CHAPTER XI. WISDOM, OR PHILOSOPHY. "When I say that the government is best under which men lead a peaceable life, I mean, that life of man which consists not only in the circulation of the blood and other properties common to all animals, but whose chief part is reason, and the true life and excellence of the mind." SPINOZA. § 1. Definition of Philosophy. WE have already seen that Wisdom, or Philosophy, is concerned with those elements of reality which depend upon unalterable principles, and is defined as "scientific knowledge of the most precious things, with the crown of perfection upon it." Before going on further to discuss the peculiar place that is claimed for it in human life and happiness, it is necessary to try to define more precisely what we are to understand by the term. Assuming that the scientific as opposed to the calculative reason has for its object the unalterable principles of reality,* how can we distinguish Philosophy from other kinds of scientific knowledge? Or, to * In what sense this is true has been seen p. 139 above. * put it otherwise, what are we to understand by "the most precious things" of which we are told Philosophy is the knowledge? The very form of the question seems to suggest that Science and Philosophy have different objects, and when he is dealing with the precise difference between them Aristotle tends to dwell upon this distinction. In this spirit he differentiates, in a well-known passage in the Metaphysics," two kinds of knowledge, one of which busies itself with the investigation of what is changeable and incomplete, i.e. contained as an attribute in something else, the other with what is eternal and self-contained. The former kind is what we should understand by science, falling, according to Aristotle, into two main divisions, viz. mathematics and physics. There is, however, in Aristotle a wider sense of the term philosophy, according to which it is taken as a description of knowledge, or theory in general, falling into the three great groups of mathematical, physical, and theological or first philosophy. According to this view, these sciences represent rather stages in the deepening of the knowledge of reality which reaches its furthest point in that which is par excellence philosophy, than fields distinct from one another or from philosophy itself. It is in accordance with this view of the scope of philosophy that Aristotle at the beginning of the Metaphysics, in enumerating the marks that distinguish philosophical from other kinds of knowledge, notes that it is concerned with every * Metaphysics K 7; cf. Stewart, ii. p. 55. Wallace's Outlines of the Philosophy of Aristotle, p. 23. form of reality and differs from scientific knowledge in the ordinary sense in its greater abstruseness, exactness, thoroughness, and disinterestedness. These two points of view are reconciled with one another by noting that while philosophy is distinguished from mathematical and physical science in being concerned with the eternal and self-contained, we are not to suppose that the "things" with which it is concerned form a class by themselves. Philosophy is concerned with the reality that underlies the world about us, not with any metaphysical realities beyond it. It is therefore not so much a separate science, with a particular field of its own, as a particular way of treating that world of reality which is the object of all science. It is quite true that Aristotle sometimes speaks of God and human reason in its highest form as realities "separable" from the rest of the world, and in a passage we have already considered he seems to regard the stars of heaven as in a special sense the objects of "philosophy." But we must be careful how we take such passages. Without entangling ourselves in the metaphysical difficulties they suggest, it may be pointed out that Aristotle has no doubt in his own mind that the nature of the ultimate realities which we call God and Reason is discoverable only by the analysis of the particular forms of reality which we see about us, and, secondly, that the stars of heaven have the place of pre-eminence assigned to them as objects of philosophical thought just because they are conceived of by Aristotle, in common with Plato, as representing in a special sense the source of the reason and intelligence which is the ultimate principle of reality in the world.* Returning to the passage before us, the reader will now be prepared to understand that while it is the narrower sense of the term which is probably here uppermost in Aristotle's mind, it would be a mistake so to interpret it as to exclude all reference to thought and science in general. § 2. Apparent Exaggeration in Aristotle's Doctrine. Even in the light of this wider interpretation of the term, however, these sections strike us at first as somewhat paradoxical and exaggerated in the importance they assign to science and philosophy as a source of happiness. We have hitherto followed the argument without much difficulty. Happiness, we have seen, consists in the excellent discharge of human function. This excellence, we have further seen, has two sides, according as we consider it to consist in a habitual attitude of the will to the calls of life, or in insight into the meaning of life. In the one aspect we call it moral: in the other, intellectual virtue. Uniting them, we define true happiness as that of the intelligent citizen who loyally accepts the responsibilities of his station and lives to the honour of his country. But here is something which it is more difficult to bring into line with ordinary moral conceptions. The spirit of sobriety with which the argument has hitherto *See Grant, op. cit. i. p. 286. been conducted seems to be abandoned, and we are asked to recognize a still higher kind of happiness in a life which is the opposite of that just described in every essential particular. In the first place, it is exclusive. Not only is it a life that implies special endowments and considerable leisure, but it is one of comparative isolation, in which even friendship plays an insignificant part, and the truly happy man seems to be he who "stands most alone." Secondly, it is unrelated to the ordinary business and calls of life, which are conceived of rather as a disturbance than as opportunities for the realization of happiness. Thirdly, instead of giving us a deeper hold of mortal life, and putting us in closer touch with humanity, it consists in the endeavour to put off our mortality through the development of the faculty of reason, which is apparently conceived of as something superhuman. It is true that this paradox does not originate with Aristotle, having been inherited by him from Plato, who had already given a somewhat mystical character to the highest happiness. But there is a tone of sobriety in all that Plato says in this connexion, which for the nonce we seem to miss in Aristotle. "Aristotle," says Grant,* " is less delicate and reverent than Plato in his mode of speaking of human happiness, especially as attained by the philosopher. In Plato there seems often, if not always, present a sense of the weakness of the individual as contrasted with the eternal and the divine. If Plato requires Op. cit. i. p. 215. * |