- Is there any part of the soul that can exist apart from the
body?
- If there is any way of
acting
or being acted upon proper to soul, soul will be capable of
separate
existence; if there is none, its separate existence is
impossible. In
the latter case, it will be like what is straight, which has
many
properties arising form the straightness in it, e.g. that of
touching a
bronze sphere at a point, though straightness divorced from
the other
consituents of the straight thing cannot touch it in this
way; it
cannot be so divorced at all since it is always found in a
body. De
Anima
403a10-16
- Hylomorphic analysis applied to living beings:
- Since the
expression, 'that whereby we live and perceive'
has two meaning, just like the expression ' that whereby we
know'--that
may
mean either knowledge or the soul, for we can speak of
knowing by
either, and
similarly that whereby we are in health may be either health
or the
body or some
part of the body; and since of these knowledge or health is
a form,
essence, or
account or if we so express it an activity of a recipient
matter--knowledge of
what is capable of knowing, health of what is capable of
being made
healthy
(for activity of that which is capable of originating hence
seems to
take place
in what is changed or altered); further, since it is the
soul by which
primarily we live, perceive, and think:--it follows that the
soul must
be an
account and essence, not matter or a subject. For, as we
said, the word
substance has three meanings--form, matter, and the complex
of
both--and of
these matter is potentiality, form actuality. Since then the
complex
here is
the living thing, the body cannot be the actuality of the
soul; it is
the soul
which is the actuality of a certain kind of body. Hence the
rightness
of the
view that the soul cannot be without a body, while it cannot
be a body;
it is
not a body but something relative to a body That is why it
is in a
body, and a
body of a definite kind. It was a mistake, therefore, to do
as former
thinkers
did, merely to fit it into a body without adding a definite
specification of the
kind or character of that body, although evidently one
chance thing
will not
receive another it comes about as reason requires; the
actuality of any
given
thing can only be realized in what is already potentially
that thing,
i.e. in a
matter of its own appropriate to it. From all this it is
plain that
soul is an
actuality or account of something that possesses a
potentiality of
being such. De Anima 414a4-29