dialecticians who did not recognize the Maxim; maintaining that the
same proposition might be at once true and false--that it was
possible for the same thing both to be and not to be. How is he to
deal with these opponents? He admits that he cannot demonstrate the
Maxim against them, and that any attempt to do this would involve
_Petitio Principii_. But he contends for the possibility of
demonstrating it in a peculiar way--_refutatively_ or _indirectly_;
that is, provided that the opponents can be induced to grant (not
indeed the truth of any proposition, to the exclusion of its
contradictory antithesis, which concession he admits would involve
_Petitio Principii_, but) the fixed and uniform signification of
terms and propositions. Aristotle contends that the opponents ought
to grant thus much, under penalty of being excluded from discussion
as incapables or mere plants.[68] I do not imagine that the opponents
themselves would have felt obliged to grant as much as he here
demands. The _onus probandi_ lay upon him, as advancing a positive
theory; and he would have found his indirect or refutative
demonstration not more available in convincing them than a direct or
ordinary demonstration. Against respondents who proclaim as their
thesis the negative of the Maxim of Contradiction, refutation and
demonstration are equally impossible. No dialectical discussion could
ever lead to any result; for you can never prove more against them
than what their own thesis unequivocally avows.[69] As against
Herakleitus and Anaxagoras, I do not think that Aristotle's qualified
vindication of the Maxim has any effective bearing.
[Footnote 68: Aristot. Metaph. [Greek: G]. iv. p. 1006, a. 11, seq.]
[Footnote 69: Ibid. a. 26: [Greek: a)nairô=n ga\r lo/gon u(pome/nei
lo/gon.]--p. 1008, a. 30.]
But Aristotle is quite right in saying that neither dialectical
debate nor demonstration can be carried on unless terms and
propositions be defined, and unless to each term there be assigned
one special signification, or a limited number of special
significations--excluding a certain number of others. This demand for
definitions, and also the multiplied use of inductive interrogations,
keeping the Universal implicated with and dependent upon its
particulars--are the innovations which Aristotle expressly places to
the credit of Sokrates. The Sokratic Elenchus operated by first
obtaining from the respondent a definition, and then testing it
through a variety of particulars: when the test brought out a
negative as against the pre-asserted affirmative, the contradiction
between the two was felt as an intellectual shock by the respondent,
rendering it impossible to believe both at once; and the unrivalled
acuteness of Sokrates was exhibited in rendering such shock
peculiarly pungent and humiliating. But the Sokratic Elenchus
presupposes this psychological fact, common to most minds, ordinary
as well as superior,--the intellectual shock felt when incompatible
beliefs are presented to the mind at once. If the collocutors of
Sokrates had not been so constituted by nature, the magic of his
colloquy would have been unfelt and inoperative. Against a
Herakleitean, who professed to feel no difficulty in believing both
sides of a contradiction at once, he could have effected nothing: and
if not he, still less any other dialectician. Proof and disproof, as
distinguished one from the other, would have had no meaning;
dialectical debate would have led to no result.
Thus, then, although Aristotle was the first to enunciate the Maxim
of Contradiction in general terms, after having previously originated
that logical distinction of contrary and contradictory Propositions
and doctrine of legitimate _Antiphasis_ which rendered such
enunciation possible,--yet, when he tries to uphold it against
dissentients, it cannot be said that he has correctly estimated the
logical position of those whom he was opposing, or the real extent to
which the defence of the Maxim can be carried without incurring the
charge of _Petitio Principii_. As against Protagoras, no defence was
needed, for the Protagorean "_Homo Mensura_" is not incompatible with
the Maxim of Contradiction; while, as against Herakleitus,
Anaxagoras, Parmenides, &c., no defence was practicable, and the
attempt of Aristotle to construct one appears to me a failure. All
that can be really done in the way of defence is, to prove the Maxim
in its general enunciation by an appeal to particular cases: if your
opponent is willing to grant these particular cases, you establish
the general Maxim against him by way of Induction; if he will not
grant them, you cannot prove the general Maxim at all. Suppose you
are attempting to prove to an Herakleitean that an universal
affirmative and its contradictory particular negative cannot be both
true at once. You begin by asking him about particular cases, Whether
it is possible that the two propositions--All men are mortal, and,
Some men are not mortal--can both be true at once? If he admits that
these two propositions cannot both be true at once, if he admits the
like with regard to other similar pairs of contradictories, and if he
can suggest no similar pair in which both propositions are true at
once, then you may consider yourself as having furnished a sufficient
inductive proof, and you may call upon him to admit the Maxim of
Contradiction in its general enunciation. But, if he will not admit
it in the particular cases which you tender, or if, while admitting
it in these, he himself can tender other cases in which he considers
it inadmissible, then you have effected nothing sufficient to
establish the general Maxim against him. The case is not susceptible
of any other or better proof. It is in vain that Aristotle tries to
diversify the absurdity, and to follow it out into collateral absurd
consequences. If the Herakleitean does not feel any repulsive shock
of contradiction in a definite particular case, if he directly
announces that he believes the two propositions to be both at once
true, then the collateral inconsistencies and derivative absurdities,
which Aristotle multiplies against him, will not shock him more than
the direct contradiction in its naked form. Neither the general
reasoning of Aristotle, nor the Elenchus of Sokrates brought to bear
in particular cases, would make any impression upon him; since he
will not comply with either of the two conditions required for the
Sokratic Elenchus: he will neither declare definitions, nor give
suitable point and sequence to inductive interrogatories.
Nor is anything gained, as Aristotle supposes, by reminding the
Herakleitean of his own practice in the daily concerns of life and in
conversation with common persons: that he feeds himself with bread
to-day, in the confidence that it has the same properties as it had
yesterday;[70] that, if he wishes either to give or to obtain
information, the speech which he utters or that which he acts upon
must be either affirmative or negative. He will admit that he acts in
this way, but he will tell you that he has no certainty of being
right; that the negative may be true as well as the affirmative. He
will grant that there is an inconsistency between such acts of detail
and the principles of the Herakleitean doctrine, which recognize no
real stability of any thing, but only perpetual flux or process; but
inconsistency in detail will not induce him to set aside his
principles. The truth is, that neither Herakleitus, nor Parmenides,
nor Anaxagoras, nor Pythagoras, gave themselves much trouble to
reconcile Philosophy with facts of detail. Each fastened upon some
grand and impressive primary hypothesis, illustrated it by a few
obvious facts in harmony therewith, and disregarded altogether the
mass of contradictory facts. That a favourite hypothesis should
contradict physical details, was noway shocking to them. Both the
painful feeling accompanying that shock, and the disposition to test
the value of the hypothesis by its consistency with inductive
details, became first developed and attended to in the dialectical
age, mainly through the working of Sokrates. The Analytic and the
First Philosophy of Aristotle were constructed after the time of
Sokrates, and with regard, in a very great degree, to the Sokratic
tests and conditions--to the indispensable necessity for definite
subjects and predicates, capable of standing the inductive scrutiny
of particulars. In this respect the _Philosophia Prima_ of Aristotle
stands distinguished from that of any of the earlier philosophers,
and even from that of Plato. He departed from Plato by recognizing
the _Hoc Aliquid_ or the definite Individual, with its essential
Predicates, as the foundation of the Universal, and by applying his
analytical factors of Form and Matter to the intellectual generation
of the Individual ([Greek: to\ su/nolon--to\ sunampho/teron]); and
thus he devised a First Philosophy conformable to the habits of
common speech as rectified by the critical scrutiny of Sokrates. We
shall see this in the next Chapter. * * * *
[Footnote 70: Aristot. Metaph. K. vi. p. 1063, a. 31.]
[The Author's MS. breaks off here. What follows on the next page, as
Chapter XII, is the exposition of Aristotle's Psychology, originally
contributed to the third edition of Professor Bain's work 'The Senses
and the Intellect,' in 1868.]
CHAPTER XII.
DE ANIMÂ, ETC.
To understand Aristotle's Psychology, we must look at it in
comparison with the views of other ancient Greek philosophers on the
same subject, as far as our knowledge will permit. Of these ancient
philosophers, none have been preserved to us except Plato, and to a
certain extent Epikurus, reckoning the poem of Lucretius as a
complement to the epistolary remnants of Epikurus himself. The
predecessors of Aristotle (apart from Plato) are known only through
small fragments from themselves, and imperfect notices by others;
among which notices the best are from Aristotle himself.
In the Timæus of Plato we find Psychology, in a very large and
comprehensive sense, identified with Kosmology. The Kosmos, a scheme
of rotatory spheres, has both a soul and a body: of the two, the soul
is the prior, grander, and predominant, though both of them are
constructed or put together by the Divine Architect or Demiurgus. The
kosmical soul, rooted at the centre, and stretched from thence
through and around the whole, is endued with self-movement, and with
the power of initiating movement in the kosmical body; moreover,
being cognitive as well as motive, it includes in itself three
ingredients mixed together:--(1) The Same--the indivisible and
unchangeable essence of Ideas; (2) The Diverse--the Plural--the
divisible bodies or elements; (3) A Compound, formed of both these
ingredients melted into one. As the kosmical soul is intended to know
all the three--_Idem_, _Diversum_, and _Idem_ with _Diversum_ in one,
so it must comprise in its own nature all the three ingredients,
according to the received Axiom--Like knows like--Like is known by
Like. The ingredients are blended together according to a scale of
harmonic proportion. The element _Idem_ is placed in an even and
undivided rotation of the outer or sidereal sphere of the Kosmos; the
element _Diversum_ is distributed among the rotations, all oblique,
of the seven interior planetary spheres, that is, the five planets,
with the Sun and Moon. Impressions of identity and diversity, derived
either from the ideal and indivisible, or from the sensible and
divisible, are thus circulated by the kosmical soul throughout its
own entire range, yet without either voice or sound. Reason and
Science are propagated by the circle of _Idem_: Sense and Opinion, by
those of _Diversum_. When these last-mentioned circles are in right
movement, the opinions circulated are true and trustworthy.[1]
[Footnote 1: See this doctrine of the Timæus more fully expounded in
'Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates,' III. xxxvi.
pp. 250-256, seq.]
It is thus that Plato begins his Psychology with Kosmology: the
Kosmos is in his view a divine immortal being or animal, composed of
a spherical rotatory body and a rational soul, cognitive as well as
motive. Among the tenants of this Kosmos are included, not only gods,
who dwell in the peripheral or celestial regions, but also men,
birds, quadrupeds, and fishes. These four inhabit the more central or
lower regions of air, earth, and water. In describing men and the
inferior animals, Plato takes his departure from the divine Kosmos,
and proceeds downwards by successive stages of increasing degeneracy
and corruption. The cranium of man was constructed as a little
Kosmos, including in itself an immortal rational soul, composed of
the same materials, though diluted and adulterated, as the kosmical
soul; and moving with the like rotations, though disturbed and
irregular, suited to a rational soul. This cranium, for wise purposes
which Plato indicates, was elevated by the gods upon a tall body,
with attached limbs for motion in different directions--forward,
backward, upward, downward, to the right and left.[2] Within this
body were included two inferior and mortal souls: one in the thoracic
region near the heart, the other lower down, below the diaphragm, in
the abdominal region; but both of them fastened or rooted in the
spinal marrow or cord, which formed a continuous line with the brain
above. These two souls were both emotional; the higher or _thoracic_
soul being the seat of courage, energy, anger, &c., while to the
lower or _abdominal_ soul belonged appetite, desires, love of gain,
&c. Both of them were intended as companions and adjuncts, yet in the
relation of dependence and obedience, to the _rational_ soul in the
cranium above; which, though unavoidably debased and perturbed by
such unworthy companionship, was protected partially against the
contagion by the difference of location, the neck being built up as
an isthmus of separation between the two. The thoracic soul, the seat
of courage, was placed nearer to the head, in order that it might be
the medium for transmitting influence from the cranial soul above, to
the abdominal soul below; which last was at once the least worthy and
the most difficult to control. The heart, being the initial point of
the veins, received the orders and inspirations of the cranial soul,
transmitting them onward through its many blood-channels to all the
sensitive parts of the body; which were thus rendered obedient, as
far as possible, to the authority of man's rational nature.[3] The
unity or communication of the three souls was kept up through the
continuity of the cerebro-spinal column.
[Footnote 2: Plato, Timæus, p. 44, E.; 'Plato and Other Comp. of
Sokr.', III. xxxvi. p. 264.]
