Aristotle

by Various Works [lit]

  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