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NOUS IS IMMORTAL, BUT NOT AS AN INDIVIDUAL.

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dividual man. But the Intellectus Patiens, or Receptivus, perishes along with the individual. Accordingly, the intellectual life of Sokrates cannot be continued farther. It cannot be prolonged after his sensitive and nutritive life has ceased; the noëtic function, as it exists in him, is subject to the same limits of duration as the other functions of the Soul. The intellectual man is no more immortal than the sentient man.

Such is the opinion here delivered by Aristotle. And it follows indeed as a distinct corollary from his doctrine respecting animal and vegetable procreation in general. Individuality (the being Unum Numero in a species) and immortality are in his view incompatible facts; the one excludes the other. In assigning (as he so often does) a final cause or purpose to the wide-spread fact of procreation of species by animals and vegetables, he tells us, that every individual living organism, having once attained the advantage of existence, yearns and aspires to prolong this for ever, and to become immortal. But this aspiration cannot be realized; Nature has forbidden it, or is inadequate to it; no individual can be immortal. Being precluded from separate immortality, the individual approaches as near to it as is possible, by generating a new individual like itself, and thus perpetuating the species. Such is the explanation given by Aristotle of the great fact pervading the sublunary, organized world; immortal species of plants, animals, and men-through a succession of individuals each essentially perishable. general doctrine applies to Nous as well as to the other functions of the Soul. Nous is immortal; but the individual Sokrates, considered as noëtic or intellectual, can no more be immortal than the same individual considered as sentient or reminiscent.

The

We have already stated that Nous-Intellect -the noëtic function is that faculty of the Soul that correlates with the abstract and universal; with Form apart from Matter. Its process is at once analytical, synthetical, and retentive. Nature presents to us only concretes and particulars, in a perpetual course of change and reciprocal action; in these the abstract and universal are immersed, and out of these they have to be disengaged by logical analysis. That the abstract is a derivative from

* Aristot. De Generat. Animal., II. 1, 731, b. 21, seq.; De Animâ, II. 4, 415, a. 26, seq.; Economica, I. 3, 1343, b. 23.

the concrete, and the universal from particulars-is the doctrine of Aristotle. Ascending from particulars, the analysis is carried so far that at length it can go no farther. It continues to divide until it comes to indivisibles, or simple notions, the highest abstractions, and the largest universals. These are the elements out of which universal propositions are formed, the first premisses or principia of demonstration. Unphilosophical miuds do not reach these indivisibles at all: but it is the function of the theorizing Nous to fasten on them, and combine them into true propositions. In so far as regards the indivisibles themselves, falsehood is out of the question, and truth also, since they affirm nothing. The mind either apprehends them, or it does not apprehend them; there is no other alternative.* But when combined into affirmative propositions, they then are true or false, as the case may be. The formal essence of each object is among these indivisibles, and is apprehended as such by the intellect; which, while confining itself to such essence, is unerring, as each sense is in regard to its own appropriate perceivables.+ But when the intellect goes farther, and proceeds to predicate any attribute respecting the essence, then it becomes liable to error, as sense is when drawing inferences.

One of the chief functions that Aristotle assigns to Nous, or the noëtic function, is that the principia of demonstration and knowledge belong to it; and not merely the principia, but also, in cases of action preceded by deliberation and balance of motives, the ultimate application of principia to action. So that he styles Nous both beginning and end; also the beginning of the beginning; and moreover he declares it to be always right and unerring equal to Science and even more than Science. These are high praises, conveying little information, and not reconcilable with other passages wherein he speaks of the exercise of the noëtic function (To voeîv) as sometimes right, sometimes

Aristot. De Animâ, III. 6, 430, a. 26. y μèv ovv tŵv àdiρéTwv νόησις ἐν τούτοις περὶ ἃ οὐκ ἔστι τὸ ψεῦδος· ἐν οἷν δὲ καὶ τὸ ψεῦδος καὶ τὸ ἀληθὲς, σύνθεσίς τις ἤδη νοημάτων ὥσπερ ἓν ὄντων.-Metaphysica, Θ. 10, 1051, b. 31. περὶ ταῦτα οὐκ ἔστιν ἀπατηθῆναι, ἀλλ ̓ ἢ νοεῖν ἢ μή. † Aristot. De Animâ, III. 6, 430, b. 29. This portion of the treatise is peculiarly confused and difficult to understand.