[Footnote 3: Plato, Timæus, p. 70; 'Plato and Other Comp. of Sokr.',
III. pp. 271-272.]
But, though by these arrangements the higher soul in the cranium was
enabled to control to a certain extent its inferior allies, it was
itself much disturbed and contaminated by their reaction. The
violence of passion and appetite, the constant processes of nutrition
and sensation pervading the whole body, the multifarious movements of
the limbs and trunk, in all varieties of direction,--these causes all
contributed to agitate and to confuse the rotations of the cranial
soul, perverting the arithmetical proportions and harmony belonging
to them. The circles of Same and Diverse were made to convey false
information; and the soul, for some time after its first junction
with the body, became destitute of intelligence.[4] In mature life,
indeed, the violence of the disturbing causes abates, and the man may
become more and more intelligent, especially if placed under
appropriate training and education. But in many cases no such
improvement took place, and the rational soul of man was
irrecoverably spoiled; so that new and worse breeds were formed, by
successive steps of degeneracy. The first stage, and the least amount
of degeneracy, was exhibited in the formation of woman; the original
type of man not having included diversity of sex. By farther steps of
degradation, in different ways, the inferior animals were
formed--birds, quadrupeds, and fishes.[5] In each of these, the
rational soul became weaker and worse; its circular rotations ceased
with the disappearance of the spherical cranium, and animal appetites
with sensational agitations were left without control. As man, with
his two emotional souls and body joined on to the rational soul and
cranium, was a debased copy of the perfect rational soul and
**spherical body of the divine Kosmos, so the other inhabitants of
the Kosmos proceeded from still farther debasement and
disrationalization of the original type of man.
[Footnote 4: Plato, Timæus, pp. 43-44; 'Plato and Other Comp. of
Sokr.', III. pp. 262-264.]
[Footnote 5: Plato, Timæus, p. 91; 'Plato and Other Comp. of Sokr.',
pp. 281-282.]
Such is the view of Psychology given by Plato in the Timæus;
beginning with the divine Kosmos, and passing downwards from thence
to the triple soul of man, as well as to the various still lower
successors of degenerated man. It is to be remarked that Plato,
though he puts soul as prior to body in dignity and power, and as
having for its functions to control and move body, yet always
conceives soul as attached to body, and never as altogether detached,
not even in the divine Kosmos. The soul, in Plato's view, is
self-moving and self-moved: it is both _Primum Mobile_ in itself,
and _Primum Movens_ as to the body; it has itself the corporeal
properties of being extended and moved, and it has body implicated
with it besides.
The theory above described, in so far as it attributes to the soul
rational constituent elements (_Idem_, _Diversum_), continuous
magnitude, and circular rotations, was peculiar to Plato, and is
criticized by Aristotle as the peculiarity of his master.[6] But
several other philosophers agreed with Plato in considering
self-motion, together with motive causality and faculties perceptive
and cognitive, to be essential characteristics of soul. Alkmæon
declared the soul to be in perpetual motion, like all the celestial
bodies; hence it was also immortal, as they were.[7] Herakleitus
described it as the subtlest of elements, and as perpetually fluent;
hence it was enabled to know other things, all of which were in flux
and change. Diogenes of Apollonia affirmed that the element
constituent of soul was air, at once mobile, all-penetrating, and
intelligent. Demokritus declared that among the infinite diversity of
atoms those of spherical figure were the constituents both of the
element fire and of the soul: the spherical atoms were by reason of
their figure the most apt and rapid in moving; it was their nature
never to be at rest, and they imparted motion to everything else.[8]
Anaxagoras affirmed soul to be radically and essentially distinct from
every thing else, but to be the great primary source of motion, and to
be endued with cognitive power, though at the same time not suffering
impressions from without.[9] Empedokles considered soul to be a
compound of the four elements--fire, water, air, earth; with love and
hatred as principles of motion, the former producing aggregation of
elements, the latter, disgregation: by means of each element the soul
became cognizant of the like element in the Kosmos. Some Pythagoreans
looked upon the soul as an aggregate of particles of extreme
subtlety, which pervaded the air and were in perpetual agitation.
Other Pythagoreans, however, declared it to be an harmonious or
proportional mixture of contrary elements and qualities; hence its
universality of cognition, extending to all.[10]
[Footnote 6: Aristot. De Animâ, I. iii. p. 407, a. 2.]
[Footnote 7: Ibid. ii. p. 405, a. 29.]
[Footnote 8: Ibid. p. 404, a. 8; p. 405, a. 22; p. 406, b. 17.]
[Footnote 9: Ibid. p. 405, a. 13, b. 19.]
[Footnote 10: Aristot. De Animâ, I. ii. p. 404, a. 16; p. 407, b.
27.]
A peculiar theory was delivered by Xenokrates (who, having been
fellow-pupil with Aristotle under Plato, afterwards conducted the
Platonic School, during all the time that Aristotle taught at the
Lykeium), which Aristotle declares to involve greater difficulty than
any of the others. Xenokrates described the soul as "a number (a
monad or indivisible unit) moving itself."[11] He retained the
self-moving property which Plato had declared to be characteristic of
the soul, while he departed from Plato's doctrine of a soul with
continuous extension. He thus fell back upon the Pythagorean idea of
number as the fundamental essence. Aristotle impugns, as alike
untenable, both the two properties here alleged--number and
self-motion. If the monad both moves and is moved (he argues), it
cannot be indivisible; if it be moved, it must have position, or must
be a point; but the motion of a point is a line, without any of that
variety that constitutes life. How can the soul be a monad? or, if it
be, what difference can exist between one soul and another, since
monads cannot differ from each other except in position? How comes it
that some bodies have souls and others not? and how, upon this
theory, can we explain the fact that many animated bodies, both
plants and animals, will remain alive after being divided, the
monadic soul thus exhibiting itself as many and diverse? Besides, the
monad set up by Xenokrates is hardly distinguishable from the highly
attenuated body or spherical atom recognized by Demokritus as the
origin or beginning of bodily motion.[12]
[Footnote 11: Ibid. iv. p. 408, b. 32.]
[Footnote 12: Ibid. p. 409, b. 12.]
These and other arguments are employed by Aristotle to refute the
theory of Xenokrates. In fact, he rejects all the theories then
current. After having dismissed the self-motor doctrine, he proceeds
to impugn the views of those who declared the soul to be a compound
of all the four elements, in order that they might account for its
percipient and cognitive faculties upon the maxim then very generally
admitted[13]--That like is perceived and known by like. This theory,
the principal champion of which was Empedokles, appears to Aristotle
inadmissible. You say (he remarks) that like knows like; how does
this consist with your other doctrine, that like cannot act upon, or
suffer from, like, especially as you consider that both in perception
and in cognition the percipient and cognizant suffers or is acted
upon?[14] Various parts of the cognizant subject, such as bone, hair,
ligaments, &c., are destitute of perception and cognition; how then
can we know anything about bone, hair, and ligaments, since we cannot
know them by like?[15] Suppose the soul to be compounded of all the
four elements; this may explain how it comes to know the four
elements, themselves, but not how it comes to know all the
combinations of the four; now innumerable combinations of the four
are comprised among the _cognita_. We must assume that the soul
contains in itself not merely the four elements, but also the laws or
definite proportions wherein they can combine; and this is affirmed
by no one.[16] Moreover, _Ens_ is an equivocal, or at least a
multivocal, term; there are _Entia_ belonging to each of the ten
Categories. Now the soul cannot include in itself all the ten, for
the different Categories have no elements in common; in whichever
Category you rank the soul, it will know (by virtue of likeness) the
_cognita_ belonging to that category, but it will not know the
_cognita_ belonging to the other nine.[17] Besides, even if we grant
that the soul includes all the four elements, where is the cementing
principle that combines all the four into one? The elements are
merely matter; and what holds them together must be the really potent
principle of soul; but of this no explanation is given.[18]
[Footnote 13: Ibid. v. p. 409, b. 29.]
[Footnote 14: Aristot. De Animâ, I. v. p. 410, a. 25.]
[Footnote 15: Ibid. a. 30.]
[Footnote 16: Ibid. p. 409, b. 28; p. 410, a. 12.]
[Footnote 17: Ibid. p. 410, a. 20.]
[Footnote 18: Ibid. p. 410, b. 10.]
Some philosophers have assumed (continues Aristotle) that soul
pervades the whole Kosmos and its elements; and that it is inhaled by
animals in respiration along with the air.[19] They forget that all
plants, and even some animals, live without respiring at all;
moreover, upon this theory, air and fire also, as possessing soul,
and what is said to be a better soul, ought (if the phrase were
permitted) to be regarded as animals. The soul of air or fire must be
homogeneous in its parts; the souls of animals are not homogeneous,
but involve several distinct parts or functions.[20] The soul
perceives, cogitates, opines, feels, desires, repudiates; farther, it
moves the body locally, and brings about the growth and decay of the
body. Here we have a new mystery:[21]--Is the whole soul engaged in
the performance of each of these functions, or has it a separate part
exclusively consecrated to each? If so, how many are the parts? Some
philosophers (Plato among them) declare the soul to be divided, and
that one part cogitates and cognizes, while another part desires. But
upon that supposition what is it that holds these different parts
together? Certainly not the body (which is Plato's theory); on the
contrary, it is the soul that holds together the body; for, as soon
as the soul is gone, the body rots and disappears.[22] If there be
anything that keeps together the divers parts of the soul as one,
that something must be the true and fundamental soul; and we ought
not to speak of the soul as having parts, but as essentially one and
indivisible, with several distinct faculties. Again, if we are to
admit parts of the soul, does each part hold together a special part
of the body, as the entire soul holds together the entire body? This
seems impossible; for what part of the body can the Noûs or Intellect
(_e.g._) be imagined to hold together? And, besides, several kinds of
plants and of animals may be divided, yet so that each of the
separate parts shall still continue to live; hence it is plain that
the soul in each separate part is complete and homogeneous.[23]
[Footnote 19: Ibid. ii. p. 404, a. 9: [Greek: tou= zê=n o(/ron
ei)=nai tê\n a)napnoê/n], &c. Compare the doctrine of Demokritus.]
[Footnote 20: Ibid. v. p. 411, a. 1, 8, 16.]
[Footnote 21: Ibid. a. 30.]
[Footnote 22: Aristot. De Animâ, I. v. p. 411, b. 8.]
[Footnote 23: Ibid. b. 15-27.]
Aristotle thus rejects all the theories proposed by antecedent
philosophers, but more especially the two following:--That the soul
derives its cognitive powers from the fact of being compounded of the
four elements; That the soul is self-moved. He pronounces it
incorrect to say that the soul is moved at all.[24] He farther
observes that none of the philosophers have kept in view either the
full meaning or all the varieties of soul; and that none of these
defective theories suffices for the purpose that every good and
sufficient theory ought to serve, viz., not merely to define the
essence of the soul, but also to define it in such a manner that the
concomitant functions and affections of the soul shall all be
deducible from it.[25] Lastly, he points out that most of his
predecessors had considered that the prominent characteristics of
soul were--to be motive and to be percipient:[26] while, in his
opinion, neither of these two characteristics is universal or
fundamental.
[Footnote 24: Ibid. a. 25.]
[Footnote 25: Ibid. i. p. 402, b. 16, seq.; v. p. 409, b. 15.]
[Footnote 26: Ibid. ii. p. 403, b. 30.]
Aristotle requires that a good theory of the soul shall explain alike
the lowest vegetable soul, and the highest functions of the human or
divine soul. And, in commenting on those theorists who declared that
the essence of soul consisted in movement, he remarks that their
theory fails altogether in regard to the Noûs (or cogitative and
intellective faculty of the human soul); the operation of which bears
far greater analogy to rest or suspension of movement than to
movement itself.[27]
[Footnote 27: Aristot. De Animâ, I. iii. p. 407, a. 32: [Greek: e)/ti
d' ê( no/êsis e)/oiken ê)remê/sei tini\ ê)\ e)pista/sei ma=llon ê)\
kinê/sei.]]
We shall now proceed to state how Aristotle steers clear (or at least
believes himself to steer clear) of the defects that he has pointed
out in the psychological theories of his predecessors. Instead of
going back (like Empedokles, Plato, and others) to a time when the
Kosmos did not yet exist, and giving us an hypothesis to explain how
its parts came together or were put together, he takes the facts and
objects of the Kosmos as they stand, and distributes them according
to distinctive marks alike obvious, fundamental, and pervading; after
which he seeks a mode of explanation in the principles of his own
First Philosophy or Ontology. Whoever had studied the Organon and the
Physica of Aristotle (apparently intended to be read prior to the
treatise De Animâ) would be familiar with his distribution of _Entia_
into ten Categories, of which Essence or Substance was the first and
the fundamental. Of these Essences or Substances the **most
complete and recognized were physical or natural bodies; and among
such bodies one of the most striking distinctions, was between those
that had life and those that had it not. By life, Aristotle means
keeping up the processes of nutrition, growth, and decay.[28]
[Footnote 28: Ibid. II i. p. 412, a. 11: [Greek: ou)si/ai de\
ma/list' ei)=nai dokou=si ta\ sô/mata, kai\ tou/tôn ta\ phusika/;
tô=n de\ phusikô=n ta\ me\n e)/chei zôê/n, ta\ d' ou)k e)/chei; zôê\n
de\ le/gô, tê\n di' au)tou= trophê\n kai\ au)/xêsin kai\ phthi/sin.]]
"To live" (Aristotle observes) is a term used in several different
meanings; whatever possesses any one of the following four properties
is said to live:[29] (1) Intellect, (2) Sensible perception, (3)
Local movement and rest, (4) Internal movement of nutrition, growth,
and decay. But of these four the last is the only one common to all
living bodies without exception; it is the foundation presupposed by
the other three. It is the only one possessed by plants,[30] and
common to all plants as well as to all animals--to all animated
bodies.
