Various Works

by Aristotle

  which anything may be moved-either (a) indirectly, owing to

  something other than itself, or (b) directly, owing to itself.

  Things are 'indirectly moved' which are moved as being contained in

  something which is moved, e.g. sailors in a ship, for they are moved

  in a different sense from that in which the ship is moved; the ship is

  'directly moved', they are 'indirectly moved', because they are in a

  moving vessel. This is clear if we consider their limbs; the

  movement proper to the legs (and so to man) is walking, and in this

  case the sailors tare not walking. Recognizing the double sense of

  'being moved', what we have to consider now is whether the soul is

  'directly moved' and participates in such direct movement.

  There are four species of movement-locomotion, alteration,

  diminution, growth; consequently if the soul is moved, it must be

  moved with one or several or all of these species of movement. Now

  if its movement is not incidental, there must be a movement natural to

  it, and, if so, as all the species enumerated involve place, place

  must be natural to it. But if the essence of soul be to move itself,

  its being moved cannot be incidental to-as it is to what is white or

  three cubits long; they too can be moved, but only incidentally-what

  is moved is that of which 'white' and 'three cubits long' are the

  attributes, the body in which they inhere; hence they have no place:

  but if the soul naturally partakes in movement, it follows that it

  must have a place.

  Further, if there be a movement natural to the soul, there must be a

  counter-movement unnatural to it, and conversely. The same applies

  to rest as well as to movement; for the terminus ad quem of a

  thing's natural movement is the place of its natural rest, and

  similarly the terminus ad quem of its enforced movement is the place

  of its enforced rest. But what meaning can be attached to enforced

  movements or rests of the soul, it is difficult even to imagine.

  Further, if the natural movement of the soul be upward, the soul

  must be fire; if downward, it must be earth; for upward and downward

  movements are the definitory characteristics of these bodies. The same

  reasoning applies to the intermediate movements, termini, and

  bodies. Further, since the soul is observed to originate movement in

  the body, it is reasonable to suppose that it transmits to the body

  the movements by which it itself is moved, and so, reversing the

  order, we may infer from the movements of the body back to similar

  movements of the soul. Now the body is moved from place to place

  with movements of locomotion. Hence it would follow that the soul

  too must in accordance with the body change either its place as a

  whole or the relative places of its parts. This carries with it the

  possibility that the soul might even quit its body and re-enter it,

  and with this would be involved the possibility of a resurrection of

  animals from the dead. But, it may be contended, the soul can be moved

  indirectly by something else; for an animal can be pushed out of its

  course. Yes, but that to whose essence belongs the power of being

  moved by itself, cannot be moved by something else except

  incidentally, just as what is good by or in itself cannot owe its

  goodness to something external to it or to some end to which it is a

  means.

  If the soul is moved, the most probable view is that what moves it

  is sensible things.

  We must note also that, if the soul moves itself, it must be the

  mover itself that is moved, so that it follows that if movement is

  in every case a displacement of that which is in movement, in that

  respect in which it is said to be moved, the movement of the soul must

  be a departure from its essential nature, at least if its

  self-movement is essential to it, not incidental.

  Some go so far as to hold that the movements which the soul

  imparts to the body in which it is are the same in kind as those

  with which it itself is moved. An example of this is Democritus, who

  uses language like that of the comic dramatist Philippus, who accounts

  for the movements that Daedalus imparted to his wooden Aphrodite by

  saying that he poured quicksilver into it; similarly Democritus says

  that the spherical atoms which according to him constitute soul, owing

  to their own ceaseless movements draw the whole body after them and so

  produce its movements. We must urge the question whether it is these

  very same atoms which produce rest also-how they could do so, it is

  difficult and even impossible to say. And, in general, we may object

  that it is not in this way that the soul appears to originate movement

  in animals-it is through intention or process of thinking.

  It is in the same fashion that the Timaeus also tries to give a

  physical account of how the soul moves its body; the soul, it is there

  said, is in movement, and so owing to their mutual implication moves

  the body also. After compounding the soul-substance out of the

  elements and dividing it in accordance with the harmonic numbers, in

  order that it may possess a connate sensibility for 'harmony' and that

  the whole may move in movements well attuned, the Demiurge bent the

  straight line into a circle; this single circle he divided into two

  circles united at two common points; one of these he subdivided into

  seven circles. All this implies that the movements of the soul are

  identified with the local movements of the heavens.

