The Mind and the Brain: Being the Authorised Translation of L'Âme et le CorpsBinet, Alfred
Philosophy
The Mind and the Brain: Being the Authorised Translation of L'Âme et le Corps
Binet, Alfred
Mind and body
If we had to seek paternity for ideas I would much rather turn to
Aristotle. It was not without some surprise that I was able to
convince myself that the above theory of the relations between the
soul and the body is to be found almost in its entirety in the great
philosopher. It is true that it is mixed up with many accessory ideas
which are out of date and which we now reject; but the essential of
the theory is there very clearly formulated, and that is the important
point. A few details on this subject will not be out of place. I give
them, not from the original source, which I am not erudite enough to
consult direct, but from the learned treatise which Bain has published
on the psychology of Aristotle, as an appendix to his work on the
Senses and the Intelligence.
The whole metaphysics of Aristotle is dominated by the distinction
between form and matter. This distinction is borrowed from the most
familiar fact in the sensible world--the form of solid objects. We may
name a substance without troubling ourselves as to the form it
possesses, and we may name the form without regard to the substance
that it clothes. But this distinction is a purely abstract one, for
there can be no real separation of form from matter, no form without
matter, and no matter without form. The two terms are correlative;
each one implies the other, and neither can be realised or actualised
without the other. Every individual substance can be considered from a
triple point of view: 1st, form; 2nd, matter; and 3rd, the compound or
aggregate of form and matter, the inseparable _Ens_, which transports
us out of the domain of logic and abstraction into that of reality.
Aristotle recognises between these two logical correlatives a
difference in rank. Form is superior, nobler, the higher in dignity,
nearer to the perfect entity; matter is inferior, more modest, more
distant from perfection. On account of its hierarchical inferiority,
matter is often presented as the second, or _correlatum_, and form as
the first, or _relatum_. This difference in rank is so strongly
marked, that these two correlations are likewise conceived in a
different form--that of the potential and the actual. Matter is the
potential, imperfect, roughly outlined element which is not yet
actual, and may perhaps never become so. Form is the actual, the
energy, the entelechy which actualises the potential and determines
the final compound.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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