Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

Galen and the Stoics: What each could learn from the other 421
the animal evidently have their origin in the brain, from which small
offshoots (paraphyseis) reach the heart. This [the heart] needs to take
part in this higher principle (or ‘source’, archÞ), in view of the fact
that it [the heart] serves it [the higher principle]”. 44 As Tieleman points
out, the psychology implied in the passage, involving a coordinated psycho-physiological
response by brain and heart, is very different from the
view stressed in PHP of brain and heart functioning as centres of two
distinct physiological and psychological networks. 45 Also, in Galen’s
On the Function of the Parts (UP), hunger and thirst are presented as arising
in the stomach and transmitted by a nerve to the brain, not to the
liver or to the brain via the liver. One might have expected that this
line of communication would be extended to the liver. Indeed, the
liver is sometimes presented as forming part of the nervous system in
UP, though only by means of a small nerve, in view of the primitive,
non-cognitive type of functions associated with the liver, which are
here again linked with the idea of “nature”. 46
In fact, in PHP, Galen sometimes, though not consistently, highlights
this type of internal communication, at least between the brainbased
(rational) and heart-based (spirited parts). For instance, in PHP
7 Galen says of the heart-based part that:
its work is by itself to provide the ‘tone’ [tonos] of the psyche, to be constant
and unyielding in the things that reason commands, and in states of
passion [pathos] to provide the boiling, as it were, of the innate heat, as
the psyche at such times desires to avenge itself on the supposed wrongdoer,
and this kind of thing is called anger; in its relation to other things its
work is to be a source of warmth for the several parts and of pulsing motion
for the arteries. 47
Some aspects of this role are purely physiological, for instance, being a
source of warmth. Other functions, however, include providing the
physiological response to a cognitive message sent from the brain (the
“boiling” in response to reason’s command) that also figures in the passage
cited from Galen’s commentary on the Timaeus. In both passages,
the role of the heart-based part is that of reacting in a physiological way
appropriate to its character (by “pulsing” activity) in response to a ra-
44 In Pl. Ti. fr. 14, lines 1 – 4 Larrain, my tr.
45 Tieleman 2003, 153 – 154, referring to PHP V.262 –267, 2.6.1 –6.
46 UP I.226.18 –22 Helmreich (also May 1968, 228); see further Tieleman 2003,
158.
47 PHP V.601, 7.3.2, p. 438.33 – 440.3, tr. De Lacy slightly modified.