Page:Aristotelous peri psuxes.djvu/51

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CH. IV.]
VITAL PRINCIPLE.
41

recipient suffering, as it does from drunkenness or maladies. Thus, too, thought and reflexion languish when any thing within the body has been destroyed, but that which thinks is impassive. The properties, therefore, of thought, love and hatred belong, not to it, but to that which contains it, and as it contains it; so that when this recipient is destroyed, it can either recollect nor love, as those emotions emanate not from it, but from that which was in common with it, and which has perished. But the mind is probably something more divine, and it is impassive.

It is, then, manifest from what has been adduced, that Vital Principle cannot be in motion; and if altogether without motion, it cannot clearly be self-moved.

The most unreasonable by far of all the opinions upon Vital Principle is that which holds it to be a number with self-motion, for it is beset with insuperable objections; those, in the first place, which result from the idea of motion, and then those more particular objections to speaking of it as a number. How, indeed, is it possible to think of an unit in motion? by what or how, being indivisible and homogeneous, is it to be moved? If said to be both motor and moved, it must have distinction of some kind. Since, besides, they say that a line in motion forms a surface, and a point in line, then units in motion will form lines, as the point is distinguished from the unit