  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 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 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. 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 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 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 admitted13 — 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 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 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. 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 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 “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. 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 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 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: d?? ?st? ?? ?? d?? ?e?t??? e??a? t?? ?????, ?st? d’ ?? t?e?? (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. Metaphys. Z. iii. p. 1029, a. 5: t? e?d?? t?? ???? p??te??? ?a? ????? ?? — p. 1039, a. 1. See in Schwegler, pp. 13, 42, 83, Part II. of his Commentary on the Aristotelian Metaphysica. 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 indeterminate36 — what may be or may not be — Matter is either remote or proximate, removed either by one stage or several stages from the s?????? in which it culminates. Strictly speaking, none but proximate matter is said to exist d???e?. Alexander Schol. (ad Metaph. T. p. 1049, a. 19) p. 781, b. 39: ? p???? ??? ?? ???eta? d???e?. t? d? p?te; ?t? ?? pa????????e? t? p???ata ?? t?? p???? ???’ ?? t?? p??se????· ????e? ??? t? ???t??? ??????? ?? t?? p??se????, ???’ ?? ?????? ?? t?? p????. Alexander in his Commentary on this book (T. iii. p. 1047, a. 30) p. 542, Bonitz’s edit., remarks that ?????e?a is used by Aristotle in a double sense; sometimes meaning ????s?? p??? t? t????, sometimes meaning the t???? itself. Comp. ?. 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 Physica, III. vi. p. 207, a. 26; De Generat. et Corrupt. I. v. p. 320, b. 14-25. 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 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 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. 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 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 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, qu 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, Themistius ad loc. p. 144, ed. Spengel: p?s?e? (t? f?t?) s??e?s???s?? t?? ???? t?? p?????t??, &c. 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 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. 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 He remarks that plants have no similar es?t?? — II. xii. p. 424, b. 1. 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 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 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.) 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 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 ?????? into ???f??. 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 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 In the treatise De Sensu et Sensili, there is one passage (ii. p. 438, b. 24), wherein Aristotle affirms that smell is ?ap??d?? ??a???as??, ?? p????; 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. 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 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 qu 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 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 ?p??sta? 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. 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. 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 It is to be remarked that, in explaining this mental process of comparison, Aristotle three several times applies it both to a?s??s?? and to ???s??, 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 To the sentient soul, even in its lowest manifestations, belong the feelings of pleasure and pain, appetite and aversion.116 The 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 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 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 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 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 About the associative property of Contraries see also De Somno et Vigil. i. p. 453, b. 27. 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; 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 In the preceding chapter he expressly discriminates ???s?? from ?p??????. This last word ?p?????? is the most general term for believing or opining upon reasons good or bad; the varieties under it are ?p?st??, d??a, f????s?? ?a? t??a?t?a t??t?? (p. 427, b. 16-27). 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 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 But though all varieties of Soul emanate from the same celestial source, they possess the divine element in very different degrees, and are very unequal in comparative worth and dignity. The lowest variety, or nutritive soul — the only one possessed by plants, among which there is no separation of sex146 — is contained potentially in the seed, and is thus transmitted when Both the nutritive and the sentient souls have, each of them respectively, a special bodily agency and movement belonging to them. But the NoÛs, or the noËtic soul, has no partnership with any similar bodily agency. There is no special corporeal potentiality (to speak in Aristotelian language) which it is destined to actualize. It enters from without, and emanates from a still more exalted influence of that divine celestial substance from which all psychical or vitalizing heat proceeds.149 It is superinduced upon the nutritive and sentient souls, and introduces itself at an age of the individual later than both of them. Having no part of the bodily organism specially appropriated to it, this variety of soul — what is called the NoÛs — stands distinguished from the other two in being perfectly separable from the body;150 that is, separable from the organized body which it is the essential function of the two lower souls to actualize, and with which both of them are bound up. The NoÛs is not separable from the body altogether; it belongs essentially to the divine celestial body, and to those