by Aristotle
Whatsoever hath been and is now and shall be hereafter,
All alike hath its birth—men, women, trees of the forest,
Beasts of the field and fowls of the air and fish in the water.5
To use a somewhat humble illustration, we might with truth compare it to the so-called ‘key-stones’ in arches, which, placed at the junction of the two sides, [30] ensure the balance and arrangement of the whole structure of the arch and give it stability. Moreover, they say that the sculptor Pheidias, when he was setting up the Athena on the Acropolis, represented his own features in the centre of her shield, [400a1] and so attached it to the statue by a hidden contrivance, that any one who tried to cut it out, thereby necessarily shattered and overthrew the whole statue. The position of God in the universe is analogous to this, for he preserves the harmony and permanence of all things; save only that he has his seat not in the midst, where [5] the earth and this our troubled world is situated, but himself pure he has gone up into a pure region, to which we rightly give the name of heaven, for it is the furthest boundary6 of the upper world, and the name of Olympus, because it is all-bright7 and free from all gloom and disordered motion, such as is caused on our earth [10] by storms and the violence of the wind. Even thus speaks the poet Homer—
Unto Olympus’ height, where men say that the gods have their dwelling,
Always safe and secure; no wind ever shaketh its stillness,
Nor is it wet with the rain; no snow draweth nigh; but unclouded,
Even the air is outspread, and a white sheen floateth about it.8
[15] This, too, is borne out by the general habit of mankind, which assigns the regions above to God; for we all stretch up our hands to heaven when we offer prayers. Hence too these words of the poet are not spoken amiss,
Heaven belongeth to Zeus, wide spread mid the clouds and the ether.9
[20] Therefore also the objects of sense which are held in the highest esteem occupy the same region, to wit the stars and the sun and the moon. For this cause the heavenly bodies alone are so arranged that they ever preserve the same order, and never alter or move from their course, while the things of earth, being mutable, admit of many [25] changes and conditions. For before now mighty earthquakes have rent the earth in diverse places, and violent rains have burst forth and flooded it, and the inroads and withdrawals of waves have often turned the dry land into sea and sea into dry land, and the might of winds and hurricanes has sometimes overthrown whole cities, and [30] fires and flames have consumed the earth, either coming forth from heaven in former times, even as men say that in the days of Phaethon they burnt up the eastern regions of the earth, or else gushing forth and erupting from the earth in the west, as when the craters of Etna burst and flowed like a torrent over the earth. [400b1] (There also the favour of heaven bestowed especial honour upon the generation of the pious; for when they were overtaken by the fiery stream, because they were carrying their aged parents upon their shoulders and seeking to save them, when the river of fire drew near to them, it was parted asunder and turned part of its flame [5] this way and part that way, and preserved the young men and their parents unscathed.)
To sum up the matter, as is the steersman in the ship, the charioteer in the chariot, the leader in the chorus, the lawgiver in the city, the general in the army, even so is God in the Universe; save that to them their rule is full of weariness and disturbance and care, while to him it is without toil or labour and free from all [10] bodily weakness. For, enthroned amid the immutable, he moves and revolves all things where and how he will, in different forms and natures; just as the law of a city, immutable in the souls of those who are under it, orders all the life of the state. [15] For in obedience to it, it is plain, the magistrates go forth to their duties, the judges to their several courts of justice, the councillors and members of the assembly to their appointed places of meeting, and one man proceeds to his meals in the prytaneum, another to make his defence before the jury, and another to die in [20] prison. So too the customary public feasts and yearly festivals take place, and sacrifices to the gods and worship of heroes and libations in honour of the dead. The various activities of the citizens in obedience to one ordinance or lawful authority are well expressed in the words of the poet,
And all the town is full of incense smoke, [25]
And full of cries for aid and loud laments.10
