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has many properties like smell, heat, and taste; similarly, the kinds of atom form "a single nature." We are
reminded of the comparison of the Stoic unified soul with its different powers to an apple with its different
properties. The fourth element is the power that makes the soul into a unity without it, Lucretius says, the
other three kinds of atom would not hold together and be enabled to function as they in fact do in an
animate body.[61]
The fourth element is "hidden deepest" in the soul, as the soul is in the body; it is "the soul of the soul"
and "runs things in the entire body." Clearly the fourth element is not spatially farthest inside, boxed in by
the other three.[62] The soul, after all, is not boxed in by the body. Rather the soul is "hidden" in the sense
that we do not encounter it in experience. We see clearly enough the effects of having a soul: it animates
and directs the body. But the soul itself is not open to observation. Similarly, the fourth element is what
"animates" the soul. Although we cannot observe the soul, we can make inferences
[59] This rules out theories that treat the fourth element alone as responsible for the soul's activity or that
of its rational part (for a survey of theories on these lines, see Kerferd 1971, 84 87). One persistent version
of this point is that the fourth nature is a transformation of Aristotle's "fifth element"; there is no reason to
think this, and it is equally misguided to think of either as "wholly spiritual and non-material" (Bailey 1928,
392).
[60] 3. 258 87.
[61] 3. 285 87.
[62] As Diano (1974a) sees.
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as to its nature, and in particular infer the existence of a kind of atom which gets the soul to function as a
whole, and which is distinct from the other soul elements whose nature we can partially describe from
experience.
Soul and body, as Lucretius says,[63] are mutually dependent: soul is like the scent in a perfume which
you cannot remove without destroying the substance. And the fourth element stands to the soul as the soul
stands to the body; it and the other soul elements are mutually dependent in that without them it would
have nothing to "animate," and without it they would not hold together as a single kind of thing. How does
the fourth element do this? It cannot be by operating, in a seemingly magical fashion, on its own. Rather, it
must, by its particularly fine nature, enable the other elements to come together in a new sort of compound.
It makes the soul a unity in the straightforward sense that its nature forms the necessary basis for the other
atom kinds to cohere in a compound that has the properties of a soul. The introduction of the fourth element
marks an insistence that there is a physical difference between souls and other kinds of body.
In one way this fits well into Epicurean theory: the soul's operations are supposed to involve particularly
fine, invisible processes, and the fourth element serves to explain how the soul, though physical, can have a
peculiarly fine structure enabling these to occur. But in other ways the move seems undermotivated.
Epicurean physics and cosmology operate with atoms and void: atomic motions and the resulting
compounds they give rise to are all we have to explain the varied phenomenal world. Faced by a complex
and self-reproducing kind of thing like a tree, an Epicurean has to admit that the way it grows and
reproduces is accounted for by its pattern of functional organization, which is stable enough to establish
trees as things with persisting natures. Given an ontology as meager as that of atoms and void, and a
rejection of teleology, patterns of functional organization are required to explain a world
[63] 3. 323 32.
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where things fall into species with stable behavior. But why will the approach deemed adequate to explain
the species-specific behavior of trees not suffice to explain the behavior of people? To reverse the point, if
we need a special kind of nameless atom to explain what souls are, why do we not need another kind of
atom to explain what trees are?
It may be that Epicurus simply thought that animals and humans are so different in their complexity
from things like trees that the same type of explanation would leave something out in their case. More likely,
he may have thought that appealing merely to patterns of functional organization in the case of humans to
explain what is characteristic of them was problematic from the point of view of atomist methodology. It is
all right to say that a tree is the kind of thing it is because its atoms are organized in a particular stably
functioning way. But to say this of humans might sound dangerously close to Aristotle, and would verge on
recognizing a metaphysical principle like form as being as basic for explanation as matter. If it really
provides an explanation to say that I perceive and act because there are stable perceptive, reactive, and so
on patterns of functioning which my soul enables my body to carry out, these patterns seem to have a large
explanatory role. And we can see why Epicurus would find this problematic; large differences of explanatory
role ought, in a physicalist system, to have a physical basis. Thus the nameless atom type, far from
signaling a retreat from physicalism, reveals confidence in the adequacy of physicalism as a theory of the
soul. There is a physical difference between souls and other kinds of thing; so we do not need anything like
Aristotelian forms to explain the way the soul functions.
Is this move successful? Aristotle argues that ignoring the role of form leaves us unable to explain
functioning. Is the postulation of a physical difference, a new kind of ingredient, adequate to meet this kind
of challenge? We might feel unhappy when we recall that the ingredient is nameless, since theory postulates
something of which experience gives us no
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idea. A successful challenge to Aristotle would rely on achieved science and point to acknowledged
complexity of structure to do the explanatory work assigned to form. But not only is Epicurus not in a
position to appeal to such science, he is in general not very interested in low-level, working science. He
accepts atomism as the best available scientific theory and tends to assume that what is needed can be
worked out within atomism, without waiting for actual research. Thus in his appeal to nameless atoms there
is a considerable element of faith the kind of faith in science which philosophers often have who do not do
any actual science.
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