For Aristotle, metaphysic is the science which has to do with Being as such, Being in general, as distinguished from the special sciences jvhich deal with special forms of being. There are certain questions which, in Aristotle’s view, we have a right to ask in regard to everything that presents itself as real. We may ask what is its ideal nature or definition, and what are the conditions of its realization; we may ask by what or whom it was produced, and for what end; we may ask, in other words, for the formal and the material, for the efficient and the final causes of everything that is. These different questions point to different elements in our notion of Being, elements which may be considered in their general relations apart from any particular case of their union. These, therefore, the first philosophy must investigate. But, further, this science of being cannot be entirely separated from the science of knowing, but must determine at least its most general principles. For the science that deals with what is most universal in being is, for that very reason, dealing with the objects which are most nearly akin to the intelligence. These, indeed, are not the objects which are first presented to our minds; we begin with the particular, not the universal, with a πρώτον ηplv which is not πρώτον φυσeL-, but science reaches its true form only when the order of thought is made one with the order of nature, and the particular is known through the universal. Yet this-conversion or revolution of the intellectual point of view is not to be regarded as an absolute change from error to truth; for Aristotle holds that nihil est in intellectu quod non prius in sensu, in the meaning that in sense perception there is already the working of that discriminative intelligence which, beginning in sense perception, with the distinction of particular from particular, can rest only when it has apprehended things in their universal forms or definitions. Looking at knowledge formally, the highest law of thought, the law of contradiction (or, as we might call it, to indicate Aristotle’s meaning more exactly, the law of definition or distinction), is already implied in the first act of perception by which one thing is distinguished from another. Looking at it materially, the reason of man is to be conceived as potentially all that is knowable ; i.e., objects are so related to it that for it to know them in their essential definitions is only to know itself. The aim of science, in this view, is to break through the husk of matter, and to apprehend things in their forms, in which they are one with the mind that knows them. Hence also it follows that in rising to the most universal science, the science of Being in general, the mind is not leaving the region of immediate experience, in which it is at home, for a far-off region of abstractions. Rather it is returning to itself, apprehending that which is most closely related to itself, and which therefore, though it is late in being made the direct object of investigation, is yet presupposed in all that is, and is known.

Metaphysic, then, is the science which deals with the principles which are presupposed in all being and knowing, though they are brought to light only by philosophy. Another trait completes the Aristotelian account of it. It is theology, or the science of God. Now God is voησι<s voησeως, pure self-consciousness, the absolute thought which is one with its object, and He is therefore the first cause of all existence. For, while the world of nature is a world of motion and change, in which form is realized in matter, this process of the finite can be explained only by referring it back to an unmoved mover, in whom there is no distinction of matter and form, and who is, therefore, in Aristotle’s view, to be conceived as pure form, the purely ideal or theoretic activity of a consciousness whose object is itself. Such a conception, however, while it secures the independence and absoluteness of the unmoved mover, by removing him from all relation to what is other than himself, seems to make his connexion with the world inexplicable. We can on this theory refer the world to God, but not God to the world. Hence Aristotle seems sometimes to say that God is the first mover only as He is the last end after which all creation strives, and this leads him to attribute to nature a desire or will which is directed towards the good as its object or end.

Aristotle then brings together in his metaphysic three elements which are often separated from each other, and the connexion of which is far from being at once obvious. It is to him the science of the first principles of being. It is also the science of the first principles of knowing. Lastly, it is the science of God, as the beginning and end of all things, the absolute unity of being and thought, in which all the differences of finite thought and existence are either excluded or overcome.

To some this description of the contents of Aristotle’s treatise, and especially the last part of it, may seem to be a confirmation of all the worst charges brought against metaphysic. For at both extremes this supposed science seems to deal with that which is beyond experience, and which therefore cannot be verified by it. It takes us back to a beginning which is prior to the existence as well as to the consciousness of finite objects in time and space, and on to an end to which no scientific prophecy based upon our consciousness of such objects can reach. In the former aspect of it, it has to do with notions so abstract and general that it seems as if they could not be fixed or tested by reference to any experience, but must necessarily be the playthings of dialectical sophistry. In the latter aspect of it, it entangles us in questions as to the final cause and ultimate meaning of things, questions involving so comprehensive a view of the infinite universe in which we are insignificant parts that it seems as if any attempt to answer them must be for us vain and presumptuous. On both sides, therefore, metaphysic appears to be an attempt to occupy regions which are beyond the habitable space of the intelligible world—to deal with ideas which are either so vague and abstract that they cannot be fastened to any definite meaning, or so complex and far-reaching that they can never by any possibility be verified. For beings like men, fixed within these narrow limits of space and time, the true course, it would seem, is to “cultivate their gardens,” asking neither whence they come nor whither they go, or asking it only within the possible limits of history and scientific prophecy. To go back to the beginning or on to the end is beyond them, even in a temporal, still more in a metaphysical, sense. That which is πpωτov φυσeL escapes us even more absolutely than the prehistorical and pregeological records of man and his world. That which is ύστατον φύσει escapes us even more absolutely than the far-off future type of civilization, which social science vainly endeavours to anticipate. Our state is best pictured by that early Anglican philosopher who compared it to a bird flying through a lighted room “between the night and the night.” The true aim of philosophy is, therefore, it would seem, to direct our thoughts to the careful examination and utilization of the narrow space allotted to us by an inscrutable power, and with scientific self-restraint to refrain from all speculation either on first or on final causes.

