[Discussion] On the Gods and the World, Ch. VIII

[sdi]

Happy Wednesday! and to those who celebrate them, a happy belated solstice and early merry Christmas. Let's pick the puzzle-box back up and continue this second third of Sallustius, shall we?

VIII. On Mind and Soul, and that the latter is immortal.

There is a certain force,* less primary than Being but more primary than the Soul, which draws its existence from Being and completes the Soul as the Sun completes the eyes. Of Souls some are rational and immortal, some irrational and mortal. The former are derived from the first Gods, the latter from the secondary.

First, we must consider what soul is. It is, then, that by which the animate differs from the inanimate. The difference lies in motion, sensation, imagination, intelligence.† Soul, therefore, when irrational, is the life of sense and imagination; when rational, it is the life which controls sense and imagination and uses reason.

The irrational soul depends on the affections of the body; it feels desire and anger irrationally. The rational soul both, with the help of reason, despises the body, and, fighting against the irrational soul, produces either virtue or vice, according as it is victorious or defeated.

It must be immortal, both because it knows the gods (and nothing mortal knows‡ what is immortal), it looks down upon human affairs as though it stood outside them, and, like an unbodied thing, it is affected in the opposite way to the body. For while the body is young and fine, the soul blunders, but as the body grows old it attains its highest power. Again, every good soul uses mind; but no body can produce mind: for how should that which is without mind produce mind? Again, while Soul uses the body as an instrument, it is not in it; just as the engineer is not in his engines (although many engines move without being touched by any one). And if the Soul is often made to err by the body, that is not surprising. For the arts cannot perform their work when their instruments are spoilt.

* Gilbert Murray notes, "Proclus, Elem. Theol. xx, calls it ἡ νοερὰ φύσις ['he noera physis'], Natura Intellectualis. There are four degrees of existence: lowest of all, Bodies; above that, Soul; above all Souls, this 'Intellectual Nature'; above that, The One."

† Thomas Taylor notes, "In order to understand this distinction properly, it is necessary to observe, that the gnostic powers of the soul are five in number, viz. intellect, cogitation, (διανοια ['dianoia']) opinion, phantasy, sense. Intellect is that power by which we understand simple self-evident truths, called axioms, and are able to pass into contact with ideas themselves. But cogitation is that power which forms and perfects arguments and reasons. Opinion is that which knows the universal in sensible particulars, as that every man is a biped; and the conclusion of cogitation, as that every rational soul is immortal; but it only knows the οτι ['oti'], or that a thing is, but is perfectly ignorant of the διοτι ['dioti'], or why it is. And the phantasy is that power which apprehends things cloathed with figure, and may be called μοζφωτιχη νοησις ['mozphotiche noesis'], a figured intelligence. And, lastly, sense is that power which is distributed about the organs of sensation; which is mingled with passion in its judgement of things, and apprehends that only which falls upon, and agitates it externally. Again, the basis of the rational life is opinion; for the true man, or the rational soul, consists of intellect, cogitation, and opinion; but the summit of the irrational life is the phantasy. And opinion and phantasy are connected with each other; and the irrational is filled with powers from the rational life: so that the fictitious man commences from the phantasy; under which desire, like a many-headed savage beast, and anger, like a raging lion, subsist.

"But of these powers, intellect and sense do not employ a reasoning energy, on account of the acuteness and suddenness of their perceptions. And with respect to cogitation, it either assumes the principles of reasoning from intellect, which principles we call axioms; and in this case it produces demonstrative reasoning, the conclusions of which are always true, on account of the certainty of the axioms from which reason receives its increase: or the same cogitation converts itself to opinion, and deriving its principles from thence, forms dialectic reason, so called from its being employed by men in common discourse with each other; and hence its conclusions are not always true, because opinion is sometimes false: or, in the third place, cogitation conjoins itself with the phantasy, and in consequence of this produces vicious reasoning, which always embraces that which is false."

‡ Murray notes, "i. e. in the full sense of Gnôsis."

Comments

[sdi]

There is a certain force, [...]

I am trying to understand the Venn diagram of the Hypercosmic Gods, here. So from the One emerges Being (which must exist in order to, well, define existence). Then, from the One and Being, there is Mind; and finally, from the One and Being and Mind, there is Soul. That is to say, each is in some sense contained wholly within the preceding one: that all Mind exists, and that all Soul moves at the behest of Mind? (That is, there is no Soul that is not moved by Mind?)

[sdi]

First, we must consider what soul is. [...] The difference lies in motion, sensation, imagination, intelligence.

I'm sure this is an issue with translating from Greek to English, but I would have assumed thinking to be Mind rather than Soul... but I guess it's here being considered a form of motion, which makes sense enough. So then, what is Mind? It must be something inanimate, if it is above Soul... perhaps it is the ideas that one thinks about?

[sdi]

Of Souls some are rational and immortal, some irrational and mortal. The former are derived from the first Gods, the latter from the secondary.

Apuleius—not, it should be noted, a Neoplatonist!—indicates that there is a middle class as well, irrational and immortal, that intermediates between the divine and mortal realms. Such beings clearly don't have a place in Sallustius' scheme, and yet I've experienced them myself! I'm not certain how to reconcile this with Sallustius' logic. Perhaps I'll get there when I begin on Iamblichus...

[sdi]

It appears to me here that Sallustius is espousing philosophy in an extreme sense, renouncing the irrational body in order to—assuming I am not being presumptuous—approach and hopefully attain the immortality of the rational soul?

Or is he rather assuming that a soul that is derived from the secondary Gods, being of a different class, to never be able to attain to the status of those that are derived from the primary Gods? (But what, then, do we make of all those myths where Zeus confers immortality upon those He favors?)

Or am I reading way too much into this and Sallustius is only defining an ontology that has nothing at all to do with how one ought to behave?