British Journal for the History of Philosophy 18(3) 2010: 363377

ARTICLE

ARISTOTLE ON GOD AS PRINCIPLE OF GENESIS

Abraham P. Bos

ARISTOTLE ON DIFFERENCES IN QUALITY OF LIFE How does Aristotle explain dierences in level and quality of life? The answer seems obvious. Aristotle divides the realm of (sublunary) living creatures into three sub-realms, plants, animals and human beings. To each sub-realm he assigns a dierent soul-principle.1 Plants have a vegetative or nutritive soul. Animals have a sensitive soul. Human beings have a rational soul (Anim. II 3, 414a32b19). For Aristotle there is a dierence in value and lack of value between these levels of life.2 On this view, the soul-principle is the basis for dierence in level of life. However, this signally fails to do justice to the great variation within each of the subrealms. It also fails to explain why a sensitive soul never manifests itself in a plant or tree. There is another side to the problem. The soul is always the rst entelechy of a natural body that potentially possesses life3 and that is organikon (Anim. II 1, 412a278) and it is never without soma, says Aristotle.4 Therefore, it is relevant to pay attention to the body that receives the soul, for a craft must use its instruments, and a soul its body (I 3, 407b256).5 A famous passage in his great work Generation of animals (II 3, 736b29 35) shows that, according to Aristotle, it is necessary that the soul-principle

C. Shields, Aristotle (London: Routledge, 2007) 274 notes that Aristotle holds to the view of the non-univocity of life. 2 Aristotle, De generatione animalium I 23, 731a25b4. Cf. A. Coles, Animal and Childhood Cognition in Aristotles Biology and the Scala Naturae, in Aristotelische Biologie. Intentionen, Methoden, Ergebnisse, edited by W. Kullmann and S. Follinger (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1997) 287323, esp. 297. 3 A visible body is never a body that potentially possesses life, but is already alive. A natural body that potentially possesses life is semen or a fruit (De anima II 1, 412b257; Gener. anim. II 1, 735a49; 3, 736a325). 4 Anim. II 2, 414a1921. Cf. Gener. anim. II 4, 738b267. 5 Cf. A. P. Bos, Why the Soul Needs an Instrumental Body According to Aristotle (Anim. I 3, 407b1326), Hermes, 128 (2000): 2031; id., The Instrumental Body of the Soul in Aristotles Ethics and Biology, Elenchos, 26 (2006): 3572.

British Journal for the History of Philosophy ISSN 0960-8788 print/ISSN 1469-3526 online 2010 BSHP http://www.informaworld.com DOI: 10.1080/09608781003779750

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and the body that receives the soul are in agreement, and that this agreement already exists in the semen phase. Aristotle says there:
The dynamis of every soul seems to have something of a body dierent from and more divine than the so-called elements; and the dierences in value or lack of value between souls correspond with the dierences in this substance (physis). For the semen of everything contains within itself its cause of being fertile, viz. so-called vital heat. This vital heat is not re or any such power but the pneuma which is enclosed in the semen and in the foam-like stu; it is the active substance which is in pneuma, which is an analogue of the astral element.6

This text talks explicitly about dierence in value or lack of value of souls and dierence in value and lack of value7 of the corporeal principle with which these souls are connected. The soul-principle in the seed of the male specimen of a particular kind of living creature is therefore both connected with and suited to the material substance of the seed, which in any case contains vital heat (pneuma), in the sublunary sphere an analogue of the astral ether.8 This material substance of the male seed is matched, in turn, by the menstrual uid of the female partner, which bears the soul-principle from the moment of fertilization.9 Aristotle speaks about the souls close connection with a very special substance, which is not identical with the visible body of the fully grown
6 See now also the Dutch translation by R. Ferwerda, Aristoteles, Over voortplanting (Groningen, Historische Uitgeverij, 2005) 86. Cf. A. P. Bos, The Soul and its Instrumental Body. A Reinterpretation of Aristotles Philosophy of Living Nature (Leiden: Brill, 2003) 15772. For dynamis of the soul, cf. Anim. II 1, 412a9; a1621. In Anim. II 2, 414a257 Aristotle had also said that the entelechy of every living body manifests itself in that which has the potentiality for it and in the matter appropriate to it. 7 On this theme, cf., e.g., Anim. II 3, 414b1519; De partibus ani malium II 2, 648a3; Historia ani malium III 19, 521a2; VIII 1, 588b8; Gener. anim. II 6, 744a2731; Metaphysics A 1, 980a27 1a7; Nicomachean Ethics X 7, 1177b304; De Respiratione 13, 477a16. See also Gener. anim. III 11, 762a246, which is discussed below. 8 Contra P. Moraux, Quinta essentia, Pauly-Wissowa, Real- Enzyclopaedie 47 Halbbd. (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1963) 1171263, esp. 1206. See A. Preus, Man and Cosmos in Aristotles Metaphysics L and the Biological Works, in Biologie, logique et metaphysique chez Aristote, edited by D. Devereux and P. Pellegrin (Paris: CNRS edns, 1990) 47190, esp. 47884. Pneuma is an equivalent (analogon) of the astral element inasmuch as both function as instrumental body and as bearer of life-generating power. Aristotles denition of the soul also applies to the Ether as natural, ensouled body. Aristotles main criticism of Platos psychology involved his rejection of the idea that the soul is a self-mover (Anim. I 3, 405b31 6b25). For Aristotle, movement is a matter of natural bodies. Cf. R. Bodeus, Ame du monde me, edited by C. Viano (Paris: J. ou corps celeste? Une interrogation dAristote, in Corps et a Vrin, 1996) 818. 9 The embryo (kyema) contains nothing of the material mass of the male semen (Gener. anim. II 3, 737a11). The male specimen supplies the principle of generation. The female specimen supplies the matter (viz. for the kyema or embryo). Cf. Gener. anim. I 20, 729a911; 21, 729b3330a23; II 4, 738b207. Cf. A. Coles, Biomedical Models of Reproduction in the Fifth Century BC and Aristotles Generation of Animals, Phronesis, 46 (1995): 4888, esp. 51 .

