LECTIO TWO

             § 16. Having stated the difficulty of this science in respect of the problem of the soul's substance and essence, the Philosopher proceeds to the problem of its modifications and accidental qualities. And here he does two things; he states, first, and solves a difficulty concerning the soul's modifications; and then, using this solution, he shows that knowledge of the soul pertains to natural science or 'physics', where he says, 'For this reason, therefore, the natural scientist . . .'. As to the first point, he says it is a problem whether the soul's modifications and activities belong to it independently of the body, as Plato thought, or are none of them peculiar to the soul, being all shared by soul and body together.

             § 17. Going on at 'It is necessary', he again does two things. First he shows the difficulty of the question, and then, at 'But if the soul. . .', the necessity of putting it. He begins then by observing that we cannot avoid the question whether the soul's modes and activities are proper to it or shared by the body, and that this is not an easy question but a very difficult one. The difficulty, as he explains, arises from the fact that many activities seem to be common to soul and body and to require the body, for instance, getting angry and having sensations and so on; which all involve body as well as soul. If there is anything peculiar to the soul it would appear to be the intellectual activity or understanding; this seems to belong to the soul in a special way.

             § 18. And yet, on closer consideration, even understanding would not seem to pertain to the soul alone. For either it is the same as imagination, as the Platonists thought, or it does not occur without the use of imagination (for there used to be men, such as the early natural philosophers, who said that intellect in no way differed from the senses, which would imply that it does not differ from the imagination; as indeed the Platonists were led to say). As, then, imagination presupposes the body and depends on it, they said that understanding was common to soul and body together, rather than the work of the soul alone. And even granted that intellect and imagination are not identical, still the one cannot function without the other. It would follow that understanding is not of the soul alone, since imagining presupposes the body. Understanding then, it seems, does not occur where there is no body.

             § 19. Now although Aristotle clears up this problem in Book III, we shall say something about it here. Understanding, then, is in one sense, proper to the soul alone, and in another sense common to both soul and body. For it should be realised that certain activities or modifications of the soul depend on the body both as an instrument and as an object. Sight, for instance, needs a body as object--because its object is colour, which is only found in bodies;--and also as an instrument--because, while the act of seeing involves the soul, it cannot occur except through the instrumentality of a visual organ, the pupil of the eye. Sight then is the act of the organ as well as of the soul. But there is one activity which only depends on the body to provide its object, not its instrument; for understanding is not accomplished with a bodily organ, though it does bear on a bodily object; because, as will be shown later, in Book III, the phantasms in the imagination are to the intellect as colours to sight: as colours provide sight with its object, so do the phantasms serve the intellect. Since then there cannot be phantasms without a body, it seems that understanding presupposes a body--not, however, as its instrument, but simply as its object.

             § 20. Two things follow from this. (1) Understanding is an act proper to the soul alone, needing the body, as was said above, only to provide its object; whereas seeing and various other functions involve the compound of soul and body together. (2) Whatever operates of itself independently, has also an independent being and subsistence of its own; which is not the case where the operation is not independent. Intellect then is a self-subsistent actuality, whereas the other faculties are actualities existing in matter. And the difficulty in dealing with this type of question arises simply from the fact that all functions of the soul seem at first sight to be also functions of the body.

             § 21. After this, when Aristotle says 'But if the soul' he states a reason for putting this question, namely, that on its answer depends the answer to a question that everyone asks very eagerly about the soul: whether it can be separated from the body. So he says that if the soul has any function proper to itself it can certainly be separated, because, as was pointed out above, whatever can operate on its own can exist on its own. Conversely, if the soul had no such proper function it would not be separable from the body; it would be in the same case as a straight line--for though many things can happen to a straight line qua straight line, such as touching a brass sphere at a certain point, still they can only come about in a material way: a straight line cannot touch a brass sphere at any point except materially. So also with the soul; if it has no activity proper to itself, then, however many things affect it, they will do so only in a material way.