Aristot. Ethic. Nikomach., VI. 12, 1143, a. 23, b. 10. diò kai ȧpxỳ KuÌ TÉλOS VOUS.-Analyt. Post., II. 18, 100, b. 5.

NOUS AT THE SOURCE OF FIRST PRINCIPLES.

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wrong. * But for the question of psychology, the point to be determined is, in what sense he meant that principia belonged to Nous. He certainly did not mean that the first principles of reasoning were novelties originated, suggested, or introduced into the soul by noëtic influence. Not only he does not say this, but he takes pains to impress the exact contrary. In passages cited a few pages back, he declares that Nous in entering the Soul brings nothing whatever with it; that it is an universal potentiality-a capacity in regard to truth, but nothing more;† that it is in fact a capacity not merely for comparing and judging (to both of which he recognizes even the sentient soul as competent), but also for combining many into one, and resolving the apparent one into several; for abstracting, generalizing, and selecting among the phantasms present, which of them should be attended to, and which should be left out of attention. is his opinion about the noëtic function; and he states explicitly that the abstract and universal not only arise from the concrete and particular, but are inseparable from the same reallyseparable only logically.

Such

He describes, at the end of the Analytica Posteriora and elsewhere, the steps whereby the mind ascends gradually from sense, memory, and experience, to general principles. And he indicates a curious contrast between these and the noëtic functions. Sense, memory, phantasy, reminiscence, are movements of the body as well as of the soul; our thoughts and feelings come and go, none of them remaining long. But the noëtic process is the reverse of this; it is an arrest of all this mental movement, a detention of the fugitive thoughts, a subsidence from perturbation-so that the attention dwells steadily and for some time on the same matters.§ Analysis, selection, and con

* Aristot. De Animâ, III. 3, 427, b. 9. ἀλλ ̓ οὐδὲ τὸ νοεῖν, ἐν ᾧ ἔστι τὸ ὀρθῶς· καὶ μὴ ὀρθῶς διανοείσθαι δ' ἐνδέχεται καὶ ψευδῶς.

+ Aristot. De Animâ, I. 2, 493, b. 30—where he censures Demokritus. οὐ δὴ χρῆται τῷ νῷ ὡς δυνάμει τινὶ περὶ τὴν αλήθειαν, αλλὰ ταὐτὸ déyei yvxyv kai vovv. Compare De Animâ, III. 4, 429, a. 21, b. 30.

Aristot. De Animâ, III. 6, 430, b. 5. τὸ δὲ ἓν ποιοῦν, τοῦτο ὁ νοῦς ἕκαστον.—III. 11, 434, a. 10.

§ Aristot. Physica, VII. 3, 247, b. 9. ἡ δ ̓ ἐξ ἀρχῆς λῆψις ἐπιστήμης γένεσις οὐκ ἔστιν· τῷ γὰρ ἠρεμῆσαι καὶ στῆναι τὴν διάνοιαν ἐπίστασθαι kaì Þpovéív Xéjoμev.-Also, De Animâ, I. 3, 406, b. 32, and the remarkable passage in the Analytica Poster., II. 18, 100, a. 3, b. 5.

centration of attention, are the real characteristics of the Aristotelian Nous. It is not (as some philosophers have thought) a source of new general truths, let into the soul by a separate door, and independent of experience as well as transcending experience.

