Aristotle
psychical. The consequents follow their antecedents either
universally, or at least according to customary rules, in the
majority of cases.[134]
[Footnote 131: Aristot. De Memor. et Rem. ii. p. 453, a. 8. He draws
the same distinction in Hist. Animal. I. i. p. 488, b. 26.]
[Footnote 132: Aristot. De Animâ, I. iv. p. 408, b. 17. De Memor. et
Remin. i. p. 450, a. 30; ii. p. 453, a. 10: [Greek: to\
a)namimnê/skesthai/ e)stin oi(=on sullo/gismo/s tis.]]
[Footnote 133: Aristot. De Memor. et Rem. ii. p. 453, a. 14-23.]
[Footnote 134: Aristot. De Memor. et Rem. ii. p. 451, b. 10: [Greek:
sumbai/nousi d' ai( a)namnê/seis, e)peidê\ pe/phuken ê( ki/nêsis
ê(/de gene/sthai meta\ tê/nde.]]
The consequent is either (1) like its antecedent, wholly or
partially; or (2) contrary to it; or (3) has been actually felt in
juxtaposition with it. In reminiscence, we endeavour to regain the
forgotten consequent by hunting out some antecedent whereupon it is
likely to follow; taking our start either from the present moment or
from some other known point.[135] We run over many phantasms until we
hit upon the true antecedent; the possibility of reminiscence depends
upon our having this within our mental reach, among our accessible
stock of ideas: if such be not the case, reminiscence is
impracticable, and we must learn over again.[136] We are most likely
to succeed, if we get upon the track or order wherein events actually
occurred; thus, if we are trying to recollect a forgotten verse or
sentence, we begin to repeat it from the first word; the same
antecedent may indeed call up different consequents at different
times, but it will generally call up what has habitually followed it
before.[137]
[Footnote 135: Ibid. b. 18: [Greek: dio\ kai\ to\ e)phexê=s
thêreu/omen noê/santes a)po\ tou= nu=n ê)\ a)/llou tino/s, kai\ a)ph'
o(moi/ou ê)\ e)nanti/ou ê)\ tou= su/neggus.]
About the associative property of Contraries see also De Somno et
Vigil. i. p. 453, b. 27.]
[Footnote 136: Aristot. De Memor. et Rem. ii. p. 452, a. 7: [Greek:
polla/kis d' ê)/dê me\n a)dunatei= a)namnêsthê=nai, zêtei=n de\
du/natai kai\ eu(ri/skei. tou=to de\ gi/netai kinou=nti polla/, e(/ôs
a)\n toiau/tên kinê/sê| ki/nêsin, ê(=| a)kolouthê/sei to\ pra=gma.
to\ ga\r memnê=sthai/ e)sti to\ e)nei=nai duna/mei **tê\n
kinou=san; tou=to de/, ô(st' e)x au)tou= kai\ ô(=n e)/chei kinê/seôn
kinêthê=nai, ô(/sper ei)/rêtai.]]
[Footnote 137: Ibid. ii. p. 452, a. 2.]
The movements of Memory and of Reminiscence are partly corporeal and
partly psychical, just as those of Sensation and Phantasy are. We
compare in our remembrance greater and less (either in time or in
external magnitudes) through similar internal movements differing
from each other in the same, proportion, but all on a miniature
scale.[138] These internal movements often lead to great discomfort,
when a person makes fruitless efforts to recover the forgotten
phantasm that he desires; especially with excitable men, who are much
disturbed by their own phantasms. They cannot stop the movement once
begun; and, when their sensitive system is soft and flexible, they
find that they have unwittingly provoked the bodily movements
belonging to anger or fear, or some other painful emotion.[139] These
movements, when once provoked, continue in spite of the opposition of
the person that experiences them. He brings upon himself the reality
of the painful emotion; just as we find that, after we have very
frequently pronounced a sentence or sung a song, the internal
movements left in our memories are sometimes so strong and so
persistent, that they act on our vocal organs even without any
volition on our parts, and determine us to sing the song or pronounce
the sentence over again in reality.[140] Slow men are usually good in
memory, quick men and apt learners are good in reminiscence: the two
are seldom found together.[141]
[Footnote 138: Ibid. b. 12: [Greek: e)/sti ga\r e)n au)tê=| ta\
o(/moia schê/mata kai\ kinê/seis.--pa/nta ga\r ta\ e)nto\s e)la/ttô,
ô(/sper a)na/logon kai\ ta\ e)kto/s.]]