[Footnote 29: Ibid. ii. p. 413, a. 22: [Greek: pleonachô=s de\ tou=
zê=n legome/nou, ka)\n e(/n ti tou/tôn e)nupa/rchê| mo/non, zê=n
au)to/ phamen], &c.]
[Footnote 30: Ibid. I. v. p. 411, b. 27, ad fin.]
What is the animating principle belonging to each of these bodies,
and what is the most general definition of it? Such is the problem
that Aristotle states to himself about the soul.[31] He explains it
by a metaphysical distinction first introduced (apparently) by
himself into _Philosophia Prima_. He considers Substance or Essence
as an ideal compound; not simply as clothed with all the accidents
described in the nine last Categories, but also as being analysable
in itself, even apart from these accidents, into two abstract,
logical, or notional elements or _principia_--Form and Matter. This
distinction is borrowed from the most familiar facts of the sensible
world--the shape of solid objects. When we see or feel a cube of wax,
we distinguish the cubic shape from the waxen material;[32] we may
find the like shape in many other materials--wood, stone, &c.; we may
find the like material in many different shapes--sphere, pyramid,
&c.; but the matter has always some shape, and the shape has always
some matter. We can name and reason about the matter, without
attending to the shape, or distinguishing whether it be cube or
sphere; we can name and reason about the shape, without attending to
the material shaped, or to any of its various peculiarities. But
this, though highly useful, is a mere abstraction or notional
distinction. There can be no real separation between the two: no
shape without some solid material; no solid material without some
shape. The two are correlates; each of them implying the other, and
neither of them admitting of being realized or actualized without the
other.
[Footnote 31: Ibid. II. p. 413, b. 11: [Greek: ê( psuchê\ tô=n
ei)rême/nôn tou/tôn a)rchê/].--Ibid. I. p. 412, a. 5: [Greek: ti/s
a)\n ei)/ê koino/tatos lo/gos au)tê=s].]
[Footnote 32: Aristot. De Animâ, II. i. p. 412, b. 7: [Greek: to\n
kêro\n kai\ to\ schê=ma].]
This distinction of Form and Matter is one of the capital features of
Aristotle's _Philosophia Prima_. He expands it and diversifies it in
a thousand ways, often with subtleties very difficult to follow; but
the fundamental import of it is seldom lost--two correlates
inseparably implicated in fact and reality in every concrete
individual that has received a substantive name, yet logically
separable and capable of being named and considered apart from each
other. The Aristotelian analysis thus brings out, in regard to each
individual substance (or _Hoc Aliquid_, to use his phrase), a triple
point of view: (1) The Form; (2) The Matter; (3) The compound or
aggregate of the two--in other words, the inseparable _Ens_, which
carries us out of the domain of logic or abstraction into that of the
concrete or reality.[33]
[Footnote 33: Aristot. Metaphys. Z. iii. p. 1029, a. 1-34; De Animâ,
II. i. p. 412, a. 6; p. 414, a. 15.
In the first book of the Physica, Aristotle pushes this analysis yet
further, introducing three _principia_ instead of two:--(1) Form,
(2) Matter, (3) Privation (of Form); he gives a distinct general name
to the negation as well as to the affirmation; he provides a sign
_minus_ as counter-denomination to the sign _plus_. But he intimates
that this is only the same analysis more minutely discriminated, or
in a different point of view: [Greek: dio\ e)/sti me\n ô(s du/o
lekte/on ei)=nai ta\s a)rcha/s, e)/sti d' ô(s trei=s] (Phys. I. vii.
p. 190, b. 29).
_Materia Prima_ (Aristotle says, Phys. I. vii. p. 191, a. 8) is
"knowable only by analogy"--_i.e._, explicable only by illustrative
examples: as the brass is to the statue, as the wood is to the couch,
&c.; natural substances being explained from works of art, as is
frequent with Aristotle.]
Aristotle farther recognizes, between these two logical correlates, a
marked difference of rank. The Form stands first, the Matter
second,--not in time, but in notional presentation. The Form is higher,
grander, prior in dignity and esteem, more _Ens_, or more nearly
approaching to perfect entity; the Matter is lower, meaner, posterior
in dignity, farther removed from that perfection. The conception of
wax, plaster, wood, &c., without amy definite or determinate shape,
is confused and unimpressive; but a name, connoting some definite
shape, at once removes this confusion, and carries with it mental
pre-eminence, alike as to phantasy, memory, and science. In the
logical hierarchy of Aristotle, Matter is the inferior and Form the
superior;[34] yet neither of the two can escape from its relative
character: Form requires Matter for its correlate, and is nothing in
itself or apart,[35] just as much as Matter requires Form; though
from the inferior dignity of Matter we find it more frequently
described as the second or correlate, while Form is made to stand
forward as the _relatum_. For complete reality, we want the concrete
individual having the implication of both; while, in regard to each
of the constituents _per se_, no separate real existence can be
affirmed, but only a nominal or logical separation.
[Footnote 34: Aristot. De Gener. Animal. II. i. p. 729, a. 10. Matter
and Form are here compared to the female and the male--to mother and
father. Form is a cause operative, Matter a cause co-operative,
though both are alike indispensable to full reality. Compare Physic.
I. ix. p. 192, a. 13: [Greek: ê( me\n ga\r u(pome/nousa sunaiti/a
tê=| morphê=| tô=n ginome/nôn e)sti/n, ô(/sper mê/têr;--a)lla\ tou=t'
e)/stin ê( u(/lê, ô(/sper a)\n ei) thê=lu a)/r)r(enos kai\ ai)schro\n
kalou= (e)phi/eto).]--De Partibus Animalium, I. i. p. 640, b. 28:
[Greek: ê( ga\r kata\ tê\n morphê\n phu/sis kuriôte/ra tê=s u(likê=s
phu/seôs].
Metaphys. Z. iii. p. 1029, a. 5: [Greek: to\ ei)=dos tê=s u(/lês
pro/teron kai\ ma=llon o)/n]--p. 1039, a. 1.
See in Schwegler, pp. 13, 42, 83, Part II. of his Commentary on the
Aristotelian Metaphysica.]
[Footnote 35: Aristot. Metaph. Z. viii. p. 1033, b. 10, seq.]
This difference of rank between Matter and Form--that the first is
inferior and the last the superior--is sometimes so much put in the
foreground, that the two are conceived in a different manner and
under other names, as Potential and Actual. Matter is the potential,
imperfect, inchoate, which the supervening Form actualizes into the
perfect and complete; a transition from half-reality to entire
reality or act. The Potential is the undefined or
indeterminate[36]--what may be or may not be--what is not yet actual,
and may perhaps never become so, but is prepared to pass into
actuality when the energizing principle comes to aid. In this way of
putting the antithesis, the Potential is not so much implicated with
the Actual as merged and suppressed to make room for the Actual: it
is as a half-grown passing into a full-grown; being itself essential
as a preliminary stage in the order of logical generation.[37] The
three logical divisions--Matter, Form, and the resulting Compound or
Concrete ([Greek: to\ su/nolon, to\ suneilêmme/non]), are here
compressed into two--the Potential and the Actualization thereof.
Actuality ([Greek: e)ne/rgeia, e)ntele/cheia]) coincides in meaning
partly with the Form, partly with the resulting Compound; the Form
being so much exalted, that the distinction between the two is almost
effaced.[38]
[Footnote 36: Ibid. [Greek: Th]. viii. p. 1050, b. 10. He says, p.
1048, a. 35, that this distinction between Potential and Actual
cannot be defined, but can only be illustrated by particular
examples, several of which he proceeds to enumerate. Trendelenburg
observes (Note **ad Aristot. De Animâ, p. 307):--"[Greek: Du/namis]
contraria adhuc in se inclusa tenet, ut in utrumque abire possit:
[Greek: e)ne/rgeia] alterum excludit." Compare also ib. p. 302. This
_May or May not be_ is the widest and most general sense of the terms
[Greek: du/namis] and [Greek: dunato/n], common to all the analogical
or derivative applications that Aristotle points out as belonging to
them. It is more general than that which he gives as the [Greek:
ku/rios o(/ros tê=s prô/tês duna/meôs--a)rchê/ metablêtikê\ e)n
a)/llô| ê)\ ê(=| a)/llo], and ought seemingly to be itself considered
as the [Greek: ku/rios o(/ros]. Cf. Arist. Metaphys. [Greek: D]. xii.
p. 1020, a. 5, with the comment of Bonitz, who remarks upon the loose
language of Aristotle in this chapter but imputes to Aristotle a
greater amount of contradiction than he seems to deserve (Comm. ad
Metaphys. pp. 256, 393).]
[Footnote 37: _Ens potentiâ_ is a variety of _Ens_ (Arist. Metaph.
[Greek: D]. vii. p. 1017, b. 6), but an imperfect variety: it is
[Greek: o)\n a)tele/s], which may become matured into [Greek: o)\n
te/leion, o)\n e)ntelechei/a|] or [Greek: e)nergei/a|] (Metaphys.
[Greek: Th]. i. p. 1045, a. 34).
Matter is either remote or proximate, removed either by one stage or
several stages from the [Greek: su/nolon] in which it culminates.
Strictly speaking, none but proximate matter is said to exist [Greek:
duna/mei]. Alexander Schol. (ad Metaph. [Greek: Th]. p. 1049, a. 19)
p. 781, b. 39: [Greek: ê( po/r)r(ô u(/lê ou) le/getai duna/mei. ti/
dê/ pote? o(/ti ou) parônumia/zomen ta\ pra/gmata e)k tê=s po/r)r(ô
a)ll' e)k tê=s prosechou=s; le/gomen ga\r to\ kibô/tion xu/linon e)k
tê=s prosechou=s, a)ll' ou) gê/i+non e)k tê=s po/r)r(ô.]]
[Footnote 38: Aristot. Metaphys. [Greek: Ê]. i. p. 1042, a. 25, seq.
He scarcely makes any distinction here between [Greek: u(/lê] and
[Greek: du/namis], or between [Greek: morphê\] and [Greek:
e)ne/rgeia] (cf. [Greek: Th]. viii. p. 1050, a. 15).
Alexander in his Commentary on this book ([Greek: Th]. iii. p. 1047,
a. 30) p. 542, Bonitz's edit., remarks that [Greek: e)ne/rgeia] is
used by Aristotle in a double sense; sometimes meaning [Greek:
ki/nêsis pro\s to\ te/los], sometimes meaning the [Greek: te/los]
itself. Comp. [Greek: Ê]. iii. p. 1043, a. 32; also the commentary of
Bonitz, p. 393.]
Two things are to be remembered respecting Matter, in its
Aristotelian (logical or ontological) sense: (1) It may be Body, but
it is not necessarily Body;[39] (2) It is only intelligible as the
correlate of Form: it can neither exist by itself, nor can it be
known by itself (_i.e._, when taken out of that relativity). This
deserves notice, because to forget the relativity of a relative word,
and to reason upon it as if it were an absolute, is an oversight not
unfrequent. Furthermore, each variety of Matter has its appropriate
Form, and each variety of Form its appropriate Matter, with which it
correlates. There are various stages or gradations of Matter; from
_Materia Prima_, which has no Form at all, passing upwards through
successive partial developments to _Materia Ultima_; which last is
hardly[40] distinguishable from Form or from _Materia Formata_.
[Footnote 39: Aristot. Metaph. Z. xi. p. 1036, a. 8: [Greek: ê( d'
u(/lê a)/gnôstos kath' au(tê/n. u(/lê d' ê( me\n ai)sthêtê/, ê( de\
noêtê/; ai)sthêtê\ me\n oi(=on chalko\s kai\ xu/lon kai\ o(/sê
kinêtê\ u(/lê, noêtê\ de\ ê( e)n toi=s ai)sthêtoi=s u(pa/rchousa mê\
ê(=| ai)sthêta/, oi(=on ta\ mathêmatika/.]--p. 1035, a. 7.
Physica, III. vi. p. 207, a. 26; De Generat. et Corrupt. I. v. p.
320, b. 14-25.]
[Footnote 40: Aristot. De Animâ, II. ii. p. 414, a. 25: [Greek:
e(ka/stou ga\r ê( e)ntele/cheia e)n tô=| duna/mei u(pa/rchonti kai\
tê=| oi)kei/a| u(/lê pe/phuken e)ggi/nesthai.]--Physica, II. ii. p.
194, b. 8: [Greek: e)/ti tô=n pro/s ti ê( u(/lê; a)/llô| ga\r ei)/dei
a)/llê u(/lê.]--Metaph. [Greek: Ê]. vi. p. 1045, b. 17: [Greek:
e)/sti d', ô(/sper ei)/rêtai, kai\ ê( e)scha/tê u(/lê kai\ ê( morphê\
tau)to/ kai\ duna/mei, to\ de\ e)nergei/a|.] See upon this doctrine
Schwegler's Commentary, pp. 100, 154, 173, 240, Pt. 2nd. Compare also
Arist. De Gener. Animal. II. i. p. 735, a. 9; also De Coelo, IV. iii.
p. 310, b. 14.]
