論人的本性 第 1 章 第 2/9 段

but rather, through good works, through abstaining from base things, and through that right aim with which the Divine is wont especially to cooperate, and through prayers, let us preserve our nobility.

On these matters, then, what has been said is sufficient.

But since common understanding takes it for granted that man consists of soul and body, let us first make the distinction and treat of the soul, leaving aside those of the questions that are exceedingly subtle, intricate, and hard for most people to grasp.

ON THE SOUL. The account of the soul is disputed among nearly all the ancients.

For Democritus, Epicurus, and the whole school of the Stoic philosophers declare the soul to be a body.

Yet even these very people, who declare the soul to be a body, differ among themselves concerning its substance.

For the Stoics say it is a warm and fiery breath; Critias says it is blood; Hippon the philosopher says it is water; and Democritus says it is fire.

For he held that it is the spherical shapes of the atoms, when combined together—namely fire and air—that produce the soul.

Heraclitus held that the soul of the universe is an exhalation arising from the moist elements, while the soul in living creatures, springing both from the external exhalation and from the exhalation within them, is of the same kind.

Again, among those who say that the soul is incorporeal there has arisen boundless disagreement: some say it is a substance and immortal, while others say it is incorporeal but neither a substance nor immortal.

Thales was the first to say that the soul is ever-moving and self-moving.

Pythagoras said it is a number that moves itself.

Plato said it is an intelligible substance, moving of itself according to harmonious number.

Aristotle said it is the first entelechy of a natural, organic body that potentially possesses life.

Dicaearchus said it is a harmony of the four elements—meaning a blend and concord of the elements.

For he does not mean the harmony that is composed of musical notes, but the harmonious blend and concord of the hot, cold, moist, and dry in the body.

It is clear that, even among these thinkers, the others say the soul is a substance,

but Aristotle and Dicaearchus say it is without substance.

Furthermore, in addition to this, some have held that the soul of all things is one and the same, broken up into individual beings and then gathered back into itself—as the Manichaeans and certain others suppose;

others hold that the souls are many and different in kind;

while still others hold that it is both one and many.

It is therefore quite unavoidable to draw out the discussion at length in refuting so many opinions.

Now, against all who say that the soul is a body, the arguments stated by Ammonius, the teacher of Plotinus, and by Numenius the Pythagorean will suffice in common.

Bodies, being by their own nature changeable, dispersible, and divisible throughout to infinity, with nothing unchangeable remaining in them, require something that composes, holds, and as it were binds and keeps them together—and this is what we call the soul.

If, then, the soul is a body of whatever kind, even the most finely composed, what in turn is it that holds that body together? For it has been shown that every body needs something to hold it together, and so on to infinity, until we arrive at something incorporeal.

But if they should say, as the Stoics do, that there is a certain tonic motion around bodies, moving simultaneously inward and outward—the outward motion producing magnitudes and qualities, and the inward producing unity and substance—then we must ask them: since all motion proceeds from some power, what is this power, and in what is it given its being? If, then, this power too is some kind of matter, we shall again employ the same arguments;

but if it is not matter but something material (and "the material" is distinct from matter, for that which partakes of matter is called material), then what after all is it that partakes of matter—is it itself matter, or is it immaterial? If it is matter, how can it be material and yet not matter? But if it is not matter, then it is immaterial.

And if it is immaterial, it is not a body; for every body is material.

But if they should say that bodies are extended in three dimensions, and that the soul too, pervading the whole of the body, is extended in three dimensions and therefore is altogether a body as well, we shall reply that, while every body is three-dimensionally extended, not everything three-dimensionally extended is a body.

For place and quality, though in themselves incorporeal, take on quantity in a mass only incidentally.

In the same way, then, with the soul: in itself the property of being without extension belongs to it, but incidentally—because of that in which it resides, which is three-dimensionally extended—it too is regarded as three-dimensionally extended.

Again, every body is moved either from without or from within.

But if it is moved from without, it will be inanimate (soulless).

Now if the soul is a body, then if it is moved from without, it is inanimate;

but it is absurd to call the soul both inanimate and animate.

Again, the soul, if it is nourished, is nourished by something incorporeal, for it is learning and studies that nourish it.

