| PSYCHOLOGICAL IDEAS IN ANTIQUITY Psychology is a modern term, but its components, psyche and logos, are words whose history goes back to the Indo-European parent language. For the philos- ophers of classical antiquity, giving an “account” (logos) of the psyche was a necessary part of intellectual inquiry. Greek philosophy was vitally concerned with many of the problems which exercise modern psychologists, but did not regard “study of the mind” as an autonomous subject with specific terms of refer- ence. Frequently theories about the psyche were intimately connected with ethical, physical, and meta- physical assumptions. In this article “antiquity” means the period of Greco-Roman civilization (ca. 750 B.C.-A.D. 450), and “psychological doctrines” means theories held about the psyche by philosophers. It is necessary to leave the term psyche untranslated initially, since it cannot be accurately rendered by a single English word such as “soul” or “mind.” The meaning of psyche will best appear by examining its functions and what it is used to denote. Most of this survey is devoted to a chrono- logical discussion of the major psychological doctrines, but a preliminary note on the language and popular conceptions inherited by philosophers will help to set the scene. THE LEGACY OF EARLY GREEK LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT The Homeric poems (ca. 750-700 B.C.) are the earli- est European literature. In them references to psyche are almost confined to descriptions of death or the dead. A man who has lost his psyche is either dead or unconscious (through fainting) and it is probable that the word has a primary association with breath. The precise location of psyche in the body is obscure, though there are good reasons for associating it with the head (R. B. Onians, The Origins of European Thought, Cambridge [1951], pp. 95-115). Psyche is sufficiently corporeal to be “breathed out” through the mouth or through a wound and to survive as a ghost when it has left the body. But though essential to the living man, psyche is not connected in Homer with any particular activity. Nous is his favorite word to describe “mental seeing” or “planning” and it can sometimes be translated “mind.” To denote emotions the important word is thumos (physically associated with breath and blood). A man may “desire in his thumos” or his thumos may “urge him to do some- thing.” Though not regarded as “organs” of the body, nous and thumos are permanent possessions of the living man to which his thinking and feeling belong. There are other words which overlap or go beyond these, but Homer does not have a single noun to denote the soul or personality. Nor does he use a single term for “body.” When the Homeric hero is under emotional stress he may externalize his heart or his thumos, scolding it or conversing with it. The notion that emo- tions or intellect are in some sense independent of their possessor is illustrated by the “psychic intervention” (Dodds [1951], pp. 5-16) seen in expressions like “Zeus took away his understanding” or “A god put courage into his heart.” The survival of the psyche in Homer appears not to possess any important ethical or religious associa- tions. Deprived of the body, the psyche lives on in Hades, a feeble transformation or residue of the living man. Essentially, the man whose psyche has left the body is dead. Merely to survive as a psyche did not make him immortal (athanatos). For to be athanatos (literally “deathless”) is to possess the property of the gods, and the Homeric psyche is so far from being divine that it is compared to smoke. The immortality of the soul was a concept which Greeks as late as the fifth century B.C. found surprising (Herodotus IV, 93ff.). The significance of the development between Homeric thought and early philosophy has been admirably analyzed by Snell (Die Entdeckung des Geistes, pp. 12ff.); but a caveat is perhaps needed against his claim that Homer gives a fully repre- sentative picture of Greek ways of thinking at a par- ticular time. Homer is the culmination of a long oral tradition which has its own highly formalized expres- sions. In the lyric poets of the next two centuries psyche came to be treated as the seat of emotions, in spite of its Homeric associations with death; and it is possible that such a use of the word is not as novel as its absence from Homer might suggest. Eventually intellectual activity was also ascribed to psyche and by the fifth century B.C. psyche has changed its relation to other words and become the name for a single thing to which consciousness and vitality in general belong. How and why this happened is impossible to answer precisely, but it is certain that religious conceptions associated with the names of Orpheus and Pythagoras were highly influential. The essence of these conceptions, which probably go back to the sixth century B.C. in northern Greece and southern Italy, is as follows: the psyche is an im- mortal (and therefore divine) being, sullied by incor- poration into a mortal body but capable by initiation and ritual observances of becoming pure and eventu- ally free of its earthly shell. Rebirth in various forms and final union with the universal divinity are essential features of this doctrine. It is clear that the Homeric concept of psyche has become quite transmuted here. Page 2, Volume 4 Now, far from signifying merely that which leaves a man when he dies, psyche must, in order to fulfill the religious belief, denote his living self or personality. The full significance of this concept was to be devel- oped by Plato, but some earlier philosophers (whether or not they accepted the religious belief) now treated psyche as the center of consciousness. