The Levels of Life, the Soul's Powers, and the Soul as That by Which We First Live

Orientation #

He begins “he’s going to develop here the minor premise first,” picking up the demonstration of the definition of soul set up before; he refers back to “I was mentioning how before, in the beginning of natural hearing in the Physics, you learn the definition of nature” and “remember the question I raised: do we see God by our reason or by our senses?” (prev. lecture, as far as the summary allows). He ends: “In chapter three he’s going to start to set the stage for a consideration of the various powers of the soul.” The previous class set up, from the Posterior Analytics, how the definition of the soul as first act of the body is to be demonstrated through the “more known” operations of life; the next moves to Acts 17:28 and Thomas on God as end, mover and sustainer.

The class, in order #

1. The ensouled divided from the unsouled by living (“taking the beginning of the inquiry”) #

Point: living is said in many ways (understanding, sensing, local motion, nutrition, growth, diminution), and a thing is called living if any one of these is present; plants live because they grow “according to opposite places.”

• Why Aristotle insists on growth in opposite directions: soul is in a way different from nature, because nature “seems to be determined to what,” one thing.
  • Stone: goes only down. Lead balloon: down. Helium balloon: up, but not up and down. Non-living things are “tied to one or two opposites, either down or up, but not both.”
  • Tree: grows both up and down. So already at the lowest level of life there is an anticipation of what appears fully in the understanding, “the same knowledge of opposites,” which transcends the opposition. More so in animals, most of all in man.
• Coriolanus: “nature not being able to be more than one thing.” So sometimes we call the soul a nature, sometimes we divide it against nature, “because it’s not just determined to one way… It has its openness to opposites.” The distinction is greatest between nature and reason, nature and will.
• Aside: in metaphysics he’ll explain how wisdom grows the way the tree does.
• Aside: the order of natural philosophy goes “towards matter twice”: Physics → On the Universe → On Generation and Corruption; then again from On the Soul to the other works on living things. As the Physics gives the definition of nature, here we learn the definition of soul.

2. Feeding, and the word “food” carried over (“whatever always feeds also lives”) #

Point: whatever feeds lives as long as it can take in food; food is the object of the lower powers (nutrition, growth, and needed for reproduction), and we transfer the word to the objects of higher powers.

• Coming later: Aristotle’s famous discussion whether the food is like the fed or unlike; predecessors took each side, each with “an element of truth.”
• Transfers: “food for thought”; “feeding somebody’s anger” (Shakespeare often); Socrates’ “feast of reason”; in theology “feast of faith,” convivium. Thomas calls the Eucharist a convivium, a banquet (sacrum convivium), and the beatific vision is also called a banquet, “precor ut ad illud ineffabile convivium.”
• Scripture already does this: the psalm “O God, you are my God, whom I seek… my flesh pines, my soul thirsts,” then satisfied “as with the riches of a banquet” — applicable, as Thomas does, to the Eucharist or the beatific vision.

3. The nutritive power separable from the others, but not vice versa “in mortal things” (“this power is able to be separated”) #

Point (para. 127): nourishing, growing and reproducing are found without sensing, emotion, understanding and willing (plants), but in mortal things the higher are never found without these.

• Plants nourish, grow, reproduce; animals do the same; man too. No animal senses without also eating and growing; no man understands and wills who does not also eat, grow, reproduce.
• “Notice the exception he makes”: “but it is impossible in mortal things.” In angels and in God there is understanding and willing without sensing, emotion, growth, reproduction, eating. Any “food” there is metaphorical: Dionysius says the higher angels are as food to the lower.
• Parallel: Thomas on St Paul’s “the Father, after whom all fatherhood is named in heaven and on earth.” On earth, human and animal fathers; but no angel begets another. Thomas: fatherhood there as we call a teacher a father — the higher angel illumines the lower. Examples: an abbot means father; St Catherine of Siena called St Agnes of Montepulciano her (spiritual) mother. Strictly, angels do not reproduce.
• “This is apparent in the plants: not one other power of the soul is present in these.”

