On The Soul   

pleased, being bold or fearful, being angry, perceiving, thinking. All

these are regarded as modes of movement, and hence it might be

inferred that the soul is moved. This, however, does not necessarily

follow. We may admit to the full that being pained or pleased, or

thinking, are movements (each of them a 'being moved'), and that the

movement is originated by the soul. For example we may regard anger or

fear as such and such movements of the heart, and thinking as such and

such another movement of that organ, or of some other; these

modifications may arise either from changes of place in certain

parts or from qualitative alterations (the special nature of the parts

and the special modes of their changes being for our present purpose

irrelevant). Yet to say that it is the soul which is angry is as

inexact as it would be to say that it is the soul that weaves webs

or builds houses. It is doubtless better to avoid saying that the soul

pities or learns or thinks and rather to say that it is the man who

does this with his soul. What we mean is not that the movement is in

the soul, but that sometimes it terminates in the soul and sometimes

starts from it, sensation e.g. coming from without inwards, and

reminiscence starting from the soul and terminating with the

movements, actual or residual, in the sense organs.

The case of mind is different; it seems to be an independent

substance implanted within the soul and to be incapable of being

destroyed. If it could be destroyed at all, it would be under the

blunting influence of old age. What really happens in respect of

mind in old age is, however, exactly parallel to what happens in the

case of the sense organs; if the old man could recover the proper kind

of eye, he would see just as well as the young man. The incapacity

of old age is due to an affection not of the soul but of its

vehicle, as occurs in drunkenness or disease. Thus it is that in old

age the activity of mind or intellectual apprehension declines only

through the decay of some other inward part; mind itself is

impassible. Thinking, loving, and hating are affections not of mind,