But no body is nourished by anything incorporeal.

(Xenocrates drew the argument together thus:

And if it is not nourished, while every body of a living creature is nourished, then the soul is not a body.) These, then, are the arguments stated in common against all who say that the soul is a body.

But specifically, against those who hold that the soul is blood or breath—on the ground that when the breath or the blood is separated from the body the living creature dies—one must not say what certain persons, who fancy they are making some point, have written, declaring:

"Therefore, whenever a portion of the blood flows away, a portion of the soul has flowed away."

For such a statement is frivolous chatter.

For in the case of things composed of homogeneous parts, even the part that remains is identical to the whole.

Water, at any rate, whether much or little, is the same; and likewise silver and gold and everything whose parts do not differ from one another in substance.

Thus, then, the blood that remains, however much it may be, is soul—if indeed the blood is soul.

For whichever of these fails, it brings life to an end.

Moreover, there are also the liver, the brain, the heart, the stomach, the kidneys, the intestines, and many other organs.

For which of these, if it were removed, would the living creature not die? Besides, there are many creatures that are bloodless yet animate, such as the cartilaginous fishes and the molluscs—for instance cuttlefish, squid, and octopuses—and all the hard-shelled and soft-shelled creatures, such as crayfish, crabs, and lobsters.

If, then, there are creatures that are animate yet bloodless, it is clear that the soul is not blood.

Against those who say that the soul is water—because water appears to give life to all things, and it is impossible to live without water—there are many counter-arguments.

For it is no more possible to live without food.

Hence, according to their reasoning, one would have to call every kind of food, each and every one, soul as well.

Next, there are many animals that do not drink, as has been recorded of certain eagles.

The partridge, too, is able to live without drinking.

And why should water rather than air be the soul? For one can abstain from water even for a long time;

but from breathing air one cannot abstain even for the briefest moment.

For there are many things that live without breathing air, such as all the insects—for instance bees, wasps, and ants—and the bloodless creatures, and most of the sea-creatures, and everything that has no lung.

For nothing that has no lung breathes air;

and conversely, nothing that does not breathe air has a lung.

But since there are also circulated certain arguments of Cleanthes the Stoic and of Chrysippus that are not to be lightly dismissed, we must set out the refutations of these as well, in the manner in which the followers of Plato resolved them.

Cleanthes weaves together a syllogism of the following sort.

Not only, he says, do we become like our parents in body, but also in soul—in our passions, our characters, our dispositions.

But likeness and unlikeness belong to body, not to the incorporeal.

But in the first place, universals are not established from particulars.

And besides, the claim 'not to the incorporeal' is itself false.

For we say that those numbers are similar whose sides are proportional, as the number six and the number twenty-four.

For the sides of six are two and three;

while the sides of twenty-four are four and six.

And two stands in proportion to four as three stands to six.

For it is observed in a double ratio.

For four is double of two, and six is double of three.

And figures are similar to figures whenever they have their angles equal and the sides about the equal angles in proportion.

But a figure even they themselves admit to be incorporeal.

Furthermore, just as the equal and the unequal are proper to quantity, so the similar and the dissimilar are proper to quality.

Therefore an incorporeal thing can also be similar to an incorporeal thing.

[They argue:] No incorporeal thing suffers-with a body, nor does a body suffer-with an incorporeal thing.

But the soul suffers-with the body when the body is sick and when it is cut, and the body suffers-with the soul.

At any rate, when the soul is ashamed the body turns red, and when it is afraid it turns pale.

But the other of the two premises is false—the one inserted by additional assumption, which states that no incorporeal thing suffers-with a body.

For what if this belongs to the soul alone? It is just as if someone were to say: no animal moves its upper jaw.

But the crocodile moves its upper jaw;

therefore the crocodile is not an animal.

For here too the premise is false by additional assumption—the one which states that no animal moves its upper jaw.

For behold, the crocodile is both an animal and moves its upper jaw.

And in the same way also when he says that no incorporeal thing suffers-with a body.

For by the negation he assumes in advance the very thing under inquiry.