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living creature. At the stage of fertilization there is no sign yet of the visible body. It must still be produced by the soul in close cooperation with its instrumental body.11

DIFFERENCES IN COMPOSITION OF THE BODY THAT RECEIVES THE SOUL This instrumental body which receives the soul and which is suitable matter for the soul-principle is composed of the four elements plus vital heat, which is an analogue of the celestial element. In animals which produce semen or menstrual uid it contains at any rate an aquatic component (Gener. Anim. II 3, 737a1112). This is not or much less the case in plants, as can be concluded from grains of corn or beech nuts. Semen also contains air, for pneuma is hot air (II 2, 735b86a1), but not in the sense of air heated by re, but in the sense of air which is a bearer of vital heat. Aristotle assigns a role not only to the vital heat, which must in any case be operative in it, but also to the basic elements, such as earth, water and air. The dierences in quality of pneuma, which Gener. Anim. II 3, 736b313 talks about, can only be explained by the mixture of pneuma with other bodies. In his famous discussion of spontaneous generation in Gener. anim. III 11, Aristotle makes it clear what the crucial point is. Dierences in kinds of living creature are determined by the value or lack of value of that which is enclosed in the soul-principle. This involves the physical substances which are enclosed by the soul-principle. There it becomes evident that the instrumental body (co)determines a living creatures quality of life. In an instrumental body which incorporates a relatively large amount of earthy matter, pneuma cannot display its highest degree of purity and therefore can no longer be the bearer of a soul-principle that is high in value. This
10 The notorious problems in the traditional view as formulated by J. L. Ackrill, Aristotles Denitions of Psyche, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 73 (19723): 11933 and discussed by J. Whiting, Living Bodies, in Essays on Aristotles De anima, edited by M. C. Nussbaum and A. Oksenberg Rorty (Oxford, 1992) 7591, can therefore be put aside. C. Shields (2007) 284 continues to compare body and soul in Aristotles view with the bricks of the house and the form of the house. 11 ma organikon in Anim. II 1, 412b56 should be translated. Cf. also 412a28, That is how so and see A. P. Bos, The Soul and its Instrumental Body (2003) 8594. Spir. 9, 485b67 and b16 show that the body which receives the soul is not just an instrument but also matter. Cf. A. P. Bos and R. Ferwerda, Aristotles De Spiritu as a Critique of the Doctrine of Pneuma of Plato and his Predecessors, Mnemosyne, 60 (2007): 56588 and Aristotle, On the Life-bearing Spirit (De spiritu). A Discussion with Plato and his Predecessors on Pneuma as the Instrumental Body of the Soul. Introduction, translation and commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2008). See also P. MacFarlane, A Philosophical Commentary on Aristotles De Spiritu (Ph.D. thesis, Duquesne University, 2007), who also argues for the authenticity of De Spiritu. Cf. L. P. Gerson, Aristotle and Other Platonists (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005) 136.

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becomes clear in a passage which has posed many problems to modern interpreters, but which is most certainly in keeping with Aristotles overall conception (III 11, 761a32b23).

DIFFERENCES IN QUALITY BETWEEN ELEMENTARY BODIES There we nd: We may say that plants belong to earth, aquatic creatures to water, and four-footed animals to air (ae`r).12 Aristotle is saying here that the vital principle or the vegetative soul-part of plants consists mainly of Earth or dryness; that the vital principle of aquatic animals, or the sensitive soul-part, possesses a higher quality, because it contains (more) Water or moisture; and that quadrupeds have a still higher form of life, because their vital principle also contains the element Air. Though all natural, elementary bodies are instruments of the soul (Anim. II 4, 415b18), there is an increase in quality of life in accordance with the quality of the souls instrumental body. Earth occupies the lowest position,13 Water the lowest but one and Air one level higher. Aristotle is familiar with plants and trees that grow in water, but he assigns all vegetation to the element Earth, because in his view, vegetative life is the lowest, least valuable life form.

