30.5 · Is spirit a third element?

“Let these, then,” I said, “be distinguished for us as two kinds present in soul. But what belongs to spirit, that with which we become angry: is it a ⟨third⟩, or would it be of the same nature as one of these?”

“Perhaps,” he said, “as the other, ⟨the⟩ appetitive element.”¹⁴⁰⁷

30.6 · Leontius and the conflict of impulses

“But,” I said, “I once heard a story that I believe. Leontius, son of Aglaion, was coming up from the Piraeus, outside the northern wall, when he noticed corpses lying beside the public executioner. He wanted to look, yet at the same time felt disgust and turned himself away. For a while he struggled and covered his face; but, overcome by desire, he pulled his eyes open, ran toward the corpses, and said: ‘There you are, you wretches! Fill yourselves with the lovely sight!’”

“I have heard it too,” he said.

“This story,” I said, “shows that anger sometimes makes war on desires, as one thing against another.”

“It does,” he said.¹⁴⁰⁸

31.1 · Spirit as the natural ally of reason

In the same work.

“Is it, then, different from this too, or is it a kind of rational element, so that there are not three kinds in soul but two, the rational and the appetitive? Or, just as three classes held the city together, the money-making, the auxiliary, and the deliberative, is this spirited element likewise a third in soul, naturally an ally of the rational, unless corrupted by a bad upbringing?”

“It must be a third,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “if it is indeed different from the rational element, just as it has been shown to differ from the appetitive.”¹⁴⁰⁹

31.2 · Children and animals

“But that is not difficult to show,” he said. “One could see it even in children [not]: from birth they are full of spirit, while some, it seems to me, never partake of reasoning, and most do so only late.”

“Yes, by Zeus,” I said, “well said. One could also see in animals that what you say is so. In addition, the words of Homer that we quoted somewhere above will bear witness:¹⁴¹⁰

31.3 · Homer: rebuking the heart

He struck his breast and rebuked his heart with words.¹⁴¹¹

31.4 · Reason rebukes unreasoning anger

“For here Homer has clearly made what reasons about better and worse rebuke what is unreasonably angry, as one thing rebuking another.”

“What you say is entirely correct,” he said.¹⁴¹²

32.1 · ⟨Iamblichus⟩: Aristotle’s classification

⟨From Iamblichus’s On the Soul.⟩¹⁴¹³

Aristotle, then, reduces the attributes most generally thought to belong to soul to three principal classes: motion, cognition, and fineness of substance, which he sometimes also calls incorporeal subsistence. To these three he refers the various specifically defined opinions, thus finding a limit to their boundless variety and a clear, concise summary.¹⁴¹⁴

32.2 · Ambiguity and incompleteness

But I see much ambiguity and confusion in these terms. Motions involving change and motions belonging to life are not understood in the same way; nor are cognitions that give form and ⟨those⟩ without form, nor the purity of substance belonging to air and that belonging to things incorporeal in themselves. I also see much that is incomplete and deficient in them: these three terms cannot encompass every class of opinion.¹⁴¹⁵

32.3 · Soul composed of spherical atoms

Some refer the substance of soul to the principles underlying the four elements. The primary bodies, they say, are indivisible, prior to the four elements and more elementary than they. Being unmixed and entirely filled with pure primary substance, they admit no division into themselves, however small. These bodies have infinitely many shapes, of which the spherical is one; and soul is composed of the spherical atoms.¹⁴¹⁶

32.4 · Form, quality, and their totality

As some Aristotelians explain it, soul is the form associated with bodies, or a simple incorporeal quality, or a complete essential quality. Beside this opinion stands a position that has not been handed down but could plausibly be proposed: it makes soul the concurrence of all the qualities and the totality constituted from them, whether that which arises subsequently or that which exists beforehand.¹⁴¹⁷

32.5 · Geometrical definitions

Next I set out distinctly those who place the substance of soul within mathematical substance. One kind of this is figure, the limit of extension, together with ⟨the⟩ extension itself. Severus the Platonist defined soul in terms of these very things, while Speusippus placed it in the form of that which is extended in every direction. Someone else might posit it more purely and most completely in their cause, that is, their unification.¹⁴¹⁸

32.6 · Number and its different interpretations

Number, in turn, belongs to another class. Some Pythagoreans connect number with soul simply as it is; Xenocrates does so as self-moving number; Moderatus the Pythagorean, as number ⟨in⟩ encompassing rational principles; and Hippasus, the “hearer” among the Pythagoreans, as a discriminating instrument of the god who fashions the cosmos;¹⁴¹⁹