Aristotle

“ The soul, therefore, is like the hand: for just as the hand is the instrument through which we grasp other instruments, so also reason is the form through which we apprehend other forms, while sense-perception is the form of the objects of sense. ”

“ Besides if it be sufficient for the soul to have touched with any of its parts, what need is there for it to move in a circle or indeed to have magnitude at all? If, on the other hand, it be necessary for thought that it should touch with the whole circle of the soul, what will happen when it touches with the parts? ”

“ Neither, again, is imagination any of those faculties which invariably reveal us truth: as, for example, scientific knowledge or thought: because imagination may be false as well as true.
It remains for us, then, to see whether opinion, which is both true and false, can be identified with imagination. But opinion is followed by belief: it is impossible, when holding an opinion, not to believe the views we have. Belief, however, is an attribute of no brute beast, whereas imagination is possessed by many. ”

“ The question might besides be raised, what is it that brings the elements to unity? The elements themselves resemble mere unformed matter, and it is the synthetic force, whatever it may be, which is most important Now it is impossible that there should be anything superior to soul or dominating it: and still more impossible that there should be anything superior to reason: for reason, it is to be believed, is by nature first born and supreme. And yet the philosophers in question make the elements the first forms of existence. ”

“ The definition we have just given should make it evident that we must no more ask whether the soul and the body are one, than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed upon it are one, or generally inquire whether the material and that of which it is the material are one; for though unity and being are used in a variety of senses, their most distinctive sense is that of perfect realization. ”

“ There are a number of ways in which a thing is said to live; yet should it possess only one of them — as for example, reason, sense — perception, local movement and rest, and further movement in respect of nutrition as well as of decay and growth — we say it lives. Hence it is that all plants are thought to live; because they manifestly contain within themselves such a power and principle as enables them to acquire growth and undergo decay in opposite directions ”

“ And, further, when we form the opinion that something is terrible or fearful, we at the same time experience a feeling of fear along with it; and the result is similar when we think anything fitted to excite our confidence: whereas, with respect to merely forming an image of anything, our condition is simply like that of those who see scenes of terror and of courage portrayed in pictures. ”

“ Everything that is animate and living must, from its birth to the time of its decay, possess the soul which we describe as nutritive: because whatever has been born must exhibit the phenomena of growth, maturity, and dissolution, and this it cannot do apart from food and nourishment Thus, then, the nutrient capacity must be inherent in all objects that are marked by growth and by decay. ”

“ There are indeed some thinkers, who assert that the soul is divided into parts, and that it reasons with one part, desires with another part. But what, we may then ask, is it, if the soul be originally and naturally divided — what is it that holds the soul together? It cannot certainly be the body: on the contrary, the soul would generally be said to unite the body; at least when the soul has made its exit from it, the body is dissolved and rots. ”

“ Man only perceives a smell while inhaling the breath: when not inhaling but breathing it forth or checking it, he has no sense of smell, no matter whether the object be far away or close at hand, nor even if it should be placed on the inside of the nostril. And it is indeed a fact common to all animals that an object placed actually on the organ itself is not perceived: but the inability to perceive an odour without inhaling breath is a trait peculiar to man, as will in fact be found on trial. ”

“ For, for what end would such a body be without the faculty of sense? It could only be because its absence would be better for it either as regards its soul or as regards its body. But, as matter of fact, the absence of sense could not possibly contribute to either. The soul will not understand the world better because it is deprived of sense: and the body will not be any more a body because it is without the sensitive capacities.
No body, therefore, not being stationary, possesses soul, without at the same time adding on the faculties of sense. ”

“ Neither light, nor darkness, nor sound, nor smell, can produce any effect on bodies, although the substance in which they are contained may do so, just as it is the air which accompanies thunder that breaks up trees. Tangible qualities, however, and flavours do themselves act on bodies ”

“ It is then on good grounds that people have viewed as springs of action these two faculties of desire and practical intellect: for the faculty of desire has itself a motive force, and the intellect excites to action just in so far as the object of desire supplies it with a starting-point: just as, similarly, imagination when it moves to action does not do so independently of desire. ”

“ At the same time imagination is something different from affirmation and negation, for it is only by a combination of ideas that we attain to truth and falsehood. But, it may be asked, in what respect will our primary ideas differ from mere images of sense? And to this, perhaps, we may reply that they are, as little as other ideas which we frame, mere images of sense, although never framed without the help of such representative images. ”

“ It is then through this principle of nutrition that life is an attribute of all living things. At the same time the animal strictly so called only begins when we reach sensation: for even those objects which do not move themselves nor change their position but possess sensation are said to be animals and not merely to be living. Among the senses themselves, it is touch which is the fundamental attribute of all animal forms. And just as the nutritive function may exist apart from touch and every form of sense, so also may touch exist without any of the other senses. ”

“ For the other senses, such as smell, sight, and hearing, perceive their objects through the medium of other substances: but if an animal, when it came in contact with different substances, were not to have the sense of touch, it would not be able to avoid some and take others: and under these circumstances it would be impossible for it to preserve itself. Hence taste is, as it were, a sort of touch: for it is applied to nutriment: and nutriment is a body that can be touched. On the other hand, sound and colour and smell supply no nourishment, nor do they cause either growth or dissolution. ”

“ Taste has for its object something tangible, and, for this reason, it is perceived as little as the object of touch through the medium of any foreign body. And the substance in which flavour lies — that is to say, the gustable — is contained in what is moist as its material substratum, and the moist itself is something tangible. Thus, were we in the water, and were any thing sweet cast into it, we should perceive it, the perception in this case being the result, not of the intervening medium, but simply of the mingling of the sweet thing with the water, as is the case with what we drink. ”

