the manifestation of perceptions and passions, its great office still is to originate, to maintain, and to perpetuate life, through all its gradations. It may be that, from some such conclusion, Aristotle was led to regard the vital principle as inferior in destiny and office to the faculty which he has designated[1] mind (ὁ νοῦς), and made to be impassive, homogeneous, apart from, and independent of, the body. These opinions have much in common with those adopted by Plato in the Timæus; as, while, in that most beautiful and intellectual disquisition, the senses, appetites, and passions, the mortal framework, that is, of the sentient being, are located about the heart and liver,—the intellectual faculty, that which is divine, and intended to direct and control the animal powers, is placed in the head. The life is represented, in fact, by ψυχή, which is bound up with corporeal functions and appetites; and reason by νοῦς, which, if any where, is, "as the divine seed of wisdom," in the brain; and, being homogeneous, does not depend, for existence, upon the life of the body. These few words will suffice to shew that there is an analogy between the two systems of physiology and psychology.
- ↑ De An. I. 4 ; I. 5 ; III. 4, 6.