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 correlate) 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;[41] 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.[42] This is all that is essential to the soul; the
second or higher entelechy (actual exercise of the faculties) is not
a constant or universal property.[43]
[Footnote 41: Aristot. De Animâ, II. i. p. 412, b. 18: [Greek: ei)
ga\r ê)=n o( o)phthalmo\s zô|o/n, psuchê\ a)\n ê)=n au)tou= ê(
o)/psis; au(/tê ga\r ou)si/a o)phthalmou= ê( kata\ to\n lo/gon. o( d'
o)phthalmo\s u(/lê o)/pseôs, ê(=s a)poleipou/sês ou)ke/t'
o)phthalmo/s, plê\n o(mônu/môs, katha/per o( li/thinos kai\ o(
gegramme/nos.]]
[Footnote 42: Aristot. De Animâ, II. i. p. 412, a. 27: [Greek: dio\
psuchê/ e)stin e)ntele/cheia ê( prô/tê sô/matos phusikou= duna/mei
zôê\n e)/chontos; toiou=to de\ o(\ a)\n ê)=| o)rganiko/n.] Compare
Metaphysica, Z. x. p. 1035, b. 14-27.]
[Footnote 43: Aristot. De Animâ, II. ii. p. 414, a. 8-18. 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 [Greek:
e(/xis] and [Greek: e)ne/rgeia]. See Topica, IV. v. p. 125, b. 15;
Ethic. Nikom. II. i.-v. p. 1103 seq.]
In this definition of 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 correlate; the
soul, as the _relatum_, is unintelligible and unmeaning without its
correlate, 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 correlate; 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."[44] Soul is to body (we thus read), not as a
compound of like elements, nor as a type is to its copy, or _vice
versâ_, but as a _relatum_ to its correlate; dependent upon the body
for all its acts and manifestations, and bringing to 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.[45]
[Footnote 44: Aristot. De Animâ, II. ii. p. 414, a. 19: [Greek: kai\
dia\ tou=to kalô=s u(polamba/nousin oi(=s dokei= mêt' a)/neu sô/matos
ei)=nai mê/te sô/ma/ ti ê( psuchê/; sô=ma me\n ga\r _ou)k e)/sti,
sô/matos de/ ti_, kai\ dia\ tou=to e)n sô/mati u(pa/rchei, kai\ e)n
sô/mati toiou/tô|.] Compare Aristot. De Juventute et Senectute, i. p.
467, b. 14.]
[Footnote 45: Aristot. De Generat. Animal. II. i. p. 731, b. 29.]
The animated subject is thus a form immersed or implicated in matter;
and all its actions and passions are so likewise.[46] 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.[47]
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 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[48]):
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 _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 inter-dependent, though logically
distinguishable. The perfect or imperfect 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 Noûs, or intellective soul, than of the sentient
soul.[49] Intelligence, as well as emotion, are phenomena, not of the
bodily organism simply, nor of the Noûs simply, but of the community
or partnership of which both are members; and, when intelligence
gives way, this is not because the Noûs itself is impaired, but
because the partnership is ruined by the failure of the bodily
organism.
[Footnote 46: Aristot. De Animâ, I. i. p. 403, a. 25: [Greek: ta\
pa/thê lo/goi e)/nuloi/ ei)sin.] Compare II. p. 412, b. 10-25; p.
413, a. 2.]
[Footnote 47: Ibid. I. i. p. 403, a. 30.]
[Footnote 48: Ibid. iv. p. 408, b. 12. [Greek: to\ de\ le/gein
o)rgi/zesthai tê\n psuchê\n o(/moion ka)\n ei)/ tis le/goi tê\n
psuchê\n u(phai/nein ê)\ oi)kodomei=n; be/ltion ga\r i)/sôs mê\
le/gein tê\n psuchê\n _e)leei=n ê)\ mantha/nein ê)\ dianoei=sthai_,
a)lla\ _to\n a)/nthrôpon_ tê=| psuchê=|; tou=to de\ mê\ ô(s e)n
e)kei/nê| tê=s kinê/seôs ou)/sês, a)ll' o(/te me\n me/chri e)kei/nês,
o(/te d' a)p' e)kei/nês], &c. Again, b. 30: [Greek: o(/ti me\n ou)=n
ou)ch oi(=o/n te kinei=sthai tê\n psuchê/n, phanero\n e)k tou/tôn.]]
[Footnote 49: Ibid. b. 26. Compare a similar doctrine in the Timæus
of Plato, p. 86, B.-D.]
Respecting the Noûs (the theorizing Noûs), 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 correlate is constantly insisted on by Aristotle; without such
correlate 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;[50] by which is meant, not an
independent and pre-existent something that brings the body into
existence but, an immanent or indwelling 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. The soul 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
body--nutrition, 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 aimed
at by each body in the economy of Nature.[51] 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.
[Footnote 50: Aristot. De Animâ, II. iv. p. 415, b. 7: [Greek: e)/sti
d' ê( psuchê\ tou= zô=ntos sô/matos ai)ti/a kai\ a)rchê/; tau=ta de\
pollachô=s le/getai.]]
[Footnote 51: Ibid. b. 1.]
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 soul, called Nutritive by Aristotle, corresponding thereto
connotes only nutrition, growth, decay, and generation of another
similar individual.[52] 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 unities of
the Nutritive soul, together with sensible perception (at least in
its rudest shape) besides.[53] 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
admixture of the Sentient. Again, the Sentient soul does not
necessarily possess either memory, imagination, or intellect (Noûs);
but no soul can be either Imaginative or Noëtic, without being
Sentient as well as Nutritive. The Noëtic Soul, as the highest of
all, retains in itself all the lower faculties; but these are found
to exist apart from it.[54]
[Footnote 52: In the Aristotelian treatise De Plantis, p. 815, b. 16,
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 those other philosophers.]
[Footnote 53: Aristot. De Animâ, I. v. p. 411, b. 28.]
[Footnote 54: Ibid. II. ii. p. 413, a. 25-30, b. 32; iii. p. 414, b.
29; p. 415, a. 10.]
We may remark here that the psychological classification of Aristotle
proceeds in the inverse direction to that of Plato. In the Platonic
Timæus we begin with the grand soul of the Kosmos, and are conducted
by successive steps of degradation to men, animals, plants; while
Aristotle lays his foundation in the largest, most multiplied, and
lowest range of individuals, carrying us by successive increase of
conditions to the fewer and the higher.
The lowest or Nutritive soul, in spite of the small number of
conditions involved in it, is the indispensable basis whereon all the
others depend. None of the other souls can exist apart from it.[55]
It is the first constituent of the living individual--the implication
of Form with Matter in a natural body suitably organized; it is the
preservative of the life of the individual, with its aggregate of
functions and faculties, and with the proper limits of size and shape
that characterize the species;[56] it is, moreover, the preservative
of perpetuity to the species, inasmuch as it prompts and enables each
individual to generate and leave behind a successor like himself;
which is the only way that an individual can obtain
quasi-immortality, though all aspire to become immortal.[57] This
lowest soul is the primary cause of digestion and nutrition. It is
cognate with the celestial heat, which is essential also as a
co-operative cause; accordingly, all animated bodies possess an
inherent natural heat.[58]
[Footnote 55: Ibid. iv. p. 415, a. 25: [Greek: prô/tê kai\ koinota/tê
du/nami/s e)sti psuchê=s, kath' ê(\n u(pa/rchei to\ zê=n
a(/pasin.]--p. 415, b. 8: [Greek: tou= zô=ntos sô/matos ai)ti/a kai\
a)rchê/].--III. xii. p. 434, a. 22-30, b. 24. Aristot. De
Respiratione, viii. p. 474, a. 30, b. 11.]
[Footnote 56: Aristot. De Animâ, II. iv. p. 416, a. 17.]
[Footnote 57: Ibid. p. 415, b. 2; p. 416, b. 23: [Greek: e)pei\ d'
a)po\ tou= te/lous a(/panta prosagoreu/ein di/kaion, te/los de\ to\
gennê=sai oi(=on au)to/, a)\n ê( prô/tê psuchê\ gennêtikê\ oi(=on
au)to/.] Also De Generat. Animal. II. i. p. 731, b. 33.]
[Footnote 58: Aristot. De Animâ, II. iv. p. 416, a. 10-18, b. 29.]
We advance upwards now from the nutritive soul to that higher soul
which is at once nutritive and Sentient; for Aristotle does not
follow the example of Plato in recognizing three souls to one body,
but assigns only one and the same soul, though with multiplied
faculties and functions, to one and the same body. Sensible
perception, with its accompaniments, forms the characteristic
privilege of the animal as contrasted with the plant.[59] Sensible
perception admits of many diversities, from the simplest and rudest
tactile sensation, which even the lowest animals cannot be without,
to the full equipment of five senses which Aristotle declares to be a
maximum not susceptible of increase.[60] But the sentient faculty,
even in its lowest stage, indicates a remarkable exaltation of the
soul in its character of form. The soul, _quâ_ sentient and
percipient, receives the form of the _perceptum_ without the matter;
whereas the nutritive soul cannot disconnect the two, but receives
and appropriates the nutrient substance, form and matter in one and
combined.[61] Aristotle illustrates this characteristic feature of
sensible perception by recurring to his former example of the wax and
the figure. Just as wax receives from a signet the impression
engraven thereon, whether the matter of the signet be iron, gold,
stone, or wood; as the impression stamped has no regard to the
matter, but reproduces only the figure engraven on the signet, the
wax being merely potential and undefined, until the signet comes to
convert it into something actual and definite;[62] so the percipient
faculty in man is impressed by the substances in nature, not
according to the matter of each but, according to the qualitative
form of each. Such passive receptivity is the first and lowest form
of sensation,[63] not having any magnitude in itself, but residing in
bodily organs which have magnitude, and separable from them only by
logical abstraction. It is a potentiality, correlating with, and in
due proportion to, the exterior _percipibile_, which, when acting
upon it, brings it into full actuality. The actuality of both
(_percipiens_ and _perceptum_) is one and the same, and cannot be
disjoined in fact, though the potentialities of the two are distinct
yet correlative; the _percipiens_ is not like the _percipibile_
originally, but becomes like it by being thus actualized.[64]
[Footnote 59: Aristot. De Sensu et Sensili, i. p. 436, b. 12. He
considers sponges to have some sensation (Hist. Animal. I. i. p. 487,
b. 9).]
[Footnote 60: Aristot. De Animâ, II. iii. p. 414, b. 2; p. 415, a. 3;
III. i. p. 424, b. 22; xiii. p. 435, b. 15.]
[Footnote 61: Ibid. II. xii. p. 424, a. 32-b. 4: [Greek: dia\ ti/
pote ta\ phuta\ ou)k ai)stha/netai, e)/chonta/ ti mo/rion psuchiko\n
kai\ pa/schonta/ ti u(po\ tô=n a(ptô=n? kai\ ga\r psu/chetai kai\
thermai/netai; ai)/tion ga\r to\ mê\ e)/chein meso/têta, mêde\
toiau/tên a)rchê\n oi(/an ta\ ei)/dê de/chesthai tô=n ai)sthêtô=n,
a)lla\ pa/schein meta\ tê=s u(/lês.]
Themistius ad loc. p. 144, ed. Spengel: [Greek: pa/schei (ta\ phuta/)
suneisiou/sês tê=s u(/lês tou= poiou=ntos], &c.]
[Footnote 62: Aristot. De Animâ, II. xii. p. 424, a. 19.]
[Footnote 63: Ibid. a. 24: [Greek: ai)sthêtê/rion de\ prô=ton e)n
ô(=| ê( toiau/tê du/namis], &c.--III. xii. p. 434, a. 29.]
[Footnote 64: Ibid. III. ii. p. 425, b. 25: [Greek: ê( de\ tou=
ai)sthêtou= e)ne/rgeia kai\ tê=s ai)sthê/seôs ê( au)tê\ me/n e)sti
kai\ mi/a, to\ d' ei)=nai ou) tau)to\n au)tai=s.]--II. v. p. 418, a.
3: [Greek: to\ d' ai)sthêtiko\n duna/mei e)sti\n oi(=on to\
ai)sthêto\n ê)/dê e)ntelechei/a|,--pa/schei me\n ou)=n ou)ch o(/moion
o)/n, pepontho\s d' ô(moi/ôtai kai\ e)/stin oi(=on e)kei=no.] Also p.
417, a. 7, 14, 20.
There were conflicting doctrines current in Aristotle's time: some
said that, for an agent to act upon a patient, there must be
_likeness_ between the two; others said that there must be
_unlikeness_. Aristotle dissents from both, and adopts a sort of
intermediate doctrine.]
