the intellectual faculties. He held the brain, in fact, to be the seat if not the source of the higher faculties, while he assigned the appetites and coarser passions to the viscera. Hippocrates, who lived some years before him, assigns to the brain the guardianship of the mind, and makes it to be not only the first percipient of all the changes of the seasons, but also the source and seat of all the more deadly and complicated maladies.
Note 3, p. 126. It may be questioned, &c.] The argument, in these passages, is to account for the changes which are constantly going on in bodies, and for which that age could assign no adequate cause; but still it was perceived that tangible and sapid qualities (hot and cold, wet and dry, acid, saline, astringent, and others) must be the agents principally concerned in their production. Thus, although neither light nor darkness, sound nor odour, can act upon bodies, yet something present with them may, and this seems to point, suggestively, to those imponderable and invisible forces (heat, magnetism, electricity, &c.), for which, as yet, even "no plausible theory has been adopted."
Note 4, p. 126. But all bodies are not impressionable, &c.] These passages are very obscure; but their purport seems to be, that odour and sound can act only upon such bodies as, like the air and water, are neither limited nor stationary—are made to be the carriers, as it were, of delicate emanations and vibrations to sentient organs. Thus, it is added, the air, having been impressed by odour, readily gives it out, and, then, through the smell, becomes perceptible to the sentient being. But neither odour nor sound, as such, can in aught contribute to the changes to which all inert bodies are subject; and the actions of sound and odour, therefore, seem to be limited to sentient, that is, living properties. This may be to us a truism, but it must be recollected that even to Aristotle the olfactory passages were but imperfectly known; that the opinions upon the Atmosphere were hypothetical; and that the processes by which changes are wrought in inert matter were still to be detected.
PRELUDE TO CHAPTER I.
This book has been by one commentator held to be spurious, even while admitting that all the opinions are genuine, because of imputed solecisms in the style and phraseology, which seem to indicate a foreign hand. But were any one capable, as Trendellenburg observes, of adopting, with so much perspicacity, the reasoning of Aristotle, he would be much rather inclined to put forth an original work, than thus to shelter his productions under another's name. The opening passages involve great, it may be, insuperable difficulties, owing rather to the argument than to the wording, although this is obscure, for it seems to be assumed that a sense would be felt to be wanting, although it might never have been possessed; and that the consciousness of its privation would prove whether or not a sense were wanting. According to this theory, in fact, if the Touch were a sense for every impression of which we now are sensible, and if there were any property not perceptible by us, we should perceive that another sentient organ was required; but it has not been shewn that such a want, had it not previously been satisfied, could be made sensible to us. And even for the Touch itself, were there any one property, of which we are sensible, say that of hardness, which had never been perceived, we could hardly be conscious of the want; and there may be, probably are properties in the bodies around and above us of which we are unconscious, and yet remain without the feeling of a want. Each of the senses seems to be an ultimate fact; for we are satisfied that we see by the eye and hear by the ear, and that with so little attention or will that the sentient organs perform their part almost irrespectively of the percipient. In the succeeding passages, which relate to media and the elementary constitution of the senses, there is ambiguity or confusion, occasioned by the then prevailing dogmata of elements and like by like, and perhaps, it may be added, by unacquaintance with the structure of the sentient organs.
Book the third.
Chapter I.
