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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

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Book I Chapter 45

Chapter 45: Plants and living creatures

How plants grew, and whether they are living creatures.¹¹⁶⁰

1 · Plato and Thales: plants as ensouled creatures

Plato and Thales hold that plants too are ensouled living creatures. This is evident also from their swaying, from their holding their branches under tension, and from their yielding to applied loads and then springing back so forcefully that they lift weights along with them.¹¹⁶¹

2 · Aristotle: soul without animal life

Aristotle holds that they are ensouled, but are not animals. For animals possess impulse and perception, and some also possess reason.¹¹⁶²

1160.Wachsmuth supplies the source attribution Aëtius V.26.1-2 (Diels, p. 438). Related material is also transmitted after chapter 41; the present edition follows his printed arrangement. The two reports below use different criteria for what counts as a zōion.

1161.The movements of branches supply the evidence adduced for life and soul. “Applied loads” renders epagōgai in light of the concluding reference to weights. The report treats elastic movement as a sign of animation; it does not distinguish the mechanisms in modern botanical terms.

1162.Here zōia has the narrower force “animals,” contrasted with plants. Having soul does not by itself satisfy the additional criteria of impulse and perception. The printed aisthētika, “capable of perception,” is corrected from aisthēta in F and P with the aid of the parallel Placita passage. Compare I.42.1 and the heading of chapter 43.