[1781] katakermatizetai
[1782] endedeichthai. Gregory constantly uses endeiknusthai (middle) transitively, e.g. 202 C, 203 A, C, 208 B, and above, 189 A, so that it is possible that we have here, in the passive form, a deponent (transitive) perfect; moreover the sense seems to require it. Gregory objects that in what has been said all the powers which analysis finds in the soul have not been set forth with sufficient fulness: an exhaustive account of them has not been given; and he immediately proceeds to name other dunameis and energeiai which have not been taken into consideration. That this view of the passage is correct is further shown by 202 C, where, the present objection having been treated at length, it is concluded that there is no real ground for quarrelling with the definition of soul hos elleipos endeixameno ten phusin. Krabinger therefore is right in dropping ennooumeno, which two of his mss. exhibit, and which Sifanus translates as governing tas...dunameis, as if the sense were, "When I consider all the powers of the soul, I do not think that your definition has been made good."
[1783] The syllogism implied in the following words is this:-- The emotions are something intellectual (because incorporeal). Therefore the emotions are soul (or souls). This conclusion is obviously false; logically, by reason of the fallacy of "the undistributed middle"; ontologically, because it requires a false premise additional (i.e. "everything intellectual is soul") to make it true. Macrina directly after this piece of bad logic deprecates the use of the syllogism. Is this accidental? It looks almost like an excuse for not going into technicalities and exposing this fallacy, which she has detected in her opponent's statement. Macrina actually answers as if Gregory had urged his objection thus. "The emotions are not purely intellectual, but are conditioned by the bodily organism: but they do belong to the expression and the substance of the soul: the soul therefore is dependent on the organism and will perish along with it."
[1784] para ten proten (i.e. horan understood). This is the reading of all the Codd. for the faulty para ten auten of the Editions.
[1785] prostithenai. Sifanus translates "illorum commentationi de animâ adjicere sermonem," which Krabinger wonders at. The Greek could certainly bear this meaning: but perhaps the other reading is better, i.e. protithenai, "to propose for consideration."
[1786] i.e.the syllogism.
[1787] that the soul was mortal. Aristotle, guided only by probabilities as discoverable by the syllogism, does indeed define the soul, "the first entelechy of a physical, potentially living, and organic body." Entelechy is more than mere potentiality: it is "developed force" ("dormant activity;" see W. Archer Butler's Lectures, ii. p. 393), capable of manifestation. The human soul, uniting in itself all the faculties of the other orders of animate existence, is a Microcosm. The other parts of the soul are inseparable from the body, and are hence perishable (De Animâ, ii. 2); but the nous exists before the body, into which it enters from without as something divine and immortal (De Gen. Animal. ii. 3). But he makes a distinction between the form-receiving, and the form-giving nous: substantial eternal existence belongs only to the latter (De Animâ, iii. 5). The secret of the difference between him and Plato, with whom "all the soul is immortal" (Phædrus, p. 245 C), lies in this; that Plato regarded the soul as always in motion, while Aristotle denied it, in itself, any motion at all. "It is one of the things that are impossible that motion should exist in it" (De Animâ, i. 4). It cannot be moved at all; therefore it cannot move itself. Plotinus and Porphyry, as well as Nemesius the Platonizing Bishop of Emesa (whose treatise De Animâ is wrongly attributed to Gregory), attacked this teaching of an "entelechy." Cf. also Justin Martyr (ad Græc. cohort, c. 6, p. 12); "Plato declares that all the soul is immortal; Aristotle calls her an entelechy,' and not immortal. The one says she is ever-moving, the other that she is never-moving, but prior to all motion." Also Gregory Naz., Orat. xxvii. "Away with Aristotle's calculating Providence, and his art of logic, and his dead reasonings about the soul, and purely human doctrine!"
[1788] for the overthrow of the truth. So c. Eunom. iii. (ii. 500).
[1789] eirmon.
[1790] most surely, e. This is the common reading: but the Codd. have mostly kai.
[1791] Aristotle, Ethic. i. 13, dwells upon these principles. Of the last he says, i.e. the common vegetative, the principle of nutrition and growth: "One would assume such a power of the soul in everything that grows, even in the embryo, and just this very same power in the perfect creatures; for this is more likely than that it should be a different one." Sleep, in which this power almost alone is active, levels all.
