collection implies consideration and a train of reasoning, and yet it is a bodily affection—a physical movement and presentation,” Aristotle adds that “persons with large heads are bad at recollecting, on account of the weight upon their perceptive organ(!), and that the very young and very old are so, on account of the state of movement they are in — the one in the movement of growth, the other in that of decay.”
These considerations, however, whether correct or erroneous, all belong rather to psychology than to metaphysics. Let us conclude by endeavouring to gather Aristotle’s opinions on three great metaphysical problems: The destiny of the human soul, free will, and the nature of God. His opinions on these subjects have to be “gathered,” because, as said above (p. 6), he had no great taste for such speculations, and was in this respect very unlike Plato. Over the mind of Plato the idea of a future life had exercised an absorbing influence. Rising to an almost Christian hope and faith, he had held out, as a consolation in the hour of death, the promise of an immortality to be spent in the fruition of truth; and, as a motive for human actions and a basis for morals, he had enunciated a system of future rewards and punishments, closely corresponding with Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. What had been so prominent with Plato was by Aristotle put away into the extreme background. In early life, indeed, he had written a dialogue, called ‘Eudemus,’ which turned on the story that an exile had been told by the oracle that within a certain time he should be “restored to his home,” and that within
