On the Soul
By Aristotle
Written 350 B.C.E
Translated by J. A. Smith
Part 1
That there is no sixth sense in addition to the five enumerated-sight,
hearing, smell, taste, touch-may be established by the following
considerations:
If we have actually sensation of everything of which touch can
give us sensation (for all the qualities of the tangible qua tangible are
perceived by us through touch); and if absence of a sense necessarily involves
absence of a sense-organ; and if (1) all objects that we perceive by immediate
contact with them are perceptible by touch, which sense we actually possess,
and (2) all objects that we perceive through media, i.e. without immediate
contact, are perceptible by or through the simple elements, e.g. air and
water (and this is so arranged that (a) if more than one kind of sensible
object is perceivable through a single medium, the possessor of a sense-organ
homogeneous with that medium has the power of perceiving both kinds of
objects; for example, if the sense-organ is made of air, and air is a medium
both for sound and for colour; and that (b) if more than one medium can
transmit the same kind of sensible objects, as e.g. water as well as air
can transmit colour, both being transparent, then the possessor of either
alone will be able to perceive the kind of objects transmissible through
both); and if of the simple elements two only, air and water, go to form
sense-organs (for the pupil is made of water, the organ of hearing is made
of air, and the organ of smell of one or other of these two, while fire
is found either in none or in all-warmth being an essential condition of
all sensibility-and earth either in none or, if anywhere, specially mingled
with the components of the organ of touch; wherefore it would remain that
there can be no sense-organ formed of anything except water and air); and
if these sense-organs are actually found in certain animals;-then all the
possible senses are possessed by those animals that are not imperfect or
mutilated (for even the mole is observed to have eyes beneath its skin);
so that, if there is no fifth element and no property other than those
which belong to the four elements of our world, no sense can be wanting
to such animals.
Further, there cannot be a special sense-organ for the common sensibles
either, i.e. the objects which we perceive incidentally through this or
that special sense, e.g. movement, rest, figure, magnitude, number, unity;
for all these we perceive by movement, e.g. magnitude by movement, and
therefore also figure (for figure is a species of magnitude), what is at
rest by the absence of movement: number is perceived by the negation of
continuity, and by the special sensibles; for each sense perceives one
class of sensible objects. So that it is clearly impossible that there
should be a special sense for any one of the common sensibles, e.g. movement;
for, if that were so, our perception of it would be exactly parallel to
our present perception of what is sweet by vision. That is so because we
have a sense for each of the two qualities, in virtue of which when they
happen to meet in one sensible object we are aware of both contemporaneously.
If it were not like this our perception of the common qualities would always
be incidental, i.e. as is the perception of Cleon's son, where we perceive
him not as Cleon's son but as white, and the white thing which we really
perceive happens to be Cleon's son.
But in the case of the common sensibles there is already in us
a general sensibility which enables us to perceive them directly; there
is therefore no special sense required for their perception: if there were,
our perception of them would have been exactly like what has been above
described.
The senses perceive each other's special objects incidentally;
not because the percipient sense is this or that special sense, but because
all form a unity: this incidental perception takes place whenever sense
is directed at one and the same moment to two disparate qualities in one
and the same object, e.g. to the bitterness and the yellowness of bile,
the assertion of the identity of both cannot be the act of either of the
senses; hence the illusion of sense, e.g. the belief that if a thing is
yellow it is bile.
It might be asked why we have more senses than one. Is it to prevent
a failure to apprehend the common sensibles, e.g. movement, magnitude,
and number, which go along with the special sensibles? Had we no sense
but sight, and that sense no object but white, they would have tended to
escape our notice and everything would have merged for us into an indistinguishable
identity because of the concomitance of colour and magnitude. As it is,
the fact that the common sensibles are given in the objects of more than
one sense reveals their distinction from each and all of the special
sensibles.
Part 2
Since it is through sense that we are aware that we are seeing
or hearing, it must be either by sight that we are aware of seeing, or
by some sense other than sight. But the sense that gives us this new sensation
must perceive both sight and its object, viz. colour: so that either (1)
there will be two senses both percipient of the same sensible object, or
(2) the sense must be percipient of itself. Further, even if the sense
which perceives sight were different from sight, we must either fall into
an infinite regress, or we must somewhere assume a sense which is aware
of itself. If so, we ought to do this in the first case.
This presents a difficulty: if to perceive by sight is just to
see, and what is seen is colour (or the coloured), then if we are to see
that which sees, that which sees originally must be coloured. It is clear
therefore that 'to perceive by sight' has more than one meaning; for even
when we are not seeing, it is by sight that we discriminate darkness from
light, though not in the same way as we distinguish one colour from another.
Further, in a sense even that which sees is coloured; for in each case
the sense-organ is capable of receiving the sensible object without its
matter. That is why even when the sensible objects are gone the sensings
and imaginings continue to exist in the sense-organs.
The activity of the sensible object and that of the percipient
sense is one and the same activity, and yet the distinction between their
being remains. Take as illustration actual sound and actual hearing: a
man may have hearing and yet not be hearing, and that which has a sound
is not always sounding. But when that which can hear is actively hearing
and which can sound is sounding, then the actual hearing and the actual
sound are merged in one (these one might call respectively hearkening and
sounding).