[Footnote 139: Aristot. De Memor. et Rem. ii. p. 453, a. 22: [Greek:
o( a)namimnêsko/menos kai\ thêreu/ôn sômatiko/n ti kinei=, e)n ô(=|
to\ pa/thos.]]
[Footnote 140: Ibid. p. 453, a. 28: [Greek: e)/oike to\ pa/thos toi=s
o)no/masi kai\ me/lesi kai\ lo/gois, o(/tan dia\ sto/matos ge/nêtai/
ti au)tô=n spho/dra; pausame/nois ga\r kai\ ou) boulome/nois
e)pe/rchetai pa/lin a)/|dein ê)\ le/gein.]]
[Footnote 141: Ibid. i. p. 449, b. 7.]
In this account of Memory and Reminiscence, Aristotle displays an
acute and penetrating intelligence of the great principles of the
Association of Ideas. But these principles are operative not less in
memory than in reminiscence: and the exaggerated prominence that he
has given to the distinction between the two (determined apparently
by a wish to keep the procedure of man apart from that of animals)
tends to perplex his description of the associative process. At the
same time, his manner of characterizing phantasy, memory, and
reminiscence, as being all of them at once corporeal and
psychical--involving, like sensation, internal movements of the body
as well as phases of the consciousness, sometimes even passing into
external movements of the bodily organs without our volition--all
this is a striking example of psychological observation, as well as
of consistency in following out the doctrine laid down at the
commencement of his chief treatise: Soul as the Form implicated with
Body as the Matter,--the two being an integral concrete separable
only by abstraction.
We come now to the highest and (in Aristotle's opinion) most
honourable portion of the soul--the Noûs or noëtic faculty, whereby
we cogitate, understand, reason, and believe or opine under the
influence of reason.[142] According to the uniform scheme of
Aristotle, this highest portion of the soul, though distinct from all
the lower, presupposes them all. As the sentient soul presupposes the
nutrient, so also the cogitant soul presupposes the nutrient, the
sentient, the phantastic, the memorial, and the reminiscent.
Aristotle carefully distinguishes the sentient department of the soul
from the cogitant, and refutes more than once the doctrine of those
philosophers that identified the two. But he is equally careful to
maintain the correlation between them, and to exhibit the sentient
faculty not only as involving in itself a certain measure of
intellectual discrimination, but also as an essential and fundamental
condition to the agency of the cogitant, as a portion of the human
soul. We have already gone through the three successive
stages--phantastic, memorial, reminiscent--whereby the interval
between sensation and cogitation is bridged over. Each of the three
is directly dependent on past sensation, either as reproduction or as
corollary; each of them is an indispensable condition of man's
cogitation; moreover, in the highest of the three, we have actually
slid unperceived into the cogitant phase of the human soul; for
Aristotle declares the reminiscent process to be of the nature of a
syllogism.[143] That the soul cannot cogitate or reason without
phantasms--that phantasms are required for the actual working of the
human Noûs--he affirms in the most explicit manner.[144]
[Footnote 142: Aristot. De Animâ, III. iv. p. 429, a. 10: [Greek:
peri\ de\ tou= mori/ou tou= tê=s psuchê=s ô(=| ginô/skei te ê(
psuchê\ kai\ phronei=.] He himself defines what he means by [Greek:
nou=s] a few lines lower; and he is careful to specify it as [Greek:
o( tê=s psuchê=s nou=s--o( a)/ra kalou/menos tê=s psuchê=s nou=s
(le/gô de\ nou=n, ô(=| dianoei=tai kai\ u(polamba/nei ê(
psuchê/)]--a. 22.
