Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

CHAPTER V: PROBLEMS OF PSYCHOLOGY

Avicenna’s definition of the soul does not differ from that of Aristotle, and like him he conceives of psychology in terms of faculties. The soul as a single genus may be divided into three species. There is (1) the vegetable which is the first entelechy (perfection or actuality) of a natural body possessing organs in so far as it reproduces, and grows and is nourished. Then (2) there is the animal which is the first entelechy of a natural body possessing organs in so far as it perceives individual things and moves by volition. Then (3) there is the humanwhich is the first entelechy of a natural body possessing organs in so far as it commits acts of rational choice and deduction through opinion; and in so far as it perceives universal mttters. The genesis of the soul is attributed to heavenly powers and it is preconditioned by a harmonious blending of the elements, though its psychical functions are distinct from and above the simple mixture.

The animal soul has two faculties, the motive and the perceptive. The motive is again of two kinds, either it gives an impulse or it is active. Where it gives an impulse it is the faculty of appetence and may be subdivided into desire and anger; and where it is active it provides the power of movement. The perceptive faculty may also be divided into two, one perceives externally, and the other internally. The external are the five or eight senses. If the sense of touch is only one, they are five; if it is supposed to comprise the four pairs of contraries - hot and cold, dry and moist, hard and soft, smooth and rough - then they can be counted as eight. Sight is a faculty located in the concave nerve which perceives the image of the forms of colored bodies imprinted on the vitreous humour; and the forms are transmitted through transparent media to polished surfaces. Avicenna refutes at length the Platonic theory of sight as proposed in the Timaeus, and accepts the Aristotelian explanation. Hearing, a faculty located in the nerves distributed over the surface 01 the ear-hole, perceives through the vibration of the air that produces the sound. The waves touch the nerve and hearing takes place. Smell, located in the two protuberances of the front part of the brain, perceives odour conveyed by inhaled air, either mixed with the vapour in by an odorous body. Taste, located in the nerves distributed over the tongue, perceives the taste dissolved from bodies and mingling with the saliva, thus producing a qualitative change on the tongue. Touch, distributed over the entire skin and flesh of the body, perceives what touches the nerves and what affects them, thus causing change in their constitution or structure. But what exactly is sensation? Aristotle’s predecessors had treated it as essentially a passive process in which the sense-organs are qualitatively changed by the object. He himself had thought of it as the 'realization of potentiality', without holding to the notion as a purely mental activity. Avicenna, like other Islamic philosophers, may be said to agree, at least as far as the mechanism is concerned, with the belief in the passive process. 'All the sensibles convey their images to the organs of sensation and are imprinted on them, and are then perceived by the sensory faculty.'

Of the internal senses, some are faculties that perceive the form of sensed objects, and others perceive their meaning or purpose. The term 'internal senses' is probably of Stoic origin, though the faculties included under it are found in Aristotle. Some of these faculties can both perceive and act, others only perceive; some possess primary perception and others secondary perception. What is first perceived by the sense and then by the internal faculties is the form of the sensed object, and what is perceived by the internal faculties only is the meaning or intended purpose of the Object. One of the animal internal senses is the faculty 01 fantasy, i.e. sensus communis, located in the forepart of the front ventricle of the brain. Next comes the faculty of representation, located in the rear part of the front ventricle of the brain, which preserves what the sensus communis has received from the five senses. The belief mat the internal senses were located in the brain was of Galenic origin. Aristotle had maintained that the heart was the seat of sensus communis and therefore of imagination and memory; and in this he had been followed by many of the Islamic Falasifa including Farabi. Ghazali subscribed to it also. In Aristotle phantasia has a variety of functions, but Avicenna treats each as a separate faculty. Other faculties in the animal are the sensitive imagination which is called 'rational imagination' in relation to the human soul; the estimative faculty which perceives the non-sensible meaning or intentions; and the retentive and recollective faculty which retains what the estimative perceives.

The human or, as it is commonly called, the rational soul, has a practical and a theoretical faculty, both of which are rather equivocally called intelligence. The practical is the principle of movement of the body urging to action: deliberate and purposive. It has a certain correspondence with the animal faculties of appetence, imagination and estimation. It is the source of human behavior and closely connected with moral considerations. The practical intelligence must control the irrational tendencies in man, and by not allowing them to get the upper hand dispose him to the consideration of knowledge from above by the theoretical intelligence. Its function includes also attention to everyday matters and to human arts. The theoretical faculty serves the purpose of receiving the impressions of the universal forms abstracted from matter. If the forms be already separate in themselves, it simply receives them; if not, it makes them immaterial by abstraction, leaving no trace of material attachments in them. These functions the theoretical intelligence performs in stages. There is first the stage of absolute, or material, potentiality as in an infant; second, that of relative, or possible, potentiality when only the instrument for the reception of actuality has been achieved, after which comes the stage of the perfection of the original potentiality, or habitus. Sometimes, Avicenna says, the second stage is termed habitus and the third the perfection of potentiality

It may thus be said that the relation of the theoretical faculty to the abstract immaterial forms is sometimes in the nature of absolute potentiality, which belongs to the soul that has not yet realized any portion of the perfection due to it potentially. At this stage it is called the material intelligence present in every individual of the human species, and so called because of its resemblance to primary matter. Or it is in the nature of possible potentiality, when only the primary intelligibles which are the source and instrument of the secondary intelligibles have been acquired by the 'material potentiality'. When only this amount of actualization has been achieved, it is called intellectus in habitu. In relation to the first it may also be called the actual intelligence, because the first cannot actually think at all. It is calledintellectus in actu because it thinks whenever it wills without any further process of perception. Lastly, its relation to the forms may be in the nature of absolute actuality, when they are present to it and it actually and knowingly contemplates them. At this stage it becomes the intellectus acquisitus because the forms are acquired from without. With it the animal genus and its human species are prefected, and the faculty of man becomes similar to the first principles of all existence. The much disputed origin of this classification is not Aristotelian, and must have been influenced by Alexander’s commentary on the De Anima. It is found in a slightly different form in Farabi, to whom Avicenna is often indebted.