If it is true that the movement, both the acting and the being
acted upon, is to be found in that which is acted upon, both the sound
and the hearing so far as it is actual must be found in that which has
the faculty of hearing; for it is in the passive factor that the actuality
of the active or motive factor is realized; that is why that which causes
movement may be at rest. Now the actuality of that which can sound is just
sound or sounding, and the actuality of that which can hear is hearing
or hearkening; 'sound' and 'hearing' are both ambiguous. The same account
applies to the other senses and their objects. For as the-acting-and-being-acted-upon
is to be found in the passive, not in the active factor, so also the actuality
of the sensible object and that of the sensitive subject are both realized
in the latter. But while in some cases each aspect of the total actuality
has a distinct name, e.g. sounding and hearkening, in some one or other
is nameless, e.g. the actuality of sight is called seeing, but the actuality
of colour has no name: the actuality of the faculty of taste is called
tasting, but the actuality of flavour has no name. Since the actualities
of the sensible object and of the sensitive faculty are one actuality in
spite of the difference between their modes of being, actual hearing and
actual sounding appear and disappear from existence at one and the same
moment, and so actual savour and actual tasting, &c., while as potentialities
one of them may exist without the other. The earlier students of nature
were mistaken in their view that without sight there was no white or black,
without taste no savour. This statement of theirs is partly true, partly
false: 'sense' and 'the sensible object' are ambiguous terms, i.e. may
denote either potentialities or actualities: the statement is true of the
latter, false of the former. This ambiguity they wholly failed to
notice.
If voice always implies a concord, and if the voice and the hearing
of it are in one sense one and the same, and if concord always implies
a ratio, hearing as well as what is heard must be a ratio. That is why
the excess of either the sharp or the flat destroys the hearing. (So also
in the case of savours excess destroys the sense of taste, and in the case
of colours excessive brightness or darkness destroys the sight, and in
the case of smell excess of strength whether in the direction of sweetness
or bitterness is destructive.) This shows that the sense is a
ratio.
That is also why the objects of sense are (1) pleasant when the
sensible extremes such as acid or sweet or salt being pure and unmixed
are brought into the proper ratio; then they are pleasant: and in general
what is blended is more pleasant than the sharp or the flat alone; or,
to touch, that which is capable of being either warmed or chilled: the
sense and the ratio are identical: while (2) in excess the sensible extremes
are painful or destructive.
Each sense then is relative to its particular group of sensible
qualities: it is found in a sense-organ as such and discriminates the differences
which exist within that group; e.g. sight discriminates white and black,
taste sweet and bitter, and so in all cases. Since we also discriminate
white from sweet, and indeed each sensible quality from every other, with
what do we perceive that they are different? It must be by sense; for what
is before us is sensible objects. (Hence it is also obvious that the flesh
cannot be the ultimate sense-organ: if it were, the discriminating power
could not do its work without immediate contact with the
object.)
Therefore (1) discrimination between white and sweet cannot be
effected by two agencies which remain separate; both the qualities discriminated
must be present to something that is one and single. On any other supposition
even if I perceived sweet and you perceived white, the difference between
them would be apparent. What says that two things are different must be
one; for sweet is different from white. Therefore what asserts this difference
must be self-identical, and as what asserts, so also what thinks or perceives.
That it is not possible by means of two agencies which remain separate
to discriminate two objects which are separate, is therefore obvious; and
that (it is not possible to do this in separate movements of time may be
seen' if we look at it as follows. For as what asserts the difference between
the good and the bad is one and the same, so also the time at which it
asserts the one to be different and the other to be different is not accidental
to the assertion (as it is for instance when I now assert a difference
but do not assert that there is now a difference); it asserts thus-both
now and that the objects are different now; the objects therefore must
be present at one and the same moment. Both the discriminating power and
the time of its exercise must be one and undivided.
But, it may be objected, it is impossible that what is self-identical
should be moved at me and the same time with contrary movements in so far
as it is undivided, and in an undivided moment of time. For if what is
sweet be the quality perceived, it moves the sense or thought in this determinate
way, while what is bitter moves it in a contrary way, and what is white
in a different way. Is it the case then that what discriminates, though
both numerically one and indivisible, is at the same time divided in its
being? In one sense, it is what is divided that perceives two separate
objects at once, but in another sense it does so qua undivided; for it
is divisible in its being but spatially and numerically undivided. is not
this impossible? For while it is true that what is self-identical and undivided
may be both contraries at once potentially, it cannot be self-identical
in its being-it must lose its unity by being put into activity. It is not
possible to be at once white and black, and therefore it must also be impossible
for a thing to be affected at one and the same moment by the forms of both,
assuming it to be the case that sensation and thinking are properly so
described.
The answer is that just as what is called a 'point' is, as being
at once one and two, properly said to be divisible, so here, that which
discriminates is qua undivided one, and active in a single moment of time,
while so far forth as it is divisible it twice over uses the same dot at
one and the same time. So far forth then as it takes the limit as two'
it discriminates two separate objects with what in a sense is divided:
while so far as it takes it as one, it does so with what is one and occupies
in its activity a single moment of time.
About the principle in virtue of which we say that animals are
percipient, let this discussion suffice.
Part 3
There are two distinctive peculiarities by reference to which we
characterize the soul (1) local movement and (2) thinking, discriminating,
and perceiving. Thinking both speculative and practical is regarded as
akin to a form of perceiving; for in the one as well as the other the soul
discriminates and is cognizant of something which is. Indeed the ancients
go so far as to identify thinking and perceiving; e.g. Empedocles says
'For 'tis in respect of what is present that man's wit is increased', and
again 'Whence it befalls them from time to time to think diverse thoughts',
and Homer's phrase 'For suchlike is man's mind' means the same. They all
look upon thinking as a bodily process like perceiving, and hold that like
is known as well as perceived by like, as I explained at the beginning
of our discussion. Yet they ought at the same time to have accounted for
error also; for it is more intimately connected with animal existence and
the soul continues longer in the state of error than in that of truth.
