The treatises of Aristotle on the soul, etc / Translated from the Greek with copious elucidations from the commentaries of Simplicius on the first of these treatises. By Thomas Taylor.

  • Aristotle.
Date:
1808
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The treatises of Aristotle on the soul, etc / Translated from the Greek with copious elucidations from the commentaries of Simplicius on the first of these treatises. By Thomas Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    45/54 (page 41)
    £li The consideration of the soul whoever, which is in mortal animals, seems to be the only scope to which this treatise is directed. For Aristotle does not appear to speak of the soul of the celestial orbs, unless so far as he considers the mathematical demonstrations of Timaeus about it. Perhaps, also, he was satisfied with the Platonic theory on this subject, animadverting on it only so far as was necessary to prevent the reader from adopting the apparent meaning of these demonstrations. And, perhaps, through what is said about the summit of our intellect, he thinks fit to lead us to a celestial soul. For the soul of the universe, says he, is [always] such, as what is called intellect sometimes is. For it is neither such as the sensitive power, nor such as that power of the soul which is the source of desire; since the soul of the universe is pure intellectual reason, which is wholly, through the whole of itself, unmingled with secondary lives, because it neither verges to bodies, nor becomes any thing pertaining to them; but while it abides in itself, bodies derive their subsistence from it. Hence its motion is circular, in consequence of the conversion of the whole to the whole of itself. Nor does Aristotle appear to have discussed any thing concerning the different allotments of the human soul, or the variety of its choice in different lives; well knowing that these particu- lars had been sufficiently considered by his preceptor. Nor does he consider the soul as inseparable from the body. For, in the third book, he assigns the cause of our having no recollection of a separate life, indicating by this the existence of the soul prior to its connexion with the body. But he alone precedaneously discusses the soul which is in mortals, leaving no power nor essence of it unexplored. In the first place, however, he assigns the formal cause in common in all souls, not as the cause of bodies, but of vital organs. For nature is the formal