It is evident that the way to give the most adequate definition of
soul is to seek in the case of each of its forms for the most
appropriate definition.
4
It is necessary for the student of these forms of soul first to find
a definition of each, expressive of what it is, and then to
investigate its derivative properties, &c. But if we are to express
what each is, viz. what the thinking power is, or the perceptive, or
the nutritive, we must go farther back and first give an account of
thinking or perceiving, for in the order of investigation the question
of what an agent does precedes the question, what enables it to do
what it does. If this is correct, we must on the same ground go yet
another step farther back and have some clear view of the objects of
each; thus we must start with these objects, e.g. with food, with what
is perceptible, or with what is intelligible.
It follows that first of all we must treat of nutrition and
reproduction, for the nutritive soul is found along with all the
others and is the most primitive and widely distributed power of soul,
being indeed that one in virtue of which all are said to have life.
The acts in which it manifests itself are reproduction and the use
of food-reproduction, I say, because for any living thing that has
reached its normal development and which is unmutilated, and whose
mode of generation is not spontaneous, the most natural act is the
production of another like itself, an animal producing an animal, a
plant a plant, in order that, as far as its nature allows, it may
partake in the eternal and divine.
Pages:
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56