INTRODUCTION. I. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL TREATISES OF ARISTOTLE AND THEIR RELATION TO HIS OTHER WORKS. PSYCHOLOGY is not the science which the name of Aristotle most immediately suggests. We think of him as the author of that exhaustive analysis of thought and reasoning which we know as Logic, as the encyclopædic worker who first mapped out with any definiteness the limits of first philosophy or metaphysic, or as the writer of that most suggestive text-book of the moralist-the Nicomachean Ethics. But, if psychology be not so directly associated with the name of Aristotle, there can be no doubt but his labours first gave a satisfactory basis for a science dealing with the problems which we now describe as psychological. He is, in short, the founder of Psychology just as surely as he is the founder of Logic: or, at any rate, it is to Aristotle that we owe the first clear conception of a science which should confine itself to the phenomena connected with what we may for the moment call the mind. There had, it is true, been scattered remarks upon psychology spread throughout the observations of the pre-Socratic thinkers: and Plato had not only discussed such questions generally in his writings, but had devoted great part of several dialogues-especially the Phædrus, Phado and Timæus, to this subject. It had only been however in connection with other problems that the phenomena of mind had been discussed and in Plato particularly the treatment of the question had been obscured by semi-mythical and mystical reflections which detracted from the value of his observations. It is different when we come to Aristotle. Not indeed that Aristotle views the subject in the abstract manner which would be expected from a modern inquirer. But, at the same time, as contrasted with the form of earlier theories, the psychological writings of Aristotle display a surprising power of isolating various phases of life and mind, without at the same time losing sight of their connection with allied phenomena. The same combination of analysis and synthesis which enabled him in dealing with moral facts to draw a line between Ethics and Politics1 and yet recognise their essential unity, allowed him to study psychology in the abstract manner which the idea of a science renders necessary and at the same time give full weight to all those cognate circumstances which form as it were the setting of the conceptions of the special science. These psychological writings comprehend a considerable number of distinct treatises. But there is one among them which may be regarded as the parent of the others. The Psychology proper (De Anima, as we generally call it), contains within the compass of some eighty or ninety pages the chief points in the psychological doctrine of Aristotle. It consists, as usually divided, of three books; of which the first is in the main a historical retrospect of pre-Aristotelian psychology, the second lays down the famous definition of the Soul and analyses at some length the faculties of sense-perception, while the third, if we regard the first and second chapters as belonging to the second rather than to the third book, is chiefly occupied 1 Eth. Nic. vi. 8. 1. 1141 23, ἔστι δὲ καὶ ἡ πολιτικὴ καὶ ἡ φρόνησις ἡ αὐτὴ μὲν ἕξις, τὸ μέντοι εἶναι οὐ ταὐτὸν αὐταῖς—ie the moral ideal for the individual and for the state is one and the same, but its manner of realization (rò eivai) is different. Cp. x. 9. 1181815, where the whole science is named ἡ περὶ τὰ ἀνθρώπινα φιλοσοφία. with the phenomena of thought and will. Comprehensive however as is Aristotle's main work on Psychology, it leaves almost untouched a number of subsidiary but important questions which require to be discussed in various supplementary treatises. These supplementary writings constitute the opuscules commonly grouped together as the Parva Naturalia. Prominent among them is the little work on Sense-Perception, a tract which deals particularly with the phenomena of sight, taste and smell, and expands the somewhat meagre analysis of these senses given in the Psychology itself. Following this comes the little work on Memory and Reminiscence, a very golden tract as Titze calls it, in which the laws of association are laid down with a clearness scarcely to be looked for outside modern philosophy. Next we meet with a trio of treatises connected with the phenomena of sleep and dreams, and which are severally entitled 'on Sleep and Waking,' 'on Dreams' and 'on Divination through Dreams.' The quasi-physiological character of the last-named treatises is continued in the works which follow and which deal with the phenomena of growth and life, of breath and death. The works in question are more accurately known as those on 'Longevity and Short Life,' on 'Life and Death,' and cognate subjects, and lastly that on 'Respiration". 