             § 22. Next, when he says 'Now all the soul's' he draws out what had been presupposed above, namely that certain modifications affect soul and body together, not the soul alone. And this he shows by one argument in two parts; which runs as follows. Whenever the physical constitution of the body contributes to a vital activity, the latter pertains to the body as well as the soul; but this happens in the case of all the 'modifications' of the soul, such as anger, meekness, fear, confidence, pity and so on; hence all these 'modifications' would seem to belong partly to the body. And to show that the physical constitution plays a part in them he uses two arguments. (1) We sometimes see a man beset by obvious and severe afflictions without being provoked or frightened, whereas when he is already excited by violent passions arising from his bodily disposition, he is disturbed by mere trifles and behaves as though he were really angry. (2) At 'This is still more evident:' what makes this point even clearer is that we see in some people, even when there is no danger present, passions arising that resemble one such 'modification' of the soul; for instance melancholy people, simply as a result of their physical state, are often timid when there is no real cause to be. Obviously then, if the bodily constitution has this effect on the passions, the latter must be 'material principles', i.e. must exist in matter. This is why 'such terms', i.e. the definitions of these passions, are not to be predicated without reference to matter; so that if anger is being defined, let it be called a movement 'of some body' such as the heart, or 'of some part or power' of the body. Saying this he refers to the subject or material cause of the passion; whereas 'proceeding from' refers to the efficient cause; and 'existing for' to the final cause.

             § 23. Then at 'For this reason', he concludes from the foregoing that the study of the soul pertains to natural science--a conclusion following from the way the soul is defined. So he does two things here: (1) he proves his statement; (2) he pursues his discussion of definitions, where he says 'the natural scientist and the dialectician'. The proof of his statement runs thus. Activities and dispositions of the soul are also activities and dispositions of the body, as has been shown. But the definition of any disposition must include that which is disposed; for its subject always falls within the definition of a disposition. If, then, dispositions of this kind are in the body as well as in the soul, the former must be included in their definition. And since everything bodily or material falls within the scope of natural science, so also must the dispositions of which we speak. Moreover, since the subject of any dispositions enters into the study of them, it must be the task of the natural scientist to study the soul,--either absolutely 'all' souls, or 'of this kind', i.e. the soul that is joined to a body. He adds this because he has left it uncertain whether intellect is joined to the body.

             § 24. Where he says 'The natural scientist and the dialectician' he continues his discussion of definitions. Explaining that, while some definitions of the dispositions of the soul include matter and the body, others exclude matter and refer only to the form, he shows that the latter kind of definition is inadequate. This leads him to go into the difference between these types of definition. Sometimes the body is omitted, as when anger is defined as a desire of revenge; and sometimes the bodily or material factor is included, as when anger is called a heating of blood round the heart. The former is a logical definition, but the latter is physical, since it includes a material factor, and so pertains to the natural scientist. The natural scientist points to the material factor when he says that anger is a heating of blood round the heart; whereas the dialectician points to the species or formal principle; since to call anger a desire of revenge is to state its formal principle.

             § 25. Now the first type of definition is obviously inadequate. The definition of any form existing in a particular matter must take account of the matter. This form, 'the desire for retaliation', exists in a definite matter, and if the matter is not included, the definition is clearly inadequate. The definition, then, must state that this thing, i.e. the form, has being in this particular sort of matter.

             § 26. Thus we have three kinds of definition. The first states the species and specific principle of a thing, and is purely formal,--as if one were to define a house as a shelter from wind, rain and heat. The second kind indicates the matter, as when a house is called a shelter made of stones and beams and wood. But the third kind includes in the definition 'both', namely matter and form, calling a house a particular kind of shelter, built of particular materials, for a particular purpose--to keep out the wind, etc. So he says that 'another' definition has three elements: the material, 'in these', i.e. beams and stones; the formal, 'the form'; and the final, 'for those reasons', i.e. to keep out the wind. So matter is included when he says 'in these', form when he says 'form', and the final cause when he says 'for those reasons'. All three are needed for a perfect definition.

             § 27. To the question which of these types of definition pertains to the natural scientist, I answer that the purely formal one is not physical but logical. That which includes matter but omits the form pertains to no one but the natural scientist, because only he is concerned with matter. Yet that which includes both factors is also in a special way the natural scientist's. Thus two of these definitions pertain to natural science, but of the two the merely material one is imperfect, while the other, that includes the form also, is perfect. For only the natural scientist studies the inseparable dispositions of matter.