They cannot escape the dilemma: either (1) whatever seems is true (and
there are some who accept this) or (2) error is contact with the unlike;
for that is the opposite of the knowing of like by like.
But it is a received principle that error as well as knowledge
in respect to contraries is one and the same.
That perceiving and practical thinking are not identical is therefore
obvious; for the former is universal in the animal world, the latter is
found in only a small division of it. Further, speculative thinking is
also distinct from perceiving-I mean that in which we find rightness and
wrongness-rightness in prudence, knowledge, true opinion, wrongness in
their opposites; for perception of the special objects of sense is always
free from error, and is found in all animals, while it is possible to think
falsely as well as truly, and thought is found only where there is discourse
of reason as well as sensibility. For imagination is different from either
perceiving or discursive thinking, though it is not found without sensation,
or judgement without it. That this activity is not the same kind of thinking
as judgement is obvious. For imagining lies within our own power whenever
we wish (e.g. we can call up a picture, as in the practice of mnemonics
by the use of mental images), but in forming opinions we are not free:
we cannot escape the alternative of falsehood or truth. Further, when we
think something to be fearful or threatening, emotion is immediately produced,
and so too with what is encouraging; but when we merely imagine we remain
as unaffected as persons who are looking at a painting of some dreadful
or encouraging scene. Again within the field of judgement itself we find
varieties, knowledge, opinion, prudence, and their opposites; of the differences
between these I must speak elsewhere.
Thinking is different from perceiving and is held to be in part
imagination, in part judgement: we must therefore first mark off the sphere
of imagination and then speak of judgement. If then imagination is that
in virtue of which an image arises for us, excluding metaphorical uses
of the term, is it a single faculty or disposition relative to images,
in virtue of which we discriminate and are either in error or not? The
faculties in virtue of which we do this are sense, opinion, science,
intelligence.
That imagination is not sense is clear from the following considerations:
Sense is either a faculty or an activity, e.g. sight or seeing: imagination
takes place in the absence of both, as e.g. in dreams. (Again, sense is
always present, imagination not. If actual imagination and actual sensation
were the same, imagination would be found in all the brutes: this is held
not to be the case; e.g. it is not found in ants or bees or grubs. (Again,
sensations are always true, imaginations are for the most part false. (Once
more, even in ordinary speech, we do not, when sense functions precisely
with regard to its object, say that we imagine it to be a man, but rather
when there is some failure of accuracy in its exercise. And as we were
saying before, visions appear to us even when our eyes are shut. Neither
is imagination any of the things that are never in error: e.g. knowledge
or intelligence; for imagination may be false.
It remains therefore to see if it is opinion, for opinion may be
either true or false.
But opinion involves belief (for without belief in what we opine
we cannot have an opinion), and in the brutes though we often find imagination
we never find belief. Further, every opinion is accompanied by belief,
belief by conviction, and conviction by discourse of reason: while there
are some of the brutes in which we find imagination, without discourse
of reason. It is clear then that imagination cannot, again, be (1) opinion
plus sensation, or (2) opinion mediated by sensation, or (3) a blend of
opinion and sensation; this is impossible both for these reasons and because
the content of the supposed opinion cannot be different from that of the
sensation (I mean that imagination must be the blending of the perception
of white with the opinion that it is white: it could scarcely be a blend
of the opinion that it is good with the perception that it is white): to
imagine is therefore (on this view) identical with the thinking of exactly
the same as what one in the strictest sense perceives. But what we imagine
is sometimes false though our contemporaneous judgement about it is true;
e.g. we imagine the sun to be a foot in diameter though we are convinced
that it is larger than the inhabited part of the earth, and the following
dilemma presents itself. Either (a while the fact has not changed and the
(observer has neither forgotten nor lost belief in the true opinion which
he had, that opinion has disappeared, or (b) if he retains it then his
opinion is at once true and false. A true opinion, however, becomes false
only when the fact alters without being noticed.
Imagination is therefore neither any one of the states enumerated,
nor compounded out of them.
But since when one thing has been set in motion another thing may
be moved by it, and imagination is held to be a movement and to be impossible
without sensation, i.e. to occur in beings that are percipient and to have
for its content what can be perceived, and since movement may be produced
by actual sensation and that movement is necessarily similar in character
to the sensation itself, this movement must be (1) necessarily (a) incapable
of existing apart from sensation, (b) incapable of existing except when
we perceive, (such that in virtue of its possession that in which it is
found may present various phenomena both active and passive, and (such
that it may be either true or false.
The reason of the last characteristic is as follows. Perception
(1) of the special objects of sense is never in error or admits the least
possible amount of falsehood. (2) That of the concomitance of the objects
concomitant with the sensible qualities comes next: in this case certainly
we may be deceived; for while the perception that there is white before
us cannot be false, the perception that what is white is this or that may
be false. (3) Third comes the perception of the universal attributes which
accompany the concomitant objects to which the special sensibles attach
(I mean e.g. of movement and magnitude); it is in respect of these that
the greatest amount of sense-illusion is possible.
