Now when we make virtue a harmony, and vice a breach of harmony, we accept an opinion approved by the ancients ; and the theory helps us decidedly to our solution. For if virtue is simply a natural concordance among the phases of the Soul, and vice simply a discord, then there is no further question of any foreign presence ; harmony would be the result of every distinct phase or faculty joining in, true to itself ; discord would mean that not all chimed in at their best and truest. Consider, for example, the performers in a choral dance ; they sing together
111.6.2] the impassivity of the unembodied
though each one has his particular part, and sometimes one voice is heard while the others are silent ; and each brings to the chorus some- thing of his own ; it is not enough that all lift their voices together ; each must sing, choicely, his own part to the music set for him. Exactly so in the case of the Soul ; there will be harmony when each faculty performs its appropriate part.
Yes : but this very harmony constituting the virtue of the Soul must depend upon a previous virtue, that of each several faculty within itself ; and before there can be the vice of discord there must be the vice of the single parts, and these can be bad only by the actual presence of vice as they can be good only by the presence of virtue. It is true that no presence is affirmed when vice is identified with ignorance in the reasoning faculty of the Soul ; ignorance is not a positive thing ; but in the presence of false judgments — the main cause of vice — must it not be admitted that something positive has entered into the Soul, something perverting the reasoning faculty ? So, the initiative faculty ; is it not, itself, altered as one varies between timidity and boldness ? And the desiring faculty, similarly, as it runs wild or accepts control ?
Our teaching is that when the particular faculty is sound it performs the reasonable act of its essential nature, obeying the reasoning faculty in it which derives from the Intellectual Principle and communicates to the rest. And this following of reason is not the acceptance of an imposed shape ; it is like using the eyes ; the Soul sees by its act, that of looking towards reason. The faculty of sight in the performance of its act is essentially what it was when it lay latent ; its act is not a change in it, but simply its entering into the relation that belongs to its essential character ; it knows — that is, sees — without suffering any change : so, precisely, the reasoning phase of the Soul stands towards the Intellectual Principle ; this it sees by its very essence ; this vision is its knowing faculty ; it takes in no stamp, no impression ; all that enters it is the object of vision — possessed, once more, without possession ; it possesses by the fact of knowing but “ without possession ” in the sense that there is no incorporation of anything left behind by the object of vision, like the impression of the seal on sealing-wax.
And note that we do not appeal to stored-up impressions to account for memory ; we think of the mind awakening its powers in such a way as to possess something not present to it.
Very good : but is it not different before and after acquiring the memory ?
Be it so ; but it has suffered no change — unless we are to think of the mere progress from latency to actuality as change — nothing has been introduced into the mind ; it has simply achieved the Act dictated by its nature.
It is universally true that the characteristic Act of immaterial entities is performed without any change in them — otherwise they would at last be worn away — theirs is the Act of the unmoving ; where act means suffering change, there is Matter : an immaterial Being would have no ground of permanence if its very Act changed it.
Thus in the case of Sight, the seeing faculty is in act but the material organ alone suffers change : judgements, (true or false, are not changes within the Soul ; they) are similar to visual experiences.
But how explain the alternation of timidity and daring in the initia- tive faculty ?
Timidity would come by the failure to look towards the Reason- Principle or by looking towards some inferior phase of it or by some defect in the organs of action— some lack or flaw in the bodily equipment — or by outside prevention of the natural act or by the mere absence of adequate stimulus : boldness would arise from the reverse conditions : neither implies any change, or even any experience, in the Soul.
So with the faculty of desire : what we call loose living is caused by its acting unaccompanied ; it has done all of itself ; the other faculties, whose business it is to make their presence felt in control and to point the right way, have lain in abeyance ; the Seer in the Soul was occupied elsewhere, for, though not always at least sometimes, it has leisure for a certain degree of contemplation of other concerns.
Often, moreover, the vice of the desiring faculty will be merely some ill condition of the body, and its virtue, bodily soundness ; thus there would again be no question of anything imported into the Soul.
111.6.3] the Impassivity of the Unembodied
But how do we explain likings and aversions ? Sorrow, too, and anger and pleasure, desire and fear — are these not changes, affectings, present and stirring within the Soul ?
This question cannot be ignored. To deny that changes take place and are intensely felt is in sharp contradiction to obvious facts. But, while we recognise this, we must make very sure what it is that changes. To represent the Soul or Mind as being the seat of these emotions is not far removed from making it blush or turn pale ; it is to forget that while the Soul or Mind is the means, the effect takes place in the distinct organism, the animated body.