As to the way in which the rational soul acquires knowledge, it may be pointed out that whether through the intermediary of someone else or through one's own self, the degree of receptivity differs with each individual. Some people come very near to having immediate perception because of their more powerful potential intellects. Where a person can acquire knowledge from within himself, the capacity is called intuition. It enables rum to make contact with the active intelligence without much effort or instruction, until it seems as though he knows everything. This is the highest stage of the disposition; and this state of the material intelligence should be called the Divine Spirit. It is of the same genus as intellectus in habitu, but far superior; and not all people share it. It is possible that some of the actions attributed to the 'Divine Intelligence' should, because of their power and lofty nature, overflow into the imagination and be imitated by it in the form of sensible symbols and concrete words. There are two ways in which intelligible truths may be acquired. Sometimes it is done through intuition which is an act of the mind, and quick apprehension is the power of intuition. And sometimes it is through instruction. And since the first principles of instruction are obtained through intuition, it may be said that ultimately all things are reduced to intuitions passed on by those who have had them to their pupils. Intuitive people vary in their capacities; the lowest are those wholly devoid of intuition; and the highest are those who seem to have an intuition regarding all or most problems, and in the shortest time. Thus a man may be of such purity of soul and so closely in contact with the rational principles that he becomes ablaze with intuition, i.e. with receptivity for inspiration from the active intelligence in all things, so that the forms that are in the active intelligence are imprinted on his soul either all at once or very nearly so. And he does not accept them on authority, but in their logical sequence and order. For beliefs based on authority possess no rational certainty. This is a kind of prophetic inspiration, rather the highest faculty of it; and should preferably be called Divine Power; and it represents the highest state of the faculties of man. Although the idea of intuition is of Aristotelian origin, where it has more the sense of sagacity and quick-wittedness, its application to the man endowed with prophetic insight has of course no Greek source. It is most probably Avicenna's own personal conception, and is in keeping with his views regarding the powers of a prophet and his mission in life, as win be seen.

There is, however, a regular hierarchy among the faculties of man. The acquired intellect, which is the ultimate goal, is found to govern them all. The intellectus in habituserves the intellectus in actu and is in turn served by the material intellect. The practical intellect serves all of them and is in turn served by the faculty of estimation; and estimation is served by an anterior and a posterior faculty. The posterior conserves what is brought to it by estimation; and the anterior is the sum total of animal faculties. The faculty of representation is served by the appetitive which obeys it, and by the imagination which accepts its combined or separate images. In turn, the imagination is served by phantasia, which is itself served by the five senses. The appetitive is served by desire and anger; and these last by the motive faculty. This concludes the list of what constitute the different animal faculties which are served in their entirety by the vegetable faculties, of which the reproductive is the first in rank. Growth serves the reproductive, and the nutritive serves them both. The four natural faculties of digestion, retention, assimilation and excretion are subservient to all these.

Taking up the question of perception, it is pointed out that there is a difference between perception by sense, by imagination, by estimation and by the mind. It appears that all perception is but the apprehension of the form of the perceived object. If it is of some material thing, it consists in perceiving the form abstracted to some extent from the matter. Except that the kinds of separation or abstraction are different and its grades varied; because the material form is subject to certain states and conditions that do not belong to it as form, and the abstraction is sometimes complete and at other times partial. Sensation cannot disentangle form completely and divorce it from material accidents, nor can it retain the form in the absence of matter. Thus the presence of matter is needed if the form is to remain presented to it. But the faculty of representation or imagination purifies theabstracted form to a higher degree. The faculty of estimation goes a little further, for it receives the meanings which are immaterial, although by accident they happen to be in matter. For instance shape, color and position cannot be found except in bodily matter, but good and evil are in themselves immaterial entities and it is by accident that they are found in matter. In the case of estimation the abstraction is relatively more complete than in the previous two forms of perception. It is the intellectual faculty that perceives the forms as completely abstracted from matter as possible. In this way differ perception through the power of sense, perception through the power of the imagination, perception through the power of estimation, and perception through the power of the intellect. This differentiation between the different forms of perception can also be traced to Alexander of Aphrodisias, with the usual modifications that Avicenna is apt to introduce.

Furthermore the particular is perceived only by what is material and the universal by what is immaterial and separate. Thus the perception of particular forms occurs by means of a bodily organ. The external senses perceive them in a way not completely divested of matter, because these forms are perceptible only if their matter is present, and a body cannot be present to what is incorporeal. A thing in space cannot be present or absent to something that is non-spatial. The faculty of imagination also needs a physical organ, because it cannot perceive without the forms being imprinted on a body in such a manner that both it and the body share the same imprint. This is proved by the case of images, which unless they have a definite position, cannot become images at all. Additions and combinations take place only in the conceptual realm. The same is true of the estimative faculty which is also dependent on a bodily organ as it perceives its objects only in particular images.

So far Avicenna is concerned with the powers and faculties of the vegetable, animal and human souls, their distinctions from, and their relations to, one another. From that he proceeds to the nature of the soul, before, however, taking up me question whether such a thing as a soul exists at all.

The substance in which. the intelligibles reside is not a body in itself, nor is it constituted by a body. In a manner it is a faculty found in the body, and a form imprinted upon it. If the place of the intelligibles were in a body then the place of the forms would be in divisible or indivisible parts of that body. It is not possible to suppose that the form is imprinted on some indivisible part. The position of a point cannot be distinguished from the whole line, and what is imprinted on a point is imprinted on a part of the line. Points are not combined into a line by being put together, and have no particular and distinct position in a line, as Aristotle had shown. If, however, the form is imprinted on divisible matter then with the division of the matter it would be divided also, and the only alternatives are that it would be divided into similar or dissimilar parts. Should they be exactly similar their totality could not be different from them except in quantity or numbers. And in that case the intelligible form would acquire some sort of figure or number. It would be no more an intellectual but a representational form. And since a part cannot be the whole, the form cannot be divided into exactly similar parts. On the other hand the division of form into dissimilar parts can only be a division into genera and differentiae, and from this impossibilities follow. For since every part of matter is potentially divisible ad infinitum, the genera and differentiae of a given form would also be infinite, which is not possible. Furthermore, when the intelligible form is imprinted in matter, genus and differentia do not have the coherence that they possess in a definition, and their position will depend on some external element. And again not every intelligible can be divided into simpler intelligibles, for there are those which are of the simplest, constituting the principles for others; and they have neither genus nor differentia, nor are they divisible in quantity or in meaning, and their parts, therefore, cannot be dissimilar. It is thus evident that the place in which the intelligibles reside is a substance, not a body, nor a faculty in a body liable to division and the impossibilities it involves.

