by Aristotle
promoted by an acquaintance with its properties: for, when we are able
to give an account conformable to experience of all or most of the
properties of a substance, we shall be in the most favourable position
to say something worth saying about the essential nature of that
subject; in all demonstration a definition of the essence is
required as a starting-point, so that definitions which do not
enable us to discover the derived properties, or which fail to
facilitate even a conjecture about them, must obviously, one and
all, be dialectical and futile.
A further problem presented by the affections of soul is this: are
they all affections of the complex of body and soul, or is there any
one among them peculiar to the soul by itself? To determine this is
indispensable but difficult. If we consider the majority of them,
there seems to be no case in which the soul can act or be acted upon
without involving the body; e.g. anger, courage, appetite, and
sensation generally. Thinking seems the most probable exception; but
if this too proves to be a form of imagination or to be impossible
without imagination, it too requires a body as a condition of its
existence. If there is any way of acting or being acted upon proper to
soul, soul will be capable of separate existence; if there is none,
its separate existence is impossible. In the latter case, it will be
like what is straight, which has many properties arising from the
straightness in it, e.g. that of touching a bronze sphere at a
point, though straightness divorced from the other constituents of the
straight thing cannot touch it in this way; it cannot be so divorced
at all, since it is always found in a body. It therefore seems that
all the affections of soul involve a body-passion, gentleness, fear,
pity, courage, joy, loving, and hating; in all these there is a
concurrent affection of the body. In support of this we may point to
the fact that, while sometimes on the occasion of violent and striking
occurrences there is no excitement or fear felt, on others faint and
feeble stimulations produce these emotions, viz. when the body is
already in a state of tension resembling its condition when we are
angry. Here is a still clearer case: in the absence of any external
cause of terror we find ourselves experiencing the feelings of a man
in terror. From all this it is obvious that the affections of soul are
enmattered formulable essences.
Consequently their definitions ought to correspond, e.g. anger
should be defined as a certain mode of movement of such and such a
body (or part or faculty of a body) by this or that cause and for this
or that end. That is precisely why the study of the soul must fall
within the science of Nature, at least so far as in its affections
it manifests this double character. Hence a physicist would define
an affection of soul differently from a dialectician; the latter would
define e.g. anger as the appetite for returning pain for pain, or
something like that, while the former would define it as a boiling
of the blood or warm substance surround the heart. The latter
assigns the material conditions, the former the form or formulable
essence; for what he states is the formulable essence of the fact,
though for its actual existence there must be embodiment of it in a
material such as is described by the other. Thus the essence of a
house is assigned in such a formula as 'a shelter against
destruction by wind, rain, and heat'; the physicist would describe
it as 'stones, bricks, and timbers'; but there is a third possible
description which would say that it was that form in that material
with that purpose or end. Which, then, among these is entitled to be
regarded as the genuine physicist? The one who confines himself to the
material, or the one who restricts himself to the formulable essence
alone? Is it not rather the one who combines both in a single formula?
If this is so, how are we to characterize the other two? Must we not
say that there is no type of thinker who concerns himself with those
qualities or attributes of the material which are in fact
inseparable from the material, and without attempting even in
thought to separate them? The physicist is he who concerns himself
with all the properties active and passive of bodies or materials thus
or thus defined; attributes not considered as being of this
character he leaves to others, in certain cases it may be to a
specialist, e.g. a carpenter or a physician, in others (a) where
they are inseparable in fact, but are separable from any particular
kind of body by an effort of abstraction, to the mathematician, (b)
where they are separate both in fact and in thought from body
altogether, to the First Philosopher or metaphysician. But we must
return from this digression, and repeat that the affections of soul
are inseparable from the material substratum of animal life, to
which we have seen that such affections, e.g. passion and fear,
attach, and have not the same mode of being as a line or a plane.
2
For our study of soul it is necessary, while formulating the
problems of which in our further advance we are to find the solutions,
to call into council the views of those of our predecessors who have
declared any opinion on this subject, in order that we may profit by
whatever is sound in their suggestions and avoid their errors.