LIVING CREATURES CONNECTED WITH FIRE Right after mentioning plants, aquatic animals and four-footed animals Aristotle continues that it is natural to assume that there must be a fourth category of living creatures, related to the fourth sublunary element, Fire.14 He says that this category should be sought not in the regions here. Therefore, where should we seek it? His answer is: on the Moon. Since the

Gener. anim. III 11, 761b1314. Quadrupeds are assigned to the element Air, not to pneuma, which according to Gener. anim. II 3, 736b297a1 is present in the instrumental body of every soul! As in Resp. 13, 477a29, Aristotle talks here about peza, animals (and human beings) with feet. These are living creatures which have high vital heat and therefore require respiration. Cf. Part. anim. III 6, 668b339a7. In this passage Aristotle also explains that some aquatic animals have lungs and some quadrupeds live in water. 13 Cf. Gener. anim. II 1, 733a11: uid matter is conducive to life, whereas dryness and ensouled entities are at opposite poles. 14 In 761b17 Aristotle talks about the order (of rank) (taxis) of Fire. A. Platt (1912) hears a a military metaphor in this. Cf. De iuventute 19 / Resp. 13, 477a301; Meteorologica I 3, 339b6 and 340a19 (tetaktai). Gener. corr. II 10, 336b12 reads: all things have their own taxis. In De Mundo 2, 391b11 kosmos is dened as the ordering (taxis) and arrangement (diakosme`sis) of all parts, maintained by and through God. Cf. also Metaph. L 10, 1075a1123 on the general and his army, and A. Preus (1990) 48790; M. Ransome Johnson, Aristotle on Teleology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005) 2745.

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Moon, as it appears, has a share in the fourth degree of remove. Aristotle speaks freely here about living creatures on the Moon, as he does in De motu animalium.16 He assigns a higher quality of life to them, because he takes the line that the position of greatest distance to the Origin of all life is occupied by plants.

DIFFERENCES IN QUALITY OF ELEMENTARY BODIES RELATED TO DIFFERENCES IN DISTANCE Aristotle underpins his thesis in De generatione animalium III 11 by means of a striking statement: But more and less and nearer and further make a surprisingly great dierence.17 He uses the same scheme in De caelo I 2, 269a301 where he speaks about the astral element as more divine and superior to the material substances here in the sublunary sphere. In De caelo I 9, 279a2830 he had also talked about the dependence of all life on the highest principle, in degrees from articulate to feeble levels of life. He underlined that the non-physical beings outside the cosmos possess eternally the best and most self-sucient life (279a212).18 In De partibus animalium I 5, 644b225a23 we nd the famous exhortation not to despise the earthly practice of studying biology on account of the higher value of beings that possess the quality of eternity.
15 Gener. anim. III 11, 761b22. Aristotle has started his count with the plants (and the element Earth) and arrives for the fourth kind at the fourth degree of remove in relation to the centre of the cosmos. By comparison Aristotle can talk about Ether as the rst element (De caelo I 3, 270b11), but also as the fth (Mu. 2, 393a13; De philosophia fr. 27 W. D. Ross). On the position of the Moon, cf. F. Cumont, Recherches sur le symbolisme funeraire des Romains (1942; repr. Paris: Librairie Orientaliste, 1966) 177252: La lune sejour des morts, esp. 182 . 16 Motu anim. 4, 699b19, quoted above. Aristotle notes there that these beings are beyond our eld of vision, but are not invisible in an absolute sense. M. C. Nussbaum, Aristotle, De motu animalium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978) 31415 sticks up for Aristotle by talking about for purpose of the argument and Aristotle speculates that if there are any reanimals they are most likely to be found on the moon. A. Coles (1997) 304 dismisses our text as a whimsical association of re with moon-dwellers. W. Lameere, Au temps o Franz u Cumont sinterrogeait sur Aristote, LAntiquite classique, 18 (1949): 2791324, esp. 287 . suggests that we are dealing in Gener. anim. III 11 with a text from an earlier period of Aristotles activity, because he sees a contrast between this text and that of Anim. I 5, 411a7 111, which we will discuss further on. However, there is no longer a sound basis for W. Jaegers theory of a three-phase development in Aristotles philosophy. 17 Gener. anim. III 11, 761b1415. A.L. Peck (1942) 351 remarks in note e: It is dicult to attach any meaning to this statement. A. Platt (1912) had already commented: I confess I cannot attach any denite meaning to the words. R. Ferwerda (2005) 143 n. 51 notes: De passage is duister [The passage is obscure], but see W. Lameere (1949) 288 . 18 Cf. R. W. Sharples, Aristotelian Theology after Aristotle, in Traditions of Theology. Studies in Hellenistic Theology, Its Background and Aftermath, edited by D. Frede and A. Laks (Leiden: Brill, 2002) 140, esp. 67.

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Perishable living creatures are closer to us but we can learn much more about them. Metaphysics L 7, 1072b330 uses the same basic idea that all forms of life in the cosmos depend on an Origin (Arche`) which is an Unmoved Mover, as Intellect. Aristotle claries this dependence with the image of the power of attraction exercised by Eros.19 In his work De motu animalium, Aristotle had presented this fundamental Unmoved Principle of movement as the deeper meaning of Homers famous text on the golden chain in Zeus speech to the gods in Iliad 8.12820 and as the foundation for certainty that the cosmic system cannot disintegrate. De generatione et corruptione II 10, 336b302 clearly expresses the same principle: all things naturally strive after the better; and being is better than non-being, but not all things can always possess being since they are too far removed from the Principle. God therefore adopted the remaining alternative, and fullled the perfection of the universe by making comingto-be uninterrupted; for the greatest possible coherence would thus be secured to existence.21 The author of On the cosmos had set out the same idea more explicitly in 6, 397b278a4, where he says:
His (Gods) power (dynamis) is experienced most of all by the body that is closest to him, less by the next, and so on down to the regions inhabited by us. So earth and the things that are on earth, being at the farthest remove from the help of God, seem to be feeble and discordant and full of confusion and diversity; but nevertheless, in that it is the nature of the Divine to penetrate to everything, the things around us occur in correspondence to the things above us, each having a greater or smaller share of Gods help in proportion to its distance to him. So it is better to suppose, what is also tting and most appropriate to God, that the power (dynamis) which is based on the heavens is also the cause of preservation in the most remote things.22
19 20