The motion which is due to the activity of sense in these three
modes of its exercise will differ from the activity of sense; (1) the first
kind of derived motion is free from error while the sensation is present;
(2) and (3) the others may be erroneous whether it is present or absent,
especially when the object of perception is far off. If then imagination
presents no other features than those enumerated and is what we have described,
then imagination must be a movement resulting from an actual exercise of
a power of sense.
As sight is the most highly developed sense, the name Phantasia
(imagination) has been formed from Phaos (light) because it is not possible
to see without light.
And because imaginations remain in the organs of sense and resemble
sensations, animals in their actions are largely guided by them, some (i.e.
the brutes) because of the non-existence in them of mind, others (i.e.
men) because of the temporary eclipse in them of mind by feeling or disease
or sleep.
About imagination, what it is and why it exists, let so much
suffice.
Part 4
Turning now to the part of the soul with which the soul knows and
thinks (whether this is separable from the others in definition only, or
spatially as well) we have to inquire (1) what differentiates this part,
and (2) how thinking can take place.
If thinking is like perceiving, it must be either a process in
which the soul is acted upon by what is capable of being thought, or a
process different from but analogous to that. The thinking part of the
soul must therefore be, while impassible, capable of receiving the form
of an object; that is, must be potentially identical in character with
its object without being the object. Mind must be related to what is thinkable,
as sense is to what is sensible.
Therefore, since everything is a possible object of thought, mind
in order, as Anaxagoras says, to dominate, that is, to know, must be pure
from all admixture; for the co-presence of what is alien to its nature
is a hindrance and a block: it follows that it too, like the sensitive
part, can have no nature of its own, other than that of having a certain
capacity. Thus that in the soul which is called mind (by mind I mean that
whereby the soul thinks and judges) is, before it thinks, not actually
any real thing. For this reason it cannot reasonably be regarded as blended
with the body: if so, it would acquire some quality, e.g. warmth or cold,
or even have an organ like the sensitive faculty: as it is, it has none.
It was a good idea to call the soul 'the place of forms', though (1) this
description holds only of the intellective soul, and (2) even this is the
forms only potentially, not actually.
Observation of the sense-organs and their employment reveals a
distinction between the impassibility of the sensitive and that of the
intellective faculty. After strong stimulation of a sense we are less able
to exercise it than before, as e.g. in the case of a loud sound we cannot
hear easily immediately after, or in the case of a bright colour or a powerful
odour we cannot see or smell, but in the case of mind thought about an
object that is highly intelligible renders it more and not less able afterwards
to think objects that are less intelligible: the reason is that while the
faculty of sensation is dependent upon the body, mind is separable from
it.
Once the mind has become each set of its possible objects, as a
man of science has, when this phrase is used of one who is actually a man
of science (this happens when he is now able to exercise the power on his
own initiative), its condition is still one of potentiality, but in a different
sense from the potentiality which preceded the acquisition of knowledge
by learning or discovery: the mind too is then able to think
itself.
Since we can distinguish between a spatial magnitude and what it
is to be such, and between water and what it is to be water, and so in
many other cases (though not in all; for in certain cases the thing and
its form are identical), flesh and what it is to be flesh are discriminated
either by different faculties, or by the same faculty in two different
states: for flesh necessarily involves matter and is like what is snub-nosed,
a this in a this. Now it is by means of the sensitive faculty that we discriminate
the hot and the cold, i.e. the factors which combined in a certain ratio
constitute flesh: the essential character of flesh is apprehended by something
different either wholly separate from the sensitive faculty or related
to it as a bent line to the same line when it has been straightened
out.
Again in the case of abstract objects what is straight is analogous
to what is snub-nosed; for it necessarily implies a continuum as its matter:
its constitutive essence is different, if we may distinguish between straightness
and what is straight: let us take it to be two-ness. It must be apprehended,
therefore, by a different power or by the same power in a different state.
To sum up, in so far as the realities it knows are capable of being separated
from their matter, so it is also with the powers of
mind.
The problem might be suggested: if thinking is a passive affection,
then if mind is simple and impassible and has nothing in common with anything
else, as Anaxagoras says, how can it come to think at all? For interaction
between two factors is held to require a precedent community of nature
between the factors. Again it might be asked, is mind a possible object
of thought to itself? For if mind is thinkable per se and what is thinkable
is in kind one and the same, then either (a) mind will belong to everything,
or (b) mind will contain some element common to it with all other realities
which makes them all thinkable.
(1) Have not we already disposed of the difficulty about interaction
involving a common element, when we said that mind is in a sense potentially
whatever is thinkable, though actually it is nothing until it has thought?
What it thinks must be in it just as characters may be said to be on a
writingtablet on which as yet nothing actually stands written: this is
exactly what happens with mind.
(Mind is itself thinkable in exactly the same way as its objects
are. For (a) in the case of objects which involve no matter, what thinks
and what is thought are identical; for speculative knowledge and its object
are identical. (Why mind is not always thinking we must consider later.)
(b) In the case of those which contain matter each of the objects of thought
is only potentially present. It follows that while they will not have mind
in them (for mind is a potentiality of them only in so far as they are
capable of being disengaged from matter) mind may yet be
thinkable.
Part 5
Since in every class of things, as in nature as a whole, we find
two factors involved, (1) a matter which is potentially all the particulars
included in the class, (2) a cause which is productive in the sense that
it makes them all (the latter standing to the former, as e.g. an art to
its material), these distinct elements must likewise be found within the
soul.
And in fact mind as we have described it is what it is what it
is by virtue of becoming all things, while there is another which is what
it is by virtue of making all things: this is a sort of positive state
like light; for in a sense light makes potential colours into actual
colours.
