Hence those who combine movement and number in the same
subject lay themselves open to these and many other similar
absurdities. It is impossible not only that these characters should
give the definition of soul-it is impossible that they should even
be attributes of it. The point is clear if the attempt be made to
start from this as the account of soul and explain from it the
affections and actions of the soul, e.g. reasoning, sensation,
pleasure, pain, &c. For, to repeat what we have said earlier, movement
and number do not facilitate even conjecture about the derivative
properties of soul.
Such are the three ways in which soul has traditionally been
defined; one group of thinkers declared it to be that which is most
originative of movement because it moves itself, another group to be
the subtlest and most nearly incorporeal of all kinds of body. We have
now sufficiently set forth the difficulties and inconsistencies to
which these theories are exposed. It remains now to examine the
doctrine that soul is composed of the elements.
The reason assigned for this doctrine is that thus the soul may
perceive or come to know everything that is, but the theory
necessarily involves itself in many impossibilities. Its upholders
assume that like is known only by like, and imagine that by
declaring the soul to be composed of the elements they succeed in
identifying the soul with all the things it is capable of
apprehending. But the elements are not the only things it knows; there
are many others, or, more exactly, an infinite number of others,
formed out of the elements.
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