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Part 1
Let the foregoing suffice as our account of the views concerning the soul
which have been handed on by our predecessors; let us now dismiss them and make
as it were a completely fresh start, endeavouring to give a precise answer to
the question, What is soul? i.e. to formulate the most general possible
definition of it.
We are in the habit of recognizing, as one determinate kind of what is,
substance, and that in several senses, (a) in the sense of matter or that
which in itself is not 'a this', and (b) in the sense of form or essence,
which is that precisely in virtue of which a thing is called 'a this', and
thirdly (c) in the sense of that which is compounded of both (a) and (b). Now
matter is potentiality, form actuality; of the latter there are two grades
related to one another as e.g. knowledge to the exercise of knowledge.
Among substances are by general consent reckoned bodies and especially natural
bodies; for they are the principles of all other bodies. Of natural bodies
some have life in them, others not; by life we mean self-nutrition and growth
(with its correlative decay). It follows that every natural body which has
life in it is a substance in the sense of a composite.
But since it is also a body of such and such a kind, viz. having life, the
body cannot be soul; the body is the subject or matter, not what is
attributed to it. Hence the soul must be a substance in the sense of the form
of a natural body having life potentially within it. But substance is
actuality, and thus soul is the actuality of a body as above characterized.
Now the word actuality has two senses corresponding respectively to the
possession of knowledge and the actual exercise of knowledge. It is obvious
that the soul is actuality in the first sense, viz. that of knowledge as
possessed, for both sleeping and waking presuppose the existence of soul, and
of these waking corresponds to actual knowing, sleeping to knowledge
possessed but not employed, and, in the history of the individual, knowledge
comes before its employment or exercise.
That is why the soul is the first grade of actuality of a natural body having
life potentially in it. The body so described is a body which is organized.
The parts of plants in spite of their extreme simplicity are 'organs'; e.g.
the leaf serves to shelter the pericarp, the pericarp to shelter the fruit,
while the roots of plants are analogous to the mouth of animals, both serving
for the absorption of food. If, then, we have to give a general formula
applicable to all kinds of soul, we must describe it as the first grade of
actuality of a natural organized body. That is why we can wholly dismiss as
unnecessary the question whether the soul and the body are one: it is as
meaningless as to ask whether the wax and the shape given to it by the stamp
are one, or generally the matter of a thing and that of which it is the
matter. Unity has many senses (as many as 'is' has), but the most proper and
fundamental sense of both is the relation of an actuality to that of  which it is the actuality. We have now given
an answer to the question, What is soul?-an answer which applies to it in its
full extent. It is substance in the sense which corresponds to the definitive
formula of a thing's essence. That means that it is 'the essential whatness'
of a body of the character just assigned. Suppose that what is literally an
'organ', like an axe, were a natural body, its 'essential whatness', would
have been its essence, and so its soul; if this disappeared from it, it would
have ceased to be an axe, except in name. As it is, it is just an axe; it
wants the character which is required to make its whatness or formulable
essence a soul; for that, it would have had to be a natural body of a
particular kind, viz. one having in itself the power of setting itself in
movement and arresting itself. Next, apply this doctrine in the case of the
'parts' of the living body. Suppose that the eye were an animal-sight would
have been its soul, for sight is the substance or essence of the eye which
corresponds to the formula, the eye being merely the matter of seeing; when
seeing is removed the eye is no longer an eye, except in name-it is no more a
real eye than the eye of a statue or of a painted figure. We must now extend
our consideration from the 'parts' to the whole living body; for what the
departmental sense is to the bodily part which is its organ, that the whole
faculty of sense is to the whole sensitive body as such.
We must not understand by that which is 'potentially capable of living' what
has lost the soul it had, but only what still retains it; but seeds and
fruits are bodies which possess the qualification. Consequently, while waking
is actuality in a sense corresponding to the cutting and the seeing, the soul
is actuality in the sense corresponding to the power of sight and the power
in the tool; the body corresponds to what exists in potentiality; as the
pupil plus the power of sight constitutes the eye, so the soul plus the body
constitutes the animal.
