Various Works

by Aristotle

  vehicle, as occurs in drunkenness or disease. Thus it is that in old

  age the activity of mind or intellectual apprehension declines only

  through the decay of some other inward part; mind itself is

  impassible. Thinking, loving, and hating are affections not of mind,

  but of that which has mind, so far as it has it. That is why, when

  this vehicle decays, memory and love cease; they were activities not

  of mind, but of the composite which has perished; mind is, no doubt,

  something more divine and impassible. That the soul cannot be moved is

  therefore clear from what we have said, and if it cannot be moved at

  all, manifestly it cannot be moved by itself.

  Of all the opinions we have enumerated, by far the most unreasonable

  is that which declares the soul to be a self-moving number; it

  involves in the first place all the impossibilities which follow

  from regarding the soul as moved, and in the second special

  absurdities which follow from calling it a number. How we to imagine a

  unit being moved? By what agency? What sort of movement can be

  attributed to what is without parts or internal differences? If the

  unit is both originative of movement and itself capable of being

  moved, it must contain difference.

  Further, since they say a moving line generates a surface and a

  moving point a line, the movements of the psychic units must be

  lines (for a point is a unit having position, and the number of the

  soul is, of course, somewhere and has position).

  Again, if from a number a number or a unit is subtracted, the

  remainder is another number; but plants and many animals when

  divided continue to live, and each segment is thought to retain the

  same kind of soul.

  It must be all the same whether we speak of units or corpuscles; for

  if the spherical atoms of Democritus became points, nothing being

  retained but their being a quantum, there must remain in each a moving

  and a moved part, just as there is in what is continuous; what happens

  has nothing to do with the size of the atoms, it depends solely upon

  their being a quantum. That is why there must be something to

  originate movement in the units. If in the animal what originates

  movement is the soul, so also must it be in the case of the number, so

  that not the mover and the moved together, but the mover only, will be

  the soul. But how is it possible for one of the units to fulfil this

  function of originating movement? There must be some difference

  between such a unit and all the other units, and what difference can

  there be between one placed unit and another except a difference of

  position? If then, on the other hand, these psychic units within the

  body are different from the points of the body, there will be two sets

  of units both occupying the same place; for each unit will occupy a

  point. And yet, if there can be two, why cannot there be an infinite

  number? For if things can occupy an indivisible lace, they must

  themselves be indivisible. If, on the other hand, the points of the

  body are identical with the units whose number is the soul, or if

  the number of the points in the body is the soul, why have not all

  bodies souls? For all bodies contain points or an infinity of points.

  Further, how is it possible for these points to be isolated or

  separated from their bodies, seeing that lines cannot be resolved into

  points?

  5

  The result is, as we have said, that this view, while on the one

  side identical with that of those who maintain that soul is a subtle

  kind of body, is on the other entangled in the absurdity peculiar to

  Democritus' way of describing the manner in which movement is

  originated by soul. For if the soul is present throughout the whole

  percipient body, there must, if the soul be a kind of body, be two

  bodies in the same place; and for those who call it a number, there

  must be many points at one point, or every body must have a soul,

  unless the soul be a different sort of number-other, that is, than the

  sum of the points existing in a body. Another consequence that follows

  is that the animal must be moved by its number precisely in the way

  that Democritus explained its being moved by his spherical psychic

  atoms. What difference does it make whether we speak of small

  spheres or of large units, or, quite simply, of units in movement? One

  way or another, the movements of the animal must be due to their

  movements. Hence those who combine movement and number in the same

  subject lay themselves open to these and many other similar

  absurdities. It is impossible not only that these characters should

  give the definition of soul-it is impossible that they should even

  be attributes of it. The point is clear if the attempt be made to

  start from this as the account of soul and explain from it the

  affections and actions of the soul, e.g. reasoning, sensation,

  pleasure, pain, c. For, to repeat what we have said earlier, movement

  and number do not facilitate even conjecture about the derivative

  properties of soul.

  Such are the three ways in which soul has traditionally been

  defined; one group of thinkers declared it to be that which is most

  originative of movement because it moves itself, another group to be

  the subtlest and most nearly incorporeal of all kinds of body. We have

  now sufficiently set forth the difficulties and inconsistencies to

  which these theories are exposed. It remains now to examine the

  doctrine that soul is composed of the elements.

