ARISTOTLE AND THE EARLIER PERIPATETICS vol.I by Eduard Zeller, B.F.C.Costelloe 1897

:
of Form with Matter.
METAPHYSICS 339
But one cannot understand how
reality can belong in a higher degree and a more
primary sense to that which is a combination of Form
and Matter, of Actual and Possible, than to that which
is pure Form as it is known in universal concepts, i.e.
to the Actual which is
limited by no element of mere
Possibility. 1 It only remains, then, to recognise in
this point, not merely a lacuna, but a deep contradiction
in the philosophy of Aristotle. 2 He has set aside the
Platonic attempt to hypostatise the universal concepts,
but he leaves standing its two main pillars, the assumptions,
namely, that it is only the universal that can be
the object of knowledge and that the truth of knowledge
keeps pace with the actuality of its object. 3
How
was_ it possible to hold these two positions together in
thought without involving contradictions ?
We need not expect, threfore, to avoid contradictions
in working out the further developments of his
theory, by which Aristotle sought a solution of the
questions which the Ideal theory and the doctrines
connected therewith had left unanswered.
EvenHBKTLiNGfailstomake presents it pure,
1
this intelligible, when he goes on 2
Since Rittee, iii. 1 30, called
to say in the_ passage just quoted attention to this difficulty it has
that that only is object of know- been further discussed by Hey--
ledge which is of permanent DER ; cf . Arist. nnd liegel. Dial.
worth in things. This in the 180, 183 sq,, and Zeller's first
sphere of sense is never the whole edition, p. 405 sq., which was
thing, but is entangled with all followed by Bonitz, Arist.
that is accidental and that has Metaph. ii. 569. Schweglee,
its source in matter. He thus Arist. Metapli. iii. 133. Cf. also
suggests the question how the Stbumpell, Gesch. d. Phil. 251
thing in which the permanent sq.
worth is mixed with the acci- 3 Cf. Zellee, Ph. d. Gr. pt. i
dental can be anything more sub- 541 sq.
stantial than the form which
340 ARISTOTLE
(i) Form and Matter: the Actual and the Possible.
We nmst now go back to Plato. In the Ideas he
had distinguished the non-sensible essence of things
from their sensible appearance. Aristotle refused to
think of the former as a universal subsisting for itself
outside of things. Yet he does not wish to abandon
the distinction, and the grounds on which he bases
are the same as those of Plato—namely, that the
it
nonsensible
Form can alone be an object of knowledge, and
that it alone is permanent amid the
change of appearances.
He says, as Plato said, that as perception is
different from knowledge, it is equally clear that the
object of knowledge must be something other than
sensible things. All that is sensible is passing and
changeful ; it is a ' contingent ' which may be one way or
may be another. What knowledge requires, on the
contrary, is an object as unchangeable and necessary as
itself, which can as little change into its opposite as
knowledge can into ignorance. Of sensible things we
can have neither a concept nor a proof; it is the Form
alone with which knowledge has to do. 1
Form, indeed,
is also the indispensable condition of all Becoming
since everything that becomes,
from being something else.
comes to be something
Becoming, then, consists
in- this, that some matter takes on a definite Form.
This Form must therefore be posited before each case
1
Metaj?h. vii. 11, 15 (see p. iirurrl)ia) obBevhs, el pi) tis efaai
220, supra), with which cf. ibid. Ae^ei tV vXaBtimv hri