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‘If any person thinks the examination of the rest of the animal kingdom an unworthy task, he must hold in like disesteem the study of man. For no one can look at the primordia of the human frame—blood, flesh, bones, vessels, and the like—without much repugnance. Moreover, when any one of the parts or structures, be it which it may, is under discussion, it must not be supposed that it is its material composition to which attention is being directed or which is the object of the discussion, but the relation of such part to the total form....

‘As every instrument and every bodily member subserves some partial end, that is to say, some special action, so the whole body must be destined to minister to some plenary sphere of action. Thus the saw is made for sawing, since sawing is a function, and not sawing for the saw. Similarly, the body too must somehow or other be made for the soul, and each part of it for some subordinate function to which it is adapted.’[22]

Aristotle is, in the fullest sense a ‘vitalist’. He believes that the presence of a certain peculiar principle of a non-material character is essential for the exhibition of any of the phenomena of life. This principle we may call soul, translating his word ψυχή. Living things, like all else in nature, have, according to Aristotle, an end or object. ‘Everything that Nature makes,’ he says, ‘is means to an end. For just as human creations are the products of art, so living objects are manifestly the products of an analogous cause or principle.... And that the heaven, if it had an origin, was evolved and is maintained by such a cause, there is, therefore, even more reason to believe, than that mortal animals so originated. For order and definiteness are much more manifest in the celestial bodies than in our own frame.’[23] It was a misinterpretation of this view that especially endeared him to the mediaeval Church and made it possible to absorb Aristotelian philosophy into Christian theology. It must be remembered that the cause or principle that leads to the development of living things is in Aristotle’s view, not external but internal.