At the idea of disgrace, the shame is in the Soul ; but the body is occupied by the Soul — not to trouble about words — is, at any rate, close to it and very different from soulless matter ; and so, is affected in the blood, mobile in its nature. Fear begins in the mind ; the pallor is simply the withdrawal of the blood inwards. So in pleasure, the elation is mental, but makes itself felt in the body ; the purely mental phase has not reached the point of sensation : the same is true of pain. So desire is ignored in the Soul where the impulse takes its rise ; what comes outward thence, the Sensibility knows.
When we speak of the Soul or Mind being moved — as in desire, reasoning, judging — ^we do not mean that it is driven into its act ; these movements are its own acts.
In the same way when we call Life a movement we have no idea of a changing substance ; the naturally appropriate act of each member of the living thing makes up the Life, which is, therefore, not a shifting thing.
To bring the matter to the point : put it that life, tendency, are no changements ; that memories are not forms stamped upon the mind, that notions are not of the nature of impressions on sealing-wax ; we thence draw the general conclusion that in all such states and movements the Soul, or Mind, is unchanged in substance and in essence, that virtue and vice are not something imported into the Soul— as heat and cold, blackness or whiteness are importations into body — but that, in all this relation, matter and spirit are exactly and comprehensively contraries.
We have, however, still to examine what is called the affective phase of the Soul. This has, no doubt, been touched upon above where we dealt with the passions in general as grouped about the initiative phase of the Soul and the desiring faculty in its effort to shape things to its choice : but more is required ; we must begin by forming a clear idea of what is meant by this affective faculty of the Soul.
In general terms it means the centre about which we recognise the affections to be grouped ; and by affections we mean those states upon which follow pleasure and pain.
Now among these affections we must distinguish. Some are pivoted upon judgements ; thus, a Man judging his death to be at hand may feel fear ; foreseeing some fortunate turn of events, he is happy : the opinion lies in one sphere ; the affection is stirred in another. Some- times the affections take the lead and automatically bring in the notion which thus becomes present to the appropriate faculty ; but as we have explained, an act of opinion does not introduce any change into the Soul or Mind : what happens is that from the notion of some impending evil is produced the quite separate thing, fear, and this fear, in turn, becomes known in that part of the Mind which is said under such circumstances to harbour fear.
But what is the action of this fear upon the Mind ?
The general answer is that it sets up trouble and confusion before an evil anticipated. It should, however, be quite clear that the Soul or Mind is the seat of all imaginative representation — both the higher representation known as opinion or judgement and the lower representa- tion which is not so much a judgement as a vague notion unattended by discrimination, something resembling the action by which, as is believed, the " Nature ” of common speech produces, unconsciously, the objects of the partial sphere. It is equally certain that in aU that follows upon the mental act or state, the disturbance, confined to the body, belongs to the sense-order ; trembling, pallor, inability to speak, have obviously nothing to do with the spiritual portion of the being. The Soul, in fact, would have to be described as corporeal if it were the seat of such
Ill 6.5] the impassivity of the unembodied
symptoms : besides, in that case the trouble would not even reach the body since the only transmitting principle, oppressed by sensation, jarred out of itself, would be inhibited.
None the less, there is an affective phase of the Soul or Mind and this is not corporeal ; it can be, only, some kind of Ideal-form.
Now Matter is the one field of the desiring faculty, as of the principles of nutrition growth and engendering, which are root and spring to desire and to every other affection known to this Ideal-form. No Ideal-form can be the victim of disturbance or be in any way affected : it remains in tranquillity ; only the Matter associated with it can be affected by any state or experience induced by the movement which its mere presence suffices to set up. Thus the vegetal Principle induces vegetal life but it does not, itself, pass through the processes of vegetation ; it gives growth but it does not grow ; in no movement which it originates is it moved with the motion it induces ; it is in perfect repose, or, at least, its movement, really its act, is utterly different from what it causes elsewhere.
The nature of an Ideal-form is to be, of itself, an activity ; it operates by its mere presence : it is as if Melody itself plucked the strings. The affective phase of the Soul or Mind will be the operative cause of all affection ; it originates the movement either under the stimulus of some sense-presentment or independently — and it is a question to be examined whether the judgement leading to the movement operates from above or not — but the affective phase itself remains unmoved like Melody dictating music. The causes originating the movement may be likened to the musician ; what is moved is like the strings of his instru- ment, and, once more, the Melodic Principle itself is not affected, but only the strings, though, however much the musician desired it, he could not pluck the strings except under dictation from the principle of Melody.
But why have we to call in Philosophy to make the Soul immune if it is thus (like the Melodic Principle of our illustration) immune from the beginning ?