From this it indubitably follows that the soul is inseparable from its body,
or at any rate that certain parts of it are (if it has parts) for the
actuality of some of them is nothing but the actualities of their bodily
parts. Yet some may be separable because they are not the actualities of any
body at all. Further, we have no light on the problem whether the soul may
not be the actuality of its body in the sense in which the sailor is the
actuality of the ship.
This must suffice as our sketch or outline determination of the nature of
soul.
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Part 2
Since what is clear or logically more evident emerges from what in itself is
confused but more observable by us, we must reconsider our results from this
point of view. For it is not enough for a definitive formula to express as
most now do the mere fact; it must include and exhibit the ground also. At
present definitions are given in a form analogous to the conclusion of a
syllogism; e.g. What is squaring? The construction of an equilateral
rectangle equal to a given oblong rectangle. Such a definition is in form
equivalent to a conclusion. One that tells us that squaring is the discovery
of a line which is a mean proportional between the two unequal sides of the
given rectangle discloses the ground of what is defined.
We resume our inquiry from a fresh starting-point by calling attention to the
fact that what has soul in it differs from what has not, in that the former
displays life. Now this word has more than one sense, and provided any one
alone of these is found in a thing we say that thing is living. Living, that
is, may mean thinking or perception or local movement and rest, or movement
in the sense of nutrition, decay and growth. Hence we think of plants also as
living, for they are observed to possess in themselves an originative power
through which they increase or decrease in all spatial directions; they grow
up and down, and everything that grows increases its bulk alike in both
directions or indeed in all, and continues to live so long as it can absorb
nutriment.
This power of self-nutrition can be isolated from the other powers mentioned,
but not they from it-in mortal beings at least. The fact is obvious in
plants; for it is the only psychic power they possess.
This is the originative power the possession of which leads us to speak of
things as living at all, but it is the possession of sensation that leads us
for the first time to speak of living things as animals; for even those
beings which possess no power of local movement but do possess the power of
sensation we call animals and not merely living things.
The primary form of sense is touch, which belongs to all animals. just as the
power of self-nutrition can be isolated from touch and sensation generally,
so touch can be isolated from all other forms of sense. (By the power of
self-nutrition we mean that departmental power of the soul which is common to
plants and animals: all animals whatsoever are observed to have the sense of
touch.) What the explanation of these two facts is, we must discuss later. At
present we must confine ourselves to saying that soul is the source of these
phenomena and is characterized by them, viz. by the powers of self-nutrition,
sensation, thinking, and motivity.
Is each of these a soul or a part of a soul? And if a part, a part in what
sense? A part merely distinguishable by definition or a part distinct in
local situation as well? In the case of certain of these powers, the answers
to these questions are easy, in the case of others we are puzzled what to
say. just as in the case of plants which when divided are observed to
continue to live though removed to a distance from one another (thus showing
that in their case the soul of each individual plant before division was
actually one, potentially many), so we notice a similar result in other
varieties of soul, i.e. in insects which have been cut in two; each of the
segments possesses both sensation and local movement; and if sensation,
necessarily also imagination and appetition; for, where there is sensation,
there is also pleasure and pain, and, where these, necessarily also desire.
We have no evidence as yet about mind or the power to think; it seems to be a
widely different kind of soul, differing as what is eternal from what is
perishable; it alone is capable of existence in isolation from all other
psychic powers. All the other parts of soul, it is evident from what we have
said, are, in spite of certain statements to the contrary, incapable of
separate existence though, of course, distinguishable by definition. If
opining is distinct from perceiving, to be capable of opining and to be
capable of perceiving must be distinct, and so with all the other forms of
living above enumerated. Further, some animals possess all these parts of
soul, some certain of them only, others one only (this is what enables us to
classify animals); the cause must be considered later.' A similar arrangement
is found also within the field of the senses; some classes of animals have all
the senses, some only certain of them, others only one, the most
indispensable, touch.
