The distinction above specified is employed by Aristotle in his exposition of the Soul. The Soul belongs to the Category of Substance or Essence (not to that of Quantity, Quality, &c.); but of the two points of view under which Essence may be presented, the Soul ranks with Form, not with Matter-with the Actual, not with the Potential. The Matter to which (as Correlatum) Soul stands related, is a natural Body (i.e. a body having within it an inherent principle of motion and rest) organized in a certain way, or fitted out with certain capacities and preparations to which Soul is the active and indispensable complement. These capacities would never come into actuality without the Soul; but, on the other hand, the range of actualities or functions in the Soul depends upon, and is limited by, the range of capacities ready prepared for it in the body. The implication of the two constitutes the living subject, with all its functions, active and passive. If the eye were an animated or living subject, seeing would be its Soul; if the carpenter's axe were living, cutting would be its Soul;* the Matter would be the lens or the iron in which this Soul is embodied. It is not indispensable, however, that all the functions of the living Subject should be at all times in complete exercise; the Subject is still living, even while asleep; the eye is still a good eye, though at the moment closed. It is enough if the functional aptitude exist as a dormant property, ready to rise into activity, when the proper occasions present themselves. This minimum of Form suffices to give living efficacy to the potentialities of Body; it is enough that a man, though now in a dark night and seeing nothing, will see as soon as the sun rises; or that he knows geometry, though he is not now thinking of a geometrical problem. This dormant possession is what Aristotle calls the First Entelechy or Energy, i.e. the lowest stage of Actuality, or the minimum of influence required to transform Potentiality into Actuality. The Aristotelian definition of Soul is thus-The First Entelechy of a natural organized Body, having life in potentiality. It is all that is * Aristot. De Anima, II. 1, 412, b. 11. εἰ γάρ ἦν ὁ ὀφθαλμὸς ζῳὸν, ψυχὴ ἂν ἦν αὐτοῦ ἡ ὄψις· αὐτὴ γὰρ οὐσία ὀφθαλμοῦ ἡ κατὰ τὸν λόγον· ὁ δ ̓ ὀφθαλμὸς ὕλη ὄψεως, ἧς ἀπολειπούσης οὐκέτ ̓ ὀφθαλμός, πλὴν ὁμωνύμως, καθάπερ ὁ λίθινος καὶ ὁ γεγραμμένος. +Aristot. De Animâ, II. 1, 412, a. 27. diò ý Yuxý čoTI ÉVTEλÉXEI ἡ πρώτη σώματος φυσικοῦ δυνάμει ζωὴν ἔχοντος; τοιοῦτο δὲ ὁ ἂν opyavikóv. Compare Metaphysica, VI., 1035, b. 15-27. DEFINITION OF THE SOUL.. 625 essential to the Soul; the second or higher Entelechy (actual exercise of the faculties) is not a constant or universal property.* In this definition of the Soul, Aristotle employs his own Philosophia Prima to escape the errors committed by prior philosophers. He does not admit that the Soul is a separate Entity in itself; or that it is composed (as Empedokles and Demokritus had said) of corporeal elements, or (as Plato had said) of elements partly corporeal, partly logical and notional. He rejects the imaginary virtues of number, invoked by the Pythagoreans and Xenokrates; lastly, he keeps before him not merely man, but all the varieties of animated objects, to which his definition must be adapted. His first capital point is to put aside the alleged identity, or similarity, or sameness of elements, between Soul and Body; and to put aside equally any separate existence or substantiality of Soul. He effects both these purposes by defining them as essentially Relatum and Correlatum; the Soul, as the Relatum, is unintelligible and unmeaning without its Correlatum, upon which accordingly its definition is declared to be founded. The real Animated Subject may be looked at either from the point of view of the Relatum or from that of the Correlatum; but though the two are thus logically separable, in fact and reality they are inseparably implicated; and if either of them be withdrawn, the Animated Subject disappears. "The soul (says Aristotle) is not any variety of body, but it cannot be without a body; it is not a body, but it is something belonging to or related to a body; and for this reason it is in a body, and in a body of such or such potentialities."