The main questions as to the possibility and the nature of metaphysic, according to Aristotle’s conception of it, may be summed up under two heads. We may ask whether we can in any sense reach that which is beyond experience, and, if so, whether this “beyond” is a first or a last principle, a pre-condition or a final cause of nature and experience, or both. The former question branches out into two, according as we look at metaphysic from the objective or the subjective side, or, to express the matter more accurately, according as we consider it in relation to those natural objects which are merely objects of knowledge, or in relation to those spiritual objects which are also subjects of knowledge. We shall therefore consider metaphysic, first, in relation to science in general, and, secondly, in relation to the special science of psychology. The latter question also has two aspects; for, while the idea of a first cause or principle points to the connexion between metaphysic and logic, the idea of a last principle or final cause connects metaphysic with theology. We shall therefore consider in the third place the relation of metaphysic to logic, and in the fourth place its relation to religion and the philosophy of religion.

1. The Relation of Metaphysic to Science.— The beginnings of science and metaphysic are identical, though there is a sense in which it may be admitted that the metaphysical comes before the scientific or positive era. The first efforts of philosophy grasp at once at the prize of absolute knowledge. No sooner did the Greeks become dissatisfied with the pictorial synthesis of mythology by which their thoughts were first lifted above the confusion of particular things, than they asked for one universal principle which should explain all things. The Ionic school sought to find some one phenomenon of nature which might be used as the key to all other phenomena. The Eleatics, seeing the futility of making one finite thing the explanation of all other finite things, tried to find that explanation in the very notion of unity or being itself. We need not underestimate the speculative value of such bold attempts to sum up all the variety of the world in one idea, but it is obvious that they rather give a name to the problem than solve it, or that they put the very consciousness of the problem in place of the solution of it. Science is possible only if we can rise from the particular to the universal, from a subjective view of things as they immediately present themselves to us in perception to an objective determination of them through laws and principles which have no special relation to any particular set of events or to any one individual subject. But this is only one aspect of the matter. To advance from a conception of the world in ordine ad individuum to one in ordine ad universum, and so to discount and eliminate what is merely subjective and accidental in our first consciousness of the world, is the beginning of knowledge. But little is gained unless the universal, which we reach through the negation of the particulars, is more than their mere negation; unless it is a law or principle by means of which we can explain the particulars. Now the defect of early philosophy was that its universal was “the one beyond the many,” not the “one in the many,”—in other words, that it was not a law or principle by which the particulars subsumed under it could be explained, but simply the abstraction of an element common to them. But the process of knowledge is a process that involves both analysis and synthesis, negation and reaffirmation of the particulars with which we start. If we exaggerate the former aspect of it, we enter upon the via negativa of the mystics, the way of pure abstraction and negation, which would open the mind to the ideal reality of things simply by shutting it to all the perceptions of sensible phenomena. And, if we follow out this method to its legitimate result, we must treat the highest abstraction, the abstraction of Being, as if it were the sum of all reality, and the Neo-Platonic ecstasy in which all distinction, even the distinction of subject and object, is lost as the only attitude of mind in which truth can be apprehended.