Cf. Metaph. 2, 1003b1617. Motu anim. 4, 699b32700a6. Cf. M. C. Nussbaum, Aristotles De motu animalium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978) 3201. Eustathius, Comm. in Hom. Iliadem H, edited by M. van der Valk (Leiden: Brill, 1976) vol. 2, p. 515, 17 calls this an allusion to the divine Monarchia. Cf. P. Leveque, Aurea catena Homeri. Une etude sur lallegorie grecque (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1959) 534. A. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936) could have anchored his theme of the chain of being much more rmly in Aristotles work than he actually does. 21 Cf. also Gener. anim. II 1, 731b242a1. 22 Cf. G. Reale, A. P. Bos, Il trattato Sul cosmo per Alessandro attribuito ad Aristotele (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1995) 3214 and D. Holwerda, Mnemosyne, 46 (1993) 52. The authorship of On the cosmos has always been hotly contested. Cf. P. Moraux, Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen von Andronikos bis Alexander von Aphrodisias vol. II (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1984) 582; Italian edition: LAristotelismo presso i Greci, 3 vols (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2000) vol. I, 1588; H. B. Gottschalk, Aristotelian Philosophy in the Roman World from the Time of Cicero to the End of the Second Century, Aufstieg und Niedergang der Ro mischen Welt, vol. II 36, part 2 (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1987) 11329. The discussion has been radically aected by the conclusion of

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There is a clear connection in this passage between the soundly Aristotelian themes of (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) the dependence of all cosmic reality,23 on a Prime Unmoved Principle of movement, via a golden chain24 of levels of vitality, through the Power proceeding from this Principle, and the dierences in linkage with this Principle in accordance with the distance to it. Moreover, the author of On the cosmos identies this Principle as the Origin of all life by calling it the Begetter of all that lives (6, 397b21; 399a31). This connection becomes even clearer if we recognize that Aristotle regarded pneuma as the bearer of the divine vital power (dynamis) in the sublunary sphere.

(f)

(g)

The agreement of the conception of On the cosmos with Aristotles biological works and in particular with his De generatione animalium warrants the conclusion that the theological view of the treatise On the cosmos is truly Aristotelian, and that in the Corpus as a whole, too, Aristotle takes God as the principle of movement (arche kineseos) that is active via ether and pneuma. Just as a human father, by means of his pneumacontaining semen, supplies the principle of movement for the menstrual uid of the mother, so God as arche kineseos is, by means of his Power (dynamis) the arche geneseos of all levels of being in the cosmos.25 In this way we can
J. Barnes in his review of G. Reale, Aristotele. Trattato Sul cosmo per Alessandro (Napoli, 1974) in Classical Review, 27 (1977): 4403 that there are no intrinsic arguments left for denying Aristotles authorship, but he believes that vocabulary and style do invalidate it. Barnes considers the works likely date to be before 250 BC. D. M. Schenkeveld, Language and Style of the Aristotelian De Mundo in Relation to the Question of its Inauthenticity, Elenchos, 12 (1991) 22155 argued for a date between 350200 BC, but his dating of the work between 350 and 200 BC on the basis of language and style raises a problem: which anonymous and highly skilled author in this period would want to present his own ideas as Aristotelian in this way and why? For a complete survey of the modern debate, see G. Reale, A. P. Bos (1995) 369411. Nowadays, there are more scholars who accept it as Aristotelian. See L. P. Gerson (2005) 50, n. 11 and M. Ransome Johnson (2005) 81. 23 See J. Whiting, Locomotive Soul: The Parts of Soul in Aristotles Scientic Works, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 22 (2002): 141200, esp. 144: The prime mover . . . can exist apart from all other things, none of which can exist apart from it. So also, M. L. Gill, First Philosophy in Aristotle, in A Companion to Ancient Philosophy, edited by M. L. Gill and P. Pellegrin (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006) 34773, esp. 369. On this point there is a basic error in R. Bodeus, Aristotle and the Theology of the Living Immortals (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2000) and in M. Ransome Johnson (2005) ch. 9. 24 Mu. 6, 397b246 also alludes to the motif of Homers golden chain, which Aristotle had cited in Motu anim. 4. 25 I am well aware of the fact that my interpretation is on a head-on collision course with the one of R. Bodeus, Aristotle and the Theology of the Living Immortals (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2000) who denies any transcendent theology in Aristotle, and in fact views On the Cosmos, that he, in

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discover the bridge that Aristotle built between his biology and his metaphysics.

