Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato — Plato — John Shaqi
Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato
Plato · en
subject, are of themselves incorporeal, though they become corporeal by
the participation of that in which they subsist, so that they are said
to be and are material in consequence of what they suffer from matter.
Qualities therefore, and still more natures, and in a still greater
degree the vegetable life, preserve the incorporeal in themselves. Since
however, sense exhibits another more conspicuous life, pertaining to
beings which are moved according to impulse and place, this must be
established prior to that, as being a more proper principle, and as the
supplier of a certain better form, that of a self-moved animal, and which
naturally precedes plants rooted in the earth. The animal however, is not
accurately self-moved. For the whole is not such throughout they whole;
but a part moves and a part is moved. This therefore is the apparent
self-moved. Hence, prior to this it is necessary there should be that
which is truly self-moved, and which according to the whole of itself
moves ands is moved, that the apparently self-moved may be the image of
this. And indeed the soul which moves the body must be considered as a
more proper self-moved essence. This, however, is twofold, the one
rational, the other irrational. For that there is a rational soul is
evident: or has not every one a cosensation of himself, more clear or
more obscure, when converted to himself in the attentions to and
investigations of himself, and in the vital and Gnostic animadversions of
himself? For the essence which is capable of this, and which can collect
universals by reasoning, will very justly be rational. The irrational
soul also, though it does not appear to investigate these things, and to
reason with itself, yet at the same time it moves bodies from place to
place, being itself previously moved from itself; for at different times
it exerts a different impulse. Does it therefore move itself from one
impulse to another? or it is moved by something else, as, for instance,
by the whole rational soul in the universe? But it would be absurd to say
that the energies of every irrational soul are not the energies of that
soul, but of one more divine; since they are infinite, and mingled with
much of the base and imperfect. For this would be just the same as to say
that the irrational enemies are the energies of the rational soul. I omit
to mention the absurdity of supposing that the whole essence is not
generative of its proper energies. For if the irrational soul is a
certain essence, it will have peculiar energies of its own, not imparted
from something else, but proceeding from itself. This irrational soul,
therefore, will also move itself at different times to different impulses.
But if it moves itself, it will be converted to itself. If, however, this
be the case, it will have a separate subsistence, and will not be in a
subject. It is therefore rational, if it looks to itself: for in being
converted to, it surveys itself. For when extended to things external, it