The school which we commonly think of contrasting with the Epicurean, and one which was founded at about the same time, is that of the Stoics.  Certainly the Stoics differed in many things from the Epicureans; their view of the world, and of the life of man, was a much nobler one; but they were uncompromising materialists, nevertheless, and identified the soul with the warm breath that animates man.

31.  THE MIND AS IMMATERIAL.—­It is scarcely too much to say that the Greek philosophy as a whole impresses the modern mind as representing the thought of a people to whom it was not unnatural to think of the mind as being a breath, a fire, a collection of atoms, a something material.  To be sure, we cannot accuse those twin stars that must ever remain the glory of literature and science, Plato and Aristotle, of being materialists.  Plato (427-347, B.C.) distributes, it is true, the three-fold soul, which he allows man, in various parts of the human body, in a way that at least suggests the Democritean distribution of mind-atoms.  The lowest soul is confined beneath the diaphragm; the one next in rank has its seat in the chest; and the highest, the rational soul, is enthroned in the head.  However, he has said quite enough about this last to indicate clearly that he conceived it to be free from all taint of materiality.

As for Aristotle (384-322, B.C.), who also distinguished between the lower psychical functions and the higher, we find him sometimes speaking of soul and body in such a way as to lead men to ask themselves whether he is really speaking of two things at all; but when he specifically treats of the nous or reason, he insists upon its complete detachment from everything material.  Man’s reason is not subjected to the fate of the lower psychical functions, which, as the “form” of the body, perish with the body; it enters from without, and it endures after the body has passed away.  It is interesting to note, however, an occasional lapse even in Aristotle.  When he comes to speak of the relation to the world of the Divine Mind, the First Cause of Motion, which he conceives as pure Reason, he represents it as touching the world, although it remains itself untouched.  We seem to find here just a flavor—­an inconsistent one—­of the material.

Such reflections as those of Plato and Aristotle bore fruit in later ages.  When we come down to Plotinus the Neo-Platonist (204-269, A.D.), we have left the conception of the soul as a warm breath, or as composed of fine round atoms, far behind.  It has become curiously abstract and incomprehensible.  It is described as an immaterial substance This substance is, in a sense, in the body, or, at least, it is present to the body.  But it is not in the body as material things are in this place or in that. It is as a whole in the whole body, and it is as a whole in every part of the body.  Thus the soul may be regarded as divisible, since it is distributed throughout the body; but it must also be regarded as indivisible, since it is wholly in every part.