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BUT these which I have recited, that the Soul should be Heart, Brains, Breath, Fire are vulgar Opinions; the remaining private Doctors have held, and some of the Ancient ones. Of later date Aristoxenus, Musician and Philosopher too,
maintain'd it was a certain Key to which the body was strain'd, as in the tuning of an Instrument; so by the nature and posture of the Body, variety of Motions were rais'd, and as Notes in Musick. He kept to his Art, yet somewhat he said, which somewhat such as it was, had been long before both said and explain'd by Plato. Xenocrates deny'd that the Soul hath any corporeal Figure, but said it was a number, whose Power, as Pythagoras had before held, was of great Efficacy in Nature. His Master Plato divided the Soul into three Parts. The Principal of these, which is Reason, he plac'd in the Head as in its Citadel, and separated into two, Anger and Lust, which he lodg'd in different Apartments, placing Anger in the Stomach, and Lust under the Entrails. But Dicaearchus in that Discourse which he held at Corinth, and put out in three Books in the Person of learned men, in the first Books brings in many Disputants; in the two latter introduceth one Pherecrates an old man of Phthia, whom he alledgeth as descended of Deucalion, and there to argue that there is no such being as a Soul; that it is a meer Name without a Notion, and that we speak improperly in say∣ing, that Creatures have a living Soul; whereas in truth there is neither in Man nor Beast, any such thing as Soul or Spirit, but all that Power which produceth in us Actions of the Mind, or Senses is an equal Complexion of the Elements, nor can subsist in a separate Estate, as being no substance, but plain body, which under such a Figure, is by its natural Temper dispos'd to Ve∣getation and Sense. Aristotle who far surpasseth all others (Plato alwayes excepted) both in Parts and Industry, after he had computed the four Ele∣ments which furnish material cause of existence to
all compound Bodies, pitches upon a fifth Essence, of which the rational Soul should consist; for to think and forecast, to learn and teach, to invent, with so many other Abilities of Memory, Love, Hatred, Desire, Fear, Anxiety, Joy, he doth not conceive these and the like, can be inherent in any of those four Elements. Hereupon he adds a fifth nameless Nature, and so calls the Soul by the new name of a pure Act, being in continu'd and per∣petual Motion.