Tratado 28 (IV, 4, 20) – THE APPETITES ARE LOCATED NEITHER IN BODY NOR SOUL, BUT IN THEIR COMBINATION (Guthrie)

THE APPETITES ARE LOCATED NEITHER IN BODY NOR SOUL, BUT IN THEIR COMBINATION.

20. Consequently, it may be said that the origin of the desires should be located in the common (combination) and in the physical nature. To desire and seek something would not be characteristic of a body in any state whatever (which would not be alive). On the other hand, it is not the soul which seeks after sweet or bitter flavors, but the body. Now the body, by the very fact that it is not simply a body (that it is a living body), moves much more than the soul, and is obliged to seek out a thousand objects to satisfy its needs: at times it needs sweet flavors, at others, bitter flavors; again humidity, and later, heat; all of them being things about which it would not care, were it alone. As the suffering is accompanied by knowledge, the soul, to avoid the object which causes the suffering, makes an effort which constitutes flight, because she perceives the passion experienced by the organ, that contracts to escape the harmful object. Thus everything that occurs in the body is known by sensation, and by that part of the soul called nature, and which gives the body a trace of the soul. On one hand, desire, which has its origin in the body, and reaches its highest degree in nature, attaches itself thereto. On the other hand, sensation begets imagination, as a consequence of which the soul satisfies her need, or abstains, and restrains herself; without listening to the body which gave birth to desire, nor the faculty which later felt its reaction.

TWO KINDS OF DESIRES: OF THE BODY; AND OF THE COMBINATION, OR NATURE.

Why therefore should we recognize two kinds of desires, instead of acknowledging only one kind in the living body? Because nature differs from the body to which it gives life. Nature is anterior to the body because it is nature that organizes the body by moulding it, and shaping it; consequently, the origin of desire is not in nature, but in the passions of the living body. If the latter suffer, it aspires to possess things contrary to those that make it suffer, to make pleasure succeed pain, and satisfaction succeed need. Nature, like a mother, guesses the desires of the body that has suffered, tries to direct it, and to lure it back. While thus trying to satisfy it, she thereby shares in its desires, and she proposes to accomplish the same ends. It might be said that the body, by itself, possesses desires and inclinations; that nature has some only as a result of the body, and because of it; that, finally the soul is an independent power which grants or refuses what is desired by the organism.