suspecting that such distribution is not real but logical; you may subdivide as much as you choose.*

It appears thus clear that Aristotle restricts the Nous or noëtic function in man to the matters of sense and experience, physical or mental, and that he considers the phantasm to be an essential accompaniment of the cogitative act. Yet this does not at all detract from his view of the grandeur, importance, and wide range of survey, belonging to the noëtic function. It is the portion of man's nature that correlates with the abstract and universal; but it is only a portion of his nature, and must work in conjunction and harmony with the rest. The abstract cannot be really separated from the concrete, nor the universal from one or other of its particulars, nor the essence from that whereof it is the essence, nor the attribute from that of which it is the attribute, nor the genus and species from the individuals comprehended therein; nor, to speak in purely Aristotelian language, the Form from some Matter, or the Matter from some Form. In all these cases, there is a notional or logical distinction, impressing the mind as the result of various comparisons, noted by an appropriate term, and remembered afterwards by means of that term (that is, by means of an audible or visible phantasm); but real separation there neither is nor can be. This is the cardinal principle of Aristotle, repeated in almost all his works; his marked antithesis against Plato. Such logical distinctions as those here noticed (they might be multiplied without number) it belongs to Nous or the noëtic function to cognize. But the real objects, in reference to which alone the distinctions have a meaning, are concrete and individual; and the cognizing Subject is really the entire man, employing indeed the noëtic function, but employing it with the aid of other mental forces, phantasms and remembrances, real and verbal.

The noëtic Soul is called by Aristotle the place of Forms, the potentiality of Forms; the Correlate of things apart from Matter.' It cogitates these Forms in or along with the phantasms; the cogitable Forms are contained in the sensible Forms; for there is nothing really existent beyond or apart from visible or tangible magnitudes, with their properties and affections,

* Aristot. De Animâ, III. 9, 432, a. 23.

+Aristot. De Animâ, III. 4, 429, a. 27, b. 22.

THE NOUS HAS NO BODILY ORGAN.

659

and with the so-called abstractions considered by the geometer. Hence, without sensible perception, a man can neither learn nor understand any thing; in all his theoretical contemplations, he requires some phantasm to contemplate along with them.*

Herein lies one of the main distinctions between the noëtic and the sentient souls. The sentient deals with particulars, and correlates with external bodies; the noëtic apprehends universals, which in a certain sense are within the soul: hence a man can cogitate whenever or whatever he chooses, but he can see or touch only what is present. Another distinction is, that the sentient soul is embodied in special organs, each with determinate capacities, and correlating with external objects, themselves alike determinate, acting only under certain conditions of locality. The possibilities of sensation are thus from the beginning limited; moreover, a certain relative proportion must be maintained between the Percipient and the Perceivable; for extreme or violent sounds, colours, &c., produce no sensation; on the contrary, they deaden the sentient organ. But the noëtic soul (what is called the Nous of the Soul, to use Aristotle's language) § is nothing at all in actuality before its noëtic function commences, though it is everything in potentiality. It is not embodied in any corporeal organ of its own, nor mingled as a new elementary ingredient with the body; it does not correlate with any external objects; it is not so specially attached to some particulars as to make it antipathetic to others. Accordingly its possibilities of cogitation are unlimited; it apprehends with equal facility what is most cogitable and what is least cogitable. It is thoroughly indeterminate in its nature, and is in fact at first a mere unlimited

• Aristot. De Animâ, III. 7, 431, b. 1. тà μèv ovv eiên tò voŋtikòv ἐν τοῖς φαντάσμασι νοεῖ,432, a. 3. ἐπεὶ δὲ οὐδὲ πρᾶγμα οὐθέν ἐστι παρὰ τὰ μεγέθη, ὡς δοκεῖ, τὰ αἰσθητὰ κεχωρισμένον, ἐν τοῖς εἴδεσι τοῖς αἰσθητοῖς τὰ νοητά ἐστιν, τά τε ἐν ἀφαιρέσει λεγόμενα, καὶ ὅσα τῶν αἰσθητῶν ἐξεις καὶ πάθη· καὶ διὰ τοῦτο οὔτε μὴ αἰσθανόμενος μηδὲν οὐθὲν ἂν μάθοι οὐδὲ ξυνείη· ὅταν δὲ θεωρῇ, ἀνάγκη ἅμα φάντασμά τι θεωρεῖν.

