Aristotle on the matter of mind 227
This is also the reason why man is most intelligent of all animals (
).
A sign of this is that also within the species of man it is in accordance with
this sense organ that one is well or poorly endowed [with intelligence], but not
in accordance with any other sense organ: for people with hard flesh are poorly
endowed with intelligence, but people with soft flesh are well endowed with it (/
. 1 #!
" %
0 / . !
( ).Here Aristotle distinguishes not only between different species of animals,
but also between different members (or types of members) within the
human species. Man is more intelligent than other animals because of the
accuracy of his sense of touch, and this is indicated also by the fact that
within the human species individuals with soft flesh (which is obviously
conducive to touch) are by nature more intelligent ( ( % %
)
than those with hard flesh. Thus variations in intellectual capacities are
here directly related to variations in the quality of the skin. Justhowthey
are related, does not emerge from the text. It is not inconceivable that the
connection is teleological and that
!should be interpreted as ‘therefore’,
or ‘to that end’, that is, to use his sense of touch in a sensible way, just as
inPart. an. 4. 10 , where it is said that man is the only animal to have hands
because he is the most intelligent and so best qualified to use them sensibly;
the remark that man is inferior to other animals in so many other respects,
but superior in his rationality and sense of touch ( 421 a 20 – 2 ) might be
paralleled by a similar remark inPart. an. 4. 10 ( 687 a 25 ff.). However, there
is nothing in the text ofDe an. 2. 11 to suggest that this is what Aristotle
has in mind here; the text rather points to a relation of efficient causality
between touch and intelligence. This relation is not further spelled out
by Aristotle: it may have something to do with the fact that touch is the
fundamental sense which is closely connected with, if not identical to, the
‘common sense faculty’^74 (also referred to atPart. an. 686 a 31 ), which is most
closely related to intellectual activity; hence variations in the performance
of this faculty might also bring about variations in intellectual performance.
Another possibility is that delicacy of the skin is somehow conducive to
thinness and agility of the blood, which in its turn, as we saw, is of influence
on the degrees of intellectual activity.^75 Anyway, it is significant that again
the worddianoiaand the adjectivephronimosare used, and againdegrees
of intelligence are at issue: man is compared with other animals in what
seems to be a gradualist view of intelligence, and within the human species
a typology is made on the basis of a physical criterion.
(^74) Somn. vig. 455 a 23. (^75) I owe this suggestion to Jochen Althoff.