luminaries and other divine beings by whom portions of it are tenanted. Theorizing contemplation — the perfect, unclouded, unembarrassed, exercise of the theoretical NoÛs — is the single mental activity of these divinities; contemplation of the formal regularity of the Kosmos, with its eternal and faultless rotations, From this celestial body, a certain influence of NoÛs is transferred to some of the mortal inhabitants of earth, water, and air. Thus a third or noËtic soul — or rather a third noËtic function — is added to the two existing functions, sensitive and nutrient, of the animal soul, which acquires thereby an improved aptitude for, and correlation with, the Formal and Universal. We have already stated that the sensitive soul possesses this aptitude to a certain extent; it receives the impression of sensible forms, without being impressed by the matter accompanying them. The noËtic function strengthens and sharpens the aptitude; the soul comes into correlation with those cogitable or intellective forms which are involved in the sensible forms;153 it rises from the lower generalities of the Second Philosophy, to the higher generalities of the First Philosophy. As the sentient or percipient soul is the form or correlate of all perceivables, and thus identified with them in nature, all of them having existence only in relation to it, — so the cogitant or intellective soul is the form or correlate of all cogitables, all of which exist relatively to it, and only relatively.154 It is in fact the highest of all forms — the Form of Forms; the mental or subjective aspect of all formal reality. Such at least is the tendency and purpose of that noËtic influence which the celestial substance imparts to the human soul; but it is realized only to a very small degree. In its characteristic theorizing efficacy, the godlike NoÛs counts for a small fraction of the whole soul, though superexcellent in quality.155 There are but few men in whom it is tolerably developed, and even in those few it is countervailed by many other agencies.156 The noËtic function in men and animals exists We have thus to study the noËtic function according to the manifestations of it that we find in man, and to a certain extent in some other privileged animals. Bees, for example, partake in the divine gift to a certain extent; being distinguished in this respect from their analogues — wasps and hornets.158
In these and other animals, and in man to a still greater degree, the theorizing activity exists; but it is either starved, or at least has to deal with materials obscure, puzzling, conflicting; while, on the other hand, the practical intellect becomes largely developed, through the pressure of wants and desires, combined with the teaching of experience. In Aristotle’s view, sensible perception is a separate source of knowledge, accompanied with judgment and discrimination, independent of the noËtic function. Occasionally, he refers the intellectual superiority of man to the properly attempered combination and antagonism of heat in the heart with cold in the brain, each strong and pure;159 all the highly endowed animals (he says)
All this process — a perpetual movement of sense and memory — begins from infancy, and goes on independently of NoÛs or the noËtic function properly so called; which grows up gradually at a later age, aided by the acquisition of language and by instruction conveyed through language. The supervening NoÛs presupposes and depends upon what has been thus treasured up by experience. Though, in the celestial body. NoÛs exists separately from human beings, and though it there operates proprio motu apart from sense, such is not the case with the human NoÛs; which depends upon the co-operation, and is subject to the restrictions, of the complicated soul and body wherewith it is domiciled — restrictions differing in each individual case. Though the noËtic process is distinct from sense, yet without sense it cannot take place in man. Aristotle expressly says: “You cannot cogitate without a phantasm or without a continuous image.” Now the phantasm has been already explained as a relic of movements of sense — or as those movements themselves, looked at in another point of view.163 “When we cogitate” (he says), “our mental affection is the same as when we draw a triangle for geometrical study; for there, though we do not make use of the fact that the triangle is determinate in its magnitude, we still draw it of a determinate magnitude. So in cogitation, even when we are not cogitating a determinate quantum, we nevertheless set before our eyes a determinate quantum, but we do not cogitate it quatenus determinate.”164 We This passage appears to be as clear a statement of the main doctrine of Nominalism as can be found in Hobbes or Berkeley. In the sixteenth section of the Introduction to the Principles of Human Knowledge, Berkeley says:—“And here it must be acknowledged that a man may consider a figure merely as triangular, without attending to the particular qualities of the angles or relations of the sides. — In like manner we may consider Peter to far forth as man, or so far forth as animal, without framing the forementioned idea, either of man or animal, inasmuch as all that is perceived is not considered.” Berkeley has not improved upon the statement of Aristotle. We see that, though Aristotle recognizes a general distinction between phantasy and cogitation, and alludes to many animals as having the former without attaining to the latter, yet he also declares that in man, who possesses both, not only is cogitation dependent upon phantasy, but phantasy passes into cogitation by gradations almost imperceptible. In regard to the practical application of NoÛs (i.e. to animal movements determined either by appetite or by reason), he finds a great difficulty in keeping the distinction clearly marked. Substantially, indeed, he lets it drop. When he speaks of phantasy as being either calculating or perceptive, we are unable to see in what respect calculating phantasy (which he states not to belong to other animals) differs from an effort of cogitation.167 Indeed, he speaks with some diffidence respecting any distribution of parts in the same soul, suspecting that such distribution is not real but logical: you may subdivide as much as you choose.168 It thus appears clear that Aristotle restricts the NoÛs or noËtic function in man