252 Aristotle and his school
Lines 33 – 4 contain many difficulties.s (‘others’) are the people who
actually owe their sucess to reasoning ( !). But it is improbable that
theses should be the subject of
(‘they have’) and that$
(‘this’) should refer to", since it is hardly credible that these people
donothave this starting-point ("), for this starting-point was said to
be the origin of all movement in the soul, including intellect, reason and
deliberation. Various solutions to this problem might be suggested:
( 1 ) The subject of
(‘they have’) is nots , but the ‘irrational
people’ (the'
); and$(‘this’) refers to !(‘reason’). It might
be objected to this possible solution that the sentence$ 5 ( -
(‘they are not capable... ’) is then redundant, since this second$refers
to$and<-
. But this objection can be countered in two ways:
either (i) the sentences . 3 !T $ 5 (
(‘others have
reasoning; this the lucky people do not possess’) can be taken as a parenthesis
(as does Susemihl, who puts it between brackets): in this case the redun-
dancy is not unacceptable; or (ii) there is a new change of subject: the
second$(‘this’) refers to
!(‘divine inspiration’) and
the subject of-
(‘they are capable’) iss , the people with reason
( !). But this seems to be going too far, since in the next sentence
the ‘irrational people’ ('
) are again the subject; moreover,-
!is linguistically an awkward combination.
( 2 ) The subject of
(‘they have’) iss (‘the other people’);
Aristotle is thinking here of a specific form of divine movement (as the
word
!suggests); this movement (some sort of inspiration)
does not affect those who have !. There is a shift in the argument
from a general divine causality ofallpsychic movement to aspecificdivine
causality.^49 But the problem is that this shift is nowhere marked explicitly
in the text; moreover the conjunction with the following sentence now
becomes problematic.
( 3 ) von Fragstein ( 1974 ) 376 reads:s . 3 !(sc.
)$
5 (
0 (.
!T $ 5 ( -
T '
1
\ '
: ‘Die Andern aber haben die F ̈ahigkeit logischen
Durchdringens; dieses aber, den Anstoß von der Gottheit her, haben sie
nicht, auch nicht die gottliche Begeisterung; das k ̈ onnen sie nicht. Wenn ̈
n ̈amlich ihr Denken einmal versagt, gehen sie in die Irre.’ Against this it
must be objected that$ 5 ( -
is redundant after$ 5
(^49) See Woods ( 1982 ) 183 : ‘although the previous section apparently introduced the divine element in the
soul as the source of all psychic activities, it is clear that in this section a divine causation of a rather
special kind is in question; instead of initiating a fallible train of reasoning from the desired end to
the conclusion, the divine element produces action of the appropriate kind in a manner superior to
rational calculation’.