In the preceding chapter he expressly discriminates [Greek: no/êsis]
from [Greek: u(po/lêpsis]. This last word [Greek: u(po/lêpsis] is the
most general term for _believing_ or _opining_ upon reasons good or
bad; the varieties under it are [Greek: e)pistê/mê, do/xa, phro/nêsis
kai\ ta)nanti/a tou/tôn] (p. 427, b. 16-27).]
[Footnote 143: Aristot. De Memor. et Rem. ii. p. 453 a. 10.]
[Footnote 144: Ibid. p. 449, b. 31-p. 450, a. 12: [Greek: noei=n ou)k
e)/stin a)/neu phanta/smatos--ê( de\ mnê/mê kai\ ê( tô=n noêtô=n ou)k
a)/neu phanta/smato/s e)stin.]--De Animâ, III. vii. p. 431, a. 16.]
The doctrine of Aristotle respecting Noûs has been a puzzle, even
from the time of his first commentators. Partly from the obscurity
inherent in the subject, partly from the defective condition of his
text as it now stands, his meaning cannot be always clearly
comprehended, nor does it seem that the different passages can be
completely reconciled.
Anaxagoras, Demokritus, and other philosophers, appear to have spoken
of Noûs or Intellect in a large and vague sense, as equivalent to
Soul generally. Plato seems to have been the first to narrow and
specialize the meaning; distinguishing pointedly (as we have stated
above) the rational or encephalic soul, in the cranium, with its
circular rotations, from the two lower souls, **thoracic and
abdominal. Aristotle agreed with him in this distinction (either of
separate souls or of separate functions in the same soul); but he
attenuated and divested it of all connexion with separate corporeal
lodgment, or with peculiar movements of any kind. In his psychology,
the brain no longer appears as the seat of intelligence, but simply
as a cold, moist, and senseless organ, destined to countervail the
excessive heat of the heart: which last is the great centre of animal
heat, of life, and of the sentient soul. Aristotle declares Noûs not
to be connected with, or dependent on, any given bodily organs or
movements appropriated to itself: this is one main circumstance
distinguishing it from the nutrient soul as well as from the sentient
soul, each of which rests indispensably upon corporeal organs and
agencies of its own.
It will be remembered that we stated the relation of Soul to Body (in
Aristotle's view) as that of Form to Matter; the two together
constituting a concrete individual, numerically one; also that Form
and Matter, each being essentially relative to the other, admitted of
gradations, higher and lower; _e.g._ a massive cube of marble is
already _materia formata_, but it is still purely _materia_, relative
to the statue that may be obtained from it. Now, the grand region of
Form is the Celestial Body--the vast, deep, perceivable, circular
mass circumscribing the Kosmos, and enclosing, in and around its
centre, Earth with the other three elements, tenanted by substances
generated and perishable. This Celestial Body is the abode of
divinity, including many divine beings who take part in its eternal
rotations, viz. the Sun, Moon, Stars, &c., and other Gods. Now, every
soul, or every form that animates the matter of a living being,
derives its vitalizing influence from this celestial region. All
seeds of life include within them a spiritual or gaseous heat, more
divine than the four elements, proceeding from the sun, and in nature
akin to the element of the stars. Such solar or celestial heat
differs generically from the heat of fire. It is the only source from
whence the principle of life, with the animal heat that accompanies
it, can be obtained. Soul, in all its varieties, proceeds from
hence.[145]
[Footnote 145: Aristot. De Generat. Animal. II. iii. p. 736, b. 29:
[Greek: pa/sês me\n ou)=n psuchê=s du/namis e(te/rou sô/matos e)/oike
kekoinônêke/nai kai\ theiote/rou tô=n kaloume/nôn stoichei/ôn; ô(s
de\ diaphe/rousi timio/têti ai( psuchai\ kai\ a)timi/a| a)llê/lôn,
ou(/tô kai\ ê( toiau/tê diaphe/rei phu/sis; pa/ntôn me\n ga\r e)n
tô=| spe/rmati e)nupa/rchei, o(/per poiei= go/nima ei)=nai ta\
spe/rmata, to\ kalou/menon thermo/n.]]
But though all varieties of Soul emanate from the same celestial