Simplicius(?) on De anima #3: On Book 3, chapters 6-13

Excerpts from the translation by Carlos Steel (2013), with the translation's page numbering.

pp. 131f

"Let us first see what he means by ‘those which can receive forms without matter’ so that we may know from the positive statement what ‘those are which cannot receive without matter’. And to what corresponds the negation oute (nor) added before it at the beginning? For it is not simply added, but it seems to have some meaning. One may explain the whole text rather as follows. If he now seems to call ‘forms’ the animate forms (if at least there might be in the universe some animate form, and not only individuals which are like corpses), and if his argument is about forms capable of perception, he does now apparently not assume simply animate forms, but those that are also capable of perception or even capable of cognition in a superior way. What can receive such forms without matter are the eternal living beings, which in no way have something [sc. matter] that receives [life] adventitiously. Neither Plato nor Aristotle attributed any form of perception to these beings, because, as has been said, they mean by ‘sense-perception’ the passive perception, not the perception that comes wholly from inside according to its proper activity and that is constitutive of the sense-objects and discriminative of them. These [eternal living beings] are then ‘what can receive forms without matter’. And it has been said what kind of forms they can receive, namely cognitive forms, and forms with a superior capacity of knowing, as is the view of these ancient philosophers, and not [a capacity of knowing] through perception. It is, then, also clear what ‘those beings are which cannot receive’ the cognitive ‘forms without matter’, namely the non-eternal living beings. For such living beings always need sense-perception because of what was said before, as they are easily affected, and they need the primary sense-perception, the sense of touch. We must thus construe oute (nor) by taking up again what was said before: ‘without this perception (namely touch) nothing can be an animal’, and having connected also the last oute with this passage we will thus bring in the rest of the text: ‘those which cannot receive forms without matter’. In this way a double explanation is given for the fact that mortal animals must absolutely have the sense of touch. One reason is that the other senses cannot exist without touch; the second reason is that, since they are generally living beings and can only receive their cognitive forms adventitiously – for that is what it means not to be capable of perception without matter –, they must also be perceptive in a passive sense, ‘if nature does nothing in vain’, that is if it will attribute to animals what is proper to them as animals. For what is good is what is able to preserve each thing, as is also Plato’s view in the Republic. What then has not acquired the cause of its preservation according to nature will exist in vain. But nature does nothing in vain. Hence it also assigns to all animals what preserves them according to measures fitting for each. The capacity of perception is what preserves mortal animals, as it becomes the cause for the avoidance of what is alien and the reception of what is proper to them."