+ Aristot. De Animâ, II. 5, 417, b. 22.

Aristot. De Animâ, III. 4, 429, a. 29.

§ Aristot. De Anima, III. 4, 429, n. 22. ὁ ἄρα καλούμενος τῆς ψυχῆς νοῦς (λέγω δε νοῦν ᾧ διανοεῖται καὶ ὑπολαμβάνει ἡ ψυχή) ουθέν εστιν ἐνεργείᾳ πρὶν νοεῖν,

cogitative potentiality; like a tablet, upon which no letters have as yet been written, but upon which all or any letters may be written.+

We have already said that the Nous of the human soul emanates from a peculiar influence of the celestial body, which is the especial region of Form in the Kosmos. Through it we acquire an enlarged power of apprehending the abstract and universal; we can ascend above sensible forms to the cogitable forms contained therein; we can consider all forms in themselves, without paying attention to the matter wherein they are embodied. Instead of considering the concrete solid or liquid before us, we can mentally analyze them, and thus study solidity in the abstract, fluidity in the abstract. While our senses judge of water as hot and cold, our noëtic function enables us to appreciate water in the abstract; to determine its essence, and to furnish a definition of it. In all these objects, as combinations of Form with Matter, the cogitable form exists potentially; and is abstracted, or considered abstractedly, by the cogitant Nous. § Yet this last cannot operate except along with and by aid of phantasms (as we have already seen)-of impressions revived or remaining from sense. It is thus immersed in the materials of sense, and has no others. But it handles them in a way of its own, and under new points of view; comparing and analyzing; recognizing the abstract in the concrete, and the universal in the particular; discriminating mentally and logically the one from the other; and noting the distinction by appropriate terms. Such distinctions are the Noumena, generated in the process of cogitation by Nous itself. The Nous, as it exists in any individual, gradually loses its original character of naked potentiality, and becomes an actual working force, by means of its own acquired materials. It is an aggregate of Noumena, all of them in nature identical with itself; and while cogitating them, the Nous at the same time cogitates itself. Considered abstractedly, apart

Aristot. De Anima, III. 4, 429, a. 21. ὥστε μηδ' αὐτοῦ εἶναι φύσιν μηδεμίαν ἀλλ ̓ ἢ ταύτην, ὅτι δυνατόν.

+ Aristot. De Animâ, III. 4, 430, a. 1.

Aristot. De Animâ, III. 4, 429, b. 10.

§ Aristot. De Animâ, III. 4, 430, a. 2-12.

|| Aristot. De Animâ, II. 5, 417, b. 23; III. 4, 429, b. 7. Űrav dúvηtu ἐνεργεῖν δι' αὐτοῦ,

INTELLECTUS AGENS AND INTELLECTUS PATIENS. 661

from matter, they exist only in the mind itself; in theoretical speculation, the Cognoscens and the Cognitum are identical. But they are not really separable from matter, and have no reality apart from it.*

The distinction, yet at the same time correlation, between Form and Matter, pervades all nature (Aristotle affirms), and will be found in the Nous as elsewhere. We must recognize an Intellectus Agens or constructive-and an Intellectus Patiens or receptive.t The Agens is the great intellectual energy pervading the celestial body, and acting upon all the animals susceptible of its operation; analogous to light, which illuminates the diaphanous medium, and elevates what was mere potential colour into colour actual and visible.‡ The Patiens is the intellectual receptivity acted upon in each individual, and capable of being made to cogitate every thing; anterior to the Agens, in time, so far as regards the individual -yet as a general fact (when we are talking of man as a species), not anterior even in time, but correlative. Of the two, the Intellectus Agens is the more venerable; it is pure intellectual energy, unmixed, unimpressible from without, and separable from all animal body. It is this, and nothing more, when considered apart from animal body; but it is then eternal and immortal, while the Intellectus Patiens perishes with the remaining soul and with the body. Yet though the Intellectus Agens is thus eternal, and though we have part in it, we cannot remember any of its operations anterior to our own maturity; for the concurrence of the Intellectus Patiens, which

* Aristot. De Animâ, III. 4, 429, b. 9, 430, a. 2-7.

Aristot. De Animâ, III. 5, 430, a. 11.

