The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics) (93 page)

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
404
^b
1–6.

⁹
Phys
. viii. 5, esp. 257
^a
31–258
^b
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
406
^a
30 ff.,
^b
5–8.

¹⁶
sc
. ‘and so, be no unit’.

¹⁷
408
^b
33 ff.

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

¹⁹
i. e. extended.

²⁰
402
^b
25–403
^a
2.

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

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 called ‘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 substance
¹
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.

We have now given an answer to the question, What is soul?—an answer which applies to it in its full extent.
(10)
It is substance in the sense which corresponds to the definitive formula of a thing’s essence. That means that it is ‘the essential whatness’ of a body of the character just
assigned.
²
Suppose that what is literally an ‘organ’,
³
like an axe, were a
natural
body, its ‘essential whatness’, would have been its essence, and so its soul; if this disappeared from it, it would have ceased to be an axe,
(15)
except in name. As it is,
⁴
it is just an axe; it wants the character which is required to make its whatness or formulable essence a soul; for that, it would have had to be a
natural
body of a particular kind, viz. one having
in itself
the power of setting itself in movement and arresting itself. Next, apply this doctrine in the case of the ‘parts’ of the living body. Suppose that the eye were an animal—sight would have been its soul, for sight is the substance or essence of the eye which corresponds to the formula,
⁵
(20)
the eye being merely the matter of seeing; when seeing is removed the eye is no longer an eye, except in name—it is no more a real eye than the eye of a statue or of a painted figure. We must now extend our consideration from the ‘parts’ to the whole living body; for what the departmental sense is to the bodily part which is its organ, that the whole faculty of sense is to the whole sensitive body as such.

We must not understand by that which is ‘potentially capable of living’ what has lost the soul it had,
(25)
but only what still retains it; but seeds and fruits are bodies which possess the qualification.
⁶
Consequently, while waking is actuality in a sense corresponding to the cutting and the seeing,
⁷
the soul is actuality in the sense corresponding to the power of sight and the power in the tool;
⁸
the body corresponds to what exists in potentiality; as the pupil
plus
the power of sight constitutes the eye, so the soul
plus
the body constitutes the animal.
[413a]

From this it indubitably follows that the soul is inseparable from its body, or at any rate that certain parts of it are (if it has parts)—for the actuality of some of them is nothing but the actualities of their bodily parts.
(5)
Yet some may be separable because they are not the actualities of any body at all. Further, we have no light on the problem whether the soul may not be the actuality of its body in the sense in which the sailor is the actuality
⁹
of the ship.

This must suffice as our sketch or outline determination of the nature of soul.
(10)

2
     Since what is clear or logically more evident emerges from what in itself is confused but more observable by us, we must reconsider our results from this point of view. For it is not enough for a definitive formula to express as most now do the mere fact; it must include and exhibit the ground also.
(15)
At present definitions are given in a form analogous to the conclusion of a syllogism; e. g. What is squaring? The construction of an equilateral rectangle equal to a given oblong rectangle. Such a definition is in form equivalent to a conclusion.
¹⁰
One that tells us that squaring is the discovery of a line which is a mean proportional between the two unequal sides of the given rectangle discloses the ground of what is defined.

We resume our inquiry from a fresh starting-point by calling attention to the fact that what has soul in it differs from what has not in that the former displays life.
(20)
Now this word has more than one sense, and provided any one alone of these is found in a thing we say that thing is living. Living, that is, may mean thinking or perception or local movement and rest, or movement in the sense of nutrition, decay and growth. Hence we think of plants also as living,
(25)
for they are observed to possess in themselves an originative power through which they increase or decrease in all spatial directions; they grow up
and
down, and everything that grows increases its bulk alike in both directions or indeed in all, and continues to live so long as it can absorb nutriment.
(30)

This power of self-nutrition can be isolated from the other powers mentioned, but not they from it—in mortal beings at least. The fact is obvious in plants; for it is the only psychic power they possess.

This is the originative power the possession of which leads us to speak of things as
living
at all, but it is the possession of sensation that leads us for the first time to speak of living things as animals; for even those beings which possess no power of local movement but do possess the power of sensation we call animals and not merely living things.
[413b]

The primary form of sense is touch, which belongs to all animals. Just as the power of self-nutrition can be isolated from touch and sensation generally,
(5)
so touch can be isolated from all other forms of sense. (By the power of self-nutrition we mean that departmental power of the soul which is common to plants and animals: all animals whatsoever are observed to have the sense of touch.) What the explanation of these two facts is, we must discuss later.
¹¹
At present we must confine ourselves to saying that soul is the source
of these phenomena and is characterized by them,
(10)
viz. by the powers of self-nutrition, sensation, thinking, and motivity.

Is each of these a soul or a part of a soul? And if a part, a part in what sense? A part merely distinguishable by definition or a part distinct in local situation as well? In the case of certain of these powers,
(15)
the answers to these questions are easy, in the case of others we are puzzled what to say. Just as in the case of plants which when divided are observed to continue to live though removed to a distance from one another (thus showing that in
their
case the soul of each individual plant before division was actually one, potentially many), so we notice a similar result in other varieties of soul,
(20)
i. e. in insects which have been cut in two; each of the segments possesses both sensation and local movement; and if sensation, necessarily also imagination and appetition; for, where there is sensation, there is also pleasure and pain, and, where these, necessarily also desire.

We have no evidence as yet about mind or the power to think; it seems to be a widely different kind of soul,
(25)
differing as what is eternal from what is perishable; it alone is capable of existence in isolation from all other psychic powers. All the other parts of soul, it is evident from what we have said, are, in spite of certain statements to the contrary, incapable of separate existence though, of course, distinguishable by definition. If opining is distinct from perceiving,
(30)
to be capable of opining and to be capable of perceiving must be distinct, and so with all the other forms of living above enumerated. Further, some animals possess all these parts of soul, some certain of them only, others one only (this is what enables us to classify animals); the cause must be considered later.
¹²
[414a]
A similar arrangement is found also within the field of the senses; some classes of animals have all the senses, some only certain of them, others only one, the most indispensable, touch.

Since the expression ‘that whereby we live and perceive’ has two meanings,
(5)
just like the expression ‘that whereby we know’—that may mean either (
a
) knowledge or (
b
) the soul, for we can speak of knowing
by
or
with
either, and similarly that whereby we are in health may be either (
a
) health or (
b
) the body or some part of the body; and since of the two terms thus contrasted knowledge or health is the name of a form, essence, or ratio, or if we so express it an actuality of a recipient matter—knowledge of what is capable of knowing,
(10)
health of what is capable of being made healthy (for the operation of that which is capable of originating change terminates and has its seat in what is changed or altered); further, since it is the
soul by or with which primarily we live, perceive, and think:—it follows that the soul must be a ratio or formulable essence, not a matter or subject. For, as we said,
¹³
the word substance has three meanings—form, matter, and the complex of both—and of these three what is called matter is potentiality,
(15)
what is called form actuality. Since then the complex here is the living thing, the body cannot be the actuality of the soul; it is the soul which is the actuality of a certain kind of body. Hence the rightness of the view that the soul cannot be without a body, while it cannot
be
a body; it is not a body but something relative to a body.
(20)
That is why it is
in
a body, and a body of a definite kind. It was a mistake, therefore, to do as former thinkers did, merely to fit it into a body without adding a definite specification of the kind or character of that body. Reflection confirms the observed fact; the actuality of any given thing can only be realized in what is already potentially that thing,
(25)
i. e. in a matter of its own appropriate to it. From all this it follows that soul is an actuality or formulable essence of something that possesses a potentiality of being besouled.