which anything may be moved-either (a) indirectly, owing to
something other than itself, or (b) directly, owing to itself.
Things are 'indirectly moved' which are moved as being contained in
something which is moved, e.g. sailors in a ship, for they are moved
in a different sense from that in which the ship is moved; the ship is
'directly moved', they are 'indirectly moved', because they are in a
moving vessel. This is clear if we consider their limbs; the
movement proper to the legs (and so to man) is walking, and in this
case the sailors tare not walking. Recognizing the double sense of
'being moved', what we have to consider now is whether the soul is
'directly moved' and participates in such direct movement.
There are four species of movement-locomotion, alteration,
diminution, growth; consequently if the soul is moved, it must be
moved with one or several or all of these species of movement. Now
if its movement is not incidental, there must be a movement natural to
it, and, if so, as all the species enumerated involve place, place
must be natural to it. But if the essence of soul be to move itself,
its being moved cannot be incidental to-as it is to what is white or
three cubits long; they too can be moved, but only incidentally-what
is moved is that of which 'white' and 'three cubits long' are the
attributes, the body in which they inhere; hence they have no place:
but if the soul naturally partakes in movement, it follows that it
must have a place.
Further, if there be a movement natural to the soul, there must be a
counter-movement unnatural to it, and conversely. The same applies
to rest as well as to movement; for the terminus ad quem of a
thing's natural movement is the place of its natural rest, and
similarly the terminus ad quem of its enforced movement is the place
of its enforced rest. But what meaning can be attached to enforced
movements or rests of the soul, it is difficult even to imagine.
Further, if the natural movement of the soul be upward, the soul
must be fire; if downward, it must be earth; for upward and downward
movements are the definitory characteristics of these bodies. The same
reasoning applies to the intermediate movements, termini, and
bodies. Further, since the soul is observed to originate movement in
the body, it is reasonable to suppose that it transmits to the body
the movements by which it itself is moved, and so, reversing the
order, we may infer from the movements of the body back to similar
movements of the soul. Now the body is moved from place to place
with movements of locomotion. Hence it would follow that the soul
too must in accordance with the body change either its place as a
whole or the relative places of its parts. This carries with it the
possibility that the soul might even quit its body and re-enter it,
and with this would be involved the possibility of a resurrection of
animals from the dead. But, it may be contended, the soul can be moved
indirectly by something else; for an animal can be pushed out of its
course. Yes, but that to whose essence belongs the power of being
moved by itself, cannot be moved by something else except
incidentally, just as what is good by or in itself cannot owe its
goodness to something external to it or to some end to which it is a
means.
If the soul is moved, the most probable view is that what moves it
is sensible things.
We must note also that, if the soul moves itself, it must be the
mover itself that is moved, so that it follows that if movement is
in every case a displacement of that which is in movement, in that
respect in which it is said to be moved, the movement of the soul must
be a departure from its essential nature, at least if its
self-movement is essential to it, not incidental.
Some go so far as to hold that the movements which the soul
imparts to the body in which it is are the same in kind as those
with which it itself is moved. An example of this is Democritus, who
uses language like that of the comic dramatist Philippus, who accounts
for the movements that Daedalus imparted to his wooden Aphrodite by
saying that he poured quicksilver into it; similarly Democritus says
that the spherical atoms which according to him constitute soul, owing
to their own ceaseless movements draw the whole body after them and so
produce its movements. We must urge the question whether it is these
very same atoms which produce rest also-how they could do so, it is
difficult and even impossible to say. And, in general, we may object
that it is not in this way that the soul appears to originate movement
in animals-it is through intention or process of thinking.
It is in the same fashion that the Timaeus also tries to give a
physical account of how the soul moves its body; the soul, it is there
said, is in movement, and so owing to their mutual implication moves
the body also. After compounding the soul-substance out of the
elements and dividing it in accordance with the harmonic numbers, in
order that it may possess a connate sensibility for 'harmony' and that
the whole may move in movements well attuned, the Demiurge bent the
straight line into a circle; this single circle he divided into two
circles united at two common points; one of these he subdivided into
seven circles. All this implies that the movements of the soul are
identified with the local movements of the heavens.