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DOCTRINES OF THE PRE-SOCRATICS 1. Thales and Anaximenes. The first Greek thinkers who are conventionally called “philosophers” were more interested in cosmogony and cosmology than in the study of man. To Thales of Miletus psyche seems to have denoted both life and the source of motion. The concept of psyche as that which moves and ani- mates the body is a natural development of the view that a dead (motionless) body has lost its psyche. In Aristotle's opinion (De anima 411a 7f.) Thales may have believed the world itself to possess psyche; and many later philosophers certainly took this view. Anaximenes, Thales' younger fellow-countryman, drew a specific analogy between the human psyche and the material which he supposed to surround (and control) the cosmos (frag. 2). Both were identified with breath or air, and the point of the comparison is clearly that the psyche in man possesses a function similar to that of air in the world. Psyche or air is the life-principle. Thales and Anaximenes did not apparently discuss psychology in detail, but the assumption of an affinity between the human psyche and the cosmic principle belongs to the same climate of ideas which gave rise to beliefs in the psyche as the divine element in man and the center of his consciousness. 2. Heraclitus. In Heraclitus of Ephesus all these concepts occur and they are also associated with an interest in sense perception and theory of knowledge. To Heraclitus the senses are the first source of informa- tion about the world, but their witness can be mislead- ing (frag. 107). If the evidence of the senses is correctly interpreted by the soul (by which psyche will now be translated) it can bring about an understanding of the logos, the principle determining all things. This princi- ple, which means the unity behind opposition and change, is not directly an object of perception, though Heraclitus may have supposed it to be “drawn in” physically through the senses (Guthrie [1962], p. 430). Logos is an object of intellectual apprehension which a soul in the right condition can grasp. The principle has as its material constituent fire, and Heraclitus probably also regarded fire as the fundamental material of soul, since “it is death to soul to become water” (frag. 36), while “a dry [i.e., hot] soul is wisest and best” (frag. 118). A number of fundamental ideas are involved here. First, the soul is now treated as the recipient of sense-impressions. Second, it is able, by interpreting these, to grasp a principle which is not strictly empirical. Third, the soul at its best is analogous to, if not identical with, the fiery cosmic principle. Aristotle, much later, was to talk of “the thought which thinks itself,” and the embryo of this notion may be contained in Heraclitus' belief that the soul is both the apprehender of logos and in some sense identical with logos. These ideas were not stated in such precise terms by Heraclitus himself. Indeed he advised that the soul possesses depths which cannot be grasped (frag. 45). But they are reasonable inferences from his oracular fragments. He probably believed that the soul was immortal, and that excellence of character went along with intellectual understanding. In this he anticipated Plato, but also his near contemporary, Empedocles. 3. Empedocles. In Empedocles, science and mysti- cism are curiously blended. But though it would be improper to draw an absolute distinction between his two poems, On Nature and Purifications, the former is primarily an attempt to explain the physical world and the latter an account, in the Orphic-Pythagorean tradition, of the incarnations, rewards, and punishments of the “soul” (daimon). Since the work On Nature accounts for sense perception, emotion, and thought in purely material terms, without reference to a psyche, it is hard to know what role the immortal soul played in the mortal body. Empedocles' account of this is confined to the religious poem (in the evidence which survives) and it is safest to assume that he distinguished the source of physical consciousness from the moral, immortal self. If so, Empedocles has come nearer to the concept of a soul which is quite distinct from the body. Empedocles gave detailed explanations of sense per- ception and thought. It is difficult to summarize these, since they are intimately connected with his basic assumptions about the world. Four elements, earth, air, fire, and water, and two polar forces, Love and Strife, constitute all that exists. To perceive is to receive in the pores of the sense organs effluences from the exter- nal elements, which are recognized by similar elements in the sense organs. Thought takes place primarily in the blood, which is composed of a nearly perfect mix- ture (frags. 98, 105) of the elements. It is by thought that we perceive Love and Strife, which are probably also embodied in the blood. Empedocles does not ex- plain whether or how the evidence of the senses is organized by thought. At about this time a Pythagorean philosopher, Alcmaeon, had traced perception from the senses to the brain, but Empedocles may have regarded thought itself as a category of perception which has as its function receiving through the pores and assimi- Page 3, Volume 4 lating different combinations of external elements. Even the elements are in some sense “conscious,” and all processes, including emotional and mental activi- ties, are referred to their mixture and separation. The naiveté of the theory should not obscure its achieve- ments. Empedocles has focused attention on the mech- anism of consciousness, and offered an explanation consistent with his theories about the natural world. Psychology is here related to physiology. The investi- gation of physical phenomena has aroused interest in the physical processes of sensation and thought. 4. Parmenides. Other pre-Socratic theories may be discussed more briefly. To Parmenides, whose influence on Empedocles and subsequent philosophy was pro- found, the physical world possessed no reality; for it contained no subject of which “exists” could always be truly asserted. Parmenides was unable to satisfy the claims of his logic by reference to changing phenomena and he rejected the senses in favor of nous, the mind or the application of thought: the only existent is an object of intellectual apprehension. For the history of psychology this is important. Parmenides set up the intellect as an autonomous faculty, quite independent of sense perception. Its physical basis (frag. 16) is obscure and hardly relevant to his main argument. But among philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, who were concerned with the relation between soul and body, an analogous belief in the primacy and independence of the intellectual faculty persists. 