Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub
[blocks in formation]

of the moist; the olfactory matter is a juicy or sapid dryness, extracted or washed out from both air and water by the transolfacient agency, and acting on the sensory potentialities of the nostrils.* This olfactory inhalation is warm as well as dry. Hence it is light, and rises easily to the brain, the moisture and coldness of which it contributes to temper; this is a very salutary process, for the brain is the wettest and coldest part of the body, and requiring warm and dry influences as a corrective. It is with a view to this correction that Nature has placed the olfactory organ in such close proximity to the brain. There are two kinds of olfactory impressions; one of them akin to the sense of taste-odour and savour going together-an affection (to a great degree) of the nutritive soul; so that the same odour is agreeable when we are hungry, disagreeable when our hunger is fully satisfied. This first kind of impressions is common to men with other animals; but there is a second, peculiar to man, and disconnected from the sense of taste :-viz., the scent of flowers, unguents, &c., which are agreeable or disagreeable constantly, and per se.‡ Nature has assigned this second kind of odours as a privilege to man, because his brain, being so large and moist, requires to be tempered by an additional stock of drying and warming olfactory influence.

Taste is a variety of touch, and belongs to the lower or *This is difficult to understand, but it seems to be what Aristotle here means-De Anima, II. 9, 422, a. 6. ἔστι δ ̓ ἡ ὀσμὴ τοῦ ξηροῦ, ὥσπερ ὁ χυμὸς τοῦ ὑγροῦ· τὸ δ ̓ ὀσφραντικὸν αἰσθητήριον δυνάμει τοιοῦτον.— De Sensu et Sensili, c. 5, 443, a. 1-9. ἔστι δ ̓ ὀσφραντὸν οὐχ ἡ διαφανές, ἀλλ ̓ ἢ πλυντικὸν καὶ ῥυπτικὸν ἐγχύμου ξηρότητος—ἡ ἐν ὑγρῷ τοῦ ἐγχύμου ξηροῦ φύσις ὀσμὴ, καὶ ὀσφραντὸν τὸ τοιοῦτον· ὅτι δ ̓ ἅπαν χυμοῦ ἔστι τὸ πάθος, δῆλον ἐκ τῶν ἐχόντων καὶ μὴ ἐχόντων ὀσμὴν, &c. Also, 443, b. 3-7.

In the Treatise De Sensu et Sensili, there is one passage (c. 2, 438, b. 24), wherein Aristotle affirms that smell is καπνώδης ἀναθυμίασις, ἐκ πυρός; but we also find a subsequent passage (c. 5, 443, a. 21, seq.) where he cites that same doctrine as the opinion of others, but distinctly refutes it.

+ Aristot. De Sensu et Sensili, c. 5, 444, a. 10-22-25, b. 1. ỷ yàp Tŷjs ὀσμῆς δύναμις θερμὴ τὴν φύσιν ἐστίν,

Aristot. De Sensu et Sensili, c. 5, 443, b. 17, 444, a. 6-15-30. ἴδιον δὲ τῆς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου φύσεως ἔστι τὸ τῆς ὀσμῆς τῆς τοιαύτης γένος διὰ τὸ πλεῖστον ἐγκέφαλον καὶ ὑγρότατον ἔχειν τῶν ζώων ὡς κατὰ μέγεθος.

Plato also reckons the pleasures of smell among the pure and admissible pleasures (Philebus, p. 51 E.; Timæus, p. 65 A., 67 A.)

Nutritive Soul, as a guide to the animal in seeking or avoiding different sorts of food. The Object of Taste is essentially liquid, often strained and extracted from dry food by warmth and moisture. The primary manifestation of this sensory phenomenon is the contrast of Drinkable and Undrinkable.* The organ of Taste, the tongue, is a mean between dryness and moisture; when either of these is in excess, the organ is disordered. Among the varieties of taste, there are two fundamental contraries-as in colour, sound, and the objects of the other senses except touch-from which the other contrasts are derived. These fundamentals in taste are sweet and bitter; corresponding to white and black, acute and grave, in colours and sounds. The sense of taste is potentially sweet or bitter; the gustable object is what makes it sweet or bitter in actuality.t

The sense of Touch, in which man surpasses all other animals, differs from the other senses by not having any two fundamental contraries giving origin to the rest, but by having various contraries alike fundamental. It is thus hardly one sense, but an aggregate of several senses. It appreciates the elementary differences of body quá body-hot, cold, dry, moist, hard, soft, &c. It is a mean between each of these two extremes; being potentially either one of them, and capable of being made to assimilate itself actually to either. In this sense, the tangible object operates when in contact with the skin; and, as has been already said, much of the superiority of man depends upon his superior fineness and delicacy of skin.§ Still Aristotle remarks that the true organ of touch is not the skin or flesh, but something interior to the flesh. This last serves only as a peculiar medium. The fact that the sensation arises when the