But suppose someone were to posit it as true that no incorporeal thing suffers-with a body;

still, the conclusion drawn is not granted—namely, that the soul suffers-with the body when it is sick and when it is cut.

For it is disputed whether the body alone is what feels pain, having received sensation from the soul, while the soul itself remains unaffected, or whether the soul too feels pain along with the body.

And among the more reputable thinkers the former view prevails.

But one ought not to draw syllogisms from disputed premises, but from agreed ones.

Moreover, it can be shown over and above this that certain incorporeal things do suffer-with bodies.

[For instance, certain incorporeal qualities are] altered together with the body in its decay and its coming-to-be.

Death is the separation of the soul from the body.

But no incorporeal thing is separated from a body;

for an incorporeal thing does not even touch a body.

But the soul both touches the body and is separated from it.

Of these claims, that death is the separation of the soul from the body is true;

but the claim that an incorporeal thing does not touch a body is false when stated universally, though true in the case of the soul.

False, because a line, being incorporeal, both touches a body and is separated from it, and likewise whiteness; but in the case of the soul it is true.

For the soul does not touch the body.

For if it touches it, then clearly it lies alongside it.

And if this is so, it does not lie alongside the whole.

For it is impossible for one body to lie wholly alongside another body, whole to whole.

And in that case the living being would not be ensouled as a whole.

So that, if it touches the body, the soul will be a body, but the living being will not be ensouled as a whole.

But if the living being is ensouled as a whole, then the soul neither touches the body nor is a body.

Now the living being is ensouled as a whole;

therefore the soul neither touches the body nor is a body, and being incorporeal it is separated from it.

That the soul, then, is not a body is clear from what has been said;

and that it is not without substance must be stated next.

Since Dinarchus also defined the soul as a harmony, and Simmias, contradicting Socrates, asserted that the soul is a harmony—saying that the soul resembles a harmony and the body a lyre—we must set forth the refutations of this view laid down in Plato's Phaedo.

One refutation, then, is the one drawn from what he had previously demonstrated.

For it had previously been demonstrated that instances of learning are recollections.

Taking this, then, as agreed, he constructs the argument as follows.

If instances of learning are recollections, then our soul existed before coming to be in human form;

but if it is a harmony, then it did not exist before, and only came to be later, once the body had been harmonized.

For every composite cannot be in any other state than that in which are the things out of which it is composed.

For a composition is a kind of association of the things composed, being a harmony;

and nothing prevents it from not preceding those things out of which it was composed, but rather following upon them.

Consequently, the claim that the soul is a harmony conflicts with the claim that instances of learning are recollections.

But what is said about recollections is true;

therefore it is false to say that the soul is a harmony.

Furthermore, the soul both opposes the body and holds the ruling principle, inasmuch as it governs the body;

but a harmony neither leads nor opposes.

Furthermore, one harmony is more or less a harmony than another by being slackened or tightened (though not in respect of the ratio of the harmony;

for it is impossible for a ratio to admit of more and less;

for if a high note and a low note, having been blended together, are then loosened, they preserve the same ratio in the magnitudes of the notes, but the harmony undergoes variation according to its degree of attunement, being more or less tensed).

But one soul is not more or less a soul than another;

therefore the soul is not a harmony.

Furthermore, the soul admits of virtue and vice;

but a harmony does not admit of harmony and disharmony.

Furthermore, the soul, by admitting contraries in turn, is a substance and a substrate;

but a harmony is a quality and exists in a substrate;

and substance is other than quality;

therefore the soul too is other than harmony.

Yet there is nothing absurd in the soul's partaking of harmony; but it is not on that account a harmony;

for neither, because it partakes of virtue, is the soul a virtue.

Galen declares nothing definite, but indeed protests in his demonstrative treatises that he has declared nothing about the soul;

yet from what he says he seems rather to approve the view that the soul is a temperament;

for he holds that the difference of characters follows upon this temperament,

establishing his argument from the works of Hippocrates.

And if this is so, it is clear that he also thinks the soul to be mortal;

yet not the whole soul, but only the irrational soul of man.

Concerning the rational soul, however, he is in doubt, speaking as follows:

"That the temperament of the body cannot be the soul is clear from this:

every body, whether ensouled or soulless, is blended out of the four elements;

for it is the blending of these that produces bodies.