5. Anaxagoras and Democritus. It is improbable that any pre-Socratic philosopher regarded mind or soul as wholly immaterial. Anaxagoras made nous the first cause of the cosmos and the controlling principle of living things. He called it the “finest and purest of all things” (frag. 12), which suggests that he was coming close to expressing its immateriality. Unlike Empedocles, Anaxagoras regarded perception as the interaction of contraries; we recognize external heat by virtue of cold in ourselves. He was also an extreme realist, taking all qualitative differences to be funda- mental differences in matter itself. This theory was opposed by his contemporary, Democritus the atomist, who referred all the qualities we perceive to changing states of the body and its interaction with atoms of different shapes. Democritus was consistent with the general pre-Socratic position in giving the soul (spherical atoms distributed over the body) the same substance as his cosmic principle. PLATO Plato's psychological theory is fundamental to his whole philosophy and only its more striking aspects can be indicated here. In regarding “cultivation of the soul” as the primary duty, Plato was certainly influ enced by Socrates and the Pythagoreans. Our knowl- edge of Socrates is largely based on the works of Plato, but it can be assumed that Socrates advocated and practiced rigorous discussion about moral concepts as the means of tending the soul and making it competent to control the body and its passions. “Soul” here means intellectual and moral self. The two attributes go hand in hand. For it is only when we know what goodness is that we can (and will) become good. Dualism. Plato presents this intellectualist position most strongly in the Phaedo. Soul and body are alien substances. It is the aim of the soul, which is simple in essence and immortal, to rid itself of the body, for while it is embodied the soul cannot attain perfect knowledge. The only objects of knowledge are Forms— unique, incomposite, immaterial entities of which the particular objects of perception are only fleeting replicas. During embodiment the soul can apprehend the Forms only by thinking as far as possible inde- pendently of the body. Soul is the thinking, rational self in direct opposition to the passions, pleasures, and sensations associated with the body. It is still part of the soul's job to animate the body during its incarna- tion, but this is a regrettable incursion on its spiritual activity and Plato does not explain how the soul acts on the body. Differentiated Soul. This extreme dualism was not Plato's final word. In the Republic (Book IV) soul loses its unity and becomes divided into nous (“intellect”), thumos (“passion”), and epithumia (“appetite”). To its appetitive part are ascribed bodily desires; thumos is the emotional element in virtue of which we feel anger, fear, etc.; nous is (or should be) the controlling part which subjugates the appetites with the help of thumos. Plato seeks justification for this theory on two counts. First, his quest for justice is based on the assumption that the state is a large-scale analogue of the individual, and therefore the components which sanction the state's division into three classes (artisans, soldiers, and guardians) are established as categories for analyzing the psychology of the individual. Second, Plato invokes the empirical fact of conflict within the individual (Republic IV, 436ff.). At one and the same time we may both desire to drink and be unwilling to drink. But the same thing cannot act in opposite ways with the same part of itself towards the same object at the same time. If such conflict is to be referred to the soul as a whole, then the soul must possess different parts to account for the clash. It is also the case that passion and appetite may conflict, for a man may be angry with that in himself which prompts him to do some- thing shameful. Hence a part of the soul different from reason and appetite is required. Like the soldiers of the ideal state, passion should be the ally of the Page 4, Volume 4 governing component. The basic conflict for Plato is still between bodily desires and intellect, between sense and reason, but the dualism of the Phaedo has been modified by locating the division which follows from incarnation within the soul itself. At the same time Plato saw the possibility of reconciliation within the divided self, for he asserts that the two lower parts have “following reason” as their function (Republic IX, 586e). The true philosopher is one in whom the rule of reason is established, and in this situation all parts of the soul conspire together for a united good. Nor is the rule of reason an exercise of cold intellection. The rational part of the soul is a lover of wisdom, and distinguished from the appetitive part not by the ab- sence of all desire but by having a different object of desire: the absolute, intelligible good. This doctrine is presented mythically in the Phaedrus (246a ff.), where the human soul is pictured as a charioteer (reason) driving a pair of horses (passion and appetite). The passionate horse is a clean, upstanding creature which follows the guide of reason, whereas its fellow horse is a shaggy, recalcitrant beast which tries to drag the chariot down from its heavenly course. Here the soul's composite nature does not depend on incarnation; but the point of the image is the imperfect human soul's moral tension, not its multiplicity of function. Plato's division of the soul persists in later works such as the Timaeus, in which the rational part of the soul is stated to be divine and immortal, and is contrasted with two mortal, irrational parts: passion and appetite (69d ff.). The rational part is located in the head and is composed of immaterial ingredients blended from the basic principles of the intelligible world and the world of physical change. The irrational parts are located in the chest (passion) and the belly (appetite). Their activities are associated with the bodily organs which house them. The blood vessels seem to be the instruments by which the different parts of the soul communicate with each other. Knowledge and Perception. Soul is self-moving, the principle of motion (i.e., animation) both in individual living things and in the world itself (Phaedrus 245c ff.). The world is an intelligent, living creature on which man himself is modelled. In its original, discarnate state the human soul