Aristotle

by Various Works [lit]

  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