Some Kant

[k_a_nitz]

From my ongoing translation of Kant's Lectures on Psychology:

Animals are not merely machines or matter, but rather they have souls; for everything in all of nature is either lifeless or animated. All matter as matter (materia, qua talis) is lifeless. From where do we know that? The concept which we have of matter is this: materia est extensum impenetrabile iners [matter is inert, impenetrable expanse]. When we, for example, perceive a mote of dust on the paper; then we are seeing whether it moves. If it does not move by itself; then we consider it to be lifeless matter which is iners, and which might remain lying for all eternity if it were not moved by something else. But as soon as the matter moves; then we see whether it moves arbitrarily by itself. When we become aware of that in the mote of dust; we say thus it is animated; it is an animal. An animal is thus an animated matter; for life is the means of defining itself from the inner principle arbitrarily. Matter, however, as matter, has no inner principle of self-activation, no spontaneity to move itself; rather all matter which is animated has an inner principle which is separate from the object of the external senses, and is an object of the inner mind. An inner principle of self-activation is only thinking and wanting; only through that can something be moved through the inner mind; this is alone a principle of acting as you like and arbitrarily. If matter thus moves; then it follows that in it there is such a special principle of self-activation. This principle, however, of thinking and wanting is something only a being which has knowledge is capable of. Matter can merely move by means of such a principle. Such a principle of matter, however, is the soul of the material. Thus: all matter which then lives does not live as matter, but rather has a principle of life and is animated. But to the extent matter is animated; to that extent it is also possessing a soul. A principle of life lies thus at the basis of animals and that is the soul.