Now, in the first place, it is a mistake to say that the soul is a
spatial magnitude. It is evident that Plato means the soul of the
whole to be like the sort of soul which is called mind not like the
sensitive or the desiderative soul, for the movements of neither of
these are circular. Now mind is one and continuous in the sense in
which the process of thinking is so, and thinking is identical with
the thoughts which are its parts; these have a serial unity like
that of number, not a unity like that of a spatial magnitude. Hence
mind cannot have that kind of unity either; mind is either without
parts or is continuous in some other way than that which characterizes
a spatial magnitude. How, indeed, if it were a spatial magnitude,
could mind possibly think? Will it think with any one indifferently of
its parts? In this case, the 'part' must be understood either in the
sense of a spatial magnitude or in the sense of a point (if a point
can be called a part of a spatial magnitude). If we accept the
latter alternative, the points being infinite in number, obviously the
mind can never exhaustively traverse them; if the former, the mind
must think the same thing over and over again, indeed an infinite
number of times (whereas it is manifestly possible to think a thing
once only). If contact of any part whatsoever of itself with the
object is all that is required, why need mind move in a circle, or
indeed possess magnitude at all? On the other hand, if contact with
the whole circle is necessary, what meaning can be given to the
contact of the parts? Further, how could what has no par
ts think
what has parts, or what has parts think what has none? We must
identify the circle referred to with mind; for it is mind whose
movement is thinking, and it is the circle whose movement is
revolution, so that if thinking is a movement of revolution, the
circle which has this characteristic movement must be mind.
If the circular movement is eternal, there must be something which
mind is always thinking-what can this be? For all practical
processes of thinking have limits-they all go on for the sake of
something outside the process, and all theoretical processes come to a
close in the same way as the phrases in speech which express processes
and results of thinking. Every such linguistic phrase is either
definitory or demonstrative. Demonstration has both a starting-point
and may be said to end in a conclusion or inferred result; even if the
process never reaches final completion, at any rate it never returns
upon itself again to its starting-point, it goes on assuming a fresh
middle term or a fresh extreme, and moves straight forward, but
circular movement returns to its starting-point. Definitions, too, are
closed groups of terms.
Further, if the same revolution is repeated, mind must repeatedly
think the same object.
Further, thinking has more resemblance to a coming to rest or arrest
than to a movement; the same may be said of inferring.
It might also be urged that what is difficult and enforced is
incompatible with blessedness; if the movement of the soul is not of
its essence, movement of the soul must be contrary to its nature. It
must also be painful for the soul to be inextricably bound up with the
body; nay more, if, as is frequently said and widely accepted, it is
better for mind not to be embodied, the union must be for it
undesirable.
Further, the cause of the revolution of the heavens is left obscure.
It is not the essence of soul which is the cause of this circular
movement-that movement is only incidental to soul-nor is, a
fortiori, the body its cause. Again, it is not even asserted that it
is better that soul should be so moved; and yet the reason for which
God caused the soul to move in a circle can only have been that
movement was better for it than rest, and movement of this kind better
than any other. But since this sort of consideration is more
appropriate to another field of speculation, let us dismiss it for the
present.
The view we have just been examining, in company with most
theories about the soul, involves the following absurdity: they all
join the soul to a body, or place it in a body, without adding any
specification of the reason of their union, or of the bodily
conditions required for it. Yet such explanation can scarcely be
omitted; for some community of nature is presupposed by the fact
that the one acts and the other is acted upon, the one moves and the
other is moved; interaction always implies a special nature in the two
interagents. All, however, that these thinkers do is to describe the
specific characteristics of the soul; they do not try to determine
anything about the body which is to contain it, as if it were
possible, as in the Pythagorean myths, that any soul could be
clothed upon with any body-an absurd view, for each body seems to have
a form and shape of its own. It is as absurd as to say that the art of
carpentry could embody itself in flutes; each art must use its
tools, each soul its body.