UNITY OF LIFE AS A SUCCESSIVE CONTINUOUS SERIES The fact that the author of On the cosmos says here that a body close to God prots most from his Power, and talks about a dependence of the lower levels in a continuous series (ephexes), allows us to involve another important point in our discussion. Aristotle was the rst to see that life does not just occur in all kinds of totally separate variants, but in degrees, hence the problem of dening what life and soul are. In De anima II 12 Aristotle developed, step by step, a denition of soul, but in De anima II 3, 414b1928 he challenges the entire preceding argument by saying that the denition of soul in De anima II 1 applies to all souls, but not specically to any individual soul!26 Aristotle has discovered that souls display a succession in the sense of a continuous series. Souls overlap, inasmuch as the sensitive soul contains the vegetative soul-part, and the rational soul necessarily contains both the sensitive and the vegetative soul-part (Anim. II 3, 414b2932). Where modern readers, looking through Darwins evolutionist glasses, will tend to see a continuous series of increasing complication, Aristotle recognizes here a continuous series of decreasing quality. This leads to the question: was Aristotle perhaps prompted by this recognition to claim that sublunary living creatures always possess a soulbody that is more or less compound? On the one hand he connects the vegetative function of life with the element Earth; on the other hand he emphasizes that animals and human beings, too, possess this vegetative soul-function as the most basic and primary function (Anim. III 9, 432a22 b5; Gener. anim. II 3, 736a33b5). This important insight seems to underlie Aristotles proposition in De anima II 4, 415b1819 that all natural bodies are instruments of the soul and his rejection of the idea that living creatures in the sublunary sphere can possess only one elementary body as their instrumental body (Gener. corr. II 8, 334b305a14).

line with P. Moraux, dates in the beginning of the Christian era, as having caused the attribution of a transcendent theology to Aristotle. See, however, A. Preus, Man and Cosmos in Aristotle: Metaphysics L and the Biological Works, in Biologie, edited by Devereux and Pellegrin (1990) 47190 and J. Rist, On Greek Biology, Greek Cosmology and Some Sources of Theological Pneuma, in Prudentia (suppl. vol.) (1985): 2747; reprinted in id., Man, Soul and Body. Essays in Ancient Thought from Plato to Dionysius (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996) ch. 5. 26 This problem was already noted in Anim. I 1, 402b19. Cf. M. Bastit (1996) 1415 and F. Ricken s.j., Zur Methodologie von Aristoteles, De anima B 13, Bijdragen, 59 (1998): 391405. See also J. E. Whiting (2002) 141200; G. Feola, De An. A1: LAporia sulle parti dellanima e la struttura dialettica del trattato De anima, Elenchos, 27 (2006): 12339, esp. 133 .

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Intriguingly, Aristotle asks after this discussion for what reason they (the dierent levels of life) form such a successive continuous series.27 He does not answer this question in the same chapter. Modern interpreters believe that the answer is deferred until De anima III 1113.28 However, perhaps we should conclude that On the cosmos 6 oers a more comprehensive outlook on the cause of this successive continuous series: the Origin of all life shows forth a vital power which causes all levels of life from the highest vital activity to the lowest.29 We can conclude of life that it can be said in many ways.30 There is a unity of life, but it is not a comprehensive unity of concept but a unity of Origin,31 a unity of the vital fullness of the Origin and of a decrease in vital power in accordance with the distance to the Origin.

THE QUALITY OF LIFE OF THE ELEMENT FIRE The fourth class of living creature, corresponding to the element Fire, cannot refer to a class of animals living in re, as A. Platt (1912) thought. Aristotle states categorically in De generatione animalium that Fire does not generate any living being and that no life is formed in solids or liquids under the inuence of re (Gener. anim. II 3, 737a13). In De anima I 5, 411a711 Aristotle urges the same objection in criticizing the Platonic doctrine of a World Soul: why does the soul when it resides in air or re not form an animal, while it does so when it resides in mixtures of the elements?32 It is striking here that Aristotle mentions the ancient natural philosopher Thales. He states that certain thinkers say that the soul is intermingled in the whole universe, and it is perhaps for that reason that Thales came to the opinion that all things are full of gods.33 This is interesting, because Thales statement also plays a part in De generatione animalium III 11, 762a1921, where Aristotle says that there is water in earth, and pneuma in water, and in all pneuma is vital heat, so that in a sense all things are full of soul. This forms a remarkable contrast with the passage in De anima I 5. There, Aristotle rejected the doctrine of a World Soul which pervades the cosmos. Here, he accepts the proposition that all things are, in a certain sense, full of soul, because pneuma is present
Anim. II 3, 414b335a1. R. D. Hicks (1907) 337; W. D. Ross (1961) 224; E. Barbotin (1968) 37, n. 2. On these chapters of Anim., cf. D. S. Hutchinson, Restoring the Order of Aristotles De Anima, Classical Quarterly, 37 (1987): 37381. 29 Cf. Metaph. L 7, 1072b1330; Cael. I 9, 279a2830. 30 Cf. Anim. II 2, 413a22. 31 Cf. Metaph. 2, 1003a334; Gener. corr. II 10, 337a212. C. Shields (2007) 273 qualies this as a case of core-dependent homonymy. 32 Aristotle holds that bodies of perishable creatures always contain at least portions of earth and water: Meteor. IV 4, 382a38; Gener. corr. II 8, 334b305a14. 33 Anim. I 5, 411a78. Cf. also Metaph. A 3, 983b22.
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everywhere.34 The proposition in On the cosmos 5, 397a1819 that all living things breathe and have their souls from the celestial and planetary spheres should be taken in the same vein. The same work says that pneuma is also used in the sense of the vital and generative substance which is found in plants and living creatures and permeates all things (4, 394b911).35 Unlike De generatione animalium III 11, On the cosmos 6, 397b1624 refers to Thales directly. This passage remarks: Some of the ancients were led to say that all the things of this world are full of gods. The author continues:
In saying this they used terms suitable to the power (dynamis) of God but not to his essence. For God is indeed the preserver of all things and the begetter (genetor) of everything in this cosmos however it is brought to fruition, but he does not take upon himself the toil of a creature that works and labours for itself, but uses an indefatigable power, by means of which he controls even things that seem a great way o.

