On the Soul (Greek: Περὶ Ψυχῆς, Peri Psychēs; Latin: De Anima) is a major treatise written byAristotle c. 350 BC.[1] His discussion centres on the kinds of souls possessed by different kinds ofliving things, distinguished by their different operations. Thus plants have the capacity fornourishment and reproduction, the minimum that must be possessed by any kind of living organism.Lower animals have, in addition, the powers of sense-perception and self-motion (action). Humanshave all these as well as intellect."Expositio et quaestiones" in Aristoteles De Anima (Jean Buridan, c. 1362)Aristotle holds that the soul (psyche, ψυχή) is the form, or essence of any living thing; it is not adistinct substance from the body that it is in. It is the possession of a soul (of a specific kind) thatmakes an organism an organism at all, and thus that the notion of a body without a soul, or of a soulin the wrong kind of body, is simply unintelligible. (He argues that some parts of the soul — theintellect — can exist without the body, but most cannot.)In 1855, Charles Collier published a translation titled On the Vital Principle. George Henry Lewes,however, found this description also wanting.[2]Contents1Division of chapters1.1Book I1.2Book II1.3Book III1.4Summary2Arabic paraphrase3Some manuscripts4English translations5Footnotes6References7Further reading8External linksDivision of chaptersThe treatise is divided into three books, and each of the books is divided into chapters (five, twelve,and thirteen, respectively). The treatise is near-universally abbreviated “DA,” for “De anima,” and
