g. the leaf serves to shelter the pericarp,
the pericarp to shelter the fruit, while the roots of plants are
analogous to the mouth of animals, both serving for the absorption
of food. If, then, we have to give a general formula applicable to all
kinds of soul, we must describe it as the first grade of actuality
of a natural organized body. That is why we can wholly dismiss as
unnecessary the question whether the soul and the body are one: it
is as meaningless as to ask whether the wax and the shape given to
it by the stamp are one, or generally the matter of a thing and that
of which it is the matter. Unity has many senses (as many as 'is'
has), but the most proper and fundamental sense of both is the
relation of an actuality to that of which it is the actuality. We have
now given an answer to the question, What is soul?-an answer which
applies to it in its full extent. It is substance in the sense which
corresponds to the definitive formula of a thing's essence. That means
that it is 'the essential whatness' of a body of the character just
assigned. Suppose that what is literally an 'organ', like an axe, were
a natural body, its 'essential whatness', would have been its essence,
and so its soul; if this disappeared from it, it would have ceased
to be an axe, except in name. As it is, it is just an axe; it wants
the character which is required to make its whatness or formulable
essence a soul; for that, it would have had to be a natural body of
a particular kind, viz.
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