+ Soul is to Body, (we thus read) not as a compound of like elements,-nor as a type is to its copy, or vice versa-but as a Relatum to its Correlate; dependent upon the body for all its acts and manifestations, and bringing to * Aristot. De Animâ, II. 2, 414, a. 9-15. The distinction here taken between the first or lower stage of Entelechy, and the second or higher stage, coincides substantially with the distinction in the Nikomachean Ethica and elsewhere between ëşıs and évépyeta. See Topica, IV. 5, 125, b. 16; Ethic. Nikom., II., 1-5. + Aristot. De Anima, II. 2, 414, a. 20. καὶ διὰ τοῦτο καλῶς ὑπολαμβάνουσιν οἷς δοκεῖ μητ ̓ ἄνευ σώματος εἶναι μήτε σῶμά τι ἡ ψυχή· σῶμα μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ἔστι, σώματος δέ τι, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἐν σώματι ὑπάρχει, kai év owμATI TOιOUT. Compare Aristot. De Juventute et Senectute, c. 1, 467, b. 14. consummation what in the body exists as potentiality only. Soul, however, is better than Body; and the Animated Being is better than the Inanimate by reason of its Soul.* The animated subject is thus a form immersed or implicated in matter; and all its actions and passions are so likewise. † Each of these has its formal side, as concerns the Soul, and its material side, as concerns the Body. When a man or animal is angry, for example, this emotion is both a fact of the Soul and a fact of the Body; in the first of these two characters, it may be defined as an appetite for hurting some one who has hurt us; in the second of the two, it may be defined as an ebullition of the blood and heat round the heart. The emotion, belonging to the animated subject or aggregate of soul and body, is a complex fact having two aspects, logically distinguishable from each other, but each correlating with and implying the other. This is true not only in regard to our passions, emotions, and appetites, but also in regard to our perceptions, phantasms, reminiscences, reasonings, efforts of attention in learning, &c. We do not say that the Soul weaves or builds (Aristotle observes§); we say that the Animated Subject, the aggregate of Soul and Body, the man, weaves or builds. So we ought also to say, not that the Soul feels anger, pity, love, hatred, &c., or that the soul learns, reasons, recollects, &c., but that the man with his soul does these things. The actual movement throughout these processes is not in the Soul, but in the Body; sometimes going through to the Soul (as in sensible perception), sometimes proceeding from the soul to the body (as in the case of reminiscence). All these processes are at once corporeal and psychical, pervading the whole animated subject, and having two aspects coincident and interdependent, though logically distinguishable. The perfect or imper • Aristot. De Generat. Animal., II. 1, 731, b. 29. + Aristot. De Animâ, I. 1, 403, a. 25. τὰ πάθη λόγοι ἔνυλοί εἰσι. Compare II. 1, 412, b. 10-25, 413, a. 2. Aristot. De Animâ, I. 1, 403, a. 30. Aristot. De Animâ, I. 4, 408, b. 12. Tò de Xéyew opɣičeoÐα Tηv ψυχὴν ὅμοιον κἂν εἴ τις λέγοι τὴν ψυχὴν ὑφαίνειν ἢ οἰκοδομεῖν· βέλτιον γὰρ ἴσως μὴ λέγειν τὴν ψυχὴν ἐλεεῖν ἢ μανθάνειν ἢ διανοεῖσθαι, ἀλλὰ τὸν ἄνθρωπον τῇ ψυχῇ· τοῦτο δὲ μὴ ὡς ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῆς κινήσεως οὔσης, ἀλλ ̓ ὅτε μὲν μέχρι ἐκείνης, ὅτε δ ̓ ἀπ' ἐκείνης, δε Again, b. 30, ὅτι μὲν οὖν οὐκ οἷόν τε κινεῖσθαι τὴν ψυχὴν, φανερὸν ἐκ τούτων. THE BODY ESSENTIALLY IMPLICATED WITH THE SOUL. 627 fect discrimination by the sentient Soul, depends upon the good or bad condition of the bodily sentient organs; an old man that has become shortsighted, would see as well as before, if he could regain his youthful eye. The defects of the soul arise from defects in the bodily organism to which it belongs, as in cases of drunkenness or sickness; and this is not less true of the Nous, or intellective Soul, than of the sentient Soul.