162 ARISTOTLE
none of the other senses is present, but touch is present without the others, for many
animals have neither sight nor hearing nor a sense of smell. And among animals with
the perceptive potency, some have the potency for motion with respect to place while
others do not. Last and most rare are reasoning and thinking things through; for in those
destructible beings in which reasoning is present, all the other potencies are also pre-
sent, while reasoning is not present in all animals, but some do not even have imagina-
tion, though others live by this alone. But about the contemplative intellect there is a
different account. It is clear, then, that the account that deals with each of these poten-
cies is also the most appropriate account of the soul.BOOKIII
- About the part of the soul by which the soul knows and understands, whether
it is a separate part, or not separate the way a magnitude is but in its meaning, one
must consider what distinguishing characteristic it has, and how thinking ever comes
about. If thinking works the same way perceiving does, it would either be some way
of being acted upon by the intelligible thing, or something else of that sort. Therefore
it must be without attributes but receptive of the form and in potency not to be the
form but to be such as it is; and it must be similar so that as the power of perception is
to the perceptible things, so is the intellect to the intelligible things. Therefore neces-
sarily, since it thinks all things, it is unmixed, just as Anaxagoras says, in order to
master them, that is, in order to know them (since anything alien that appeared in it
besides what it thinks would hinder it and block its activity); and so intellect has no
nature at all other than this, that it is a potency. Therefore the aspect of the soul that is
called intellect (and I mean by intellect that by which the soul thinks things through
and conceives that something is the case) is not actively any of the things that are
until it thinks. This is why it is not reasonable that it be mixed with the body, since it
would come to be of a certain sort, either cold or warm, and there would be an organ
for it, as there is for the perceptive potency, though in fact there is none. And it is well
said that the soul is a place of forms, except that this is not the whole soul but the
thinking soul, and it is not the forms in its being-at-work-staying-itself, but in
potency.
The absence of attributes is not alike in the perceptive and thinking potencies;
this is clear in its application to the sense organs and perception. For the sense is
unable to perceive anything from an excessive perceptible thing, neither any sound
from loud sounds, nor to see or smell anything from strong colors and odors, but
when the intellect thinks something exceedingly intelligible it is not less able to
think the lesser things but even more able, since the perceptive potency is not present
without a body, but the potency to think is separate from body. And when the intel-
lect has come to be each intelligible thing, as the knower is said to do when he is a
knower in the active sense (and this happens when he is able to put his knowing to
work on his own), the intellect is even then in a sense those objects in potency, but
not in the same way it was before it learned and discovered them, and it is then able
to think itself.
Now since a magnitude is different from being a magnitude, and water is differ-
ent from being water (and so too in many other cases, though not in all, since in some
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