             § 28. But there are various ways of studying the dispositions of matter, as Aristotle now proceeds to show. He divides the students of these dispositions into three classes. One class consists of those who, while they study material dispositions, differ from the natural scientist in their point of view; thus the craftsman differs from the scientist in that he starts from the point of view of art, but the natural scientist from that of real nature. Another class consists of those who, though they consider forms that exist in sense-perceptible matter, do not include such matter in their definitions. The forms referred to are such as curved, straight, and so on, which, though they exist in matter and are, in fact, inseparable from it, are not, by the mathematician, regarded under their sense-perceptible aspect. The reason is that if it is through its quality that a thing is sense-perceptible, quality presupposes quantity; hence the mathematician abstracts from this or that particular material factor in order to attend exclusively to the purely quantitative. Finally, the third class studies things whose existence is either completely independent of matter or can be found without matter. This is First Philosophy.

             § 29. Note that this division of Philosophy is entirely based on definition and the method of defining. The reason is that definition is the principle of demonstration. Since things are defined by their essential principles, diverse definitions reveal a diversity of essential principles; and this implies a diversity of sciences.

             § 30. Then at 'To return . . .' he comes back to the matter in hand after the apparent digression about definitions. The point under discussion was that such modifications of the soul as love, fear and so forth are inseparable from physical animal matter inasmuch as they have this sort of existence, i.e. as passions in the body; in which they differ from lines, plane-surfaces and so on, which can be considered by the mind apart from the matter that they naturally imply. If this is the case then the study of such dispositions, and even of the soul itself, becomes, as has been said, the affair of the natural scientist.

             And 'concerning this', i.e. the soul, we must, at our present stage, take account of the opinions of the ancients no matter who they were, provided they had anything to say about it. This will be useful in two ways. First, we shall profit by what is sound in their views. Secondly, we shall be put on our guard against their errors.

403b 24-404b 7

PREVIOUS THEORIES

DEMOCRITUS, THE PYTHAGOREANS, ANAXAGORAS

             OUR enquiry must begin with a statement of what seems most to belong by nature to the soul. The animated being would appear to differ from the inanimate in two primary respects: by motion and by sense-perception. And these two notions are roughly what our predecessors have handed down to us concerning the soul.§§ 31-2

             For some say that the soul is principally and primarily what moves. Holding that what does not itself move moves no other moving thing, they thought that the soul too was thus.§ 33

             Hence Democritus said it was a kind of fire or heat. There exist an infinite number of shapes and atoms, and those of the spherical kind are, he said, fire and soul: like the dust-motes in the air called 'atomies' seen in the rays of the sun in doorways; and of all the seeds of these, he said, are the elements of all Nature. Leucippus had a similar opinion. Those round in shape make the soul, because they are most able to penetrate everywhere, and since they move of themselves, they have also the power to move everything else. The soul, they maintained, is what causes movement in living things: and accordingly breathing is coterminous with living. That which envelops all bodies expels by compression the atoms [within], thus causing movement in animals, for these [atoms] are never at rest. A reinforcement must come therefore [he said] from without; in that other atoms enter by respiration, preventing from dispersal those that are within the animate body, and which simultaneously resist the constraining and compressing environment; and that animals live so long as they can do this.§§ 34-5

             The teaching of the Pythagoreans seems to have had much the same purport. Some of these said the soul consisted of atoms in the air; others, that it was what sets these in motion. And these atoms are mentioned because they seem to be always moving, even if the soul be quite tranquil. 36

             All who say that the soul is a thing that moves itself tend in the same direction; all seem to hold that movement is what is most proper to the soul, and accordingly that all things are in motion on account of the soul, but the soul itself on its own account; because one sees nothing moving other things that is not itself moving.§ 37

             Anaxagoras likewise said that the soul is a mover, as also did anyone else who held that a Mind moves all things. But his view is not exactly Democritus'.§ 38

             He [Democritus], asserts that intellect and soul are absolutely identical; and that what appears is the truth. And therefore that Homer aptly says of Hector that he lay 'other-minded'. He does not use the term intellect to denote a definite faculty concerned with truth, but identifies soul and intellect.§ 39

             Anaxagoras is less definite about these matters. He often says that the cause of being right or good is intellect, and that this is the soul. For it is, he says, in all animals, great and small, noble and base.§ 40

             It does not seem, however, that there exists mind, in the sense of prudence, alike in all animals: nor even in all men.§ 41

             All those therefore who have regarded life from the point of view of movement have held soul to be pre-eminently a moving force.§ 42