Page:Aristotelous peri psuxes.djvu/138

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
PRELUDE TO CHAPTER I.

[1]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

  1. Vide Trendell. Comment.