Since the expression 'that whereby we live and perceive' has two meanings,
just like the expression 'that whereby we know'-that may mean either (a)
knowledge or (b) the soul, for we can speak of knowing by or with either, and
similarly that whereby we are in health may be either (a) health or (b) the
body or some part of the body; and since of the two terms thus contrasted
knowledge or health is the name of a form, essence, or ratio, or if we so
express it an actuality of a recipient matter-knowledge of what is capable of
knowing, health of what is capable of being made healthy (for the operation
of that which is capable of originating change terminates and has its seat in
what is changed or altered); further, since  it is the soul by or with which primarily we
live, perceive, and think:-it follows that the soul must be a ratio or
formulable essence, not a matter or subject. For, as we said, word substance
has three meanings form, matter, and the complex of both and of these three
what is called matter is potentiality, what is called form actuality. Since
then the complex here is the living thing, the body cannot be the actuality
of the soul; it is the soul which is the actuality of a certain kind of body.
Hence the rightness of the view that the soul cannot be without a body, while
it cannot he a body; it is not a body but something relative to a body. That
is why it is in a body, and a body of a definite kind. It was a mistake,
therefore, to do as former thinkers did, merely to fit it into a body without
adding a definite specification of the kind or character of that body.
Reflection confirms the observed fact; the actuality of any given thing can
only be realized in what is already potentially that thing, i.e. in a matter
of its own appropriate to it. From all this it follows that soul is an
actuality or formulable essence of something that possesses a potentiality of
being besouled.
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Part 12
The following results applying to any and every sense may now be formulated.
(A) By a 'sense' is meant what has the power of receiving into itself the
sensible forms of things without the matter. This must be conceived of as
taking place in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a
signet-ring without the iron or gold; we say that what produces the
impression is a signet of bronze or gold, but its particular metallic
constitution makes no difference: in a similar way the sense is affected by
what is coloured or flavoured or sounding, but it is indifferent what in each
case the substance is; what alone matters is what quality it has, i.e. in
what ratio its constituents are combined.
(B) By 'an organ of sense' is meant that in which ultimately such a power is
seated.
The sense and its organ are the same in fact, but their essence is not the
same. What perceives is, of course, a spatial magnitude, but we must not
admit that either the having the power to perceive or the sense itself is a
magnitude; what they are is a certain ratio or power in a magnitude. This
enables us to explain why objects of sense which possess one of two opposite
sensible qualities in a degree largely in excess of the other opposite
destroy the organs of sense; if the movement set up by an object is too
strong for the organ, the equipoise of contrary qualities in the organ, which
just is its sensory power, is disturbed; it is precisely as concord and tone
are destroyed by too violently twanging the strings of a lyre. This explains
also why plants cannot perceive. in spite of their having a portion of soul
in them and obviously being affected by tangible objects themselves; for
undoubtedly their temperature can be lowered or raised. The explanation is
that they have no mean of contrary qualities, and so no principle in them
capable of taking on the forms of sensible objects without their matter; in
the case of plants the affection is an affection by form-and-matter together.
The problem might be raised: Can what cannot smell be said to be affected by
smells or what cannot see by colours, and so on? It might be said that a
smell is just what can be smelt, and if it produces any effect it can only be
so as to make something smell it, and it might be argued that what cannot
smell cannot be affected by smells and further that what can smell can be
affected by it only in so far as it has in it the power to smell (similarly
with the proper objects of all the other senses). Indeed that this is so is
made quite evident as follows. Light or darkness, sounds and smells leave
bodies quite unaffected; what does affect bodies is not these but the bodies
which are their vehicles, e.g. what splits the trunk of a tree is not the
sound of the thunder but the air which accompanies thunder. Yes, but, it may
be objected, bodies are affected by what is tangible and by flavours. If not,
by what are things that are without soul affected, i.e. altered in quality?
Must we not, then, admit that the objects of the other senses also may affect
them? Is not the true account this, that all bodies are capable of being
affected by smells and sounds, but that some on being acted upon, having no
boundaries of their own, disintegrate, as in the instance of air, which does
become odorous, showing that some effect is produced on it by what is
odorous? But smelling is more than such an affection by what is odorous-what
more? Is not the answer that, while the air owing to the momentary duration
of the action upon it of what is odorous does itself become perceptible to
the sense of smell, smelling is an observing of the result produced?