  The reason assigned for this doctrine is that thus the soul may

  perceive or come to know everything that is, but the theory

  necessarily involves itself in many impossibilities. Its upholders

  assume that like is known only by like, and imagine that by

  declaring the soul to be composed of the elements they succeed in

  identifying the soul with all the things it is capable of

  apprehending. But the elements are not the only things it knows; there

  are many others, or, more exactly, an infinite number of others,

  formed out of the elements. Let us admit that the soul knows or

  perceives the elements out of which each of these composites is made

  up; but by what means will it know or perceive the composite whole,

  e.g. what God, man, flesh, bone (or any other compound) is? For each

  is, not merely the elements of which it is composed, but those

  elements combined in a determinate mode or ratio, as Empedocles

  himself says of bone,

  The kindly Earth in its broad-bosomed moulds

  Won of clear Water two parts out of eight,

  And four of Fire; and so white bones were formed.

  Nothing, therefore, will be gained by the presence of the elements

  in the soul, unless there be also present there the various formulae

  of proportion and the various compositions in accordance with them.

  Each element will indeed know its fellow outside, but there will be no

  knowledge of bone or man, unless they too are present in the

  constitution of the soul. The impossibility of this needs no

  pointing out; for who would suggest that stone or man could ent
er into

  the constitution of the soul? The same applies to 'the good' and

  'the not-good', and so on.

  Further, the word 'is' has many meanings: it may be used of a 'this'

  or substance, or of a quantum, or of a quale, or of any other of the

  kinds of predicates we have distinguished. Does the soul consist of

  all of these or not? It does not appear that all have common elements.

  Is the soul formed out of those elements alone which enter into

  substances? so how will it be able to know each of the other kinds

  of thing? Will it be said that each kind of thing has elements or

  principles of its own, and that the soul is formed out of the whole of

  these? In that case, the soul must be a quantum and a quale and a

  substance. But all that can be made out of the elements of a quantum

  is a quantum, not a substance. These (and others like them) are the

  consequences of the view that the soul is composed of all the

  elements.

  It is absurd, also, to say both (a) that like is not capable of

  being affected by like, and (b) that like is perceived or known by

  like, for perceiving, and also both thinking and knowing, are, on

  their own assumption, ways of being affected or moved.

  There are many puzzles and difficulties raised by saying, as

  Empedocles does, that each set of things is known by means of its

  corporeal elements and by reference to something in soul which is like

  them, and additional testimony is furnished by this new consideration;

  for all the parts of the animal body which consist wholly of earth

  such as bones, sinews, and hair seem to be wholly insensitive and

  consequently not perceptive even of objects earthy like themselves, as

  they ought to have been.

  Further, each of the principles will have far more ignorance than

  knowledge, for though each of them will know one thing, there will

  be many of which it will be ignorant. Empedocles at any rate must

  conclude that his God is the least intelligent of all beings, for of

  him alone is it true that there is one thing, Strife, which he does

  not know, while there is nothing which mortal beings do not know,

  for ere is nothing which does not enter into their composition.

  In general, we may ask, Why has not everything a soul, since

  everything either is an element, or is formed out of one or several or

  all of the elements? Each must certainly know one or several or all.

  The problem might also be raised, What is that which unifies the

  elements into a soul? The elements correspond, it would appear, to the

  matter; what unites them, whatever it is, is the supremely important

  factor. But it is impossible that there should be something superior

  to, and dominant over, the soul (and a fortiori over the mind); it

  is reasonable to hold that mind is by nature most primordial and

  dominant, while their statement that it is the elements which are

  first of all that is.

  All, both those who assert that the soul, because of its knowledge

  or perception of what is compounded out of the elements, and is

  those who assert that it is of all things the most originative of

  movement, fail to take into consideration all kinds of soul. In fact

  (1) not all beings that perceive can originate movement; there

  appear to be certain animals which stationary, and yet local

  movement is the only one, so it seems, which the soul originates in

  animals. And (2) the same object-on holds against all those who

  construct mind and the perceptive faculty out of the elements; for

  it appears that plants live, and yet are not endowed with locomotion

  or perception, while a large number of animals are without discourse

  of reason. Even if these points were waived and mind admitted to be

  a part of the soul (and so too the perceptive faculty), still, even

  so, there would be kinds and parts of soul of which they had failed to

  give any account.

