Chapter XII. Against the Same, as at Variance With Plato in the Argument Concerning the Universal Soul. From the Same

[ATTICUS] ‘FURTHER, when Plato says that the soul pervading all parts arranges all in order, and is that whereby the other philosophers would admit that all things are so arranged, and that nature is nothing else than soul, and evidently not an irrational soul, and when from this Plato gathers that all things take place according to providence, since they take place according to nature, in none of these opinions does Aristotle agree with us.

‘For he does not admit that nature is soul, and earthly things ordered by one nature: for he says that for each several thing there are also different causes. For of the things in heaven which ‘always remain in the same relations and conditions he supposes fate to be the cause: and of sublunary things, nature; and of human affairs, prudence, and forethought, and soul, showing indeed nicety in such distinctions, but not discerning the necessary truth.

‘For if there were not some one animate power pervading the whole, and binding and holding all things together, the whole could not be either reasonably or beautifully arranged. It was a proof then of the same blindness, to hope that a city could ever continue in well-being without unity, and to believe that one could in argument preserve this universe in perfect beauty, such it appears, without having bound and compacted it together by participation in some one common principle.

‘And something of this kind, he says, it is that arranges the several parts, such as to be a principle of motion, but he will not admit that this is soul; though Plato nevertheless shows that in all things that are moved the source and fountain of their motion is the soul. And that which would be the work of a rational and wise soul, to make nothing without a purpose, this he attributes to nature, but gives nature no share in the name of soul; as if things were derived not from powers but from names.’