by Aristotle
many other cases (though not in all; for in certain cases the thing
and its form are identical), flesh and what it is to be flesh are
discriminated either by different faculties, or by the same faculty in
two different states: for flesh necessarily involves matter and is
like what is snub-nosed, a this in a this. Now it is by means of the
sensitive faculty that we discriminate the hot and the cold, i.e.
the factors which combined in a certain ratio constitute flesh: the
essential character of flesh is apprehended by something different
either wholly separate from the sensitive faculty or related to it
as a bent line to the same line when it has been straightened out.
Again in the case of abstract objects what is straight is
analogous to what is snub-nosed; for it necessarily implies a
continuum as its matter: its constitutive essence is different, if
we may distinguish between straightness and what is straight: let us
take it to be two-ness. It must be apprehended, therefore, by a
different power or by the same power in a different state. To sum
up, in so far as the realities it knows are capable of being separated
from their matter, so it is also with the powers of mind.
The problem might be suggested: if thinking is a passive
affection, then if mind is simple and impassible and has nothing in
common with anything else, as Anaxagoras says, how can it come to
think at all? For interaction between two factors is held to require a
precedent community of nature between the factors. Again it might be
asked, is mind a possible object of thought to itself? For if mind
is thinkable per se and what is thinkable is in kind one and the same,
then either (a) mind will belong to everything, or (b) mind will
contain some element common to it with all other realities which makes
them all thinkable.
(1) Have not we already disposed of the difficulty about interaction
involving a common element, when we said that mind is in a sense
potentially whatever is thinkable, though actually it is nothing until
it has thought? What it thinks must be in it just as characters may be
said to be on a writingtablet on which as yet nothing actually
stands written: this is exactly what happens with mind.
(Mind is itself thinkable in exactly the same way as its objects
are. For (a) in the case of objects which involve no matter, what
thinks and what is thought are identical; for speculative knowledge
and its object are identical. (Why mind is not always thinking we must
consider later.) (b) In the case of those which contain matter each of
the objects of thought is only potentially present. It follows that
while they will not have mind in them (for mind is a potentiality of
them only in so far as they are capable of being disengaged from
matter) mind may yet be thinkable.
5
Since in every class of things, as in nature as a whole, we find two
factors involved, (1) a matter which is potentially all the
particulars included in the class, (2) a cause which is productive
in the sense that it makes them all (the latter standing to the
former, as e.g. an art to its material), these distinct elements
must likewise be found within the soul.
And in fact mind as we have described it is what it is what it is by
virtue of becoming all things, while there is another which is what it
is by virtue of making all things: this is a sort of positive state
like light; for in a sense light makes potential colours into actual
colours.
Mind in this sense of it is separable, impassible, unmixed, since it
is in its essential nature activity (for always the active is superior
to the passive factor, the originating force to the matter which it
forms).
Actual knowledge is identical with its object: in the individual,
potential knowledge is in time prior to actual knowledge, but in the
universe as a whole it is not prior even in time. Mind is not at one
time knowing and at another not. When mind is set free from its
present conditions it appears as just what it is and nothing more:
this alone is immortal and eternal (we do not, however, remember its
former activity because, while mind in this sense is impassible,
mind as passive is destructible), and without it nothing thinks.
6
The thinking then of the simple objects of thought is found in those
cases where falsehood is impossible: where the alternative of true
or false applies, there we always find a putting together of objects
of thought in a quasi-unity. As Empedocles said that 'where heads of
many a creature sprouted without necks' they afterwards by Love's
power were combined, so here too objects of thought which were given
separate are combined, e.g. 'incommensurate' and 'diagonal': if the
combination be of objects past or future the combination of thought
includes in its content the date. For falsehood always involves a
synthesis; for even if you assert that what is white is not white
you have included not white in a synthesis. It is possible also to
call all these cases division as well as combination. However that may
be, there is not only the true or false assertion that Cleon is
white but also the true or false assertion that he was or will he
white. In each and every case that which unifies is mind.
