Sayings of Publilius Syrus 2

The evil you do to others you may expect in return.

Epictetus, Golden Sayings 141

Are you then free? a man may say. So help me heaven, I long and pray for freedom! But I cannot look my masters boldly in the face; I still value the poor body; I still set much store on its preservation whole and sound.

But I can point you out a free man, that you may be no more in search of an example. Diogenes was free. 

How so? Not because he was of free parentage (for that, indeed, was not the case), but because he was himself free. He had cast away every handle whereby slavery might lay hold of him to enslave him, nor was it possible for any to approach and take hold of him to enslave him.

All things sat loose upon him—all things were to him attached by but slender ties. Had you seized upon his possessions, he would rather have let them go than have followed you for them—aye, had it been even a limb, or mayhap his whole body; and in like manner, relatives, friends, and country. 

For he knew whence they came—from whose hands and on what terms he had received them. His true forefathers, the Gods, his true Country, he never would have abandoned; nor would he have yielded to any man in obedience and submission to the one nor in cheerfully dying for the other. 

For he was ever mindful that everything that comes to pass has its source and origin there; being indeed brought about for the weal of that his true Country, and directed by Him in whose governance it is. 

Sayings of Publilius Syrus 1

As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.

Seneca, Moral Letters 13.2

This is the touchstone of such a spirit; no prizefighter can go with high spirits into the strife if he has never been beaten black and blue; the only contestant who can confidently enter the lists is the man who has seen his own blood, who has felt his teeth rattle beneath his opponent's fist, who has been tripped and felt the full force of his adversary's charge, who has been downed in body but not in spirit, one who, as often as he falls, rises again with greater defiance than ever.

 

So then, to keep up my figure, Fortune has often in the past got the upper hand of you, and yet you have not surrendered, but have leaped up and stood your ground still more eagerly. For manliness gains much strength by being challenged; nevertheless, if you approve, allow me to offer some additional safeguards by which you may fortify yourself.

 

Honestly, when I first read a passage like this, I have a knee-jerk reaction. I don’t like tough talk, and I have little patience for folks who brag about how much damage they can bear. Machismo sounds to me more like the braying of asses than the roaring of lions. 

 

As always, however, I need to look more closely, because strength of will is a necessary condition for character. It turns out that what frustrates me is not toughness at all, but toughness for all the wrong reasons. 

 

There are some who use their power for violence, and others who use their power for peace. A man who has no confidence in himself will lash out by putting down others, while a man who knows how to love will raise everyone up. 

 

Yes, give me courage! When I now pray to God, I no longer ask for things, and I no longer demand what I want. I request only that I be given what I need, and I understand quite well that this will include a fine dose of suffering. 

 

Now what am I to do in the face of pain? Some will play it as victims, and others will be consumed by their rage, yet I choose to turn it around, to transform the agony into ecstasy. There can be found the muscle that matters, the sort of bravery that is worth praising. 

 

Is your hand strong enough to beat someone down? Is your will strong enough to offer a firm embrace?

 

A strength in the body is completely pointless without a strength in the soul. You could be a superstar by pushing people around. You could also be a saint by loving them.

 

Theodore Roosevelt seemed like a stranger to me, until I finally saw that there was some substance to his style. 

 

Does it hurt? Good. Now do something about it.  

 

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. 

Written in 6/2012

Chuang Tzu 1.1

In the Northern Ocean there is a fish, the name of which is Khwan—I do not know how many lì in size. It changes into a bird with the name of Phang, the back of which is also—I do not know how many lì in extent. 

When this bird rouses itself and flies, its wings are like clouds all round the sky. When the sea is moved so as to bear it along, it prepares to remove to the Southern Ocean. The Southern Ocean is the Pool of Heaven.

There is the book called Khì Hsieh—a record of marvels. We have in it these words: "When the Phang is removing to the Southern Ocean it flaps its wings on the water for 3000 lì. Then it ascends on a whirlwind 90,000 lì, and it rests only at the end of six months." 

But similar to this is the movement of the breezes which we call the horses of the fields, of the dust which quivers in the sunbeams, and of living things as they are blown against one another by the air. 

Is its azure the proper color of the sky? Or is it occasioned by its distance and illimitable extent? 

