Page:Aristotelous peri psuxes.djvu/152

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CHAPTER III.

As writers, for the most part, define Vital Principle by two different faculties, by locomotion and thought, judgment and sensibility, it would seem as though thought and reflexion are by them considered to be some kind of sensation; for, in both cases, the Vital Principle both discerns and recognises something. Thus, the ancients affirm that reflexion is identical with feeling; and Empedocles has said, "man's intelligence is enlarged by what is present," and, elsewhere, "hence, man derives his power of reflecting upon different subjects;" so Homer's words, "such is the mind" do but express the same idea. All these writers assume, in fact, that thinking, like feeling, is corporeal, and that Like is perceived and comprehended by Like, as was explained in our opening chapters. But yet it was incumbent upon them to have spoken, at the same time, upon the liability to error through the senses; for this belongs, more peculiarly, to animals, and Vital Principle remains subject to it during the greater portion of existence. On which account, either all appearances are, as some of