To take another argument, it is the rational faculty that abstracts the intelligibles from all the different categories such as quantity, place and position. And the abstraction is made in the mind; so when it comes to exist as a form in the intellect, it has no quantity, place or position to be indicated or divided or subjected to similar processes, and this shows that it cannot be in a body. Again, if a simple indivisible form were to exist in a divisible matter, its relation will be either with every part of that matter or with some parts or with none at all. If with none, then the whole cannot have any relation either. If some parts have a relation and others have not, then those that have not cannot enter as factors into the form. If all the parts have a relation with the form, then they are no more parts, but each is a complete intelligible in itself, and the intelligible as it actually is at a certain moment of time. Should each have different relations with the form or with the different parts of the form, this would mean that it is divisible, which cannot be maintained. From this may be seen that the forms imprinted in matter are just the exterior forms of particular divisible entities, every part of which has an actual or potential relation with the other. Moreover what is by definition composed of different parts, has in its completeness a unity of its own that is indivisible? How then can this unity as such be imprinted in what is divisible? Finally, it is established that the supposed intelligibles which are for the reasonable faculty to conceive actually and in succession, are potentially unlimited; and what has the capacity to be unlimited cannot reside in a body, nor be the faculty of a body. This has been proved, Avicenna says, in Aristotle’s Physics. It is not possible therefore, that the entity which is capable of conceiving intelligibles be constituted in a body at all, nor its action be in a body or through a body. These arguments, which have their source not only in Aristotle but in various commentators to his De Anima, such as John Philoponus and Themistius, are here restated with Avicenna’s ability to reinterpret the views of his predecessors in his own way.

Furthermore, the activity of the rational faculty is not performed by means of a physical organ; nothing intervenes between that faculty and its own self, nor between it and its special organ or the fact of its intellection. It is purely rationally that it knows its own self, and that which is called its organ, and its act of intellection. Let us suppose that it was otherwise. In that case the rational faculty could know itself either through the form of that organ, or through some numerically different form, or through some entirely different form. The second and third alternatives are obviously not possible. There remains only the possibility that it should know its own organ only and continuously, which it does not. This is a proof, Avicenna says, that it is not possible for the percipient to perceive an organ which it uses as its own in its perception. And this is the reason why, contrary to Aristotle, he maintains that sensation senses something external, and does not sense itself, nor its organ, nor its act of sensation; and in like manner imagination does not imagine itself, nor its act, nor its organ. Another proof is that those faculties that perceive through bodily organs weaken and ultimately corrupt those organs through the constant use of them, as in the case of the sense-organs and the effect of excessive light on human sight and thunderous noise on the hearing. Whereas in the case of the rational faculty the contrary is true. Through continued intellection and thought and the consideration of complex matters, it gains in power and versatility. And if it sometimes gets tired - an interesting point - it is because the intellect seeks the help of the imagination which employs an organ liable to fatigue and so does not serve the mind. Furthermore, the members of the human body after reaching maturity, which is usually before or at the age of forty, gradually begin to lose their strength; whereas in most cases the rational faculty grows in capacity after that age. If it were one of the bodily faculties it ought to follow the same course as the others, and this in itself shows that it is not. As to the objection that the soul forgets its intelligibles and ceases activity in case of illness of the body and with old age, it should be remembered that the soul has a twofold activity, one in relation to the body in the form of governance and control, and another in relation to itself and its principles in the form of intellection. These two activities are opposed to one another and mutually obstructive, so that if the soul becomes occupied with one, it turns away from the other - it is very difficult for it to combine the two. Its occupation with respect to the body is commonly known that thought of the intelligibles makes one forget all these and that sensation in turn inhibits the soul from intellection. Since the soul is engrossed with the sensibles, it is kept away from the intelligible without the organ of intellection or the faculty itself being in any way impaired. Hence in cases of illness the activities of the mind do not stop entirely, they are only diverted to something else. Not only does this dual activity of the soul produce this situation, but occupation with even one of them produces exactly the same effect - fear keeps away hunger, appetite hinders anger, and anger makes one forget fear. The cause of all this is the complete preoccupation of the soul with just one thing. All this goes to show that the soul is not imprinted in the body, nor constituted by it. The exact relation of the soul to the body is determined by its particular disposition to occupy itself with the governance and control of that body; and this results from an inherent inclination of its own.

The rational soul is assisted by the animal faculties in various ways. For instance, sensation brings to it particulars from which four processes result. By the first process, the soul separates individual universals from the particulars by abstracting their concepts from the matter and material attachments and concomitants; and by considering the common factors between them; and the differences; and the essentials; and the accidentals. From these the soul obtains the fundamental concepts by using the imagination and the estimative faculty. By the second process the soul seeks the relation between these individual universals such, as negation and affirmation. Where the combination depending on negation and affirmation is self-evident, it readily accepts it; where it is not, it waits till it finds the middle term of the syllogistic reasoning. By the third process it acquires empirical premisses. This process consists in finding through sense-experience a necessary predicate for a subject whether in the negative or affirmative; or consequences affirmatively or negatively conjoin with or disjoined from the antecedents, the whole relation being recognized as necessary and true in all cases. By the fourth process, the human soul acquires what has been generally accepted, through an unbroken chain of transmission, as a basis for concept and assent. All this goes to show that the soul is independent of the body and has activities of its own.

But what exactly is the nature of the soul? Is it a unity, or is it characterized by multiplicity, and what happens to it after the death of the body?