The starting-point of our inquiry is an exposition of those
characteristics which have chiefly been held to belong to soul in
its very nature. Two characteristic marks have above all others been
recognized as distinguishing that which has soul in it from that which
has not-movement and sensation. It may be said that these two are what
our predecessors have fixed upon as characteristic of soul.
Some say that what originates movement is both pre-eminently and
primarily soul; believing that what is not itself moved cannot
originate movement in another, they arrived at the view that soul
belongs to the class of things in movement. This is what led
Democritus to say that soul is a sort of fire or hot substance; his
'forms' or atoms are infinite in number; those which are spherical
he calls fire and soul, and compares them to the motes in the air
which we see in shafts of light coming through windows; the mixture of
seeds of all sorts he calls the elements of the whole of Nature
(Leucippus gives a similar account); the spherical atoms are
identified with soul because atoms of that shape are most adapted to
permeate everywhere, and to set all the others moving by being
themselves in movement. This implies the view that soul is identical
with what produces movement in animals. That is why, further, they
regard respiration as the characteristic mark of life; as the
environment compresses the bodies of animals, and tends to extrude
those atoms which impart movement to them, because they themselves are
never at rest, there must be a reinforcement of these by similar atoms
coming in from without in the act o
f respiration; for they prevent the
extrusion of those which are already within by counteracting the
compressing and consolidating force of the environment; and animals
continue to live only so long as they are able to maintain this
resistance.
The doctrine of the Pythagoreans seems to rest upon the same
ideas; some of them declared the motes in air, others what moved them,
to be soul. These motes were referred to because they are seen
always in movement, even in a complete calm.
The same tendency is shown by those who define soul as that which
moves itself; all seem to hold the view that movement is what is
closest to the nature of soul, and that while all else is moved by
soul, it alone moves itself. This belief arises from their never
seeing anything originating movement which is not first itself moved.
Similarly also Anaxagoras (and whoever agrees with him in saying
that mind set the whole in movement) declares the moving cause of
things to be soul. His position must, however, be distinguished from
that of Democritus. Democritus roundly identifies soul and mind, for
he identifies what appears with what is true-that is why he commends
Homer for the phrase 'Hector lay with thought distraught'; he does not
employ mind as a special faculty dealing with truth, but identifies
soul and mind. What Anaxagoras says about them is more obscure; in
many places he tells us that the cause of beauty and order is mind,
elsewhere that it is soul; it is found, he says, in all animals, great
and small, high and low, but mind (in the sense of intelligence)
appears not to belong alike to all animals, and indeed not even to all
human beings.
All those, then, who had special regard to the fact that what has
soul in it is moved, adopted the view that soul is to be identified
with what is eminently originative of movement. All, on the other
hand, who looked to the fact that what has soul in it knows or
perceives what is, identify soul with the principle or principles of
Nature, according as they admit several such principles or one only.
Thus Empedocles declares that it is formed out of all his elements,
each of them also being soul; his words are:
For 'tis by Earth we see Earth, by Water Water,
By Ether Ether divine, by Fire destructive Fire,
By Love Love, and Hate by cruel Hate.
In the same way Plato in the Timaeus fashions soul out of his
elements; for like, he holds, is known by like, and things are
formed out of the principles or elements, so that soul must be so too.
Similarly also in his lectures 'On Philosophy' it was set forth that
the Animal-itself is compounded of the Idea itself of the One together
with the primary length, breadth, and depth, everything else, the
objects of its perception, being similarly constituted. Again he
puts his view in yet other terms: Mind is the monad, science or
knowledge the dyad (because it goes undeviatingly from one point to
another), opinion the number of the plane, sensation the number of the
solid; the numbers are by him expressly identified with the Forms
themselves or principles, and are formed out of the elements; now
things are apprehended either by mind or science or opinion or
sensation, and these same numbers are the Forms of things.
Some thinkers, accepting both premisses, viz. that the soul is
both originative of movement and cognitive, have compounded it of both
and declared the soul to be a self-moving number.
As to the nature and number of the first principles opinions differ.