The sentient soul is communicated by the male parent in the act of
generation,[65] and is complete from the moment of birth, not
requiring a process of teaching after birth; the sentient subject
becomes at once and instantly, in regard to sense, on a level with
one that has attained a certain actuality of cognition, but is not at
the moment reflecting upon the _cognitum_. Potentiality and Actuality
are in fact distinguishable into lower and higher degrees; the
Potential that has been actualized in a first or lower stage, is
still a Potential relatively to higher stages of Actuality.[66] The
Potential may be acted upon in two opposite ways; either by deadening
and extinguishing it, or by developing and carrying it forward to
realization. The sentient soul, when asleep or inert, requires a
cause to stimulate it into actual seeing or hearing; the noëtic or
cognizant soul, under like circumstances, must also be stimulated
into actual meditation on its _cognitum_. But there is this
difference between the two. The sentient soul communes with
particulars; the noëtic soul with universals. The sentient soul
derives its stimulus from without, and from some of the individual
objects, tangible, visible, or audible; but the noëtic soul is put
into action by the abstract and universal, which is in a certain
sense _within_ the soul itself; so that a man can at any time
meditate on what he pleases, but he cannot see or hear what he
pleases, or anything except such visible or audible objects as are at
hand.[67]
[Footnote 65: Aristot. De Gener. Animal. II. v. p. 741, a. 13, b. 7;
De Animâ, II. v. p. 417, b. 17.]
[Footnote 66: Aristot. De Animâ, II. v. p. 417, b. 18-32. See above,
p. 457, note a.
The extent of Potentiality, or the partial Actuality, which Aristotle
claims for the sentient soul even at birth, deserves to be kept in
mind; we shall contrast it presently with what he says about the
Noûs.]
[Footnote 67: Aristot. De Animâ, II. v. p. 417, b. 22: [Greek:
ai)/tion de\ o(/ti, tô=n kath' e(/kaston ê( kat' e)ne/rgeian
ai)/sthêsis, ê( d' e)pistê/mê tô=n katho/lou; tau=ta d' e)n au)tê=|
pô/s e)sti tê=| psuchê=|.] III. iii. p. 427, b. 18.]
We have already remarked, that in many animals the sentient soul is
little developed; being confined in some to the sense of touch (which
can never be wanting),[68] and in others to touch and taste. But even
this minimum of sense--though small, if compared with the variety of
senses in man--is a prodigious step in advance of plants; it
comprises a certain cognition, and within its own sphere it is always
critical, comparing, discriminative.[69] The sentient soul possesses
this discriminative faculty in common with the noëtic soul or
Intelligence, though applied to different objects and purposes; and
possesses such faculty, because it is itself a mean or middle term
between the two sensible extremes of which it takes cognizance,--hot
and cold, hard and soft, wet and dry, white and black, acute and
grave, bitter and sweet, light and darkness, visible and invisible,
tangible and intangible, &c. We feel no sensation at all when the
object touched is exactly of the same temperature with ourselves,
neither hotter nor colder; the sentient soul, being a mean between
the two extremes, is stimulated to assimilate itself for the time to
either of them, according as it is acted upon from without. It thus
makes comparison of each with the other, and of both with its own
mean.[70] Lastly, the sentient faculty in the soul is really one and
indivisible, though distinguishable logically or by abstraction into
different genera and species.[71] Of that faculty the central
physical organ is the heart, which contains the congenital or animal
spirit. The Aristotelian psychology is here remarkable, affirming as
it does the essential relativity of all phenomena of sense to the
appreciative condition of the sentient; as well as the constant
implication of intellectual and discriminative comparison among them.
[Footnote 68: Ibid. III. xii. p. 434, b. 23: [Greek: phanero\n o(/ti
ou)ch oi(=o/n te a)/neu a(phê=s ei)=nai zô=|on.]]
[Footnote 69: Ibid. ix. p. 432, a. 16: [Greek: tô=| kritikô=|, o(\
dianoi/as e)/rgon e)sti\ kai\ ai)sthê/seôs.]--III. iii. p. 427, a.
20; p. 426, b. 10-15. De Generat. Animal. I. xxiii. p. 731, a. 30-b.
5; De Somno et Vigil. i. p. 458**, b. 2. The sentient faculty is
called [Greek: du/namin su/mphuton kritikê/n] in Analyt. Poster.
II. xix. p. 99, b. 35.]
[Footnote 70: Aristot. De Animâ, II. x. p. 422, a. 20; ix. p. 421, b.
4-11; xi. p. 424, a. 5: [Greek: kai\ dia\ tou=to kri/nei ta\
ai)sthêta/--to\ ga\r me/son kritiko/n]. III. vii. p. 431, a. 10:
[Greek: e)/sti to\ ê(/desthai kai\ lupei=sthai to\ e)nergei=n tê=|
ai)sthêtikê=| meso/têti pro\s to\ a)gatho\n ê)\ kako/n, ê(=|
toiau=ta.] III. xiii. p. 435, a. 21.
He remarks that plants have no similar [Greek: meso/tês]--II. xii. p.
424, b. 1.]
[Footnote 71: Aristot. De Sensu et Sensili, vii. p. 449, a. 8, 17. De
Motu Animal. x. p. 703, a. 15. De Somno et Vigil. ii. p. 455, a. 15,
21, 35; p. 456, a. 5. De Juventute et Senect. p. 467, b. 27; p. 469,
a. 4-12.]
All the objects generating sensible perception, are magnitudes.[72]
Some perceptions are peculiar to one sense alone, as colour to the
eye, &c. Upon these we never make mistakes directly; in other words,
we always judge rightly what is the colour or what is the sound,
though we are often deceived in judging what the thing coloured is,
or where the sonorous object is.[73] There are, however, some
perceivables not peculiar to any one sense alone, but appreciable by
two or more; though chiefly and best by the sense of vision; such are
motion, rest, number, figure, magnitude. Here the appreciation
becomes less accurate, yet it is still made directly by sense.[74]
But there are yet other matters that, though not directly affecting
sense, are perceived indirectly, or by way of accompaniment to what
is directly perceived. Thus we see a white object; nothing else
affecting our sense **except its whiteness. Beyond this,
however, we judge and declare, that the object so seen is the son of
Kleon. This is a judgment obtained indirectly, or by way of
accompaniment; by _accident_, so to speak, inasmuch as the same does
not accompany all sensations of white. It is here that we are most
liable to error.[75]
[Footnote 72: Aristot. De Sensu et Sensili, vii. p. 449, a. 20:
[Greek: to\ ai)sthêto\n pa=n e)sti\ me/gethos.]]
[Footnote 73: Aristot. De Animâ, II. vi. p. 418, a. 10-16.]
[Footnote 74: Aristot. De Sensu et Sensili, i. p. 437, a. 8; iv. p.
442, b. 4-12. He says in this last passage, that the common
perceivables are appreciable _at least by both sight and touch_--if
not by all the senses.]
[Footnote 75: Aristot. De Animâ, II. vi. p. 418, a. 7-25: [Greek:
le/getai de\ to\ ai)sthêto\n trichô=s, ô(=n du/o me\n kath' au(ta/
phamen ai)stha/nesthai, to\ de\ e(\n kata\ sumbebêko/s.] Also, III.
i. p. 425, b. 24; iii. p. 428, b. 18-25.]
Among the five senses, Aristotle distinguishes two as operating by
direct contact between subject and object (touch, taste); three as
operating through an external intervening medium (vision, smell,
taste). He begins with Vision, which he regards as possessing most
completely the nature and characteristics of a sense.[76] The direct
and proper object of vision is colour. Now colour operates upon the
eye not immediately (for, if the coloured object be placed in contact
with the eye, there will be no vision), but by causing movements or
perturbations in the external intervening medium, air or water, which
affect the sense through an appropriate agency of their own.[77] This
agency is, according to Aristotle, the Diaphanous or Transparent.
When actual or in energy, the transparent is called light; when
potential or in capacity only, it is called darkness. The eye is of
watery structure, apt for receiving these impressions.[78] It is the
presence either of fire, or of something analogous to the celestial
body, that calls forth the diaphanous from the state of potentiality
into that of actuality or light; in which latter condition it is
stimulated by colour. The diaphanous, whether as light or as
darkness, is a peculiar nature or accompaniment, not substantive in
itself, but inherent chiefly in the First or Celestial Body, yet also
in air, water, glass, precious stones, and in all bodies to a greater
or less degree.[79] The diaphanous passes at once and simultaneously,
in one place as well as in another, from potentiality to
actuality--from darkness to light. Light does not take time to travel
from one place to another, as sound and smell do.[80] The diaphanous
is not a body, nor effluvium from a body, nor any one of the elements:
it is of an adjective character--a certain agency or attribute
pervading or belonging to bodies, along with their extension.[81]
Colour marks and defines the surface of the body _quâ_ diaphanous, as
figure defines it _quâ_ extended. Colour makes the diaphanous itself
visible, and its own varieties visible through the diaphanous. Air
and water are transparent throughout, though with an ill-defined
superficial colour. White and black, as colours in solid bodies,
correspond to the condition of light or darkness in air. There are
some luminous objects visible in the dark, as fire, fungous matter,
eyes, and scales of fish, &c., though they have no appropriate
colour.[82] There are seven species or varieties of colours, but all
of them proceed from white and black, blended in different
proportions, or seen one through another; white and black are the
two extremes, the other varieties being intermediate between them.
[Footnote 76: Aristot. De Animâ, III. iii. p. 429, a. 2: [Greek: ê(
o)/psis ma/lista ai)sthêsi/s e)stin.] Also Metaphysica, A. init.]
[Footnote 77: Aristot. De Animâ, II. vii. p. 419, a. 12, 14, 19;
Aristot. De Sensu et Sensili, iii. p. 440, a. 18: [Greek: ô(/st'
eu)thu\s krei=tton pha/nai, tô=| kinei=sthai to\ metaxu\ tê=s
ai)sthê/seôs u(po\ tou= ai)sthêtou= gi/nesthai tê\n ai)/sthêsin,
a(phê=| kai\ mê\ tai=s a)por)r(oi/ais.]--Ib. ii. p. 438, b. 3:
[Greek: ei)/te phô=s ei)/t' a)ê/r e)sti to\ metaxu\ tou= o(rôme/nou
kai\ tou= o)/mmatos, ê( dia\ tou/tou ki/nêsi/s e)stin ê( poiou=sa to\
o(ra=n.]]
[Footnote 78: Aristot. De Animâ, II. vii. p. 419, a. 9: [Greek:
tou=to ga\r ê)=n au)tô=| to\ chrô/mati ei)=nai, to\ kinêtikô=|
ei)=nai tou= kat' e)ne/rgeian diaphanou=s phô=s e)sti/n.]--Ib. ii. p.
418, b. 11-17: [Greek: o(/tan ê)=| e)ntelechei/a| diaphane\s u(po\
puro\s ê)\ toiou/tou oi(=on to\ a)/nô sô=ma;--puro\s ê)\ toiou/tou
tino\s parousi/a e)n tô=| diaphanei=.]]
[Footnote 79: Aristot. De Animâ, II. vii. p. 418, b. 4. De Sensu et
Sensili, ii. p. 438, a. 14, b. 7; iii. p. 439, a. 21, seq.: [Greek:
o(\ de\ le/gomen diaphane/s, ou)k e)/stin i)/dion a)e/ros ê)\
u(/datos, ou)d' a)/llou tô=n ou(/tô legome/nôn sôma/tôn, a)lla/ ti/s
e)sti\ koinê\ phu/sis kai\ du/namis, ê(\ chôristê\ me\n ou)k e)/stin,
e)n tou/tois d' e)sti/, kai\ toi=s a)/llois sô/masin e)nupa/rchei,
toi=s me\n ma=llon toi=s d' ê(=tton.]]
[Footnote 80: Aristot. De Sensu et Sensili, vi. p. 446, a. 23, seq.,
b. 27: [Greek: tô=| ei)=nai ga/r ti phô=s e)sti/n, a)ll' ou)
ki/nêsi/s tis.] Empedokles affirmed that light travelling from the
Sun reached the intervening space before it came to the earth;
Aristotle contradicts him.]
[Footnote 81: Aristot. De Animâ, II. vii. p. 418, b. 18: [Greek:
e)/sti de\ to\ sko/tos ste/rêsis tê=s toiau/tês e(/xeôs e)k
diaphanou=s, ô(/ste dê=lon o(/ti kai\ ê( _tou/tou parousi/a_ phô=s
e)sti/n.]--Aristot. De Sensu et Sensili, iii. p. 439, a. 26: [Greek:
ê( me\n ou)=n tou= phôto\s phu/sis e)n ao)ri/stô| tô=| diaphanei=
e)sti/n; tou= d' e)n toi=s sô/masi diaphanou=s to\ e)/schaton, o(/ti
me\n ei)/ê a)/n ti, dê=lon; o(/ti de\ tou=to e)sti\ to\ chrô=ma, e)/k
tô=n sumbaino/ntôn phanero/n.--e)/sti me\n ga\r e)n tô=| tou=
sô/matos pe/rati, a)ll' ou)/ ti to\ tou= sô/matos pe/ras, a)lla\ tê\n
au)tê\n phu/sin dei= nomi/zein, ê(/per kai\ e)/xô chrômati/zetai,
tau/tên kai\ e)nto/s.]]
[Footnote 82: Aristot. De Animâ, II. vii. p. 419, a. 2-25; Aristot.
De Sensu et Sensili, iv. p. 442, a. 20,--seven colours.]