* Intelligence, as well as emotion, are phenomena, not of the bodily organism simply, nor of the Nous simply, but of the community or partnership of which both are members; and when intelligence gives way, this is not because the Nous itself is impaired, but because the partnership is ruined by the failure of the bodily organism. Respecting the Nous (the theorizing Nous), we must here observe that Aristotle treats it as a separate kind or variety of Soul, with several peculiarities. We shall collect presently all that he says upon that subject, which is the most obscure portion of his psychology. In regard to Soul generally, the relative point of view with Body as the Correlatum, is constantly insisted on by Aristotle ; without such Correlatum, his assertions would have no meaning. But the relation between them is presented in several different ways. The Soul is the cause and principle of a living body t by which is meant, not an independent and pre-existent something that brings the body into existence, but an immanent or in-dwelling influence which sustains the unity and guides the functions of the organism. According to the quadruple classification of Cause recognized by Aristotle-Formal, Material, Movent, and Final-the Body furnishes the Material Cause, while the Soul comprises all the three others; it is (as we have already seen) the Form in relation to the body as matter, but it is, besides, the Movent, inasmuch as it determines the local displacement as well as all the active functions of the Bodynutrition, growth, generation, sensation, &c.; lastly, it is also the Final Cause, since the maintenance and perpetuation of the same Form, in successive individuals, is the standing purpose * Aristot. De Animâ, I. 4, 408, b. 26.-Compare a similar doctrine in the Timæus of Plato, p. 86, B.-D. + Aristot. De Animâ, II. 4, 415, b. 9. ἔστι δ ̓ ἡ ψυχὴ τοῦ ζῶντος σώματος αἰτία καὶ ἀρχή· ταῦτα δὲ πολλαχῶς λέγεται. aimed at by each Body in the economy of Nature.* Under this diversity of aspect, Soul and Body are reciprocally integrant and complementary of each other, the real integer (the Living or Animated Body) including both. Soul, in the Aristotelian point of view (what is common to all living bodies) comprises several varieties. But these varieties are not represented as forming a genus with co-ordinate species under it, in such manner that the counter-ordinate species, reciprocally excluding each other, are, when taken together, co-extensive with the whole genus-like Man and Brute in regard to animal. The varieties of Soul are distributed into successive stages gradually narrowing in extension and enlarging in comprehension; the first or lowest stage being co-extensive with the whole, but connoting only two or three simple attributes; the second, or next above, connoting all these and more besides, but denoting only part of the individuals denoted by the first; the third connoting all this and more, but denoting yet fewer individuals; and so on forward. Thus the concrete individuals called Living Bodies, include all plants as well as all animals; but the Form Soul (called Nutritive by Aristotle) corresponding thereto, connotes only nutrition, growth, decay, and generation of another similar individual. In the second stage, plants are left out, but all animals remain; the Sentient Soul, belonging to animals, but not belonging to any plants, connotes all the functions and faculties of the Nutritive Soul, together with sensible perception (at least in its rudest shape) besides. We proceed onward in the same direction, taking in additional faculties-the Movent, Appetitive, Phantastic (Imaginative), Noëtic (Intelligent) Soul, and thus diminishing the total of individuals denoted. But each higher variety of soul continues to possess all the faculties of the lower. Thus the Sentient Soul cannot exist without comprehending all the faculties of the Nutritive, though the Nutritive exists (in plants) without any * Aristot. De Animâ, II. 4, 415, a. 28, b. 12. + In the Aristotelian treatise De Plantis-p. 815, b. 15-it is stated that Empedokles, Anaxagoras, and Demokritus, all affirmed that plants had both intellect and cognition, up to a certain moderate point. We do not cite this treatise as the composition of Aristotle; but it is reasonably good evidence, in reference to the doctrine of these other philosophers. Aristot. De Animâ, I. 5, 411, b. 28. |