From the early Greeks through Galen’s period of influence, a period of seventeen centuries of human thought, thinking about the nature of human existence found us wallowing in high-powered confusion. Most of the talk was about souls, not minds -- and certainly not consciousness. Plato and Socrates argued for a tripartite immortal soul, partly rational, partly spiritual, and partly appetitive. Aristotle also reasoned we had souls, but he said they were not immortal. The early students of the brain, and of anatomy in general, went back to saying that they were immortal but that there was no difference between the mental and the physical. Ideas die hard, even in the light of an emerging science. As we shall see, these primitive ideas are still in play today. ~ Page 20 {Excerpt: 'The Consciousness Instinct' Author : Michel Gazzaniga

The word’s (xenophobia) absence surprised me for another reason. As contemporary scholar have shown, the ancient Greeks often behaved in ways that we would call xenophobic. Aristotle originated an infamous tradition in which outsiders were deemed subhuman, hence naturally intended for enslavement. In his ‘Politics,’ he cited Euripides, who wrote: “it is proper for Greeks to rule non-Greeks”. The one whom early modern Western thinkers simply called “The Philosopher” then extended this, so “that non-Greek and slave are in nature the same.” Foreigners, Aristotle argued, were like bodies with souls, animals that required masters, and women who needed to be led about by men. In “the great order of things,” it was natural for foreigners to be subdued, enchained, and put to work by their male Greek overlords. No one, it seems, called Aristotle xenophobic. Not in Athens. ~ Page 8