We may be satisfied, from the observations which follow, that there is no sense besides the five—besides, that is, Sight, Hearing, Smell, Taste, and Touch; for if Touch be the sense for every impression of which we are sensible, and if we have this sense, then, as all the conditions of whatever is tangible, in so far as tangible, are made perceptible to us by the Touch, it follows that, if any sensation be wanting, some sentient organ must be wanting to us also. Now, all the bodies which are perceived by touching are made sensible to us by the Touch which has been allotted to us; and all those which are perceived, not by touching but, through media, are made sensible to us by simple bodies—that is, by air and water. We are so constituted, in fact, that, if several objects, differing generically from one another, could be perceived through one medium, an individual, having a sentient organ such as that medium, would, necessarily, be sensible of impressions through both media—as if the sentient organ should be of air, then, as air is the medium for sound and colour, the individual would be sensible of both impressions through the same organ. Should there, however, be more than one medium for the transmission of the same impression, as air as well as water (since both are diaphanous,) serves for the transmission of colour, then an individual, having an organ constituted of either of those elements, would perceive impressions transmitted through them both. The sentient organs, however, are constituted of those two simple bodies, air and water, exclusively—for the pupil is of water, the hearing of air, and the smell either of one or other; but fire forms no part of any organ, or rather it is an element common to all, as there is nothing sentient without heat; and earth either does not enter at all into any sentient part, or it has been in some especial and peculiar manner combined with the Touch. Thus, there can remain only this conclusion, that, were there no air or water, there could be no sentient organ; and organs so constituted are actually possessed by animals now living. All the senses, in fact, are possessed by animals which are neither imperfect nor mutilated; for the mole appears to have eyes beneath its skin. So that, unless there is some kind of body hitherto unknown and some kind of impression unsuited to bodies here on earth, it may be affirmed that no sense can be wanting to us. But neither is it possible that there should be any special organ for the perception of common properties, (such as motion, rest, magnitude, form, number and unity), of which we are made sensible, by each special sense, accidentally; for we perceive all such by motion as we do magnitude, and as we do form, as form is a kind of magnitude; the state of rest we are sensible of by the absence of motion, and number we perceive by the want of continuity and by particular senses, for each sense is perceptive of unity. So that, evidently, there cannot be a peculiar sense for the perception of any one of those properties, as motion, for instance; with respect to which we shall be ever situated as we now are, when, by sight, we judge of something sweet. And this we are able to do from our happening to possess a sense which is perceptive of double impressions, and by the way in which those impressions coincide, we recognise what the thing is; were this not the case, then, in no wise, except by chance, could we perceive that the thing was sweet, any more than we could tell that an individual is the son of Cleon, not because he is really so, but because he is fair; and fairness is an accident pertaining to the son of Cleon. And yet we have a common sense for the perception of common properties and that not casually, although it is not a peculiar sense; for, were it so, then in no otherwise could we perceive those properties than, as has just been said, we see that an individual is the son of Cleon. The senses, however, do perceive, casually, the special qualities of each other; but then they do so, not as distinct senses but, as becoming one sense, as when double impressions may be made simultaneously upon the same organ, as by bile, which is bitter and yellow. But as it belongs not to either sense to say that both qualities belong to one substance, we are exposed to error, and led to think that if a fluid be yellow it must be bile.
Should any one inquire why we have been furnished with several senses in place of having only one, it might be answered, " that we have so been constituted in order that the sequences and common properties of bodies, as motion, magnitude, and number, may the less readily escape our notice." If vision, in fact, were our only sense and it perceptive only of whiteness, then all other qualities would more readily escape our notice and seem to be identical, on account of colour and magnitude being in an invariable sequence to one another. But as here common properties are manifested in different bodies, it is evident that each of those properties (colour and magnitude) must also be different.
Notes Layout 2 Notes Layout 2 Note 1, p. 131. The sentient organs, however, are constituted, &c.] The senses were formed, according to that age, from the elements—as the hearing from air, and the eye, which alone was supposed to have a special organ, from the purest part of the fluid secreted by the brain; and vision is the result, according to Aristotle, of refraction. Thus, Democritus was held to be right in saying that the eye is water but to be wrong in supposing vision to be caused by reflection, (τὸ ὁρᾶν εἶναι τὴν ἔμφασιν) as vision is, not in the eye but, in the percipient; for "vision is refraction" (ἀνάκλασις γὰρ τὸ πάθος). Aristotle shews that, according to the admitted doctrines, these two elements only constitute the sentient organs of all animals which are perfect; and adds, as if to guard against a possible objection, that the mole has eyes although they may not be very apparent. It is then argued that, unless there is some kind of body or mode of impression different from all with which we are acquainted, no sense can be wanting; and Cuvier adopted a similar argument to prove that no animal, unknown to Zoology, remains to be discovered.
Note 2, p. 132. And this we are able to do, &c.] This passage is elliptical and obscure; but, as "the relative is too closely connected with the example something sweet to admit of being separated," it may imply that the sight may, by colour and refraction, determine the quality of a particular fluid. But, as no sense can judge, excepting indirectly, of compound qualities, the perception of such is accidental, a kind of guess, that is, just as it would be in the case of a fair individual, in the example of Cleon's son.
