Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY.431the body formed and penetrated by it, and whichworks continuously in it, as the life which determinesand prevails over its matter. Thus the bodyis of itself nothing ; what it is, it is only throughthe soul, whose being and nature it expresses, towhich it is related as the medium in which thepurpose, which is the soul, realises itself. Thusthe soul cannot be thought of without the body,nor the body without the soul : both come intotheir actual state together.o In the soul Aristotledistinguishes three parts, the vegetative, the sensitive,and the thinking. This last, the peculiarproperty of man, is further divisible into the passiveand the active, of which the former is linked"to the soul as the soul is to the body, as form isto matter, multiplies itself with individuals, and isextinguished with them. But the reason, or pureintelligence, has nothing in common with matter.comes from without into man, and exists in himas a self - consisting indestructible being, withoutmultiplying or dividing itself. Accordingly thisintellect or reason suffers the soul to sink backwith the body into the nothing from which bothhave been together produced. It alone continuesto subsist as what is ever the same and unchangeable,since it is nothing but the divine intelligencein an individual existence, enlightening th> O Oness of the human subject in the passive partderstanding, and so must be considered asthe first mover in man of his discursive thinking O