Page:Aristotelous peri psuxes.djvu/31

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CH. II.]
VITAL PRINCIPLE.
21

accordance with that of Democritus. Democritus, in fact, maintains that Vital Principle and mind are absolutely identical ; that the apparent is the true; and that Homer, therefore, has done well in representing Hector as "changing his mind while he lay." Thus he does not employ the term mind as a faculty for the attainment of truth, but makes mind to be identical with the Vital Principle. Anaxagoras is less explicit upon these points ; for, in many places, he speaks of mind as the source of the beautiful and the true, while, elsewhere, he says that it is identical with the Vital Principle, and innate in all creatures, larger or smaller, higher or lower, in the scale of being ; but it is manifest that mind, in the sense of intellect, is not equally allotted to all animals, nor even to all men.

Thus they who have looked upon living beings with respect to motion, have assumed that the Vital Principle is the most motive of entities, and so many as have looked upon them with respect to knowledge and sentient perception, have said that the Vital Principle comprises all first causes; of which, while some admit of several, others maintain that there is only this one. Empedocles, for instance, seems to maintain that the Vital Principle is derived from all the elements, and that each element is Vital Principle, as he says that " by earth we perceive earth, by water water, by air air, by fire destructive