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These few definitions will make clear the singularly ingenious idea of Aristotle on the nature of the body, the soul, and of their union. The body is matter which is only intelligible as the correlatum of form; it can neither exist by itself nor be known by itself that is to say, when considered outside this relation. The soul is form, the actual.
Form is superior, nobler, the higher in dignity, nearer to the perfect entity; matter is inferior, more modest, more distant from perfection. On account of its hierarchical inferiority, matter is often presented as the second, or correlatum, and form as the first, or relatum.
Happy though it may be, this comparison is but a metaphor which perhaps facilitates the understanding of Aristotle's idea, but is not essential to his theory. For my part, I attach far greater importance to the character of relatum, and correlatum ascribed to the two terms mind and matter, and to the actualisation produced by their union. Let me add another point of comparison.
By uniting with the body it constitutes the living subject. The soul is the relatum, and is unintelligible and void of sense without its correlatum. "The soul," says Aristotle, "is not a variety of body, but it could not exist without a body: the soul is not a body, but something which belongs or is relative to a body."
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