Book 2
13
From these considerations light is also thrown on the question sometimes raised—what is the precise reason why the virtuous are for half their lives no better than the base, since all men are alike when asleep?The reason is that sleep is inaction of the spirit, not an activity.
14
Hence the goodness of any other part of the spirit, for instance the nutritive, is not a portion of goodness as a whole, just as also goodness of the body is not; for the nutritive part functions more actively in sleep, where as the sensory and appetitive parts are ineffective in sleep. But even the imaginations of the virtuous, so far as the imaginative faculty participates in any mode of motion, are better than those of the base, provided they are not perverted by disease or mutilation.
15
Next we must study the spirit; for goodness is a property of the spirit, it is not accidental. And since it is human goodness that we are investigating, let us begin by positing that the spirit has two parts that partake of reason, but that they do not both partake of reason in the same manner, but one of them by having by nature the capacity to give orders, and the other to obey and listen (let us leave out any part that is irrational in another wayi.e. the part connected with nutrition and growth, man’s animal life, which is irrational absolutely, and not merely in the sense of not possessing reason but being capable of obedience to it.).
16
And it makes no difference whether the spirit is divisible or is undivided yet possessed of different capacities, namely those mentioned, just as the concave and convex sides in a curve are inseparable, and the straightness and whiteness in a straight white line, although a straight thing is not white except accidentally and not by its own essence.