• Aristot. De Animâ, II. 10, 422, a. 30-33; De Sensu et Sensili, c. 1, 436, b. 15, 4, 441, b. 18. διὰ τοῦ ξηροῦ καὶ γεώδους διηθοῦσα (ἡ φύσις) καὶ κινοῦσα τῷ θερμῷ ποιόν τι τὸ ὑγρὸν παρασκευάζει, καὶ ἔστι τοῦτο χυμὸς τὸ γιγνόμενον ὑπὸ τοῦ εἰρημένου ξηροῦ πάθος ἐν τῷ ὑγρῷ. b. 24. οὐ παντὸς ξηροῦ ἀλλὰ τοῦ τροφίμου.

+ Aristot. De Animâ, II. 10, 422, b. 5-15; II. 11, 422, b. 23. wâsa αἴσθησις μιᾶς ἐναντιώσεως εἶναι δοκεῖ, &c.

Aristot. De Animâ, II. 11, 422, b. 17-25, 423, b. 5-27, a. 424, a. 3-10. § Aristot. Histor. Animal., I. 15, 494, b. 17. Man is λetodepμótatos Twv (wwv (Aristot. De Partib. Animal. II. 657, b. 2), and has the tongue also looser and softer than any of them, most fit for variety of touch (660, a. 20) as well as for articulate speech.

[blocks in formation]

object touches our skin, does not prove that the skin is the true organ; for if there existed a thin exterior membrane surrounding our bodies, we should still feel the same sensation. Moreover, the body is not in real contact with our skin, though it appears to be so; there is a thin film of air between the two, though we do not perceive it; just as when we touch an object under water, there is a film of water interposed between, as is seen by the wetness of the finger. The skin is, therefore, not the true organ of touch, but a medium between the object and the organ; and this sense does in reality agree with the other senses in having a certain medium interposed between object and organ. But there is this difference; in touch, the medium is close to and a part of ourselves; in sight and hearing, it is exterior to ourselves, and may extend to some distance. In sight and hearing, the object does not affect us directly; it affects the external medium, which again affects us. But in touch, the object affects, at the same time and by the same influence, both the medium and the interior organ; like a spear that, with the same thrust, pierces the warrior's shield and wounds the warrior himself.† Apparently, therefore, the true organ of touch is something interior, and skin and flesh is an interposed medium.‡ But what this interior organ is, Aristotle does not more particularly declare. He merely states it to be in close and intimate communication with the great central focus and principle of all sensation-the heart; § more closely connected with the heart

* Aristot. De Animâ, II. 11, 422, b. 25-32.

+ Aristot. De Animâ, II. 11, 423, a. 5-17. diapépei Tò ȧTTÒν Tŵv ὁρατῶν καὶ τῶν ψοφητικῶν ὅτι ἐκείνων μὲν αἰσθανόμεθα τῷ τὸ μεταξύ ποιεῖν τι ἡμᾶς, τῶν δὲ ἁπτῶν οὐχ ὑπὸ τοῦ μεταξὺ ἀλλ ̓ ἅμα τῷ μεταξύ, ὥσπερ ὁ δι' ἀσπιδὸς πληγείς· οὐ γὰρ ἡ ἀσπὶς πληγεῖσα ἐπάταξεν, ἀλλ' ἅμ ̓ ἄμφω συνέβη πληγῆναι.

This analogy, of the warrior pierced at the same time with his shield, illustrates Aristotle's view of the eighth Category-Habere: of which he gives wπotal as the example. He considers a man's clothes and defensive weapons as standing in a peculiar relation to him, like a personal appurtenance, and almost as a part of himself. It is under this point of view that he erects Habere into a distinct Category.

‡ Aristot. De Animâ, II. 11, 423, b. 23-26. † kai dîjλov öti évtòs TÒ τοῦ ἁπτοῦ αἰσθητικόν—τὸ μεταξὺ τοῦ ἁπτικοῦ ἢ σάρξ. n

§ Aristot. De Partibus Animal., II. 10, 656, a. 30; De Vitâ et Morte, c. 3, 469, as 12; De Somno et Vigil., c. 2, 455, a. 23; De Sensu et Sensili, c. 2, 439, a. 2.

(he appears to think) than any of the other organs of sense, though all of them are so connected more or less closely.