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 Part 3
There are two distinctive peculiarities by reference to which we characterize
the soul (1) local movement and (2) thinking, discriminating, and perceiving.
Thinking both speculative and practical is regarded as akin to a form of
perceiving; for in the one as well as the other the soul discriminates and is
cognizant of something which is. Indeed the ancients go so far as to identify
thinking and perceiving; e.g. Empedocles says 'For 'tis in respect of what is
present that man's wit is increased', and again 'Whence it befalls them from
time to time to think diverse thoughts', and Homer's phrase 'For suchlike is
man's mind' means the same. They all look upon thinking as a bodily process
like perceiving, and hold that like is known as well as perceived by like, as
I explained at the beginning of our discussion. Yet they ought at the same
time to have accounted for error also; for it is more intimately connected
with animal existence and the soul continues longer in the state of error
than in that of truth. They cannot escape the dilemma: either (1) whatever
seems is true (and there are some who accept this) or (2) error is contact
with the unlike; for that is the opposite of the knowing of like by like.
But it is a received principle that error as well as knowledge in respect to
contraries is one and the same.
That perceiving and practical thinking are not identical is therefore
obvious; for the former is universal in the animal world, the latter is found
in only a small division of it. Further, speculative thinking is also
distinct from perceiving-I mean that in which we find rightness and
wrongness-rightness in prudence, knowledge, true opinion, wrongness in their
opposites; for perception of the special objects of sense is always free from
error, and is found in all animals, while it is possible to think falsely as
well as truly, and thought is found only where there is discourse of reason
as well as sensibility. For imagination is different from either perceiving
or discursive thinking, though it is not found without sensation, or
judgement without it. That this activity is not the same kind of thinking as
judgement is obvious. For imagining lies within our own power whenever we
wish (e.g. we can call up a picture, as in the practice of mnemonics by the
use of mental images), but in forming opinions we are not free: we cannot escape
the alternative of falsehood or truth. Further, when we think something to be
fearful or threatening, emotion is immediately produced, and so too with what
is encouraging; but when we merely imagine we remain as unaffected as persons
who are looking at a painting of some dreadful or encouraging scene. Again
within the field of judgement itself we find varieties, knowledge, opinion,
prudence, and their opposites; of the differences between these I must speak
elsewhere.
Thinking is different from perceiving and is held to be in part imagination,
in part judgement: we must therefore first mark off the sphere of imagination
and then speak of judgement. If then imagination is that in virtue of which
an image arises for us, excluding metaphorical uses of the term, is it a
single faculty or disposition relative to images, in virtue of which we
discriminate and are either in error or not? The faculties in virtue of which
we do this are sense, opinion, science, intelligence.
That imagination is not sense is clear from the following considerations:
Sense is either a faculty or an activity, e.g. sight or seeing: imagination
takes place in the absence of both, as e.g. in dreams. (Again, sense is
always present, imagination not. If actual imagination and actual sensation
were the same, imagination would be found in all the brutes: this is held not
to be the case; e.g. it is not found in ants or bees or grubs. (Again,
sensations are always true, imaginations are for the most part false. (Once
more, even in ordinary speech, we do not, when sense functions precisely with
regard to its object, say that we imagine it to be a man, but rather when
there is some failure of accuracy in its exercise. And as we were saying
before, visions appear to us even when our eyes are shut. Neither is
imagination any of the things that are never in error: e.g. knowledge or
intelligence; for imagination may be false.
It remains therefore to see if it is opinion, for opinion may be either true
or false.