  Now, in the first place, it is a mistake to say that the soul is a

  spatial magnitude. It is evident that Plato means the soul of the

  whole to be like the sort of soul which is called mind not like the

  sensitive or the desiderative soul, for the movements of neither of

  these are circular. Now mind is one and continuous in the sense in

  which the process of thinking is so, and thinking is identical with

  the thoughts which are its parts; these have a serial unity like

  that of number, not a unity like that of a spatial magnitude. Hence

  mind cannot have that kind of unity either; mind is either without

  parts or is continuous in some other way than that which characterizes

  a spatial magnitude. How, indeed, if it were a spatial magnitude,

  could mind possibly think? Will it think with any one indifferently of

  its parts? In this case, the 'part' must be understood either in the

  sense of a spatial magnitude or in the sense of a point (if a point

  can be called a part of a spatial magnitude). If we accept the

  latter alternative, the points being infinite in number, obviously the

  mind can never exhaustively traverse them; if the former, the mind

  must think the same thing over and over again, indeed an infinite

  number of times (whereas it is manifestly possible to think a thing

  once only). If contact of any part whatsoever of itself with the

  object is all that is required, why need mind move in a circle, or

  indeed possess magnitude at all? On the other hand, if contact with

  the whole circle is necessary, what meaning can be given to the

  contact of the parts? Further, how could what has no par
ts think

  what has parts, or what has parts think what has none? We must

  identify the circle referred to with mind; for it is mind whose

  movement is thinking, and it is the circle whose movement is

  revolution, so that if thinking is a movement of revolution, the

  circle which has this characteristic movement must be mind.

  If the circular movement is eternal, there must be something which

  mind is always thinking-what can this be? For all practical

  processes of thinking have limits-they all go on for the sake of

  something outside the process, and all theoretical processes come to a

  close in the same way as the phrases in speech which express processes

  and results of thinking. Every such linguistic phrase is either

  definitory or demonstrative. Demonstration has both a starting-point

  and may be said to end in a conclusion or inferred result; even if the

  process never reaches final completion, at any rate it never returns

  upon itself again to its starting-point, it goes on assuming a fresh

  middle term or a fresh extreme, and moves straight forward, but

  circular movement returns to its starting-point. Definitions, too, are

  closed groups of terms.

  Further, if the same revolution is repeated, mind must repeatedly

  think the same object.

  Further, thinking has more resemblance to a coming to rest or arrest

  than to a movement; the same may be said of inferring.

  It might also be urged that what is difficult and enforced is

  incompatible with blessedness; if the movement of the soul is not of

  its essence, movement of the soul must be contrary to its nature. It

  must also be painful for the soul to be inextricably bound up with the

  body; nay more, if, as is frequently said and widely accepted, it is

  better for mind not to be embodied, the union must be for it

  undesirable.

  Further, the cause of the revolution of the heavens is left obscure.

  It is not the essence of soul which is the cause of this circular

  movement-that movement is only incidental to soul-nor is, a

  fortiori, the body its cause. Again, it is not even asserted that it

  is better that soul should be so moved; and yet the reason for which

  God caused the soul to move in a circle can only have been that

  movement was better for it than rest, and movement of this kind better

  than any other. But since this sort of consideration is more

  appropriate to another field of speculation, let us dismiss it for the

  present.

  The view we have just been examining, in company with most

  theories about the soul, involves the following absurdity: they all

  join the soul to a body, or place it in a body, without adding any

  specification of the reason of their union, or of the bodily

  conditions required for it. Yet such explanation can scarcely be

  omitted; for some community of nature is presupposed by the fact

  that the one acts and the other is acted upon, the one moves and the

  other is moved; interaction always implies a special nature in the two

  interagents. All, however, that these thinkers do is to describe the

  specific characteristics of the soul; they do not try to determine

  anything about the body which is to contain it, as if it were

  possible, as in the Pythagorean myths, that any soul could be

  clothed upon with any body-an absurd view, for each body seems to have

  a form and shape of its own. It is as absurd as to say that the art of

  carpentry could embody itself in flutes; each art must use its

  tools, each soul its body.