† Aristot. De Anima, III. 5, 430, a. 15. καὶ ἔστιν ὁ μὲν τοιοῦτος νους τῷ πάντα γίνεσθαι, ὁ δὲ τῷ πάντα ποιεῖν, ὡς ἕξις τις, οἷον τὸ φῶς• τρόπον γὰρ τινα καὶ τὸ φῶς ποιεῖ τὰ δυνάμει ὄντα χρώματα ενεργεια χρώματα. Aristotle here illustrates νοῦς ποιητικὸς by φῶς and ἕξις ; and we know what view he takes of pws (De Animâ, II. 7, 418, b. 9), as the ἐνέργεια οι ἕξις τοῦ διαφανοῦς—which diaphanous he explains to be a φύσις τις ἐνυπάρχουσα ἐν ἀέρι καὶ θέατι καὶ ἐν τῷ ἀϊδίῳ τῷ ἄνω σώματι. Judging by this illustration, it seems proper to couple the vous momNTIKOS here with his declaration in De Generat. Animal., II. 736, b. 28, 737, a. 10. τὸν νοῦν μόνον θύραθεν ἐπεισιέναι καὶ θεῖον εἶναι μόνον: he cannot con. sider the vous moiŋtikos which is of the nature of Form, as belonging to each individual man, like the νοῦς παθητικός.

begins and ends with us, is indispensable both to remembrance and to thought.*

We see here the full extent of Aristotle's difference from the Platonic doctrine, in respect to the immortality of the Soul. He had defined the Soul as the first actualization of a body having potentiality of life with a determinate organism. This of course implied, and he expressly declares it, that Soul and Body in each individual case were one and indivisible, so that the soul of Sokrates perished of necessity with the body of Sokrates.† But he accompanied that declaration with a reserve in favour of Nous, and especially of the theorizing Nous; which he recognized as a different sort of Soul, not dependent on a determinate bodily organism, but capable of being separated from it, as the eternal is from the perishable. The present chapter informs us how far such reserve is intended to go. That the theorizing Nous is not limited, like the sentient soul, to a determinate bodily organism, but exists apart from that organism and eternally-is maintained as incontestable; it is the characteristic intellectual activity of the eternal celestial body and the divine inmates thereof. But the distinction of Form and Matter is here pointed out, as prevailing in Nous and in Soul generally, not less than throughout all other Nature. The theorizing Nous, as it exists in Sokrates, Plato, Demokritus, Anaxagoras, Empedokles, Xenokrates, &c., is individualized in each, and individualized differently in each. It represents the result of the Intellectus Agens or formal Nous, universal and permanent, upon the Intellectus Patiens or noëtic receptivity peculiar to each individual; the co-operation of the two is indispensable, to sustain the theorizing Intellect of any in

Aristot. De Anima, III. 5, 430, a. 18. καὶ οὗτος ὁ νοῦς (i.e. ποιητικός) χωριστὸς καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγὴς, τῇ ουσίᾳ ὢν ἐνέργεια· ἀεὶ γὰρ τιμιώτερον τὸ ποιοῦν τοῦ πάσχοντος, καὶ ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς ύλης. 22. χωρισθεὶς δ ̓ ἔστι μόνον τοῦθ ̓ ὅπερ ἔστι, καὶ τοῦτο μόνον ἀθάνατον καὶ ἀΐδιον· οὐ μνημονεύομεν δὲ, ὅτι τοῦτο μὲν ἀπαθές, ὁ δὲ παθητικὸς νοῦς φθαρτὸς, καὶ ἄνευ τούτου οὐθὲν νοεῖ. In this obscure and difficult chapter (difficult even to Theophrastus the friend and pupil of the author), we have given the best meaning that the words seem to admit.

Aristot. De Animâ, II. 1, 413, a. 3, b. 7.

Aristot. De Animâ, II. 2, 413, b. 25. περὶ δὲ τοῦ νοῦ καὶ τῆς θεωρητικής δυνάμεως οὐδέν πω φανερὸν, ἀλλ ̓ ἔοικε ψυχῆς γένος ἕτερον εἶναι, καὶ τοῦτο μόνον ἐνδέχεται χωρίζεσθαι, ὥσπερ τὸ ἀΐδιον τοῦ φθαρτοῦ.