In the philosophy of the Socratic school we find the first attempt at a systematic as opposed to an abstract theory— the first attempt to bring together the one and the many, and so to determine the former that it should throw light upon the latter. Yet even in Plato the tendency to oppose the universal to the particular is stronger than the tendency to relate them to each other, and in some of his dialogues, as, e.g. ∖ in the Phsedo, we find a near approach to that identification of the process of knowledge with abstraction which is the characteristic of mysticism. Aristotle, therefore, had some ground for taking the Platonic principle that “the real is the universal” in a sense which excludes the reality of the individual. Yet, though he detected Plato’s error in opposing the universal to the particular, and though, at the same time, he did not entirely lose sight of the truth which Plato had exaggerated, that the particular is intelligible only through the universal, Aristotle was not able to escape the influence of that dualism which had marred the philosophy of his predecessor. Hence the effect of his protest against a philosophy of abstraction was partly neutralized by his separation between the divine Being as pure form and nature as the unity of form and matter, and again by his separation of the pure reason which apprehends the forms of things from the perceptions of sense which deal with forms realized in matter. And after Aristotle’s time the tendency of philosophy was more and more to withdraw from contact with experience. The Neo-Platonic philosophy, and the Christian theology which was so strongly influenced by it, contained, indeed, an idea of the reconciliation of God and nature, and hence of form and matter, which must ultimately be fatal to dualism, and therefore to the method of mere abstraction. But the explicit meaning of the philosophy of the Middle Ages was still dualistic, and the mode in which the Aristotelian formulae were wrought into the substance of Christian doctrine by the scholastics tended more and more to conceal that idea of the unity of opposites which was involved in Christianity. Hence mediaeval realism presented, in its most one-sided form, the doctrine that “the real is the universal,” meaning by the universal nothing more than the abstract. And, as a natural consequence, the modern insurrection of the scientific spirit against scholasticism took its start from an equally bald and one-sided assertion of the opposite principle, that “the real is the individual,” meaning by that the individual of immediate perception. If Platonism had dwelt too exclusively on one aspect of the process of knowledge, viz., that it seeks to rise above the particular, the sensible, the subjective, to the universal, the intelligible, the objective, as if in the latter alone were reality to be found, modern men of science learnt from their first nominalistic teachers to regard the universal as nothing more than an abbreviated expression for the particulars, and science itself as a mere generalization of the facts of sensible perception. But this view of scientific knowledge, as a mere reaffirmation of what is immediately given in sense, is as imperfect as the opposite theory, which reduces it to the mere negation of what is so given. An ideal world utterly and entirely divorced from the phenomenal, and an ideal world which is simply a repetition of the phenomenal, are equally meaningless. The processes of science have both a negative and a positive side; they involve a negation of the particular as it is immediately presented in sense, but only with a view to its being reaffirmed with a new determination through the universal. The fact as it is first presented to us is not the fact as it is; for, though it is from the fact as given that we rise to the knowledge of the law, it is the law that first enables us to understand what the fact really means. Our first consciousness of things is thus, not an immovable foundation upon which science may build, but rather a hypothetical and self-contradictory starting-point of investigation, which becomes changed and transformed as we advance.

The nominalism of scientific men in modern times is due to two special causes, one of which has already been mentioned. It is partly due to the traditions of a time when mediaeval realism was the great enemy of science. The Baconian protest against the “anticipation of nature” was a relative truth when it was urged against a class of writers who supposed that true theories could be attained without regard to facts; the Baconian assertion of the necessity of attending to ajciomata media was the necessary correction of the tendencies of mystics, who supposed that philosophy could attain its end by grasping at once at absolute unity, and contented themselves, therefore, with a unity which did nothing to explain the differences. But, when the former was turned into the dogmatic assertion that the mind is, or ought to be, passive in the process of knowledge, as having in itself no principle for the explanation of things, and when the latter was turned into the dogmatic assertion that science can only proceed from part to part and never from the whole to the parts, these relative truths became a source of error. And this error was confirmed and increased by the mistaken views of those who first tried to correct it. For these, admitting that scientific truth is entirely derived from external experience, only ventured to assert the existence of a priori knowledge alongside of, and in addition to, that which is a posteriori. In other words, they sought in inner experience a basis for those beliefs which outward experience seemed unable to support. But this basis was soon found to be treacherous. Introspection, observation of the inner life as opposed to and distinguished from the outer life, could be only an observation of the facts of the individual consciousness as such; and to base religion and morality on such a foundation was to treat God and right as subjective phenomena, which do not necessarily correspond to any objective reality. Nor was this conclusion really evaded by the assertion of the self-evidencing necessity of such ideas and beliefs, or of the principles upon which they are founded. For this necessity, as a subjective phenomenon, might be accounted for otherwise than by the supposition of their objective validity. Such scepticism, further, was favoured by the progress of science, which, as it advanced from physics to biology and sociology, became more and more inconsistent with the idea of an absolute breach between inner and outer experience, and narrowed the sphere which had been hitherto reserved for the former. Man, it was urged, is but a part in a greater whole, not exempted from the law of action and reaction which connects all parts of that whole with each other. His individual life contains only a few links in a chain of causation that goes back to a beginning and onward to an end of which he knows nothing. And, as Spinoza says, vis qua unaquaeque res in existendo perseverat a causis externis infinite superatur. Hence to treat ideas which are only states of the individual consciousness as the explanation of the world, instead of treating them as phenomena to be explained by its relation to that world, seemed to be an absurdity. The particular beliefs and tendencies of the mind were to be regarded, not as ultimate facts in reference to which everything is to be interpreted, but rather as facts which are themselves to be referred to more...