Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/40

 autem quatuor sunt: una quæ explicat quid res sit ; altera, quam, si quædam sint, necesse est esse ; tertia, quæ quid primum movit ; quarta id, cujus gratia.) Now this is the origin of the division of the causes universally adopted by the Scholastic Philosophers, into causæ materiales, formales, efficientes et finales, as may be seen in "Suarii disputationes metaphysicæ" a real compendium of Scholasticism. Even Hobbes still quotes and explains this division. It is also to be found in another passage of Aristotle, this time somewhat more clearly and fully developed ("Metaph." i. 3.) and it is again briefly noticed in the book "De somno et vigilia," c. 2. As for the vitally important distinction between reason and cause, however, Aristotle no doubt betrays something like a conception of it in the "Analyt. post." i. 13, where he shows at considerable length that knowing and proving that a thing exists is a very different thing from knowing and proving why it exists : what he represents as the latter, being knowledge of the cause; as the former, knowledge of the reason. If, however, he had quite clearly recognized the difference between them, he would never have lost sight of it, but would have adhered to it throughout his writings. Now this is not the case ; for even when he endeavours to distinguish the various kinds of causes from one another, as in the passages I have mentioned above, the essential difference mooted in the chapter just alluded to, never seems to occur to him again. Besides he uses the term αίτιον indiscriminately for every kind of cause, often indeed calling reasons of knowledge,