1 66 Traces of Unity in the 



v\r), and in belonging to plants and animals as well as 

 to man. It is possessed of several energies or faculties, 

 Syj/a/iet? the faculty of appropriating nourishment, 8u- 

 vafjLis dpeTTTi/crj; the faculty of sensation, 8. alad^TLKr] ; the 

 faculty of motion in place, 8. tavrjriicri ; the faculty of 

 impulse or desire, 8. operixr] ; the faculty of intelligence, 

 &'. BiavovTiKrj : and in more than one of these points it 

 is difficult to see wherein it differs from vovs. It would 

 seem also as if the etSo? entering into the formation of 

 the ^rv^ri had lost some of its purity by being associated 

 with v\tj : and in short, the relations of the vov? to the 

 ^fvyij are involved in much obscurity. In many points, 

 certainly, there is a distinction without a difference. 

 Indeed nothing is said to show why the vovs has to do 

 with pure imperishable eI8o<?, and the i/nr^r; with the perish- 

 able compound of el&os and v\r) which constitutes the 

 living body, fcoov : and the general impression left upon 

 the mind is that the things of sense are more real than 

 the things which do not come within the range of sense, 

 and that in the %wov the ij\r) is quite as important a 

 constituent element as the elSos. It is scarcely just to 

 speak of Aristotle as a materialist in the modern sense 

 of the word : it is certainly not right to speak of him 

 in any sense as a spiritualist. His First Cause is little 

 more than an abstraction, which for all practical pur- 

 poses is extra-mundane. His vov?, is very little more 

 of a reality. His tyvxri is a shadowy entity which 

 ceases to be when the elSo? and v\rj constituting the 

 %wov separate at death : and all that can be said about 

 it is that it is something contingent upon body, some- 

 thing which can be no more than a bodily function. 

 There is no room in the system for the idea of immor- 

 tality. At death the man is disintegrated : and what 

 applies to man applies equally to all other living crea- 