The same necessity for an intervening medium external to the subject,
as in the case of vision, prevails also in the senses of hearing and
smell. If the audible or odorous object be placed in contact with its
organ of sense, there will be no hearing or smell. Whenever we hear
or smell any object, there must be interposed between us and the
object a suitable medium that shall be affected first; while the
organ of sense will be affected secondarily through that medium. Air
is the medium in regard to sound, both air and water in regard to
smell; but there seems besides (analogous to the transparent in
regard to vision) a special agency called the Trans-Sonant, which
pervades air and enables it to transmit sound; and certainly another
special agency called the Trans-Olfacient, which pervades both air
and water, and enables them to transmit smell.[83] (It seems thus
that something like a luminiferous ether--extended, mobile, and
permeating bodies, yet still incorporeal in itself--was an hypothesis
as old as Aristotle; and one other ether besides, analogous in
property and purpose--an odoriferous ether; perhaps a third or
soniferous ether, but this is less distinctly specified by
Aristotle.)
[Footnote 83: Aristot. De Animâ, II. vii. p. 419, a. 25-35; De Sensu
et Sensili, v. p. 442, b. 30; Themistius ad Aristot. De Animâ, II.
vii., viii. p. 115, Spengel. Of the three names, [Greek: to\
diaphane/s--to\ diêche/s--to\ di/osmon], the last two are not
distinctly stated by Aristotle, but are said to have been first
applied by Theophrastus after him. See the notes of Trendelenburg and
Torstrick; the latter supposes Themistius to have had before him a
fuller and better text of Aristotle than that which we now possess,
which seems corrupt. In our present text, the transparent as well as
the trans-olfacient ether are clearly indicated, the trans-sonant not
clearly.]
Sound, according to Aristotle, arises from the shock of two or more
solid bodies communicated to the air. It implies local movement in
one at least of those bodies. Many soft bodies are incapable of
making sound; those best suited for it are such as metals, hard in
structure, smooth in surface, hollow in shape. The blow must be smart
and quick, otherwise the air slips away and dissipates itself before
the sound can be communicated to it.[84] Sound is communicated
through the air to the organ of hearing; the air is one _continuum_
(not composed of adjacent particles with interspaces), and a wave is
propagated from it to the internal ear, which contains some air
enclosed in the sinuous ducts within the membrane of the tympanum,
congenitally attached to the organ itself, and endued with a certain
animation.[85] This internal air within the ear, excited by the
motion propagated from the external ear, causes hearing. The ear is
enabled to appreciate accurately the movements of the external air,
because it has itself little or no movement within. We cannot hear
with any other part of the body; because it is only in the ear that
nature has given us this stock of internal air. If water gets into
the ear, we cannot hear at all; because the wave generated in the air
without, cannot propagate itself within. Nor can we hear, if the
membrane of the ear be disordered; any more than we can see, when the
membrane of the eye is disordered.[86]
[Footnote 84: Aristot. De Animâ, **II. viii. p. 419, b. 4 seq. He
calls air [Greek: psathuro/s, eu)/thruptos] (p. 420,
a. 1-8),--[Greek: eu)diai/retos, eu)o/listhos] (Themistius, pp. 116,
117, Sp.)--"quod facilé diffluit" (Trendelenburg, Comm. p. 384). He
says that for sonorous purposes air ought to be [Greek:
a)throu=n]--compact or dense: sound reverberates best from metals
with smooth surface, p. 420, a. 25.]
[Footnote 85: Aristot. De Animâ, II. viii. p. 419, b. 34 seq.:
[Greek: ou(=tos d' (o( a)ê\r) e)sti\n o( poiô=n a)kou/ein, o(/tan
kinêthê=| sunechê\s kai\ ei(=s;--psophêtiko\n me\n ou)=n to\
kinêtiko\n e(no\s a)e/ros sunechei/a| me/chris a)koê=s. a)koê=| de\
sumphuê\s a)ê/r; dia\ de\ to\ e)n a)e/ri ei)=nai, kinoume/nou tou=
e)/xô to\ ei)/sô kinei=. dio/per ou) pa/ntê| to\ zô=|on a)kou/ei,
ou)de\ pa/ntê| die/rchetai o( a)ê/r; ou) ga\r pa/ntê| e)/chei a)e/ra
to\ kinêso/menon me/ros kai\ e)/mpsuchon.--dia\ ta\s e(/likas] (p.
420, a. 13).
The text of this passage is not satisfactory. It has been much
criticised as well as amended by Torstrick; see his Comment. p. 148
seq. I cannot approve his alteration of [Greek: e)/mpsuchon] into
[Greek: e)/mpsophon].]
[Footnote 86: Aristot. De Animâ, II. viii. p. 420, a. 9: [Greek: o(
d' e)n toi=s ô)si\n e)gkatô|kodo/mêtai pro\s to\ a)ki/nêtos ei)=nai,
o(/pôs a)kribô=s ai)stha/nêtai pa/sas ta\s diaphora\s tê=s
kinê/seôs.]--p. 420, a. 14. [Greek: ou)d' (a)kou/omen) a)\n ê(
mê/nigx ka/mê|, ô(/sper to\ e)pi\ tê=| ko/rê| de/rma o(/tan ka/mê|.]]
Voice is a kind of sound peculiar to animated beings; yet not
belonging to all of them, but only to those that inspire the air.
Nature employs respiration for two purposes: the first, indispensable
to animal life,--that of cooling and tempering the excessive heat of
the heart and its adjacent parts; the second, not indispensable to
life, yet most valuable to the higher faculties of man,--significant
speech. The organ of respiration is the larynx; a man cannot speak
either when inspiring or expiring, but only when retaining and using
the breath within. The soul in those parts, when guided by some
phantasm or thought, impels the air within against the walls of the
trachea, and this shock causes vocal sounds.[87]
[Footnote 87: Aristot. De Animâ, II. viii. p. 420, b. 5-p. 421, a. 6.
[Greek: ô(/ste ê( plêgê\ tou= a)napneome/nou a)e/ros u(po\ tê=s e)n
tou/tois toi=s mori/ois psuchê=s pro\s tê\n kaloume/nên a)rtêri/an
phônê/ e)stin. ou) ga\r pa=s zô/|ou pso/phos phônê/, katha/per
ei)/pomen (e)/sti ga\r kai\ tê=| glô/ttê| psophei=n kai\ ô(s oi(
bê/ttontes) a)lla\ dei= e)/mpsucho/n te ei)=nai to\ tu/pton kai\
meta\ phantasi/as tino/s; sêmantiko\s ga\r dê/ tis pso/phos e)sti\n
ê( phônê/; kai\ ou) tou= a)napneome/nou a)e/ros, ô(/sper ê( bê/x,
a)lla\ tou/tô| tu/ptei to\n e)n tê=| a)rtêri/a| pro\s au)tê/n.]]
Aristotle seems to have been tolerably satisfied with the above
explanation of sight and hearing; for, in approaching the sense of
Smell with the olfacients, he begins by saying that it is less
definable and explicable. Among the five senses, smell stands
intermediate between the two (taste and touch) that operate by direct
contact, and the other two (sight and hearing) that operate through
an external medium. Man is below other animals in this sense; he
discriminates little in smells except the pleasurable and the
painful.[88] His taste, though analogous in many points to smell, is
far more accurate and discriminating, because taste is a variety of
touch; and in respect to touch, man is the most discriminating of all
animals. Hence his great superiority to them in practical wisdom.
Indeed the marked difference of intelligence between one man and
another, turns mainly upon the organ of touch: men of hard flesh (or
skin) are by nature dull in intelligence, men of soft flesh are apt
and clever.[89] The classifying names of different smells are
borrowed from the names of the analogous tastes to which they are
analogous--sweet, bitter, tart, dry, sharp, smooth, &c.[90] Smells
take effect through air as well as through water; by means of a
peculiar agency or accompaniment (mentioned above, called the
Trans-Olfacient) pervading both one and the other. It is peculiar to
man that he cannot smell except when inhaling air in the act of
inspiration; any one may settle this for himself by making the
trial.[91] But fishes and other aquatic animals, which never inhale
air, can smell in the water; and this proves that the trans-olfacient
agency is operative to transmit odours not less in water than in
air.[92] We know that the sense of smell in these aquatic animals is
the same as it is in man, because the same strong odours that are
destructive to man are also destructive to them.[93] Smell is the
parallel, and in a certain sense the antithesis of taste; smell is of
the dry, taste is of the moist: the olfactory matter is a juicy or
sapid dryness, extracted or washed out from both air and water by the
trans-olfacient agency, and acting on the sensory potentialities of
the nostrils.[94] This olfactory inhalation is warm as well as dry.
Hence it is light, and rises easily to the brain, the moisture and
coldness of which it contributes to temper; this is a very salutary
process, for the brain is the wettest and coldest part of the body,
requiring warm and dry influences as a corrective. It is with a view
to this correction that Nature has placed the olfactory organ in such
close proximity to the brain.[95] There are two kinds of olfactory
impressions. One of them is akin to the sense of taste--odour and
savour going together--an affection (to a great degree) of the
nutritive soul; so that the same odour is agreeable when we are
hungry, disagreeable when our hunger is fully satisfied. This first
kind of impression is common to men with other animals; but there is
a second, peculiar to man, and disconnected from the sense of taste,
viz., the scent of flowers, unguents, &c., which are agreeable or
disagreeable constantly and _per se_.[96] Nature has assigned this
second kind of odours as a privilege to man, because his brain, being
so large and moist, requires to be tempered by an additional stock of
drying and warming olfactory influence.
[Footnote 88: Aristot. De Animâ, II. ix. p. 421, a. 7. De Sensu et
Sensili, v. p. 445, a. 6; iv. p. 441, a. 1. De Partibus Animal. II.
xii. p. 656, a. 31; p. 657, a. 9.]
[Footnote 89: Aristot. De Animâ, II. ix. p. 421, a. 21: [Greek: kata\
de\ tê\n a(phê\n pollô=| tô=n a)/llôn zô/|ôn diaphero/ntôs a)kriboi=
(o( a)/nthrôpos). dio\ kai\ phronimô/tato/n e)sti tô=n zô/|ôn.
sêmei=on de\ to\ kai\ e)n tô=| ge/nei tô=n a)nthrô/pôn para\ to\
ai)sthêtê/rion tou=to ei)=nai eu)phuei=s kai\ a)phuei=s, _par' a)/llo
de\ mêde/n_; oi( me\n ga\r sklêro/sarkoi a)phuei=s tê\n dia/noian,
oi( de\ malako/sarkoi eu)phuei=s.]]
[Footnote 90: Ibid. a. 26.]
[Footnote 91: Ibid. b. 9-19. [Greek: to\ a)/neu tou= a)napnei=n mê\
ai)stha/nesthai _i)/dion_ e)pi\ tô=n a)nthrô/pôn; dê=lon de\
peirôme/nois.] He seems to think that this is not true of any animal
other than man.]
[Footnote 92: Aristot. De Sensu et Sensili, v. p. 443, a. 3-31; p.
444, b. 9.]
[Footnote 93: Aristot. De Animâ, II. ix. p. 421, b. 23. He instances
brimstone, [Greek: a)/sphaltos], &c.]
[Footnote 94: This is difficult to understand, but it seems to be
what Aristotle here means.--De Animâ, II. ix. p. 422, a. 6: [Greek:
e)/sti d' ê( o)smê\ tou\ xêrou=, ô(/sper o( chumo\s tou= u(grou=; to\
d' o)sphrantiko\n ai)sthêtê/rion duna/mei toiou=ton.]--De Sensu et
Sensili, v. p. 443, a. 1-9: [Greek: e)/sti d' o)sphranto\n ou)ch ê(=|
diaphane/s, a)ll' ê)=| pluntiko\n ê)\ r(uptiko\n e)gchu/mou
xêro/têtos;--ê( e)n u(grô=| tou= e)gchu/mou xêrou= phu/sis o)smê/,
kai\ o)sphranto\n to\ pa/thos, dê=lon e)k tô=n e)cho/ntôn kai\ mê\
e)cho/ntôn o)smê/n], &c. Also p. 443, b. 3-7.
In the treatise De Sensu et Sensili, there is one passage (ii. p.
438, b. 24), wherein Aristotle affirms that smell is [Greek:
kapnô/dês a)nathumi/asis, e)k puro/s]; but we also find a subsequent
passage (v. p. 443, a. 21, seq.) where he cites that same doctrine as
the opinion of others, but distinctly refutes it.]
[Footnote 95: Aristot. De Sensu et Sensili, v. p. 444, a. 10, 22, 24:
[Greek: ê( ga\r tê=s o)smê=s du/namis thermê\ tê\n phu/sin e)sti/n.]]
[Footnote 96: Ibid. p. 443, b. 17; p. 444, a. 6. 15, 28: [Greek:
i)/dion de\ tê=s tou= a)nthrô/pou phu/seô/s e)sti to\ tê=s o)smê=s
tê=s toiau/tês ge/nos dia\ to\ plei=ston e)gke/phalon kai\
u(gro/taton e)/chein tô=n zô/|ôn ô(s kata\ me/gethos.]
Plato also reckons the pleasures of smell among the pure and
admissible pleasures (Philebus, p. 51, E.; Timæus, p. 65, A., p. 67,
A.).]
