SOUL AND MIND second actuality When the axe is actually cutting, and the eye is actually seeing, that is second actuality But an axe in a sheath, and the eye of a sleeper, retain a power that they are not actually exercising: that active power is a Wrst actuality It is that kind of actuality that the soul is: the Wrst actuality of a living body The exercise of this actuality is the totality of the vital operations of the organism (2 412b11–413a3) The soul is not only the form, or formal cause, of the living body: it is also the origin of change and motion in the body, and above all it is also the Wnal cause that gives the body its teleological orientation Reproduction is one of the most fundamental vital operations Each living thing strives ‘to reproduce its kind, an animal producing an animal, and a plant a plant, in order that they may have a share in the everlasting and the divine so far as they can’ (2 415a26–9, b16–20) The souls of living beings can be ordered in a hierarchy Plants have a vegetative or nutritive soul, which consists of the powers of growth, nutrition, and reproduction (2 415a23–6) Animals have in addition the powers of perception, and locomotion: they possess a sensitive soul, and every animal has at least one sense-faculty, touch being the most universal Whatever can feel at all can feel pleasure: and hence animals, who have senses, also have desires Humans in addition have the power of reason and thought (logismos kai dianoia), which we may call a rational soul Aristotle’s theoretical concept of soul diVers from that of Plato before him and Descartes after him A soul, for him, is not an interior, immaterial agent acting on a body ‘We should not ask whether body and soul are one thing, any more than we should ask that question about the wax and the seal imprinted on it, or about the matter of anything and that of which it is the matter’ (2 412b6–7) A soul need not have parts in the way that a body does: perhaps they are no more distinct than concave and convex in the circumference of a circle (NE 13 1102a30–2) When we talk of parts of the soul we are talking of faculties: and these are distinguished from each other by their operations and their objects The power of growth is distinct from the power of sensation because growing and feeling are two diVerent activities; and the sense of sight diVers from the sense of hearing not because eyes are diVerent from ears, but because colours are diVerent from sounds (de An 415a14–24) The objects of sense come in two kinds: those that are proper to particular senses, such as colour, sound, taste, and smell, and those that 243