So must we suppose to be the case with that greater city, the universe. For God is to us a law, impartial, admitting not of correction or change, and better, I think, and surer than those which are engraved upon tablets. Under his motionless and [30] harmonious rule the whole ordering of heaven and earth is administered, extending over all natural things through the seeds of life in each both to plants and to animals, according to genera and species. For vines and date-palms and peach-trees [401a1] and ‘sweet fig-trees and olives’,11 as the poet says, and trees which, though they bear no fruits, have other uses, plane-trees and pines and box-trees,
Alder and poplar-tree and cypress breathing sweet odours,12
and trees which produce autumn crops pleasant but also difficult to store, [5]
Pear-trees and pomegranate-trees and apple-trees glorious-fruited,13
and animals, both wild and tame, feeding in the air or on the earth or in the water, all are born and come to their prime and decay in obedience to the ordinances of God; for, in the words of Heraclitus, ‘every creeping thing grazes at the blow of [10] God’s goad’.14
7 · God being one yet has many names, being called after all the various conditions which he himself inaugurates. We call him Zen and Zeus, using the two names in the same sense, as though we should say him through whom we live.15 He [15] is called the son of Kronos and of Time, for he endures from eternal age to age. He is God of Lightning and Thunder, God of the Clear Sky and of Ether, God of the Thunderbolt and of Rain, so called after the rain and the thunderbolts and other physical phenomena. Moreover, after the fruits he is called the Fruitful God, after [20] cities the City-God; he is God of the Family, God of the Household, God of Kindred and God of our Fathers from his participation in such things. He is God of Comradeship and Friendship and Hospitality, God of Armies and of Trophies, God of Purification and of Vengeance and of Supplication and of Propitiation, as the poets name him, and in very truth the Saviour and God of Freedom, and to complete [25] the tale of his titles, God of Heaven and of the World Below, deriving his names from all natural phenomena and conditions, inasmuch as he is himself the cause of all things. Thus it is well said in the Orphic Hymns,
Zeus of the flashing bolt was the first to be born and the latest,
Zeus is the head and the middle; of Zeus were all things created;
[401b1] Zeus is the stay of the earth and the stay of the star-spangled heaven;
Zeus is male and female of sex, the bride everlasting;
Zeus is the breath of all and the rush of unwearying fire;
Zeus is the root of the sea, and the sun and the moon in the heavens;
[5] Zeus of the flashing bolt is the king and the ruler of all men,
Hiding them all away, and again to the glad light of heaven
Bringing them back at his will, performing terrible marvels.
I think also that God and nothing else is meant when we speak of Necessity, since he is as it were an invincible cause; and Fate, because his action is continuous and he cannot be stayed in his course; and Destiny, because all things [10] have their bounds, and nothing which exists is infinite; and Lot, from the fact that all things are allotted; and Nemesis, from the apportionment which is made to every individual; and Adrasteia, which is a cause ordained by nature which cannot be escaped; and Dispensation, so called because it exists for ever. What is said of the [15] Fates and their spindle tends to the same conclusion; for they are three, appointed over different periods of time, and the thread on the spindle is part of it already spent, part reserved for the future, and part in the course of being spun. One of the Fates is appointed t
o deal with the past, namely, Atropos, for nothing that is gone by [20] can be changed; Lachesis is concerned with the future, for cessation in the course of nature awaits all things; Clotho presides over the present, accomplishing and spinning for each his own particular destiny.16 This fable is well and duly composed. All these things are nought else but God, even as worthy Plato tells us:
[25] ‘God, then, as the old story has it, holding the beginning and the end and the middle of all things that exist, proceeding by a straight path in the course of nature brings them to accomplishment; and with him ever follows Justice, the avenger of all that falls short of the Divine Law—let every man who is to become blessed and happy partake in this from the very first’.17
**TEXT: W. L. Lorimer, Paris, 1933
1‘Ether’, αἰθήρ, is derived from ἀεὶ θεῖν not from αἴθεσθαι.
2Frag. 10 Diels-Kranz.
3Things are said κεκoσμῆσθαι after the κόσμoς.
4Homer, Iliad I 499.
5Frag. 21 Diels-Kranz.
6oὐρανός being derived from ὅρoς ἄ νω.
7῎Oλυμπoς being derived from ꜔ λoλαμπής.
8Odyssey VI 42–5.
9Iliad XV 192.
10Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus 4–5.
11Odyssey XV 116.
12ib V 64.
