1. Pleasures and pains, fears and assurances, desires and aversions, and suffer- ing—to what subject do they belong?1 For they either belong to the soul or to soul
using body or to some third thing made up from both. And this can also be taken in two ways, to mean either the mixture or another [5] different thing resulting from the mixture. And in fact the same is true of what comes to be as a result of these emotions, both actions or opinions. And so we must examine both discur- sive reason and opinion in order to determine whether they belong to the same subjects as the affections or whether some of them are like this and some of them different. We must also look at thoughts to determine how they operate and what they belong to and to decide, in particular, precisely what subject it is that [10] overlooks the activity and makes the enquiry and judgement about these matters. And, earlier, what does perception belong to? For it is appropriate to start from perception, since affections are a sort of perception or are not without perception.
2. First we must take soul in order to see whether soul is one thing and her essential being another. For if this is so, soul will be a compound thing, and there will be no absurdity already in her admitting affections of the kind mentioned above, if the argument turns out to favour this. [5] Or, if soul and her essential be- ing are the same,2 then soul will be a sort of form, which does not admit all these
activities that it confers upon something else but has its own native activity in it- self, whatever the argument reveals it to be. For if so, it is [10] true to say that the soul is immortal, if what is immortal and incorruptible must be impassible, giving of itself to another in some way but receiving nothing itself from another except all it has from the things before it, which are greater than it and from which it is not cut off. For what could such a thing fear if it receives nothing at all from out- side? So let that thing [5] fear which can be affected. Nor then does it experience assurance; for how can there be assurance for those who are never in the presence of what is frightening? And how can there be desires, which are fulfilled by means of the body being emptied and filled, if what is filled or emptied is differ- ent from soul? And how could it be receptive of mixture? Substantial being is
1. Aristotle, De Anima 408 b 1 ff.; Plato, Republic 429 c–d; 430 a–b; Phaedo 83 b.
unmixed. And how could substantial being receive any further addition? [20] For were it to do so, it would be hastening to the state of not being what it is. Suffer- ing is also far from it. And how could it be in pain and with what? For what is simple in substance is self-sufficient, insofar as it remains in its own substance. And does it take delight if something is added to it, when nothing, not even a good, can make an addition to it? For what it is, [25] it is always. And besides, it will not even perceive, nor will reasoning or opinion belong to it; for perception is reception of a form or indeed of an affection of body,3 and reasoning and opinion
are founded upon perception. But we must examine how it is with thought, to see if we shall leave this to soul; and in the case of pure pleasure,4 as well, to see if
the soul experiences [30] this when she is alone.
3. But we must in fact put soul in body, whether she is before body or in it, since it is from body and soul that “the complete living creature takes its name.”5
If soul uses body as a tool,6 then she is not compelled to receive the impressions
that come through the body, [5] just as craftsmen do not have to be affected by the properties of their tools7; perhaps she would necessarily have perception, if using
a tool involves the soul knowing the impressions that come from outside as a re- sult of perception, since using the eyes too is to see. But indeed there can be harmful results connected with seeing, so that pains, suffering, and [10] generally anything that may befall the whole body can follow; and so desires too may fol- low if the soul seeks the service of her tool. But how will the affections come from the body to her? For body will give a share of what belongs to it to another body, but how will body give to soul? For this is like saying that if one thing is af- fected so must another different thing [15] be affected. For as far as one is the user and the other what it uses, each of the two is separate. At any rate, before their separation by philosophy, how were they related? There was a mixture. But if there was a mixture, there was either a blending, or the soul was in some man- ner “woven through,”8 or the soul was like a form [20] not separated from the
matter, or a form touching upon the matter, as the steersman steers the ship, or one part was related in one way and another in another. And I mean that one part is separated, which is that which uses, and the other mingled in some way and on the same level with that which it uses, so that this lower part philosophy should turn toward the user and lead the user— [25] insofar as there is no absolute neces- sity for the relation, so that it may not always even have to use it—away from what it uses.
3. Aristotle, De Anima 424 a 18.
4. Cf. I, 1, 5, 26–8. 5. Plato, Phaedrus 246 c 5.
6. Plato, Alcibiades I 129 c–e.
7. Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 1241 b 18.