If, then, the soul is the temperament of the body, nothing will be soulless.

And the argument is concluded thus:

the soul is the [temperament] of the body, and every body has a temperament, [therefore] every body has a soul;

but if every body has a soul, no body is soulless;

therefore neither stone nor wood nor iron nor any other thing will be soulless.

But if he should say that not every temperament of a body whatsoever is a soul, but only a temperament of a certain kind, then one must ask: what sort of temperament is it that produces a living being and holds the role of a soul? For whatever temperament he names as such, we shall find that very kind also among soulless things.

For there being nine temperaments, as he himself showed in his treatise On Temperaments—eight of the ill-tempered and one of the well-tempered—he says that man is blended according to the well-tempered, yet not every man but the one of the mean temperament, while the other animals are blended according to the other ill-temperaments, according to their kind, together with relaxation toward the more and the less;

but these nine temperaments are found also among soulless things, together with the more and the less, as he himself again demonstrated in his treatise On Simple [Drugs/Bodies].

Furthermore, if the soul is a temperament, and temperaments change according to ages, seasons, and regimens, then the soul changes;

but if it changes, we do not have the same soul, but, according to the temperament, at one time the soul of a lion, at another of a sheep, and at another of some other creature—which is absurd.

Furthermore, the temperament does not oppose the desires of the body, but even cooperates with them;

for it is itself the moving cause;

therefore the temperament is not the soul.

Furthermore, if the soul is a temperament, and the temperament is a quality, and a quality both comes to be and passes away apart from the destruction of the substrate, then the soul too will be separated apart from the destruction of the substrate;

therefore the soul is neither a temperament nor a quality.

For surely they will not assert that one of the opposites belongs naturally to the living being, as heat belongs to fire.

But the temperament evidently shifts; or rather, it is they themselves who, through the art of medicine, alter the temperaments.

Furthermore, the qualities of every body are perceptible to the senses;

but the soul is not perceptible to the senses but intelligible;

therefore the soul is not a quality of the body.

Furthermore, the good temperament of body and breath (pneuma), together with the disposition of the flesh, sinews, and the rest, is strength;

and the good temperament of the hot and cold and dry and moist is health;

and the due proportion of the limbs together with a good complexion produces the beauty of the body.

If, then, the harmony of health and of strength and of beauty is the soul, it would be necessary that a living man should neither fall ill nor grow weak nor be misshapen;

but it often happens that not one alone but all three of these good temperaments are destroyed together, and yet the man lives;

for it happens that the same man is at once both misshapen and weak and sick.

Therefore the good temperament of the body is not the soul.

How, then, do certain natural vices and virtues accompany men? This arises truly from the temperament of the body.

For just as some are by nature healthy and others sickly as a result of their temperament,

so some, being by nature bilious (full of bitter bile), are irascible, others are cowardly, others prone to lust.

But some master and overcome these [tendencies];

and it is clear that they master the temperament.

But the one that masters is other than the one that is mastered;

therefore the temperament is one thing and the soul another.

For the body, being an instrument of the soul, if it is fittingly furnished, cooperates with the soul and is itself in good condition;

but if it is unfittingly furnished, it hinders, and then the soul has need of effort, struggling against the unfitness of the instrument;

and unless it is very vigilant, it is even distorted together with the body, just as a musician errs along with the distortion of the lyre, unless he first sets it right in good order.

Wherefore the soul has need of care for the body, in order that it may make it into an instrument fit for itself.

This it does through reason and through habits (moral training), as in a harmony slackening some things and tightening others, so that it may make the body well-suited to itself and may use a fit instrument—provided that it is not itself distorted together with the body.

Aristotle, in calling the soul an entelechy, agrees no less with those who call it a quality.

But let us first clarify what kind of entelechy he means.

He speaks of substance in three ways: one as matter, the substrate, which in itself is nothing but has the potentiality for coming-to-be; [a second as form;]

and a third, the composite of both, that which has come into being from matter and form, which is, finally, the ensouled thing.

Now matter is potentiality, while form is entelechy (actuality).

