160 ARISTOTLE
And seeing that the means by which we live and perceive is meant two ways, as is
the means by which we know (by which is meant in one sense knowledge but in another
the soul, since by means of each of these we say we know something), likewise also we are
healthy in one sense by means of health, but in another by means of either some part of the
body or the whole of it. Now of these, the knowledge or the health is a form, and a certain
look, and an articulation in speech, and a kind of being-at-work of what is receptive, in the
one case a being-at-work of what is capable of knowing, in the other a being-at-work of
what is capable of being healthy (for it seems that the being-at-work of what is active is pre-
sent in what is acted on and placed in a certain condition). So since the soul is that by which
in the primary sense we live and perceive and think things through, it would be a certain
sort of articulation and form, and not an underlying material. For thinghood is meant in
three ways, as we said, of which one way is as form, one as material, and one as what is
made of both, while of these the material is potency and the form is being-at-work-staying-
itself, so since what is ensouled is made of both, it is not the body that is the being-at-work-
staying-itself of the soul, but the soul is the being-at-work-staying-itself of some body.Discus Thrower,by Myron. A
Roman copy after a bronze original
of ca. 450 B.C. Myron’s athlete
epitomizes the ideal Olympian goals
of godlike perfection and rational
beauty. (10
515
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