Passing now to the Emotions, we find that these are not systematically classified and analyzed by Aristotle, as belonging to a scheme of Psychology; though he treats them incidentally, with great ability and acuteness, both in his Ethics, where he regards them as auxiliaries or impediments to a rational plan of life, and in his Rhetoric, where he touches upon their operation as it bears on oratorical effect. He introduces however in his Psychology some answer to the question,. What is it that produces local movement in the animal body? He replies that movement is produced both by Nous and by Appetite.

Speaking strictly, we ought to call Appetite alone the direct producing cause, acted upon by the Appetitum, which is here the Primum Movens Immobile. But this Appetitum cannot act without coming into the intellectual sphere, as something seen, imagined, cogitated. In this case the Nous or Intellect is stimulated through appetite, and operates in subordination thereto. Such is the Intellect, considered as practical, the principle or determining cause of which, is the Appetitum or object of desire; the Intellect manifesting itself only for the sake of some end, to be attained or avoided. Herein it is distinguished altogether from the theoretical Nous or Intellect, which does not concern itself with any Expetenda or Fugienda, and does not meddle with conduct. The Appetitum is good, real or apparent, in so far as it can be achieved by our actions. Often we have contradictory appetites; and in such cases, the Intellect is active, generally as a force resisting the present and caring for the future. But Appetite or Desire, being an energy including both soul and body, is the real and appropriate cause that determines us to local movement, often even against strong opposition from the Intellect.+

Aristotle thus concludes his scheme of Psychology, compre

Aristot. De Animâ, III. 10, 433, b. 12-17. πρῶτον δὲ πάντων τὸ ὀρεκτὸν, τοῦτο γὰρ κινεῖ οὐ κινούμενον τῷ νοηθῆναι ἡ φαντασθῆναι.

+ Aristot. De Animâ, III. 10, 433, a. 25, b. 19. ἐν τοῖς κοινοῖς σώματος καὶ ψυχῆς ἔργοις, &c.

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hending all plants as well as all animals; a scheme differing in this respect, as well as in others, from those that had preceded him, and founded upon the peculiar principles of his own First Philosophy, Soul is to organized body as Form to Matter, as Actualizer to the Potential; not similar or homogeneous, but correlative; the two are only separable as distinct logical points of view in regard to one and the same integer or individual. Aristotle recognizes many different varieties of Soul, or rather many distinct functions of the same Soul, from the lowest or most universal, to the highest, or most peculiar and privileged; * but the higher functions presuppose or depend upon the lower, as conditions; while the same principle of Relativity pervades them all. He brings this principle prominently forward, when he is summing up in the third or last book of the treatise De Animâ. The Soul (he says) is in a certain way all existent things; for all of them are either Perceivables or Cogitables; and the Cogitant Soul is in a certain way the matters cogitated, while the Percipient Soul is in a certain way the matters perceived.' The Percipient and its Percepta-the Cogitant and its Cogitata-each implies and correlates with the other; the Percipient is the highest Form of all Percepta; the Cogitant is the Form of Forms, or the highest of all Forms, cogitable or perceivable. The Percipient or Cogitant Subject is thus conceived only in relation to the Objects perceived or cogitated, while these Objects again are presented as essentially correlative to the Subject. The realities of nature are particulars, exhibiting Forms and Matter in one; though, for purposes of scientific study-of assimilation and distinction-it is necessary to consider each of the two abstractedly from the other.

Aristot. De Animâ, III. 8, 431, b. 20 seq. Νῦν δὲ περὶ ψυχῆς τὰ λεχθέντα συγκεφαλαιώσαντες, εἴπωμεν πάλιν ὅτι ἡ ψυχὴ τὰ ὄντα πώς ἐστι πάντα, ἢ γὰρ αἰσθητὰ τὰ ὄντα ἢ νοητά, ἔστι δὲ ἡ ἐπιστήμη μὲν τὰ ἐπιστητά πως, ἡ δ' αἴσθησις τὰ αἰσθητά.

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Aristot. De Animâ, III. 8, 432, a. 2. ὁ νοῦς εἶδος εἰδῶν, καὶ ἡ αἴσθησις εἶδος αἰσθητῶν.

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