Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/111

Rh rei alicujus gratia est, tum vero totum ipsum.) At greater length, p. 633 and 645 of the Berlin quarto edition, and also De incessu animalium, c. 2: "" (Natura nihil frustra facit, sed semper ex iis, quæ cuique animalium generis essentiæ contingunt, id quod optimum est.) But he expressly recommends teleology at the end of the books De generatione animalium, and blames Democritus for having denied it, which is just what Bacon, in his prejudice, praises in him. Especially, however, in the "Physica," ii. 8, p. 198, Aristotle speaks ex professo'' of final causes, and establishes them as the true principle of the investigation of nature. In fact, every good and regular mind must, in considering organised nature, hit upon teleology, but unless it is determined by the preconceived opinions, by no means either upon physico-theology or upon the anthropo-teleology condemned by Spinoza. With regard to Aristotle generally, I wish further to draw attention to the fact here, that his teaching so far as it concerns unorganised nature, is very defective and unserviceable, as in the fundamental conceptions of mechanics and physics he accepts the most gross errors, which is the less pardonable, since before him the Pythagoreans and Empedocles had been upon the right path and had taught much better. Empedocles indeed, as we learn from Aristotle's second book, De cælo (c. 1, p. 284), had already grasped the conception of a tangential force arising from rotation, and counteracting gravity, which Aristotle again rejects. Quite the reverse, however, is Aristotle's relation to the investigation of organised nature. This is his field; here the wealth of his knowledge, the keenness of his observation, nay, sometimes the depth of his insight, astonish us. Thus, to give just one example, he already knew the antagonism in which in the ruminants the horns and the teeth of the upper jaw stand to each other, on account of which, therefore, the latter are wanting where the former are found, and conversely (De partib. anim., iii. 2). Hence then, also his correct estimation of final causes.