If one were looking down from above, the very same appearance would just meet his view.

—all of these passages are taken from the translation of Chuang Tzu by James Legge (1891). The original romanization has been retained. 

Dhammapada 136

A fool does not know when he commits his evil deeds: but the wicked man burns by his own deeds, as if burnt by fire.

Wisdom from the Bhagavad Gita 34

19. As sun I give heat; I withhold and send forth rain; I am immortality and also death; being and non-being am I, O Arjuna!

20. The knowers of the three Vedas, worshipping Me by Yajna, drinking the Soma, and thus being purified from sin, pray for passage to heaven; reaching the holy world of the Lord of the Devas, they enjoy in heaven the divine pleasures of the Devas.

21. Having enjoyed the vast Swarga-world, they enter the mortal world, on the exhaustion of their merit. Thus, abiding by the injunctions of the three Vedas, desiring desires, they constantly come and go. 

22. Persons who, meditating on Me as non-separate, worship Me in all beings, to them thus ever jealously engaged, I carry what they lack and preserve what they already have. 

23. Even those devotees, who endued with Shraddhâ, worship other gods, they too worship Me alone, O son of Kunti, but by the wrong method. 

24. For I alone am the Enjoyer, and Lord of all Yajnas; but because they do not know Me in reality, they return to the mortal world. 

25. Votaries of the Devas go to the Devas; to the Pitris, go their votaries; to the Bhutas, go the Bhuta worshippers; My votaries too come unto Me. 

—Bhagavad Gita, 9:19-25

Seneca, Moral Letters 13.1

Letter 13: On groundless fears

I know that you have plenty of spirit; for even before you began to equip yourself with maxims which were wholesome and potent to overcome obstacles, you were taking pride in your contest with Fortune; and this is all the more true, now that you have grappled with Fortune and tested your powers. 

 

For our powers can never inspire in us implicit faith in ourselves except when many difficulties have confronted us on this side and on that, and have occasionally even come to close quarters with us. It is only in this way that the true spirit can be tested—the spirit that will never consent to come under the jurisdiction of things external to ourselves.

 

It is one thing to understand what is right, and then another to have the courage to do it. Many of my own mistakes came from a divide between conception and completion, where my will needed to catch up to my intellect. Wisdom is powerless without the stout companionship of fortitude. 

 

Seneca clearly admired and had high hopes for Lucilius, not only because he could think, but also because he was determined. I recall it still being called “moxie” when I was younger, the fire and the spunk that makes it possible to stand up for what is right. 

 

I rarely managed to find my moxie when people just told me what to do, even as I was far more successful when I was offered some sincere encouragement. 

 

“Get over it!” has far less effect than “I know you can do this!” 

 

The helpful way that Seneca tried to inspire Lucilius reminds me of the decent people who always had my back. 

 

And as painful as it might be, facing some serious hardship can be the best way to bring out that moxie. The obstacle becomes the opportunity, the means by which we can build the habits of character. The body becomes stronger through rigorous exercise, and the virtues increase through the struggle against circumstances. 

 

It took me some time to realize that until I had been tried, my principles were just words. Until I had been challenged, I had not yet proven myself. Until I had lost something I believed was important, I wouldn’t learn what was truly important. 

 

We tend to love Fortune when she smiles on us, and we tend to hate her when she bites, and that is a terrible mistake. The lesson, whatever may come or go, is that the very coming and going does not need to be the master. I am capable of being my own master, let the chips fall where they may.

 

No, I cannot conform the world to my image, but that isn’t my job; my job is to nurture myself in harmony with Nature. Facing adversity has taught me this, and my troubles have kindled within me a spark of bravery. Let me find my moxie by following along with Lucilius. 

Written in 6/2012

Wisdom from the Early Cynics, Antisthenes 10

Antisthenes is held responsible for the exile of Anytus and the execution of Meletus. For he fell in with some youths from Pontus whom the fame of Socrates had brought to Athens, and he led them off to Anytus, whom he ironically declared to be wiser than Socrates; whereupon, it is said, those about him with much indignation drove Anytus out of the city. 

If he saw a woman anywhere decked out with ornaments, he would hasten to her house and bid her husband bring out his horse and arms, and then, if the man possessed them, let his extravagance alone, for, he said, the man could with these defend himself; but, if he had none, he would bid him to strip off the finery.