Human souls are all of the same species and significance. If they existed before the body, they must have been either single or multiple entities. It is impossible that they should have been either; it is therefore impossible that they should have existed before the body. In the supposed case of multiplicity, the difference among the souls could be according to their quiddity and form, or according to their relation to the elements, or according to the time in which they became attached to the body, or still more according to the causes which determined their material existence. Their differences could not be according to quiddity and form, because their form is necessarily one. They must therefore differ according to the recipient of the form. That is to say, according to the individual body to which that particular form and quiddity became attached. Since the souls are pure and simple quiddities, there could be no essential or numerical differentiation between them. If they are absolutely separate entities, and the enumerated categories do not apply to them in any way, the souls cannot be different and of diverse kinds. And when there is no diversity, there can be no multiplicity. On the other hand, it is impossible that all human souls should have just one single essence in common. For when two bodies come into existence, two souls also come to be. In that case these two are either the parts of one and the same soul - and that would mean that what does not possess magnitude and extension is potentially divisible, which is absurd - or a soul which is numerically one could be in two bodies at the same time, which is equally absurd. It thus stands that a soul comes into existence whenever a body suitable to it comes into existence. And this body will be the domain and the instrument of the soul. There is at the same time created in it a natural yearning to associate itself completely with that particular body - to use it, to control it, and to be attracted by it. This bond unites it to that body and keeps it away from all others different in nature. And when those peculiar dispositions which constitute the principle of its individualization are present in combination, it is combined and transformed into an individual, although that state and that relationship may remain obscure to us. The soul thus achieves the principles on which its perfection is based, through the instrumentality of the body. Its subsequent development, however, remains bound to its own nature and is not conditioned by the body after it has completely left it. Once they have forsaken their bodies, souls survive each as a separate entity, duly shaped by the different material elements in which they had resided, and the different times of their coming into existence, and also the different forms and figures of their bodies.

Here Avicenna is characteristically influenced by a host of classical and Hellenistic philosophers, as well as by some of the assertions of religious dogma, without, however, agreeing with any of them on all points. He holds with Aristotle that the soul is the form and the quiddity of the body which controls and gives it its particular character; but contrary to him asserts that it is a separate substance capable of existing independently of the body; and that after separation it has an activity of its own regardless of its previous connections. In fact ever since the translation of the Phaedo into Arabic - a highly prized dialogue - and theDe Anima of Aristotle, problems of the soul, its nature and existence, had become the subject of much study among the Islamic philosophers owing to its religious implications. Because of this preoccupation the commentaries of Neo-Platonic authors who had tried to reconcile Plato and Aristotle on the subject of the soul were also translated, as well as the works of Alexander, whose writings on logic had been so much favored by Avicenna. It has been claimed that the earliest statements on the substantiality of the soul are found in his commentary on the De Anima of Aristotle. This had been accepted by most subsequent philosophers; and Avicenna seems to attribute substantiality not only to the human soul, but to the vegetative and animal souls as well. Though it should be noted that substance here is not strictly that of Aristotle's conception. The attempt to draw parallels between the assertions of Avicenna and those of Plotinus has produced some interesting results showing clearly the relation of one to the other; and a more thorough study of the correspondence may prove even more revealing. Avicenna had carefully studied the so-called Theology of Aristotle with its excerpts from the Enneads, and had even written a commentary on it.1 The idea of the soul yearning for the body once it has itself come into existence as a separate entity is definitely of Plotinian origin.

Now that he has disposed of the faculties of the vegetative, animal and human souls and has demonstrated the nature of the human soul and its relation to the body, Avicenna turns to what is perhaps the more interesting and important part of his psychology, viz. his arguments in proof of the existence of the soul. The Isharat contains an illustration, already introduced in the Shifa, which later became famous among mediaeval scholastics.

Turn to yourself, Avicenna says, and ponder. When you are in good health, or rather in a normal state, such that you can comprehend matters properly, are you ever forgetful of your own existence, and do you ever cease to assert your own sell. This could not happen to an alert observer; and even to the man in his sleep and to the drunkard in his intoxication the consciousness of his inner self is never absent from his mind even though he may not be aware of his whereabouts. And if you imagine yourself to have been born from the very beginning with a healthy mind and disposition and then imagine that you are suspended in space for an instant, in such a way that you do not see the parts of your body and the members of it do not touch one another, you will find that you are unaware of everything about yourself except the fact that you are - that you exist. With what do you perceive yourself in such a state, or before or after it? And what is the percipient in you? Is it your senses, or your mind, or some faculty in addition to your senses and corresponding to them? If it be your mind and a faculty besides your senses, is it through some intermediary or directly? You will be in no need of an intermediary at such a time, and there is none. Therefore you perceive yourself without needing of any other faculty or medium; and the perception takes place through your senses or some internal sense. Let us look, further. Do you deduce from all this that the perceived in you is what the sight perceives from your flesh? That could not be, because if you were to lose that flesh and have another, you would still be what you are. Or is it what the sense of touch perceives? That could not be so either, except for the external members of your body. It thus becomes clear that what you then perceive is not one of your members like a heart or a brain; for how could this be when their existence is hidden from you unless they are exposed by dissection? Nor is what you perceive an assemblage of things in so far as it is an assemblage So what you perceive is something other than these things which you do not perceive while you are perceiving your self, and which you do not find necessary to make you what you are. Thus that self which you perceive does not belong to the order of things that you perceive through the senses in any way whatever, or through what resembles the senses.

Avicenna continues. “Perhaps you will say, indeed I prove the existence of my self through the medium of my action. In that case you will have to have an act to prove or a movement or some other thing. In the supposition of suspension in space we isolate you from all that. But as a general principle, if you prove your act as absolutely an act, you must prove from it an agent absolutely and not particularly, who is your self definitely. If you prove that it is an act of yours and you do not prove yourself through it, and if it is part of what is understood from your act in so far as it is your act, it would then have been proved in the understanding, before it or at least with it but not through it. Your self is thus not proved through it”.

