105

Logic IV. 113.
If there is a question of cause of what kind is that cause? Some defenders seem to think it an efficient cause. If that is so the sould would be conceived as an automation. Any automation which does external work will run down but surprising psychical efficiency to follow the same laws as physical efficiency if the soul does no external work which we must conceive as psychical work it would not run down. But then the soul in fact does external psychical work whether it does physical work or not and whether psychical work does or does not exhause a psychical agent we simply do not know. Probably not but the argument amount to nothing. If a formal cause is intended the argument would be better but it would seem so understood to be little more than an inappropriate way of stating the argument of the Phaedo. But if we put aside the conception of cause as extraneous to Plato's meaning what he would mean by saying that the soul consists in self motions.