—Diogenes Laërtius, 6.9-10

Wisdom from the Early Stoics, Zeno of Citium 34

A term is, as stated by Antipater in his first book On Terms, a word which, when a sentence is analyzed  is uttered with complete meaning; or, according to Chrysippus in his book On Definitions, is a rendering back one's own. 

Delineation is a statement which brings one to a knowledge of the subject in outline, or it may be called a definition which embodies the force of the definition proper in a simpler form.

—Diogenes Laërtius, 7.60

Sayings of Ramakrishna 98

God is like unto a hill of sugar. A small ant carries away from it a small grain of sugar, the bigger ant takes from it a larger grain. But the hill remains as large as before. 

So are the devotees of God. They become ecstatic with even a grain of one Divine attribute. No one can contain within him all His attributes.

Epictetus, Discourses 1.8.5

You ask me, do I then count these faculties as of no effect?

 

Heaven forbid! No more than I ignore the faculty of vision. 

 

Nevertheless, if you ask me what is the true good of man, I can only say to you that it lies in a certain disposition of the will.

 

Perhaps it is peculiar to my own experience, but I find that, right behind appealing to unclear terms, the next most common mistake in thinking is the assumption of a false dichotomy. It’s bad enough that I might not even be able to define what I am talking about, and then I compound the error by insisting on contradictions where none need to be present. 

 

“Ignatz, do you love me more than Imogen?”

 

“I don’t love you any more or any less than I love Imogen.”

 

“Hah! I knew you didn’t love me!”

 

So when Epictetus says that training in logic isn’t the most important part of being a philosopher, the rationalist may see red, and he takes it as a claim that dialectic is unimportant. A red herring can’t be far behind. As a rationalist, he should know better. 

 

It certainly matters, for example, if we are able to see, and yet what matters more will be what we choose to do with what we see. You can show me all sorts of wondrous things, but it won’t make any real difference unless I decide to engage them. The eye is only as good as the hand that follows through. 

 

The skills of reasoning provide the form, while actions make up the content—thinking well is ordered toward living well. The most profound reflections and sublime demonstrations are empty without putting them into practice. 

 

In middle school, I had a teacher who was understandably growing frustrated with my newfound adolescent stubbornness, and she constantly had to remind me to complete the simplest of tasks. 

 

“Yes, I know, I know!” was always my reply. 

 

One day she looked at me firmly but calmly and gave me an excellent lesson. “If you really knew, you would already be doing something about it.”

 

To put the mind in service to our conduct is not to deny it or to denigrate it; each piece of us has its crucial part to play, but ultimately a man is defined by his convictions working through his deeds. The true philosopher commits himself to being a good man, not just a smart man—he wills what he understands. 

Written in 11/2000

Stoic Snippets 86

Look within. Let neither the peculiar quality of anything nor its value escape you.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.3

Fractals 14

Epictetus, Discourses 1.8.4

“What do you mean? Was not Plato a philosopher?”

 

I reply, Was not Hippocrates a physician? But you see how eloquent Hippocrates was. Was Hippocrates so eloquent by virtue of being a physician? 

 

Why then do you mix qualities, which are casually united in the same persons? 

 

Suppose Plato was handsome and strong; ought I also to set to and strive to become handsome or strong, as though this were necessary for philosophy, just because one philosopher was handsome as well? 

 

Will you not have the discernment to see what makes men philosophers and what qualities are accidental in them? 

 

Suppose now I were a philosopher, ought you to become lame?

 

Whenever I am backed into a social corner, and I have to tell someone that I play at being a teacher and dabble in philosophy, I await the brief pause, and then the usual response: “Oh, you must be smart!”

 

I smile on the outside, but squirm a little on the inside, because I know why they might say that, even though it is hardly true. 

 

Are teachers intelligent? Many are, but if you’ve been in the trade long enough, you also know that some of us can be a bit slow. I can’t think of a more polite way to say that. 

 

Do philosophers use logic? Yes, at least they try to, but that isn’t really what makes them philosophers, just as working with numbers doesn’t make an engineer or an accountant, and owning a car doesn’t make a racing driver. 