to the matters of sense and experience, physical or mental, and that he considers the phantasm to be an essential accompaniment of the cogitative act. Yet this does not at all detract from his view of the grandeur, importance, and wide range of survey, belonging to the noËtic function. It is the portion of man’s nature that correlates with the abstract and universal; but it is only a portion of his nature, and must work in conjunction and harmony with the rest. The abstract cannot be really separated from the concrete, nor the universal from one or other of its particulars, nor the essence from that whereof it is The noËtic soul is called by Aristotle “the place of Forms,” “the potentiality of Forms,” “the correlate of things apart from Matter.”169 It cogitates these Forms in or along with the phantasms: the cogitable Forms are contained in the sensible Forms; for there is nothing really existent beyond or apart from visible or tangible magnitudes, with their properties and affections, and with the so-called abstractions considered by the geometer. Hence, without sensible perception, a man can neither learn nor understand anything; in all his theoretical contemplations, he requires some phantasm to contemplate along with them.170 Herein lies one of the main distinctions between the noËtic and the sentient souls. The sentient deals with particulars, and correlates with external bodies; the noËtic apprehends universals, which in a certain sense are within the soul: hence a man can cogitate whenever or whatever he chooses, but he can see or touch only what is present.171 Another distinction is, that the sentient soul is embodied in special organs, each with determinate capacities, and correlating with external objects, themselves alike determinate, acting only under certain conditions of locality. We have already said that the NoÛs of the human soul emanates from a peculiar influence of the celestial body, which is the special region of Form in the Kosmos. Through it we acquire an enlarged power of apprehending the abstract and universal; we can ascend above sensible forms to the cogitable forms contained therein; we can consider all forms in themselves, without paying attention to the matter wherein they are embodied. Instead of considering the concrete solid or liquid before us, we can mentally analyse them, and thus study solidity in the abstract, fluidity in the abstract. While our senses judge of water as hot and cold, our noËtic function enables us to appreciate water in the abstract — to determine its essence, and to furnish a definition of it.176 In all these objects, as combinations of Form with Matter, the cogitable form exists potentially; and is abstracted or considered abstractedly, by the cogitant NoÛs.177 Yet this last (as we have already seen) cannot operate except along with and by aid of phantasms — of impressions revived or remaining from sense. It is thus immersed in the materials of sense, and has no others. But it handles them in a way of its own, and under new points of view; comparing and analysing; recognizing the abstract in the concrete, and the universal in the particular; The distinction, yet at the same time correlation, between Form and Matter, pervades all nature (Aristotle affirms), and will be found in the NoÛs as elsewhere. We must recognize an Intellectus Agens or constructive, and an Intellectus Patiens or receptive.179 The Agens is the great intellectual energy pervading the celestial body, and acting upon all the animals susceptible of its operation; analogous to light, which illuminates the diaphanous medium, and elevates what was mere potential colour into colour actual and visible.180 The Patiens is the intellectual receptivity acted upon in each individual, and capable of being made to cogitate every thing; anterior to the Agens, in time, so far as regards the individual, yet as a general fact (when we are talking of man as a species) not anterior even in time, but correlative. Of the two, the Intellectus Agens is the more venerable; it is pure intellectual energy, unmixed, unimpressible from without, and separable from all animal body. It is this, and nothing more, when considered apart from animal body; but it is then eternal and immortal, while the Intellectus Patiens perishes with the remaining soul and with the body. Yet though the Intellectus Agens is thus eternal, and though we have part in it, we cannot remember any of its operations anterior to our own maturity; for the concurrence of the Intellectus Patiens, which We see here the full extent of Aristotle’s difference from the Platonic doctrine, in respect to the immortality of the soul. He had defined soul as the first actualization of a body having potentiality of life with a determinate organism. This of course implied, and he expressly declares it, that soul and body in each individual case were one and indivisible, so that the soul of Sokrates perished of necessity with the body of Sokrates.182 But he accompanied that declaration with a reserve in favour of NoÛs, and especially of the theorizing NoÛs; which he recognized as a different sort of soul, not dependent on a determinate bodily organism, but capable of being separated from it, as the eternal is from the perishable.183 The present chapter informs us how far such reserve is intended to go. That the theorizing NoÛs is not limited, like the sentient soul, to a determinate bodily organism, but exists apart from that organism and eternally — is maintained as incontestable: it is the characteristic intellectual activity of the eternal celestial body and the divine inmates thereof. But the distinction of Form and Matter is here pointed out, as prevailing in NoÛs and in Soul generally, not less than throughout all other Nature. The theorizing NoÛs, as it exists in Sokrates, Plato, Demokritus, Anaxagoras, Empedokles, Xenokrates, &c., is individualized in each, and individualized differently in each. It represents the result of the Intellectus Agens or Formal NoÛs, universal and permanent, upon the Intellectus Patiens or noËtic receptivity peculiar to each individual; the co-operation of the two is indispensable to sustain the theorizing intellect of any individual man. But the Intellectus Patiens, or Receptivus, perishes along with the individual. Accordingly, the intellectual life of Sokrates cannot be continued farther. It cannot be prolonged