[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
one.
The soul is the cause or source of the living body. The terms cause
and source have many senses. But the soul is the cause of its body
alike in all three senses which we explicitly recognize. It is (a)
the source or origin of movement, it is (b) the end, it is (c) the
essence of the whole living body.
That it is the last, is clear; for in everything the essence is identical
with the ground of its being, and here, in the case of living things,
their being is to live, and of their being and their living the soul
in them is the cause or source. Further, the actuality of whatever
is potential is identical with its formulable essence.
It is manifest that the soul is also the final cause of its body.
For Nature, like mind, always does whatever it does for the sake of
something, which something is its end. To that something corresponds
in the case of animals the soul and in this it follows the order of
nature; all natural bodies are organs of the soul. This is true of
those that enter into the constitution of plants as well as of those
which enter into that of animals. This shows that that the sake of
which they are is soul. We must here recall the two senses of 'that
for the sake of which', viz. (a) the end to achieve which, and (b)
Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com
ON THE SOUL 23
the being in whose interest, anything is or is done.
We must maintain, further, that the soul is also the cause of the
living body as the original source of local movement. The power of
locomotion is not found, however, in all living things. But change
of quality and change of quantity are also due to the soul. Sensation
is held to be a qualitative alteration, and nothing except what has
soul in it is capable of sensation. The same holds of the quantitative
changes which constitute growth and decay; nothing grows or decays
naturally except what feeds itself, and nothing feeds itself except
what has a share of soul in it.
Empedocles is wrong in adding that growth in plants is to be explained,
the downward rooting by the natural tendency of earth to travel downwards,
and the upward branching by the similar natural tendency of fire to
travel upwards. For he misinterprets up and down; up and down are
not for all things what they are for the whole Cosmos: if we are to
distinguish and identify organs according to their functions, the
roots of plants are analogous to the head in animals. Further, we
must ask what is the force that holds together the earth and the fire
which tend to travel in contrary directions; if there is no counteracting
force, they will be torn asunder; if there is, this must be the soul
and the cause of nutrition and growth. By some the element of fire
is held to be the cause of nutrition and growth, for it alone of the
primary bodies or elements is observed to feed and increase itself.
Hence the suggestion that in both plants and animals it is it which
is the operative force. A concurrent cause in a sense it certainly
is, but not the principal cause, that is rather the soul; for while
the growth of fire goes on without limit so long as there is a supply
of fuel, in the case of all complex wholes formed in the course of
nature there is a limit or ratio which determines their size and increase,
and limit and ratio are marks of soul but not of fire, and belong
to the side of formulable essence rather than that of matter.
Nutrition and reproduction are due to one and the same psychic power.
It is necessary first to give precision to our account of food, for
it is by this function of absorbing food that this psychic power is
distinguished from all the others. The current view is that what serves
as food to a living thing is what is contrary to it-not that in every
pair of contraries each is food to the other: to be food a contrary
must not only be transformable into the other and vice versa, it must
also in so doing increase the bulk of the other. Many a contrary is
transformed into its other and vice versa, where neither is even a
quantum and so cannot increase in bulk, e.g. an invalid into a healthy
subject. It is clear that not even those contraries which satisfy
both the conditions mentioned above are food to one another in precisely
the same sense; water may be said to feed fire, but not fire water.
Where the members of the pair are elementary bodies only one of the
contraries, it would appear, can be said to feed the other. But there
is a difficulty here. One set of thinkers assert that like fed, as
well as increased in amount, by like. Another set, as we have said,
maintain the very reverse, viz. that what feeds and what is fed are
contrary to one another; like, they argue, is incapable of being affected
by like; but food is changed in the process of digestion, and change
is always to what is opposite or to what is intermediate. Further,
food is acted upon by what is nourished by it, not the other way round,
as timber is worked by a carpenter and not conversely; there is a
Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com
ON THE SOUL 24
change in the carpenter but it is merely a change from not-working
to working. In answering this problem it makes all the difference
whether we mean by 'the food' the 'finished' or the 'raw' product.
If we use the word food of both, viz. of the completely undigested
and the completely digested matter, we can justify both the rival
accounts of it; taking food in the sense of undigested matter, it
is the contrary of what is fed by it, taking it as digested it is
like what is fed by it. Consequently it is clear that in a certain
sense we may say that both parties are right, both wrong.
Since nothing except what is alive can be fed, what is fed is the
besouled body and just because it has soul in it. Hence food is essentially
related to what has soul in it. Food has a power which is other than
the power to increase the bulk of what is fed by it; so far forth
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
