LECTIO SIX

             § 68. The Philosopher now begins to criticise the theories he has been recounting. These theories amount to three statements about the soul: that it is the source of movement and of knowledge, and that it is in a special way incorporeal. The two former attributions, the principal ones, have been predicated of the soul in an absolute sense, as referring directly to its essence. The third is, however, true in one sense and false in another. For if immateriality is taken as predicated simply and absolutely of the soul, then the statement is true; for soul is certainly the least material and most rarified of things. But if it is predicated only in relation to the body, as if to say that soul is the least material of bodies, then the statement is not true. Hence the Philosopher sets to work only with the two former attributions, of movement and of knowledge.

             § 69. This part of the treatise falls into three divisions. Aristotle first argues against the philosophers who had made the soul the source of movement; then at 'There are then three ways' against those who regarded it as the seat of knowledge; and thirdly, at 'Since knowledge pertains', he raises the question whether movement, feeling and knowing ought to be attributed to the soul as to one principle or several. The first of these divisions is again divided. He first adduces objections against simply identifying the soul itself with a source of movement; and then against an opinion, proceeding from this identification, according to which the soul was also a self-moving number. (This comes at 'Much the most unreasonable'.) The former argument again subdivides into, first a criticism of the way in which these philosophers had predicated movement of the soul, and secondly, at 'One might with more reason . . .', a query whether this predication might have been made differently. Then the criticism is divided into, first, a general argument against all who said that the soul was the source of movement; and secondly, at 'Some say that a soul moves', a series of particular discussions of special points. Finally, the general argument is subdivided. First, he says what he intends to do; secondly, he argues in support of his own opinion. The latter begins at 'Since there are four kinds of movement'.

             § 70. He begins then by remarking that philosophers have studied the soul from two points of view, from motion and from knowledge. This is clear from what has been said. And Aristotle says that he will start from motion. Now all the others who started from this point of view had one notion in common, that everything that produces movement is itself moving. They thought therefore that if soul is by nature a cause of movement, it must be by its nature a moving essence. So they put movement into its definition, calling it something that moves itself.

             § 71. Now here there are two disputable points; the theory itself is disputable, and so is the principle upon which it rests. The principle presupposed as a self-evident truth, namely that every active mover is itself in movement, is in fact not true, as is clearly enough shown in Book VIII of the Physics, where Aristotle proves the existence of an unmoved mover. And as to this, we may give here a short proof that if a thing produces movement it does not have to be in movement itself. It is clear that in so far as a thing produces movement it is in act, and in so far as it is caused to move, it is in potency. (If then as causing movement it were moved), the same thing would be in act and potency in the same respect; which hardly makes sense.

             § 72. But even setting this difficulty aside, the theory that the soul is in movement is disputable. Its upholders indeed added the further proposition, that movement was of the soul's essence; but Aristotle denies both parts of this theory where he says, 'For perhaps', etc. He puts it like this because he has not yet proved his assertion, namely that not only is it false to say that movement is of the essence of the soul (which is what they imply when they define the soul as an actual or potential self-mover) but that it is also quite impossible that the soul should move at all.

             § 73. That not everything which causes movement need itself be moved was shown in an earlier work, Book VIII of the Physics. Now in any self-mover there are two things to be considered, the thing moving and the thing moved; and the former cannot as such be the same as the latter. In living things, however, though the moving part is not moved in itself, absolutely speaking, yet it is moved indirectly. For there are two kinds of movement, direct and indirect: direct, when a thing itself is moving, e.g. a ship; indirect when a thing itself is at rest, but moved with the movement of something else which contains it, as the sailor on board ship moves with the ship's movement, not his own. So the ship moves directly and in itself, but the sailor only in an accidental way or relatively. This is clear if we consider that when anything moves in itself, its parts are moving, as in walking the feet make the first movement; but once the sailor is on board this does not happen. Movement then can be taken in either of these two senses; but since the philosophers we are discussing said that the soul moved in itself, directly, we can forgo at present the question whether it is moved indirectly, and consider only whether it is directly affected by movement, as they maintained.