Since the word 'simple' has two senses, i.e. may mean either (a)
'not capable of being divided' or (b) 'not actually divided', there is
nothing to prevent mind from knowing what is undivided, e.g. when it
apprehends a length (which is actually undivided) and that in an
undivided time; for the time is divided or undivided in the same
manner as the line. It is not possible, then, to tell what part of the
line it was apprehending in each half of the time: the object has no
actual parts until it has been divided: if in thought you think each
half separately, then by the same act you divide the time also, the
half-lines becoming as it were new wholes of length. But if you
think it as a whole consisting of these two possible parts, then
also you think it in a time which corresponds to both parts
together. (But what is not quantitatively but qualitatively simple
is thought in a simple time and by a simple act of the soul.)
But that which mind thinks and the time in which it thinks are in
this case divisible only incidentally and not as such. For in them too
there is something indivisible (though, it may be, not isolable) which
gives unity to the time and the whole of length; and this is found
equally in every continuum whether temporal or spatial.
Points and similar instances of things that divide, themselves being
indivisible, are realized in consciousness in the same manner as
privations.
A similar account may be given of all other cases, e.g. how evil
or black is cognized; they are cognized, in a sense, by means of their
contraries. That which cognizes must have an element of potentiality
in its being, and one of the contraries must be in it. But if there is
anything that has no contrary
, then it knows itself and is actually
and possesses independent existence.
Assertion is the saying of something concerning something, e.g.
affirmation, and is in every case either true or false: this is not
always the case with mind: the thinking of the definition in the sense
of the constitutive essence is never in error nor is it the
assertion of something concerning something, but, just as while the
seeing of the special object of sight can never be in error, the
belief that the white object seen is a man may be mistaken, so too
in the case of objects which are without matter.
7
Actual knowledge is identical with its object: potential knowledge
in the individual is in time prior to actual knowledge but in the
universe it has no priority even in time; for all things that come
into being arise from what actually is. In the case of sense clearly
the sensitive faculty already was potentially what the object makes it
to be actually; the faculty is not affected or altered. This must
therefore be a different kind from movement; for movement is, as we
saw, an activity of what is imperfect, activity in the unqualified
sense, i.e. that of what has been perfected, is different from
movement.
To perceive then is like bare asserting or knowing; but when the
object is pleasant or painful, the soul makes a quasi-affirmation or
negation, and pursues or avoids the object. To feel pleasure or pain
is to act with the sensitive mean towards what is good or bad as such.
Both avoidance and appetite when actual are identical with this: the
faculty of appetite and avoidance are not different, either from one
another or from the faculty of sense-perception; but their being is
different.
To the thinking soul images serve as if they were contents of
perception (and when it asserts or denies them to be good or bad it
avoids or pursues them). That is why the soul never thinks without
an image. The process is like that in which the air modifies the pupil
in this or that way and the pupil transmits the modification to some
third thing (and similarly in hearing), while the ultimate point of
arrival is one, a single mean, with different manners of being.
With what part of itself the soul discriminates sweet from hot I
have explained before and must now describe again as follows: That
with which it does so is a sort of unity, but in the way just
mentioned, i.e. as a connecting term. And the two faculties it
connects, being one by analogy and numerically, are each to each as
the qualities discerned are to one another (for what difference does
it make whether we raise the problem of discrimination between
disparates or between contraries, e.g. white and black?). Let then C
be to D as is to B: it follows alternando that C: A:: D: B. If then
C and D belong to one subject, the case will be the same with them
as with and B; and B form a single identity with different modes of
being; so too will the former pair. The same reasoning holds if be
sweet and B white.
The faculty of thinking then thinks the forms in the images, and
as in the former case what is to be pursued or avoided is marked out
for it, so where there is no sensation and it is engaged upon the
images it is moved to pursuit or avoidance. E.g.. perceiving by
sense that the beacon is fire, it recognizes in virtue of the
general faculty of sense that it signifies an enemy, because it sees
it moving; but sometimes by means of the images or thoughts which
are within the soul, just as if it were seeing, it calculates and
deliberates what is to come by reference to what is present; and
when it makes a pronouncement, as in the case of sensation it
pronounces the object to be pleasant or painful, in this case it
avoids or persues and so generally in cases of action.
