THE ARISTOTELIAN CONCEPT OF ΦϒΣΙΣ
I.
A RISTOTLE submits that there are "two modes of causa- tion, and both must be taken into account, as far as possible, in explaining natural phenomena. An attempt, at least, must be made to include them both, and those who fail in this in reality tell us nothing about Nature, and Nature (<f>vai<;) rather than Matter (vrj) is the principle (apx'n) of things. . . . The reason why (he continues) our predecessors failed in hitting upon this method of treatment was that they were not in possession of the notion of formal cause (TO T( fjv elvai), or of any definition of substance (ovaia)." 1 The distinction is, for Aristotle, one between mechanism and teleology. And though Aristotle notes the fact that no such distinction obtained in early Greek cosmology, he does not seem to see that his distinction is the direct descendant of the philosophy of the Concept inaugurated by Socrates, and that, therefore, it could not have arisen with the Pre- Socratics. " For all early Greek philosophy moved wholly in the region of what Hegel calls the Vorstellung, and was not, therefore, philosophy at all, in his sense of the word. When an early Greek philosopher speaks of TO ov, he does not mean Being, but Body ; TO /z?) ov is Empty Space and not Not- Being. There is always before the mind of an Anaximander or a Heracleitus a perfectly clear pictorial idea ; his system is thoroughly anschaulich. When therefore we seek to understand these systems, what we have to do is not to think them by means of rational concepts, but to picture them in our minds by means of images." 2 We note, then, in the first place, that early Greek philosophy was thoroughly anschaulich^ perceptual. The consequence of this appears immediately. 1 De Part. An. I, I, 642 a, 13-31. a Burnet, Early Greek Philusophy, Introd., pp. 27, 28.
