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. What, however, I would ask, are the
forces by which the hand or the body was fashioned into its shape? The
woodcarver will perhaps say, by the axe or the auger; the
physiologist, by air and by earth. Of these two answers the
artificer's is the better, but it is nevertheless insufficient. For it
is not enough for him to say that by the stroke of his tool this
part was formed into a concavity, that into a flat surface; but he
must state the reasons why he struck his blow in such a way as to
effect this, and what his final object was; namely, that the piece
of wood should develop eventually into this or that shape. It is
plain, then, that the teaching of the old physiologists is inadequate,
and that the true method is to state what the definitive characters
are that distinguish the animal as a whole; to explain what it is both
in substance and in form, and to deal after the same fashion with
its several organs; in fact, to proceed in exactly the same way as
we should do, were we giving a complete description of a couch.
If now this something that constitutes the form of the living
being be the soul, or part of the soul, or something that without
the soul cannot exist; as would seem to be the case, seeing at any
rate that when the soul departs, what is left is no longer a living
animal, and that none of the parts remain what they were before,
excepting in mere configuration, like the animals that in the fable
are turned into stone; if, I say, this be so, then it will come within
the province of the natural philosopher to inform himself concerning
the soul, and to treat of it, either in its entirety, or, at any rate,
of that part of it which constitutes the essential character of an
animal; and it will be his duty to say what this soul or this part
of a soul is; and to discuss the attributes that attach to this
essential character, especially as nature is spoken of in two
senses, and the nature of a thing is either its matter or its essence;
nature as essence including both the motor cause and the final
cause
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