Mind in this sense of it is separable, impassible, unmixed, since
it is in its essential nature activity (for always the active is superior
to the passive factor, the originating force to the matter which it
forms).
Actual knowledge is identical with its object: in the individual,
potential knowledge is in time prior to actual knowledge, but in the universe
as a whole it is not prior even in time. Mind is not at one time knowing
and at another not. When mind is set free from its present conditions it
appears as just what it is and nothing more: this alone is immortal and
eternal (we do not, however, remember its former activity because, while
mind in this sense is impassible, mind as passive is destructible), and
without it nothing thinks.
Part 6
The thinking then of the simple objects of thought is found in
those cases where falsehood is impossible: where the alternative of true
or false applies, there we always find a putting together of objects of
thought in a quasi-unity. As Empedocles said that 'where heads of many
a creature sprouted without necks' they afterwards by Love's power were
combined, so here too objects of thought which were given separate are
combined, e.g. 'incommensurate' and 'diagonal': if the combination be of
objects past or future the combination of thought includes in its content
the date. For falsehood always involves a synthesis; for even if you assert
that what is white is not white you have included not white in a synthesis.
It is possible also to call all these cases division as well as combination.
However that may be, there is not only the true or false assertion that
Cleon is white but also the true or false assertion that he was or will
he white. In each and every case that which unifies is
mind.
Since the word 'simple' has two senses, i.e. may mean either (a)
'not capable of being divided' or (b) 'not actually divided', there is
nothing to prevent mind from knowing what is undivided, e.g. when it apprehends
a length (which is actually undivided) and that in an undivided time; for
the time is divided or undivided in the same manner as the line. It is
not possible, then, to tell what part of the line it was apprehending in
each half of the time: the object has no actual parts until it has been
divided: if in thought you think each half separately, then by the same
act you divide the time also, the half-lines becoming as it were new wholes
of length. But if you think it as a whole consisting of these two possible
parts, then also you think it in a time which corresponds to both parts
together. (But what is not quantitatively but qualitatively simple is thought
in a simple time and by a simple act of the soul.)
But that which mind thinks and the time in which it thinks are
in this case divisible only incidentally and not as such. For in them too
there is something indivisible (though, it may be, not isolable) which
gives unity to the time and the whole of length; and this is found equally
in every continuum whether temporal or spatial.
Points and similar instances of things that divide, themselves
being indivisible, are realized in consciousness in the same manner as
privations.
A similar account may be given of all other cases, e.g. how evil
or black is cognized; they are cognized, in a sense, by means of their
contraries. That which cognizes must have an element of potentiality in
its being, and one of the contraries must be in it. But if there is anything
that has no contrary, then it knows itself and is actually and possesses
independent existence.
Assertion is the saying of something concerning something, e.g.
affirmation, and is in every case either true or false: this is not always
the case with mind: the thinking of the definition in the sense of the
constitutive essence is never in error nor is it the assertion of something
concerning something, but, just as while the seeing of the special object
of sight can never be in error, the belief that the white object seen is
a man may be mistaken, so too in the case of objects which are without
matter.
Part 7
Actual knowledge is identical with its object: potential knowledge
in the individual is in time prior to actual knowledge but in the universe
it has no priority even in time; for all things that come into being arise
from what actually is. In the case of sense clearly the sensitive faculty
already was potentially what the object makes it to be actually; the faculty
is not affected or altered. This must therefore be a different kind from
movement; for movement is, as we saw, an activity of what is imperfect,
activity in the unqualified sense, i.e. that of what has been perfected,
is different from movement.
To perceive then is like bare asserting or knowing; but when the
object is pleasant or painful, the soul makes a quasi-affirmation or negation,
and pursues or avoids the object. To feel pleasure or pain is to act with
the sensitive mean towards what is good or bad as such. Both avoidance
and appetite when actual are identical with this: the faculty of appetite
and avoidance are not different, either from one another or from the faculty
of sense-perception; but their being is different.
To the thinking soul images serve as if they were contents of perception
(and when it asserts or denies them to be good or bad it avoids or pursues
them). That is why the soul never thinks without an image. The process
is like that in which the air modifies the pupil in this or that way and
the pupil transmits the modification to some third thing (and similarly
in hearing), while the ultimate point of arrival is one, a single mean,
with different manners of being.
With what part of itself the soul discriminates sweet from hot
I have explained before and must now describe again as follows: That with
which it does so is a sort of unity, but in the way just mentioned, i.e.
as a connecting term. And the two faculties it connects, being one by analogy
and numerically, are each to each as the qualities discerned are to one
another (for what difference does it make whether we raise the problem
of discrimination between disparates or between contraries, e.g. white
and black?). Let then C be to D as is to B: it follows alternando that
C: A:: D: B. If then C and D belong to one subject, the case will be the
same with them as with and B; and B form a single identity with different
modes of being; so too will the former pair. The same reasoning holds if
be sweet and B white.
The faculty of thinking then thinks the forms in the images, and
as in the former case what is to be pursued or avoided is marked out for
it, so where there is no sensation and it is engaged upon the images it
is moved to pursuit or avoidance. E.g.. perceiving by sense that the beacon
is fire, it recognizes in virtue of the general faculty of sense that it
signifies an enemy, because it sees it moving; but sometimes by means of
the images or thoughts which are within the soul, just as if it were seeing,
it calculates and deliberates what is to come by reference to what is present;
and when it makes a pronouncement, as in the case of sensation it pronounces
the object to be pleasant or painful, in this case it avoids or persues
and so generally in cases of action.
