Page:Aristotle (Grant).djvu/184

 he thought freedom to be, in a certain sense, valueless. Hence, we only mention the problem of Free Will in connection with him in order to show how his ideas contrast with those of the modern world. By a curious metaphor (‘Metaphys.’ XI. x.), he figured the universe as a household, in which the sun and stars and all the heavens are the masters, whose high aims and important positions prevent any of their time being left to a merely arbitrary disposal, for all is taken up with a round of the noblest duties and occupations. Other parts of the universe are like the inferior members of the family—the slaves and domestic animals—who can to a great extent pursue their own devices. Under the last category man would be ranked. Aristotle does not regard the unchanging and perpetual motion of the heavenly bodies as a bondage, nor what is arbitrary in the human will as a privilege. His cosmical views tended to disparage the dignity of man. He would say with the Psalmist, “What is man in comparison with the heavens?” But he failed to reach the counterbalancing thought of Kant, that “There are two things which strike the mind with awe—the starry heavens and the moral nature of man.”

Within an eternal and immutable circumference of the heavens, Aristotle placed a comparatively narrow sphere of the changeable, and in this, Nature, Chance, and Human Will were the causes at work. He admitted a certain amount of determinism as controlling the human will, but he did not care to trace out the exact proportions of this; he merely maintained that the