[116] Aristot. De Animâ, II. iii. p. 414, b. 3-16; III. vii. p. 431, a. 9; De Somno et Vigil. i. p. 454, b. 29.
[117] Aristot. De Partibus Animalium, III. iv. p. 666, a. 12.
Aristotle proceeds by gradual steps upward from the Sentient soul to the Noëtic (Cogitant or Intelligent) soul, called in its highest perfection Noûs. While refuting the doctrine of Empedokles, Demokritus, and other philosophers, who considered cogitation or intelligence to be the same as sensible perception, and while insisting upon the distinctness of the two as mental phenomena, he recognizes the important point of analogy between them, that both of them include judgment and comparison;[118] and he describes an intermediate stage called Phantasy or Imagination, forming the transition from the lower of the two to the higher. We have already observed that, in the Aristotelian psychology, the higher functions of the soul presuppose and are built upon the lower as their foundation, though the lower do not necessarily involve the higher. Without nutrition, there is no sense; without sense, there is no phantasy; without phantasy, there is no cogitation or intelligence.[119] The higher psychical phenomena are not identical with the lower, yet neither are they independent thereof; they presuppose the lower as a part of their conditions. Here, and indeed very generally elsewhere, Aristotle has been careful to avoid the fallacy of confounding or identifying the conditions of a phenomenon with the phenomenon itself.[120]
[118] Aristot. De Animâ, III. iii. p. 427, a. 20.
[119] Ibid. b. 14: φαντασία γὰρ ἕτερον καὶ αἰσθήσεως καὶ διανοίας. — Ib. vii. p. 431, a. 16: οὐδέποτε νοεῖ ἄνευ φαντάσματος ἡ ψυχή. — De Memoriâ et Reminiscent. i. p. 449, b. 31: νοεῖν οὐκ ἔστιν ἄνευ φαντάσματος.
[120] Mill’s System of Logic, Book V. ch. 3, s. 8.
He proceeds to explain Phantasy or the Phantastic department of the soul, with the phantasms that belong to it. It is not sensible perception, nor belief, nor opinion, nor knowledge, nor cogitation. Our dreams, though affections of the sentient soul, are really phantasms in our sleep, when there is no visual sensation; even when awake, we have a phantasm of the sun, as of a disk one foot in diameter, though we believe the sun to be larger than the earth.[121] Many of the lower animals have sensible perception without any phantasy: even those among them that have phantasy have no opinion; for opinion implies faith, persuasion, and some rational explanation of that persuasion, to none of which does any animal attain.[122] Phantasy is an internal movement of the animated being (body and soul in one); belonging to the sentient soul, not to the cogitant or intelligent; not identical with the movement of sense, but continued from or produced by that, and by that alone; accordingly, similar to the movement of sense and relating to the same matters.[123] Since our sensible perceptions may be either true or false, so also may be our phantasms. And, since these phantasms are not only like our sensations, but remain standing in the soul long after the objects of sense have passed away, they are to a great degree the determining causes both of action and emotion. They are such habitually to animals, who are destitute of Noûs; and often even to intelligent men, if the Noûs be overclouded by disease or drunkenness.[124]
[121] Aristot. De Animâ, III. iii. p. 428, a. 5, b. 3; De Somno et Vig. ii. p. 456, a. 24: κινοῦνται δ’ ἔνιοι καθεύδοντες καὶ ποιοῦσι πολλὰ ἐγρηγορικά, οὐ μέντοι ἄνευ φαντάσματος καὶ αἰσθήσεώς τινος· τὸ γὰρ ἐνύπνιόν ἐστιν αἴσθημα τρόπον τινά. — Ibid. i. p. 454, b. 10.
[122] Aristot. De Animâ, III. iii. p. 428, a. 10, 22, 25.
[123] Ibid. b. 10-15; De Somniis, i. p. 459, a. 15.