has direct acquaintance with the Forms and thus acquires knowledge. This knowledge is for- gotten when the soul enters a body but it can be recalled, at least in part, by “dialectic,” rigorous philo- sophical discussion, and the judgments which we make about our perceptions presuppose it. All judgments entail the use of such terms as “exists,” “is the same as,” “is different from,” and these are not objects of perception (Theaetetus 185a ff.). Learning is a process of recollecting a priori truths, a doctrine Plato attempts to prove in the Meno (81e ff.) by an experiment in which an uneducated slave is shown how to “recall” the answer to the problem, what square has twice the area of that of a given square, by answering a series of simple questions. Since sensible objects lack the unchanging existence required by Plato of what is fully real, he took less interest in the analysis of sensation. But in later dialogues the soul is more explicitly related to the body insofar as sensations are described as movements, caused by external phenomena, which are transmitted to the soul through the body (Timaeus 43c); and pleasures which have their source in the body penetrate to the soul (Republic 457c). Plato also recog- nized a form of “judgment” in which the mind pro- nounces rightly or wrongly on what is presented to the senses (Sophist 263d-264b). Plato's psychology is not a systematic doctrine, rigidly adhered to. His view of the soul developed from the uncompromising dualism of the Phaedo to a posi- tion in which a unitary self is attainable if harmony can be established between reason, emotion, and bodily appetite. Body and mind are related to each other through pleasure and sensation. But Plato never aban- doned his belief in the priority of reason, the part of man which is akin to the fully real, unchanging world and which has as its essential function apprehending that world. ARISTOTLE With Aristotle, psychology became a subject of sys- tematic inquiry. He devoted a whole treatise (De anima) to defining soul and its functions, and a group of smaller works (Parva naturalia) covers specific topics such as memory and sleep. Aristotle regarded psychol- ogy as an aspect of physical science, and his own analysis is based on the principles which he lays down for all study of the natural world. But the De anima occupies a fundamental place in his entire philosophy. The biological works require constant reference to it, and it is highly relevant to the ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. Aristotle has good claims to be the founder of “psychology,” though the word itself is not used by him. All later Greek psychological theory shows his influence, in both terminology and method. Soul as Vital Principle. Aristotle began his career as a student of Plato, and in his earliest works, of which only fragments survive, he argued for the preexistence and survival of the whole soul. According to that theory the relationship of body to soul is temporary and con- tingent. But in the De anima, a work of his later years, Aristotle takes body and soul to be two aspects, which are only conceptually distinguishable, of a single sub- stance: “a body which possesses life” (II, 1). Aristotle calls these two aspects “matter” and “form.” Soul is Page 5, Volume 4 the form which animate matter must possess. The physical matter of an animal is not its soul, for what distinguishes animate from inanimate is not physical matter but “the possession of life.” The potentiality to be alive is a natural property of certain bodies, and it is in virtue of soul that such bodies realize this potentiality. Aristotle defines soul as “the primary actuality of a natural body which potentially has life” (De anima 412a 27-28). By “primary actuality” he means the actual possession of the faculties which are necessary to life, just as an eye, in order to be an eye, must possess the faculty of vision. It is clear that with this concep- tion body and soul are necessarily related. Aristotle recognizes that emotions, desire, perception—all func- tions of the soul—are dependent on the body which contains them. But the influence of Plato remains strong enough to make Aristotle regard mind (nous) as a faculty of soul which has no physical base and which may be capable of existing apart from the body. Of this more below. Faculties of Soul. In the first book of De anima, Aristotle surveys and criticizes earlier theories of the soul. From them he draws certain general assumptions; in particular, the soul is the principle responsible for thought, sensation and perception (Aristotle's single word aisthesis covers both), and movement. His detailed analysis in the next two books is concerned with these functions of soul. Since soul is that which distinguishes animate from inanimate, Aristotle considers what characteristics are peculiar to living creatures. He nominates four: nutri- tion (the faculty of growth and reproduction); sensa- tion; locomotion; and thought. The first of these is a “form of movement,” and it is possessed by every living creature from plants upwards. Only man has all four faculties, which thus serve as a way of classifying all living things in ascending order of complexity. This method of analyzing soul is an important ad- vance on Plato's. Aristotle is not dividing the soul into parts (a procedure which he opposes) but analyzing its different functions. Possessing aisthesis means possessing at least one (touch) of the five senses, and it also entails imagination, pleasure and pain, and de- sire. The latter is not a base part of the soul, but a necessary concomitant of perception and sensation. Aristotle in some sense is a behaviorist. He wants to know how and why living creatures act, and he analyzes this in terms roughly comparable to stimulus and response. Thus an animal moves in space because its appetitive faculty is prompted by an object which presents itself as desirable (or good), and the animal is then moved to pursue it (De anima III, 432b 15-17; 433a 27-29). In man the psychology of action is more complex, since mind and desire may clash; but there is no question of man's acting independently of desire since all action is prompted by the good, as the agent sees it. What man can do, if he has himself under control, is to contemplate objects of desire or aversion