 

It reminds me of that old insult, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” What, pray tell, does one have to do with the other? 

 

When we come across two things that happen to go together, we may assume that they must always be connected, or that one must be the cause of the other. I remind myself not to make hasty generalizations, and I try to distinguish between what is essential and what is accidental. 

 

What defines it, as opposed to what is merely added to it? Am I understanding its identity as distinct from its circumstances? Is it necessary or is it optional?

 

No, doctors don’t have to be rich, and politicians don’t have to be shifty, and tall folks don’t have to play basketball. 

 

And Philosophers don’t have to wear tweed jackets, or earn advanced degrees, or, for that matter, even formally study logic for however many years. 

 

All the training in the art of reasoning could help, but it could also hurt. Will it be used in the service of knowing the true and loving the good? A strong mind can be in the service of many vices, just as easily as a strong arm. 

 

Epictetus needed a crutch to walk, but he didn’t need it to be a philosopher—he had the content of his character for that. 

Written in 11/2000

 

Sayings of Ramakrishna 97

How sweet is the simplicity of the child! He prefers a doll to all riches and wealth. 

So is the faithful devotee. No one else can throw aside wealth and honor to take God only.

IMAGE: Gyula Benczur, Little Girl with a Doll (1863)

Michael Leunig 22

Epictetus, Discourses 1.8.3

And there is more—not only should we have less leisure for more necessary things, but we should give uncommon occasion for conceit and vanity. For the faculty of disputative and plausible reasoning is a powerful one, especially if it should be developed by training and gain further dignity from mastery of language. 

 

For indeed generally every faculty is dangerous when it comes into the hands of those who are without education and without real force, for it tends to exalt and puff them up. For how would it be possible to persuade the young man who excels in these arguments that he ought not to become dependent upon them, but to make them depend upon him? 

 

Instead of this he tramples under foot all we say to him and walks among us in a high state of elation, so puffed up that he cannot bear that anyone should remind him how far he has fallen short and into what errors he has lapsed.

 

Virtue and vice are not in the skill, but rather in the use or the abuse of the skill. Reason joined to humility will lift us up, while reason joined to pride will pull us down. 

 

Nothing good will come from training a mind in the rigors of argumentation and the charms of fine speaking without first building a sense of moral reverence. Not only will the effort have been wasted, like throwing pearls before swine, but the powers of intellect divorced from conscience are likely to do grave harm, like giving a handgun to a toddler. 

 

Mere knowledge must be elevated to the level of wisdom, driven on by love.

 

I have unfortunately seen what happens when this warning isn’t heeded, and I need look no further than some of the colossal blunders of my own life. I am working to transform them into something good, a hard lesson learned, but their weight can still haunt me. 

 

A little learning is a dangerous thing . . . 

 

Provide me with an interesting fact here, an obscure reference there, and suddenly I may believe that I have become an expert in all things. Instead, I should freely admit that I don’t know, and stop insisting that mucking about in the foothills is like climbing the loftiest peaks. 

 

A first exposure to formal logic, and all the impressive terminology that goes with it, might tempt me to think that I can argue circles around anyone. I greedily memorize the moods of syllogisms, and I am sure that I am invincible. Instead, I should worry more about making simple decisions in my life than spouting the grandest theories. 

 

I stumble across some clever rhetorical device, I then find that people are suitably impressed when I use it, and it all goes to my head. I confuse appearances with truths, and I become convinced that a sharp wit is sufficient for any task. Instead, I should shut my mouth and clean out my ears.

 

If I go down this sort of seductive path, what sort of person will I become? The most horrible sort of intellectual snob, who thinks he is the master of everything, while actually being a slave to his vanities. It was all made possible by hastily grabbing on to one part or another, while neglecting to take any note of the whole. The dialectic and the rhetoric are treated like parlor tricks, because I’ve misplaced that moral compass. 

 

Do you know the sort of fellow who has carefully crafted an image for himself, who is arrogant and aloof but still demands your attention, who tells you that your argument isn’t valid, when what he really means to say is that your argument isn’t sound? 

 

Don’t be that fellow. Do your philosophy in the dirt, and don’t fret about polishing up your fork and trowel; they are meant to be used, not to be seen. 