4. Animals: sensation beyond nourishing; touch first among the senses (“touch is present in all first”) #

Point (para. 128): things that do not move from place to place but have sensation we call animals, not only living; living is the “lowest common denominator” of living bodies (take nourishment, grow, reproduce in some way).

• The analogy: as the nutritive power can be separated from touch and all sensation, touch can be separated from the other senses. Some lower animals attached in place react only to what touches them, and eat what comes in contact; they need only touch and perhaps taste (“a kind of touch”), not the distance senses (sight, hearing, smell). Animals that hunt need smell, sight, hearing.
• Nutritive power: that part of the soul in which even plants share; all animals have at least touch. “We will say later through what cause each of these occurs.”
• Summary line: the soul is the principle of the things named and is defined in a way by them — the powers of nutrition, sensation, thinking and motion.

5. Difficulties: are the powers souls or parts, separable in account or in place? (“whether each of these powers is a soul”) #

Point: he raises but does not fully clear up the difficulties; some are easy, some hard.

• Divided plants: both parts live, “as if there is in these a soul one in act in each plant, but many in ability” (potency). Reason: not much diversity of organs (“tools”); each part has what it needs to function. Same for some insects, worms: cut them and both parts move and sense.
• A man cut in half: neither part lives, because neither has all the parts needed. That is why man or a dog is given as an example of substance before a plant: a plant “almost seems to be able to be divided into two substances.”
• Where sensation is, there is imagination and appetite (desire). Chain: sensation → at least touch → pleasure and pain → desire of the pleasant and aversion from the painful. Example: things fixed to the ocean floor that only touch; stick them with a pin and they react as if it were unpleasant.
• In such lower forms the powers seem to be throughout the body rather than this power here and that there.

6. The mind a different kind of soul; the other parts differ in account only (“this alone can be separated”) #

Point (para. 133, “a footnote at this point”): about the power of mind nothing is yet clear, but it seems a different kind of soul, alone separable “as the eternal from the corruptible” — hinting at what Book III shows, that the human soul can exist apart from the body because it has a power not in the body.

• The remaining parts are not separable “as some say”; but they differ in account or definition even where they share a location: touch is throughout the body, and my eye has touch as well as sight, yet touch and sight are two powers. “Being sensitive and being opinative are different.”

7. Greek check: nous, theoretike dunamis, dianoetike, doxastike (“Aristotle’s weird sometimes”) #

Point: the translation “power of mind or consideration” renders peri de tou nou kai tes theoretikes dunameos.

• nous (genitive nou): Aristotle’s usual name for the understanding. dunamis (gen. dunameos): power, ability, “dynamite.” theoretike from theoria, looking — as a theorem in geometry is something to look at “with the eye of the soul.” So: the looking power.
• This confirms Shakespeare’s definition of reason, “large discourse, looking before and after.”
• Later Aristotle uses dianoetike in distinguishing reason from the other powers: knowing one thing through another, almost a synonym for Shakespeare’s “discourse.” In the opening of the Posterior Analytics all dianoetic knowledge is through pre-existing knowledge. “Reason is the only part of us that gives a reason for anything,” and to give a reason is to know one thing through another.
• doxastike (para. 134, “opinative”), from doxa, opinion: refers to reason too. Why that word? Because opining and imagining “seem very close”: in English “I imagine that so” can mean I think so without knowing; “I opine that” is not familiar English, we say “I think” for the mind not certain but inclined (will President Bush be re-elected? I think so; “the best man doesn’t always win”; “I think he did it”).
• How Aristotle later contrasts thinking and imagining: to think you need a reason. I can imagine a terrorist coming through the door with a grenade, or someone bringing lemonade or an ice cream bar, but I am not free to think either without some reason. Freedom of imagining vs necessity of a reason for thinking — which shows the discursive nature of reason.
• Pre-Aristotelian Greeks, like most people, could not distinguish these; so Locke and Berkeley with “ideas,” sometimes images, sometimes thoughts. Locke’s general triangle, neither scalene, isosceles nor equilateral, “all and none of these,” a mishmash; he cannot imagine one, though reason can define what is common and leave out the differences; every imagined triangle is one of the three. Berkeley then denies general ideas altogether. Same with fruit: you cannot imagine fruit in general (not apple, orange, lemon), but reason sees what they have in common. The early Greeks likewise could not distinguish sensing, imagining and thinking.

