Chapter XV.—The Souls Vitality and Intelligence. Its Character
and Seat in Man. In the first place, (we must determine) whether
there be in the soul some supreme principle of vitality and
intelligence 1583 which they call “the ruling power of the
soul”—τὸ ἡγεμονικόν for if this be not admitted, the whole
condition of the soul is put in jeopardy. Indeed, those men who
say that there is no such directing faculty, have begun by
supposing that the soul itself is simply a nonentity. One
Dicæarchus, a Messenian, and amongst the medical profession
Andreas and Asclepiades, have thus destroyed the (souls)
directing power, by actually placing in the mind the senses, for
which they claim the ruling faculty. Asclepiades rides rough-
shod over us with even this argument, that very many animals,
after losing those parts of their body in which the souls
principle of vitality and sensation is thought mainly to exist,
still retain life in a considerable degree, as well as
sensation: as in the case of flies, and wasps, and locu