Written in 11/2000

Sayings of Socrates 56

Sentence of death was passed, with an accession of eighty fresh votes. He was put in prison, and a few days afterwards drank the hemlock, after much noble discourse, which Plato records in the Phaedo. Further, according to some, he composed a paean beginning:

All hail, Apollo, Delos' lord!
Hail Artemis, ye noble pair!

Dionysodorus denies that he wrote the paean. He also composed a fable of Aesop, not very skillfully, beginning:

"Judge not, ye men of Corinth," Aesop cried,
"Of virtue as the jury-courts decide."

—Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 2.42

IMAGE: Gavin Hamilton, Apollo and Artemis (1770)

Sayings of Ramakrishna 96

The stone may remain for myriads of years in water, and the water will never penetrate it. But clay is soon softened into mud by the contact of water. 

So the strong heart of the faithful does not despair in the midst of trials and persecutions, but the man of weak faith is easily shaken even by the most trifling cause. 

Epictetus, Discourses 1.8.2

Why then, you ask, do we not train ourselves and one another in this style of argument? 

 

Because even now, though we do not devote ourselves to training in these matters and though we are not drawn away, so far as I have any influence, from cultivating character, nevertheless we make no advance towards goodness. 

 

What should we have to expect then, if we should add this business to our other employments? 

 

Socrates saw it in Athens, and Epictetus saw it in Rome, and any one of us can see it today, if only we choose to look around: people who are so concerned with the form of the argument that they neglect the content of character. 

 

Sophists, in whatever time or place, value style over substance, prefer sounding good to being good, and will talk the talk without walking the walk. A love for the arts of dialectic and rhetoric can all too easily become more important to us than the truths they were made to serve. 

 

Once a scholar gets caught up in publishing articles, giving lectures, or earning tenure, he runs the serious risk of missing his vocation entirely. It will be the same in whatever we do, if we focus on the wording of the problem at the expense of actually doing something about the problem. 

 

It isn’t that those who are called to philosophy shouldn’t learn how to think, but rather that all the thinking should not be treated as an end in itself, pursued without a broader context. 

 

If I merely give a student pages of logical exercises to solve, or drill him in presenting a convincing argument, I have provided him with tools, but he has no idea what he is supposed to build with them. I have then trained an incredibly clever man, who also happens to be completely useless. He has learned how to argue for the sake of arguing, not for the sake of living. 

 

Somewhere between a bitter disdain for reason and a fawning worship of reason lies the tempered use of the mind, directed to the humble purpose of living well. A man should be reasonable so that he can be good, and logic will have no worth without a sense of right and wrong. 

 

Perhaps some were critical of Epictetus for not demanding more formal or rigorous training in dialectic and rhetoric from his students, but he had something greater in mind, a priority of the moral over the technical. By all means, exercise the mind to its fullest capacity, but fill it with the things that really matter. 

 

With the time that he has available to him, what qualities would the teacher most wish to encourage?

Written in 11/2000

  

 

Death Blowing Bubbles

Johann Georg Leinberger, Plaster Decoration at Michaelsberg Abbey (1731)

Tao Te Ching 81

Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere. Those who are skilled in the Tao do not dispute about it; the disputatious are not skilled in it. Those who know the Tao are not extensively learned; the extensively learned do not know it.

The sage does not accumulate for himself. The more that he expends for others, the more does he possess of his own; the more that he gives to others, the more does he have himself.

With all the sharpness of the Way of Heaven, it injures not; with all the doing in the way of the sage, he does not strive.

Dhammapada 135

As a cowherd with his staff drives his cows into the stable, so do Age and Death drive the life of men.

Epictetus, Discourses 1.8.1

Chapter 8: That faculties are fraught with danger for the uneducated.

 

Just as it is possible to interchange terms which are equivalent to one another, so and in just as many ways it is allowable to vary in argument the types of disputative argument and enthymeme. 

 

Take for instance this kind of argument: “If you borrowed and did not repay, you owe me the money. You did not borrow without repaying; therefore, you do not owe me the money.” 

 

And the philosopher above all others is the proper person to handle such arguments with skill. For if enthymeme is imperfect syllogism, plainly he who is trained in perfect syllogism would be equally capable in dealing with imperfect.