8. Some living things have all the parts, some one; the proportion with the senses (“this fact will make the difference among living things”) #

Point (para. 135): all the parts are in some living things (man), some in others, one only in others — as some have all five senses, some some, some only the most necessary, touch. The cause is to be looked into afterwards.

• Aristotle is “filled with proportions.” Aside: Pierre Duhem says seeing a proportion is the most common way theories are found in science; Einstein says anyone sees a superficial analogy, but seeing a deep analogy under apparent differences is important scientific work, his perfect example being de Broglie’s wave mechanics; “wave” and “wavelength” are carried over by proportion, though one must be careful, since waves propagate differently (horizontal, longitudinal).
• What Aristotle has stated is a “before” in the second sense (nutrition without the others, touch without the other senses, not vice versa); later he gives the why, the fifth sense of before, cause and effect, applied to the second.

9. The major premise: “that by which” said in two ways (“that by which we live and sense is said in two ways”) #

Point (para. 136): the minor was that the soul is that by which we first live, sense, move, understand; now “by which” — as subject or matter vs as form.

• His examples: do I teach geometry by my mind or by geometry? (mind is the subject of the geometry). Is “cat” the word by its letters or by the order of letters? (letters as matter, order as form).
• Aristotle’s: that by which we know is the science and the soul; that by which we are healthy is health, and a part of the body or the whole. A third sense of “by which,” the extrinsic cause, is left out here because the soul is a cause of life within living bodies.
• Argument:
  1. The soul is that by which we first live, sense, think.
  2. Matter is not capable of these operations until it has the form; “matter has these operations only in potency before it receives the form.”
  3. Therefore the soul is “by which” as form, “some account and species” (logos and eidos), not underlying matter.
• Restated through the earlier division: substance said in three ways — form/species, matter, the composite; matter is potency, species is act; so the body is not the act of the soul, but the soul the act of some body. Example: is it by the matter of the eye or by the power of sight that we see? The eye sees only once it has the power, which is like a form to it.
• Back to natural philosophy: nature is both matter and form; form is more nature, since a thing is natural by matter only in ability, actually when it includes form.
• How different natures are known (“nature loves to hide”): by what things do — same sun, water, soil, the tree grows and reproduces, the stone does not. A thing does not do what the natural thing does until it has that nature, and has not that nature until it has its form. So that by which we first live must be the form of a body.

10. The same distinction in the beatific vision, in conclusions, in definitions (“do we first see God by our reason or by God?”) #

Point: two “by which"s can be true together, one as subject, one as form, and the form is that by which first.

• Do we see God by our reason or by our eyes? By reason. Thomas: God can be seen as He is only through God Himself, who joins Himself to our mind, so God is not only what we see but that by which we see, as intelligible form; our reason is the subject of that form. So it is by God first that we see God.
• Do I see the conclusion by my reason or by the premises? Both, the premises as form. Do I understand what a square is (an equilateral, right-angled quadrilateral) by reason or by the definition? Both; the definition is the form in reason as subject, and before it is there I do not know distinctly what a square is — so by the definition first.
• Student asks “first in what sense?” — that is the before in the sense of cause. Rubber is first a ball when it has the shape of a ball; “before then, first says nothing.” So the body is first able to sense and move when it has its soul, its form. (Student suggestion that it is “by the body that you second have them”: he would rather think of the powers.)

11. Where the chapter stands; soul never without body nor some body (“those assume well to whom it seems”) #

Point: summary of Aristotle’s three tasks in these two chapters, and the closing comments on the definition.

