By Water & Blood

Chapter 11

[PORPHYRY] 'IN answer to him who called the soul an entelechy, and supposed it, though utterly motionless, to be a cause of motion, we must ask what is the source of the strong excitements of the animal who understands nothing of what he sees and utters, though his soul discerns what is future and not yet present, and moves according to the same? Whence also in the constitution of the animal come the acts of the soul as of a living thing, acts of deliberation, inquiry, and will, which are movements of the soul and not of the body?'

Then presently he adds:

'To liken the soul to weight or bodily properties uniform and immovable, by which either the motion or the quality of the subject-matter is determined, was the part of a man who either willingly or unwillingly had utterly lost sight of the dignity of the soul, and had in no way discerned that by the presence of the soul the animal's body is made alive, as by the presence of fire the water placed close to it, though cold in itself, is made hot; and by the rising of the sun the air, which is dark without his shining, is made full of light.

Then afterwards he adds:

'So then all the other statements which others have made concerning the soul bring disgrace upon us. For must it not be a disgraceful doctrine which makes the soul the entelechy of the physical organic body? And is not that a shameful doctrine, which represents it as having somehow a breath or intelligent fire, kindled or quenched by the cooling, and, as it were, dipping in the air around it, and which makes it a collection of atoms, or represents it as wholly engendered of the body? '

This is what in The Laws the author represented as the impious doctrine of impious men.^[29] All such statements then are full of shame: but, says he, no one would be ashamed for him who calls it a self-moved substance.