That too which involves no action, i.e. that which is true or false,
is in the same province with what is good or bad: yet they differ in
this, that the one set imply and the other do not a reference to a
particular person.
The so-called abstract objects the mind thinks just as, if one had
thought of the snubnosed not as snub-nosed but as hollow, one would
have thought of an actuality without the flesh in which it is
embodied: it is thus that the mind when it is thinking the objects
of Mathematics thinks as separate elements which do not exist
separate. In every case the mind which is actively thinking is the
objects which it thinks. Whether it is possible for it while not
existing separate from spatial conditions to think anything that is
separate, or not, we must consider later.
8
Let us now summarize our results about soul, and repeat that the
soul is in a way all existing things; for existing things are either
sensible or thinkable, and knowledge is in a way what is knowable, and
sensation is in a way what is sensible: in what way we must inquire.
Knowledge and sensation are divided to correspond with the
realities, potential knowledge and sensation answering to
potentialities, actual knowledge and sensation to actualities.
Within the soul the faculties of knowledge and sensation are
potentially these objects, the one what is knowable, the other what is
sensible. They must be either the things themselves or their forms.
The former alternative is of course impossible: it is not the stone
which is present in the soul but its form.
It follows that the soul is analogous to the hand; for as the hand
is a tool of tools, so the mind is the form of forms and sense the
form of sensible things.
Since according to common agreement there is nothing outside and
separate in existence from sensible spatial magnitudes, the objects of
thought are in the sensible forms, viz. both the abstract objects
and all the states and affections of sensible things. Hence (1) no one
can learn or understand anything in the absence of sense, and (when
the mind is actively aware of anything it is necessarily aware of it
along with an image; for images are like sensuous contents except in
that they contain no matter.
Imagination is different from assertion and denial; for what is true
or false involves a synthesis of concepts. In what will the primary
concepts differ from images? Must we not say that neither these nor
even our other concepts are images, though they necessarily involve
them?
9
The soul of animals is characterized by two faculties, (a) the
faculty of discrimination which is the work of thought and sense,
and (b) the faculty of originating local movement. Sense and mind we
have now sufficiently examined. Let us next consider what it is in the
soul which originates movement. Is it a single part of the soul
separate either spatially or in definition? Or is it the soul as a
whole? If it is a part, is that part different from those usually
distinguished or already mentioned by us, or is it one of them? The
problem at once presents itself, in what sense we are to speak of
parts of the soul, or how many we should distinguish. For in a sense
there is an infinity of parts: it is not enough to distinguish, with
some thinkers, the calculative, the passionate, and the
desiderative, or with others the rational and the irrational; for if
we take the dividing lines followed by these thinkers we shall find
parts far more distinctly separated from one another than these,
namely those we have just mentioned: (1) the nutritive, which
belongs both to plants and to all animals, and (2) the sensitive,
which cannot easily be classed as either irrational or rational;
further (3) the imaginative, which is, in its being, different from
all, while it is very hard to say with which of the others it is the
same or not the same, supposing we determine to posit separate parts
in the soul; and lastly (4) the appetitive, which would seem to be
distinct both in definition and in power from all hitherto enumerated.
It is absurd to break up the last-mentioned faculty: as these
thinkers do, for wish is found in the calculative part and desire
and passion in the irrational; and if the soul is tripartite
appetite will be found in all three parts. Turning our attention to
the present object of discussion, let us ask what that is which
originates local movement of the animal.
The movement of growth and decay, being found in all living
things, must be attributed to the faculty of reproduction and
nutrition, which is common to all: inspiration and expiration, sleep
and waking, we must consider later: these too present much difficulty:
at present we must consider local movement, asking what it is that
originates forward movement in the animal.
That it is not the nutritive faculty is obvious; for this kind of
movement is always for an end and is accompanied either by imagination
or by appetite; for no animal moves except by compulsion unless it has