1 These minor psychological writings may be here briefly tabulated as follows: a. περὶ αἰσθήσεως καὶ αἰσθητῶν. Το these is sometimes added another tractate under the title περὶ νεότητος καὶ γήρως, as corresponding with the first two chapters of the wepì Zwŷs kai Oavárov. But it would seem that we cannot in this way precisely distinguish between the separate portions of the Parva Naturalia: rather Aristotle intended the subjects of youth and age, life and death, to be discussed together in the sections which precede the work on The genuineness of the works just mentioned has been seldom or never questioned. It is difficult, indeed, to find in the Catalogue of Aristotle's writings transmitted to us by Diogenes Laertius, a counterpart either to the Psychology itself or to the minor psychological treatises, but this is a difficulty which meets us in connection with all the writings of the Stagyrite, and is not peculiar to his compositions on Psychology1. Nor, it need scarcely be added, are the psychological writings without the distinctive characteristics which are wont everywhere to disturb the Aristotelian student. We are met by the same abruptness, the same incompleteness on the one hand, redundancy on the other, as present themselves in the Metaphysics or the Ethics. Torstrik particularly has sought to make out the existence of a double version, a twofold recension in the Psychology: but this subject is too closely bound up with the general question of the composition of Aristotle's writings to be summarily settled in a general discussion such as this is meant to be. A still more sweeping charge was made by Weisse in questioning altogether the genuineness and authenticity of the third Book. But his view has never been accepted by Aristotelian scholars: and though few would refuse to acknowledge that the book in question is full of peculiar respiration, which itself is regarded as a direct continuation of the foregoing discussion. Thus the treatise on life and death, after noting the influence of cold on animals and plants, ends by saying that this subject must be discussed at greater length; and we are thereupon introduced to the tract on respiration with the words : περὶ γὰρ ἀναπνοῆς ὀλίγοι μέν τινες τῶν πρότερον φυσικῶν εἰρήκασιν. So also Aristotle closes the Parva Naturalia at 48obar by saying: περὶ μὲν οὖν ζωῆς καὶ θανάτου καὶ τῶν συγγενῶν ταύτης τῆς σκέψεως σχεδὸν εἴρηται περὶ πάντων. 1 To the Tepi yuxs possibly correspond in the Catalogue of Diogenes No. 13, περὶ ψυχῆς ἀ: 73, θέσεις περὶ ψυχῆς ἄ. To the Parva Naturalia would seem to correspond 120, φυσικῶν κατὰ στοιχεῖον λῆ: while further in 117 μνημονικὸν ἅ we may perhaps recognise our repl μvýμns. With respect to the general discrepancy between the works of Aristotle as named by us and catalogued by Diogenes Laertius, it may be some slight solution to remember that Aristotle himself frequently alludes to his writings, or rather parts of them, under very different designations from those which we employ. So, for instance, various portions of the Physics are cited as év Toîs Tepì κινήσεως —ἐν τοῖς περὶ ἀρχῶν—ἐν τοῖς περὶ χρόνον. 2 See the Appendix. difficulties, there seem to be no good grounds for doubting its Aristotelian origin'. There are however other psychological writings commonly included in the works of Aristotle whose authenticity is much. more open to dispute. Such for example is the work on Physiognomics, a tractate specially connected with the relation between the internal feelings and their outward expression". To the same class of spurious or semi-spurious writings belong the treatises on Colours and on Sounds, and lastly the little work on Animal Movement'. This last-mentioned dissertation is of particular importance for Aristotelian psychology: and M. Barthélemy St Hilaire has not hesitated to include it in his translation of the Parva Naturalia. But though the work just mentioned throws no inconsiderable light upon Aristotle's theory of will and his general conception of the relation between motives and action, it is yet, almost without doubt, not even Aristotelian in the sense in which other works commonly ascribed to Aristotle are said to be so. Thus far we have confined ourselves to Aristotle's actually extant works. But there is another work of which some fragments have been handed down which cannot be left altogether out of sight. This is the Dialogue Eudemus—a dialogue, which, as its second title indicates, was devoted to questions of psychology. Into the nature of these dialogues, and particularly their identification with the so-called exoteric writings, this is not perhaps the place to enter. But it seems difficult in the face 1 For Weisse's argument see his translation p. 278, and for an answer Schmidt in Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik, Aug. 1831. 2 Þvoorwμiká: printed in Bekker's Berlin Aris. p. 805. Such a work is catalogued by Diogenes No. 109: but the existing compilation is almost unanimously judged spurious. See Rose, De A. Libr. Ordine, pp. 221-225. 3 περὶ χρωμάτων: περὶ ἀκουστῶν ἢ περὶ φωνῆς. 4 Tepi Šwwv kivńoews. See Rose (De Aris. Libr. Ord. 163). The work wepi jwwv Topelas (De Animalium Incessu) is on the other hand generally regarded as authentic. 5 Εὔδημος ἢ περὶ ψυχῆς. 6 See Bernays, Dialoge d. Aris. pp. 14-42, Heitz, Verlor. Schriften, pp. 199— 201, and cp. De Anima 1. 4, 40730 and III. 9, 432 26. The fragments are printed in the Appendix. W. AR. b |