But opinion involves belief (for without belief in what we opine we cannot
have an opinion), and in the brutes though we often find imagination we never
find belief. Further, every opinion is accompanied by belief, belief by
conviction, and conviction by discourse of reason: while there are some of
the brutes in which we find imagination, without discourse of reason. It is
clear then that imagination cannot, again, be (1) opinion plus sensation, or
(2) opinion mediated by sensation, or (3) a blend of opinion and sensation;
this is impossible both for these reasons and because the content of the
supposed opinion cannot be different from that of the sensation (I mean that
imagination must be the blending of the perception of white with the opinion
that it is white: it could scarcely be a blend of the opinion that it is good
with the perception that it is white): to imagine is therefore (on this view)
identical with the thinking of exactly the same as what one in the strictest
sense perceives. But what we imagine is sometimes false though our contemporaneous
judgement about it is true; e.g. we imagine the sun to be a foot in diameter
though we are convinced that it is larger than the inhabited part of the
earth, and the following dilemma presents itself. Either (a while the fact
has not changed and the (observer has neither forgotten nor lost belief in
the true opinion which he had, that opinion has disappeared, or (b) if he
retains it then his opinion is at once true and false. A true opinion,
however, becomes false only when the fact alters without being noticed.
Imagination is therefore neither any one of the states enumerated, nor
compounded out of them.
But since when one thing has been set in motion another thing may be moved by
it, and imagination is held to be a movement and to be impossible without
sensation, i.e. to occur in beings that are percipient and to have for its
content what can be perceived, and since movement may be produced by actual
sensation and that movement is necessarily similar in character to the
sensation itself, this movement must be (1) necessarily (a) incapable of
existing apart from sensation, (b) incapable of existing except when we
perceive, (such that in virtue of its possession that in which it is found
may present various phenomena both active and passive, and (such that it may
be either true or false.
The reason of the last characteristic is as follows. Perception (1) of the
special objects of sense is never in error or admits the least possible
amount of falsehood. (2) That of the concomitance of the objects concomitant
with the sensible qualities comes next: in this case certainly we may be
deceived; for while the perception that there is white before us cannot be
false, the perception that what is white is this or that may be false. (3)
Third comes the perception of the universal attributes which accompany the
concomitant objects to which the special sensibles attach (I mean e.g. of
movement and magnitude); it is in respect of these that the greatest amount
of sense-illusion is possible.
The motion which is due to the activity of sense in these three modes of its
exercise will differ from the activity of sense; (1) the first kind of
derived motion is free from error while the sensation is present; (2) and (3)
the others may be erroneous whether it is present or absent, especially when
the object of perception is far off. If then imagination presents no other
features than those enumerated and is what we have described, then
imagination must be a movement resulting from an actual exercise of a power
of sense.
As sight is the most highly developed sense, the name Phantasia (imagination)
has been formed from Phaos (light) because it is not possible to see without
light.
And because imaginations remain in the organs of sense and resemble
sensations, animals in their actions are largely guided by them, some (i.e.
the brutes) because of the non-existence in them of mind, others (i.e. men)
because of the temporary eclipse in them of mind by feeling or disease or
sleep.
About imagination, what it is and why it exists, let so much suffice.
Part 4
Turning now to the part of the soul with which the soul knows and thinks
(whether this is separable from the others in definition only, or spatially
as well) we have to inquire (1) what differentiates this part, and (2) how
thinking can take place.
If thinking is like perceiving, it must be either a process in which the soul
is acted upon by what is capable of being thought, or a process different
from but analogous to that. The thinking part of the soul must therefore be,
while impassible, capable of receiving the form of an object; that is, must
be potentially identical in character with its object without being the
object. Mind must be related to what is thinkable, as sense is to what is
sensible.
Therefore, since everything is a possible object of thought, mind in order,
as Anaxagoras says, to dominate, that is, to know, must be pure from all
admixture; for the co-presence of what is alien to its nature is a hindrance
and a block: it  follows that it too, like the sensitive part,
can have no nature of its own, other than that of having a certain capacity.
Thus that in the soul which is called mind (by mind I mean that whereby the
soul thinks and judges) is, before it thinks, not actually any real thing.
For this reason it cannot reasonably be regarded as blended with the body: if
so, it would acquire some quality, e.g. warmth or cold, or even have an organ
like the sensitive faculty: as it is, it has none. It was a good idea to call
the soul 'the place of forms', though (1) this description holds only of the
intellective soul, and (2) even this is the forms only potentially, not
actually.