after his sensitive and nutritive life has ceased; the noËtic function, as it exists in him, is subject to the same limits of duration as the other functions of the soul. The intellectual man is no more immortal than the sentient man. We have already stated that NoÛs — Intellect — the noËtic function — is that faculty of the soul that correlates with the abstract and universal; with Form apart from Matter. Its process is at once analytical, synthetical, and retentive. Nature presents to us only concretes and particulars, in a perpetual course of change and reciprocal action; in these the abstract and universal are immersed, and out of these they have to be disengaged by logical analysis. That the abstract is a derivative from the concrete, and the universal from particulars — is the doctrine of Aristotle. Ascending from particulars, the analysis is carried so far that at length it can go no farther. It continues to divide until it comes to indivisibles, or simple notions, the highest abstractions, and the largest universals. These are the elements out of which universal propositions are formed, the first premisses or principia of demonstration. Unphilosophical minds do not reach these indivisibles at all: but it is the function of the theorizing NoÛs to fasten on them, and combine them into true propositions. In so far as regards the indivisibles themselves, falsehood is out of the question, and One of the chief functions that Aristotle assigns to NoÛs, or the noËtic function, is that the principia of demonstration and knowledge belong to it; and not merely the principia, but also, in cases of action preceded by deliberation and balance of motives, the ultimate application of principia to action. So that he styles NoÛs both beginning and end; also the beginning of the beginning; and, moreover, he declares it to be always right and unerring — equal to Science and even more than Science.187 These are high praises, conveying little information, and not reconcilable with other passages wherein he speaks of the exercise of the noËtic function (t? ??e??) as sometimes right, sometimes wrong.188 But, for the question of psychology, the point to be determined is, in what sense he meant that principia belonged to NoÛs. He certainly did not mean that the first principles of reasoning were novelties originated, suggested, or introduced into the soul by noËtic influence. Not only he does not say this, but he takes pains to impress the exact contrary. In passages cited a few pages back, he declares that NoÛs in entering the soul brings nothing whatever with it; that it is an universal potentiality — a capacity in regard to truth, but nothing more;189 that it is in fact a capacity not merely for comparing and judging (to both of which he recognizes even the sentient soul as competent), but also for combining many into one, and resolving the apparent one into several; for abstracting, generalizing, He describes, at the end of the Analytica Posteriora and elsewhere, the steps whereby the mind ascends gradually from sense, memory, and experience, to general principles. And he indicates a curious contrast between these and the noËtic functions. Sense, memory, phantasy, reminiscence, are movements of the body as well as of the soul; our thoughts and feelings come and go, none of them remaining long. But the noËtic process is the reverse of this; it is an arrest of all this mental movement, a detention of the fugitive thoughts, a subsidence from perturbation — so that the attention dwells steadily and for some time on the same matters.191 Analysis, selection, and concentration of attention, are the real characteristics of the Aristotelian NoÛs. It is not (as some philosophers have thought) a source of new general truths, let into the soul by a separate door, and independent of experience as well as transcending experience. Passing now to the Emotions, we find that these are not systematically classified and analysed by Aristotle, as belonging to a scheme of Psychology; though he treats them incidentally, with great ability and acuteness, both in his Ethics, where he regards them as auxiliaries or impediments to a rational plan of life, and in his Rhetoric, where he touches upon their operation as it bears on oratorical effect. He introduces however in his Psychology some answer to the question, What is it that produces local movement in the animal body? He replies that movement is produced both by NoÛs and by Appetite. Speaking strictly, we ought to call Appetite alone the direct producing cause, acted upon by the appetitum, which is here the Primum Movens Immobile. But this appetitum cannot act without coming into the intellectual sphere, as something seen, imagined, cogitated.192 In this case the NoÛs or Intellect is stimulated through appetite, and operates in subordination thereto. Aristotle thus concludes his scheme of Psychology, comprehending all plants as well as all animals; a scheme differing in this respect, as well as in others, from the schemes of those that had preceded him, and founded upon the peculiar principles of his own First Philosophy. Soul is to organized body as Form to Matter, as Actualizer to the Potential; not similar or homogeneous, but correlative; the two being only separable as distinct logical points of view in regard to one and the same integer or individual. Aristotle recognizes many different varieties of Soul, or rather many distinct functions of the same soul, from the lowest or most universal, to the highest or most peculiar and privileged; but the higher functions presuppose or depend upon the lower, as conditions; while the same principle of Relativity pervades them all. He brings this principle prominently forward, when he is summing up194 in the third or last book of the treatise De AnimÂ:—“The Soul is in a certain way all existent things; for all of them are either Perceivables or Cogitables; and the Cogitant Soul is in a certain way the matters cogitated, while the Percipient Soul is in a certain way the matters perceived.” The Percipient and its Percepta — the Cogitant and its Cogitata — each implies and correlates with the other: the Percipient is the highest Form of all Percepta; the Cogitant is the Form of Forms, or the highest of all Forms, cogitable or perceivable.195 The Percipient or Cogitant Subject is thus conceived |
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