moment or from some other known point. We run over many phantasms until we hit upon the true antecedent; the possibility of reminiscence depends upon our having this within our mental reach, among our accessible stock of ideas; if such be not the case, reminiscence is impracticable, and we must learn over again.+ We are most likely to succeed, if we get upon the track or order wherein events actually occurred; thus, if we are trying to recollect a forgotten verse or sentence, we begin to repeat it from the first word; the same antecedent may indeed call up different consequents at different times, but it will generally call up what has habitually followed it before.+ The movements of Memory and of Reminiscence are partly corporeal and partly psychical, just as those of Sensation and Phantasy are. We compare in our remembrance greater and less, (either in time or in external magnitudes) through similar internal movements differing from each other in the same proportion, but all on a miniature scale.§ These internal movements often lead to great discomfort, when a person makes fruit. less efforts to recover the forgotten phantasm that he desires; especially with excitable men, who are much disturbed by their own phantasms. They cannot stop the movement once begun; and when their sensitive system is soft and flexible, they find that they have unwittingly provoked the bodily movements belonging to anger or fear, or some other painful emotion. These movements, when once provoked, continue in spite of the opposition of the person that experiences them. He brings upon him Aristot. De Memor. et Rem., c. 2, 451, b. 18. diò kai тò ¿peçîjs Onpevομεν νοήσαντες ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν ἢ ἄλλου τινός, καὶ ἀφ ̓ ὁμοίου ἢ ἐναντίον ἢ τοῦ συνεγγύς. About the associative property of contraries, see again De Somno et Vigil., c. 1, 453, b. 27. + Aristot. De Memor. et Rem., c. 2, 452, a. 5-12. #oλλákis dè ñòŋ μèv ἀδυνατεῖ ἀναμνησθῆναι, ζητεῖν δὲ δύναται καὶ εὑρίσκει. τοῦτο δὲ γίνεται κινοῦντι πολλὰ, ἕως ἂν τοιάυτην κινήθη κίνησιν, ἢ ἀκολουθήσει τὸ πρᾶγμα, τὸ γὰρ μεμνῆσθαί ἐστι τὸ ἐνεῖναι δυνάμει την κινοῦσαν· τοῦτο δὲ, ὥστ' ἐξ αὐτοῦ καὶ ὧν ἔχει κινήσεων κινηθῆναι, ὥσπερ είρηται. Aristot. De Memor. et Rem., c. 2, 452, a. 2-25. § Aristot. De Memor. et Rem., 452, b. 12. ἔστι γὰρ ἐν αὐτῇ τὰ ὅμοια σχήματα καὶ κινήσεις—πάντα γὰρ τὰ ἐντὸς ἐλάττω, ὥσπερ ἀνάλογον καὶ τὰ ἐκτός. || Aristot. De Memor. et Rem., 453, a. 22. ò åvaμμvyokóμevos, kai Αγρεύων σωματικόν τι κινεῖ, ἐν ᾧ τὸ πάθος. self the reality of the painful emotion; just as we find that after we have very frequently pronounced a sentence or sung a song, the internal movements left in our memories are sometimes so strong and so persistent, that they act on our vocal organs even without any volition on our parts, and determine us to sing the song or pronounce the sentence over again in reality.* Slow men are usually good in Memory, quick men and apt learners are good in Reminiscence: the two are seldom found together.+ In this account of Memory and Reminiscence, Aristotle displays an acute and penetrating intelligence of the great principles of the association of ideas. But these principles are operative not less in Memory than in Reminiscence; and the exaggerated prominence that he has given to the distinction between the two (determined apparently by a wish to keep the procedure of man apart from that of animals) tends to perplex his description of the associative process. At the same time, his manner of characterizing phantasy, memory, and reminiscence, as being all of them at once corporeal and psychical-involving, like sensation, internal movements of the body as well as phases of the consciousness-sometimes even passing into external movements of the bodily organs without our volition; all this is a striking example of psychological observation, as well as of consistency in following out the doctrine laid down at the commencement of the Aristotelian treatise :-Soul as the Form, implicated with Body as the Matter, and the two being an integral concrete separable only by abstraction. We come now to the highest and (in Aristotle's opinion) most honourable