This illuminating demonstration of the suspended man was quoted and copied by many Eastern and Western philosophers after Avicenna with occasional variations. It has been stated that it is of Neo-Platonic origin, yet the passages that have been cited from Plotinus, though related, are extremely remote from the vivid presentation we have here. That it inspired the cogito ergo sum of Descartes, scholars are no more in doubt; but it should be remembered that there is a reference to the suspended man in St. Augustine also. In fact, if thought is a form of activity, the statement of Avicenna which, however, he does not pursue, to the effect that “I prove my self by means of my act” is more comprehensive than that of the French philosopher.

Moreover, take the case of an animal. It moves by means of something other than its corporeal body or the organic combination of it, as may well be observed. This may sometimes be actually an obstacle to movement. And an animal perceives by something other than that corporeal construction or the combination of its parts, which is sometimes an obstacle to perception. The principle of the faculty of perception, of motion, and of protection in the general temperament of an animal is something else which you might call with justification the soul. This is the substance that pervades and rules the parts of the human body as well. This substance is unique in you, it is rather yourself in fact. And it has ramifications and faculties spread in your organs. And when you feel something through one of your organs, or you imagine, or you desire, or you are in anger, the connection existing between that substance and these branches casts a disposition in it so that it creates through repetition a certain inclination, or rather a habit and nature, which master this controlling substance in the same manner as natural dispositions do.

And is the soul immortal? The soul does not die with the body nor does it suffer corruption in any way. This is because everything that is corrupted with the corruption of something else, must be attached to it in some way. And the attachment or relationship must be one of coexistence, or of posteriority, or of priority - a priority that is in essence and not in time. If the relation of the soul to the body be one of coexistence and the attachment be in essence and not accidentally, then each is essentially correlated to the other, and neither of them would be an independent substance, whereas in fact we know that they are independent. And if the attachment be accidental and not in essence, then the corruption of one annuls the accidental relation ship and does not corrupt the essence. If the attachment of the soul to the body is such that it is posterior to it in existence, then the body would be the cause of the soul and one of the four causes would apply. It could not possibly be the efficient cause of the soul for it acts only through its faculties. Ift it were to act through its essence, all bodies would act in exactly the same way. Nor could the body possibly be the receptive and material cause of the soul, for it has been shown that the soul is in no way imprinted in the body, and the latter does not take the form of the former whether in simplicity or composition. Nor indeed could the body possibly be the formal or the final cause of the soul. It is the reverse that is more comprehensible and likely. It may therefore be concluded that the attachment of the soul to the body does not correspond to the attachment of an effect to some essential cause. Admittedly the body and the temperament could stand as an accessory cause to the soul, for when the matter of a body suitable to be the instrument and the domain of the soul comes into being, the separate causes bring a particular soul into being. And that is how the soul is said to originate from them, because the bringing into being for no special reason one soul and not another is impossible. And at the same time it prevents numerical multiplicity which, as was shown, cannot be ascribed to the soul. Furthermore, whenever a new entity comes into being it is necessary that it should be preceded by matter fully disposed to receive it or to become related to it. And if it were possible that an individual soul should come into being, without a corresponding instrument through which to act and attain perfection, its existence would be purposeless, and in nature there is nothing without a purpose. Nothing that necessarily comes into being together with the coming into existence of another thing need become corrupted with the corruption of the other. The former does not logically entail the latter. It would do so only if the essence of the first were constituted by and in the second, which does not apply here.

There are cases where things originating from other things survive the latter’s corruption provided their essences are not constituted in them, and especially if what brings them into existence is different from what only prepares their coming into being together with itself, which here means the body. And the soul, as has been repeatedly said, does not come from the body, nor is it due to a faculty of it. It is an entirely different substance. If, then, it owes its being to some other thing, and it is only the time of its realization that it owes to the body, it is not inseparably bound up with it in its very existence, and the body is not its cause except by accident. Therefore it may not be said that the attachment between the two is such as to necessitate that the body should be prior to the soul and possess an essential causal priority.

There remains the third possibility, namely, that the attachment of the soul to the body should be one of priority in existence. In that case it could be temporal or essential. The soul could not be attached to the body in time because it preceded it. And if it were attached to it in essence, then the body could neither exist nor die independently of it. If the body died, it would have to be through the destruction of the soul, whereas in fact it dies through causes peculiar to itself and its composition. Thus for their existence the soul and the body are in no way interdependent on one another, as a result of an essential priority. This goes to show that ultimately all forms of attachment between the soul and the body prove to be false; and the soul in its being can be in true relationship only with other principles that do not suffer change or corruption.

There is another reason for the immortality of the soul. Everything that is liable to corruption through some cause, possesses in itself the potentiality of corruption and, before that occurs, the actuality of persistence. It is impossible to suppose that in one and the same thing there could be both corruption and persistence, and the liability to one cannot be due to the other, because the two concepts are contrary to one another. And their relations also differ, one being correlated with the notion of corruption and the other with that of persistence. The two may exist jointly in composite things and in simple things that are constituted in the composite, but in simple things whose essence is separate, they cannot. It may further be said that in an absolute sense the two notions cannot exist together in something possessing a unitary essence, because the potentiality of persistence is something to be found in the very substance of the thing. To be sure the actuality of persistence is not the same as the potentiality of persistence, the one being a fact that happens to a body possessing the other. Hence that potentiality belongs to something to which actual existence is only accidental and not of its essence. From this it follows that its being is composed of two factors, (1) one the possession of which gives it its actual existence, which is the form. And (2,) one which attained this actual existence though in itself it had only the potentiality of it, which is the matter. It may thus be concluded that if the soul is absolutely simple and in no way divisible into matter and form, it will not admit of corruption.