The difference is greatest between those who regard them as
corporeal and those who regard them as incorporeal, and from both
dissent those who make a blend and draw their principles from both
sources. The number of principles is also in dispute; some admit one
only, others assert several. There is a consequent diversity in
their several accounts of soul; they assume, naturally enough, that
what is in its own nature originative of movement must be among what
is primordial. That has led some to regard it as fire, for fire is the
subtlest of the elements and nearest to incorporeality; further, in
the most primary sense, fire both is moved and originates movement
in all the others.
Democritus has expressed himself more ingeniously than the rest on
the grounds for ascribing each of these two characters to soul; soul
and mind are, he says, one and the same thing, and this thing must
be one of the primary and indivisible bodies, and its power of
originating movement must be due to its fineness of grain and the
shape of its atoms; he says that of all the shapes the spherical is
the most mobile, and that this is the shape of the particles of fire
and mind.
Anaxagoras, as we said above, seems to distinguish between soul
and mind, but in practice he treats them as a single substance, except
that it is mind that he specially posits as the principle of all
things; at any rate what he says is that mind alone of all that is
simple, unmixed, and pure. He assigns both characteristics, knowing
and origination of movement, to the same principle, when he says
that it was mind that set the whole in movement.
Thales, too, to judge from what is recorded about him, seems to have
held soul to be a motive force, since he said that the magnet has a
soul in it because it moves the iron.
Diogenes (and others) held the soul to be air because he believed
air to be finest in grain and a first principle; therein lay the
grounds of the soul's powers of knowing and originating movement. As
the primordial principle from which all other things are derived, it
is cognitive; as finest in grain, it has the power to originate
movement.
Heraclitus too says that the first principle-the 'warm exhalation'
of which, according to him, everything else is composed-is soul;
further, that this exhalation is most incorporeal and in ceaseless
flux; that what is in movement requires that what knows it should be
in movement; and that all that is has its being essentially in
movement (herein agreeing with the majority).
Alcmaeon also seems to have held a similar view about soul; he
says that it is immortal because it resembles 'the immortals,' and
that this immortality belongs to it in virtue of its ceaseless
movement; for all the 'things divine,' moon, sun, the planets, and the
whole heavens, are in perpetual movement.
of More superficial writers, some, e.g. Hippo, have pronounced it to
be water; they seem to have argued from the fact that the seed of
all animals is fluid, for Hippo tries to refute those who say that the
soul is blood, on the ground that the seed, which is the primordial
soul, is not blood.
Another group (Critias, for example) did hold it to be blood; they
take perception to be the most characteristic attribute of soul, and
hold that perceptiveness is due to the nature of blood.
Each of the elements has thus found its partisan, except earth-earth
has found no supporter unless we count as
such those who have declared
soul to be, or to be compounded of, all the elements. All, then, it
may be said, characterize the soul by three marks, Movement,
Sensation, Incorporeality, and each of these is traced back to the
first principles. That is why (with one exception) all those who
define the soul by its power of knowing make it either an element or
constructed out of the elements. The language they all use is similar;
like, they say, is known by like; as the soul knows everything, they
construct it out of all the principles. Hence all those who admit
but one cause or element, make the soul also one (e.g. fire or air),
while those who admit a multiplicity of principles make the soul
also multiple. The exception is Anaxagoras; he alone says that mind is
impassible and has nothing in common with anything else. But, if
this is so, how or in virtue of what cause can it know? That
Anaxagoras has not explained, nor can any answer be inferred from
his words. All who acknowledge pairs of opposites among their
principles, construct the soul also out of these contraries, while
those who admit as principles only one contrary of each pair, e.g.
either hot or cold, likewise make the soul some one of these. That
is why, also, they allow themselves to be guided by the names; those
who identify soul with the hot argue that sen (to live) is derived
from sein (to boil), while those who identify it with the cold say
that soul (psuche) is so called from the process of respiration and
(katapsuxis). Such are the traditional opinions concerning soul,
together with the grounds on which they are maintained.
3
We must begin our examination with movement; for doubtless, not only
is it false that the essence of soul is correctly described by those
who say that it is what moves (or is capable of moving) itself, but it
is an impossibility that movement should be even an attribute of it.
We have already pointed out that there is no necessity that what
originates movement should itself be moved. There are two senses in