Observation of the sense-organs and their employment reveals a distinction
between the impassibility of the sensitive and that of the intellective
faculty. After strong stimulation of a sense we are less able to exercise it
than before, as e.g. in the case of a loud sound we cannot hear easily
immediately after, or in the case of a bright colour or a powerful odour we
cannot see or smell, but in the case of mind thought about an object that is
highly intelligible renders it more and not less able afterwards to think
objects that are less intelligible: the reason is that while the faculty of
sensation is dependent upon the body, mind is separable from it.
Once the mind has become each set of its possible objects, as a man of
science has, when this phrase is used of one who is actually a man of science
(this happens when he is now able to exercise the power on his own
initiative), its condition is still one of potentiality, but in a different
sense from the potentiality which preceded the acquisition of knowledge by
learning or discovery: the mind too is then able to think itself.
Since we can distinguish between a spatial magnitude and what it is to be
such, and between water and what it is to be water, and so in many other
cases (though not in all; for in certain cases the thing and its form are
identical), flesh and what it is to be flesh are discriminated either by
different faculties, or by the same faculty in two different states: for
flesh necessarily involves matter and is like what is snub-nosed, a this in a
this. Now it is by means of the sensitive faculty that we discriminate the
hot and the cold, i.e. the factors which combined in a certain ratio
constitute flesh: the essential character of flesh is apprehended by
something different either wholly separate from the sensitive faculty or
related to it as a bent line to the same line when it has been straightened
out.
Again in the case of abstract objects what is straight is analogous to what
is snub-nosed; for it necessarily implies a continuum as its matter: its
constitutive essence is different, if we may distinguish between straightness
and what is straight: let us take it to be two-ness. It must be apprehended,
therefore, by a different power or by the same power in a different state. To
sum up, in so far as the realities it knows are capable of being separated
from their matter, so it is also with the powers of mind.
The problem might be suggested: if thinking is a passive affection, then if
mind is simple and impassible and has nothing in common with anything else,
as Anaxagoras says, how can it come to think at all? For interaction between
two factors is held to require a precedent community of nature between the
factors. Again it might be asked, is mind a possible object of thought to
itself? For if mind is thinkable per se and what is thinkable is in kind one
and the same, then either (a) mind will belong to everything, or (b) mind
will contain some element common to it with all other realities which makes
them all thinkable.
(1) Have not we already disposed of the difficulty about interaction
involving a common element, when we said that mind is in a sense potentially
whatever is thinkable, though actually it is nothing until it has thought?
What it thinks must be in it just as characters may be said to be on a
writing tablet on which as yet nothing actually stands written: this is
exactly what happens with mind.
(Mind is itself thinkable in exactly the same way as its objects are. For (a)
in the case of objects which involve no matter, what thinks and what is
thought are identical; for speculative knowledge and its object are
identical. (Why mind is not always thinking we must consider later.) (b) In
the case of those which contain matter each of the objects of thought is only
potentially present. It follows that while they will not have mind in them
(for mind is a potentiality of them only in so far as they are capable of
being disengaged from matter) mind may yet be thinkable.
Part 5
Since in every class of things, as in nature as a whole, we find two factors
involved, (1) a matter which is potentially all the particulars included in
the class, (2) a cause which is productive in the sense that it makes them
all (the latter standing to the former, as e.g. an art to its material),
these distinct elements must likewise be found within the soul.
And in fact mind as we have described it is what it is what it is by virtue
of becoming all things, while there is another which is what it is by virtue
of making all things: this is a sort of positive state like light; for in a
sense light makes potential colours into actual colours.
Mind in this sense of it is separable, impassible, unmixed, since it is in
its essential nature activity (for always the active is superior to the
passive factor, the originating force to the matter which it forms).
Actual knowledge is identical with its object: in the individual, potential
knowledge is in time prior to actual knowledge, but in the universe as a
whole it is not prior even in time. Mind is not at one time knowing and at
another not. When mind is set free from its present conditions it appears as
just what it is and nothing more: this alone is immortal and eternal (we do
not, however, remember its former activity because, while mind in this sense
is impassible, mind as passive is destructible), and without it nothing
thinks.
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