This passage, too, plainly targets Platos doctrine of the divine Demiurge and leaves no room for an all-pervasive World Soul.36 It also shows very clearly what Aristotles alternative was: the doctrine of Gods Power, which is passed on from level to level and which is life-generating, even in the waters of the sea, where it brings about spontaneous generation. In this sense Aristotle can endorse Heraclitus saying: Even here are gods (Part. Anim. I 5, 645a21). Gods life-generating power is even present in regions furthest removed from the divine Origin. Just so Aristotle talked in De generatione animalium II 1, 734b1419 about the power that, by means of semen, becomes generative in the embryo in the womb of a female and in this process initiates a series of new functions, analogous to the successive actions of a winding mechanism.37 In Aristotles view, this Power, as the life-generating power of the omnipresent pneuma, also explains why cuttings can generate a new (ensouled) plant and why parts of some insects that are cut in two can live on (for a time).38 For the standard view of Aristotles psychology, this
34 Cf. A. Preus (1990) 4802. The author concludes there: Aristotle has taken a direction that gives him an explanation of the generation of sea animals at the cost of part of his hylomorphism. 35 Cf. G. Reale, A. P. Bos (1995) 1945 and 2858; D. Holwerda, Mnemosyne, (1993): 50. For that reason On the cosmos was often taken to be inuenced by the Stoa; also, De spiritu ch. 9. 36 In Cael. II 1, 284a1135, Aristotle disputes Platos doctrine of the World Soul by saying that if it were the motive principle of the celestial bodies, which by nature are earthy and heavy, the condition of the World Soul would be worse than that of toiling mortals and comparable with the fate of the wheel-bound Ixion. This tallies with his argument in Anim. I 3, 405b317a2 against the Timaeus (and the Phaedrus) that the soul cannot be the principle of movement as self-mover. (Movement is a matter of bodies!) 37 Cf. Mu. 6, 398b1316. See also Motu anim. 7, 701b112. 38 On this problem, cf. D. Lefebvre, Largument du sectionnement des vivants dans le Parva naturalia: le cas des insectes, Revue de philosophie ancienne, 20 (2002): 534 and A. P. Bos,

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phenomenon dees explanation, because it seems to imply that the immaterial entelechy of a plant can be cut in two.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE MALE AND THE FEMALE AS A COSMIC GIVEN This allows us to integrate another part of Aristotles cosmology with his overall conception. Aristotle sometimes uses for the elements Earth, Water, Air and Fire the expression the bodies that function as matter.39 Against these he sets the astral element as the element which through its power (dynamis) is the principle of movement for the sublunary elements (Meteor. I 2, 339a2933). Such a passage only becomes truly transparent when we consider that Aristotle thus characterizes the sublunary elements in the cosmos together as the female part of the cosmos, and Ether as the male semen, which passes on a power (dynamis) to the female contribution to the process of generation. On the cosmos 5, 396b7 also assigns a cosmic meaning to the male and the female, where it says:
Perhaps nature actually has a liking for opposites; perhaps it is from them that she creates harmony, and not from similar things, in just the same way as she has joined the male to the female, and not each of them to another of the same sex, thus making the rst harmonious community not of similar but of opposite things.

The author again explains the work of nature there on the basis of the single power which interpenetrates all things (396b28), of which he explains in Chapter 6 that it is the unremitting Power of God. In his great work Generation of animals Aristotle had presented the male and the female as the fundamental principles in all that exists. That is to say, not only in the animal world, but even more broadly on a cosmic scale. Aristotle says this explicitly in II 1, 731b35732a3:
That is why there is always a class of men, of animals, of plants, and since the principle (arche) of these is the male and the female (cf. 731b18!), it will surely be for the sake of generation that the male and the female are present in all that exists.

The Greek text of the manuscripts has en tois ousin here, which should be translated in all that exists. H. J. Drossaart Lulofs corrected this to en
Aristotle on the Dissection of Plants and Animals, and his Concept of the Instrumental SoulBody, Ancient Philosophy, 27 (2007): 95106. 39 Cf. Meteor. I 2, 339a29; Metaph. A 3, 983b7; 984a18; 4, 985a32; 5, 986b6; 987a7; Gener. corr. I 3, 318a9. See also the opposite expression he kata to eidos arche in Phys. I 9, 192a34.