But what if the soul is composite? To answer that we have to go back to the substance which is its matter. We say: either that matter will continue to be divisible and so the same analysis will go on being applied to it and we shall then have a regress ad infinitum which is absurd; or this substance and base will never cease to exist. But if so, then our present discourse is devoted to this factor and not to the composite thing which is composed of this factor and some other. So it is clear that everything which is simple cannot in itself possess both the actuality of persistence and the potentiality of corruption. If it has the potentiality of corruption it is impossible that it should possess the actuality of persistence also; and if it has the actuality to exist and persist, it cannot have the potentiality of corruption. Hence the substance of the soul does not contain the potentiality of corruption. As to those beings that suffer corruption, it is the composite in them that is corruptible. Furthermore the potentiality to corruption and persistence is not to be found in something that gives unity to a composite, but in the matter which potentially admits of both contraries. And so the corruptible composite has neither the potentiality to persist nor to suffer corruption, nor both together, while the matter either has persistence without its being due to the potentiality that can give it the capacity to persist, as some suppose, or it has persistence through that potentiality, but does not have the potentiality of corruption, which is something that it acquires.

There remains the case of the simple entities that are constituted in matter. With them the potentiality of corruption is something that is found in their matter and not in their actual substance. And the condition that everything that has come to be should suffer some form of corruption on account of the finitude of the potentialities of persistence and corruption in it, applies only to those things whose being is composed of matter and form. In their matter there would be the potentiality that their forms may persist in them, and at the same time the potentiality that these forms may cease to persist in them. From all this it becomes evident that the soul does not suffer corruption at all.

These arguments in proof of the immortality of the soul are not of Aristotelian origin. They are to be found in a fragmentary and perhaps elementary form in Neo-Platonic writings that had been rendered into Arabic, and were therefore available to Avicenna. As with the theory of emanation, Islamic psychology found Neo-Platonic conceptions with regard to the soul and its nature highly congenial particularly in what may be called its spiritual aspects. In his interesting work Dr Rahman has pointed out that the idea that destruction is the fate of composite sub-stances only, and that the soul being by nature simple and incorporeal is not liable to corruption, is to be found in Plotinus, as also is the view that the soul is not imprinted on the body as form is in matter. But that does not mean that Avicenna deserts Aristotle completely. On the contrary embedded in his own distinctive line of thought, there is a happy combination of the best of both Aristotle and Plotinus. Nor is the influence of Hellenistic commentators altogether absent.

Avicenna could not entertain the idea of the transmigration of the soul. Contrary to Plato and in agreement with Aristotle, he rejected what to any Muslim was an abhorrent notion. It has been made clear, he says, that souls come into being - and they are in endless number - only when bodies are prepared to receive them; and it is this readiness of the body that necessitates their emanation from the separate causes. Obviously this cannot happen by accident or chance. If we were to suppose that the soul exists already and it just happens that a body comes into existence at the same time and the two somehow combine, without the need of a temperament and suitability in the body requiring a particular soul to govern and control it, there would be no essential cause for multiformity, only an accidental one; and it has been learnt that essential causes are prior to accidental ones. If that is the case then everybody requires a special soul to itself, suitable to its elements; and this applies to all and not only to some bodies. Now if it be supposed that one soul can migrate into several bodies each of which requires for its existence, and therefore already has, a separate soul, there would then be two souls in one and the same body at the same time, which is absurd. And again, it has been maintained that the relationship between the soul and the body is not such that the soul is imprinted in the body, but that it controls and governs it in such a way that it is conscious of the body and the body is in turn influenced by it. This prevents the possibility of a second soul having exactly the same relationship to it. And consequently transmigration cannot take place in any manner.

For Avicenna as for Aristotle, the soul is a single unity and not as Plato had taught a compound of three kinds. The soul is one entity with many faculties. If these faculties did not unite into a greater whole, and sensation and anger and each of the others had a principle of its own, different actions might proceed from the same faculty or different faculties might become confused with one another. Of course these faculties interact and influence each other, but they do not change with the other’s change, for the activity of each is special to the function that it performs. The faculty of anger does not perceive and that of perception does not become angry. What happens is that all the faculties bring what they receive to one unifying and controlling centre. This unitary thing could be a man’s body or his soul. If it were his body it would either be the totality of his organs or some of them. It could not be the totality for obviously his hands and feet could have nothing to do with it; nor could it be just two, one sensing and the other becoming angry, because there would then be no one thing that sensed and consequently became angry. Nor indeed could it be one single organ which, according to those who hold this view, would be the basis of both functions. What becomes angry is that thing to which sense-perception transmits its sensation; and it must have a faculty of combining both sensations, perception and anger. That thing cannot be the totality of our bodily organs, nor two of them, nor just one. The uniting substance can only be the soul or the body inasmuch as it possesses a soul, which really means the same thing as the soul, the principle of all the faculties. This soul should necessarily be attached to the first organ in which life begins, and so it is impossible that an organ should be alive without a psychical faculty attached to it. And the first thing joined to the body cannot be something posterior to this. Hence the organ to which this psychical faculty has to be attached must be the heart. “This opinion of the philosopher” (i.e. Aristotle), Avicenna says, is contrary to that of the divine Plato.

But there are vegetative faculties in the plants, and plants do not possess the perceptive and rational faculties. And there are the vegetative and the perceptive in the animals, and animals do not possess the rational faculty. This shows that each of these is a separate faculty by itself having no connection with the others. What then of the all-embracing unity of the soul? It must be understood that among elemental bodies their absolute contrariness prevents them from receiving life. The more they are able to break. that contrariness and approach the mean, which has no opposite, the nearer they approach a resemblance to the heavenly bodies and to that extent they deserve to receive an animating force from the originating separate principle. The nearer they get to the mean, the more capable of life they become. And when they reach the limit beyond which it is impossible to approach the mean any nearer and to reduce the contrary extremes any further, they receive a substance which in some ways is similar to the separate substance, just as the heavenly substances had received it and become attached to it. Once the elemental bodies have received this substance, what was said to originate in them only through the external substance may be now said to originate through both.

