Aristotle the Alchemist

It is important for the real researcher to look past the superficial anthologies of his work and to read his Secretum Secretorum which is not even mentioned in those anthologies at my local library. The Secretum was an explanation of alchemy for Alexander who set the alchemist family named Ptolemy in charge of Egypt. Ptolemy had Manetho do a Kings List to link himself to the De Danaan hero named Herakles. Alexander may have found the Emerald Tablet or Tabula Smaragdina in the grave of Hermes Trismegistus at Hebron. Some people think this Tablet with the Dictum of Hermes or the Magian Law known as ‘As Above, SO Below’ is the Holy Grail and they imagine it was at Oak Island after the Merovingians brought it there. The ‘green vitreole’ it was made of was indeed an immortal and vital component in the esoteric searches of those who are called De Brix.

Here is something that still haunts the minds of people in science as the History of Psychology gives us some idea of what Aristotle sought to understand.

”The Third Period of Greek Speculation -- Objectivism.

Aristotle and the Rise of Objectivism. -- It would seem that Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), without doubt the greatest scientific man, if not also the greatest speculative genius, that ever lived, arose to restore the empirical tradition to philosophy after the plunge into absolutism. The time was ripe for the foundation of empirical psychology, and following his scientific instinct, he founded it. But the time was not ripe for its entire philosophical justification, and he did not justify it. He had the right to found formal logic, and he took advantage of the right. His achievements in natural science, politics, aesthetics, and ethics are also those of a man of the highest constructive genius.

These remarks follow from the one statement that Aristotle developed both the empiricism of method of Socrates and the rationalistic logic that Plato inherited in the Ionic and Pythagorean tradition. Confining ourselves to the psychological bearings of his views, we will look at his doctrine from both sides, taking the metaphysical first.

Aristotle distinguished four sorts of "cause," as working together in things: "efficient," "formal," "final," and "material" cause. Of these, three fell together on the side of form (eidoV), manifested in reason, soul, and God. The fourth, the material cause, [p. 61] is matter ('ulh). This is Aristotle's interpretation of dualism. Aristotle declares that final cause was the relatively new conception which had been clearly distinguished before him only by Anaxagoras.

But matter is not an independent principle: it exists only in connection with form and design. It is a limitation, a relative negation. The only independent absolute principle is God, who is, as in the Platonic teaching, both Reason and the Good.

With such a metaphysics, there is no positive justification of science, psychological or other. Objective nature is teleological, an incorporation of reason, which gives it its form, movement, and final outcome. Life is a semi-rational teleological principle, working to an end -- a vitalistic conception. All form in nature is the product of a formative reason. Natural phenomena are not purely quantitative; formal distinctions are qualitative.

The objective world is thus given its right to be; but it is a world in which reason is immanent. There are two great modes of reason, considered as cause, in the world: a cause is either a potency (dunamiV), or an act, called "entelechy" (enteleceia) or actuality (energeia). Reason or form, when not actual, slumbers as a potentiality in nature. Pure reason or God is pure actuality; matter is pure potentiality. As such God merely exists in eternal self-contemplation, apart from the world. The heavenly bodies are made of ether (not matter like that of the four elements) and have spirits; they are moved by love, directed toward God. In this we have a concrete rendering of the ideas and divine love of Plato.

On this conception, "physics," which deals with phenomenal appearances, including psychology, is contrasted [p. 62] with the theory of causes, "first things," or "metaphysics."

This philosophical conception so dominates Aristotle's mind that he practically abandons, in theory, the subjective point of view. In his view of the soul, he goes over to a biological conception, which is, however, not that of evolution. Natural species, like the types of Plato, are immutable. The soul is the "first entelechy" or formal cause of the body; in essence it is akin to ether. It embodies also the efficient and final causal principles. Man, in the masculine gender, alone realises the end of nature. Psychology, thus fused with biology, extends to plants and animals and so becomes a comparative science. The plants have nutritive and reproductive souls; they propagate their form. Animals have, besides, the sentient and moving soul, which is endowed with impulse, feeling, and the faculty of imaging. In man, finally, the thinking or rational soul is present. This is implanted in the person before birth from without; and at death it goes back to its source, the divine reason, where it continues in eternal but impersonal form. It is two-fold in its nature in man, partaking both of divine reason and of the sensitive soul; it is both active and passive (nouV poihtikos and nouV paqetikoV).

In the theory of the relation of these souls to one another, Aristotle advances to a genetic and strictly modern point of view. They are not separate "parts," having different local seats in the body, as [p. 63] Plato taught, but functions of the one developing principle. The higher is developed from and includes the lower.

In all this, it is evident that while the objective point of view is maintained, still the doctrine is not the result of a searching of consciousness; nor does it employ a strictly empirical method. It does not isolate the sphere of mind as one of conscious fact, distinct from that of the physical. The results are on the same level for mind, life, and physics in the narrower sense; they are deduced from the immanental conception of nature as a whole. So far Aristotle the metaphysician.

But Aristotle the scientific observer is still to be heard from. It is clear that psychological facts may be observed, just as other facts may be, even in the absence of any clear distinction as to the presence or absence of consciousness. Aristotle set himself to investigate the functions of the soul, looking upon it as the biological principle of form in nature. In this sense, as using an objective method of observation, and as making important and lasting discoveries, he is properly to be described as the pioneer psychologist.” (7)

His insights were boundless and Pseudo-Aristotle or he, himself, also wrote about the Carthaginian ban on travel to America. His insight on the Carthaginian democratic system with a common consent king is important to getting a glimpse of how much better things were in the earlier times before Empire became all the rage. Whether he supported the stupid ban on educating women or just went along because it was politically incorrect and dangerous to do otherwise is something we may never really know. Aquinas re-worked much of Aristotle into the Catholic dogma and many Thomists in that behemoth still hold sway.