δυνατὸν which he gives in that chapter (1047, a. 25), are hardly to be reconciled with his reasoning in the fifth chapter. Bonitz (Notes on the Metaphys. pp. 393-395) complains of the mira levitas of Aristotle in his reasoning against the Megarics, and of his omitting to distinguish between Vermögen and Möglichkeit. I will not use so uncourteous a phrase; but I think his refutation of the Megarics is both unsatisfactory and contradicted by himself. I agree with the following remark of Bonitz:—“Nec mirum, quod Megarici, aliis illi quidem in rebus arguti, in hâc autem satis acuti, existentiam τῷ δυνάμει ὄντι tribuere recusarint,” &c.
60 The dialectic ingenuity of Diodorus is powerfully attested by the verse of Ariston, applied to describe Arkesilaus (Sextus Emp. Pyrrh. Hyp. i. p. 234):
Πρόσθε Πλάτων, ὄπιθεν Πύῤῥων, μέσσος Διόδωρος.
61 Aristot. De Interpret. p. 18, a. pp. 27-38. Alexander ad Aristot. Analyt. Prior. 34, p. 163, b. 34, Schol. Brandis. See also Sir William Hamilton’s Lectures on Logic, Lect. xxiii. p. 464.
62 Arrian ad Epiktet. ii. p. 19. Upton, in his notes on this passage of Arrian (p. 151) has embodied a very valuable and elaborate commentary by Mr. James Harris (the great English Aristotelian scholar of the 18th century), explaining the nature of this controversy, and the argument called ὁ Κυριεύων.
Compare Cicero, De Fato, c. 7-9. Epistol. Fam. ix. 4.
63 Xenophon, Memor. i. 1; Plato, Timæus, p. 48 A. ἡ πλανωμένη αἰτία, &c.
64 Ἡ τύχη — τὸ ὁπότερ’ ἔτυχε — τὸ αὐτόματον are in the conception of Aristotle independent Ἀρχαί, attached to and blending with ἀνάγκη and τὸ ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ. See Physic. ii. 196, b. 11; Metaphys. E. 1026-1027.
Sometimes τὸ ὁπότερ’ ἔτυχε is spoken of as an Ἀρχή, but not as an αἴτιον, or belonging to ὕλη as the Ἀρχή. 1027, b. 11. δῆλον ἄρα ὅτι μέχρι τινὸς βαδίζει ἀρχῆς, αὔτη δ’ οὔκετι εἰς ἄλλο· ἔσται οὖν ἡ τοῦ ὁπότερ’ ἔτυχεν αὔτη, καὶ αἴτιοι τῆς γενέσεως αὐτῆς οὐθέν.
See, respecting the different notions of Cause held by ancient philosophers, my remarks on the Platonic Phædon infrà, vol. ii. ch. xxv.
65 Aristot. Metaph. E. 1027, a. 13; A. 1071, a. 10.
ὥστε ἡ ὕλη ἔσται αἰτία, ἡ ἐνδεχομέν ἠ παρὰ τὸ ὡς ἐπὶ το πολὺ ἄλλως τοῦ συμβεβηκότος.
Matter is represented as the principle of irregularity, of τὸ ὁπότερ’ ἔτυχε — as the δύναμις τῶν ἐναντίων.
In the explanation given by Alexander of Aphrodisias of the Peripatetic doctrine respecting chance — free-will, the principle of irregularity — τύχη is no longer assigned to the material cause, but is treated as an αἰτία κατὰ συμβεβηκός, distinguished from αἰτία προηγούμενα or καθ’ αὑτά. The exposition given of the doctrine by Alexander is valuable and interesting. See his treatise De Fato, addressed to the Emperor Severus, in the edition of Orelli, Zurich. 1824 (a very useful volume, containing treatises of Ammonius, Plotinus, Bardesanes, &c., on the same subject); also several sections of his Quæstiones Naturales et Morales, ed. Spengel, Munich, 1842, pp. 22-61-65-123, &c. He gives, however, a different explanation of τὸ δυνατὸν and τὸ ἀδύνατον in pp. 62-63, which would not be at variance with the doctrine of Diodorus. We may remark that Alexander puts the antithesis of the two doctrines differently from Aristotle, — in this way.
1. Either all events happen καθ’ εἱμαρμένην.
2. Or all events do not happen καθ’ εἱμαρμένην, but some events are ἐφ’ ἡμῖν. See De Fato, p. 14 seq. This way of putting the question is directed more against the Stoics, who were the great advocates of εἱμαρμένη, than against the Megaric Diodorus. The treatises of Chrysippus and the other Stoics alter both the wording and the putting of the thesis. We know that Chrysippus impugned the doctrine of Diodorus, but I do not see how.
The Stoic antithesis of τα καθ’ εἱμαρμένην — τὰ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν is different from the antithesis conceived by Aristotle and does not touch the question about the universality of regular sequence. Τὰ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν describes those sequences in which human volition forms one among the appreciable conditions determining or modifying the result; τὰ καθ’ εἱμαρμένην includes all the other sequences wherein human volition has no appreciable influence. But the sequence τῶν ἐφ’ ἡμῖν is just as regular as the sequence τῶν καθ’ εἱμαρμένην: both the one and the other are often imperfectly predictable, because our knowledge of facts and power of comparison is so imperfect.
Theophrastus discussed τὸ καθ’ εἱμαρμένην, and explained it to mean the same as τὸ κατὰ φύσιν. φανερώτατα δὲ Θεόφραστος δείκνυσι ταὐτὸν ὃν τὸ καθ’ εἱμαρμένην τῷ κατὰ φύσιν (Alexander Aphrodisias ad Aristot. De Animâ, ii.).