III. Whether the
Soul is a Substance.
That the soul is a substance,448
is
proved in the following manner.
In the first place, because the definition given to the term substance
suits it very well. And that definition is to the effect, that
substance is that which, being ever identical, and ever one in point of
numeration with itself, is yet capable of taking on contraries in
succession.
449
| 449
τῶν
ἐναντίων
παραμέρος
εἰναι
δεκτικόν,
παραμέρος, here
apparently = in turn, though usually = out of turn. |
And that
this
soul, without passing the limit of its own proper
nature, takes on
contraries in succession, is, I fancy, clear to everybody. For
righteousness and
unrighteousness,
courage and cowardice,
temperance
and intemperance, are seen in it successively; and these are
contraries. If, then, it is the property of a substance to be
capable of taking on contraries in succession, and if the
soul is shown
to sustain the definition in these terms, it follows that the soul is a
substance. And in the second place, because if the body is a
substance, the soul must also be a substance. For it cannot be,
that what only has life imparted should be a substance, and that what
imparts the life should be no substance: unless one should assert
that the non-existent is the cause of the existent; or unless, again,
one were insane enough to allege that the dependent object is itself
the cause of that very thing in which it has its being, and without
which it could not subsist.
450
| 450 The text
has an apparent inversion: τὸ ἐν ᾧ τὴν
ὕπαρξιν ἔχον
καὶ οὗ ἄνευ
εἶναι μὴ
δυνάμενον,
αἴτιον
ἐκείνου
εἶναι τοῦ ἐν
ᾧ ἐστί. There is also a variety of reading:
καὶ ὁ
ἄνευ τοῦ
εἶναι μὴ
δυνάμενον. |
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