including
embryos—the same faculty being present also in the fully-developed organism
(this is more reasonable than to assume a different nutritive faculty in the
latter).
[
12]
The excellence of this faculty
therefore appears to be common to all animate things and not peculiar to man; for it is
believed that this faculty or part of the soul is most active during sleep, but when they
are asleep you cannot tell a good man from a bad one (whence the saying that for
half their lives there is no difference between the happy and the miserable).
[
13]
This is a natural result of the fact that sleep is a
cessation of the soul from the functions on which its goodness or badness
depends—except that in some small degree certain of the sense-impressions may
reach into soul during sleep, and consequently the dreams of the good are better than
those of ordinary men.
[
14]
We need not however pursue this
subject further, but may omit from consideration the nutritive part of the soul, since it
exhibits no specifically human excellence.
[
15]
But there also appears to be another element in the soul, which, though irrational, yet
in a manner participates in rational principle. In self-restrained and unrestrained
1 people we approve
their principle, or the rational part of their souls, because it urges them in the right
way and exhorts them to the best course; but their nature seems also to contain another
element beside that of rational principle, which combats and resists that principle.
[
16]
Exactly the same thing may take place in the soul as
occurs with the body in a case of paralysis: when the patient wills to move his limbs to
the right they swerve to the left; and similarly in
unrestrained persons their impulses run counter to their principle. But whereas in the
body we see the erratic member, in the case of the soul we do not see it; nevertheless it
cannot be doubted that in the soul also there is an element beside that of principle,
which opposes and runs counter to principle (though in what sense the two are
distinct does not concern us here).
[
17]
But this
second element also seems, as we said, to participate in rational principle; at least in
the self-restrained man it obeys the behest of principle—and no doubt in the
temperate and brave man it is still more amenable, for all parts of his nature are in
harmony with principle.
[
18]
Thus we see that the irrational part, as well as the soul as a whole, is double. One
division of it, the vegetative, does not share in rational principle at all; the other,
the seat of the appetites and of desire in general, does in a sense participate in
principle, as being amenable and obedient to it (in the sense in fact in which we
speak of ‘paying heed’ to one's father and friends, not in the sense
of the term ‘rational’ in mathematics
2). And that principle
can in a manner appeal to the irrational part, is indicated by our practice of admonishing
delinquents, and by our employment of rebuke and exhortation generally.