 

Having argued, in the previous chapter, that the ability to reason soundly is critical to the good life, Epictetus will now warn us that there can also be grave dangers in committing ourselves to the study of logic. 

 

Is he somehow backpedaling here? Hardly, since, like any good Stoic, Epictetus understands that the value in any human exercise will be in how well it assists us with the formation of character. 

 

Have you studied hard to become a lawyer, or learned to play the guitar like a real virtuoso, or uncovered some hidden secret of the sciences? What will be the point if you don’t employ it to be a better person? 

 

It will be no different with the skills of formal thinking. I have spent a good number of years in the company of philosophy students, and most of them are deeply intelligent. The historians are like walking encyclopedias of citations, and the logicians are fluent in the most complex of proofs. 

 

Yet what impresses me the most, and what brings me the greatest joy, is when I run across that one in the bunch who is a genuinely decent huma being, a true mensch. There is the fellow who knows how to put his philosophy to proper use! 

 

When ordered toward the right end, a familiarity with different forms of arguments, and the variety of ways we might go about expressing them, is a powerful means for distinguishing wisdom from sophistry. 

 

Many of us are barely aware, for example, how regularly we assume the definition of a certain term, or don’t explicitly state a premise in a demonstration, and the good philosopher will have the knack to spot such instances.

 

Sometimes, of course, there is no harm done, since we are just abbreviating what we think is abundantly clear. At other times, however, we are being lazy, or perhaps even deliberately manipulative. It will take a sharp mind to catch the difference. 

 

Logicians call it an enthymeme when a step in an argument is passed over, as in the example above. It makes complete sense, and yet there is something taken for granted, that a debt is something that should be repaid to begin with. 

 

I recall this version from my childhood: “Don’t do that, it’s stupid!” Quite often, I may have seen that it was stupid, but it might have helped to be reminded that I shouldn’t be doing stupid things from the get-go. 

 

Logic isn’t just for nerds who obsess about the details, since the details do matter in how we all live. The problem, as we shall see, comes when we divorce such calculations from a sense of right and wrong, when careful thinking is no longer in service to an informed conscience. 

Written in 11/2000

The Wisdom of Solomon 10:5

[5] Wisdom also, when the nations in wicked agreement
had been confounded,
recognized the righteous man and preserved
him blameless before God,
and kept him strong in the face of his compassion
for his child.

IMAGES: 

Tobias Verhaecht, The Tower of Babel (c. 1590)

Rembrandt, The Sacrifice of Isaac (1635)

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.10

M. But what I have said as to the heart, the blood, the brain, air, or fire being the soul, are common opinions: the others are only entertained by individuals; and, indeed, there were many among the ancients who held singular opinions on this subject, of whom the latest was Aristoxenus, a man who was both a musician and a philosopher. He maintained a certain straining of the body, like what is called harmony in music, to be the soul, and believed that, from the figure and nature of the whole body, various motions are excited, as sounds are from an instrument. He adhered steadily to his system, and yet he said something, the nature of which, whatever it was, had been detailed and explained a great while before by Plato. 

 

Xenocrates denied that the soul had any figure, or anything like a body; but said it was a number, the power of which, as Pythagoras had fancied, some ages before, was the greatest in nature: his master, Plato, imagined a threefold soul, a dominant portion of which—that is to say, reason—he had lodged in the head, as in a tower; and the other two parts—namely, anger and desire—he made subservient to this one, and allotted them distinct abodes, placing anger in the breast, and desire under the praecordia. 

 

But Dicaearchus, in that discourse of some learned disputants, held at Corinth, which he details to us in three books—in the first book introduces many speakers; and in the other two he introduces a certain Pherecrates, an old man of Phthia, who, as he said, was descended from Deucalion; asserting, that there is in fact no such thing at all as a soul, but that it is a name without a meaning; and that it is idle to use the expression “animals,” or “animated beings;” that neither men nor beasts have minds or souls, but that all that power by which we act or perceive is equally infused into every living creature, and is inseparable from the body, for if it were not, it would be nothing; nor is there anything whatever really existing except body, which is a single and simple thing, so fashioned as to live and have its sensations in consequence of the regulations of nature. 