Taste is a variety of touch, and belongs to the lower or nutritive
soul, as a guide to the animal in seeking or avoiding different sorts
of food. The object of taste is essentially liquid, often strained
and extracted from dry food by warmth and moisture. The primary
manifestation of this sensory phenomenon is the contrast of drinkable
and undrinkable.[97] The organ of taste, the tongue, is a mean
between dryness and moisture; when either of these is in excess, the
organ is disordered. Among the varieties of taste, there are two
fundamental contraries (as in colour, sound, and the objects of the
other senses except touch) from which the other contrasts are
derived. These fundamentals in taste are sweet and bitter;
corresponding to white and black, acute and grave, in colours and
sounds. The sense of taste is potentially sweet or bitter; the
gustable object is what makes it sweet or bitter in actuality.[98]
[Footnote 97: Aristot. De Animâ, II. x. p. 422, a. 30-33. De Sensu et
Sensili, i. p. 436, b. 15; iv. p. 441, b. 17: [Greek: dia\ tou=
xêrou= kai\ geô/dous diêthou=sa (ê( phu/sis) kai\ kinou=sa tô=|
thermô=| poio/n ti to\ u(gro\n paraskeua/zei. kai\ e)/sti tou=to
chumo\s to\ gigno/menon u(po\ tou= ei)rême/nou xêrou= pa/thos e)n
tô=| u(grô=|.]--Ib. b. 24: [Greek: ou) panto\s xêrou= a)lla\ tou=
trophi/mou].]
[Footnote 98: Aristot. De Animâ, II. x. p. 422, b. 5-16; II. xi. p.
422, b. 23: [Greek: pa=sa/ te ga\r ai)/sthêsis mia=s e)nantiô/seôs
ei)=nai dokei=], &c.]
The sense of touch, in which man surpasses all other animals, differs
from the other senses by not having any two fundamental contraries
giving origin to the rest, but by having various contraries alike
fundamental. It is thus hardly one sense, but an aggregate of several
senses. It appreciates the elementary differences of body _quâ_
body--hot, cold, dry, moist, hard, soft, &c. It is a mean between
each of these two extremes; being potentially either one of them, and
capable of being made to assimilate itself actually to either.[99] In
this sense, the tangible object operates when in contact with the
skin; and, as has been already said, much of the superiority of man
depends upon his superior fineness and delicacy of skin.[100] Still
Aristotle remarks that the true organ of touch is not the skin or
flesh, but something interior to the flesh. This last serves only as
a peculiar medium. The fact that the sensation arises when the object
touches our skin, does not prove that the skin is the true organ; for,
if there existed a thin exterior membrane surrounding our bodies, we
should still feel the same sensation. Moreover, the body is not in
real contact with our skin, though it appears to be so; there is a
thin film of air between the two, though we do not perceive it; just
as, when we touch an object under water, there is a film of water
interposed between, as is seen by the wetness of the finger.[101] The
skin is, therefore, not the true organ of touch, but a medium between
the object and the organ; and this sense does in reality agree with
the other senses in having a certain medium interposed between object
and organ. But there is this difference: in touch the medium is close
to and a part of ourselves; in sight and hearing it is exterior to
ourselves, and may extend to some distance. In sight and hearing the
object does not affect us directly; it affects the external medium,
which again affects us. But in touch the object affects, at the same
time and by the same influence, both the medium and the interior
organ; like a spear that, with the same thrust, pierces the warrior's
shield and wounds the warrior himself.[102] Apparently, therefore,
the true organ of touch is something interior, and skin and flesh is
an interposed medium.[103] But what this interior organ is, Aristotle
does not more particularly declare. He merely states it to be in
close and intimate communication with the great central focus and
principle of all sensation--the heart;[104] more closely connected
with the heart (he appears to think) than any of the other organs of
sense, though all of them are so connected more or less closely.
[Footnote 99: Ibid. xi. p. 422, b. 17 seq.]
[Footnote 100: Aristot. Histor. Animal. I. xv. p. 494, b. 17. Man is
[Greek: leptodermo/tatos tô=n zô=|ôn] (Aristot. De Partib. Animal.
ii. p. 657, b. 2), and has the tongue also looser and softer than any
of them, most fit for variety of touch (p. 660, a. 20) as well as for
articulate speech.]
[Footnote 101: Aristot. De Animâ, II. xi. p. 423, a. 25-32.]
[Footnote 102: Ibid. p. 423, b. 12-17: [Greek: diaphe/rei to\ a(pto\n
tô=n o(ratô=n kai\ tô=n psophêtikô=n o(/ti e)kei/nôn me\n
ai)sthano/metha tô=| to\ metaxu\ poiei=n ti ê(ma=s, tô=n de\ a(ptô=n
ou)ch u(po\ tou= metaxu\ a)ll' a(/ma tô=| metaxu/, ô(/sper o( di'
a)spi/dos plêgei/s; ou) ga\r ê( a)spi\s plêgei=sa e)pa/taxen, a)ll'
a(/m' a)/mphô sune/bê plêgê=nai.]
This analogy of the warrior pierced at the same time with his shield
illustrates Aristotle's view of the eighth Category--_Habere_: of
which he gives [Greek: ô(/plistai] as the example. He considers a
man's clothes and defensive weapons as standing in a peculiar
relation to him like a personal appurtenance and almost as a part of
himself. It is under this point of view that he erects _Habere_ into
a distinct Category.]
[Footnote 103: Aristot. De Animâ, II. xi. p. 423, b. 22-26: [Greek:
ê(=| kai\ dê=lon o(/ti e)nto\s to\ tou= a(ptou= ai)sthêtiko/n.--to\
metaxu\ tou= a(ptikou= ê( sa/rx.]]
[Footnote 104: Aristot. De Partibus Animal. II. x. p. 656, a. 30; De
Vitâ et Morte, iii. p. 469, a. 12: De Somno et Vigil. ii. p. 455, a.
23; De Sensu et Sensili, ii. p. 439, a. 2.]
Having gone through the five senses _seriatim_, Aristotle offers
various reasons to prove that there neither are, nor can be, more
than five; and then discusses some complicated phenomena of sense. We
perceive _that_ we see or hear;[105] do we perceive this by sight or
by hearing? and if not, by what other faculty?[106] Aristotle replies
by saying that the act of sense is one and the same, but that it may
be looked at in two different points of view. We see a coloured
object; we hear a sound: in each case the act of sense is one; the
energy or actuality of the _visum_, and _videns_, of the _sonans_ and
_audiens_, is implicated and indivisible. But the potentiality of the
one is quite distinct from the potentiality of the other, and may be
considered as well as named apart.[107] When we say: I perceive
_that_ I see--we look at the same act of vision from the side of the
_videns_; the _visum_ being put out of sight as the unnoticed
correlate. This is a mental fact distinct from, though following
upon, the act of vision itself. Aristotle refers it rather to that
general sentient soul or faculty, of which the five senses are
partial and separate manifestations, than to the sense of vision
itself.[108] He thus considers what would now be termed
_consciousness of a sensation_, as being merely the subjective view
of the sensation, distinguished by abstraction from the objective.
[Footnote 105: In modern psychology the language would be--"We _are
conscious_ that we see or hear." But Sir William Hamilton has
remarked that the word Consciousness has no equivalent usually or
familiarly employed in the Greek psychology.]
[Footnote 106: Aristot. De Animâ, III. ii. p. 425, b. 14.]
[Footnote 107: Ibid. b. 26; p. 426, a. 16-19.]
[Footnote 108: Aristot. De Somno et Vigil. ii. p. 455, a. 12-17; De
Animâ, III. ii. with Torstrick's note, p. 166, and the exposition of
Alexander of Aphrodisias therein cited. These two passages of
Aristotle are to a certain extent different yet not contradictory,
though Torstrick supposes them to be so.]
It is the same general sentient faculty, though diversified and
logically distinguishable in its manifestations, that enables us to
conceive many sensations as combined into one; and to compare or
discriminate sensations belonging to different senses.[109]
[Footnote 109: Aristot. De Sensu et Sensili, vii. p. 449, a. 8-20.]
White and sweet are perceived by two distinct senses, and at two
distinct moments of time; but they must be compared and discriminated
by one and the same sentient or cogitant act, and at one moment of
time.[110] This mental act, though in itself indivisible, has yet two
aspects, and is thus in a certain sense divisible; just as a point
taken in the middle of a line, while indivisible in itself, may be
looked upon as the closing terminus of one-half of the line, and as
the commencing terminus of the other half. The comparison of two
different sensations or thoughts is thus one and the same mental
fact, with two distinguishable aspects.[111]
[Footnote 110: Aristot. De Animâ, III. ii. p. 426, b. 17-29: [Greek:
ou)/te dê\ kechôrisme/nois e)nde/chetai kri/nein o(/ti e(/teron to\
gluku\ tou= leukou=, a)lla\ dei= e(ni/ tini a)/mphô dê=la
ei)=nai.--dei= de\ to\ e(\n le/gein o(/ti e(/teron; e(/teron ga\r
to\ gluku\ tou= leukou=.--a)chô/riston kai\ e)n a)chôri/stô|
chro/nô|.] III. vii. p. 431, a. 20.]
[Footnote 111: Aristot. De Animâ, III. ii. p. 427, a. 10-14: [Greek:
ô(/sper ê(\n kalou=si/ tines stigmê/n, ê(=| mia\ kai\ ê(=| du/o,
tau/tê| kai\ a)diai/retos kai\ diaire/tê; ê(=| me\n ou)=n
a)diai/reton, e(\n to\ kri=no/n e)sti kai\ a(/ma, ê(=| de\ diai/reton
u(pa/rchei, ou)ch e(/n; di\s ga\r tô=| au)tô=| chrê=tai sêmei/ô|
a(/ma.]
It is to be remarked that, in explaining this mental process of
comparison, Aristotle three several times applies it both to [Greek:
ai)/sthêsis] and to [Greek: no/êsis], p. 426, b. 22-31; p. 427, a.
9.]
Aristotle devotes a chapter to the enquiry: whether we can perceive
two distinct sensations at once (_i.e._ in one and the same moment of
time). He decides that we cannot; that the sentient soul or faculty
is one and indivisible, and can only have a single energy or
actuality at once.[112] If two causes of sensation are operative
together, and one of them be much superior in force, it will render
us insensible to the other. He remarks that, when we are pre-occupied
with loud noise, or with deep reflection, or with intense fright,
visual objects will often pass by us unseen and unnoticed.[113] Often
the two simultaneous sensations will combine or blend into one
compound, so that we shall feel neither of them purely or
separately.[114] One single act of sensational energy may however
have a double aspect; as the same individual object may be at once
white and sweet, though its whiteness and its sweetness are logically
separable.[115]
[Footnote 112: Aristot. De Sensu et Sensili, vii. p. 447, a. 12.]
[Footnote 113: Ibid. a. 15.]
[Footnote 114: Ibid. b. 12-20.]
[Footnote 115: Ibid. p. 449, a. 14.]
To the sentient soul, even in its lowest manifestations, belong the
feelings of pleasure and pain, appetite and aversion.[116] The
movements connected with these feelings, as with all sensation, begin
and close with the central organ--the heart.[117] Upon these are
consequent the various passions and emotions; yet not without certain
faculties of memory and phantasy accompanying or following the facts
of sense.
[Footnote 116: Aristot. De Animâ, II. iii. p. 414, b. 3-16; III. vii.
p. 431, a. 9; De Somno et Vigil. i. p. 454, b. 29.]
[Footnote 117: Aristot. De Partibus Animalium, III. iv. p. 666, a.
12.]
Aristotle proceeds by gradual steps upward from the Sentient soul to
the Noëtic (Cogitant or Intelligent) soul, called in its highest
perfection Noûs. While refuting the doctrine of Empedokles,
Demokritus, and other philosophers, who considered cogitation or
intelligence to be the same as sensible perception, and while
insisting upon the distinctness of the two as mental phenomena, he
recognizes the important point of analogy between them, that both of
them include judgment and comparison;[118] and he describes an
intermediate stage called Phantasy or Imagination, forming the
transition from the lower of the two to the higher. We have already
observed that, in the Aristotelian psychology, the higher functions
of the soul presuppose and are built upon the lower as their
foundation, though the lower do not necessarily involve the higher.
Without nutrition, there is no sense; without sense, there is no
phantasy; without phantasy, there is no cogitation or
intelligence.[119] The higher psychical phenomena are not identical
with the lower, yet neither are they independent thereof; they
presuppose the lower as a part of their conditions. Here, and indeed
very generally elsewhere, Aristotle has been careful to avoid the
fallacy of confounding or identifying the conditions of a phenomenon
with the phenomenon itself.[120]
[Footnote 118: Aristot. De Animâ, III. iii. p. 427, a. 20.]
[Footnote 119: Ibid. b. 14: [Greek: phantasi/a ga\r e(/teron kai\
ai)sthê/seôs kai\ dianoi/as].--Ib. vii. p. 431, a. 16: [Greek:
ou)de/pote noei= a)/neu phanta/smatos ê( psuchê/].--De Memoriâ et
Reminiscent. i. p. 449, b. 31: [Greek: noei=n ou)k e)/stin a)/neu
phanta/smatos.]]