without acting in consequence, though physical changes, such as rapid heartbeat, may ensue (De anima 432b 27-32). He also has the unique capacity to deliberate and thus establish a goal of action inde- pendent of his immediate environment and physical state. Sensation and Perception. Aristotle devoted consid- erable attention to the analysis of sensation and per- ception (De anima II, 5-12). His theories here, though hampered by inadequate physiology (the nervous sys- tem, commonly confused with the arteries, was dis- covered about sixty years after his death) represent a major advance on previous speculation. Aristotle takes sense perception to be an activity in which external objects so act upon each sense organ that it receives their form (perceptible properties) independently of the matter with which this form is associated in the object itself. Just as wax can be imprinted with various impressions, so the sense organ or sense can become qualified as colored, resonant, hot, etc. Neither the sense nor its (perceptible) object has any actual exist- ence except in the act of perception, and this takes place when the appropriate medium (e.g., light in the case of vision) is acted upon by the external object and passes on its perceptible properties to the sense organ. It has been observed that an explanation of aisthesis as a “process of being acted on” does not square well with the active notion of “discrimination,” which Aristotle also attributes to this faculty (Hamlyn, Classical Quarterly, 9 [1959], 12f.). Part of the difficulty arises from a lack of terms to distinguish sensation from perception. But Aristotle was not perhaps so confused as some make out. The organ is so constituted that it reacts in certain ways to the objects which fall between the ranges, light-dark, soft-hard, etc. (De anima 423b 30-424a 10). The sense is a “mean” be- tween two extremes and it is in virtue of this mean that we are made aware of (or judge) the different properties of objects. Hence the reason, according to Aristotle, why we are not aware of temperature equiv- alent to that of our own body. A more serious difficulty is how to explain the coor- dination of information received by the senses and the problem of self-consciousness. Aristotle asserts that each sense has its own object, to which it is necessarily related. (He seems to exclude the possibility of halluci- nation by connecting actual hearing with actual sounding, De anima 425b 26ff.). But there are certain properties such as motion, rest, shape, magnitude, and Page 6, Volume 4 number which are apprehended by more than one sense. Since there is no sixth sense, this “perception of common sensibles” is due to the cooperative activity of the special senses, i.e., the whole faculty, and Aristotle calls this “common sense” (De anima 425a 14-425b 11). Whereas we can never, in Aristotle's view, be deceived by the simple qualities (e.g., color, sound) reported by the special senses, we can make mistakes about the common sensibles; we can also relate any object of perception to the wrong external object (what Aristotle calls the “incidental” object of perception), i.e., take what we perceive to be Socrates when it is Plato. For perception does not tell us what something is (this is the job of the mind); it gives information about the qualities of an object. The pre- cise workings of “common sense” are obscure in the De anima. In the Parva naturalia mention is made of a single, unified sense faculty, probably located in the heart, by which the data of sense are coordinated and on which self-awareness, imagination, and dream- ing depend. But if Aristotle envisaged such a role for “common sense” in the De anima he does not say so. Thought. Artistotle's account of thought is obscure and unsatisfactory. Much of the difficulty derives from the fact that he takes thought to be an activity analogous to aisthesis, i.e., a change brought about by an object, in this case “thinkables” or “intelligibles” (De anima III, 4). Now in sensation the sense organ is acted upon by external phenomena, but these are not available to actualize the mind, which “has no organ.” Aristotle takes the mind to be in one respect analogous to a blank wax-tablet on which anything can be imprinted; in this sense mind is capable of receiving and becoming identical with any object of thought, but it has no actual existence until it thinks. In another respect, the mind is an ever-active power that actualizes its own capacity for thought in the manner of light which makes potential colors actual (ibid., III, 5). This doctrine of an active intellect is necessary, given Aristotle's theory of potentiality, if the capacity of the passive intellect is to result in an actual cognitive process. But the active intellect does not apparently create its own objects of thought. Where then do they come from? They cannot be independent substances, like Plato's Forms. But thought is concerned with “forms” or “essences”—what things really are—and it thinks them with the help of mental images (ibid., 431a 14-15). Aristotle seems to conceive of imagination as a faculty, intermediate between aisthesis and thought, which provides the mind with the data in which it can conceptualize the essential form of particular things, or, in the case of abstract thought, the form of, say, triangle without reference to any actual existing triangle. But the precise relationship between imagi nation and the two aspects of mind is very uncertain. In its active aspect mind is independent of body, eternal and immortal. It is not engendered in the phys- ical process of conception but enters the womb “from outside.” But what kind of existence the individual mind enjoys when separate from the body is not explained. God, for Aristotle, is nothing but an ever- active mind, and man has something of God present in himself through his active intellect. This doctrine does not seriously contradict Aristotle's view of soul and body as two aspects of a single sub- stance. Soul essentially is that which actualizes the body's vital capacities, but the active intellect has no physical correlate, though it temporarily unites with the passive intellect, which ultimately seems to depend on the body. The details of this theory are not Aristotle's main concern in the De anima. There he shows how the response