De Anima

There is yet another opinion concerning soul which has come down to us, commending itself to many minds as readily as any that is put forward, although it has been severely criticised even The theory in the popular discussions of the present day. The soul is asserted to be a kind of harmony, for harmony is on this view a blending or combining of opposites, and the components of the body are opposites. And yet this harmony must mean either a certain proportion in the components or else the combining of them; and the soul cannot possibly be either of these. Furthermore, to cause motion is no attribute of a harmony: yet this function more than any other is all but universally assigned to soul. Again, it is more in harmony with the facts to apply the term harmony to health or bodily excellence generally than to soul, as is very clearly seen when we try to assign to a harmony of whatever kind the affections or functions of the soul: it is difficult to harmonise them.

Further, if we use the word harmony with a twofold application; first, and in its most natural sense, of those magnitudes which have motion and position, to denote the combining meanings of them into a whole, when they are so closely fitted together that they do not admit between them anything of the same kind; and then in a secondary sense to denote the proportion subsisting between the components of a mixture: in neither sense is it reasonable to call soul a harmony. The view which regards it as a combining of the parts of the body is singularly

open to criticism. For there are many combinings of the parts, and they combine in many ways. What part, then, is that whose combining with the rest we must assume to be the intellect, and in what way does it combine? Or again, what of the sensitive and appetitive faculties? But it is equally absurd to regard the soul as the proportion determining the mixture. For the elements are not mixed in the same proportion in flesh as in bone. Thus it will follow that there are many souls, and that, too, all over the body, if we assume that all members consist of the elements variously commingled and that the proportion determining the mixture is a harmony, that is, soul. This is a question we might ask Empedocles; who says that each of the parts is determined by a certain proportion. Is the soul, then, this proportion, or is it rather developed in the frame as something distinct? And, further, is it a mixture at random or a mixture in the right proportion which he ascribes to Love: and, if the latter, is Love the proportion itself or something other than the proportion and distinct from it? Such, then, are the difficulties involved in this view. On the other hand, if soul is something distinct from the mixture, how comes it that it is destroyed simultaneously with the disappearance of the quiddity of the flesh and of the other parts of the animal? And, further,. assuming that each of the separate parts has not a soul of its own, unless the soul be the proportion of their admixture, what is it that perishes when the soul quits the body?

From what has been said it is clear that the soul cannot be a harmony and cannot revolve in a circle. But incidentally it can, as we have seen, move and set itself in motion: for instance, the body in which it is may move, and be set in motion by the soul: otherwise it cannot possibly move from place to place. The question whether the soul is moved would more naturally arise in view of such facts as the following. The soul is said to feel pain and joy, confidence and fear, and again to be angry, to perceive and to think; and all these states are held to be movements: which might lead one to infer that soul itself is moved. But this is no necessary inference. For suppose it ever so true that to feel pain

or joy and to think are movements, that to experience each of these is to be moved and that the movement is due to the soul: suppose that to be angry, for instance, or to be afraid means a particular movement of the heart, and that to think means a movement of this or of some other part, some of these movements being movements of locomotion, others of qualitative change (of what sort and how produced does not concern us here): yet, even then, to speak of the soul as feeling anger is as if one should say that the soul weaves or builds. Doubtless it would be better not to say that the soul pities or learns or thinks, but that the man does so with the soul: and this, too, not in the sense that the motion occurs in the soul, but in the sense that motion sometimes reaches to, sometimes starts from, the soul. Thus, sensation originates in particular objects, while recollection, starting from the soul, is directed towards the movements or traces of movements in the Intellect: Sense-organs. But intellect would seem to be developed as a self-existing substance and to be imperishable. perishable. For, if anything could destroy it, it would be the feebleness of age. But, as things are, no doubt what occurs is the same as in the case of the sense-organs. If an aged man could procure an eye of the right sort, he would see just as well as a young man. Hence old age must be due to an affection or state not of the soul as such, but of that in which the soul resides, just as is the case in intoxication and disease. In like manner, then, thought and the exercise of knowledge are enfeebled through the loss of something else within, but are in themselves impassive. But reasoning, love and hatred are not attributes of the thinking faculty but of its individual possessor, in so far as he possesses it. Hence when this possessor perishes, there is neither memory nor love: for these never did belong to the thinking faculty, but to the composite whole which has perished, while the intellect is doubtless a thing more divine and is impassive.

From the foregoing it is clear that the soul is incapable of motion; and, if it is not moved at all, clearly it does not move itself. Now of all the views that have been put forward by far the most irrational is that which makes the soul a self-moving number. Its supporters are involved in

many impossibilities, not only in those which arise from attributing motion to the soul, but also in others of a special character due to calling it a number. For how are we to conceive of a unit, a thing which is without parts or differences, as in motion? By what would it be moved, and in what way? For if it is capable of imparting motion as well as of being moved, it must admit differences. Further, since they say that a line by its motion generates a surface and that a point by its motion generates a line, the movements of the units will also be lines, for a point is a unit having position. But the number of the soul must, from the nature of the case, be somewhere and have position. Again, if you subtract a number or unit from a number, a different number remains: whereas plants and many animals continue to live when divided and seem to have specifically the same soul in each segment. Besides, it would seem to make no difference whether we Say units or tiny particles. For if the little round atoms of Democritus be converted into points and only their sum-total be retained, in such sum-total there will still be a part which moves and a part which is moved, just as there is in that which is extended. The truth of this statement does not depend upon the size of the atoms, whether great or small, but upon the fact that there is a sum-total or quantity of them. Hence there must be something to set the units in motion. But if in the animal the part which causes motion is the soul, then it is so likewise in the number: so that it will not be both that which causes motion and that which is moved which is the soul, but that which causes motion only. How then can this cause of motion be a unit? For if it were so there must be some difference between it and the other units. But what is there to differentiate points which are units, except position? If, then, the units, that is the points, in the body are distinct from the units of soul, the units of soul will be in the same place as the points, for each unit will occupy the space of a point. And yet if two things can be in the same place, why not an infinite number? When the place which things occupy is indivisible, the things themselves are also indivisible. If, on the other hand, the number of the soul consists of the ar points in the body, or if the soul is the number of such points, why are not all bodies possessed of soul? For in all bodies there

would seem to be points: nay, an infinity of points. And, further, how can the points be separated and set free from the bodies to which they belong; unless, indeed, we are prepared to resolve lines into points?