             § 74. To show that the soul does not move in itself, Aristotle uses six arguments, with regard to which we should note that, while they may not appear very cogent, still they are effective in relation to the theory he is criticising. For it is one thing to argue out the simple truth of a question, and another to reason against a particular theory; in the former case you have to make sure that your premisses are true, but in the latter you proceed from what your adversary concedes or asserts. Hence it is that when Aristotle criticises the views of others, he often seems to use rather weak arguments. In each case he is, in fact, destroying his adversary's position by drawing out its logical consequences.

             § 75. The first argument begins at 'Since there are four kinds', and may be stated as follows. If the soul moves, its movement is either direct (in the sense explained) or indirect. If indirect, then it is not of the essence of the soul (which is against their opinion), and the soul moves in the same way as whiteness or 3 inches which are accidental qualities moving only with the thing that is white or 3 inches long, and not themselves, as such, requiring a position in space. But if the soul moves in itself, it moves in one of the four kinds of movement: change of place, growth, decrease or alteration. Coming-to-be and passing-away are not movements, strictly speaking, but changes, because they are instantaneous, whilst movements are successive. Hence the soul will have to move in one of these four ways--from place to place; by increase or decrease in size; or by qualitative alteration. But if all these movements involve position in space, the soul will then be localised in space.

             § 76. There seem to be two doubtful points in this argument. The first is that, while it is clear enough as regards locomotion, growth and decrease, it suggests a difficulty about alteration. Some meet this difficulty by saying that as only bodies are subject to alteration, and all bodies are in place, alteration itself may be said to occur in place. But this does not keep to the letter of the argument: Aristotle says that this kind of movement is in place and not merely according to place. Movement in place is quite different from movement according to place; and, following Aristotle, I maintain that alteration certainly occurs in place. Of itself, and not simply because of its localised subject, it is in place; for, when any alteration occurs, the agent producing it must draw near to the thing altered; otherwise nothing would ever be altered. And since drawing near is a local movement, it follows that here and now the cause of a given alteration is a change in place.

             § 77. The second difficulty is that these philosophers do not in fact see anything unreasonable in the soul's being in place, since they maintain that it moves in itself, absolutely. So Aristotle's objection seems to misfire. To this two answers might be given, (a) that the objection to the soul's being in place will become clearer as we proceed, and (b) that if the soul were in place, it would have to be assigned a definite position in the body and thus would not be the form of the whole body. This reinforces the objection to the soul's being in place.

             § 78. The second argument, at 'Further, if it moves', is this. If the soul moves 'absolutely' from place to place, the movement must be natural to it. But anything that can be moved naturally can be moved violently. Now its natural movement implies a natural ceasing to move; and therefore also its enforced, violent movement implies an enforced ceasing to move. Hence the soul may both move and stop moving under compulsion; which is impossible if by nature both its movement and ceasing to move are spontaneous.

             § 79. A difficulty here seems to be that what moves naturally does not in fact move under compulsion. I answer that what Aristotle says is false absolutely speaking, but true relative to the theory under discussion. For these philosophers maintained that the only bodies that moved with a natural movement were the four elements; in which we do observe both natural and enforced movement and ceasing to move. This opinion is presupposed by the argument.

             § 80. The third argument, at 'Again, if', runs as follows: these men who ascribe movement primarily to the soul, and to the body only as derived from the soul, also say that this movement is due to one or other of the elements, fire or earth or one of the others. But if the soul moved with the nature of fire it would only rise; if with the nature of earth it would only sink; whereas in fact it moves in all directions. This argument also is ad hominem.

