"sense" do not capture the decisive meaning: gathering joining and making known. They overlook what is originally and properly ancient and thus at once essential to the word and concept. Whether, then, in the history of the origin of the word λόγος the meaning of the gathering joining was immediately accompanied by the meaning of gathering saying, a meaning that language always already has assumed, and in fact in the manner of conversance; whether, in fact, originally language and discourse was directly experienced as the primary and genuine basic way of gathering joining, or whether the meaning of gathering and joining together was only subsequently carried over onto language, I am not able to decide on the basis of my knowledge of the matter, assuming that the question is at all decidable. (In any case, we already find within philosophy the multiplicity of the meanings of λόγος in Heraclitus.)
What then does the determination of ἄλογος and μετὰ λόγου mean now on the basis of this clarification of the word λόγος? Ἄλογος: without discourse: without conversance; this means something which is without conversance in what and how it is. Without conversance: without the possibility of taking notice, of perceiving, or of giving notice, and hence all the more not being in a position to explore and be conversant in a matter. Μετὰ λόγου, in contrast. is something which has conversance there along with it in what and how it is. Conversance: the possibility of taking and giving notice and thus the. possibility of exploring and becoming conversant and so being conversant.
Thus Aristotle divides, as we heard, the δυνάμεις κατὰ κίνησιν into what is without discourse and what is directed by discourse, without conversance and conversant. And in fact he achieves the division by going back to a division of beings into ἄψυχα (soulless) and ἔμψυχα (besouled). Thus ἄλογον corresponds to the ἄψυχον and μετὰ λόγου to ἔμψυχον. In general, λόγος and ψυχή, soul, correspond. Where λόγος, there ψυχή, and where ψυχή and ἔμψυχον, there λόγος and μετὰ λόγου. Or is this last relationship simply invalid? Let us see.
In what regard are ἄψυχον and ἔμψυχον different? Aristotle says in De anima, Β 2, 413a20ff.: λέγομεν ... διωρίσθαι τὸ ἔμψυχον τοῦ