Having gone through the five senses seriatim, Aristotle offers various reasons to prove that there neither are, nor can be, more than five; and then discusses some complicated phenomena of sense. We perceive that we see or hear; * do we perceive this by sight or by hearing? and if not, by what other faculty?+ Aristotle replies by saying that the act of sense is one and the same, but that it may be looked at in two different points of view. We see a coloured object; we hear a sound: in each case the act of sense is one; the energy or actuality of the Visum and Videns, of the Sonans and Audiens, is implicated and indivisible. But the potentiality of the one is quite distinct from the potentiality of the other, and may be considered as well as named apart.‡ When we say-I perceive that I see-we look at the same act of vision from the side of the Videns; the Visum being put out of sight as the unnoticed Correlate. This is a mental fact distinct from, though following upon, the act of vision itself. Aristotle refers it rather to that general sentient soul or faculty, of which the five senses are partial and separate manifestations, than to the sense of Vision itself.§ He thus considers what would now be termed consciousness of a sensation, as being merely the subjective view of the sensation, distinguished by abstraction from the objective.

It is the same general sentient faculty, though diversified and logically distinguishable in its manifestations, that enables us to conceive many sensations as combined in one; and to compare or discriminate sensations belonging to different senses.||

White and sweet are perceived by two distinct senses, and at

* In modern psychology, the language would be—“We are conscious that we see or hear." But Sir William Hamilton has remarked that the word Consciousness has no equivalent usually or familiarly employed, in the Greek psychology.

+ Aristot. De Animâ, III. 2, 425, b. 14.

Aristot. De Animâ, III. 2, 425, b. 26, 426, a. 16-19.

§ Aristot. De Somno et Vigil., c. 2, 455, a. 12-17; Aristot. De Animâ, III. 2, with Torstrick's note, p. 166, and the exposition of Alexander of Aphrodisias therein cited. These two passages of Aristotle are to a certain extent different, yet not contradictory, though Torstrick supposes them to be 80.

|| Aristot. De Seusu et Sensili, c. 7, 449, a. 9-20.

THE SENTIENT SOUL ONE AND INDIVISIBLE.

643

two distinct moments of time; but they must be compared and discriminated by one and the same sentient or cogitant act, and at one moment of time. This mental act, though in itself indivisible, has yet two aspects, and is thus in a certain sense divisible; just as a point taken in the middle of a line, while indivisible in itself, may be looked upon as the closing terminus of one-half of the line, and as the commencing terminus of the other half. The comparison of two different sensations or thoughts is thus one and the same mental fact, with two distinguishable aspects.+

Aristotle devotes a chapter to the enquiry-whether we can perceive two distinct sensations at once (i.e., in one and the same moment of time). He decides that we cannot; that the sentient Soul or faculty is one and indivisible, and can only have a single energy or actuality at once. If two causes of sensation are operative together, and one of them be much superior in force, it will render us insensible to the other. He remarks that when we are preoccupied with loud noise, or with deep reflection, or with intense fright, visual objects will often pass by us unseen and unnoticed.§ Often the two simultaneous sensations will combine or blend into one compound, so that we shall feel neither of them purely or separately. One single act of sensational energy may however have a double aspect; as the same individual object may be at once white and sweet, though its whiteness and its sweetness are logically separable.T

To the sentient soul, even in its lowest manifestations, belong

Aristot. De Animâ, III. 2, 426, b. 18-12. οὔτε δὴ κεχωρισμένοις ἐνδέχεται κρίνειν ὅτι ἕτερον το γλυκὺ τοῦ λευκοῦ, ἀλλὰ δεῖ ἑνί τινι ἄμφω δῆλα εἶναι—δεῖ δὲ τὸ ἓν λέγειν ὅτι ἕτερον· ἕτερον γὰρ τὸ γλυκὺ τοῦ λευκοῦἀχώριστον καὶ ἐν ἀχωρίστῳ χρόνῳ. b. 29, also III. 7, 431,

a. 20.

+ Aristot. De Animâ, III. 2, 427, a. 10-14. womeр îv kaλovoi tives στιγμὴν, ᾗ μιά καὶ ᾗ δύο, ταύτῃ καὶ ἀδιαίρετος καὶ διαιρέτη· ᾗ μὲν οὖν ἀδιαίρετον, ἓν τὸ κρῖνόν ἐστι καὶ ἅμα, δὲ διαίρετον ὑπάρχει, οὐχ ἔν· δὶς γὰρ τῷ αὐτῷ χρῆται σημείῳ ἅμα.

It is to be remarked that in explaining this mental process of comparison, Aristotle, three several times, applies it both to alooŋois and to voyois 426, b. 22-31, 427, a. 9.

Aristot. De. Sensu et Sensili, c. 7, 449, a. 8-17.
§ Aristot. De Sensu et Sensili, c. 7, 447, a. 15.
Aristot. De Sensu et Sensili, c. 7, 447, b. 12-20.
Aristot. De Sensu et Sensili, c. 7, 449, a. 14-18.

« ForrigeFortsæt »