portion of the Soul,-the Nous or noëtic faculty, whereby we cogitate, understand, reason, and believe or opine under the influence of reason. According to the uniform Aristot. De Memor. et Rem., 453, a. 23-30. ἔοικε τὸ πάθος τοῖς ὀνόμασι καὶ μέλεσι καὶ λόγοις, ὅταν διὰ στόματός τι γένηται αυτῶν σφόδρα· παυσαμένοις γὰρ καὶ οὐ βουλομένοις ἐπέρχεται πάλιν ᾄδειν ἢ λέγειν. + Aristot. De Memor. et Rem., 449, a. 7. ‡ Aristot. De Anima, III. 4, 429, a. 10. I pì về roi uopio toi Ti ψυχῆς ᾧ γινώσκει τε ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ φρονεῖ. He himself defines what he means by vous a few lines lower-429, a. 30-and he is careful to specify it as ὁ τῆς ψυχῆς νοῦς ὁ ἄρα καλούμενος τῆς ψυχῆς νοῦς (λέγω δὲ νοῦν, ὦ διανοεῖται καὶ ὑπολαμβάνει ἡ ψυχή). In the preceding chapter, he expressly discriminates voyois from scheme of Aristotle, this highest portion of the soul, though distinct from all the lower, presupposes them all. As the sentient Soul presupposes the nutrient, so also the cogitant Soul presupposes the nutrient, the sentient, the phantastic, the memorial, and the reminiscent. Aristotle carefully distinguishes the sentient department of the Soul from the cogitant, and refutes more than once the doctrine of those philosophers that identified the two. But he is equally careful to maintain the correlation between them, and to exhibit the sentient faculty not only as involving in itself a certain measure of intellectual discrimination, but also as an essential and fundamental condition to the agency of the Cogitant, as a portion of the human Soul. We have already gone through the three successive stages-phantastic, memorial, reminiscent-whereby the interval between sensation and cogitation is bridged over. Each of the three is directly dependent on past sensation, either as reproduction or as corollary; each of them is an indispensable condition of man's cogitation; moreover, in the highest of the three, we have actually slid unperceived into the Cogitant phase of the human soul-for Aristotle declares the reminiscent process to be of the nature of a syllogism.* That the Soul cannot cogitate or reason without phantasmsthat phantasms are required for the actual working of the human Nous-he affirms in the most explicit manner.† The doctrine of Aristotle respecting Nous has been a puzzle, even from the time of his first commentators. Partly from the obscurity inherent in the subject, partly from the defective condition of his text as it now stands, his meaning cannot be always clearly comprehended, nor does it seem that the different passages can be completely reconciled. Anaxagoras, Demokritus, and other philosophers, appear to have spoken of Nous or Intellect in a large and vague sense, as equivalent to Soul generally. Plato seems to have been the first to narrow and specialize the meaning; distinguishing pointedly ὑπόληψις. This last word ὑπόληψιs is the most general term for believing or opining, upon reasons good or bad; the varieties under it are eithμn, δόξα, φρόνησις καὶ τἀνάντια τούτων. -427, b. 17-25. * Aristot. De Memor. et Rem., 453, a. 10. Aristot. De Memor. et Rem., 449, b. 31, 450, a. 12. voeîv ovк ČOTIV ἄνευ φαντάσματος--ἡ δὲ μνήμη καὶ ἡ τῶν νοητῶν οὐκ ἄνευ φαντάσματός COTI.-De Animâ, III. 7, 431, a. 16. THE NOUS NOT DEPENDING ON BODILY ORGANS. 651 (as we have stated above) the rational or encephalic soul, in the cranium, with its circular rotations, from the two lower souls, thoracic and abdominal. Aristotle agreed with him in this distinction (either of separate souls or of separate functions in the same soul); but he attenuated and divested it of all connexion with separate corporeal lodgment, or with peculiar movements of any kind. In his psychology, the brain no longer appears as the seat of intelligence, but simply as a cold, moist, and senseless organ, destined to countervail the excessive heat of the heart; which last is the great centre of animal heat, of life, and of the sentient soul. Aristotle declares Nous not to be connected with, or dependent on, any given bodily organs or movements appropriated to itself; this is one main circumstance distinguishing it from the nutrient