Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

166 Aristotle and his school(Pr. 953 a 27), but in this interpretation this becomes more easy to understand:phusis presents Aristotle with a possibility to explain the fact that acertain creativity is required in the intellectual area of philosophy as well,and that in this respect there is a difference between great minds (the perittoi)and average minds (the mesoi, cf.Pr. 954 b 24). This explanation isactually used in the text of the Problemata, but can also be found in severalshort statements in Aristotle’s authentic writings. A direct relationship betweenbodily constitution and intelligence is for instance made in De. an.421 a 23ff., where Aristotle states that people with soft flesh (malakosarkoi)are more intelligent (euphueis) than people with hard flesh (sklērosarkoi);and in two instances in Parts of Animals (648 a 2ff. and 650 b 18ff.), where hewrites that the quality of the blood determines the degree of intelligence.In this respect chapters 12–15 of the second book of the Rhetoric are ofparticular importance, in which the ‘ethopoietic’ effects of youth and oldage and ‘noble descent’ (eugeneia) are discussed; in particular chapter 15on eugeneia (with its clear relationship to phusis in the sense of a ‘naturalpredisposition’) is significant. Melancholics are not mentioned in this passage,but it demonstrates precisely the same thought structure as that usedto describe melancholics: most of the people of noble descent (eugeneis)belong to the category of ‘the simple-minded’ (euteleis, 1390 b 24; cf. theuse of melancholics as an example of euteleis in Div. somn. 463 b 17), butsome become ‘exceptional’ (perittoi): ‘There is a change in the generationsof men as in those who move from one place to another, and sometimes thegeneration is good, and during certain intervals the men are exceptional,and then they decline again’ .In this passage, similarly to the melancholic’s ‘instability’, reference ismade to the quick decline of the eugeneis, either to ‘those who are bycharacter more inclined to madness’ (examples for this are the descendantsof Alcibiades and Dionysus) or to stupidity and obtuseness 1390 b 27–30). It appears that these two forms of degenerationcorrespond very well with both the ‘manic-passionate’ and ‘depressive-cold’expressions of the melancholic nature in Pr. 30.1 (see in particular 954 b28–34).A consideration of the physiological aspect to people’s mental processesand ethical behaviour, as is done frequently in the Problemata, 89 turns out89 On this tendency of the Problemata, which is sometimes unfortunately referred to as ‘materialistic’,see Flashar (1962) 329ff.