[Footnote 120: Mill's System of Logic, Book V. ch. 3, s. 8.]
He proceeds to explain Phantasy or the Phantastic department of the
soul, with the phantasms that belong to it. It is not sensible
perception, nor belief, nor opinion, nor knowledge, nor cogitation.
Our dreams, though affections of the sentient soul, are really
phantasms in our sleep, when there is no visual sensation; even when
awake, we have a phantasm of the sun, as of a disk one foot in
diameter, though we _believe_ the sun to be larger than the
earth.[121] Many of the lower animals have sensible perception
without any phantasy: even those among them that have phantasy have
no opinion; for opinion implies faith, persuasion, and some rational
explanation of that persuasion, to none of which does any animal
attain.[122] Phantasy is an internal movement of the animated being
(body and soul in one); belonging to the sentient soul, not to the
cogitant or intelligent; not identical with the movement of sense,
but continued from or produced by that, and by that alone;
accordingly, similar to the movement of sense and relating to the
same matters.[123] Since our sensible perceptions may be either true
or false, so also may be our phantasms. And, since these phantasms
are not only like our sensations, but remain standing in the soul
long after the objects of sense have passed away, they are to a great
degree the determining causes both of action and emotion. They are
such habitually to animals, who are destitute of Noûs; and often even
to intelligent men, if the Noûs be overclouded by disease or
drunkenness.[124]
[Footnote 121: Aristot. De Animâ, III. iii. p. 428, a. 5, b. 3; De
Somno et Vig. ii. p. 456, a. 24: [Greek: kinou=ntai d' e)/nioi
katheu/dontes kai\ poiou=si polla\ e)grêgorika/, ou) me/ntoi a)/neu
phanta/smatos kai\ ai)sthê/seô/s tinos; to\ ga\r e)nu/pnio/n e)stin
ai)/sthêma tro/pon tina/.]--Ibid. i. p. 454, b. 10.]
[Footnote 122: Aristot. De Animâ, III. iii. p. 428, a. 10, 22, 25.]
[Footnote 123: Ibid. b. 10-15; De Somniis, i. p. 459, a. 15.]
[Footnote 124: Aristot. De Animâ, III. iii. p. 428, b. 16: [Greek:
kai\ polla\ kat' au)tê\n] (_i.e._ [Greek: kata\ tê\n phantasi/an)
kai\ poiei=n kai\ pa/schein to\ e)/chon.]--Ibid. p. 429, a. 4:
[Greek: kai\ dia\ to\ e)mme/nein kai\ o(moi/as ei)=nai (ta\s
phantasi/as) tai=s ai)sthê/sesi, polla\ kat' au)ta\s pra/ttei ta\
zô=|a], &c.]
In the chapter now before us, Aristotle is careful to discriminate
phantasy from several other psychological phenomena wherewith it is
liable to be confounded. But we remark with some surprise, that
neither here, nor in any other part of his general Psychology, does
he offer any exposition of Memory, the phenomenon more nearly
approaching than any other to phantasy. He supplied the deficiency
afterwards by a short but valuable tract on Memory and Reminiscence;
wherein he recognizes, and refers to, the more general work on
Psychology. Memory bears on the past, as distinguished both from the
present and future. Memory and phantasy are in some cases so alike,
that we cannot distinguish clearly whether what is in our minds is a
remembrance or a phantasm.[125] Both of them belong to the same
psychological department--to the central sentient principle, and not
to the cogitant or intelligent Noûs. Memory as well as phantasy are
continuations, remnants, or secondary consequences, of the primary
movements of sense; what in itself is a phantasm, may become an
object of remembrance directly and _per se_; matters of cogitation,
being included or implicated in phantasms, may also become objects of
remembrance, indirectly and by way of accompaniment.[126] We can
remember our prior acts of cogitation and demonstration; we can
remember that, a month ago, we demonstrated the three angles of a
triangle to be equal to two right angles; but, as the original
demonstration could not be carried on without our having before our
mental vision the phantasm of some particular triangle, so neither
can the remembrance of the demonstration be made present to us
without a similar phantasm.[127] In acts of remembrance we have a
conception of past time, and we recognize what is now present to our
minds as a copy of what has been formerly present to us, either as
perception of sense or as actual cognition;[128] while in phantasms
there is no conception of past time, nor any similar recognition, nor
any necessary reference to our own past mental states; the phantasm
is looked at by itself, and not as a copy. This is the main point of
distinction between phantasm and remembrance:[129] what is remembered
is a present phantasm assimilated to an impression of the past. Some
of the superior animals possess both memory and phantasy. But other
animals have neither; their sensations disappear, they have no
endurance; while endurance is the basis both of phantasy and
memory.[130]
[Footnote 125: Aristot. De Memor. et Remin. i. p. 451, a. 5; p. 449,
a. 10.]
[Footnote 126: Ibid. p. 450, a. 22: [Greek: ti/nos me\n ou)=n tô=n
tê=s psuchê=s e)sti\n ê( mnê/mê, phanero\n o(/ti ou(=per kai\ ê(
phantasi/a; kai\ e)/sti mnêmoneuta\ kath' au(ta\ me\n o(/sa e)sti\
phantasta/, kata\ sumbebêko\s d' o(/sa mê\ a)/neu phantasi/as.]]
[Footnote 127: Aristot. De Memor. et. Rem. i. p. 449, b. 18.]
[Footnote 128: Ibid. b. 22: [Greek: a)ei\ ga\r o(/tan e)nergê=| kata\
to\ mnêmoneu/ein, ou(/tôs e)n tê=| psuchê=| le/gei, o(/ti pro/teron
tou=to ê)/kousen ê)\ ê)/|stheto ê)\ e)no/êsen.]--Ibid. p. 452, b.
28.]
[Footnote 129: Ibid. p. 450, a. 30; p. 451, a. 15: [Greek: to\
mnêmoneu/ein, ô(s ei)ko/nos ou(= pha/ntasma, e(/xis]. Themistius
**ad Aristot. De Memoriâ, p. 240, ed. Spengel.]
[Footnote 130: Aristot. Analyt. Poster. ii. p. 99, b. 36: [Greek:
monê\ tou= ai)sthê/matos]. It may be remarked that in the Topica
Aristotle urges a dialectical objection against this or a similar
doctrine (Topic. IV. iv. v. p. 125, b. 6-19), and against his own
definition cited in the preceding note, where he calls [Greek:
mnê/mê] an [Greek: e(/xis]. Compare the first chapter of the
Metaphysica.]
But though some animals have memory, no animal except man has
Reminiscence. Herein man surpasses them all.[131] Aristotle draws a
marked distinction between the two; between the (memorial) retentive
and reviving functions, when working unconsciously and instinctively,
and the same two functions, when stimulated and guided by a
deliberate purpose of our own--which he calls reminiscence. This last
is like a syllogism or course of ratiocinative inference, performable
only by minds capable of taking counsel and calculating. He considers
memory as a movement proceeding from the centre and organs of sense
to the soul, and stamping an impression thereupon; while reminiscence
is a counter-movement proceeding from the soul to the organs of
sense.[132] In the process of reminiscence, movements of the soul and
movements of the body are conjoined,[133] more or less perturbing and
durable according to the temperament of the individual. The process
is intentional and deliberate, instigated by the desire to search for
and recover some lost phantasm or cognition; its success depends upon
the fact that there exists by nature a regular observable order of
sequence among the movements of the system, physical as well as
psychical. The consequents follow their antecedents either
universally, or at least according to customary rules, in the
majority of cases.[134]
[Footnote 131: Aristot. De Memor. et Rem. ii. p. 453, a. 8. He draws
the same distinction in Hist. Animal. I. i. p. 488, b. 26.]
[Footnote 132: Aristot. De Animâ, I. iv. p. 408, b. 17. De Memor. et
Remin. i. p. 450, a. 30; ii. p. 453, a. 10: [Greek: to\
a)namimnê/skesthai/ e)stin oi(=on sullo/gismo/s tis.]]
[Footnote 133: Aristot. De Memor. et Rem. ii. p. 453, a. 14-23.]
[Footnote 134: Aristot. De Memor. et Rem. ii. p. 451, b. 10: [Greek:
sumbai/nousi d' ai( a)namnê/seis, e)peidê\ pe/phuken ê( ki/nêsis
ê(/de gene/sthai meta\ tê/nde.]]
The consequent is either (1) like its antecedent, wholly or
partially; or (2) contrary to it; or (3) has been actually felt in
juxtaposition with it. In reminiscence, we endeavour to regain the
forgotten consequent by hunting out some antecedent whereupon it is
likely to follow; taking our start either from the present moment or
from some other known point.[135] 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.[136] 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.[137]
[Footnote 135: Ibid. b. 18: [Greek: dio\ kai\ to\ e)phexê=s
thêreu/omen noê/santes a)po\ tou= nu=n ê)\ a)/llou tino/s, kai\ a)ph'
o(moi/ou ê)\ e)nanti/ou ê)\ tou= su/neggus.]
About the associative property of Contraries see also De Somno et
Vigil. i. p. 453, b. 27.]
[Footnote 136: Aristot. De Memor. et Rem. ii. p. 452, a. 7: [Greek:
polla/kis d' ê)/dê me\n a)dunatei= a)namnêsthê=nai, zêtei=n de\
du/natai kai\ eu(ri/skei. tou=to de\ gi/netai kinou=nti polla/, e(/ôs
a)\n toiau/tên kinê/sê| ki/nêsin, ê(=| a)kolouthê/sei to\ pra=gma.
to\ ga\r memnê=sthai/ e)sti to\ e)nei=nai duna/mei **tê\n
kinou=san; tou=to de/, ô(st' e)x au)tou= kai\ ô(=n e)/chei kinê/seôn
kinêthê=nai, ô(/sper ei)/rêtai.]]
[Footnote 137: Ibid. ii. p. 452, a. 2.]
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.[138] These internal movements often lead to great discomfort,
when a person makes fruitless 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.[139] These
movements, when once provoked, continue in spite of the opposition of
the person that experiences them. He brings upon himself 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.[140] Slow men are usually good in
memory, quick men and apt learners are good in reminiscence: the two
are seldom found together.[141]
[Footnote 138: Ibid. b. 12: [Greek: e)/sti ga\r e)n au)tê=| ta\
o(/moia schê/mata kai\ kinê/seis.--pa/nta ga\r ta\ e)nto\s e)la/ttô,
ô(/sper a)na/logon kai\ ta\ e)kto/s.]]
[Footnote 139: Aristot. De Memor. et Rem. ii. p. 453, a. 22: [Greek:
o( a)namimnêsko/menos kai\ thêreu/ôn sômatiko/n ti kinei=, e)n ô(=|
to\ pa/thos.]]
[Footnote 140: Ibid. p. 453, a. 28: [Greek: e)/oike to\ pa/thos toi=s
o)no/masi kai\ me/lesi kai\ lo/gois, o(/tan dia\ sto/matos ge/nêtai/
ti au)tô=n spho/dra; pausame/nois ga\r kai\ ou) boulome/nois
e)pe/rchetai pa/lin a)/|dein ê)\ le/gein.]]
[Footnote 141: Ibid. i. p. 449, b. 7.]
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 his chief treatise: Soul as the Form implicated with
Body as the Matter,--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 Noûs or noëtic faculty, whereby
we cogitate, understand, reason, and believe or opine under the
influence of reason.[142] According to the uniform 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.[143] That the soul cannot cogitate or reason without
phantasms--that phantasms are required for the actual working of the
human Noûs--he affirms in the most explicit manner.[144]
[Footnote 142: Aristot. De Animâ, III. iv. p. 429, a. 10: [Greek:
peri\ de\ tou= mori/ou tou= tê=s psuchê=s ô(=| ginô/skei te ê(
psuchê\ kai\ phronei=.] He himself defines what he means by [Greek:
nou=s] a few lines lower; and he is careful to specify it as [Greek:
o( tê=s psuchê=s nou=s--o( a)/ra kalou/menos tê=s psuchê=s nou=s
(le/gô de\ nou=n, ô(=| dianoei=tai kai\ u(polamba/nei ê(
psuchê/)]--a. 22.
In the preceding chapter he expressly discriminates [Greek: no/êsis]
from [Greek: u(po/lêpsis]. This last word [Greek: u(po/lêpsis] is the
most general term for _believing_ or _opining_ upon reasons good or
bad; the varieties under it are [Greek: e)pistê/mê, do/xa, phro/nêsis
kai\ ta)nanti/a tou/tôn] (p. 427, b. 16-27).]
[Footnote 143: Aristot. De Memor. et Rem. ii. p. 453 a. 10.]
[Footnote 144: Ibid. p. 449, b. 31-p. 450, a. 12: [Greek: noei=n ou)k
e)/stin a)/neu phanta/smatos--ê( de\ mnê/mê kai\ ê( tô=n noêtô=n ou)k
a)/neu phanta/smato/s e)stin.]--De Animâ, III. vii. p. 431, a. 16.]
The doctrine of Aristotle respecting Noûs 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 Noûs 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 (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 Noûs 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.[145]