  4

  There is yet another theory about soul, which has commended itself

  to many as no less probable than any of those we have hitherto

  mentioned, and has rendered public account of itself in the court of

  popular discussion. Its supporters say that the soul is a kind of

  harmony, for (a) harmony is a blend or composition of contraries,

  and (b) the body is compounded out of contraries. Harmony, however, is

  a certain proportion or composition of the constituents blended, and

  soul can be neither the one nor the other of these. Further, the power

  of originating movement cannot belong to a harmony, while almost all

  concur in regarding this as a principal attribute of soul. It is

  more appropriate to call health (or generally one of the good states

  of the body) a harmony than to predicate it of the soul. The absurdity

  becomes most apparent when we try to attribute the active and

  passive affections of the soul to a harmony; the necessary

  readjustment of their conceptions is difficult. Further, in using

  the word 'harmony' we have one or other of two cases in our mind;

  the most proper sense is in relation to spatial magnitudes which

  have motion and position, where harmony means the disposition and

  cohesion of their parts in such a manner as to prevent the

  introduction into the whole of anything homogeneous with it, and the

  secondary sense, derived from the former, is that in which it means

  the ratio between the constituents so blended; in neither of these

  senses is it plausible to predicate it of soul. That soul is a harmony

  in the sense of the mode of composition of the parts of the body is

  a view easily refutable; for there are many composite parts and

  those variously compounded; of what bodily part is mind or the

  sensitive or the appetitive faculty the mode of composition? And

  what is the mode of composition which constitutes each of them? It

  is equally absurd to identify the soul with the ratio of the

  mixture; for the mixture which makes flesh has a different ratio

  between the elements from that which makes bone. The consequence of

  this view will therefore be that distributed throughout the whole body

  there will be many souls, since every one of the bodily parts is a

  different mixture of the elements, and the ratio of mixture is in each

  case a harmony, i.e. a soul.

  From Empedocles at any rate we might demand an answer to the

  following question for he says that each of the parts of the body is

  what it is in virtue of a ratio between the elements: is the soul

  identical with this ratio, or is it not rather something over and

  above this which is formed in the parts? Is love the cause of any

  and every mixture, or only of those that are in the right ratio? Is

  love this ratio itself, or is love something over and above this? Such

  are the problems raised by this account. But, on the other hand, if

  the soul is different from the mixture, why does it disappear at one

  and the same moment with that relation between the elements which

  constitutes flesh or the other parts of the animal body? Further, if

  the soul is not identical with the ratio of mixture, and it is

  consequently not the case that each of the parts has a soul, what is

  that which perishes when the soul quits the body?

  That the soul cannot either be a harmony, or be moved in a circle,

  is clear from what we have said. Yet that it can be moved incidentally

  is, as we said above, possible, and even that in a sense it can move

  itself, i.e. in the sense that the vehicle in which it is can be

  moved, and m
oved by it; in no other sense can the soul be moved in

  space.

  More legitimate doubts might remain as to its movement in view of

  the following facts. We speak of the soul as being pained or

  pleased, being bold or fearful, being angry, perceiving, thinking. All

  these are regarded as modes of movement, and hence it might be

  inferred that the soul is moved. This, however, does not necessarily

  follow. We may admit to the full that being pained or pleased, or

  thinking, are movements (each of them a 'being moved'), and that the

  movement is originated by the soul. For example we may regard anger or

  fear as such and such movements of the heart, and thinking as such and

  such another movement of that organ, or of some other; these

  modifications may arise either from changes of place in certain

  parts or from qualitative alterations (the special nature of the parts

  and the special modes of their changes being for our present purpose

  irrelevant). Yet to say that it is the soul which is angry is as

  inexact as it would be to say that it is the soul that weaves webs

  or builds houses. It is doubtless better to avoid saying that the soul

  pities or learns or thinks and rather to say that it is the man who

  does this with his soul. What we mean is not that the movement is in

  the soul, but that sometimes it terminates in the soul and sometimes

  starts from it, sensation e.g. coming from without inwards, and

  reminiscence starting from the soul and terminating with the

  movements, actual or residual, in the sense organs.

  The case of mind is different; it seems to be an independent

  substance implanted within the soul and to be incapable of being

  destroyed. If it could be destroyed at all, it would be under the

  blunting influence of old age. What really happens in respect of

  mind in old age is, however, exactly parallel to what happens in the

  case of the sense organs; if the old man could recover the proper kind

  of eye, he would see just as well as the young man. The incapacity

  of old age is due to an affection not of the soul but of its