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tois 5ech4 ousin; that is to say, he proposes to read: in all kinds of living creatures which have sexual dierentiation.40 However, there is no sound basis for Drossaart Lulofs textual change. We should assume that Aristotle deliberately wrote in all that exists. It then becomes easier to see that Aristotles entire cosmology and theology are set up on the basis of his overall biologist framework.41 In the end Aristotle assumed only two principles, the principle of Form and the principle of Matter.42 He presented God as the formal principle, which through his Power (dynamis) generates life in matter of the purest kind, the divine Ether. In its turn, Ether is operative as a life-generating principle for the sublunary sphere, which supplies the material principle for all that is born and perishes, just as the female partner supplies the material principle for a new specimen that is generated by the power (dynamis) which passes on the soul-principle and formal principle through the semen of the father specimen.43 The fact that Aristotle talks about all that exists means not only that he takes the nonsexual generatio spontanea as the result of a male and a female principle,44 but also that he sees the Origin (as the principle of eidos) and matter (as the passive principle) in the relation of male and female. Over against Platos Maker God Aristotle posits his Father God.45

DEGREES OF HIGHER AND LOWER IN VALUE, BETTER OR LESS GOOD, MORE OR LESS DIVINE AND MORE OR LESS PURE Living creatures who must be assigned to the element Fire are therefore living creatures that possess a soul-principle and a matching instrumental soul-body that guarantees a higher quality of life than that of plants with their nutritive soul and their earthy soul-body, that of shes with their

H. J. Drossaart Lulofs OCT (1965; repr. 2005) 47. D. M. Balme (1972) 58 has: male and female exist in those that have them. A. L. Peck (1942) 131 read with ms Z: are present in the individuals which are male and female. Likewise P. Louis (1961) 47. 41 On the question of the relation of biology to metaphysics, cf. J. G. Lennox, Aristotles Biology and Aristotles Philosophy, in A Companion, edited by Gill and Pellegrin, 292315. 42 Cf. Phys. II 7, 198a227. See also Plutarch, De Iside et Osiridi 370c Aristotle, De philosophia fr. 6c Ross; 1009 Gigon, and Aristotle, Phys. I 9, which will be discussed below. Against Plato, whom he blames for assuming only two principles (Ideas and Matter), Aristotle insists that Gods power guides a natural body which functions as an instrument or ecient cause. Cf. Metaph. A 9, 991b35; Gener. corr. II 9, 335b7. 43 Cf. Gener. anim. I 2, 716a1517: That is why in the universe as a whole the earths nature is thought of as female and mother, while the sky and sun or such others are called begetters and fathers, translated by D. M. Balme (1972) 23. 44 He makes this very explicit in Gener. anim. III 11, 762a35b1, when he speaks about the material principle in processes of spontaneous generation! 45 Cf. A. P. Bos, God as Father and Maker in Philo of Alexandria and its Background in Aristotelian Thought, Elenchos, 24 (2003): 31132.

40

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sensitive soul and their water-containing soul-body, and that of four-footed mammals with their soul-body that contains air. In many crucial places in Aristotles writings we encounter the same scheme of higher and lower in value (time), better and less good (agathon), more or less pure (katharos) and more or less divine (theion).46 At the beginning of Generation of animals II 1, 731b1830 Aristotle also seems to place his entire cosmology in a scheme of more and less good and more and less divine. The basic distinction there is between the eternal and divine entities among beings and all the rest. This divine is then designated as the cause of all that is more good in non-eternal matters, which take part in what is more and less. Soul is said there to be better than body and on account of the soul the ensouled is better than the non-ensouled, existence better than non-existence and life better than non-life. For these perishable creatures generation is positive to the extent that, in the way of perishable creatures, they can share in eternity (viz. of the kind).47 The next step is crucial. The male and the female are the principles of all generation. The principle of movement is better and more divine than matter, for the principle of movement brings about the structure (logos) and the form (eidos). This better and more divine principle is the male (732a1 9). This male principle occurs separately from the female in all living creatures which are higher in value and more self-sucient, i.e. in all fourfooted mammals (732a1322). According to the passage in Generation of animals II 3, 736b2935 discussed above, that which makes reproduction possible is something of the more divine (astral) element, namely vital heat.48 This vital heat is not identical with Ether, but it is deriving from Ether and enclosed in semen. According to Aristotle, then, vital heat is responsible for all processes of sexual reproduction and even, witness Generation of animals III 11, for the non-sexual generation of testaceans, etc., in which a male and a female side can nevertheless be distinguished. This pneuma can there also be called an equivalent (analogon) of the astral element, because, like Ether, it is an instrumental body of the soul.

THE PRINCIPLE OF THE GOOD AND THE DIVINE The entire scheme of more and less good and more and less divine implies that there is a standard, the Good and the Divine. There must be a rst and
46 Cf. J. G. Lennox, Aristotles Philosophy of Biology: Studies in the Origins of Life Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) ch. 7: Kinds, forms of kinds, and the more and the less in Aristotles biology (16081). A. Coles (1997) 293 observed: This conspicuous application of the more-and-less to faculties or functional capacities . . . is a relatively neglected feature of Aristotles biological thought. See also, 296 . 47 Gener. anim. II 1, 731b312a1; De generatione et corruptione II 9, 336b2834. 48 For the divinity of Ether, cf. Cael. I 2, 269a30. For its being higher in value, Cael. I 2, 269b1517; 3, 270a12b11.