That too which involves no action, i.e. that which is true or false,
is in the same province with what is good or bad: yet they differ in this,
that the one set imply and the other do not a reference to a particular
person.
The so-called abstract objects the mind thinks just as, if one
had thought of the snubnosed not as snub-nosed but as hollow, one would
have thought of an actuality without the flesh in which it is embodied:
it is thus that the mind when it is thinking the objects of Mathematics
thinks as separate elements which do not exist separate. In every case
the mind which is actively thinking is the objects which it thinks. Whether
it is possible for it while not existing separate from spatial conditions
to think anything that is separate, or not, we must consider
later.
Part 8
Let us now summarize our results about soul, and repeat that the
soul is in a way all existing things; for existing things are either sensible
or thinkable, and knowledge is in a way what is knowable, and sensation
is in a way what is sensible: in what way we must inquire.
Knowledge and sensation are divided to correspond with the realities,
potential knowledge and sensation answering to potentialities, actual knowledge
and sensation to actualities. Within the soul the faculties of knowledge
and sensation are potentially these objects, the one what is knowable,
the other what is sensible. They must be either the things themselves or
their forms. The former alternative is of course impossible: it is not
the stone which is present in the soul but its form.
It follows that the soul is analogous to the hand; for as the hand
is a tool of tools, so the mind is the form of forms and sense the form
of sensible things.
Since according to common agreement there is nothing outside and
separate in existence from sensible spatial magnitudes, the objects of
thought are in the sensible forms, viz. both the abstract objects and all
the states and affections of sensible things. Hence (1) no one can learn
or understand anything in the absence of sense, and (when the mind is actively
aware of anything it is necessarily aware of it along with an image; for
images are like sensuous contents except in that they contain no
matter.
Imagination is different from assertion and denial; for what is
true or false involves a synthesis of concepts. In what will the primary
concepts differ from images? Must we not say that neither these nor even
our other concepts are images, though they necessarily involve
them?
Part 9
The soul of animals is characterized by two faculties, (a) the
faculty of discrimination which is the work of thought and sense, and (b)
the faculty of originating local movement. Sense and mind we have now sufficiently
examined. Let us next consider what it is in the soul which originates
movement. Is it a single part of the soul separate either spatially or
in definition? Or is it the soul as a whole? If it is a part, is that part
different from those usually distinguished or already mentioned by us,
or is it one of them? The problem at once presents itself, in what sense
we are to speak of parts of the soul, or how many we should distinguish.
For in a sense there is an infinity of parts: it is not enough to distinguish,
with some thinkers, the calculative, the passionate, and the desiderative,
or with others the rational and the irrational; for if we take the dividing
lines followed by these thinkers we shall find parts far more distinctly
separated from one another than these, namely those we have just mentioned:
(1) the nutritive, which belongs both to plants and to all animals, and
(2) the sensitive, which cannot easily be classed as either irrational
or rational; further (3) the imaginative, which is, in its being, different
from all, while it is very hard to say with which of the others it is the
same or not the same, supposing we determine to posit separate parts in
the soul; and lastly (4) the appetitive, which would seem to be distinct
both in definition and in power from all hitherto enumerated.
It is absurd to break up the last-mentioned faculty: as these thinkers
do, for wish is found in the calculative part and desire and passion in
the irrational; and if the soul is tripartite appetite will be found in
all three parts. Turning our attention to the present object of discussion,
let us ask what that is which originates local movement of the
animal.
The movement of growth and decay, being found in all living things,
must be attributed to the faculty of reproduction and nutrition, which
is common to all: inspiration and expiration, sleep and waking, we must
consider later: these too present much difficulty: at present we must consider
local movement, asking what it is that originates forward movement in the
animal.
That it is not the nutritive faculty is obvious; for this kind
of movement is always for an end and is accompanied either by imagination
or by appetite; for no animal moves except by compulsion unless it has
an impulse towards or away from an object. Further, if it were the nutritive
faculty, even plants would have been capable of originating such movement
and would have possessed the organs necessary to carry it out. Similarly
it cannot be the sensitive faculty either; for there are many animals which
have sensibility but remain fast and immovable throughout their
lives.
If then Nature never makes anything without a purpose and never
leaves out what is necessary (except in the case of mutilated or imperfect
growths; and that here we have neither mutilation nor imperfection may
be argued from the facts that such animals (a) can reproduce their species
and (b) rise to completeness of nature and decay to an end), it follows
that, had they been capable of originating forward movement, they would
have possessed the organs necessary for that purpose. Further, neither
can the calculative faculty or what is called 'mind' be the cause of such
movement; for mind as speculative never thinks what is practicable, it
never says anything about an object to be avoided or pursued, while this
movement is always in something which is avoiding or pursuing an object.
No, not even when it is aware of such an object does it at once enjoin
pursuit or avoidance of it; e.g. the mind often thinks of something terrifying
or pleasant without enjoining the emotion of fear. It is the heart that
is moved (or in the case of a pleasant object some other part). Further,
even when the mind does command and thought bids us pursue or avoid something,
sometimes no movement is produced; we act in accordance with desire, as
in the case of moral weakness. And, generally, we observe that the possessor
of medical knowledge is not necessarily healing, which shows that something
else is required to produce action in accordance with knowledge; the knowledge
alone is not the cause. Lastly, appetite too is incompetent to account
fully for movement; for those who successfully resist temptation have appetite
and desire and yet follow mind and refuse to enact that for which they
have appetite.