13ib XI 589.
14Frag. 11 Diels-Kranz.
15Zῆνα from ζῆν, Δία from δι’ ὅν.
16The identifications in this paragraph are supported by etymologizing.
17Laws 715E and 730C.
ON THE SOUL**
J. A. Smith
BOOK I
1 · Holding as we do that, while knowledge of any kind is a thing to be [402a1] honoured and prized, one kind of it may, either by reason of its greater exactness or of a higher dignity and greater wonderfulness in its objects, be more honourable and precious than another, on both accounts we should naturally be led to place in the front rank the study of the soul. The knowledge of the soul admittedly contributes [5] greatly to the advance of truth in general, and, above all, to our understanding of Nature, for the soul is in some sense the principle of animal life. Our aim is to grasp and understand, first its essential nature, and secondly its properties; of these some are thought to be affections proper to the soul itself, while others are considered to attach to the animal owing to the presence of soul.
To attain any knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things in the [10] world. As the form of question which here presents itself, viz. the question ‘What is it?’, recurs in other fields, it might be supposed that there was some single method of inquiry applicable to all objects whose essential nature we are endeavouring to ascertain (as there is for incidental properties the single method of demonstration); [15] in that case what we should have to seek for would be this unique method. But if there is no such single and general method for solving the question of essence, our task becomes still more difficult; in the case of each different subject we shall have to determine the appropriate process of investigation. If to this there be a clear answer, e.g. that the process is demonstration or division, or some other known [20] method, many difficulties and hesitations still beset us—with what facts shall we begin the inquiry? For the facts which form the starting-points in different subjects must be different, as e.g. in the case of numbers and surfaces.
First, no doubt, it is necessary to determine in which of the summa genera soul lies, what it is; is it ‘a this-somewhat’, a substance, or is it a quale or a quantum, or some other of the remaining kinds of predicates which we have distinguished? [25] Further, does soul belong to the class of potential existents, or is it not rather an actuality? Our answer to this question is of the greatest importance.
We must consider also whether soul is divisible or is without parts, and [402b1] whether it is everywhere homogeneous or not; and if not homogeneous, whether its various forms are different specifically or generically: up to the present time those who have discussed and investigated soul seem to have confined themselves to the [5] human soul. We must be careful not to ignore the question whether soul can be defined in a single account, as is the case with animal, or whether we must not give a separate account for each sort of it, as we do for horse, dog, man, god (in the latter case the universal, animal—and so too every other common predicate—is either nothing or posterior). Further, if what exists is not a plurality of souls, but a [10] plurality of parts of one soul, which ought we to investigate first, the whole soul or its parts? It is also a difficult problem to decide which of these parts are in nature distinct from one another. Again, which ought we to investigate first, these parts or their functions, mind or thinking, the faculty or the act of sensation, and so on? If [15] the investigation of the functions precedes that of the parts, the further question suggests itself: ought we not before either to consider the correlative objects, e.g. of sense or thought? It seems not only useful for the discovery of the causes of the incidental properties of substances to be acquainted with the essential nature of those substances (as in mathematics it is useful for the understanding of the property of the equality of the interior angles of a triangle to two right angles to [20] know the essential nature of the straight and the curved or of the line and the plane) but also conversely, for the knowledge of the essential nature of a substance is largely 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 [25] 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 [403a1] to discover the incidental 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 [5] 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 [10] 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 [15] straight thing cannot touch it in this way; it cannot be so divorced at all, since it is always found in a body. It 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 [20] 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 accounts. [25]
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—either every soul or souls of this sort—must fall within the science of nature. 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 [30] pain for pain, or something like that, while the former would define it as a boiling of the blood or warm substance surrounding the heart. The one assigns the material [403b1] conditions, the other the form or account; for what he states is the account 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 an account as ‘a shelter against destruction by wind, rain, and heat’; the physicist [5] 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 account alone? Is it not rather the one who combines both? 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 [10] 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, to the First [15] Philosopher. But we must return from this digression, and repeat that the affections of soul, insofar as they are such as passion and fear, are inseparable from the natural matter of animals in this way and not in the same way as a line or surface.