Note 3, p. 133. The senses, however, do perceive casually, &c.] This passage remains, according to its wording, unintelligible, notwithstanding the attention bestowed upon it by commentators, because of the difficulty of attaching any sense to the assumption, that the senses can become as one. The comment "si unum et idem uno et eodem tempore a diversis sensibus percipitur, ni sensus in unum coalescunt," assumes but does not shew that the senses can so coalesce, and then judge of impressions made upon them individually. And thus here again is required a central organ, the common origin of the perceptive power of the senses, to which all impressions are to be referred and by which they are to be compared; and such an organ is the brain. But still, from the moment that we judge of more than a simple impression or a single idea, there is liability to error, as was observed and exemplified in the case of a fluid, which, from being bitter and yellow, is at once assumed to be bile because those are the known qualities of that fluid. Many of our errors arise, no doubt, in like manner, from our not sufficiently scrutinising the impressions derived from external objects.
PRELUDE TO CHAPTER II.
This chapter opens with a continuation of the discussion upon the senses, and, assuming sensation to be an ultimate fact, it argues that vision (taken as an example), must be the office of the eye, or some other sense; if the office of some other sense, then it, unlike every other, will have had assigned to it two different modes of impression. Add to this, that like the visual sense, which perceives colour only, it must be imbued with colour, and this would interfere with its own peculiar office. The further objection to another than its own sense for vision, in its requiring an infinite series of perceptions, is neither clear nor apposite; for, had a sense been made perceptive of double impressions, that faculty would be, as much as a single sense, an ultimate fact. The passage has been a fruitful topic for commentators, as might be supposed, but it still remains the subject of conjecture.
Chapter II.
Chapter II.
Since we are sensible that we see and hear, we cannot but be sensible that we see by sight or by some other sense; but, if we see by some other sense, then it will be perceptive of sight and colour, the subject of sight; and thus there will be either two senses for the same office, or the sight itself will be the percipient. If, besides, there is some other than the visual sense for sight, we shall have to admit an infinite series of perceptions, or else this other sense, whatever it may be, will be the visual percipient; and this might as well have been conceded to the first sense. But here there is a difficulty—if to perceive by sight is seeing, and if that which is seen is colour or something having colour, then, if any sense is to see that which sees, that sense must first have colour. It is then manifest that perception by sight is not a single perception; for even when we may not see, it is still by sight that we judge both of darkness and light, although not in the same manner. That, moreover, which sees, must have been already imbued with colour, since each sentient organ must be receptive of the object of perception without its matter; and this accounts for impressions and images being still present in the sentient organs, after objects have been withdrawn.
The action of the object of perception is one and the same with that of the sense, although they differ in mode of being—I mean, for example, sound in action and hearing in action; for it may be that an individual, endowed with hearing, does not hear, as that a sonorous body does not give out sound. But when an individual, capable of hearing, listens, and when that which is sonorous gives out sound, then hearing in action coincides with sound in action, and the one may strictly be termed hearing, the other sound. If motion, production, and impression, are in the product, it follows that sound and hearing, in an active state, must pre-exist in hearing in a potential state; for the action of the creative and the motive exists, naturally, in that which is to be acted upon. It is, therefore, no way necessary that the motor should be itself in motion. The action, then, of the sonorous body is sound or sounding, that of the auditory sense is hearing or audition; for hearing is double as sound is double, and the same applies to other senses and perceptions. Since production and impression are, not in that which acts but, in that which is impressed, so the action of the object of perception and the sensibility is in the sentient being. But, while for some senses these two states have been specially distinguished by names, as sound and hearing, there are others for which one or other state is without appellation—the action of vision, for instance, is called sight, but the action of colour is unnamed; the action of the sapid sense is called taste, while that of savour is without appellation.
Since the action of the object of perception and that of the sentient being is one and the same, although different in mode of acting, it follows that hearing and sound, in this sense, must together be lost, or together be preserved; and this is true of taste and savour, and other senses and functions; but yet it does not hold good of those relations in potentiality.