4. Let us suppose, then, that there is a mixture. But if there is a mixture, the worse will be better, that is, the body, and the better element worse, that is, the soul. And the body will be better by sharing life, and the soul worse by sharing in death and lack of reason. How in fact could that which has had its life diminished in some way [5] take on an additional power of perception? On the contrary, it is the body that, in taking life, shares in perception and the impressions resulting from perception. The body then will also desire—for it is the body that will profit from the objects of its desire—and will be afraid for itself; for this too will not find what is [10] agreeable to it and will be destroyed. And we must in fact inves- tigate the manner of the mixture and see if it is not actually impossible, just as if someone were to talk about a line being mixed with white, one kind of nature with another.9 The notion of “being interwoven” does not make the things interwoven
similarly affected, but it is possible for that which is interwoven to be unaffected and for the soul [15] to permeate the body without experiencing the body’s affec- tions, just like light, and especially if she is so interwoven as to be interwoven through the whole. The soul will not experience the affections of the body if she is interwoven in this way.10 But will the soul be in body as a form in matter? First,
she will be like a separable form if, as is in fact the case, she is substance [20] and so will be more consistent with the notion of a using agent. But if we suppose the relation to be like the shape of an axe imposed upon the iron11—and then the com-
pound, the axe, will do what it does, that is to say, the iron shaped in this way, though by virtue of the shape—then we shall rather grant all the common affec- tions to the body, though to a specific kind of body “natural, [25] organic, poten- tially having life.”12 For he [Aristotle] also says it is absurd “to say the soul
weaves,”13 so that it is absurd as well to say she desires or is pained; we should at-
tribute these affections rather to the living creature.
5. But we must say that the living creature is either the body of this specific kind or the conjoint of body and soul or some different third thing that has come to be from both.14 However this may be, we must either truly keep the soul unaf-
fected, as being herself the cause of such affections in something else, or have her also affected together with body, [5] and then either be affected by the same im- pression or a similar one, as for example, the living creature desires in one way, but the desiring faculty of soul acts or is affected in a different way. We should examine this specific kind of body later.15 But how is the compound, for instance,
9. Aristotle, De generatione et corruptione 323 b 26.
10. Plato, Timaeus 36 e; cf. I, 1, 3, 19. 11. Aristotle, De Anima 412 b 12. 12. Aristotle, De Anima 412 a 27–8. 13. Aristotle, De Anima 408 b 12–13. 14. Aristotle, De Anima 408 b 29. 15. Cf. I, 1, 7.
capable of experiencing pain?16 Is it that the body is disposed in this particular
way [10] and the affection comes right through to perception and the perception ends in the soul? But it is not yet clear how perception takes place. Or is it that, when a feeling of pain takes its origin from an opinion and a judgement17 that
there is some evil present either for the person himself or for one of his house- hold, there results from this a painful change for the body [15] and generally for the whole living creature? But in this case it is not yet clear to what subject the opinion belongs, the soul or the compound; besides, the opinion about an evil for someone does not include the experience of pain; for it is perfectly possible for an opinion to be present without one’s being at all pained as a consequence, just as it is equally possible not to be angry [20] despite having the opinion that we have been slighted, and for our appetite again not to be moved when we have the opin- ion that there is a good present. How then are these affections common to body and soul? Is it because desire belongs to the desiring part and high spirit to the spirited part and movement outwards to anything generally belongs to the appeti- tive part? But in this case they will no longer be common affections, but they will belong to the soul alone; or do they also belong to the body, [25] because blood and bile must boil and the body be so disposed as to move our appetite, as in the case of sexual desire. Let us admit that the appetite for the good is not a common property but belongs to the soul, as is also the case with other affections; an ar- gued account does not give all of them to the conjoint. But when a man has an ap- petite for sex, [30] it will be the man who desires, but in another way it will be the desiring part which desires. And how? Will the man start the desire, and the desir- ing part follow on? But how does the man desire at all if the desiring part was not moved? Granted, you will say, the desiring part will start. But if [35] the body is not earlier disposed in this particular way, where will it start from?