• Three tasks: (1) investigate the definition through six divisions, three on the side of soul, three on the side of that of which soul is something; (2) manifest it by two likenesses, ratios or proportions; (3) demonstrate it through something more known to us — going back almost to the meaning of the word soul: first cause of life in the living body, hence that by which we first live, and so form rather than matter.
• Comments: those think well who say the soul is never without body nor is some body — like the definition of time: never without motion, not a motion, but “something of motion,” the number of before and after in motion. Likewise the soul “is not a body but something of a body,” the first act of a certain body; “it’s not going to show up on the dissecting table.”
• Hence the soul is in a body and in such a body, not, as predecessors said, fixed in the body without defining which and what sort — “not any chance thing receives any chance thing”; the act of each thing is in what is already in potency and is apt to come to be in its proper matter. “The soul is some actuality and account of what is in potency to be such.” He stops there.

His words #

• in-souled / un-souled; living vs non-living (the translation’s rendering of ensouled).
• nature “determined to one”; soul with “openness to opposites”; hence soul sometimes called a nature, sometimes divided against nature.
• “natural hearing” [ed.: Physics].
• food as object of the lower powers, transferred to the objects of higher powers; convivium, sacrum convivium, “ineffable banquet.”
• “in mortal things”: the qualification excluding angels and God.
• “tools” [ed.: organs]; “ability” [ed.: potency]; “one in act, many in ability.”
• account [ed.: logos], species [ed.: eidos].
• nous: the understanding; theoretike dunamis: the looking power; theoria: looking; theorem: something to look at with the eye of the soul.
• dianoetike: knowing one thing through another, discursive; his gloss of Shakespeare’s “discourse.”
• doxastike, doxa: opinion; English “I think” for the mind inclined but not certain.
• “before” in the second sense (found without, not vice versa) and the fifth sense (cause).
• “that by which” in two ways: as subject/matter and as form; a third, the extrinsic cause, set aside.
• nature “loves to hide”; natures known by what they do.
• soul “not a body but something of a body”; time “not a motion but something of motion.”

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, De Anima II.2, paragraphs 125-136 of the class translation (from “the in-souled is to be divided from the un-souled by living” to “the soul is some actuality and account of what is in potency to be such”), with the Greek of 133-134 checked.
• Psalm “O God, you are my God, whom I seek… my soul thirsts… as with a banquet” (Psalm 63, inferred).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Physics: definition of nature; definition of time (inferred loci).
• Aristotle, De Anima III: the separable intellect; the later distinction of thinking from imagining; food like or unlike the fed (later in Book II).
• Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, opening: dianoetic knowledge through pre-existing knowledge.
• Shakespeare, Coriolanus, “nature not being able to be more than one thing”; Shakespeare’s definition of reason as “large discourse, looking before and after” (Hamlet, inferred).
• St Paul on the Father “after whom all fatherhood is named in heaven and on earth” and Thomas’s commentary (Ephesians 3, inferred).
• Dionysius: higher angels as food to the lower.
• Thomas on the beatific vision: God as the form by which we see.
• Locke and Berkeley on the general idea of triangle.
• Pierre Duhem; Einstein on de Broglie’s wave mechanics.

His questions #

• How does a tree grow, up or down? Both — unlike stone or balloons, tied to one opposite.
• Which is more nature, matter or form, and why? Form; a thing is natural by matter only in ability, actually by form.
• How do we know the nature of a stone differs from that of a tree, since nature loves to hide? By what they do: in the same sun, water and soil, the tree grows and reproduces, the stone does not.
• Do I teach geometry by my mind or by geometry? Is “cat” the word by its letters or their order? Both, in two senses: mind and letters as subject/matter, geometry and order as form.
• Is it by the matter of the eye or by the power of sight that we see? By the power, as a form; matter sees only once it has it.
• Do we see God by our reason or by our eyes? By reason or by God? By reason; and by God first, as intelligible form joined to reason as subject.
• Do you know what a square is by your reason or by the definition? By both; by the definition first, since reason knows distinctly only when informed by it.
• When is rubber first a ball? When it has the shape of a ball; so the body first lives when it has its form.
• Why does Aristotle use “opinative” (doxastike) for reason here? Because opining and imagining seem very close; thinking differs by needing a reason.