  The same objection lies against the view expressed in the 'Orphic'

  poems: there it is said that the soul comes in from the whole when

  breathing takes place, being borne in upon the winds. Now this

  cannot take place in the case of plants, nor indeed in the case of

  certain classes of animal, for not all classes of animal breathe. This

  fact has escaped the notice of the holders of this view.

  If we must construct the soul out of the elements, there is no

  necessity to suppose that all the elements enter into its

  construction; one element in each pair of contraries will suffice to

  enable it to know both that element itself and its contrary. By

  means of the straight line we know both itself and the curved-the

  carpenter's rule enables us to test both-but what is curved does not

  enable us to distinguish either itself or the straight. Certain

  thinkers say that soul is intermingled in the whole universe, and it

  is perhaps for that reason that Thales came to the opinion that all

  things are full of gods. This presents some difficulties: Why does the

  soul when it resides in air or fire not form an animal, while it

  does so when it resides in mixtures of the elements, and that although

  it is held to be of higher quality when contained in the former?

  (One might add the question, why the soul in air is maintained to be

  higher and more immortal than that in animals.) Both possible ways

  of replying to the former question lead to absurdity or paradox; for

  it is beyond paradox to say that fire or air is an animal, and it is

  absurd to refuse the name of animal to what has soul in it. The

  opinion that the elements have soul in them seems to have arisen

  from the doctrine that a whole must be homogeneous with its parts.

  If it is true that animals become animate by drawing into themselves a

  portion of what surrounds them, the partisans of this view are bound

  to say that the soul of the Whole too is homogeneous with all its

  parts. If the air sucked in is homogeneous, but soul heterogeneous,

  clearly while some part of soul will exist in the inbreathed air, some

  other part will not. The soul must either be homogeneous, or such that

  there are some parts of the Whole in which it is not to be found.

  From what has been said it is now clear that knowing as an attribute

  of soul cannot be explained by soul's being composed of the

  elements, and that it is neither sound nor true to speak of soul as

  moved. But since (a) knowing, perceiving, opining, and further (b)

  desiring, wishing, and generally all other modes of appetition, belong

  to soul, and (c) the local movements of animals, and (d) growth,

  maturity, and decay are produced by the soul, we must ask whether each

  of these is an attribute of the soul as a whole, i.e. whether it is

  with the whole soul we think, perceive, move ourselves, act or are

  acted upon, or whether each of them requires a different part of the

  soul? So too with regard to life. Does it depend on one of the parts

  of soul? Or is it dependent on more than one? Or on all? Or has it

  some quite other cause?

  Some hold that the soul is divisible, and that one part thinks,

  another desires. If, then, its nature admits of its being di
vided,

  what can it be that holds the parts together? Surely not the body;

  on the contrary it seems rather to be the soul that holds the body

  together; at any rate when the soul departs the body disintegrates and

  decays. If, then, there is something else which makes the soul one,

  this unifying agency would have the best right to the name of soul,

  and we shall have to repeat for it the question: Is it one or

  multipartite? If it is one, why not at once admit that 'the soul' is

  one? If it has parts, once more the question must be put: What holds

  its parts together, and so ad infinitum?

  The question might also be raised about the parts of the soul:

  What is the separate role of each in relation to the body? For, if the

  whole soul holds together the whole body, we should expect each part

  of the soul to hold together a part of the body. But this seems an

  impossibility; it is difficult even to imagine what sort of bodily

  part mind will hold together, or how it will do this.

  It is a fact of observation that plants and certain insects go on

  living when divided into segments; this means that each of the

  segments has a soul in it identical in species, though not numerically

  identical in the different segments, for both of the segments for a

  time possess the power of sensation and local movement. That this does

  not last is not surprising, for they no longer possess the organs

  necessary for self-maintenance. But, all the same, in each of the

  bodily parts there are present all the parts of soul, and the souls so

  present are homogeneous with one another and with the whole; this

  means that the several parts of the soul are indisseverable from one

  another, although the whole soul is divisible. It seems also that

  the principle found in plants is also a kind of soul; for this is

  the only principle which is common to both animals and plants; and

  this exists in isolation from the principle of sensation, though there

  nothing which has the latter without the former.