LECTIO TWELVE

             § 178. Having in the preceding sections explained that the early philosophers pursued their enquiry into the soul by three ways, that of movement, of knowledge and of incorporeal being, and having pressed certain objections against those who took the way of movement, and against those who identified soul with something bodiless and entirely simple, the Philosopher now turns to criticise the upholders of the principle that the soul knows everything because everything is included in itself.

             § 179. With their theory that all knowledge takes place by means of assimilation these philosophers had caught, as it were, a far-off glimpse of the truth; but they expressed this by saying that the reason why the soul knew all things was that all things entered into its composition, and that the soul possessed the likeness of all things according to the mode of existence, i.e. a corporeal one, which things have in themselves outside it. Hence, if things consist of elements, the same is true, they said, of the soul; and that is the cause of sensation and knowledge. The chief upholder of this view was Empedocles, who posited more elements in the soul than anyone else; and therefore the Philosopher is more concerned here to refute him than anyone else. So he first attacks the opinion of Empedocles, and only then, at 'And some say', that of certain others.

             § 180. Against Empedocles he brings ten arguments. The first is as follows. Empedocles argues that the soul must be composed of all the objects of its knowledge because knowledge takes place by means of similitude. But this involves many difficulties and absurdities. For clearly the elements are not all that any given thing contains; it includes much else besides, such as the proportion in which its elements are combined and the formulable essence of each one in particular, and there may even be an infinity of accidents belonging to things made up of elements. Take, for example, bones. To understand bones we need to know, not only the elements of which they are composed, but also how these elements combine in them, and the functional pattern of bones; for the order of elements in compound things is not a random one, it involves a certain definite proportional arrangement. If bone, as Empedocles says, is composed of eight parts, each bone has eight parts into which the various elements enter in unequal measure: for earth, he says, contributes two parts, air and water one each, and fire four--to which predominance of fire is due the whiteness of bone, while from earth comes its dryness. Thus in compound things there are, besides the elements, certain proportions and patterns. Well then, either these proportions are in the soul together with the elements, or not. If they are in the soul, then bones and flesh and so forth, and therefore men and stones and bodies and things quite contrary to one another, are all in the soul; and this nobody dreams of conceding. But if only the elements are in the soul, then it does not in fact know the proportion in things nor compound things as such; and how can it know God (i.e. the Heavens as a whole) or man or stone or bone? It cannot possibly know these things; it knows only the elements which compose them, according to this view.

             § 181. The second argument, starting at 'Further, that which is', runs thus. You say the soul is made up of elementary principles. But these differ according to the different categories of things, such as substance, quality, quantity and the rest. Is then the soul made up of the elementary principles of substance alone, or does it include those of the other categories? If the first alternative is right, then the soul only knows substance; yet the supposition is that it knows everything. But if it includes the elements of all the categories, then, since whatever has the elementary principles of substance is a substance, and whatever has those of quantity is a quantity, and so on likewise with the rest, it follows that the soul is at once both a substance, and a quality, and a relation, and so on and so forth.

             § 182. It might be answered that the elementary principles of substance are also those of quantity, quality, etc., since everything is grounded in substance; hence the soul need only possess the principles of substance to know everything. But I say that things have both remote and proximate principles, and should be known by means of the latter. The principles of substance may be the remote, but they are not the proximate, principles of the other categories; hence they cannot give knowledge of anything except substance.

             § 183. The third argument, starting at 'It is unreasonable', is this. The reason why the soul is said to be composed of all the elements is that it knows all things and knowledge is by similarity. Against this is the admitted fact that sensation and knowledge are a sort of being acted upon; and it seems unreasonable to say that like is acted upon by like, and not rather by its contrary; and consequently, to say that sensation or knowledge are by similarity.

             § 184. The fourth argument, at 'What has now', is this. What has been said already is enough to show that Empedocles's theory is highly questionable and his manner of expressing it slipshod. But there is a yet stronger objection. If the soul, as he says, knows by similarity, then the element air will know air, and so on for the other elements. But we know that animals' bodies have many earthy parts which lack sensation, such as hair, bones and nerves; yet they ought to have sensation according to this theory. Therefore knowledge is not by similarity nor the soul composed of the elements.

             § 185. The fifth argument, at 'Again etc.', runs thus. Another objection to this view is that it implies that principles as such are more ignorant than percipient. For if knowledge is only by similarity, and if every principle is quite simple, having no likeness to anything but itself and is ignorant of everything else.

             § 186. The sixth argument comes at 'Further'. This theory also implies the doubtful consequence that God is the most ignorant of all living beings. For, as we have seen, Empedocles thought that everything on this earth could be reduced to the four elements together with Strife and Friendship, these last being the causes of coming-to-be and passing-away. But the sky he called God and said it was composed of the four elements and Friendship, but not of Strife; and was therefore incorruptible. If then knowledge is by similarity, God cannot know Strife, since it does not form part of him, and God is therefore less percipient, strictly speaking, than other living beings which know Strife because they include it.