[1792] ousia.
[1793] It is best to keep ara: ara is Krabinger's correction from four Codd.: and he reads ho for ei above: but only one class of Codd. support these alterations.
[1794] I mean the sensation of pleasure. This (noema) is Krabinger's reading: but Oehler reads from his Codd. nosema: and H. Schmidt suggests kinema, comparing (205 A) below, "any other such-like emotion of the soul."
[1795] have some relation to the soul, and yet they are not the soul. Macrina does not mean that the Passions are altogether severed from the soul, as the following shows: and so Oehler cannot be right in reading and translating "Das Alles hat nichts mir der Seele zu schaffen." The Greek peri ten psuchen is to be parallelled by hoi peri ton Periklea, "Pericles' belongings," or "party"; passing, in later Greek, almost into "Pericles himself."
[1796] Reading kata phusin auten, kai tes theoeidous charitos, k. t. l. with Sifanus.
[1797] hosa de tes psuches en methori& 251; keitai. Moller (Gregorii Nysseni doctrina de hominis naturâ) remarks rightly that Krabinger's translation is here incorrect: "quæcunque autem in animæ confinio posita sunt"; and that tes psuches should on the contrary be joined closely to hosa. The opposition is not between elements which lie in, and on the confines of the soul, but between the divine and adventitious elements within the soul: methori& 251; refers therefore to "good and bad," below.
[1798] This is no contradiction of the passage above about Moses: there it was stated that the Passions did not belong to the essence (ousia) of man.
[1799] hode de. The Teacher introduces this logos with some reserve. "We do not lay it down ex cathedrâ, we put it forward as open to challenge and discussion as we might do in the schools (hos en gumnasi& 251;)." It is best then to take diaphugoi as a pure optative. Gregory appears in his answer to congratulate her on the success of this "exercise." "To any one that reflects...your exposition...bears sufficiently upon it the stamp of correctness, and hits the truth." But he immediately asks for Scripture authority. So that this logos, though it refers to Genesis, is not yet based upon Scripture. It is a "consecutive" and consistent account of human nature: but it is virtually identical with that advanced at the end of Book I. of Aristotle's Ethics. It is a piece of secular theorizing. The sneers of cavillers may well be deprecated. Consistent, however, with this view of the logos here offered by Macrina, there is another possible meaning in hos en gumnasi& 251;, k. t. l., i.e. "Let us put forward the following account with all possible care and circumspection, as if we were disputing in the schools; so that cavillers may have nothing to find fault with": hos an expressing purpose, not a wish. The cavillers will thus refer to sticklers for Greek method and metaphysics: and Gregory's congratulation of his sister's lucidity and grasp of the truth will be all the more significant.
[1800] Following the order and stopping of Krabinger, amikton esti kai idiazon epi tautes tes phuseos, eph' heautou, k. t. l.
[1801] Reading dia tou henos kai pros ta sunemmena touto (for touton), with Sifanus.
[1802] Cf. De Hom. Opif. c. xviii. 5. "So, on the contrary, if reason instead assumes sway over such emotions, each of them is transmuted to a form of virtue: for anger produces courage; terror, caution; fear, obedience; hatred, aversion from vice; the power of love, the desire for what is truly beautiful, &c." Just below, the allusion is to Plato's charioteer, Phædrus, p. 253 C, and the old custom of having the reins round the driver's waist is to be noticed.
[1803] are implanted. All the Codd. have enkeimenes here, instead of the enkomiazomenes of the Paris Edition, which must be meant for enkomazomenes (itself a vox nihili), "run riot in them."
[1804] we were agreed. homologeito: cf. 201 D, "If on the other hand any one will accept a discussion which is in a naked unsyllogistic form, we will speak upon these points by making our study of them as far as we can follow the chain of Scriptural tradition."
[1805] There is a variety of readings from the Codd. here; sunenkataleie, sunektale, sunektaleie, sunektalai& 219;, sunkatalu& 219;: in two (and on the margins of two others), sunektile, which Krabinger has adopted. The Paris Editt. have sunektinei
[1806] parenespare, the idea of badness being contained in para, which in such cases is always the first compound. One Cod. has the curious inversion enparespare
[1807] exandrapodistheie; this is adopted by Krabinger from the Haselman Cod. for the common ex hon drapodistheie
[1808] hadou onoma.
