Aristotle : On the parts of animals / translated, with introduction and notes by W. Ogle.
- Aristotle
- Date:
- 1882
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Aristotle : On the parts of animals / translated, with introduction and notes by W. Ogle. Source: Wellcome Collection.
194/316 page 146
![ripens into maturity. It never acquires a sensory faculty ; never, that is, develops into an animal. Still it is capable of growth up to a certain point, as the wind-eggs of birds testify, so that some share in the nutritive faculty must be allowed to come from the mother {D. G. ii. 5, 3). Such an egg then, if regarded as the conception of a plant, is perfect; but, if regarded as the conception of an animal, is imperfect (Z>. C. iii. 7, 8). The other faculties than the nutritive only appear in the fecundated germ. They are ’imparted, then, to the germ in the fertilising fluid of the male parent. But how does this fecundating fluid come to possess them? Does it get them from the male organism, from which it issues itself, or from some external source ? As regards the Sensory, the Motor, and all other faculties than the Intellectual, they must necessarily come from the father; for they are inseparable from bodily matter, there being no such thing as Sensation and Motion without sensory and motor organs, and the matter of the fecundating fluid is evidently all derived from the father’s body. But as regards the higher faculty, or Intellect, the case is otherwise. This requires no bodily substance in which to be incorporate. It exists independently of tangible matter; and so may, and in fact does, come into the fecundating fluid not from the father’s body but from without, viz. from the divine soul of the Cosmos. Thus the mother furnishes the material of the body and, in some degree at least, the Nutritive faculty. The father contributes the Sensory and the Motor faculties. While the Intellect comes from the soul of the Cosmos, and is only transmitted by the father intermediately. 16. Cf. Note 3. 16. The Soul is the source of vital motion, .and the several psychical modes correspond, though not always as the active source, to the several modes of rrlotion. Of these there are three (Phys. v. 2, 8). Firstly motion leading to change of bulk, i.e. growth and decay (oC^7)<m and (pBlcns) ; with this Is associated the Nutritive and Genetic faculty, as the active cause. Secondly motion with change of quality {aWStami), of which sensation is a form [D. A. ii. 4, 8) ; with this is associated the Sensory faculty, no longer how'ever as the active source, but as the passive recipient of the motion which starts from the objects of sense. Thirdly motion with change of place (<popd) ; with this is associated the Motor faculty of the soul, here again not passive but active. 17. Cf. Metaph. v. l, 7. “ The natural philosopher has to deal with the soul, so far as it is inseparably luaited with matter,” i.e. with all the soul, excepting the active intellect, which is independent of the body and separable from it {D. G. ii. 3, 10; D. A. ii. 2, 10). The consideration of this element of the soul belongs to “the first philosophy ” or metaphysics. It is, I presume, of the separable intellect that A. speaks, when he compares the relation of soul and body to that of row’er and boat {D.A. ii. i, 12); and of the inseparable faculties, when he takes for his simile the relation of vision to the eye, or of the impression to wax (D. A. \\. i, 7—9). 18. The argument seems to be as follows: “Moreover that part of the soul which is independent of matter cannot come within the province of natural science ; for this deals only with the works- of nature, and these are not abstractions but actual bodies, concretions of form and matter, for by such alone can the ends of nature, viz. the activities, of life, be fulfilled. [Natural Science then is concerned with Uiat soul only which is incorporate in matter.] For that there is such a soul, or nature, informing the body, and that to it, and not to blind chance, are due the evolution and activities of . organisms, is shown by the constancy of the phenomena they present and by the fact that the result of their evolutional processes is predictable with certainty. ” 19. Both art and nature are concerned with concrete bodies in which form and matter are combined ; but in the case of art the form is impressed on the matter from without.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24864249_0194.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
