one thing which includes all three forms of life.[1] We therefore assert that sensation is common to all animal life, because sensation marks the distinction between life and death; but the heavens, which pursue a nobler and more sublime path than we do, are far removed from life and death. But it is fitting that animals should have[2] some common characteristic perfect in itself but less sublime, and this is the acquisition and deprivation of life. And one ought not to shrink from the use of these terms on the ground that there is no mean between the animate and the inanimate, between life and the deprivation of life; nay, there is a mean between life and the inanimate, because the inanimate is that which has no soul nor any portion of it. But a plant is not one of those things which entirely lack a soul, because there is some portion of a soul in it;[3] and 816b it is not an animal, because there is no sensation in it, and plants pass one by one gradually from life into death. We can put the matter in a different way and say that a plant is animate. I cannot, however, assert that it is inanimate as long as it possesses soul and some form of sensation; for that which receives food is not entirely without soul, and every animal has soul. But a plant is imperfect, and, whereas an animal has definite limbs, a plant is indefinite in form, and a plant derives its own particular nature from the motion which it possesses in itself.[4] Some one might say that a plant has soul, because the soul is that which causes motion and desire to arise locally, and motion can only arise locally when sensation is present. But the absorption of food is in accordance with a natural principle, and is common both to animals and plants, and no sensation at all will accompany the absorption of food; for everything that absorbs food employs two qualities in feeding, namely, heat and cold, and an animal properly requires moist food
- ↑ i. e. life as found in the heavenly bodies, in animals, and in plants. The reasoning is somewhat obscure, but seems to be that (1) animals have life and movement, (2) the heavenly bodies have a higher form of life and fixed movement, (3) plants have life but no movement.
- ↑ Reading habeat.
- ↑ i.e. τὸ θρεπτικόν, cf. de anima 414a 29–32.
- ↑ The motion of plants is that which takes place in the absorption of food.
