230 Aristotle and his school
($0
0 ).^78 Whether they always are, or only in abnormal
cases, or whether the influence in abnormal cases is of a different kind rather
than of a different degree compared with normal cases is hard to decide, for
these bodily conditions are mostly referred to by Aristotle in the context of a
discussion ofvariationsin intellectual performances (type ( 3 ) distinguished
above, p. 217 ). It is clear, however, that apart from incidental bodily states
such as drunkenness or sleep (which may be characterised as disturbing
agents, although the former is1 -
, the latter1 -
), there
are also more structural conditions such as the quality of the blood, age,
the overall balance between warm and cold in the body and the quality of
the skin. Variations in these structural conditions account for variations in
intellectual capacities. The variations exist among different species, but also
among individual members of one species or types within a species, such as
dwarfs or melancholics. For the most part, these types represent ‘imperfect’
(" ) or ‘deformed’ ( #)
) groups of human beings with spe-
cial characteristics due to their physical aberrations. However, some types
(such as the !
) seem to represent special classes of humans
whose distinctive characteristics are not to be regarded as deformations, but
as variationswithinone species that may be either conducive, or harmful,
or just neutral to the exercise of certain psychic powers.
We hear very little about what the bodily conditions of a normal, success-
ful operation of the intellectual powers are, but, as I have already said, there
is good reason to assume that this is just because, in the writings that have
survived, Aristotle simply does not have much reason to dwell on them.
Our picture of Aristotle’s psycho-physiology is likely to remain very incom-
plete – as is also indicated by the difficulties involved in piecing together his
scattered remarks about physiological conditions such aspneuma, blood,
and so forth. This has perhaps to do with his indebtedness to a medical
tradition which supplied a lot of material which he could simply take for
granted. As has already been demonstrated by Tracy – and is confirmed by
more recent work on Aristotle’s acquaintance with medical literature^79 –
this indebtedness is probably much greater than the scanty references to
medical authorities in Aristotle’s works suggest. In this particular context,
the Hippocratic workOn Regimencomes to one’s mind, which in chapters
35 and 36 has an extremely interesting discussion on variations in intellectual
performance due to variations in the proportion between fire and water in
(^78) Other, more peripheral evidence (dealing less explicitly withintellectualcapacities) is discussed in
ch. 5 above. See also Tracy ( 1969 ),passim.
(^79) For further references to scholarly discussions of Aristotle’s relation to medical literature see ch. 9 ;
see also Longrigg ( 1995 ) and Oser-Grote ( 1997 ).