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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

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Book I Chapter 49

Chapter 49: On the soul

On the soul.¹²⁴⁷

1a.1 · ⟨Aëtius⟩: soul and self-movement

Thales was the first to declare the soul to be always in motion, or self-moving.

Pythagoras calls it a number that moves itself, taking number to stand for intellect.

Xenocrates holds the same view.

Alcmaeon considers it a nature that moves itself in eternal motion, and for this reason regards it as immortal and akin to divine things.¹²⁴⁸

1a.2 · Harmony and the senses

Dicaearchus calls it a harmony of the four elements.

Asclepiades the physician calls it the joint exercise of the senses.¹²⁴⁹

1a.3 · Aristotle: first actuality

Aristotle calls it the first actuality of a natural body equipped with organs and possessing life potentially. “Actuality” is to be understood as form and activity.¹²⁵⁰

1b.1 · ⟨Aëtius⟩: air, breath, and fire

Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Archelaus, [Diogenes] call it air-like.

The Stoics call it intelligent, warm breath.

Parmenides and Hippasus call it fiery.¹²⁵¹

1b.2 · Democritus and further elemental accounts

Democritus calls it a fiery compound of things discernible by reason, spherical in their shapes and fiery in their power; this compound is a body.¹²⁵²

Heraclitus defined the soul as like light.

Leucippus holds that the soul is made of fire.

Diogenes of Apollonia holds that the soul is made of air.

Hippon holds that the soul is made of water.¹²⁵³

1b.3 · Xenarchus: form and the body

Xenarchus the Peripatetic and certain others of the same school call it perfection and actuality in respect of form, existing in its own right and at the same time ordered together with the body.¹²⁵⁴

1b.4 · Epicurus: a fourfold mixture

Epicurus calls it a mixture of four constituents: something fiery, something airy, something breath-like, and a fourth, unnamed constituent. This last was, for him, the element responsible for perception. Of these constituents, breath produces motion; air, rest; the warm constituent, the manifest warmth of the body; and the unnamed constituent, perception within us. For perception is present in none of the elements that have names.¹²⁵⁵

1c · Hermes: soul as thinking substance

From Hermes.

Soul, then, is an eternal substance capable of thought, having its own reason as its object of thought.¹²⁵⁶

2 · Plato: a shortened quotation

From Plato, from the Phaedrus.

For the colorless, shapeless, intangible substance of soul, truly ⟨existing⟩.¹²⁵⁷

3.1 · Hermes: body depends upon soul

From Hermes.

Soul, then, is an incorporeal substance. For if it has a body, it will no longer be able to preserve itself. Every body needs being; it also needs life established in an orderly arrangement. Everything that comes into being must also undergo change. What comes into being does so with magnitude; ⟨for⟩ in coming into being it grows. Everything that grows is followed by diminution, and diminution by destruction. But through receiving a form of life it lives and shares in being ⟨through⟩ soul.¹²⁵⁸

3.2 · The source of rational life

What causes another thing to be is itself already a being. By “being” here I mean coming to exist in reason and sharing in intelligent life; it is soul that supplies intelligent life. It is called a living creature because of life, rational because of intelligence, and mortal because of the body. Soul, therefore, is an incorporeal ⟨substance⟩ whose power does not change. How can one speak of an [intelligent] living creature unless there is a substance that also supplies life? Nor can one call it rational unless there is a thinking substance that also supplies intelligent life.¹²⁵⁹

3.3 · Bodily constitution and intelligence

Intelligence does not reach everyone, because of the body’s constitution in relation to its harmony. If warmth predominates in the constitution, the ⟨person⟩ becomes light and ardent; if cold predominates, heavy and sluggish. For nature adjusts the constitution of the body to its harmony. There are three forms of harmony: that according to warmth, that according to cold, and that according to the intermediate condition.¹²⁶⁰

3.4 · The harmony of the stars

Nature adjusts it according to the star that has prevailed in the blending of the stars. Soul receives a ⟨body⟩ as fate has ordained and gives life to this work of nature. Nature therefore makes the body’s harmony resemble the blending of the stars and unifies its many mixed constituents in accordance with the stars’ harmony, so that they have sympathy with one another. For the purpose of the stars’ harmony is to engender sympathy according to their fate.¹²⁶¹

1247.Psychē, “soul,” names the principle of life as well as the subject of thought and desire in these excerpts. The opening reports give competing definitions; they are not a single doctrine of Stobaeus. Letters follow Wachsmuth’s numbering, while decimal subdivisions are modern aids to comparison. His apparatus records that the heading is absent from F and P.

