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For if once he shall begin to dote, his respiration, nutrition, his imaginative, and appetitive, and other natural faculties, may still continue the same: he shall find no want of them.
The commonest is the three-fold division into vegetative, animal and rational. We also find the Platonic division into appetitive, spirited and rational.
Then we may fairly assume that they are two, and that they differ from one another; the one with which man reasons, we may call the rational principle of the soul, the other, with which he loves and hungers and thirsts and feels the flutterings of any other desire, may be termed the irrational or appetitive, the ally of sundry pleasures and satisfactions?
The former decides whether a thing should be done or not, and discriminates between the proper and the improper in human actions and qualities. It is important as a guide to the happiness of the soul because it instructs the appetitive power in reference to those things which are subject to the will, and directs it to aim at the good and to reject the evil.
No sooner, however, had he acquired the rudiments of humane learning, which, being of very quick parts, he imbibed with incredible facility, than he began to display a restless mind, insatiable and appetitive of vice.
This training will be administered to the three component parts of the soul, the rational, the spirited and the appetitive, while the educational curriculum will be divided into two sections, Gymnastic for the body and Artistic for the mind the latter including all scientific, mathematical and literary subjects.
Though the soul is said by him to be prior to the body, yet we cannot help seeing that it is constructed on the model of the body the threefold division into the rational, passionate, and appetitive corresponding to the head, heart and belly.
One is directed upwards and is the means of our learning the sciences and the arts. This function we call conduct, and virtue is the mean between the two extremes of too much and too little. The mean of the appetitive power is temperance; of the spirited power, bravery and gentleness; of the rational soul, justice. Justice consists in giving everything its due without excess or defect.
The vegetative power, whose functions are nourishment, growth and reproduction, is related to appetite, and is called the appetitive soul. The animal power as being the cause of sensation, voluntary motion, cruelty, revenge, mercy and kindness, is called the spirited soul, because these qualities are dependent upon the energy or weakness of the spirit. The rational power has two aspects.
Now if good and evil both came from God, he would have to be composite just like man, who can be the cause of good and evil, the one coming from his rational power, the other from the spirited or appetitive. But God is simple and if evil comes from him, good cannot do so, which is absurd.
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