Here emerges the idea of self-consciousness and the existence of a personal ego through which the unity of experience can be explained. Here Avicenna, like some of Aristotle’s Hellenistic commentators, goes beyond what was envisaged by the Stagirite. A passage in John Philoponus throws some light on what seems to have been the subject of much argument. “We, however, say about this that Aristotle’s view is wrong he wants to attribute to individual senses the knowledge both of their objects and of their own acts. Alexander attributes to the five senses the knowledge of their objects only, and to thesensus communis the knowledge of objects and the knowledge of their acts as well. Plutarch holds that it is a function of the rational soul to know the acts of the senses. But the more recent interpreters say that it is the function of the attentive part of the rational soul to know the acts of the senses. For according to them, the rational soul has not only five faculties - intellect, reason, opinion, will and choice - but besides these, also a sixth faculty which they add to the rational soul and which they call the attentive faculty … We agree in saying there is no sith sense which possesses self-consciousness it is false to attribute self-consciousness to sensation itself. Sensation having perceived color must at all events reflect upon itself. If it thus reflects upon itself it belongs to the kind of separate activity, and also to a separate substance, and is therefore incorporeal and eternal”. It has been pointed out in this connection that the Stoics were the first to use the word ego in a technical sense.

There remains to be considered the element that gives actuality to a potential human intellect. The theoretical faculty in man emerges from a potential to an actual state through the illuminating action of a substance that has this effect upon it. A thing does not change from potentiality to actuality all by itself but through something that produces that result, and the actuality conferred consists of the forms of the intelligibles. Here then is something that from its own substance grants to the human soul and imprints upon it the forms of the intelligibles. The essence of this thing undoubtedly possesses these forms, and is therefore an intellect in itself. If it were a potential intellect it would mean a regression ad infinitum, which is absurd. The regression must halt at something which is in essence an intellect, and which is the cause of all potential intellects becoming actual intellects, and which alone is sufficient to bring this about. This thing is called, in relation to the potential intellects that pass through it into actuality, an active intellect. In like manner the material intellect is called in relation to it a passive intellect; and the imagination also is called in relation to it another passive intellect. The intellect that comes between the active and the passive is called the acquired intellect. The relation of the active intellect to our souls which are potentially intellect, and to the intelligibles which are potential intelligibles, is as the relation of the sun to our eyes which are potential percipients, and to the colours which are potentially perceptible. For when light falls on the potential objects of sight, they become actually perceptible and the eye becomes an actual percipient. In a similar fashion there is some power that emanates from this active intellect and extends to the objects of imagination which are potential intelligibles to make them actually so, and transforms the potential into an actual intellect. And just as the sun is by itself an object of sight and the agency which makes what is a potential object of sight actually so, in just the same way this substance is in itself intelligible and an agency which transforms all potential intelligibles into actual ones. But one thing that is in itself intelligible is an intellect in essence, for it is the form separated from matter, especially when it is in itself abstract and not present through the action of something else. This thing is the active intelligence, and it is actually eternally intelligible as well as intelligent in itself.

Here then is an important distinction between the intellect, the intelligible, and the act of intellection. In this Avicenna rejects the Peripatetic idea that the intellect and the object of its intellection are identical, and adopts the Neo-platonic doctrine of emanation, which was to become prevalent among all Islamic thinkers after him. Again, somewhat similar statements may be found by Hellenistic commentators and by Farabi, but none correspond exactly to what Avicenna envisages even where the terms used are the same. The significance and the function he gives them are quite different if not altogether original. For him they had to conform to the general system which he was attempting to build.

But what of dreams in Avicenna’s system? In his view as in that of Aristotle, dreams are the work of the imagination. During sleep a man's imaginative faculty is more active than when he is awake because it is not overwhelmed by the external senses. In two conditions the soul diverts the imagination from the performance of its proper function. One is when it is itself occupied with the external senses and devotes the image-forming power to their use rather than to that of the imaginative faculty which as a result becomes involved in other than its proper function. And the sensus communis also cannot come to its aid since it is busy with the external senses. The other condition is that of the soul when employing the imagination in its intellectual activities, either to construct together with the sensus communis concrete forms or to discourage it from imagining things that do not conform with actual objects; and as a result weakening its powers of representation. When, however, it becomes disengaged from such preoccupations and impediments as in sleep, or during the illness of the body, when the soul ceases to employ the mind and make fine distinctions, the imagination finds an opportunity to grow in intensity and to engage the image-forming power and make use of it. The combination of the two powers adds still more to their activity, and the image thereby produced falls on the sensus communis, and the object is seen as though it were externally existent.

The foregoing account is based on what Avicenna wrote on psychology in the Shifa, theNajat and the Isharat. Notice might also be taken of a very short treatise on the subject, because it is certainly one of the earliest things he ever wrote, and may quite possibly be the very earliest. It is addressed to the Prince of Bukhara, Nuh ibn Mansur, whom he had been invited to treat for an illness, when himself just a young physician of promise. It opens in the diffident language of a youthful aspirant seeking recognition and patronage; then develops into a clear exposition of his conception of the soul and its faculties. It is remarkable for the fact that in all that he wrote on psychology afterwards, he had, in spite of some additions, very little to change. His conception was based principally on the De Anima of Aristotle, though it included matters not to be found there. Later he did alter his views on two points. In the early work, common sense and memory are considered as one and the same faculty, whereas in the Shifa and the Najat they are entirely distinct. Moreover, he was at first inclined to attribute the power of recollection to animals, then later changed to the belief that memory may be found in all animals, but recollection, i.e. a conscious effort to reproduce what has gone out of memory, belongs I think, only to man.

To animals he attributes an estimative faculty which the Latin Scholastics translated asaestimatio. This is the power by which the sheep senses that a wolf is to be avoided as an object of fear. Averroes and Ghazali both asserted that this was a non-Aristotelian faculty invented by Avicenna himself; and the former took strong exception to it. And yet the fact that he already discusses it in this very early book written when hardly twenty years of age, makes it unlikely that they are right. For it may be supposed that he was then too young for original contributions in the field of what was a purely theoretical psychology; and that it must have come from some other source. Attempts to ascertain the correct Greek equivalents of the terms wahm and zann have caused sharp controversy, because the available materials have not yet been studied. It has been claimed, and with some good arguments, that actually all the internal senses of which Avicenna speaks are differentiations or rather specifications of the Aristotelian phantasia, and that the so-called estimative faculty is one form of imagination or 'an operation subsidiary to imagination. This may well be so when it is remembered that in more than one place in his philosophical system, Avicenna has taken an Aristotelian idea and divided it into subsidiary parts, giving each a significance not envisaged by the Stagirite himself. Averroes and Ghazali may therefore have been right in thinking that the estimative faculty was a non-Aristotelian innovation of Avicenna; and Dr Rahman may be justified in believing that it is a subdivision of phantasia. But then it would not need a Greek equivalent, which it has been shown to have, and which the transistors used long before him. In any case, Avicenna was capable of taking an idea, or a suggestion, or just a term, and making it entirely his own. He was no servile commentator, like Averroes, and gave himself every liberty.

