On Youth and Old Age
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~2,530 words · 12 passages
Cite this work
- APAAristotle. (n.d.). On Youth and Old Age. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/on-youth-and-old-age
- MLAAristotle. "On Youth and Old Age." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/on-youth-and-old-age.
- ChicagoAristotle. On Youth and Old Age. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/on-youth-and-old-age.
What it is about
Youth, old age and what lies between, explained by vital heat and its exhaustion.
Context and history
In the manuscripts it usually runs together with On Breathing and On Life and Death, and all three treat the same thing: what keeps a body alive and what runs out. Part of the Parva naturalia, the eight short works that continue the De anima by applying its theory to particular phenomena of the living body. They are transmitted as a group and read best together.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
We must now treat of youth and old age and life and death. We must probably also at the same time state the causes of respiration as well, since in some cases living and the reverse depend on this. We have elsewhere given a precise account of the soul, and while it is clear that its essential reality cannot be corporeal, yet manifestly it must exist in some bodily part which must be one of those possessing control over the members. Let us for the present set aside the other divisions or faculties of the soul (whichever of the two be the correct name). But as to being what is called an animal and a living thing, we find that in all beings endowed with both characteristics (viz. being an animal and being alive) there must be a single identical part in virtue of which they live and are called animals; for an animal qua animal cannot avoid being alive. But a thing need not, though alive, be animal, for plants live without having sensation, and it is by sensation that we distinguish animal from what is not animal. This organ, then, must be numerically one and the same and yet possess multiple and disparate aspects, for being animal and living are not identical. Since then the organs of special sensation have one common organ in which the senses when functioning must meet, and this must be situated midway between what is called before and behind (we call 'before' the direction from which sensation comes, 'behind' the opposite), further, since in all living things the body is divided into upper and lower (they all have upper and lower parts, so that this is true of plants as well), clearly the nutritive principle must be situated midway between these regions. That part where food enters we call upper, considering it by itself and not relatively to the surrounding universe, while downward is that part by which the primary excrement is discharged. Plants are the reverse of animals in this respect. To man in particular among the animals
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