1 (1) Pythagoras of Samos instructed the region of Italy once called ...

8 ON THE SOUL
(1) Although Aristotle rejects everyone’s view as absurd, he has what amounts to the
most absurd position of all when he gives soul to trees and plants. Poets, who are granted
the broadest license of expression, seem more modest about this in claiming that the trees
and bushes that they describe as living have a mind, and that in the trees are goddesses
called ‘hamadryads’ because they appear and disappear together with the trees. 148
What does it actually mean to distinguish ‘animals’ from ‘animate bodies,’ which no one
has done but the tribe of sophists? 149 (2) An ‘animal’ is so called because a soul
‘animates’ it, and the ‘inanimate’ is not an ‘animal.’ These terms are actually nothing
more than ‘animate’ and ‘inanimate,’ and the one expression adds nothing to the other,
for all the learned Latin writers use ‘animal’ and ‘inanimate’ as contraries, and they think
there is no difference between calling something ‘inanimate’ or ‘unanimated.’ But surely
‘animal’ is no different than what is ‘animating’ or ‘something animal.’ Things that are
‘animal’ or ‘animate,’ however – which is how many of the ancients described the world
– how are they different from ‘animals’? This is why those same ancients called the
world an ‘animal.’ Whatever is ‘animate,’ then, or ‘animating’ or ‘something animal’
will be an ‘animal.’
(3) Thus, according to Aristotle, plants are animals. Why? Because he plainly called
them ‘animals’ in his books On the Generation of Animals? 150 Or because a zôon is said
to be from ‘living,’ apo tou zên, not from ‘soul,’ and so it seems not unreasonable that he
could have given life to those things that seem somehow to live and die? Not at all. For
it is not that plants, seeming somehow to be alive, should have been called zôa; on the
contrary, because they are not zôa (a name that no one previously used for trees, to the
best of my knowledge), therefore they should have been called not alive, except that it
sometimes helps to speak metaphorically – ‘eau de vie,’ ‘quicksilver,’ ‘live sulphur,’
‘quicklime,’ ‘living rock.’
(4) Sacred scripture sometimes speaks this way, as Gregory explains: ‘Plants and bushes
are alive, yes, but they do not feel.’ I say they do not live because of a soul but because
of liveliness, since Paul also says: ‘Fool, it gives life to its seeds only by dying.’ It lives
by dying, then, in order to give life. 151 (5) Finally, these ‘animals’ or ‘animate bodies’ of
Aristotle’s have no consciousness. And if we look at the origin of the word, the soul gets
its name apo tou anemou, from a ‘breath’ or a ‘breeze,’ which is why we say ‘hold your
breath’ for ‘restrain yourself’ and many such expressions. In the end, even though trees,
bushes and plants are said to live, they are really not said to live by a soul; otherwise,
there would be as many souls in my body as there are hairs, and more in the body of a
beast where there are more hairs. But it is ridiculous even to say so.
148 Zippel cites Arist. An. 411b27-30, Part an. 655b30-56a1.
149 Zippel cites Boethius, In Porph. dialogus secundus (PLM 64:51).
150 Zippel cites Arist. Gen. an. 757 b 16-18.
151 Zippel cites Greg. Nys. De hom. opificio 8 (PGM 44:146); I Cor. 15:36.
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