that time he had died, and thus in another sense had “gone home.” It is conjectured that this youthful production may have treated of the survival of the individual Reason into another state of existence. But in Aristotle’s maturer works, so far from such a doctrine being laid down, and deductions made from it, passages occur which would seem to render it untenable. “The Soul,” says Aristotle, “is the function of the body, as sight is of the eye. Some of its parts, however, may be separable from the body, as not arising out of the material organisation. This is the case with the Reason, which cannot be regarded as the result of bodily conditions, but which is divine, and enters into each of us from without. Reason, as manifested in the individual mind, is twofold, constructive and passive (see above, p. 166). The passive Reason, which receives the impressions of external things, is the seat of memory, but it perishes with the body; while the constructive Reason transcends the body, being capable of separation from it and from all things, It is an everlasting existence, incapable of being mingled with matter, or affected by it; it is prior and subsequent to the individual mind; but though immortal, it carries no memory with it.”[1]
This last sentence would seem logically to exclude the possibility of a future life for the individual, for memory is requisite to individuality; and if all that is immortal in us is incapable of memory, it would seem that the only immortality possible would be that
- ↑ Collected from ‘Soul,’ II. i. 7-12; III. v. 2. ‘Generation,’ II. iii. 10.