4
There is yet another theory about soul, which has commended itself
to many as no less probable than any of those we have hitherto
mentioned, and has rendered public account of itself in the court of
popular discussion. Its supporters say that the soul is a kind of
harmony, for (a) harmony is a blend or composition of contraries,
and (b) the body is compounded out of contraries. Harmony, however, is
a certain proportion or composition of the constituents blended, and
soul can be neither the one nor the other of these. Further, the power
of originating movement cannot belong to a harmony, while almost all
concur in regarding this as a principal attribute of soul. It is
more appropriate to call health (or generally one of the good states
of the body) a harmony than to predicate it of the soul. The absurdity
becomes most apparent when we try to attribute the active and
passive affections of the soul to a harmony; the necessary
readjustment of their conceptions is difficult. Further, in using
the word 'harmony' we have one or other of two cases in our mind;
the most proper sense is in relation to spatial magnitudes which
have motion and position, where harmony means the disposition and
cohesion of their parts in such a manner as to prevent the
introduction into the whole of anything homogeneous with it, and the
secondary sense, derived from the former, is that in which it means
the ratio between the constituents so blended; in neither of these
senses is it plausible to predicate it of soul. That soul is a harmony
in the sense of the mode of composition of the parts of the body is
a view easily refutable; for there are many composite parts and
those variously compounded; of what bodily part is mind or the
sensitive or the appetitive faculty the mode of composition? And
what is the mode of composition which constitutes each of them? It
is equally absurd to identify the soul with the ratio of the
mixture; for the mixture which makes flesh has a different ratio
between the elements from that which makes bone. The consequence of
this view will therefore be that distributed throughout the whole body
there will be many souls, since every one of the bodily parts is a
different mixture of the elements, and the ratio of mixture is in each
case a harmony, i.e. a soul.
From Empedocles at any rate we might demand an answer to the
following question for he says that each of the parts of the body is
what it is in virtue of a ratio between the elements: is the soul
identical with this ratio, or is it not rather something over and
above this which is formed in the parts? Is love the cause of any
and every mixture, or only of those that are in the right ratio? Is
love this ratio itself, or is love something over and above this? Such
are the problems raised by this account. But, on the other hand, if
the soul is different from the mixture, why does it disappear at one
and the same moment with that relation between the elements which
constitutes flesh or the other parts of the animal body? Further, if
the soul is not identical with the ratio of mixture, and it is
consequently not the case that each of the parts has a soul, what is
that which perishes when the soul quits the body?
That the soul cannot either be a harmony, or be moved in a circle,
is clear from what we have said. Yet that it can be moved incidentally
is, as we said above, possible, and even that in a sense it can move
itself, i.e. in the sense that the vehicle in which it is can be
moved, and m
oved by it; in no other sense can the soul be moved in
space.
More legitimate doubts might remain as to its movement in view of
the following facts. We speak of the soul as being pained or
pleased, being bold or fearful, being angry, perceiving, thinking. All
these are regarded as modes of movement, and hence it might be
inferred that the soul is moved. This, however, does not necessarily
follow. We may admit to the full that being pained or pleased, or
thinking, are movements (each of them a 'being moved'), and that the
movement is originated by the soul. For example we may regard anger or
fear as such and such movements of the heart, and thinking as such and
such another movement of that organ, or of some other; these
modifications may arise either from changes of place in certain
parts or from qualitative alterations (the special nature of the parts
and the special modes of their changes being for our present purpose
irrelevant). Yet to say that it is the soul which is angry is as
inexact as it would be to say that it is the soul that weaves webs
or builds houses. It is doubtless better to avoid saying that the soul
pities or learns or thinks and rather to say that it is the man who
does this with his soul. What we mean is not that the movement is in
the soul, but that sometimes it terminates in the soul and sometimes
starts from it, sensation e.g. coming from without inwards, and
reminiscence starting from the soul and terminating with the
movements, actual or residual, in the sense organs.
The case of mind is different; it seems to be an independent
substance implanted within the soul and to be incapable of being
destroyed. If it could be destroyed at all, it would be under the
blunting influence of old age. What really happens in respect of
mind in old age is, however, exactly parallel to what happens in the
case of the sense organs; if the old man could recover the proper kind
of eye, he would see just as well as the young man. The incapacity
of old age is due to an affection not of the soul but of its