THE DIFFERENCE IN PHILOSOPHY.

The soul understands many things not in act, but in potentiality....they distinguish it by the fact that it is moved from one thought to another. The human soul, indeed, changes from a state of understanding to not understanding, or from not understanding to understanding; therefore, it does not always possess a knowledge of things in act actuality: the state of being currently in operation or fully realized, but rather in potential potentiality: the capacity to become or do something that is not yet happening.

The soul is not immobile, except in regard to local motion; it becomes understanding from a state of not understanding.Aristotle, furthermore, makes the soul "immobile." Certainly, if he understands "mobile" as referring to local motion original: "motum localem"; the physical movement from one place to another, then he speaks correctly. But if he means it simply, in regard to every kind of movement (for he does not explain this very clearly), he is no longer correct. For how will the soul appear to change from one thought to another from time to time, or—as Aristotle himself concedes regarding the human mind—how can it change from not understanding to understanding and back again, if it is understood to be immobile? But let us leave these matters and return to where we left off.

The Platonists indeed make these divisions. Aristotle, His opinion that the mind is not an act.however, uses no distinction at all, but simply affirms that every mind is, by its own subsistence, pure act. But how will he defend this as being true of the human mind, which we may assume is not always understanding or acting? For if he is correct, the mind will no longer persist, since if "act" and "essence" Essence refers to what a thing fundamentally is; Aristotle argued that in divine things, what they are is identical to what they do. are one and the same, it would lose its essence along with its act. The mind itself would die, only to come back to life when it begins to understand again. It now appears clearly that Aristotle pronounced this concerning the soul quite incautiously.

Aristotle fights with himself i.e., contradicts himself when he says that the mind is older than the body, and yet he removes "reminiscence" The Platonic theory that learning is actually "remembering" knowledge the soul had before birth.; for if the mind existed before, it certainly thought and possessed knowledge before it entered the body.

CHAPTER [IX].

How was that not poorly stated by the same man, and in what way does he completely disagree with himself? Clearly, he concedes—as appears in his books On the Generation of Animals—that the human mind is older than this body of ours; yet later he attacks those who...