Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

Aristotle on melancholy 159to mood changes and desires, and some become more talkative. Those,however, who have reached a ‘mean’ (meson) in the mixture between heatand cold, come closer to reason and are less abnormal. They are the peoplewho have reached outstanding achievements in the arts, culture and politics(954 a 39–b 4). Thus here for the first time, the opening question of thechapter is answered. However, and this is very important, it is striking thatthis conclusion is immediately followed by the remark that this balance ofheat and cold is uncertain and unstable (anōmalos). The author repeats thisremark later, in 954 b 26–8 (after a digression). This is followed by interestingand rather elaborate observations on euthumia and dusthumia as theeffects of excessive heat and cold of the black bile, and on the melancholic’sinclination to commit suicide. Here, too, the analogy with wine is made,and a second analogy, with youth and old age, is added. 71 The chapter endswith the summary discussed above (see note 64).With regard to the physiological disposition of the melancholic thischapter reveals precisely those details on which the scattered remarks inthe Aristotelian writings did not allow us to gain full clarity. It appearsthat the ‘natural melancholic’ is characterised by an excess of black bilein his body which is constantly and permanently present (954 a 22–3: and Klibansky et al. (1964) 29). This does notmean, however, that underlying this text is the humoral system of the Hippocratictheory of the four humours, for a mixture of humours is nowherementioned: wherever the word krasis is used (953 a 30; 954 a 13, 29, 30; 954b 8, 12, 25, 33; 955 a 14) it refers to a mixture of heat and cold. 72 The placewhere black bile can normally be found is not defined; only the presence ofheat near the ‘place where thinking takes place’ (noeros topos) is mentioneddisorders of the black bile that are not constitution-related (hence the word nosēmata), which arecontrasted with the cases of Sibyls and Bakides and such people who are not enthusiastic becauseof a nosēma, but as a consequence of their phusis. Both the polloi and the other group suffer fromheat (thermotēs) around the ‘region where thinking takes place’ (noeros topos) (this is what hothenrefers to); yet with the polloi it is not nature but illness, whereas with the other group (Sibyls,Bakides and the ‘naturally inspired’) it is nature. That this is the correct interpretation is shown bythe sentence , for in Flashar’s interpretation this sentence would be anegation of what was confirmed in line 35. Cf. Tellenbach (1961) 9 and Pigeaud (1988a) 41–2 on thisinterpretation.71 On youth and old age as ‘ethopoietic’ factors cf. Rh. 2.12–13 and the remark on youth in Eth. Nic.1154 b 9–11.72 See above section 3 on Eth. Nic. 1154 b 13 and Pigeaud (1988a) 19. Incidentally, the fact that Aristotlerefers to black bile as a perittōma in the chapter from the Probl. is unparalleled (the term perittōmais only used in 955 a 24–5, but in that passage without referring to black bile). Therefore Pigeaud’sassociation of the peritton of the melancholic with the perittōma of black bile is not to the point(1988, 20: ‘L’homme exceptionnel est l’homme du résidu par excellence’).