The earlier physiologists have expressed themselves ill upon the subject, as they thought that there can be neither black nor white without sight, nor savour without Taste. And yet what they said was in part right and in part wrong; for as senses and sentient impressions have a twofold acceptation, according to their state of potentiality or activity, so what was advanced by them may be applicable to the one state, and inapplicable to the other. The fact is, those writers reasoned absolutely upon conditions, which do not admit of being so dealt with. If a voice of any kind is harmony, and if voice and hearing are, in one sense, the same, and, in another sense, not the same, then, as harmony is proportion, it follows that hearing must be proportion also. And hence it comes that every sound in excess, whether acute or grave, perverts the hearing, as every savour in excess does the taste; and every colour over-bright or dark dulls the sight, as every odour excessively pungent, whether grateful or offensive, does the smell, as if shewing that sensibility is a kind of proportion. Thus, qualities, as acid or sweet or saline, are agreeable whenever they are reduced, pure and unmixed, to a due proportion; for it is this only which renders them grateful. To speak generally, harmony is a combination of tones rather than the acute or the grave singly, as for the Touch, the warmed or cooled is genial, rather than the hot or cold, simply; for, as sensibility is proportion, so qualities, in excess, pain or pervert the senses.
Each sense is perceptive of its own appointed subjects, is innate in its own organ, as a special organ, and judges of the distinctions of qualities, as sight judges of white and black; taste of bitter and sweet, and so as to other senses and qualities. But since we judge of white, sweet, and each other quality by its relation to each sense, by what do we perceive that qualities differ? Now, it is evident that it must be by some sense, as the impressions are all sentient; and equally so that the flesh cannot be that final organism, as in order to judge of qualities it must, of necessity, first touch bodies. Neither is it admissible that, by different senses, we judge sweet to be different from white, as both qualities must be apparent to some single faculty; for, otherwise, it would be as if I should perceive one quality and you perceive another, and thus make it evident that they are different from one another. But it is here required that the same individual should perceive that they are different, for the sweet is different from the white, and what he perceives that he says; and thus, what he says that he thinks and perceives. It is then evident that we cannot, by different senses, judge of different qualities, as also, from what follows, that we cannot judge of them in a separate portion of time. Neither can an opinion be in a separate portion of time; for just as it is the same individual who says that good is other than bad, so when he says that the one is different from the other, he implies that the other is equally so, and does not employ the term when loosely—he does not use it, I mean, in the sense of now, in the phrase, "now I say that the object is different," without implying that it is different now. But, here, it is the same individual who employs the term now, and says that objects are different now and because now; for the impressions are coincident, as they are inseparable, and as the time is indivisible. It cannot, however, be, that the same individual, in so far as indivisible, should be subject to contrary impulses in time which is indivisible; yet if sweetness move sensation or thought in one way, bitterness must move them in an opposite, and whiteness in some other direction. Can, then, that which judges be, numerically, indivisible and inseparable, yet separable in its mode of being? If so, then, in some way, as divisible, it may perceive divisible, and, in some way, as indivisible, it may perceive indivisible qualities; for in its mode of being it is separable, but, locally and numerically, it is inseparable. But is not this impossible? The same may, in potentiality, be indivisible and divisible and be the contraries; but not so in mode of being, as it is divisible in action, and cannot possibly be at once white and black, nor be simultaneously impressed by the forms of those colours, provided sensation and thought are such as we have said they are. But it is with this, as with that which some call a point, and which, in so far as it is one or dual, is indivisible or divisible. Thus, in so far as that which judges is one, it is indivisible, and its perceptions are simultaneous; and in so far as it is divisible, it employs the same point twice, simultaneously. In so far, then, as it employs the boundary as two, it judges of two things by it and perceives that they are distinct, as the boundaries of the line are distinct; but in so far as it is one, it judges by one act, and judges simultaneously.
Let what has been said then suffice for the definition of that principle, by which we maintain that an animal is made a sentient being.
Notes Layout 2 Note 1, p. 135. It is then manifest that perception &c.] This is a conclusion drawn from the reasoning of a former chapter, and its purport is to shew that our senses enable us to judge even of privative conditions, as darkness and silence; and, further, that, being receptive of forms without matter, they can retain images, and so, through the sensorium recall objects after their withdrawal.
