[40] Aristot. De Animâ, II. ii. p. 414, a. 25: ἑκάστου γὰρ ἡ ἐντελέχεια ἐν τῷ δυνάμει ὑπάρχοντι καὶ τῇ οἰκείᾳ ὕλη πέφυκεν ἐγγίνεσθαι. — Physica, II. ii. p. 194, b. 8: ἔτι τῶν πρός τι ἡ ὕλη· ἄλλῳ γὰρ εἴδει ἄλλη ὕλη. — Metaph. Η. vi. p. 1045, b. 17: ἔστι δ’, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, καὶ ἡ ἐσχάτη ὕλη καὶ ἡ μορφὴ ταὐτό καὶ δυνάμει, τὸ δὲ ἐνεργείᾳ. See upon this doctrine Schwegler’s Commentary, pp. 100, 154, 173, 240, Pt. 2nd. Compare also Arist. De Gener. Animal. II. i. p. 735, a. 9; also De CÅ“lo, IV. iii. p. 310, b. 14.
The distinction above specified is employed by Aristotle in his exposition of the Soul. The soul belongs to the Category of Substance or Essence (not to that of Quantity, Quality, &c.); but of the two points of view under which Essence may be presented, the soul ranks with Form, not with Matter — with the Actual, not with the Potential. The Matter to which (as correlate) soul stands related, is a natural body (i.e., a body having within it an inherent principle of motion and rest) organized in a certain way, or fitted out with certain capacities and preparations to which soul is the active and indispensable complement. These capacities would never come into actuality without the soul; but, on the other hand, the range of actualities or functions in the soul depends upon, and is limited by, the range of capacities ready prepared for it in the body. The implication of the two constitutes the living subject, with all its functions, active and passive. If the eye were an animated or living subject, seeing would be its soul; if the carpenter’s axe were living, cutting would be its soul;[41] the matter would be the lens or the iron in which this soul is embodied. It is not indispensable, however, that all the functions of the living subject should be at all times in complete exercise: the subject is still living, even while asleep; the eye is still a good eye, though at the moment closed. It is enough if the functional aptitude exist as a dormant property, ready to rise into activity, when the proper occasions present themselves. This minimum of Form suffices to give living efficacy to the potentialities of body; it is enough that a man, though now in a dark night and seeing nothing, will see as soon as the sun rises; or that he knows geometry, though he is not now thinking of a geometrical problem. This dormant possession is what Aristotle calls the First Entelechy or Energy, i.e., the lowest stage of Actuality, or the minimum of influence required to transform Potentiality into Actuality. The Aristotelian definition of Soul is thus: The first entelechy of a natural organized body, having life in potentiality.[42] This is all that is essential to the soul; the second or higher entelechy (actual exercise of the faculties) is not a constant or universal property.[43]
[41] Aristot. De Animâ, II. i. p. 412, b. 18: εἰ γὰρ ἦν ὁ ὀφθαλμὸς ζῳόν, ψυχὴ ἂν ἦν αὐτοῦ ἡ ὄψις· αὕτη γὰρ οὐσία ὀφθαλμοῦ ἡ κατὰ τὸν λόγον. ὁ δ’ ὀφθαλμὸς ὕλη ὄψεως, ἧς ἀπολειπούσης οὐκέτ’ ὀφθαλμός, πλὴν ὁμωνύμως, καθάπερ ὁ λίθινος καὶ ὁ γεγραμμένος.
[42] Aristot. De Animâ, II. i. p. 412, a. 27: διὸ ψυχή ἐστιν ἐντελέχεια ἡ πρώτη σώματος φυσικοῦ δυνάμει ζωὴν ἔχοντος· τοιοῦτο δὲ ὃ ἂν ᾖ ὀργανικόν. Compare Metaphysica, Z. x. p. 1035, b. 14-27.
[43] Aristot. De Animâ, II. ii. p. 414, a. 8-18. The distinction here taken between the first or lower stage of Entelechy, and the second or higher stage, coincides substantially with the distinction in the Nikomachean Ethica and elsewhere between ἕξις and ἐνέργεια. See Topica, IV. v. p. 125, b. 15; Ethic. Nikom. II. i.-v. p. 1103 seq.