             § 187. The seventh argument comes at 'In general, why'. If the soul is made of all the elements, then all things have souls; for all things are made of either all or some elements. Now whatever is made up of elements or of compounds of elements is a body. Hence all bodies, indeed all beings, have souls; which is false.

             § 188. The eighth argument begins at 'One might wonder'. The elements are many and contrary; but whenever contrary things come together in a composition there must be some other thing which includes and unifies them. Hence if the soul is made up of the elements there must be something in it which unifies them. But it is extremely doubtful what this can be; for it must be something in the soul nobler than the soul, which is an impossibility, at least as regards that which it is reasonable to consider the supremely noble and divine thing, namely the mind. Besides, this other thing would have to be prior to the elements, whereas Empedocles and the rest have asserted that the elements were the first of all beings. Therefore the soul is not made up of elements.

             § 189. He begins the ninth argument at 'Not one of those', showing the weakness of Empedocles's view and that of all the others who have enquired about the soul, whether by way of movement or by way of sense-perception. For (1) there is a gap in the arguments of all who defined the soul in terms of local movement. Many living beings, such as plants and things resembling plants, do not move locally at all but are fixed in one place. And (2) there is a like inadequacy in the definition of the soul in terms of intellect or sensation; for plenty of living things neither sense nor think. And if local motion, intellect and sensation are taken separately and regarded as distinct parts of the one soul, this will not apply to soul in general, since not all souls are intellectual; nor to the whole of any one soul, since only parts of it will be intellectual and sensitive; nor to any one single soul, since this description does not enumerate all the characteristics of any given soul; for in any soul there are other things besides understanding and sensation.

             § 190. And a certain philosopher named Orpheus having fallen into a rather similar error in what he said about the soul, he too is mentioned here. Orpheus was one of those three early thinkers who were, so to say, poet-theologians; for they wrote in verse on philosophy and about God. The other two were Museus and a certain Linus. Orpheus, a wonderful orator whose words had power to civilise wild and brutish folk, was the first man to induce his fellows to live together in society. For this reason it is said of him that he could make rocks dance to the sweet sounds of his harp, which really means that his eloquence could melt the hardest hearts. And after these three poet-philosophers came the seven sages, of whom Thales was one. Now this Orpheus thought that the whole air was alive, was indeed a sort of living soul, and that the so-called souls of living bodies were really nothing but the air these bodies breathed; and this idea he expressed in verse. But the Philosopher objects to the Orphic theory, saying that it is just as inadequate as the others he has criticised; for there are many animals that do not breathe at all, 'a fact', he says, 'which was overlooked' by those who held this opinion. The criticism touches the inadequacy of the theory.

             § 191. At 'But if one' comes the tenth argument; which convicts the Empedoclean theory of unnecessary complication. The soul's capacity for knowledge is explained by its composition from elements. Now it is a matter of experience that knowledge of anything rests on few, rather than many, principles; hence even if we grant that the soul is composed of elements we ought not to suppose that these are all the elements, but at the most two. And that knowledge rests on few rather than many principles is clear if we consider that in composite things, consisting of two principles, one of perfection, the other of imperfection, it is in the light of the former that we know the latter; and that in contraries, which can be reduced to a quality and its privation, it suffices to understand the term denoting quality and perfection in order to understand also the other term denoting privation and imperfection. Thus by the idea of straight line we know and form judgements about both straight and crooked lines; for 'the rule', i.e. the measure, is the means of knowing both; but the crooked line is the means of knowing neither itself nor the straight. Hence there was no need to regard the soul as made up of all the elements; enough to adduce two only, fire and earth, as its means of knowing both itself and contrary things. Through fire it could know both cold and hot objects, and through earth the dry and the moist.

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THE ELEMENTS HAVE NO SOUL

             AND some say that the soul is intermingled generally with the Universe. That is perhaps why Thales thought that the whole world was full of divinities.§ 192

             This, however, involves several difficulties. For why does the soul in fire and air not result in an animated being, whereas it does so in composite beings?--and that, even though it is thought to be more excellent in the former. (And one might well query why the soul in the air should be nobler and more enduring than that in animals.) On either count the theory is absurd and unreasonable. To say that air or fire is an animal is among the most wanton of absurdities; and if there is a soul in them, it is inconsistent not to call them animals.§§ 193-5

             They seem to have held that there was a soul in these on the ground that the Universe is made up of homogeneous parts; so that if animals become animate by partaking of the containing element, they must say that the soul [of the Whole] is homogeneous with its parts.§ 196

             If then the air, divided off thus, be homogeneous, but the soul be composed of heterogeneous parts, something of it [the soul] will exist and something not. It is necessary then, either that it be of homogeneous parts, or that it be not in any and every part of the whole.§ 197

             It is evident then, from what has been said, that the cause of knowledge being in the soul is not that soul is made up of the elements; and that it is neither true nor apposite to say that it is in motion.§ 198