1248.Wachsmuth identifies this group editorially with Aëtius IV.2.1, 3, 4, 2, 7, 8, 6 (Diels, p. 386). The translated Latin attribution is marked by angle brackets. “First” is the report’s claim, not an independently established chronology. Thales’ alternatives distinguish continual motion from motion originating in the soul itself; Alcmaeon explicitly connects everlasting motion with immortality.

1249.The four elements are earth, water, air, and fire. Harmonia suggests their ordered combination. The unusual syngymnasia, rendered “joint exercise,” is retained; the report gives no further explanation of how the senses together constitute soul. A long list of topics found here in the manuscripts is excluded by Wachsmuth as a reader’s marginal summary; it is not part of his printed main text.

1250.The Greek first prints endelecheian, with delta, then entelecheian, with tau; both are rendered according to the technical definition given here. The spelling difference remains visible on the facing page. “First actuality” identifies the body’s being constituted as living, distinguished from its potential for life. The gloss associates this actuality with eidos, form, and energeia, activity.

1251.The editorial attribution refers to Aëtius IV.3.2-11 (Diels, p. 387). Wachsmuth brackets Diogenes as an intrusive name here; a distinct notice of Diogenes of Apollonia follows. Pneuma is rendered “breath” in this physical definition. This should not be taken to mean an immaterial spirit; the wording expressly attributes warmth to it.

1252.The things discernible by reason are the constituents of the compound; the report describes their shapes and power without printing the word “atoms.” Logōi theōrētōn does not here make them incorporeal. Wachsmuth retains hoper, “which,” referring to the compound, rather than Usener’s proposed dioper, “therefore.”

1253.The wording distinguishes “like light” from “made of fire.” These are brief reports under the philosophers’ names, not necessarily quotations of their own words. The English supplies “holds” where Greek gives only the name and a compressed predicate.

1254.The report joins two claims: soul has its own standing, yet is coordinated with body. “In its own right” renders kath’ heautēn without deciding the stronger question of separate existence. Hairesis here is a philosophical school; “Peripatetic” identifies the Aristotelian tradition.

1255.This fourfold mixture is not the familiar set of earth, water, air, and fire. The report distinguishes air from breath, and reserves the power of perception for a fourth constituent whose name it does not give. “Produces” carries the concluding empoiein back through the parallel clauses.

1256.The statement recurs at the beginning of excerpt 6 with a different word order. Wachsmuth retains both occurrences, although Heeren omitted this one. Logos is rendered “reason,” and noēma “object of thought”; the clause is compressed, and can also suggest that soul’s own reason constitutes its thought. The heading attributes the passage to Hermes.

1257.Phaedrus 247c. As printed here, the quotation is only a noun phrase. In Plato’s fuller sentence, psychēs, “of soul,” belongs with the following “pilot,” intellect, which sees true being; it does not define true being as the soul’s substance. This excerpt stops before those words. The English exposes the resulting compression rather than importing the omitted continuation. Wachsmuth supplies ousa from Plato. Compare the Greek text of Phaedrus 247c reproduced by Luke Dysinger at ldysinger.com/@texts/0-03_plato/04_phaedrus.htm.

1258.The subject of the final sentence is the body. The argument makes soul the source of its life. The awkward first “needs,” deitai, remains in Wachsmuth’s text, although he proposes deleting it in the apparatus. The English retains both occurrences; it does not silently replace the sentence with a smoother conjecture. The supplied gar and dia are marked.

1259.The printed pro tou, written protou, is Wachsmuth’s correction and gives priority to the cause; the neuter on is rendered “a being.” The creature is the understood subject of “is called.” Wachsmuth supplies ousia and rejects noeron in the first question, preserving a distinction between life as such and intelligent life. These signs are retained.

1260.The negative is understood as “not everyone,” rather than “no one,” in view of the differences that follow. Harmonia is the body’s ordered balance or attunement. The account links temperament to a warm, cold, or intermediate constitution. The supplied Greek article before “cold” has no separate English equivalent; the supplied anthrōpos is marked as “person.”

1261.Sympatheia means a correspondence or mutual responsiveness, not simply shared emotion. The excerpt explains the body through stellar influences and fate. Wachsmuth questions whether “star” should be deleted, but retains it; the English does likewise. “Nature” supplies the continuing subject of the opening verb. The final “their” is left attached to the stars as in the Greek.