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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

Reading language

Book I Chapter 49

17 · Porphyry: soul between indivisible and divisible

From Porphyry’s Points of Departure toward the Intelligibles.

Soul is something intermediate between indivisible substance and ⟨the⟩ substance divided among bodies. Intellect is simply indivisible substance, and bodies are simply divisible. Qualities and forms in matter concern bodies, ⟨the⟩ divisible things.¹³⁴⁴

18 · Attachment to bodily affections

In the same work.

Soul is bound to body by turning toward the affections that come from it, and is released through freedom from those affections.¹³⁴⁵

19.1 · Turning outward and inward

In the same work.

Soul possesses the rational principles of all things, but acts in accordance with them either when summoned by something else to bring them into use, or when it turns itself inward toward them. When summoned by something else in relation to things outside, it delivers perceptions ⟨inward⟩. When it enters into itself toward intellect, it comes to be engaged in acts of intellection. And neither perception from outside nor intellection ⟨within⟩ ever occurs in any other way.¹³⁴⁶

19.2 · Perception, image, and intellection

Just as a living creature’s perceptions do not occur without its sense organs being affected, so acts of intellection do not occur without imagination. The analogy is this: as the impression is an accompaniment of a perceiving living creature, so the image is an accompaniment of the living creature’s soul, following intellection.¹³⁴⁷

20 · A substance whose being is in life

In the same work.

Soul is a substance without magnitude, immaterial and indestructible, possessing its being in a life that has its living from itself.¹³⁴⁸

21.1 · How bodies and souls are affected

In the same work.

Being affected is one thing for bodies and another for incorporeal things. For bodies, being affected involves alteration. But the soul’s attachments and affections are activities, bearing no resemblance to the heating and cooling of bodies. So if being affected invariably involves alteration, incorporeal things must be called wholly unaffected. For those separated from matter and bodies were identical with activities; those that approach matter and bodies are themselves unaffected, while the things in which they are observed are affected.¹³⁴⁹

21.2 · A separate harmony

For when a living creature perceives, its soul resembles a separate harmony that moves the tuned strings from itself; . . . . . an inseparable harmony. The cause that moves the living creature because it is ensouled is analogous to the musician because he is attuned; the bodies struck through an affection of sense are analogous to the tuned strings.¹³⁵⁰

21.3 · The musician and the string

For there too it is not the separate harmony that has been affected, but the string. The musician moves it according to the harmony within himself; yet the string would not have moved musically, even if the musician wished it, unless the harmony prescribed this.¹³⁵¹

22 · Death as a certain kind of life

In the same work.

For a substance whose being is in life and whose affections are life, death too consists in a certain kind of life, not in the complete deprivation of life, since being affected was not, in its case, a path to utter lifelessness.¹³⁵²

23.1 · Many souls and one soul

In the same work.

We must not suppose that the plurality of souls arose because of the plurality of bodies. Before bodies, souls are both many and one: the one whole soul does not prevent the many from existing within it, nor do the many divide the one among themselves. For they stand apart without having been cut off or having broken the whole into fragments among themselves. They are present to one another without being confused together or making the whole a heap. They are neither divided by boundaries nor confused with one another, just as the many kinds of knowledge in one soul have not been confused together. Nor, again, do they reside in soul as bodies would, as something different in substance; rather, they were activities of the soul of certain kinds.¹³⁵³

23.2 · Unlimited power and distinction by form

The nature of soul has unlimited power, and in any given part of it . . . . . soul; all are one, and yet the whole is other than them all. For just as bodies, when divided without limit, do not end in incorporeal things, their portions acquiring their difference in respect of bulk, so soul, being something living, is distinguished without limit according to forms, with differences of form; the whole exists both with these and without them. For what is like division in its case is difference while identity remains.¹³⁵⁴

23.3 · Unity despite bodily involvement

If, in the case of bodies, where difference prevailed over identity, no intervening incorporeal thing severed their unity, and all remain united in substance though distinguished by qualities and other forms, what must we suppose of incorporeal life belonging to form? In it identity has prevailed over difference, and nothing other than form underlies it; from it bodies too receive their unity. Nor does a body joined to it cut off this unity, although it obstructs its activities in many respects.¹³⁵⁵

23.4 · The power of the whole in each part

Its identity itself, on account of itself, makes and discovers all things through its activity in forms extending without limit. Any given part is capable of all things when free of bodies, just as any given part of seed possesses the power of the whole seed.¹³⁵⁶

1344.The title identifies the source of excerpts 17-23; subsequent headings say “In the same work.” Nous is rendered “intellect,” ousia “substance,” and enyla eidē “forms in matter.” The two articles supplied by Wachsmuth are marked in both languages. The final supplied article attaches “divisible” to bodies; the English preserves that construction.

