Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

Aristotle on the matter of mind 227This is also the reason why man is most intelligent of all animals ().A sign of this is that also within the species of man it is in accordance withthis sense organ that one is well or poorly endowed [with intelligence], but notin accordance with any other sense organ: for people with hard flesh are poorlyendowed with intelligence, but people with soft flesh are well endowed with it ( ).Here Aristotle distinguishes not only between different species of animals,but also between different members (or types of members) within thehuman species. Man is more intelligent than other animals because of theaccuracy of his sense of touch, and this is indicated also by the fact thatwithin the human species individuals with soft flesh (which is obviouslyconducive to touch) are by nature more intelligent ( )than those with hard flesh. Thus variations in intellectual capacities arehere directly related to variations in the quality of the skin. Just how theyare related, does not emerge from the text. It is not inconceivable that theconnection is teleological and that should be interpreted as ‘therefore’,or ‘to that end’, that is, to use his sense of touch in a sensible way, just asin Part. an. 4.10, where it is said that man is the only animal to have handsbecause he is the most intelligent and so best qualified to use them sensibly;the remark that man is inferior to other animals in so many other respects,but superior in his rationality and sense of touch (421 a 20–2) might beparalleled by a similar remark in Part. an. 4.10 (687 a 25ff.). However, thereis nothing in the text of De an. 2.11 to suggest that this is what Aristotlehas in mind here; the text rather points to a relation of efficient causalitybetween touch and intelligence. This relation is not further spelled outby Aristotle: it may have something to do with the fact that touch is thefundamental sense which is closely connected with, if not identical to, the‘common sense faculty’ 74 (also referred to at Part. an. 686 a 31), which is mostclosely related to intellectual activity; hence variations in the performanceof this faculty might also bring about variations in intellectual performance.Another possibility is that delicacy of the skin is somehow conducive tothinness and agility of the blood, which in its turn, as we saw, is of influenceon the degrees of intellectual activity. 75 Anyway, it is significant that againthe word dianoia and the adjective phronimos are used, and again degreesof intelligence are at issue: man is compared with other animals in whatseems to be a gradualist view of intelligence, and within the human speciesa typology is made on the basis of a physical criterion.74 Somn. vig. 455 a 23. 75 I owe this suggestion to Jochen Althoff.