ARISTOTLE 



even when it is asleep, but its full activity is not 

 evident until it is awake and about its business. We 

 must call Soul, then, the " first realization " of the 

 animal, its waking life its " second realization.'* 

 This distinction does not concern us in the De partibus. 

 But an expansion of the definition is not irrelevant. 

 Aristotle states that the Soul is the first realization 

 of a body furnished with organs. The priority of 

 Soul over body is emphasized in the passage just 

 referred to (640 b 23—641 a 32), and in another in- 

 teresting passage (687 a 8 foil.) Aristotle maintains 

 that man has hands because he is the most intelli- 

 gent animal, and not, as some have said, the most 

 intelligent animal because he has hands. 



With this is connected the question whether the 

 Soul is independent of the body ; though it is not 

 raised in De partibus. As we have seen already, a 

 ^wov is a single concrete entity made up of Soul and 

 body, i.e. a certain form implanted in certain matter. 

 The matter can exist, for it did exist, apart from the 

 form ; and as the form that is implanted in all the 

 individuals of a species is one and the same form, 

 clearly it can exist apart from any one individual's 

 matter — though of course its existence is not in- 

 dependent of all the individuals' matter. Further- 

 more, the form — the Soul — requires matter of a 

 particular kind : not any sort of matter will do. 

 From these considerations two conclusions seem to 

 follow : (1) that transmigration is impossible : a 

 human Soul cannot function in a hyena's body, any 

 more than the carpenter's art can be executed by 

 means of musical instruments ; (2) the Soul cannot 

 function without a body at all ; cannot, we may say, 

 exist (4.14- a 19). 



Sd 