Part 10
These two at all events appear to be sources of movement: appetite
and mind (if one may venture to regard imagination as a kind of thinking;
for many men follow their imaginations contrary to knowledge, and in all
animals other than man there is no thinking or calculation but only
imagination).
Both of these then are capable of originating local movement, mind
and appetite: (1) mind, that is, which calculates means to an end, i.e.
mind practical (it differs from mind speculative in the character of its
end); while (2) appetite is in every form of it relative to an end: for
that which is the object of appetite is the stimulant of mind practical;
and that which is last in the process of thinking is the beginning of the
action. It follows that there is a justification for regarding these two
as the sources of movement, i.e. appetite and practical thought; for the
object of appetite starts a movement and as a result of that thought gives
rise to movement, the object of appetite being it a source of stimulation.
So too when imagination originates movement, it necessarily involves
appetite.
That which moves therefore is a single faculty and the faculty
of appetite; for if there had been two sources of movement-mind and appetite-they
would have produced movement in virtue of some common character. As it
is, mind is never found producing movement without appetite (for wish is
a form of appetite; and when movement is produced according to calculation
it is also according to wish), but appetite can originate movement contrary
to calculation, for desire is a form of appetite. Now mind is always right,
but appetite and imagination may be either right or wrong. That is why,
though in any case it is the object of appetite which originates movement,
this object may be either the real or the apparent good. To produce movement
the object must be more than this: it must be good that can be brought
into being by action; and only what can be otherwise than as it is can
thus be brought into being. That then such a power in the soul as has been
described, i.e. that called appetite, originates movement is clear. Those
who distinguish parts in the soul, if they distinguish and divide in accordance
with differences of power, find themselves with a very large number of
parts, a nutritive, a sensitive, an intellective, a deliberative, and now
an appetitive part; for these are more different from one another than
the faculties of desire and passion.
Since appetites run counter to one another, which happens when
a principle of reason and a desire are contrary and is possible only in
beings with a sense of time (for while mind bids us hold back because of
what is future, desire is influenced by what is just at hand: a pleasant
object which is just at hand presents itself as both pleasant and good,
without condition in either case, because of want of foresight into what
is farther away in time), it follows that while that which originates movement
must be specifically one, viz. the faculty of appetite as such (or rather
farthest back of all the object of that faculty; for it is it that itself
remaining unmoved originates the movement by being apprehended in thought
or imagination), the things that originate movement are numerically
many.
All movement involves three factors, (1) that which originates
the movement, (2) that by means of which it originates it, and (3) that
which is moved. The expression 'that which originates the movement' is
ambiguous: it may mean either (a) something which itself is unmoved or
(b) that which at once moves and is moved. Here that which moves without
itself being moved is the realizable good, that which at once moves and
is moved is the faculty of appetite (for that which is influenced by appetite
so far as it is actually so influenced is set in movement, and appetite
in the sense of actual appetite is a kind of movement), while that which
is in motion is the animal. The instrument which appetite employs to produce
movement is no longer psychical but bodily: hence the examination of it
falls within the province of the functions common to body and soul. To
state the matter summarily at present, that which is the instrument in
the production of movement is to be found where a beginning and an end
coincide as e.g. in a ball and socket joint; for there the convex and the
concave sides are respectively an end and a beginning (that is why while
the one remains at rest, the other is moved): they are separate in definition
but not separable spatially. For everything is moved by pushing and pulling.
Hence just as in the case of a wheel, so here there must be a point which
remains at rest, and from that point the movement must
originate.
To sum up, then, and repeat what I have said, inasmuch as an animal
is capable of appetite it is capable of self-movement; it is not capable
of appetite without possessing imagination; and all imagination is either
(1) calculative or (2) sensitive. In the latter an animals, and not only
man, partake.
Part 11
We must consider also in the case of imperfect animals, sc. those
which have no sense but touch, what it is that in them originates movement.
Can they have imagination or not? or desire? Clearly they have feelings
of pleasure and pain, and if they have these they must have desire. But
how can they have imagination? Must not we say that, as their movements
are indefinite, they have imagination and desire, but
indefinitely?
Sensitive imagination, as we have said, is found in all animals,
deliberative imagination only in those that are calculative: for whether
this or that shall be enacted is already a task requiring calculation;
and there must be a single standard to measure by, for that is pursued
which is greater. It follows that what acts in this way must be able to
make a unity out of several images.
This is the reason why imagination is held not to involve opinion,
in that it does not involve opinion based on inference, though opinion
involves imagination. Hence appetite contains no deliberative element.
Sometimes it overpowers wish and sets it in movement: at times wish acts
thus upon appetite, like one sphere imparting its movement to another,
or appetite acts thus upon appetite, i.e. in the condition of moral weakness
(though by nature the higher faculty is always more authoritative and gives
rise to movement). Thus three modes of movement are
possible.
The faculty of knowing is never moved but remains at rest. Since
the one premiss or judgement is universal and the other deals with the
particular (for the first tells us that such and such a kind of man should
do such and such a kind of act, and the second that this is an act of the
kind meant, and I a person of the type intended), it is the latter opinion
that really originates movement, not the universal; or rather it is both,
but the one does so while it remains in a state more like rest, while the
other partakes in movement.
Part 12
The nutritive soul then must be possessed by everything that is
alive, and every such thing is endowed with soul from its birth to its
death. For what has been born must grow, reach maturity, and decay-all
of which are impossible without nutrition. Therefore the nutritive faculty
must be found in everything that grows and decays.
