{304}
We have traced the scale of being from inorganic matter,
through plants and animals, to man. What then? What is
the next step? Or does the scale stop there? Now there is a
sort of break in Aristotle’s system at this point, which has
led many to say that man is the top of the scale. The rest
of Aristotle’s physics deal with what is outside our earth,
such as the stars and planets. And they deal with them
quite as if they were a different subject, having little or
nothing to do with the terrestrial scale of being which we
have been considering. But here we must not forget two
facts. The first is that Aristotle’s writings have come down
to us mutilated, and in many cases unfinished. The second
is that Aristotle had a curious habit of writing separate
monographs on different parts of his system, and omitting
to point out any connexion between them, although such a
connexion undoubtedly exists.
Now although Aristotle himself does not say it, there are
several good reasons for thinking that the true interpreta-
tion of his meaning is that the scale of being does not stop
at man, that there is no gap in the chain here, but that
it proceeds from man through planets and stars—which
Aristotle, like Plato, regarded as divine beings—right up
to God himself. In the first place, this is required by the
logic of his system. The scale has formless matter at the
bottom and matterless form at the top. It should proceed
direct from one to the other. It is essential to his philosophy
that the universe is a single continuous chain. There is no
place for such a hiatus between man and the higher beings.
Secondly, it is not as if terrestrial life formed a scale, and
celestial beings were all on a par, having among themselves
no {305} scale of higher and lower. This is not the case.
The heavenly bodies have grades among themselves. The
higher are related to the lower as form to matter. Thus
stars are higher than planets. So that if we suppose that
evolution stops at man, what we have is a gap in the mid-
dle, a scale below it, and a scale above it. It is like a bridge
over a sheet of water, the two ends of which are intact,
but which is broken down in the middle. The natural com-
pletion of this scheme involves the filling up of the gap.
Thirdly, we have another very important piece of evidence.
With his valuable idea of evolution Aristotle combined an-
other very curious, and no doubt, absurd, theory. This was
that in the scale of the universe the lowest existence is to
be found in the middle, the highest at the periphery, and
that in general the higher is always outside the lower, so
that the spatial universe is a system of concentric spheres,
the outer sphere being related to the inner sphere as higher
to lower, as form to matter. At the centre of the spherical
universe is our earth. Earth, as the lowest element, is in the
middle. Then comes a layer of water, then of air, then of
fire. Among the heavenly bodies there are fifty-six spheres.
The stars are outside the planets and are therefore higher
beings. And in conformity with this scheme, the supreme
being, God, is outside the outermost sphere. Now it is ob-
vious that, in this scheme, the passage from the centre of
the earth to the stars forms a spatial continuity, and it is
impossible to resist the conclusion that it also forms a log-
ical continuity, that is, that there is no break in the chain
of evolution.