Soul as well as from the sentient Soul, each of which rests indispensably upon corporeal organs and agencies of its own. It will be remembered that we stated the relation of Soul to Body (in Aristotle's view) as that of Form to Matter; the two together constituting a concrete individual, numerically One; also that Form and Matter, each being essentially relative to the other, admitted of gradations, higher and lower; e.g. a massive cube of marble is already Materia Formata, but it is still purely Materia, relative to the statue that may be obtained from it. Now, the grand region of Form is the CELESTIAL BODY-the vast, deep, perceivable, circular mass circumscribing the Kosmos, and enclosing, in and around its centre, Earth with the other three elements, tenanted by substances generated and perishable. This Celestial Body is the abode of divinity, including many divine Beings who take part in its eternal rotations-viz., the Sun, Moon, Stars, &c.,-and other Gods. Now, every Soul, or every Form that animates the Matter of a living being, derives its vitalizing influence from this celestial region. All seeds of life include within them a spiritual or gaseous heat, more divine than the four elements, proceeding from the Sun, and in nature akin to the element of the stars. Such solar or celestial heat differs generically from the heat of fire. It is the only source from whence the principle of life, with the animal heat that accompanies it, can be obtained. Soul, in all its varieties, proceeds from hence.* * Aristot. De Generat. Animal., II. 3, 736, b. 29. wáoŋs μèv oûv yvxýs δυναμις ἑτέρου σώματος ἔοικε κεκοινωνηκέναι καὶ θειοτέρου τῶν καλου But though all varieties of Soul emanate from the same celestial source, they possess the divine element in very different degrees, and are very unequal in comparative worth and dignity. The lowest variety, or nutritive Soul-the only one possessed by plants, among which there is no separation of sex (in Aristotle's view*).—is contained potentially in the seed, and is thus transmitted when that seed is matured into a new individual. In animals, who possess it along with the sensitive soul and among whom the sexes are separated, it is also contained potentially in the generative system of the female separately; and the first commencement of life in the future animal is thus a purely vegetable life. The sensitive soul, the characteristic of the complete animal, cannot be superadded except by copulation and the male semen. The female being comparatively impotent and having less animal heat, furnishes only the Matter of the future offspring; Form, or the moving, fecundating, cause, is supplied by the male. Through the two together, the new individual animal is completed, having not merely the nutritive Soul, but also the sentient Soul along with it. Both the nutritive and the sentient Soul have, each of them respectively, a special bodily agency and movement belonging to them. But the Nous, or the Noëtic Soul, has no partnership with any similar bodily agency. There is no special corporeal potentiality (to speak in Aristotelian language) which it is destined to actualize. It enters from without, and emanates from a still more exalted influence of that divine celestial substance from which all psychical or vitalizing heat proceeds.§ It is μένων στοιχείων· ὡς δὲ διαφέρουσι τιμιότητι αἱ ψυχαὶ καὶ ἀτιμία ἀλλήλων, οὕτω καὶ ἡ τοιαύτη διαφέρει φύσις· πάντων μὲν γὰρ ἐν τῷ σπέρματι ἐνυπάρχει, ὅπερ ποιεῖ γόνιμα εἶναι τὰ σπέρματα, τὸ καλούμενον θερμόν. * Aristot. De Generat. Animal., I. 23, 731, a. 27. Aristot. De Generat. Animal., II. 3, 736, a. 22, b. 4-12. Aristot. De Generat. Animal., I. 2, 716, a. 5-17, 726, b. 33, 728, a. 17, 729, b. 6-27. NETTE TILT TÒI viên οὐθὲν γὰρ αὐτοῦ τῇ θεῖον εἶναι μόνον § Aristot. De Generat. Animal., II. 3, 736, 3. 28, μόνον θύραθεν ἐπεισιέναι, καὶ θεῖον εἶναι μόνον· ἐνεργείᾳ κοινωνεῖ σωματικὴ ἐνέργεια. The words must not be construed strictly; for in the next following passage, he proceeds to declare that all ψυχή-ψυχικὴ δύναμις or ἀρχὴ partakes of the divine element, and that in this respect there is only a difference of degree between one ψυχή and another. |