Aristotle on the matter of mind 213
‘irritable’ people, ‘quick’ and ‘slow’ people, very young, youthful and very
old people, people with prominent veins, people with soft flesh vs. people
with hard flesh, etc., all of which are invoked to account for variations
in cognitive capacities and performances).^22 Some of the variations of this
latter category are on the structural level of an animal’s ‘disposition’K4D
L
or natural constitutionK -
L, in that they are, for example, determined
by heritage, natural constitution, or dependent on age and gender, but
others are incidental (i.e. dependent on particular transitory states of the
body or particular transitory circumstances). And whilst, depending on
their effects, these variable factors are mostly to be regarded asdisturbing
agents impeding the actualisation of the animal’s capacities (or even, on the
level of the ‘first actuality’, affecting the basic vital apparatus of the animal,
in which case it counts as a ‘deformation’, #) L, they can also
beconduciveto a better and fuller development of these capacities.
Some of these variations are explained by Aristotle in an entirely ‘mech-
anistic’ way without reference to a higher purpose they are said to serve,
because they merely represent residual phenomena to be accounted for
(material which is typically suitable for works like theProblemata). How-
ever, there are also variations which are, or can be, explained teleologically.
Thus also in the seemingly mechanical account of the various forms and de-
grees of sharpness of sight inGen. an. 5. 1 an underlying teleological motive
can be discerned: Aristotle distinguishes two types of sharpness of sight–
seeing over a great distanceK!) +Land sensitivity to differences
K
1
L;^23 and the fact that the latter manifests itself
in humans^24 (whereas many other animals are better at seeing sharply over
a great distance) can be related to the cognitive and epistemological impor-
tance of the discrimination of differences, which is (like its counterpart, the
(^22) Little attention has been paid to this aspect of Aristotle’s biology, and to its medical background. On
constitution types in the Hippocratic Corpus see Dittmer ( 1940 ). On dwarfs (/
) see below,
p. 223 ; for the ‘ecstatics’ (/
) seeDiv. somn. 464 a 24 – 5 ;Eth. Nic. 1145 b 8 – 14 ; 1146 a 16 ff.;
1151 a 1 ; 1151 a 20 ff.;Mem. 451 a 9 , and the discussion in Croissant ( 1932 ) 41 ff., and in van der Eijk
( 1994 ) 321 ff. The ‘irritable’ (/ SD ) are mentioned inEth. Nic. 1150 b 25 ; for the quick and the slow
(/ 0 / < ) seeMem. 450 b 8 ,Physiognomonica(Phgn.) 813 b 7 ff. and below, p. 228 ; for
the ‘very young’ (/
), the young and the old seeHist. an. 581 b 2 ; 537 b 14 ff.;Mem.
450 b 2 ; 453 b 4 ;Insomn. 461 a 12 ; 462 a 12 ;Gen. an. 779 a 12 f.; 778 a 23 ff.;Somn. vig. 457 a 3 ff.;Rh.
2. 12 – 14 and below p. 225 ; for people with prominent veins (said to influence their sleep behaviour)
seeSomn. vig. 457 a 26 (cf.Hist. an. 582 a 15 ;Pr. 863 a 23 ); for ‘people with soft’ or ‘hard flesh’ (/
!
0 / #!
) seeDe an. 421 a 25 , and below, pp. 226 – 7.
(^23) Gen. an. 780 b 15 ff.
(^24) Gen. an. 781 b 20 : ‘the reason is that the sense organ is pure and least earthy or corporeal, and man by
nature has for his size the most delicate skin of all animals’ (A
.
3
#
3
[
) 0 -
! =C) P 1
' )!
).