Note 2, p. 136. The action of the object of perception, &c.] It has been attempted, by some of the ancient commentators, to annex this to the preceding argument, and shew that, as sight must first be imbued with colour, so the hearing must, in order to perceive sounds, be first sensible of the actions of sonorous bodies. But the more obvious signification, and which is equally supported by the text, is, that there must be simultaneousness of action between the object and the sense, although the modes of that action are as different as material are from living properties. The succeeding passage is, by its wording, obscure, but yet it admits of being elucidated by the term on which its meaning chiefly depends; for hearing, when in potentiality, must involve both sound (as without hearing there is no sound,) and hearing, in reality, just as the Vital Principle must exist, innately in the body in potentiality, but which, under genial circumstances, is to be acted upon and made a reality; and thus, too, the power which impels may, itself, be at rest.
Note 3, p. 136. But while for some senses these two states, &c.] It is scarcely possible, owing to the difficulty of fixing upon synonyms, to make this passage clear to the general reader—the text instances two terms (ψοφήσις καὶ ἡ ἄκουσις), as potential conditions of sound and hearing (ψόφος καὶ ἡ ἀκοή), and it may be assumed that they conveyed a modified signification of the action and sensation, which another language, even were the meaning quite evident, may fail in imparting. But even the plastic Greek fails, in many instances, in discriminating, without periphrasis, the two conditions; for vision, although potential, is still vision, nor has it any other designation when made reality by colour, and this applies equally to the taste and savour. In this version, the double condition of sound is rendered by sound and sounding, that of the sense by hearing, and audition for want of a vernacular term; the French version gives them as "le son et la résonnance, et l'acte de ce qui peut entendre est l'ouïe ou l'audition." It is clear that hearing and sound, and other senses and actions, in reality, must coincide to eliminate sensation; although this does not, of course, apply, as the text observes, to the senses in potentiality. And, hence, in this state, there are, for a sentient being, no such qualities as white or black, bitter or sweet, as they depend, for their reality, upon a given condition of the sensibility, which depends again, in part, upon the will.
Note 4, p. 137. If a voice of any kind is harmony, &c.] This deviation from the immediate subject of the chapter, which was to prove that the five senses satisfy all our wants as sentient creatures, and that, therefore, there can be no other sense besides them, is, no doubt, episodical, although it is annexed, by the extremes of sounds, to the general argument upon sensibility. But the phrase itself is by its wording obscure, and, by its conclusion unsatisfactory, for it may not follow that, because voice may be harmony and harmony proportion, the hearing must be proportion also. It has been suggested that, by a slight change of position in the words, and so, instead of the present wording, making harmony, voice to be (εἰ δ'ἡ φωνὴ συμφωνία vice εἰ δὴ συμφωνία φωνή τις) of any kind, it might be assumed that hearing should be harmony. Aristotle, by allotting "vowels and consonants, which constitute speech, to the larynx, tongue and lips," seems, by this variety of sounds, to consider voice as a kind of harmony; and Cuvier says, that all the modifications of sound which are expressible by the letters of the alphabet, "take place in the mouth, and depend on the relative mobility of the tongue, and still more the lips, whence the perfection of man's speech is derived."
Note 5, p. 138. But since we judge of white, sweet, and each other, &c.] The only answer to this, as it was to a former inquiry, is, that the brain is that generalising faculty, and that it fulfils all the conditions, however enigmatically described, which are required in the text. It is impossible to refuse to the brain the property of receiving and comparing contrary impressions, simultaneously, and receiving them, therefore, in the words of the text, as an indivisible principle, just as the mind can compare opposite ideas; and all the speculations upon impulses and the divisibility and indivisibility of that which is to perceive and judge only shew the want of a central organ for the reception and comparison of individual sensations. And many of these passages are necessarily obscure, owing to their partaking of the character of inquiry or suggestion, rather than didactic statement; but their obscurity may be, in part, seen through by the introduction of that source of sensibility, which is said, in the closing paragraph, to constitute animal in contradistinction to mere vegetive life.
PRELUDE TO CHAPTER III.