 

Aristotle, a man superior to all others, both in genius and industry (I always except Plato), after having embraced these four known sorts of principles, from which all things deduce their origin, imagines that there is a certain fifth nature, from whence comes the soul; for to think, to foresee, to learn, to teach, to invent anything, and many other attributes of the same kind, such as to remember, to love, to hate, to desire, to fear, to be pleased or displeased—these, and others like them, exist, he thinks, in none of those first four kinds: on such account he adds a fifth kind, which has no name, and so by a new name he calls the soul ἐνδελέχεια, as if it were a certain continued and perpetual motion.

 

Yet analogies, however helpful or profound, are always incomplete, and placing the principle of life in only one function of the body seems to focus on the part at the expense of the whole. 

 

Instead of saying that the soul is akin to one or another element, or to be found in this or that location, should I not be asking about what makes it distinct in and of itself, and how it is somehow distributed within all aspects of a living creature?

 

Aristoxenus offered another perspective, suggesting that the soul is not some static substance, but rather flows as a harmony from the active relationship of all the parts of the body. Just as the cooperation of many performers in an orchestra creates a complete work of music, so the balanced combination of the body’s operations produces the soul. 

 

When Plato considered a similar argument in the Phaedo, however, he noted a difficulty. If the soul is something that proceeds from the body, as a whole that is determined by the parts, then it would follow that the soul is ruled by the body. This, however, does not appear to be the case, since the soul, as a binding and guiding principle, is that which gives order and direction to its members. 

 

Let us not confuse causes and consequences. This harmony seems to require some unifying agency behind it, an identity that provides a pattern to all the pieces. To push the earlier analogy, the orchestra will sound like a cacophony without a conductor, or a composer. 

 

Might the soul, as Xenocrates proposed, be a sort of number? This need not be cryptic, for thinkers from many traditions have understood how mathematics can express the structure of reality. But can we, like the Platonists, speak of universals as existing independently, or only in particular things? How does an abstract concept give life to a body? 

 

Plato himself argued that the human soul acts on three related levels, the rational, the spirited, and the appetitive, and that the proper hierarchy among them, from the higher to the lower, is a key to living well. Indeed, when the mind harnesses our aggressiveness to rule the passions, we find ourselves at peace, while when the passions inflame our aggressiveness to stifle the mind, we meet only discord. 

 

What has always struck me as so insightful about Plato’s account is the way it describes the soul not only by its distinct powers, but also by how they are made to work together within the whole person. It goes beyond affirming that I am alive, to explaining how I am alive; the nature behind the actions become clearer. 

 

In sharp contrast, the theory discussed by Dicaearchus should sound fairly familiar to a modern reader, since it has much in common with the pure materialism that is popular in so much contemporary science. I regularly hear that the idea of a “soul” is nonsensical, an imaginary concept quite unnecessary to define a living being. What we call life, they say, is just the result of certain combinations of matter, and so can be reduced to the properties of matter alone. The patterns may be complex, the story has it, but reality is reducible to a bundle of particles. 

 

The same problem that befell Aristoxenus also rears its head here, in that the very presence of any pattern, or structure, or identity is something imprinted onto the matter, not proceeding from it. Here Aristotle comes to the rescue, arguing that a substance is not made of matter alone, but matter joined to a principle of form, the “whatness” that imparts its distinct nature. 

 

When it comes to a living thing, Aristotle called this identifying form a soul, and when it comes to a human being, he called this identifying form a rational soul. As giving life, the soul is what actualizes the potentiality in the body, the entelechy that Cicero mentions, in that what is animate adds something to what is inanimate, and what has awareness adds something to what lacks awareness. 

 

In examining how the human soul operates, Aristotle further observed how it has powers that cannot be contained within the organs of the body, or accounted for by the properties of matter. Particularly, mind rises above a physical nature, for it apprehends things in a in a universal and abstract way. 

 

So where, according to Aristotle, is this soul? It isn’t in the heart, or the blood, or the brain, or the breath, but resides beneath them all, and works through them all. It makes me a who instead of a what, the mode that specifies my existence. I can’t put it in a box, even as it very concretely allows me to be myself. 

 

This is a very brief and inadequate account, but it can perhaps give some sense of the many questions that will arise if we wonder about the soul, and it can point the way toward some possible answers. 

Written in 2/1996