             § 81. The fourth argument comes at 'Since it seems'. It is this. You say that it is in moving the body that the soul moves. Logically, then, it follows that it moves the body by its own movements; and conversely that it is moved by the same movements which move the body. But the body moves by changing position in space; so also then the soul. But if the soul's local movements affect the body, the soul might, after leaving the body, enter it once more. And since it is the soul's presence that gives life to the body, it follows that dead animals might, even naturally, come back to life: which is impossible.

             § 82. Against this argument some have objected that it ignores the difference between the movements which affect the soul itself and those by which it moves other things, including the body. The former are movements of desire and will; not so the latter.

             But in reply one may say that desires and volitions and so on are not properly 'movements' of the soul but 'operations'. 'Movements' and 'operations' are different: a movement is an act of something that is incomplete, whereas an operation is an act of a subject already possessing full actuality. Still, what Aristotle says is true relative to the theory under discussion; for this had identified all the movements of the soul with those by which it moved the body.

             § 83. But is it true that if the soul had local movement dead animals would come to life again? Well, some philosophers have maintained that the soul pervades the whole body, forming a unity with it through some kind of proportion, and that the two cannot be separated without this proportion being destroyed; so that, so far as this view is concerned, the conclusion would not follow. But it does follow from--and is a valid objection against--the opinion of those who say the soul is located in the body as in a vessel which it sometimes enters and sometimes leaves.

             § 84. The fifth argument comes at 'If it does move', and runs as follows. It is clear that when anything is of the essence of a given subject its presence in the latter does not need, except incidentally, to be explained by anything else. If then the soul is essentially moving, it is mobile of its own nature; it does not need to be moved through or by anything else. But we know that it is in fact moved by sensible objects when it senses, and by things desirable when it desires; therefore it does not move of itself.

             § 85. The Platonists meet this argument by denying that the soul is moved by sensible objects; these, they say, are merely involved in the soul's own movement when it passes from one object to another. But this is untrue. As Aristotle has proved, the intellectual potency is brought into act precisely by means of the sensible objects as apprehended; so that it is moved by them in this way.

             § 86. The sixth argument begins at 'But if it moves itself'. Clearly, if the soul is self-moving, its own essence governs its movement. But in every movement the moving thing comes away or proceeds from that which moves it and governs its movement; for instance, if anything is moved by a quantity, it departs and proceeds from the latter. If then the soul is moved by its own essence (as they say) it must depart or proceed from its own essence; which is as much as to say that it causes its own destruction. How then could it be through movement that the soul becomes god-like and immortal, as some philosophers whom we have mentioned supposed? This argument bears against those who did not distinguish between movement proper and operation. For movement implies that what is moved comes away from the cause of movement; but operation is a perfection intrinsic to the operating agent itself.

406b 15-407a 2

SOUL AS A MOVER OF THE BODY

DEMOCRITUS AND PLATO

             SOME say that a soul moves the body in which it dwells just as it moves itself; as did Democritus, who spoke like Philip the comic poet; for the latter relates that Daedalus made a wooden Venus mobile by pouring quicksilver into it. Democritus, then, spoke in like manner, saying that there are in movement indivisible globules of which the nature is to be never at rest, and which therefore draw together and move the whole body.§§ 87-8

             Now, what we would ask is, whether this is also the cause of coming to rest? How it could be, on this hypothesis, is difficult to see, indeed impossible.§ 89

             The soul seems, in general, not to move the animate being in this way, but rather by a sort of choice and understanding. § 90 In the same way, the Timaeus sets out a physical theory as to how the soul moves the body. For, from the fact that the soul moves itself, it moves the body, as a result of its connection with the body.§ 91

             'Being compounded of the elements and divided according to harmonic numbers, so that it have a connatural sense of harmony, and the whole be borne along with well attuned motions,§§ 92-8

             [God] bent the straight line into a circle, and, dividing it, made out of one two circles, adjusted at two points; and, again, he divided one of these into seven circles, as though the heavenly motions were the soul's motions. § 99-106