Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

222 Aristotle and his school . 56 If the heat which raises theorganism up wanes still further and the earthly matter waxes, 57 then the animals’bodies wane, and they are many-footed; and finally they lose their feet and lie fulllength on the ground.This passage clearly speaks of the ‘movement’ of thought and the commonsense admitting of being impeded by the position of the body. Again themention of ‘intellect’ and of ‘the principle of the soul’ as beingsusceptible to bodily disturbances (even acquiring a ‘body-like’ state, is significant. 58 The seemingly indiscriminate use of , and may suggest that Aristotle isnot talking about a specific intellectual function but about thinking ingeneral; however, it might also indicate that the gradual difference of intelligencebetween man and other animals amounts toa principal difference of having nous or not having it – although the expression occurs in a context where he isdiscussing differences within the human species, which suggests that theinferiority of dwarfs consists in their having a lower degree of intelligencerather than having no intelligence at all. This point is of relevance for thequestion whether Aristotle believed in lower or higher levels of thinkingwhich are to a higher or lower extent susceptible to bodily influence, andfor whether Aristotle believed in animal intelligence (see below).It is further significant that, perhaps somewhat to our surprise, the passagestates the reason why man is the most intelligent of all blooded animals –something which is usually simply postulated as a fact without argument byAristotle in On the Soul and in the Ethics – by stating the material cause forman’s being intelligent. 59 All blooded animals are less intelligent than manbecause of their dwarf-like nature , and also within the humanspecies differences in intelligence are accounted for by the dwarf-like shape56 The text is uncertain here; is A. L. Peck’s emendation of the manuscript reading .57 A. L. Peck, in his Loeb translation, compares this to the Hippocratic On Regimen 1.35; on this seebelow, pp. 230–1. On ‘earthiness’ as an impeding factor cf. Gen. an. 781 b 20.58 The mention of the ‘common sense’, and ‘the principle of the soul’ suggest that a principle locatedin the heart is meant here (cf. De iuv. 469 a 5ff.; b 5–6; Gen. an. 743 b 26; Somn. vig. 456 b 1). Forthe difficulty of relating this passage to Aristotle’s conception of the soul see Althoff (1992) 73 n. 146:‘Der Seele selbst die Eigenschaft des Körperhaften zuzusprechen ist nach der aristotelischen Seelenauffassungsehr problematisch. Es scheint vielmehr so zu sein, dass die mangelnde Beweglichkeitder Seele (und damit die mangelnde Intelligenz) zurückgeführt wird auf eine Druckeinwirkung, dieder obere Teil des Körpers auf das Herz als den ersten Sitz der Seele ausübt.’ However, also in Part.an. 672 b 16–17 Aristotle seems to allow the ‘principle of the sensitive part of the soul’ to be affectedby the evaporation of food.59 Further below in the same chapter (686 a 7ff.) Aristotle also gives a teleological explanation for thedifference in bodily shape between man and other animals with a view to man’s being intelligent.There, however, the material explanation offered by Anaxagoras and rejected by Aristotle is different:it is not man’s upright position, but his having hands which is at issue.