But sensation need not be found in all things that live. For it
is impossible for touch to belong either (1) to those whose body is uncompounded
or (2) to those which are incapable of taking in the forms without their
matter.
But animals must be endowed with sensation, since Nature does nothing
in vain. For all things that exist by Nature are means to an end, or will
be concomitants of means to an end. Every body capable of forward movement
would, if unendowed with sensation, perish and fail to reach its end, which
is the aim of Nature; for how could it obtain nutriment? Stationary living
things, it is true, have as their nutriment that from which they have arisen;
but it is not possible that a body which is not stationary but produced
by generation should have a soul and a discerning mind without also having
sensation. (Nor yet even if it were not produced by generation. Why should
it not have sensation? Because it were better so either for the body or
for the soul? But clearly it would not be better for either: the absence
of sensation will not enable the one to think better or the other to exist
better.) Therefore no body which is not stationary has soul without
sensation.
But if a body has sensation, it must be either simple or compound.
And simple it cannot be; for then it could not have touch, which is indispensable.
This is clear from what follows. An animal is a body with soul in it: every
body is tangible, i.e. perceptible by touch; hence necessarily, if an animal
is to survive, its body must have tactual sensation. All the other senses,
e.g. smell, sight, hearing, apprehend through media; but where there is
immediate contact the animal, if it has no sensation, will be unable to
avoid some things and take others, and so will find it impossible to survive.
That is why taste also is a sort of touch; it is relative to nutriment,
which is just tangible body; whereas sound, colour, and odour are innutritious,
and further neither grow nor decay. Hence it is that taste also must be
a sort of touch, because it is the sense for what is tangible and
nutritious.
Both these senses, then, are indispensable to the animal, and it
is clear that without touch it is impossible for an animal to be. All the
other senses subserve well-being and for that very reason belong not to
any and every kind of animal, but only to some, e.g. those capable of forward
movement must have them; for, if they are to survive, they must perceive
not only by immediate contact but also at a distance from the object. This
will be possible if they can perceive through a medium, the medium being
affected and moved by the perceptible object, and the animal by the medium.
just as that which produces local movement causes a change extending to
a certain point, and that which gave an impulse causes another to produce
a new impulse so that the movement traverses a medium the first mover impelling
without being impelled, the last moved being impelled without impelling,
while the medium (or media, for there are many) is both-so is it also in
the case of alteration, except that the agent produces produces it without
the patient's changing its place. Thus if an object is dipped into wax,
the movement goes on until submersion has taken place, and in stone it
goes no distance at all, while in water the disturbance goes far beyond
the object dipped: in air the disturbance is propagated farthest of all,
the air acting and being acted upon, so long as it maintains an unbroken
unity. That is why in the case of reflection it is better, instead of saying
that the sight issues from the eye and is reflected, to say that the air,
so long as it remains one, is affected by the shape and colour. On a smooth
surface the air possesses unity; hence it is that it in turn sets the sight
in motion, just as if the impression on the wax were transmitted as far
as the wax extends.
Part 13
It is clear that the body of an animal cannot be simple, i.e. consist
of one element such as fire or air. For without touch it is impossible
to have any other sense; for every body that has soul in it must, as we
have said, be capable of touch. All the other elements with the exception
of earth can constitute organs of sense, but all of them bring about perception
only through something else, viz. through the media. Touch takes place
by direct contact with its objects, whence also its name. All the other
organs of sense, no doubt, perceive by contact, only the contact is mediate:
touch alone perceives by immediate contact. Consequently no animal body
can consist of these other elements.
Nor can it consist solely of earth. For touch is as it were a mean
between all tangible qualities, and its organ is capable of receiving not
only all the specific qualities which characterize earth, but also the
hot and the cold and all other tangible qualities whatsoever. That is why
we have no sensation by means of bones, hair, &c., because they consist
of earth. So too plants, because they consist of earth, have no sensation.
Without touch there can be no other sense, and the organ of touch cannot
consist of earth or of any other single element.
It is evident, therefore, that the loss of this one sense alone
must bring about the death of an animal. For as on the one hand nothing
which is not an animal can have this sense, so on the other it is the only
one which is indispensably necessary to what is an animal. This explains,
further, the following difference between the other senses and touch. In
the case of all the others excess of intensity in the qualities which they
apprehend, i.e. excess of intensity in colour, sound, and smell, destroys
not the but only the organs of the sense (except incidentally, as when
the sound is accompanied by an impact or shock, or where through the objects
of sight or of smell certain other things are set in motion, which destroy
by contact); flavour also destroys only in so far as it is at the same
time tangible. But excess of intensity in tangible qualities, e.g. heat,
cold, or hardness, destroys the animal itself. As in the case of every
sensible quality excess destroys the organ, so here what is tangible destroys
touch, which is the essential mark of life; for it has been shown that
without touch it is impossible for an animal to be. That is why excess
in intensity of tangible qualities destroys not merely the organ, but the
animal itself, because this is the only sense which it must
have.
All the other senses are necessary to animals, as we have said,
not for their being, but for their well-being. Such, e.g. is sight, which,
since it lives in air or water, or generally in what is pellucid, it must
have in order to see, and taste because of what is pleasant or painful
to it, in order that it may perceive these qualities in its nutriment and
so may desire to be set in motion, and hearing that it may have communication
made to it, and a tongue that it may communicate with its
fellows.
THE END
Chicago-North Shore Therapy.com
|
|