[1809] ton hupochthonion
[1810] kakeinon en hauto, H. Schmidt's reading, on the authority of 3 Codd. The reading of Krabinger is en heauto te kakeinon. But the underworld is the only habitation in question.--houto legesthai, above, must mean, "is rightly so named."
[1811] ei gar alethes ho logos ho kata se, kai to suneche te pros, k. t. l., Krabinger's reading, following the majority of Codd.; ho kata se being thus opposed to the next words, which others say. But Schmidt points out that the conclusion introduced below by ananke pasa does not follow at all from the first, but only from the second of these suppositions, and he would await the evidence of fresh Codd. Sifanus and Augentius would read ei kai...kata se. To gar, k. t. l., which would certainly express the sense required.
[1812] panton ton kuklophoroumenon, i.e. the heavenly bodies moving as one (according to the ancient astronomy) round the central earth.
[1813] proballoito. This is the proper meaning of the middle: "should object," as Oehler translates (einwerfen wollte), would require the active.
[1814] Philip. ii. 10.
[1815] lapsed from the nobler view (hupolepseos). This is the common reading: but Krabinger prefers lexeos, which is used by Gregory (De Hom. Opif. c. 17, "the sublime angelic lot"), and is a Platonic word. The other word, "lapsed," is also Platonic.
[1816] from those evil spirits. So Great Catechism, c. 26 (fin.). Here too Gregory follows Origen (c. Cels. vi. 44), who declares that the Powers of evil are for a purpose (in answer to Celsus' objection that the Devil himself, instead of humanity, ought to have been punished). "Now it is a thing which can in no way cause surprise, that the Almighty, Who knows how to use wicked apostates for His own purposes, should assign to such a certain place in the universe, and should thus open an arena, as it were, of virtue, for those to contend in who wish to "strive lawfully" for her prize: those wicked ones were to try them, as the fire tries the gold, that, having done their utmost to prevent the admission of any alloy into their spiritual nature, and having proved themselves worthy to mount to heaven, they might be drawn by the bands of the Word to the highest blessedness and the summit of all Good." These Powers, as reasoning beings, shall then themselves be "mastered by the Word." See c. Cels. viii. 72.
[1817] The conclusion of which was drawn, 199 C. "Therefore the soul exists in the actual atoms which she has once animated, and there is no force to tear her away from her cohesion with them." It is to the line of reasoning (akolouthia) leading up to this conclusion that Gregory would revert, in order to question this conclusion. What both sides are agreed on is, the existence merely of the soul after death. All between this conclusion and the present break in the discussion has been a digression on the Passions and on Hades. Now Gregory asks, how can the soul possibly recognize the atoms that once belonged to her? Oehler therefore does not translate aright, "ich bitte nur den geführten Beweis...in derselben Folge zu wiederholen:" but Krabinger expresses the true sense, "ut rursus mihi ad eandem consequentiam reducatur oratio," i.e. the discussion (not the proof), which is here again, almost in Platonic fashion, personified.
[1818] has assumed, analabonton. The construction is accommodated to the sense, not the words; tes ton stoicheion henoseos having preceded.
[1819] tint, morphes. Certainly in earlier Greek morphe is strictly used of "form," "shape" (or the beauty of it) only, and colours cannot be said to be mixed in imitation of form. It seems we have here a late use of morphe as = "outward appearance"; so that we may even speak of the morphe of a colour, or combinations of colours. So (214 A) the painter "works up (on his palette) a particular tint of colour" (morphen). Here it is the particular hue, in person or picture, which it is desired to imitate. Akin to this question is that of the proper translation of pros ten homoioteta tou prokeimenou, which Sifanus and Krabinger translate "ad similitudinem argumenti," and which may either mean (1) "to make the analogy to the subject matter of our question as perfect as possible," i.e. as a parenthesis, or (2) "in imitation of the thing or colour (lying before the painter) to be copied." The last seems preferable ("to form the given tint").