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highest.49 It is important that he talks about it in his study On the principles in Physics I and there clearly demarcates his position from the logicist position of Plato. Plato had set the Good against the not Good (in the form of the Great and Small). Aristotle observes that two contradictory principles do not admit of mediation. Aristotles alternative is the distinction between the Good and the negation of the Good, but in between he situates matter, as that which by nature pursues and desires the Good,50 and he compares the relation of the Good to matter there with the relation between the male and the female: the female pursues and desires the formal principle, which it cannot produce itself.51 To achieve being, however, matter must be set in motion by the Origin, just as menstrual uid must be dynamized by semen (Metaph. L 6, 1071b2931). The Good causes this movement as object of desire and by power of attraction (Metaph. L 6, 1072a20b6). By the same token, the author of On the cosmos 6, 397b21; 399a31 calls God the begetter (genetor) of all that lives.52 Again, the biologist slant of Aristotles systematic philosophy is in evidence here.53 The motif of God as highest in value is impressively elaborated in the comparison of the cosmic order established by the administrative apparatus serving the Persian Great King (On the cosmos 6, 396a6b6).

ARISTOTLES CONCEPTION IN CONTRAST TO PLATOS We have now seen that the essentially new element in Aristotles analysis of living nature is his insight that the levels of life are connected to each other in a very structural way. Dependent on the Origin of all life, the transcendent, separate Intellect, is the vital level of the divine celestial beings, who are not subject to generation and decay, but are bound to a natural body, Ether, which perpetually moves in a circular course.54
49 ton kai akrotaton). Aristotle there refers to enkyklioi logoi. Mu. 6, Cael. I 9, 279a32 (pro taton; 399a26: archegonos aitia. 397b12: kyrio 50 Physics I 9, 192a1119. Cf. Metaph. L 10, 1075a25b1; Gener. corr. II 9, 335b76a15. 51 Phys. I 9, 192a203; Gener. corr. II 10, 336b278. 52 Platos Maker metaphor is no longer viable for Aristotle. 53 Cf. M. Furth, Substance, Form and Psyche: an Aristotelean Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) 5: Aristotles metaphysical inquiries . . . were (or came to be) motivated in an extremely concrete and specic way by his theoretical preoccupations in biology. 54 These divine celestial beings cannot represent the whole of Aristotles theology as R. Bodeus wants us to believe. Aristotle disliked anarchy. There should be one leader is his nal statement in Metaphysics L 10, as the conclusion of an inquiry regarding the Good of the cosmos. Aristotle rejects the position that the Good is comparable to order, like the order in an army. There must be a principle of that order (like a general). That is also the reason for his rejection of Platos cosmic theology of the Phaedrus myth. Cf. A. Preus (1990) 488: Aristotle supposes the unication of the universe to be essentially formal and nal, and M. L. Gill, First

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Dependent on Ether are all levels of life in the sphere of generation and decay. The most knowable of these are the levels of human beings, animals and plants, but whereas human beings can realize all vital functions, this does not apply to animals, much less to plants. Where Plato explained these dierences in levels and quality of life by speaking about degeneration of (originally perfect) souls,55 and paid scant attention to dierentiation in the bodies where these souls ended up, Aristotle followed a dierent line of thought. His starting-point was that the highest living creatures display all vital functions and the lowest lack the higher ones. He even emphasizes that, in the development of the human embryo, the vegetative function develops rst. This leads him to conclude that all life in the sublunary world exists thanks to soul-principles which guide instrumental bodies that are more or less compound. Human life is possible when a high-quality soulprinciple, with a high degree of vital heat, occurs in an instrumental body of Air, Water and Earth. The animal life of birds and four-footed mammals is the result of a soul-principle with a lower degree of vital heat and an instrumental body of Air, Water and Earth. Fish have a soulprinciple with an even lower degree of vital heat and an instrumental body of Water and Earth, in which the earthy element predominates. Aristotles new insight into the structural unity of vital manifestations gives him a decisive reason to reject Platos conception of parts of the soul which are situated in dierent parts of the body. It also prompts him to dismiss, in the cosmos as a whole, dierent segments of the World Soul, connected with Fire or Air.56 His alternative to Platos doctrine of soul, including the World Soul, is a theory in which the unity of all life resides in the power of the vitalizing principle, corresponding to the predominance of higher or lower natural bodies in the instrumental body of the soul. This view of vital levels may suggest that Aristotle considered his conception related to that of Anaxagoras,57 in the sense that he presented the four sublunary elements as matter, as a cosmic seed, from which all levels of life are developed through the eect of the vitalizing Power proceeding from the Origin of all life on the female, passive principle. In this sense the theology of On the cosmos 6 about the Power proceeding from God as the begetter of all life is essentially Aristotelian. Life of higher quality manifests itself where a vital principle of higher quality is operative. Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam

philosophy in Aristotle, in A Companion, edited by Gill and Pellegrin, 34773, esp. 369. See, however, also M. Ransome Johnson (2005) 27186. 55 Plato also explains animal souls as failed human souls. Cf. Arist. Anim. I 1, 402b35. 56 Anim. I 5, 411a923. 57 Cf. Metaph. L 6, 1071b262a7.

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