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For Aristotle the heart was the meeting place of all sensations. The brain, being cold, merely served as an organ which condensed the rising hot vapors to a cooling dew which refreshed the heart.
One would think that a psychology based on such fundamental errors could not be of more than historical interest. But when one reads this skilfully written and concise book one is astounded by the greatness of that mind, and one wonders how error and wisdom can live under the same roof. Does Aristotle appear to us to be so great because two thousand years ago he had views and an approach akin to modern psychobiological thinking; or because we have not grown up much since, and are still as small as Aristotle in the face of the towering mystery of life? And are not many of our modern concepts just as fantastic as the vapors?
The author tries rather successfully 'to avoid questions which are non-Aristotelian in nature and focus attention on what is most germane to Aristotle's interpretation in living'. The striving to find in Aristotle's psychology close parallels to contemporary approaches leads to interpretations which are debatable. In his interpretation of reason (vous), the higher 'part of the human soul', the author tries to show that Aristotle did not believe in an intrinsic immortal soul as distinguished from the body: 'In its true nature it [vous] is separated, deathless, eternal. But we have seen that when this mind is operating, it is identical with its object—it is thus not a purely personal, individual matter, but is the intelligible order of the world in which the man as a whole participates while he is a "living being".' This would mean a projection of an