Tratado 28 (IV, 4, 21) – DESIRES ARE PHYSICAL, BECAUSE CHANGEABLE IN HARMONY WITH THE BODY (Guthrie)

DESIRES ARE PHYSICAL, BECAUSE CHANGEABLE IN HARMONY WITH THE BODY.

21. The observation of the different ages shows that it is indeed the organism which is the origin of desires. Indeed, these change according as the man is a child or a youth, sick or well. Nevertheless that part of the soul which is the seat of desires ever remains the same. Consequently the variations of desire must be traced back to the variations of the organism. But this desiring faculty of the soul is not always entirely wakened by the excitation of the body, although this subsists to the end. Often even before having deliberated, the soul will forbid the body to drink or eat, although the organism desires it as keenly as possible. Nature herself also often forbids the satisfaction of the bodily desire, because such desire may not seem to it natural, and because she alone has the right to decide what things are harmonious to or contrary to nature. The theory that the body, by its different states suggests different desires to the soul’s faculty of desire, does not explain how the different states of the body can inspire different desires in the soul’s faculty of desire, since then it is not itself that it seeks to satisfy. For it is not for itself, but for the organism, that the soul’s faculty of desire seeks foods, humidity or heat, motion, agitation, or the satisfaction of hunger.