« 1. I. 



in none but him is there intellect. Thus then it is plain that it 

 is not of the whole soul that we have to treat. For it is not the 

 whole soul that constitutes the animal nature, but only some part 

 or parts of it.^' Moreover, it is impossible that any abstraction^® 

 can form a subject of natural science, seeing that everything that 

 Nature makes is means to an end. For just as human creations 

 are the products of art, so living objects are manifestly the products 

 of an analogous cause or principle, not external but internal,^^ 

 derived like the hot and the cold [and the other material elements 

 of our bodies] from the environing universe.^" And that the heaven, 

 if it had an origin,^^ was evolved by such a cause, there is even 

 more reason to believe, than that mortal animals so originated. 

 For order and arrangement and constancy are much more plainly 

 manifest in the celestial bodies than in our own frame ; while 

 change and chance are characteristic of the perishable things of 

 earth. Yet there are some who, while they allow that animals 

 were all generated by nature, nevertheless hold that the heaven 

 was constructed to be what it is by chance and spontaneity ; the 

 heaven, in which not the faintest sign of hap-hazard or of disorder 

 is discernible ! ^^ Again, whenever there is plainly some final end, 

 to which a motion tends, should nothing stand in the way, we 

 always say that such final end is the aim or purpose of the motion ; 

 and from this it is evident that there must be a something or 

 other really existing, corresponding to what we call by the name 

 of Nature. For a given germ does not give rise to any chance 

 living being, nor spring from any chance one ; but each germ 

 springs from a definite parent and gives rise to a definite progeny. 

 And thus it is the germ that is the ruling influence and fabricator 

 of the offspring ; for the offspring is that which in the course of 

 nature will spring from it. At the same time [in the order of 

 thought] the offspring is anterior to the germ ; for germ and 

 perfected progeny are related as the developmental process and 

 the result, [and result is in thought anterior to evolution]. An- 

 terior, however, to both germ and product is the organism from 

 which the germ was derived. For every germ connotes two 

 organisms, the parent and the progeny. For germ or seed is 

 both the seed of the organism from which it came, of the horse, 

 for instance, from which it was derived, and the seed of the 

 organism that will eventually arise from it, of the mule, for 

 example, which is developed from the seed of the horse. The 

 641b. 