of a living creature to its environment can be analyzed as a movement, varying in complexity from the single nutritive functions of a plant to the behavior of man, who responds by his rational and appetitive capacities to the data provided by the senses and imagination. Knowledge is the formulation of general notions by induction from the particular objects of perception. This ability to frame concepts provides man with his ethical goals and the subject matter of his scientific inquiries. Aristotle's psychology is a general analysis of the determinate capacities of the species which fall under the genus animal. It has important metaphysical and ethical applications, but unlike Plato, Aristotle emphasized the organic unity of body and soul, and established terms of reference for investigating animal behavior. POST-ARISTOTELIAN PSYCHOLOGY 1. Theophrastus and Strato. After Aristotle's death the philosophical school (Lyceum or Peripatos) associ- ated with his name won fame as a center of scientific research, under its successive heads, Theophrastus and Strato. Theophrastus' De sensu, a historical survey of theories of sensation and perception, is an invaluable source of information about the pre-Socratics, but the little that is known about his own psychological theory suggests that he followed Aristotle in most respects. He did, however, raise questions about the “external” origin of intellect and the manner of the association between the active and passive intellect (Themistius, In De an. 430a 25). In this context, and for what follows, Strato is a figure of major importance, a fact which has not always been fully appreciated. Evidence about him is scanty, but it reveals a thinker of the highest scientific quality. Strato departed radically from the Platonic and Aristotelian tradition in regarding sensa- Page 7, Volume 4 tion, perception, emotion, and thought as multiple aspects of a single, unified consciousness (Plutarch, De libidine et aegritudine 697b). This he located in a central organ (the front part of the brain) which com- municates with the sense organs and the rest of the body via pneuma (“fine air or breath”). Sensations occur not in the organs themselves but in this sensorium, whence they are projected to the particular part of the body which is affected (Aëtius, IV 23, 3). Strato thus provided a firm physiological basis for consciousness lacking in Aristotle's system, and com- pletely abandoned the distinction between rational and irrational faculties, as well as the belief in an immortal soul or a transcendent reason. Mind is not peculiar to man; rather, it is a necessary condition of sensation and perception, since the data of sense require “atten- tion” if they are to be registered (Plutarch, De sollertia animalium 961a). In this theory, thought is down- graded to “consciousness,” a thoroughly heretical no- tion in the general context of Greek philosophy. For his physiology Strato was certainly influenced by med- ical science which, probably shortly after his death, was revolutionized by the discovery of the nervous system. (See F. Solmsen, “Greek Philosophy and the Discovery of Nerves,” Museum Helveticum, 18 [1961], 150-63, 169-97.) Strato's use of pneuma as the carrier of “messages” (Aristotle in his biological works had already assigned to pneuma the function of trans- mitting bodily movement) as well as his concept of a unified consciousness found further development in the psychology of the Stoics. 2. Stoics and Epicureans. In spite of their scientific achievements the Peripatetics were not the major influence on later Greek thinking in its broader sense. Epicurus and Zeno (of Citium), who founded schools in Athens at the end of the fourth century B.C., inaugu- rated two philosophical systems which rapidly acquired rival adherents from a wider range of society than Plato and Aristotle had affected. It is customary to invoke the conquests of Alexander the Great and the collapse of the Greek city-state in accounts of the origin of these systems. The instability of the times and the inadequacy of traditional ethics may well help to explain the suc- cess and motivation of Epicurus and Zeno, who both provided a morality which stressed the self-sufficiency of the individual. But the intellectual basis of both systems is thoroughly Greek and their psychological theories develop ideas already discussed. These theories may conveniently be studied in con- cert, for Stoicism and Epicureanism possess striking similarities as well as contrasts. Both systems are a form of materialism: for Epicurus, following Democritus, all that exists is atoms, differing in size, shape, and weight (this last an innovation), which by deviating from their normal downward movement in empty space collide and form temporary compound bodies. In living things the soul itself consists of very fine atoms, resembling fiery air, which pervade the whole body. No body which lacks a soul can be alive and soul cannot be sentient or cause sensation unless it is housed in a body, a doctrine which rules out the survival of consciousness after death (Letter to Herodotus 63-64). The soul-atoms located in the human breast constitute “mind,” which controls and issues instructions to the rest of the soul (Lucretius, III, 136-44). Mind and soul are thus in permanent contact with all parts of the body. Sensation is the result of eidōla (effluences exactly reproducing external objects) striking the sense organs and thus setting up a movement in the mind. And certain par- ticularly fine “idols” (e.g., from the gods) penetrate directly to the mind. All sensations as such are true, and the only source of knowledge; but they may be misinterpreted by the mind and hence errors arise. General ideas are built up by the mind from repeated presentations of the same object, and perception occurs when individual presentations match the general idea. Scientific thought seems to operate by the juxtaposition of two sets of atoms within the mind, constituting different concepts (C. Bailey, Epicurus [1926], p. 269), but the evidence for this theory is notoriously obscure. In Stoicism the soul also permeates the whole body and finds its “thinking center” in the heart. It consists not of atoms but pneuma (“fiery breath”) in a particular state of “tension.” For the Stoics, all that exists consists