The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics)

by Mckeon, Richard

  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. [409a] How are 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.16

  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, (5) 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, (10) 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. (15) 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, (20) 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 place, they must themselves be indivisible. If, on the other hand, (25) 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, (30) as we have said,17 that this view, while on the one side identical with that of those who maintain that soul is a subtle kind of body,18 is on the other entangled in the absurdity peculiar to Democritus’ way of describing the manner in which movement is originated by soul. [409b] 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, (5) 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 large19 units, or, quite simply, (10) 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, (15) e. g. reasoning, sensation, pleasure, pain, &c. For, to repeat what we have said earlier,20 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, (20) 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, (25) 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. (30) [410a] 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. (5)

  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 enter into the constitution of the soul? The same applies to ‘the good’ and ‘the not-good’, (10) 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. (15) Is the soul formed out of those elements alone which enter into substances? If 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. (20) 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, (25) 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, (30) sinews, and hair seem to be wholly insensitive and consequently not perceptive even of objects earthy like themselves, as they ought to have been. [410b]

  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. (5) 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 there 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 sev
eral or all of the elements? Each must certainly know one or several or all.

  The problem might also be raised, (10) 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, (15) while their statement is 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, is compounded out of the elements, and 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 are stationary, (20) and yet local movement is the only one, so it seems, which the soul originates in animals. And (2) the same objection 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), (25) 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, (30) 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. [411a] 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. (5)

  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, (10) 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, (15) 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, (20) 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. (25) 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, (30) 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. [411b] 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, (5) another desires. If, then, its nature admits of its being divided, 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, (10) 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 rôle of each in relation to the body? For, (15) 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, (20) 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, (25) 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 is21 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, (30) though there is nothing which has the latter without the former.

  * * *

  1 i. e. the complex of soul and body.

  2 i. e. as presupposing the various sorts instead of being presupposed by them.

  3 II. xxiii. 698.

  4 35 A ff.

  5 Like the straight line, whose number is the dyad.

  6 The triad.

  7 The tetrad.

  8 404b 1–6.

  9 Phys. viii. 5, esp. 257a 31–258b 9.

  10 i. e. so that what is moved is not it but something which ‘goes along with it’, e. g. a vehicle in which it is contained.

  11 sc. in which case the movement can only be ‘incidental’; for, as we shall see later, it is really the bodily organ of sensation that then is ‘moved’.

  12 35 A if.

  13 sc. but mind in fact thinks or cognizes both.

  14 sc. ‘and so a hindrance to its bliss’.

  15 406a 30 ff., b5–8.

  16 sc. ‘and so, be no unit’.

  17 408b 33 ff.

  18 e. g. Heraclitus, and Diogenes of Apollonia.

  19 i. e. extended.

  20 402b 25–403a 2.

  21 sc. ‘in a sense, i. e. so as to preserve its homogeneity in even its smallest part’.

  BOOK II

  1 [412a] Let the foregoing suffice as our account of the views concerning the soul which have been handed on by our predecessors; let us now dismiss them and make as it were a completely fresh start, (5) endeavouring to give a precise answer to the question, What is soul? i. e. to formulate the most general possible definition of it.

  We are in the habit of recognizing, as one determinate kind of what is, substance, and that in several senses, (a) in the sense of matter or that which in itself is not ‘a this’, and (b) in the sense of form or essence, which is that precisely in virtue of which a thing is calle
d ‘a this’, and thirdly (c) in the sense of that which is compounded of both (a) and (b). Now matter is potentiality, (10) form actuality; of the latter there are two grades related to one another as e. g. knowledge to the exercise of knowledge.

  Among substances are by general consent reckoned bodies and especially natural bodies; for they are the principles of all other bodies. Of natural bodies some have life in them, others not; by life we mean self-nutrition and growth (with its correlative decay). (15) It follows that every natural body which has life in it is a substance in the sense of a composite.

  But since it is also a body of such and such a kind, viz. having life, the body cannot be soul; the body is the subject or matter, not what is attributed to it. Hence the soul must be a substance in the sense of the form of a natural body having life potentially within it. (20) But substance1 is actuality, and thus soul is the actuality of a body as above characterized. Now the word actuality has two senses corresponding respectively to the possession of knowledge and the actual exercise of knowledge. It is obvious that the soul is actuality in the first sense, viz. that of knowledge as possessed, for both sleeping and waking presuppose the existence of soul, and of these waking corresponds to actual knowing, (25) sleeping to knowledge possessed but not employed, and, in the history of the individual, knowledge comes before its employment or exercise.

  That is why the soul is the first grade of actuality of a natural body having life potentially in it. The body so described is a body which is organized. [412b] The parts of plants in spite of their extreme simplicity are ‘organs’; e. g. the leaf serves to shelter the pericarp, the pericarp to shelter the fruit, while the roots of plants are analogous to the mouth of animals, both serving for the absorption of food. If, then, we have to give a general formula applicable to all kinds of soul, we must describe it as the first grade of actuality of a natural organized body. (5) That is why we can wholly dismiss as unnecessary the question whether the soul and the body are one: it is as meaningless as to ask whether the wax and the shape given to it by the stamp are one, or generally the matter of a thing and that of which it is the matter. Unity has many senses (as many as ‘is’ has), but the most proper and fundamental sense of both is the relation of an actuality to that of which it is the actuality.