6. But perhaps it is better to say that, on the whole, it is by virtue of the pres- ence of the powers of soul that those subjects that have them are active in accor- dance with them, but that the powers themselves are unmoved, granting the power to act to the subjects that have that power. But if this is so, when the living crea- ture is affected, the [5] cause of its life, which gave itself to the compound, can still be unaffected, and the affections and activities belong to the subject that has them. But if this is so, then life will belong not to the soul at all but to the com- pound. Or rather, the life of the compound will not be the life of the soul, and the power of perception [10] will not perceive, but rather the subject that has the power will perceive. But if perception as a movement through the body ends in the soul, how will the soul not perceive? It would seem that when the power of perception is present, then by virtue of this power’s presence the compound will
16. Plato, Alcibiades I 130 a 9 (generally 130 a–c); also Aristotle, Metaphysics 1041 b 17, 19.
perceive whatever it perceives. But if the power [15] is not going to be moved, how is it still the compound that perceives if neither soul nor even soul-power is counted in together with it?
7. Let it be the compound then that perceives, and the soul by her presence does not give herself in this qualified way either to the compound or to the other element in the compound, but makes, out of the body qualified in this way and a kind of light that is given from herself, the nature of the [5] living creature, some- thing different, to which perceiving and all the other affections of the living crea- ture are said to belong. But how is it we who perceive? Presumably, because we are not released from the living creature of this particular kind, even if there are other things of more value than us that are present to the whole substance of a human being, which is made up of many things. And the soul’s power of percep- tion [10] need not be of sensible objects, but it must rather be able to apprehend the imprints from perception that come to be in the living creature, for these are already intelligible objects. So external perception is an image of this power of perception in soul, which is truer in substance and a contemplation of forms alone that remains unaffected. From just these [15] forms, from which the soul on her own already receives her leadership over the living creature, come discursive rea- sonings, in fact, and opinions, and thoughts; here precisely are “we” most of all. What is before these is ours, but we above all are what ranges from here upwards, since we are set over the living creature. And nothing will prevent us calling the entire thing “living creature,” mixed as to the lower parts but, from this point on, the true man, we might say. And those are the [20] “lion-like” and generally the “multiform beast.”18 For since the human being is coextensive with the rational
soul, whenever we reason it is we who reason, because reasonings are active op- erations of soul.
8. But how are we related to the intellect? And by intellect I mean not that disposition of soul that she has as one of the things from intellect, but intellect it- self. No doubt, we have this too as something above us. And we have it as either common or particular or both common and particular; common [5] because it is undivided, one, and everywhere the same, and particular because each one has it whole in the primary soul. So we also have the forms in soul in two ways, un- rolled and separated, as it were, and in intellect all together. But how do we have god? No doubt, as riding upon intelligible reality and upon [10] substance in the real sense,19 and we are third in rank from there, being formed, he [Plato] says,
out of the undivided substance from above and the substance that is divided in bodies,20 which we must effectively think of as being divided in bodies insofar as
the soul gives herself to the magnitude of bodies in proportion to the size of each
18. Plato, Republic 590 a 9; 588 c 7. 19. Numenius, fr. 11, Leemans, ed. 20. Plato, Timaeus 35 a 1–3.
living creature, since she also gives herself to the whole universe, though [15] she is one; or in so far as the soul is imagined as present to bodies by shining upon them and making living creatures not out of herself and body, but by remaining herself and by giving images of herself, just as a face is seen in many mirrors. And the first image is perception in the conjoint; then, after this, comes everything else that is said to be a form [20] of soul, each different form coming always from another, terminating in the generative and growth powers and generally in the powers of making and perfection of things other than the making soul, while the making soul herself is turned toward the product.
9. So the nature of that soul of ours, then, will be freed from responsibility for the evils a human being does and suffers; for these are related to the living creature, the common element, and common in the way we have explained.21 But
if opinion and discursive reasoning belong to the soul, how can she be faultless? [5] For opinion can be false and many evils are perpetrated under the guidance of false opinion. Or perhaps evil actions occur when we are overcome by the worse in us—for we are many—either by desire or passion or by an image of evil. And what is called thinking rationally of false things is a form of imagination that has not waited upon the judgement of the reasoning faculty, but [10] we have acted under the persuasion of our worse impulses, just as in the case of perception it happens that the common sense sees falsely before the reasoning faculty has passed judgement upon it. And intellect either laid hold of the true or not, so that it is faultless, or we should speak rather in the following way, that we either laid hold of the intelligible object in intellect or not; or of the intelligible object in us; [15] for it is possible to have the object and not to have it at hand.22 So we have
distinguished what is common to the soul-body conjoint and what is particular to