De Anima
Aristotle (384–322 BC)
Περὶ ψυχῆς
Aristotle's De Anima in the Greek text of Bekker with R. D. Hicks's English translation, in three books and thirty chapters.
Book 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Book 2
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Book 3
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
We must also consider what is the moving cause in those imperfect animals which have only the sense of touch. Is it possible that they should have imagination and desire, or is it not? It is evident that they feel pleasure and pain: and, if they have these, then of necessity they must also feel desire. But how can they have imagination? Shall we say that, as their movements are vague and indeterminate, so, though they have these faculties, they have them in a vague and indeterminate form? The imagination of sense, then, as we have said, is found in the other animals also, but deliberative imagination in those alone which have reason.— For the task of deciding whether to do this or that already implies reasoning. And the pursuit of the greater good necessarily implies some single standard of measurement. Hence we have the power of constructing a single image out of a number of images.—And the reason why the lower animals are thought not to have opinion is that they do not possess that form of imagination which comes from inference, while the latter implies the former. And so appetency does not imply the deliberative faculty. But sometimes it overpowers rational wish and moves to action; at other times the latter, rational wish, overpowers the former, appetency. Thus one appetency prevails over another appetency, like one sphere over another sphere, in the case where incontinence has supervened. But by nature the upper sphere always has the predominance and is a moving cause, so that the motion is actually the resultant of three orbits.
The cognitive faculty, however, is not subject to motion, but is at rest. The major premiss is universal, whether judgment or proposition, while the minor has to do with a particular fact: for, while the former asserts that such and such a person ought to do such and such an act, the latter asserts that a particular act is one of the sort and that I am such a person. Now it is the latter judgment which at once moves to action, not the universal. Or shall we say that it is both together, but the one is akin to the unmoved movent, the other is not?