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PROLOGUE 436A1–B8 436a1 Since it was determined about soul in itself, and each virtue from the point of view of it, the next thing is to make a consideration about animals, and everything that has life, as to what are their proper and what their common operations . Accordingly let the things that were said about soul be underlying, and let us speak about the rest, and first about what is first. 436a6 The greatest both of the common and of the proper features of animals are seen to be common to both body and soul. 436a8 For instance, sense and memory, and anger and desire, and appetite as a whole, and with these pleasure and pain. For almost all of these are present in all animals. And with these, some things that are common to everything that participates in life, and some to some of the animals. Of these, the greatest are four pairs in number, namely wakefulness and sleep, and youth and old age, and inhalation and exhalation, and life and death. About these it must be considered what each of them is and for what causes it occurs. But it also belongs to the student of nature to discover first principles concerning health and sickness. 436a18 For it is impossible for either health or sickness to occur in what lacks life. Therefore, in general, in the case of most students of nature, and of the physicians who pursue the art more philosophically, the former finish with what belongs to medicine, but the latter begin medicine with what belongs to nature. 436b1 That all the abovementioned are common to soul and body is not unclear . For with respect to all, some take place together with the sense-power, some through the sense-power. And with respect to certain ones, some exist as affections of it, some as conditions, some as protections and benefits, and some as destructions and privations. And that sense is present in the soul by means of the body is clear both through discussion and apart from discussion. Commentary As The Philosopher says in On the Soul III, “just as things are separable from matter, so also is what pertains to intellect”:1 for everything is intelligible inasmuch as it is separable from matter. Hence what is by na14 ture separate from matter is of its very self intelligible in actuality; but what is abstracted by us from conditions of matter is made intelligible in actuality by the light of our agent intellect. And because the habits of a power are specifically distinguished according to differentiation of that which is the per se object of the power, the habits of the sciences, by which intellect is perfected, are necessarily distinguished according to differentiation of “the separable from matter,” and so the Philosopher in Metaphysics VI distinguishes genera of science according to different manners of separation from matter: what is separate from matter according to being and nature pertains to the metaphysician; what is separate from matter according to nature and not according to being pertains to the mathematician; and what includes sensible matter in its nature pertains to the natural philosopher.2 And just as different genera of science are distinguished according as things are in different ways separable from matter, so also in individual sciences, and especially in natural science, the parts of a science are distinguished according to different manners of separation and concretion. And because universals are more separate from matter, in natural science one proceeds from universals to what is less universal, as the Philosopher teaches in Physics I.3 And so he began the teaching of natural science with what is most common to all natural things, namely movement and principles of movement, and from there proceeded by way of concretion or application of common principles, to determinate mobile things, some of which are living bodies. Concerning these he also proceeded in a similar way, dividing this consideration into three parts. First he considered soul in itself, in an abstraction , as it were; second he has a consideration of what belongs to soul according to a concretion or application to body, but in general; third he has a consideration that applies all this to individual species of animals and plants, determining what is proper to each species. Thus, the first consideration is contained in the book On the Soul; the third consideration is contained in books that he wrote on animals and plants; the intermediate consideration is contained in books...

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