According to Avicenna, the estimative faculty plays its part in the grades of abstraction. Intellect was the recipient of universal forms, and sensation the recipient of individual forms as present in matter. Knowledge comes by means of bridging the gap between the material forms of sensible objects and the abstract forms of intelligibles. This is done through the faculties of imagination and estimation. In the acquisition of knowledge, the first stage is sensation. Sensation perceives forms embedded in matter. It could not possibly take place without the presence of matter. It arrives at knowledge of an object by perceiving its form, and this it can do only when the form is present in the matter of that object. In the next stage comes imagination, which can act without the presence of the physical object itself. The images that it forms are, consequently, not material images even though they may be fashioned after the pattern of material objects. Imagination knows an object not as matter or as present in matter, but in the image of the material attachments that it has acquired. The next process is taken up by the estimative faculty which perceives such notions as pleasure and pain, which sees goodness and badness in the individual objects that have been first sensed and then imagined. It comprehends meaning and intention in objects; and thereby carries the abstraction one stage further. In the final act reason comes to know things that have either been abstracted into pure form or that it abstracts itself completely and takes in their ultimate universality. This was Avicenna's attempt to explain knowledge when coming from sensation and when abstracted and universalized by the intellect, the difference between the two, and the means by which one led to the other - questions to which Aristotelian theory gave, in his view, no satisfactory answer.

The principle of individuation by matter entailed some difficulties. In the world of pure intelligences, Avicenna argued, form is the essential thing, and consequently differentiation is entirely on the basis of form and quiddity which determine species. In our material world, on the other hand, just the opposite is true. In this world of generation and corruption, it is quite evident that the species man, with the particular form that he possesses, is represented by more than one individual. And the same may be said of other species. The individual differences, therefore, could not come from the form, they must come from the matter which thereby permits that multiplicity of forms impossible among pure intelligences. But - and here comes the difficulty if different individuals, as well as different bodies, have the same matter in common between them, and also have the same form in common, then why can they be so different from one another, and what is it that gives them their particular individuality? It has been shown that the basis of all beings in our world is matter; and that the Active Intelligence, as the Giver of Forms, bestows upon this matter a form to produce the different species. Now if the matter and the form be the same, how and why do they individualize? This problem arises in both the ontological as well as the psychological field - individualization among different species of being in general, and among individuals of the human species. The principle is matter, Avicenna says in agreement with Aristotle; but matter with a particular and predetermined disposition, in a certain predetermined state which make it merit one form to the exclusion of another. This, however, is only an explanation of the existence of different species, not of separate specimens of any species. It was important to know why individual persons differed among themselves, since religion asserted that their souls survived individually, and maintained their individual human identity.

Aristotle had denied intellectual memory. Intelligibles, he had said, are never remembered in themselves as such. Avicenna asserts the same view in various places, but supports it by means of the Neo-Platonic theory of the emanation of intelligibles directly from the Active Intelligence. His conception, which was to have a great influence on the mediaeval scholastics, was that there are two retentive faculties in the human soul. The first, as the representative faculty, stored images; the second, as the faculty of conservation, stored meanings or intentions. There is no special faculty for the retention of intelligibles as such. And when the soul wishes to contemplate the intelligibles, what happens is that it reunites itself with the Active Intelligence; and from it the intelligibles start to emanate again as they had done before.

We may close this chapter with his celebrated Ode on the Soul as done into English by the late Prof. E. G. Browne of Cambridge.

It descended upon thee from out of the regions above,

That exalted, ineffable, glorious, heavenly Dove.

’Twas concealed from the eyes of all those who its nature would ken,

Yet it wears not a veil, and is ever apparent to men.

Unwilling it sought thee and joined thee, and yet, though it grieve,

It is like to be still more unwilling thy body to leave.

It resisted and struggled, and would not be tamed in haste,

Yet it joined thee, and slowly grew used to this desolate waste,

Till, forgotten at length, as I ween, were its haunts and its troth

In the heavenly gardens and groves, which to leave it was loath.

Until, when it entered the D of its downward Descent,

And to earth, to the C of its centre, unwillingly went,

The eye of Infirmity smote it, and lo, it was hurled

Midst the sign-posts and ruined abodes of this desolate world.

It weeps, when it thinks of its home and the peace it possessed,

With tears welling forth from its eyes without pausing or rest,

And with plaintive mourning it broodeth like one bereft

O’er such trace of its home as the fourfold winds have left.

Thick nets detain it, and strong is the cage whereby

It is held from seeking the lofty and spacious sky.

Until, when the hour of its homeward flight draws near,

And ’tis time for it to return to its ampler sphere,

It carols with joy, for the veil is raised, and it spies

Such things as cannot be witnessed by waking eyes.

On a lofty height doth it warble its songs of praise.

(For even the lowliest being doth knowledge raise.)

And so it returneth, aware of all hidden things

In the universe, while no stain to its garment clings.

Now why from its perch on high was it cast like this

To the lowest Nadir’s gloomy and drear abyss?

Was it God who cast it forth for some purpose wise,

Concealed from the keenest seeker s inquiring eyes?

Then is its descent a discipline wise but stern,

That the things that it hath not heard it thus may learn,

So ’tis she whom Fate doth plunder, until her star

Setteth at length in a place from its rising far,

Like a gleam of lightning which over the meadows shone,

And, as though it ne’er had been, in a moment is gone.