of bodies differentiated by pneuma, the active force which binds the passive material qualities, earth and water, into individual things according to its tension. (Like the pre-Socratics, Stoics and Epicureans ex- plained soul in terms of the basic principle governing the universe.) Pneuma is not merely a mechanistic concept, like the Epicurean atom, but a dynamic, rational force which pervades and activates the whole world, all parts of which are thus interconnected. In perception the sense organs are acted upon by objects, either directly or through a medium, and this sets up a presentation (phantasia) which is reported to the central organ by currents of pneuma. The agent has the power to assent or not to the presentation, and his act of assent constitutes perception or “grasping” the object. The Stoics argued that presentations which completely reproduce the object are grasped as true by men of normal health, and on the basis of these, general ideas are built up by analogy, combination, etc. (Cicero, Academica posteriora I, 41-42; Sextus Empiricus, Adversus mathematicos VII, 227-60; Diogenes Laërtius, VII, 45-54). Presentations can also occur without an external cause, a theory which ac- counts, inter alia, for hallucination. Like the Page 8, Volume 4 Epicureans the Stoics based their theory of knowledge entirely on perception. Both systems gave special attention to motivation. For the primary impulse the Stoics took “innate attraction towards those things which are peculiarly suited to preserve an animal's natural well-being and avoidance of their opposites” (Cicero, De finibus III, 16ff.). All living creatures are endowed with a drive, and this is naturally stimulated by awareness of the appropriate object. Without this drive no action is possible, and it follows on a mental picture stemming from something internal or external. What distinguishes man from other animals is the possession of reason. This develops through childhood, and in maturity ena- bles a man to control his drives and so make responses to the environment which are rational and moral as well as appropriate in the instinctive sense. Assent plays its part here as a means of determining the mental attitude, which is open to the individual's control. From God's viewpoint all events are predetermined, but so far as human action is concerned the causal factor (as in Aristotle) is primarily the disposition which the agent has acquired by repeatedly acting in a certain way. The Stoics underrated emotions, which they regarded as perverted judgments, except in the case of the sage. Like Strato they unified all functions of soul. For the Epicureans, by contrast, pleasure and avoidance of pain are the primary impulse of living creatures and the foundation of ethics. They constitute the objects of desire by which all action is prompted (Cicero, De finibus I, 29ff.). For any action to take place, mental images in the form of “idols” must strike the mind and obtain its attention. Then the will is activated and movement transferred from the mind to the limbs (Lucretius, II, 261-83). The freedom of the will in action is explained by reference to an indeter- minate “swerve” of atoms (Lucretius, II, 250-60). This has generally been taken to imply a spontaneous movement of soul atoms for every voluntary act. But it has recently been argued that the swerve explains not particular voluntary acts but merely the fact that character is not wholly determined by antecedent causes (D. J. Furley, Two Studies in the Greek Atomists, Princeton [1967], pp. 169-237). Stoicism and Epicureanism are primarily theories of ethics, and their psychology focuses attention on the motives and processes of human action. Both abandon completely any idea of an incorporeal mind; mental activity is psychosomatic activity in which the soul acts by physical processes upon the body. Human behavior is necessarily related to the environment, from which all the data used to form concepts are derived. Such materialism and behaviorism were completely abandoned by the last great pagan and early Christian philosophers. PSYCHOLOGICAL DOCTRINE IN LATE ANTIQUITY: PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGY Between the foundation of Stoicism and Epicurean- ism and the establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman empire lies a span of some six hundred years. The early part of this period produced a ferment of ideas in philosophy and science. But the first two hundred years of the Roman Empire, in spite of the achievements of the anatomist Galen and the astronomer Ptolemy, were not a time in which original thought flourished. Much was done to synthesize, mod- ify, or reinterpret existing theories, but the dominance of Rome, so fruitful in many respects, was not con- ducive to philosophical speculation. Yet there were forces at work which were to produce figures of major importance in the history of ideas, in particular Ploti- nus and Augustine. In them classical philosophy and the eclecticism of the age combined with spiritual theology in a remarkable way. 1. Plotinus. As concern with moral conduct became increasingly dominant among philosophers, so interest became ever more centered on the “inner man.” Already in Stoicism it was the attitude of mind, the internal disposition, which mattered in ethical judg- ment, but Stoicism remained earthbound by its denial of any existence to the incorporeal. In Neo-Platonism, as established by Plotinus, the highest human activity is contemplation of the transcendent Good, which is the source of various grades of being. Lowest on the scale is the material universe, including the human body with which the soul forms a mysterious and temporary union. This looks similar to Platonic dualism, but in fact it is significantly different. For Plato embodiment prevents the soul from fully grasp- ing the Forms. But for Plotinus the body is not a necessary barrier to union with the One or ultimate Good, the goal of human endeavor. This follows be- cause man's soul in its highest aspect is continually engaged in intellection of the Forms; it is “illumined” by Intellect, the principle second only to the One or Good. In this activity the soul is not self-conscious, since this would detract from its attention to the object of contemplation. Plotinus notes that certain activities, such