Page:Aristotelous peri psuxes.djvu/128

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118
PRELUDE TO CHAP. XI.
[BK. II.

homogeneous and gelatinous condition of the Invertebrata, before assuming the red colour." As the Touch, besides, was regarded as the first in order of the senses and characteristic of animals, so the flesh was said to be the origin of all other parts of animal bodies, bone and skin, sinews, veins, hair and nails; and this hypothesis may have confirmed the opinion that it is either the sense or the seat of the sense of Touch.


CHAPTER XI.

The same reasoning holds good for the tangible quality as for the Touch; for if the Touch be not a single but a manifold sense, it follows that tangible qualities must be manifold also. Now, it is difficult to determine whether the Touch is a manifold or a single sense, and difficult also to say what the organ may be which is percipient of tangible qualities; that is, whether or not it is the flesh, and that which, in other creatures, is analogous to flesh; but yet the flesh is only the medium, and the essential organ, therefore, must be something different from flesh, and situated internally.

Each sense seems to be perceptive of only one contrary, as Sight of white and black, Hearing of