[Entelechy is twofold:] the one as knowledge, the other as contemplating according to knowledge—that is, the one as a disposition, the other as activity.

As knowledge, because, while the soul exists, there are both sleep and waking;

and by analogy, waking corresponds to contemplating, while sleep corresponds to possessing [the knowledge] yet not exercising it.

And knowledge is prior to the activity.

Therefore he calls the form the first entelechy, and the activity the second.

For instance, an eye consists of an underlying substrate and a form;

and the substrate in it is that which receives sight, namely the matter of the eye,

and this too is called an eye by the same name (homonymously);

but the form and first entelechy of the eye is sight itself, which provides it with the ability to see;

and the second entelechy of the eye is the activity by which it actually sees.

Just as a newborn puppy has neither entelechy but only the potentiality to receive the entelechy, so too must we understand the case of the soul;

for as in that case sight, once generated, perfects the eye, so here the soul, once generated in the body, perfects the living being, such that the soul can never exist without a body, nor the body without it.

For it is not a body, but belongs to a body, and on this account it exists in a body and in a body of a particular kind;

but it does not exist by itself.

But, in the first place, he calls only the passive part of the soul 'soul,' separating from it the rational part.

Yet one ought to have taken the whole soul of man together, and not to pronounce about the whole on the basis of a part—and that the weakest part at that.

Next, he says that the body possesses life in potentiality even before the soul comes to be;

for he asserts that the body has life potentially within itself.

But the body that possesses life potentially must first be a body in actuality;

and it cannot be a body in actuality before it has received the form, for [before that] it is matter without quality and not a body;

it is therefore impossible for that which does not exist in actuality to have the potentiality for something to come to be out of it.

And if it is a body only in potentiality, how can that which is a body in potentiality have life potentially within itself? Besides, in other cases it is possible to have something and not use it;

for instance, to have sight and not use it;

but in the case of the soul this is impossible.

For not even the sleeper is without psychic activity;

for he is nourished, grows, has images (imagination), and breathes—which is above all the proof of life.

From these considerations, then, it is clear that life cannot belong to anything in potentiality, but always in actuality.

For that which gives the soul its specific form (its essential character) is nothing other than life.

For to the soul life is innate (connatural),

but to the body it belongs by participation.

He, then, who says that health is analogous to life is speaking not of the life of the soul but of that of the body, and thus deals in sophistry.

For corporeal substance is receptive of contraries by turns;

but substance in respect of its form is in no way so.

For if the differentia in respect of form is altered, the living being too is altered.

So it is not the substance in respect of form that is receptive of contraries, but the substance in respect of the substrate—that is, the corporeal substance.

The soul, therefore, cannot in any way be the entelechy of the body;

rather, it is a self-complete (self-subsistent), incorporeal substance.

For it admits the contraries by turns—vice and virtue—which the form was unable to admit.

Next he says that the soul, being an entelechy, is immovable in itself, but is moved accidentally (per accidens).

Yet it is not absurd that, though immovable, it should move us.

For beauty also, though immovable, moves us.

But [one might object:] even if this too, being immovable, moves;

yet it is that which has a nature to be moved that does the moving, and not the immovable.

If, then, the body too had motion of itself, there would be nothing absurd in its being moved by something immovable;

but as it is, it is impossible for the immovable to be moved by the immovable;

whence, then, does the body get its being moved, if not from the soul? For the body is not self-moving.

So, wishing to demonstrate the first origin of motion, he demonstrated not the first but the second.

For if [the soul], itself unmoved, were to move [the body], it would produce a first motion;

but if it moves the body that is moved from itself and in another way, then he is expounding the origin of a second motion.

...[whence] motion for the body? For to say that the elements move of themselves—some being light by nature, others heavy—is false.

For if lightness and heaviness were motion, the light and heavy things would never come to rest;

but they do come to rest, once they have reached their proper place;

therefore heaviness and lightness are not the causes of the first motion, but are qualities of the elements.

And even if this be granted, how can reasoning and forming opinions and judging be works of lightness and heaviness? And if they are not of these, then neither are they of the elements;

and if not of the elements, then neither of bodies.