as reading, go better if we are unconscious of ourselves as acting. What “comes down” to the mate- rial world and joins with body is an irradiation from the higher soul. But this lower soul is incorporeal, and Plotinus discusses the problem of its relation to the body at length (Enneads I, 1, 1-10; IV, 3, 9-23). He rejects all previous explanations of this relationship in favor of an analogy with light: soul is present to body Page 9, Volume 4 as light to air. The living body is “illumined” by soul. In sensation the soul uses the body and reads impres- sions made on it. Hence there is no action of body on soul. The two remain “separate but in contact.” Memory and perception both belong to soul and depend on its faculty of imaging (Enneads IV, 3, 27). The soul sees when it looks out at externals. In thought the faculty of imaging is acted upon by the higher soul, and this provides the principles with which reason works. Memory is a concept of great importance for Plotinus because it provides (or is) the continuity of self-consciousness. Only by memory does the embodied soul possess an image of itself. It is through desire for the lower that soul enters into body, and it is by desire for the higher that the soul can recall memory of its activity in the intellectual sphere and aspire eventually to forget all the lower (including self-awareness) in contemplation of the divine. 2. Augustine. Plotinus was the last great pagan philosopher of classical antiquity, but it is no coinci- dence that he shares much with Saint Augustine. In interpreting the scriptures Augustine was influenced by an intellectual climate common to pagan and Christian; and inner experience as revealed by intro- spection becomes the key to psychology. In a summary it is impossible to do more than indicate some of Augustine's major doctrines on the soul. In the De quantitate animae problems of the soul's relation to the body, and the nature of sensation and thought are discussed in dialogue form. The soul is incorporeal and its substance cannot be named; rather must it be inferred from the fact that God, its creator, is its proper habitation (Patrologia Latina, 32, 1036). The soul shares in reason and is fitted to rule the body. By its presence it vitalizes the body and forms this into a harmonious unity. In this doctrine Augustine is closer to Plotinus than to Aristotle. The soul can take note of the body's changes (and this is Augustine's definition of sensus) but these do not affect the soul itself. In man the soul possesses various grades of being (ibid., 1074ff.), a ranking determined by the objects of its attention. Apprehension of any kind is a result of the mind's choosing to attend to something in its field of internal vision. God is always present to the mind (whatever its activity) and by His grace the souls of the faithful at their highest possess a stable vision of the truth. It is by divine illumination that the soul has standards of judgment “impressed” on it, for the divine mind contains eternal truths (P.L. 42, 1052). Like Plotinus Augustine laid great weight on “memory,” for this is not mere reminiscence but the storehouse of experience and the mind's knowledge of itself (ibid., 1048). In conversion the mind “remembers” God. Augustine, for all his indebtedness to Greek thought, looks forward to the Middle Ages. But it is not the business of this article to chart the subsequent history of psychology. Needless to say, modern thinking owes more than is sometimes acknowledged to ancient psy- chology. Between the materialism of Democritus and the extreme spirituality of Plotinus runs a line on which intermediate positions are taken by Descartes as well as Plato, by Gilbert Ryle as well as Aristotle. In spite of inadequate technical knowledge the Greeks devel- oped ways of analyzing mind and body and the re- sponse of an organism to its environment which con- tinue to shape much of our thinking. They knew no “science” of psychology, and were not hampered by having to confine their attention to a neatly labeled set of “mental phenomena.” BIBLIOGRAPHY For pre-philosophical psychology the best starting points are Erwin Rhode, Psyche: Seelenkult und Unsterblichkeits- glaube der Griechen, 4th ed. (Tübingen, 1970; Engl. trans. London, 1925); Bruno Snell, Die Entdeckung des Geistes, 3rd ed. (Hamburg, 1955), trans. as The Discovery of the Mind (Cambridge, Mass., 1953); E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, 1951). Texts of the pre-Socratics are collected in H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th ed. (Berlin, 1951-52). For an extended treatment see J. I. Beare, Greek Theories of Elementary Cognition (Oxford, 1906). W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, Vols. I, II (Cambridge, 1962, 1965) has extensive notes and bibliography. For Plato the most im- portant texts are Phaedo, Phaedrus, Philebus, Republic IV- VII, X; Theaetetus, Timaeus. For bibliography see H. Cherniss, Lustrum (1961), 340-82, and for recent discussion I. M. Crombie, An Examination of Plato's Doctrines, Vol. I (London, 1962). Aristotle's psychological theory is set out in De anima, ed. Hicks (Cambridge, 1907) and Parva naturalia, ed. W. D. Ross (Oxford, 1955); general discussion and bibliography in I. Düring, Aristotles (Heidelberg, 1966). See also D. W. Hamlyn, De anima Books II and III, with Certain Passages from Book I (Oxford and New York, 1968). Some basic texts for post-Aristotelian psychology are col- lected by C. J. de Vogel, Greek Philosophy. A Collection of Texts with Notes and Explanations, Vol. III (Leiden, 1959). Relevant works of Augustine are De trinitate, De liberio arbitrio, De quantitate animae, and of Plotinus, Enneads I, 1; IV. This period is well surveyed by E. Zeller, Die Philos- ophie der Griechen, Vol. III, 1, 5th. ed. by E. Wellmann (Leipzig, 1923), and A. H. Armstrong, ed., Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge, 1956). ANTHONY A. LONG [See also Analogy in Early Greek Thought v1-09 ; Atomism v1-21 v1-22 ; Behaviorism v1-30 ; Biological Conceptions in Antiquity v1-31 ; Cosmology v1-66 v1-67 ; Dualism v2-05 ; Epicureanism v2-15 ; Imprinting v2-64 ; Neo-Platonism v3-47 ; Platonism v3-63 v3-64 v3-65 ; Pythagorean... v4-04 v4-05 ; Rationality v4-07 ; Stoicism. v4-41 ] |
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