Key Arguments

• He defines the functions of the nutritive soul: 'Its | 415 a 25 | functions are generation and the making use of nourishment.'
• He claims that it is 'the most natural function in those living things that are complete, and not disabled or spontaneously generated, to produce another like itself—an animal producing an animal, a plant a plant', grounding reproduction in the nature of complete living beings.
• He explains the teleological reason: they reproduce 'in order that they may partake in the eternal and divine insofar as they can', explicitly connecting biological generation to participation in the eternal and divine.
• He generalizes the teleological drive: 'For all desire that, and it is for the sake of it that they do | 415 b 1 | whatever they do by nature.'
• He argues that because perishable things 'cannot share in what is eternal and divine by continuous existence, because nothing that admits of passing away can persist as the same and numerically one', they instead share by producing something like themselves, 'not one in number but one in form'.

Source Quotes

And so we must first speak about nourishment and generation. For the nutritive soul belongs to the others as well [as to plants], and it is the first and most common capacity of soul, in virtue of which life belongs to every one. Its | 415 a 25 | functions are generation and the making use of nourishment. 186 For it is the most natural function in those living things that are complete, and not disabled or spontaneously generated, to produce another like itself—an animal producing an animal, a plant a plant—in order that they may partake in the eternal and divine insofar as they can.

Its | 415 a 25 | functions are generation and the making use of nourishment. 186 For it is the most natural function in those living things that are complete, and not disabled or spontaneously generated, to produce another like itself—an animal producing an animal, a plant a plant—in order that they may partake in the eternal and divine insofar as they can. 187 For all desire that, and it is for the sake of it that they do | 415 b 1 | whatever they do by nature.

186 For it is the most natural function in those living things that are complete, and not disabled or spontaneously generated, to produce another like itself—an animal producing an animal, a plant a plant—in order that they may partake in the eternal and divine insofar as they can. 187 For all desire that, and it is for the sake of it that they do | 415 b 1 | whatever they do by nature. (The for-the-sake-of-which, though, is twofold—the purpose for which and the beneficiary for whom.) Since, then, they cannot share in what is eternal and divine by continuous existence, because nothing that admits of passing away can persist as the same and numerically one, they share in them insofar as each can, | 415 b 5 | some more and some less.

187 For all desire that, and it is for the sake of it that they do | 415 b 1 | whatever they do by nature. (The for-the-sake-of-which, though, is twofold—the purpose for which and the beneficiary for whom.) Since, then, they cannot share in what is eternal and divine by continuous existence, because nothing that admits of passing away can persist as the same and numerically one, they share in them insofar as each can, | 415 b 5 | some more and some less. And what persists is not the thing itself but something like itself, not one in number but one in form.

(The for-the-sake-of-which, though, is twofold—the purpose for which and the beneficiary for whom.) Since, then, they cannot share in what is eternal and divine by continuous existence, because nothing that admits of passing away can persist as the same and numerically one, they share in them insofar as each can, | 415 b 5 | some more and some less. And what persists is not the thing itself but something like itself, not one in number but one in form. The soul of the living body is its cause and starting-point.

Key Concepts

• the nutritive soul belongs to the others as well [as to plants], and it is the first and most common capacity of soul, in virtue of which life belongs to every one. Its | 415 a 25 | functions are generation and the making use of nourishment.
• For it is the most natural function in those living things that are complete, and not disabled or spontaneously generated, to produce another like itself—an animal producing an animal, a plant a plant—in order that they may partake in the eternal and divine insofar as they can.
• For all desire that, and it is for the sake of it that they do | 415 b 1 | whatever they do by nature.
• Since, then, they cannot share in what is eternal and divine by continuous existence, because nothing that admits of passing away can persist as the same and numerically one, they share in them insofar as each can, | 415 b 5 | some more and some less.
• And what persists is not the thing itself but something like itself, not one in number but one in form.

Context

Early II.4 (415a25–b6), where Aristotle characterizes the nutritive soul by its two main functions and develops a teleological argument that reproduction allows mortal organisms to participate in the eternal and divine through the continuity of form rather than numerical identity.