Further, if the soul is moved accidentally, while the body is moved from itself, then even when the soul is not present, the body will be moved from itself;

and if so, there will also be a living being apart from the soul;

the original supposition, therefore, is also absurd.

Nor is it true to say that everything moved by nature is also moved by force, and everything moved by force is also moved by nature.

For the cosmos, though moved by nature, is not moved by force;

nor again, if something is moved according to nature, is it therefore also at rest according to nature.

For indeed the cosmos, the sun, and the moon, though moved according to nature, cannot be at rest according to nature; in the same way the soul too, being moved according to nature, cannot be at rest according to nature.

For rest is the destruction of the soul and of everything that is ever-moving.

In addition to these, the difficulty raised at the outset also remains unsolved: whence is the body held together, since it is by nature disposed to be dispersed?

These [arguments], chosen from many, suffice to prove that the soul is neither an entelechy, nor immovable, nor generated within the body.

Pythagoras, being always accustomed to represent symbolically both God and all things by numbers, defined the soul also as a self-moving number; and Xenocrates followed him in this—not that the soul is a number, but because it is found among things that are countable and pluralized, and because the soul is that which distinguishes things by imposing shapes and forms upon each.

For it is the soul that separates the kinds (forms) from one another and shows them to be distinct, both by the otherness of the forms and by the plurality of number, and on this account makes things countable.

Hence it is not altogether removed from a certain affinity with numbers.

And he himself also bore witness to its self-moving character on its behalf.

But that it is not a number is clear from the following.

The soul is not a quantity but a substance;

the soul, therefore, is not a number—even granting fully that they hold number, among intelligible things, to be a substance, as we shall say in what follows.

Further, the soul is continuous;

further, number is either even or odd;

but the soul is neither even nor odd;

further, number increases by addition;

but the soul does not increase by addition.

Further, the soul is self-moving;

but a determinate number is immovable.

Furthermore, number, while remaining one and the same in its nature, cannot alter any of the qualities that arise within numbers;

but the soul, while remaining one and the same in its substance, does alter its qualities, passing over from ignorance into knowledge and from vice into virtue.

Such, then, are the doctrines of the ancients concerning the soul.

Eunomius defined the soul as an incorporeal substance created within a body, heaping together all sorts of notions at once.

For he took the phrase "incorporeal substance" from the truth, but the phrase "created within a body" from the teaching of Aristotle, not perceiving—keen-witted though he was—that he was attempting to bring together into one things that are incompatible.

For everything that has a coming-into-being which is at once bodily and temporal is corruptible and mortal.

And with these considerations the words of Moses also agree;

for in describing the coming-into-being of sensible things, he did not expressly state that the nature of the intelligible things came into existence within that same account.

But some, conjecturing, hold this opinion, with whom not all are in agreement.

And if anyone, from the fact that the soul is infused after the formation of the body, should suppose that it came into being after the body, he goes astray from the truth.

For neither does Moses say that it was created at the time when it was infused into the body,

nor is the case so according to reason.

Either, then, let him call the soul mortal, as Aristotle does—who said that it is generated within a body—and as the Stoics do;

or else let him refrain from calling it incorporeal yet created within a body, lest he present to us the notion of a soul that is mortal and altogether irrational.

Besides, according to him the world is not yet complete, but is still even now only half-finished and ever in need of further addition.

At any rate, at least fifty thousand intelligible substances are added to it each day; and, the most absurd thing of all, when it is brought to completion it will then, according to him, be dissolved—when the last human beings, those at the resurrection, fill up the full tally of souls.

And what could be more irrational than to assert that the world is destroyed precisely when it is completed? For this is altogether the manner of infant children, who in the sand of their play, the very moment after they have finished, confound what they have made.

For to say that souls now come into being by way of providence and not by way of creation—on the ground that no new substance, nor any other beside that which already exists, is being introduced, but that the existing substance is being multiplied by providence—belongs to those who are ignorant of the difference between creation and providence.

For the work of providence is to preserve, through mutual generation, the substance of corruptible living creatures (I mean those that do not come into being by way of putrefaction, since the succession of these latter is in turn maintained by yet another process of putrefaction);

but the supreme work of creation is to make things out of what does not exist.