“ The nature of sense and intellect has been so far settled: we must now investigate the motive faculty of the soul, and ask whether it is some distinct part of it, separable either actually or by abstraction, or whether, on the contrary, it be the soul taken as a whole: and further, if it be some one part of the soul, whether it be some special part different from these usually recognised and enumerated, or whether, on the contrary, it is some one of these which have been stated. ”

“ It is, however, a law of nature that whenever one object is moved, another is moved by it. Now imagination is thought to be a form of movement, and is believed to be dependent on the senses so far as to arise only in those who perceive, and relatively to the objects of perception. And while such movement must result from sense as actually realized, and must itself be like the senseperception, this movement, it follows, can neither exist without sense-perception nor can it be the property of any that do not have perceptive powers. ”

“ If, however, there be a causal mental force, which has no contrary opposed to it, such a faculty knows itself by its own agency, and is realized in full activity and independently of all bodily conditions. And thus while every statement, as for instance an affirmation, asserts something of something else, and is in every case either true or false, reason is not in every case placed between the alternatives of truth and falsehood: the conception of the notion in its real nature is intrinsically true, and is not merely an assertion that something belongs to something else. ”

“ For as the forms of the atoms are as the atoms themselves unlimited, he declares that those which are spherical in shape constitute fire and soul, these atoms being like the so-called motes which are seen in the sunbeams that enter through doorways, and it is in such a mixed heap of seeds that he finds the elements of the whole natural world. ”

“ The object of any sense, in fact, destroys, if it be developed to excess, the organ of sense: and in this same way, then, tangible objects destroy the sense of touch. But life itself is constituted by this sense, since, as has been shewn before, the animal cannot exist without the sense of touch. And thus excess in things tangible destroys not only the organ of sense but the animal itself as well, because this is the one sense absolutely essential to animal life; while as regards the other senses, the animal has them, as has been said, not for bare existence, but for the sake of higher ends. ”

“ Soul then is the original and fundamental ground of all our life, of our sensation and of our reasoning. It follows therefore that the soul must be regarded as a sort of form and idea, rather than as matter and as underlying subject. For the term real substance is, as we have before remarked, employed in three senses: it may denote either the specific form, or the material substratum, or thirdly the combination of the two: and of these different aspects of reality the matter or substratum is but the potential ground, whereas the form is the perfect realization. ”

“ Or may we not rather hold that the receptivity of reason is possible only in virtue of some common element? And hence it has been already said that reason is in a way potentially one with the ideas of reason, though it is actually nothing but a mere capacity before the exercise of thought. We must suppose, in short, that the process of thought is like that of writing on a writing-tablet on which nothing is yet actually written. ”

“ If, on the other hand, the points in the body constitute the number of the soul, or if the soul be the number arising from the points in the body, why is it that all bodies do not possess a soul: seeing that there seems to be points in all of them even innumerable? ”

“ We must, therefore, ascribe this faculty of sense-perception to the original sense itself.
Here, however, a difficulty meets us. To perceive anything by sight is, it may be said, to see: and it is colour, or what possesses colour, that is seen. Hence, it may be thought, the original sense must, in order to perceive the seeing organ, possess colour also. The difficulty so raised shews that perception by sight is not used in one single sense; even when we see nothing we are still able to distinguish by the eye-sight both darkness and light, though not, it is true, in the same manner. ”

“ It appears at any rate that in the great majority of cases the soul is neither active nor passive without the co-operation of the body, for example in being angry, in shewing courage, in feeling appetite — in one word, in being sensitive. Thought seems to be the clearest case of a state peculiar to the soul alone: but if even thought is only the presentation of an image or not independent of such presentation, it would follow that it is impossible for even this act of the soul to be exercised in independence of the body. ”

“ We will now sum up the conclusions we have made about the soul. The soul, we have seen, is in a way all existing things. For the objects of existence are either objects of sense or objects of thought: and while science is in a way identical with the objects of thought, sense again is one with the objects of sense. How this comes about is a point we must investigate.
Scientific thought and sense-perception thus spread themselves over objects, potential sense and science relating to things potential, actual to things actual. ”

“ Why is it, for instance, that the soul which is in the air or in the fire does not produce an animal organism, while it does so in those objects which are mixed and compound, and this too though such thinkers hold the soul dispersed within the former to be the superior? With reference to which, we might further ask why it is that the soul in air is, as they hold, more excellent and more immortal than that amongst animals. In two ways, in fact, their theory is inconsistent with itself and paradoxical. ”

“ Thinking, we may assume, is like perception, and, if so, consists in being affected by the object of thought or in something else of this nature. Like sense then, thought or reason must be not entirely passive, but receptive of the form — that is, it must be potentially like this form, but not actually identical with it: it will stand, in fact, towards its objects in the same relation as that in which the faculty of sense stands towards the objects of perception. ”

“ For touch applies itself as a central state to all things tangible, and its organ is fitted to receive, not only the different qualities of earth, but also of the hot and cold, and of all other tangible qualities of body. And hence it is that we have no perception through the bones and hair and such like parts, because they are composed of earth entirely. Plants, again, do not have any powers of sense-perception, because they are composed totally of earth. ”

“ God however must have made the soul to be moved in this circular fashion for no other reason than that it was better for it to be in movement than to remain at rest, and, further, better to be moved in this manner than in any other. ”

“ There is a difference between magnitude as a simple fact and magnitude as a real notion, just as there is between water and its essential being: as indeed a similar difference holds good in most things, though not in all, there being some abstract objects in which matter and form combine together into one. ”