1345.Epistrophē is a turning toward something; here its direction is toward bodily pathē, things undergone or affections. Apatheia names freedom from them, rather than indifference in the ordinary modern sense of “apathy.” The sentence connects bondage with the soul’s orientation toward bodily experience.

1346.Logoi here are rendered “rational principles,” the contents by which soul operates, rather than the proposed “accounts” of Plato’s preceding argument. Procheirisis is their bringing into use. The two inward-direction words are supplied by Usener in Wachsmuth’s text. The compressed last clause uses the editor’s adverb allēi, “in another way”; the English understands its omitted verb from the preceding sentence.

1347.Phantasia is the image-presenting activity, here “imagination,” and phantasma the image. The final analogy is textually difficult: Wachsmuth questions psychēs, “of soul,” and suggests changing the closing reference to intellection. Both printed words are retained. The English supplies the repeated “accompaniment” from the first half of the comparison; it does not claim that the difficult wording is settled.

1348.Amegethēs denies spatial magnitude. The dative participle echousēi, “having,” agrees with life, while kektēmenē, “possessing,” agrees with soul. The English preserves this distinction rather than flattening the whole sentence into a list of attributes of soul.

1349.The contrast depends on defining pathos through tropē, alteration. Oikeiōseis, rendered “attachments,” can also mean acts of appropriation or making something one’s own; these and the soul’s affections are classified as activities. The printed past tense ēn is retained as “were.” The final clause distinguishes incorporeal activity from the bodily subject in which it is observed.

1350.The asterisks mark a gap in the source, retained as dots in English. Most of the parallel member ending “an inseparable harmony” is missing; the apparatus suggests a reference to perception itself, but no reconstruction is inserted. The next clause’s compressed “because it is ensouled” qualifies the living creature, and the musician’s attunement supplies the analogy. This separate, active harmony differs from the bodily resultant challenged in Plato’s earlier excerpt.

1351.The separate harmony is the ordering principle according to which the musician acts; the string undergoes the bodily change. The printed legousēs literally means “saying,” here rendered “prescribed.” The apparatus proposes the alternative verbs “willing” and “commanding”; the English does not silently replace the printed personification with either.

1352.The assertion follows the distinction between bodily alteration and the soul’s activities. “A certain kind of life” translates poiai zōēi; the passage does not specify that kind here. Azōia is lifelessness, which is expressly distinguished from the death predicated of this living substance. The editor’s corrected infinitive to pathein, “being affected,” is followed.

1353.The many souls are distinguished without spatial partition, and the whole is not an aggregate or heap. The final sentences use kinds of knowledge as an analogy: their plurality need not introduce substances foreign to soul. The nearest subjects of “reside” and “were activities” are the kinds of knowledge; the English follows that connection.

1354.The gap after “of it” is printed by Wachsmuth, who suggests that words such as “form” or “whole” may have been lost; no conjecture is inserted. The bodily analogy concerns continued bodily character under division, while soul’s distinctions are eidikai, differences of form. The printed neuter zōtikon is represented by “something living.” Identity and difference remain simultaneous, not successive states.

1355.The English divides the long question for readability while retaining its comparison. Eidikē, “belonging to form,” contrasts with differences of bodily bulk. The distinction at the end is between interrupting unity and obstructing activity: bodily involvement is allowed to do the latter without doing the former. The printed clause deriving bodily unity from this life is retained, although the apparatus records a proposal to delete it.

1356.The printed smooth-breathing αὐτήν is retained. “On account of itself” interprets the emphatic reference to identity in this awkward clause; the apparatus proposes alternative wording. The qualification “when free of bodies” is essential to the claim about the part’s power. Seed supplies the passage’s analogy for a whole productive capacity present in a part; this is the author’s explanatory image, not a claim added from modern biology.