In this definition of Soul, Aristotle employs his own Philosophia Prima to escape the errors committed by prior philosophers. He does not admit that the soul is a separate entity in itself; or that it is composed (as Empedokles and Demokritus had said) of corporeal elements, or (as Plato had said) of elements partly corporeal, partly logical and notional. He rejects the imaginary virtues of number, invoked by the Pythagoreans and Xenokrates; lastly, he keeps before him not merely man, but all the varieties of animated objects, to which his definition must be adapted. His first capital point is to put aside the alleged identity, or similarity, or sameness of elements, between soul and body; and to put aside equally any separate existence or substantiality of soul. He effects both these purposes by defining them as essentially relatum and correlate; the soul, as the relatum, is unintelligible and unmeaning without its correlate, upon which accordingly its definition is declared to be founded.
The real animated subject may be looked at either from the point of view of the relatum or from that of the correlate; but, though the two are thus logically separable, in fact and reality they are inseparably implicated; and, if either of them be withdrawn, the animated subject disappears. “The soul (says Aristotle) is not any variety of body, but it cannot be without a body; it is not a body, but it is something belonging to or related to a body; and for this reason it is in a body, and in a body of such or such potentialities.�[44] Soul is to body (we thus read), not as a compound of like elements, nor as a type is to its copy, or vice versâ, but as a relatum to its correlate; dependent upon the body for all its acts and manifestations, and bringing to consummation what in the body exists as potentiality only. Soul, however, is better than body; and the animated being is better than the inanimate by reason of its soul.[45]
[44] Aristot. De Animâ, II. ii. p. 414, a. 19: καὶ διὰ τοῦτο καλῶς ὑπολαμβάνουσιν οἷς δοκεῖ μητ’ ἄνευ σώματος εἶναι μήτε σώμά τι ἡ ψυχή· σῶμα μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ἔστι, σώματος δέ τι, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἐν σώματι ὑπάρχει καὶ ἐν σώματι τοιούτῳ. Compare Aristot. De Juventute et Senectute, i. p. 467, b. 14.
[45] Aristot. De Generat. Animal. II. i. p. 731, b. 29.
The animated subject is thus a form immersed or implicated in matter; and all its actions and passions are so likewise.[46] Each of these has its formal side, as concerns the soul, and its material side, as concerns the body. When a man or animal is angry, for example, this emotion is both a fact of the soul and a fact of the body: in the first of these two characters, it may be defined as an appetite for hurting some one who has hurt us; in the second of the two, it may be defined as an ebullition of the blood and heat round the heart.[47] The emotion, belonging to the animated subject or aggregate of soul and body, is a complex fact having two aspects, logically distinguishable from each other, but each correlating and implying the other. This is true not only in regard to our passions, emotions, and appetites, but also in regard to our perceptions, phantasms, reminiscences, reasonings, efforts of attention in learning, &c. We do not say that the soul weaves or builds (Aristotle observes[48]): we say that the animated subject, the aggregate of soul and body, the man, weaves or builds. So we ought also to say, not that the soul feels anger, pity, love, hatred, &c., or that the soul learns, reasons, recollects, &c., but that the man with his soul does these things. The actual movement throughout these processes is not in the soul, but in the body; sometimes going to the soul (as in sensible perception), sometimes proceeding from the soul to the body (as in the case of reminiscence). All these processes are at once corporeal and psychical, pervading the whole animated subject, and having two aspects coincident and inter-dependent, though logically distinguishable. The perfect or imperfect discrimination by the sentient soul depends upon the good or bad condition of the bodily sentient organs; an old man that has become shortsighted would see as well as before, if he could regain his youthful eye. The defects of the soul arise from defects in the bodily organism to which it belongs, as in cases of drunkenness or sickness; and this is not less true of the Noûs, or intellective soul, than of the sentient soul.[49] Intelligence, as well as emotion, are phenomena, not of the bodily organism simply, nor of the Noûs simply, but of the community or partnership of which both are members; and, when intelligence gives way, this is not because the Noûs itself is impaired, but because the partnership is ruined by the failure of the bodily organism.