Chapter XII · DE ANIMÂ, ETC. (continued 2)

One of the chief functions that Aristotle assigns to Noûs, or the noëtic function, is that the principia of demonstration and knowledge belong to it; and not merely the principia, but also, in cases of action preceded by deliberation and balance of motives, the ultimate application of principia to action. So that he styles Noûs both beginning and end; also the beginning of the beginning; and, moreover, he declares it to be always right and unerring — equal to Science and even more than Science.187 These are high praises, conveying little information, and not reconcilable with other passages wherein he speaks of the exercise of the noëtic function (τὸ νοεῖν) as sometimes right, sometimes wrong.188 But, for the question of psychology, the point to be determined is, in what sense he meant that principia belonged to Noûs. He certainly did not mean that the first principles of reasoning were novelties originated, suggested, or introduced into the soul by noëtic influence. Not only he does not say this, but he takes pains to impress the exact contrary. In passages cited a few pages back, he declares that Noûs in entering the soul brings nothing whatever with it; that it is an universal potentiality — a capacity in regard to truth, but nothing more;189 that it is in fact a capacity not merely for comparing and judging (to both of which he recognizes even the sentient soul as competent), but also for combining many into one, and resolving the apparent one into several; for abstracting, generalizing, and selecting among the phantasms present, which of them should be attended to, and which should be left out of attention.190 Such is his opinion about the noëtic function; and he states explicitly that the abstract and universal not only arise from the concrete and particular, but are inseparable from the same really — separable only logically.

He describes, at the end of the Analytica Posteriora and elsewhere, the steps whereby the mind ascends gradually from sense, memory, and experience, to general principles. And he indicates a curious contrast between these and the noëtic functions. Sense, memory, phantasy, reminiscence, are movements of the body as well as of the soul; our thoughts and feelings come and go, none of them remaining long. But the noëtic process is the reverse of this; it is an arrest of all this mental movement, a detention of the fugitive thoughts, a subsidence from perturbation — so that the attention dwells steadily and for some time on the same matters.191 Analysis, selection, and concentration of attention, are the real characteristics of the Aristotelian Noûs. It is not (as some philosophers have thought) a source of new general truths, let into the soul by a separate door, and independent of experience as well as transcending experience.

Passing now to the Emotions, we find that these are not systematically classified and analysed by Aristotle, as belonging to a scheme of Psychology; though he treats them incidentally, with great ability and acuteness, both in his Ethics, where he regards them as auxiliaries or impediments to a rational plan of life, and in his Rhetoric, where he touches upon their operation as it bears on oratorical effect. He introduces however in his Psychology some answer to the question, What is it that produces local movement in the animal body? He replies that movement is produced both by Noûs and by Appetite.

Speaking strictly, we ought to call Appetite alone the direct producing cause, acted upon by the appetitum, which is here the Primum Movens Immobile. But this appetitum cannot act without coming into the intellectual sphere, as something seen, imagined, cogitated.192 In this case the Noûs or Intellect is stimulated through appetite, and operates in subordination thereto. Such is the Intellect, considered as Practical, the principle or determining cause of which is the appetitum or object of desire; the Intellect manifesting itself only for the sake of some end, to be attained or avoided. Herein it is distinguished altogether from the Theoretical Noûs or Intellect, which does not concern itself with any expetenda or fugienda and does not meddle with conduct. The appetitum is good, real or apparent, in so far as it can be achieved by our actions. Often we have contradictory appetites; and, in such cases, the Intellect is active generally as a force resisting the present and caring for the future. But Appetite or Desire, being an energy including both soul and body, is the real and appropriate cause that determines us to local movement, often even against strong opposition from the Intellect.193

Aristotle thus concludes his scheme of Psychology, comprehending all plants as well as all animals; a scheme differing in this respect, as well as in others, from the schemes of those that had preceded him, and founded upon the peculiar principles of his own First Philosophy. Soul is to organized body as Form to Matter, as Actualizer to the Potential; not similar or homogeneous, but correlative; the two being only separable as distinct logical points of view in regard to one and the same integer or individual. Aristotle recognizes many different varieties of Soul, or rather many distinct functions of the same soul, from the lowest or most universal, to the highest or most peculiar and privileged; but the higher functions presuppose or depend upon the lower, as conditions; while the same principle of Relativity pervades them all. He brings this principle prominently forward, when he is summing up194 in the third or last book of the treatise De Animâ:—“The Soul is in a certain way all existent things; for all of them are either Perceivables or Cogitables; and the Cogitant Soul is in a certain way the matters cogitated, while the Percipient Soul is in a certain way the matters perceived.” The Percipient and its Percepta — the Cogitant and its Cogitata — each implies and correlates with the other: the Percipient is the highest Form of all Percepta; the Cogitant is the Form of Forms, or the highest of all Forms, cogitable or perceivable.195 The Percipient or Cogitant Subject is thus conceived only in relation to the Objects perceived or cogitated, while these Objects again are presented as essentially correlative to the Subject. The realities of Nature are particulars, exhibiting Form and Matter in one: though, for purposes of scientific study — of assimilation and distinction — it is necessary to consider each of the two abstractedly from the other.