Chapter 6 describes the construction of the unified inner self and its relation to the universe. A movement from diversity (inner, cosmic and political) to wholeness is found in the mythic-ritual complex of both cultures, notably in the strikingly similar myths of Prajapati and Dionysos. The wholeness of the inner self correlates with the wholeness of the world obtained by sacrifice. The formation of the unified inner self (atman) as cosmogony is described in the opening of the B?hadara?yaka Upani?ad. The relation of atman to other candidates for the role of unified inner self, prana and manas, is described.

In the previous chapter I argued that in the context of GA I Aristotle uses the hylomorphic model primarily as a way to analyse the causal contributions of male and female seed to the formation of the primitive embryo (embryogenesis). In this context semen is said to give form to the menstrual blood only in the purely mechanical sense of imposing a determinate limit or boundary on her indeterminate fluid. In GA II 4–5 Aristotle uses the hylomorphic analysis as a way to identify the parents’ reproductive contributions to the substance that comes to be from the embryo (the completed offspring). He presents his account in two stages. In GA II 4 he argues that the father provides the offspring’s form in the sense of its soul while the mother provides the body that underlies the soul as its subject. He then refines this account in GA II 5 by identifying the father’s exclusive contribution with sensory soul.

Chapter 13 describes the projection and interiorisation (introjection) of abstract value. The idea of the comprehensive inner self as constituting a person's identity is first indicated in the Homeric Achilles’ evaluation, in a crisis of reciprocity, of his psuche, which is also the first of many passages in which death is envisaged as an economic transaction, for instance in Herakleitos, who is also the first to focus on the nature of the living psuche, and who also exemplifies the Greek interiorisation of unifying abstract value.

In Chapters 5 and 6 we saw that Aristotle treats male and female as ‘principles’ (archai) of generation both in the sense of starting points (animals come to be from the union of male and female) and in the sense of causes (the male as the efficient cause, the female as supplying the material cause). However, Aristotle does not treat male and female as causally basic principles in the sense of being causes of other things while nothing more fundamental is the cause of them (cf. GA 788a14–16). At the beginning of GA II 1 Aristotle tells us that the existence of males and females themselves can be traced to a higher principle (731b24–5: anôthen) namely, the divine. And so, they are not the most basic principles of animal generation since something more fundamental is the cause of them.

At the outset of the Physics Aristotle tells us that when the objects of any inquiry have ‘principles, causes, or elements’, knowledge and understanding are acquired by grasping these: ‘For we do not think we know a thing until we are familiar with its primary causes or first principles and have carried out our analysis as far as its elements. Clearly, then, also in the science of nature our first task will be to determine its principles’ (184a10–16). The aim of the next three chapters is to present Aristotle’s general model of substantial generation by examining those principles from which natural substances first come into being. Each of the three chapters focuses on a different set of texts. This chapter explores the basic hylomorphic model of coming-to-be from the perspective of Physics I, with an emphasis on the account in Physics I 7 (which is generally taken to be the locus classicus of that model).

Chapter 7 describes a distinctively Indian phenomenon. The participation of individual autocrats (Kshatriyas) in the dialogues of the early Upanishads is associated with new metaphysical doctrines that will be shown to reflect monetisation. The social power that is interiorised in the construction of the unified inner self is in India (mainly) autocracy, whereas in Greece – where kingship is in decline – it is (mainly) monetary value.

Chapter 16 emphasises the complex diversity of the factors shaping the Greek and Indian intellectual revolutions, describes the metaphysical consequences of a variety of perspectives on money and accounts for the differences between brahman and the Parmenidean One.

Chapter 8 describes the development of the various forms of monism (material, personal, mental, abstract) after the Rigveda. The traditional correspondences, between ritual and what ritual controls, tend to collapse into a single identification, of subject with object, making for the prominence and coalescence of mental monism and abstract monism in the early Upanishads – under the influence of universal abstract value. Awareness of the unity of all things (monism) is associated with immortality. The monistic tendency is illustrated by focus on a single passage of the Chandogya Upani?ad.

Chapter 2 describes the set of metaphysical ideas that, roughly speaking, occurred at about the same time in India and Greece and nowhere else . For the sake of clarity I expose, right from the start, the weaknesses of several kinds of explanation, in particular the widely popular assumption of 'influence', while also setting out the evidence for the socio-economic transformations that I regard as the most important but relatively neglected factor.

Chapter 9 describes the earliest extant Indian beliefs about the afterlife, which were superseded by the idea of individually accumulated metaphysical merit accompanied by the danger of repeated death, which develops into the idea of subjection in the hereafter to a repeated cosmic cycle. All this prefigures the combination of individually accumulated karma with the universal cycle of reincarnation (sam?sara), from which escape was sought by various forms of renunciation. An important factor in these developments was the individual accumulation and universal circulation of money.

Chapter 12 classifies Greek monism with the same four categories as used for India, and describes the transition – also found in India – from reciprocity to monism, which is closely associated with the new inner self. The element of fire in universe and inner self allows cross-cultural comparison that includes Zoroastrianism and Buddhism.

As we have seen, Aristotle opens the Generation of Animals by announcing that he has already dealt with three of the four causes of animals and their parts (formal, final, and material) and that it remains to discuss the efficient cause. For ‘to inquire into this and to inquire into the manner of generation for each thing is, in a way, the same thing’ (GA I 1, 715a1–18). But here we immediately encounter a puzzle. On the one hand, the GA routinely identifies the male principle as the primary efficient cause of the animal and its parts, which is housed in another individual of the same species, namely the father. This would suggest that generation has an external efficient cause (external to the thing that comes to be from it).