The influence of the philosophic system of Aristotle on the intellectual development of the human race has been more extensive and more lasting than that of any other philosopher except Plato. This supremacy is to be ascribed (1) to his method, which not only re stricted the range of human observation and thought, but also fixed the laws of their operation, so far as the field of the outer, world is concerned, (in principles fundamental to the human mind; (2) t<> his logic which grew out of his method and also complemented it; (3) to the practical character of his intellect, and the practical tendency of his speculations, even the
most subtle ; and (4) to the comparative clearness and simplicity of his system, which arises partly from the really luminous clearness of his own intellect, and partly from the fact that the most profound problems of philosophy do not come within the range of his method when confined to its legitimate application. His meth- od is the so-called empirical one, viz., to begin with the observation of phenomena, and to reason upon them. " ' Art commences when, from a great number of expe- riences, one general conception is formed, which will embrace all similar cases ; experience is the knowledge of individual things ; art is that of universals' (Meta- pkys. i, 1). What Aristotle here calls ' art' is plain- ly what we now call ' induction ;' and had he ad- hered throughout to the method here indicated, he would have been, in reality, what Bacon is called, the father of the inductive philosophy. The distinction between Aristotle and Plato is, that while both held that science could only be formed from universals, ra KcidoKov, Aristotle contended that such universals had purely a subjective existence, i. e. that they were nothing more than the inductions derived from par- ticular facts. He therefore made experience the ba- sis of all science, and reason the architect. Plato made reason the basis. The tendency of the one was to direct man to the observation and interrogation of nature, that of the other was to direct man to the con- templation of ideas" (Lewes, Hist, of Philosophy, ii, 114). In passing from Plato to Aristotle, the thoughtful student observes that he comes into a different if not a lower atmosphere. The end of all Plato's teaching is to show, in opposition to the Sophists, that the mind of man is not its own standard ; the tendency of Aris- totle's teaching is to show that it is. It has been the fashion, since Hegel's exposition of Aristotle, to deny that his doctrine is substantially realism, in the em- pirical sense, as opposed to Plato's idealism. To illus- trate : Both Plato and Aristotle could say that "dia- lectics is that science which discovers the difference between the false and the true. But the false in Plato is the semblance which any object presents to the sen- sualized mind ; the true the very substance and mean- ing of that object. The false in Aristotle is a wrong affirmation concerning any matter whereof the mind takes cognizance ; the true a right affirmation con- cerning the same matter. Hence the dialectic of the one treats of the way whereby we obtain to a clear and vital perception of things ; the dialectic of the other treats of the way in which we discourse of things. Words to the one are the means whereby we descend to an apprehension of realities of which there are no sensible exponents. Words to the other are the formulas wherein we set forth our notions and judgments. The one desires to ascertain of what hid- den meaning the word is an index ; the other desires to prevent the word from transgressing certain bound- aries which he has fixed for it. Hence it happened "that the sense and leading maxim of Plato's philoso- phy became not only more distasteful, but positively more unintelligible to his wisest disciple than to many who had not studied in the Academy, or who had set themselves in direct opposition to it. When Aristotle had matured his system of dialectics, there was some- thing in it so perfect and satisfactory that he could not even dream of any thing lying outside of its circle, and incapable of being brought under its rules. He felt that he had discovered all the forms under which it is possible to set down any proposition in words ; and what there could be besides this, what opening there could be for another region entirely out of the government of these forms, he had no conception. At any rate, if there were such a one, it must be a vague, uninhabited world. To suppose it peopled with other, and those more real and di-tinct forms, was the ex- travagance of philosophical delirium. Accordingly, when he speaks of the doctrine of substantial ideas — of ideas, that is to say, which are the grounds of all
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our forms of thought, and consequently cannot be sub- ject to them, be is reduced to the strange, and, for so consummate a logician, most disagreeable necessity of begging the whole question ; of arguing that, since these ideas ought to he included under some of the as- certained conditions of logic, and by the hypothesis are not included under any, they must be fictitious" (Mau- rice, Moral and Metaph. Philosophy, ch. vi, div. iii, § 2).