Chapter V.—Probable View of the Stoics, that the Soul Has a Corporeal Nature.

Suppose one summons a Eubulus to his assistance, and a Critolaus, and a Zenocrates, and on this occasion Plato’s friend Aristotle. They may very possibly hold themselves ready for stripping the soul of its corporeity, unless they happen to see other philosophers opposed to them in their purpose—and this, too, in greater numbers—asserting for the soul a corporeal nature. Now I am not referring merely to those who mould the soul out of manifest bodily substances, as Hipparchus and Heraclitus (do) out of fire; as Hippon and Thales (do) out of water; as Empedocles and Critias (do) out of blood; as Epicurus (does) out of atoms, since even atoms by their coherence form corporeal masses; as Critolaus and his Peripatetics (do) out of a certain indescribable quintessence,37    Ex quinta nescio qua substantia. Comp. Cicero’s Tuscul. i. 10. if that may be called a body which rather includes and embraces bodily substances;—but I call on the Stoics also to help me, who, while declaring almost in our own terms that the soul is a spiritual essence (inasmuch as breath and spirit are in their nature very near akin to each other), will yet have no difficulty in persuading (us) that the soul is a corporeal substance. Indeed, Zeno, defining the soul to be a spirit generated with (the body,38    Consitum.) constructs his argument in this way:  That substance which by its departure causes the living being to die is a corporeal one. Now it is by the departure of the spirit, which is generated with (the body,) that the living being dies; therefore the spirit which is generated with (the body) is a corporeal substance. But this spirit which is generated with (the body) is the soul:  it follows, then, that the soul is a corporeal substance. Cleanthes, too, will have it that family likeness passes from parents to their children not merely in bodily features, but in characteristics of the soul; as if it were out of a mirror of (a man’s) manners, and faculties, and affections, that bodily likeness and unlikeness are caught and reflected by the soul also.  It is therefore as being corporeal that it is susceptible of likeness and unlikeness. Again, there is nothing in common between things corporeal and things incorporeal as to their susceptibility. But the soul certainly sympathizes with the body, and shares in its pain, whenever it is injured by bruises, and wounds, and sores: the body, too, suffers with the soul, and is united with it (whenever it is afflicted with anxiety, distress, or love) in the loss of vigour which its companion sustains, whose shame and fear it testifies by its own blushes and paleness. The soul, therefore, is (proved to be) corporeal from this inter-communion of susceptibility. Chrysippus also joins hands in fellowship with Cleanthes when he lays it down that it is not at all possible for things which are endued with body to be separated from things which have not body; because they have no such relation as mutual contact or coherence. Accordingly Lucretius says:39    De Nat. Rer. i. 305.

“Tangere enim et tangi nisi corpus nulla potest res.”

“For nothing but body is capable of touching or of being touched.”

(Such severance, however, is quite natural between the soul and the body); for when the body is deserted by the soul, it is overcome by death. The soul, therefore, is endued with a body; for if it were not corporeal, it could not desert the body.

CAPUT V.

Accerserit Eubulum aliquem et Critolaum et Xenocratem, et isto in loco amicum Platonis Aristotelem. 0653A Fortassean extruentur magis ad auferendam animae corpulentiam, si non alios e contrario inspexerint, et quidem plures corpus animae vindicantes, nec illos dico solos qui eam de manifestis corporalibus effingunt, ut Hipparchus et Heraclitus ex igni, ut Hippon et Thales ex aqua, ut Empedocles et Critias ex sanguine, ut Epicurus ex atomis, si et atomi corpulentias de coitu suo cogunt, ut Critolaüs, et peripatetici ejus, ex quinta nescio qua substantia, si et illa corpus, quia corpora includit; sed etiam Stoicos allego, qui spiritum praedicantes animam, pene nobiscum, qua proxima inter se flatus et spiritus, tamen corpus animam facile persuadebunt. Denique Zeno consitum spiritum definiens animam, hoc modo instruit: Quo, inquit, digresso animal emoritur, corpus 0653B est; consito autem spiritu digresso, animal emoritur; ergo consitus spiritus corpus est: consitus autem spiritus anima est; ergo corpus est anima. Vult et Cleanthes non solum corporis lineamentis, sed et animae notis similitudinem parentibus in filios respondere, de speculo scilicet morum et ingeniorum et adfectuum: corporis autem similitudinem et dissimilitudinem capere et animam: itaque corpus similitudini vel dissimilitudini obnoxium. Item corporalium et incorporalium passiones inter se non communicare. Porro et animam compati corpori, cui laeso ictibus, vulneribus, ulceribus condolescit; et corpus animae, cui afflictae cura, angore, amore, coaegrescit , per detrimentum scilicet vigoris, cujus pudorem et pavorem rubore atque pallore testetur. Igitur anima corpus, ex 0653C corporalium passionum communione. Sed et Chrysippus manum ei porrigit, constituens corporalia ab incorporalibus derelinqui omnino non posse, quia nec contingantur ab eis; unde et Lucretius: Tangere enim et tangi, nisi corpus, nulla potest res;derelicto autem corpore ab anima, affici morte. Igitur corpus anima, quae, nisi corporalis, corpus non derelinqueret.