ON THE SOUL

by Aristotle
translated by J.

A.

Smith

Book I
1

HOLDING as we do that, while knowledge of any kind is a thing to
be honoured and prized, one kind of it may, either by reason of its
greater exactness or of a higher dignity and greater wonderfulness
in its objects, be more honourable and precious than another, on
both accounts we should naturally be led to place in the front rank
the study of the soul.

The knowledge of the soul admittedly
contributes greatly to the advance of truth in general, and, above
all, to our understanding of Nature, for the soul is in some sense the
principle of animal life.

Our aim is to grasp and understand, first
its essential nature, and secondly its properties; of these some are
taught to be affections proper to the soul itself, while others are
considered to attach to the animal owing to the presence within it
of soul.
To attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most
difficult things in the world.

As the form of question which here
presents itself, viz.

the question 'What is it?', recurs in other
fields, it might be supposed that there was some single method of
inquiry applicable to all objects whose essential nature (as we are
endeavouring to ascertain there is for derived properties the single
method of demonstration); in that case what we should have to seek for
would be this unique method.

But if there is no such single and
general method for solving the question of essence, our task becomes
still more difficult; in the case of each different subject we shall
have to determine the appropriate process of investigation.

If to this
there be a clear answer, e.g.

that the process is demonstration or
division, or some known method, difficulties and hesitations still
beset us-with what facts shall we begin the inquiry? For the facts
which form the starting-points in different subjects must be
different, as e.g.

in the case of numbers and surfaces.
First, no doubt, it is necessary to determine in which of the
summa genera soul lies, what it is; is it 'a this-somewhat, 'a
substance, or is it a quale or a quantum, or some other of the
remaining kinds of predicates which we have distinguished? Further,
does soul belong to the class of potential existents, or is it not
rather an actuality? Our answer to this question is of the greatest
importance.
We must consider also whether soul is divisible or is without parts,
and whether it is everywhere homogeneous or not; and if not
homogeneous, whether its various forms are different specifically or
generically: up to the present time those who have discussed and
investigated soul seem to have confined themselves to the human
soul.

We must be careful not to ignore the question whether soul can
be defined in a single unambiguous formula, as is the case with
animal, or whether we must not give a separate formula for each of it,
as we do for horse, dog, man, god (in the latter case the
'universal' animal-and so too every other 'common predicate'-being
treated either as nothing at all or as a later product).

Further, if
what exists is not a plurality of souls, but a plurality of parts of
one soul, which ought we to investigate first, the whole soul or its
parts? (It is also a difficult problem to decide which of these
parts are in nature distinct from one another.) Again, which ought
we to investigate first, these parts or their functions, mind or
thinking, the faculty or the act of sensation, and so on? If the
investigation of the functions precedes that of the parts, the further
question suggests itself: ought we not before either to consider the
correlative objects, e.g.

of sense or thought? It seems not only
useful for the discovery of the causes of the derived properties of
substances to be acquainted with the essential nature of those
substances (as in mathematics it is useful for the understanding of
the property of the equality of the interior angles of a triangle to
two right angles to know the essential nature of the straight and
the curved or of the line and the plane) but also conversely, for
the knowledge of the essential nature of a substance is largely
promoted by an acquaintance with its properties: for, when we are able
to give an account conformable to experience of all or most of the
properties of a substance, we shall be in the most favourable position
to say something worth saying about the essential nature of that
subject; in all demonstration a definition of the essence is
required as a starting-point, so that definitions which do not
enable us to discover the derived properties, or which fail to
facilitate even a conjecture about them, must obviously, one and
all, be dialectical and futile.
A further problem presented by the affections of soul is this: are
they all affections of the complex of body and soul, or is there any
one among them peculiar to the soul by itself? To determine this is
indispensable but difficult.

If we consider the majority of them,
there seems to be no case in which the soul can act or be acted upon
without involving the body; e.g.

anger, courage, appetite, and
sensation generally.

Thinking seems the most probable exception; but
if this too proves to be a form of imagination or to be impossible
without imagination, it too requires a body as a condition of its
existence.

If there is any way of acting or being acted upon proper to
soul, soul will be capable of separate existence; if there is none,
its separate existence is impossible.

In the latter case, it will be
like what is straight, which has many properties arising from the
straightness in it, e.g.

that of touching a bronze sphere at a
point, though straightness divorced from the other constituents of the
straight thing cannot touch it in this way; it cannot be so divorced
at all, since it is always found in a body.

It therefore seems that
all the affections of soul involve a body-passion, gentleness, fear,
pity, courage, joy, loving, and hating; in all these there is a
concurrent affection of the body.

In support of this we may point to
the fact that, while sometimes on the occasion of violent and striking
occurrences there is no excitement or fear felt, on others faint and
feeble stimulations produce these emotions, viz.

when the body is
already in a state of tension resembling its condition when we are
angry.

Here is a still clearer case: in the absence of any external
cause of terror we find ourselves experiencing the feelings of a man
in terror.

From all this it is obvious that the affections of soul are
enmattered formulable essences.
Consequently their definitions ought to correspond, e.g.

anger
should be defined as a certain mode of movement of such and such a
body (or part or faculty of a body) by this or that cause and for this
or that end.

That is precisely why the study of the soul must fall
within the science of Nature, at least so far as in its affections
it manifests this double character.

Hence a physicist would define
an affection of soul differently from a dialectician; the latter would
define e.g.

anger as the appetite for returning pain for pain, or
something like that, while the former would define it as a boiling
of the blood or warm substance surround the heart.

The latter
assigns the material conditions, the former the form or formulable
essence; for what he states is the formulable essence of the fact,
though for its actual existence there must be embodiment of it in a
material such as is described by the other.

Thus the essence of a
house is assigned in such a formula as 'a shelter against
destruction by wind, rain, and heat'; the physicist would describe
it as 'stones, bricks, and timbers'; but there is a third possible
description which would say that it was that form in that material
with that purpose or end.

Which, then, among these is entitled to be
regarded as the genuine physicist? The one who confines himself to the
material, or the one who restricts himself to the formulable essence
alone? Is it not rather the one who combines both in a single formula?
If this is so, how are we to characterize the other two? Must we not
say that there is no type of thinker who concerns himself with those
qualities or attributes of the material which are in fact
inseparable from the material, and without attempting even in
thought to separate them? The physicist is he who concerns himself
with all the properties active and passive of bodies or materials thus
or thus defined; attributes not considered as being of this
character he leaves to others, in certain cases it may be to a
specialist, e.g.

a carpenter or a physician, in others (a) where
they are inseparable in fact, but are separable from any particular
kind of body by an effort of abstraction, to the mathematician, (b)
where they are separate both in fact and in thought from body
altogether, to the First Philosopher or metaphysician.

But we must
return from this digression, and repeat that the affections of soul
are inseparable from the material substratum of animal life, to
which we have seen that such affections, e.g.

passion and fear,
attach, and have not the same mode of being as a line or a plane.
2
For our study of soul it is necessary, while formulating the
problems of which in our further advance we are to find the solutions,