232 Aristotle and his school
may easily give rise to statements to the effect that he ismoreintelligent than
other animals, and an ‘idealistic’, anthropocentric view which postulates
a distinction of kind rather than degree between animals and men to the
effect that man is the only intelligent living being and the other animals
have no intelligence at all.
I should suggest that this difficulty is to be related to Aristotle’s endeav-
ours to account for variations in psychic capacities and their performance
by reference to variablebodily(anatomical, physiological, pathological) fac-
tors – although it is not quite clear how these factors are to be accommodated
within the ‘canonical’ doctrine of the incorporeality of the intellect and the
changelessness of the soul. It is certainly to Aristotle’s credit as a scientist
that he recognises the existence of these variations, most of which are prob-
ably to be classified as belonging to the category of ‘the more and the less’
K
’H L.^86 And just as, at the one end of the scale, he is
prepared to account for disturbances in intellectual behaviour by reference
to physical aberrations or disturbances, he also recognises the existence of
exceptionally good performances of the intellectual part of the soul and
tries to account for these by assuming that some people have extraordinary
intuitive powers that enable them to think quickly, to perceive hidden re-
semblances, to invent good definitions and to create effective metaphors;^87
and he tries to explain these positive deviations too as the results of differ-
ences in bodily constitution, as we have seen in the case of the ‘people with
soft flesh’K !
L. Moreover, when it comes to physical defects,
he also seems to apply a sort of principle of naturalcompensation, which
manifests itself in his belief that nature (i.e. the natural, bodily constitu-
tion) provides even people with low intellectual capacities with a special
endowment or ingenuityK ( L,^88 which is at the basis of such marginal
powers as the ability to foresee the future in sleep, the instinctive power
to make the right choiceK (, see ch. 8 below), the manifestations of
‘the exceptional’K3
!L, or ‘natural virtues’K
" Lsuch
as moral shrewdnessK
!#L– capacities which seem to flourish when
the reasoning faculties are impeded or absent and which are, of course,
obviously inferior to the intellectual virtues such as ‘prudence’K !#
L,
(^86) Cf.Part. an. 645 b 24 ; 644 a 17 ; 692 b 3 ff.;Gen. an. 737 b 4 – 7 ; 739 b 31 – 2.
(^87) See the passages referred to above (n. 83 ) and, for metaphors,Poet. 1459 a 5 – 7 , 1455 a 32 , andRh.
1405 a 8 – 10.
(^88) The word ( , meaning ‘natural suitability’, seems to have acquired the special sense of ‘natural
cleverness’, ‘ingenuity’ (with%
to be understood), and/ ( represent a special type
of people with a particular cleverness (which, however, may easily change into insanity:Rh. 1390 b
28 ); seeEth.Eud. 1247 b 22 ,b 39 ;Eth. Nic. 1114 b 8 ;Mag. mor. 1203 b 1 – 2 ;Phgn. 807 b 12 and 808 a
37 ;Poet. 1459 a 7 and 1455 a 32 ;Pr. 954 a 32.