Page:Aristotelous peri psuxes.djvu/164

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154
ARISTOTLE ON THE VITAL PRINCIPLE.
[BK. III.

the same difficulty if the mind itself is intelligible; for it will be present in other things, unless it is itself, intelligible in some other way than they are, and unless the subject of thought is some one specific subject; or else the mind will be some kind of combination, and this reduces thought to the nature of other things. But to suffer impression according to some common relation implies, as has been just explained, that the mind, in potentiality, is as the subjects thought upon, and yet that, in reality, it is no one of them before thinking upon it; and thus the mind is to be regarded as a tablet on which nothing may have been actually inscribed. The mind is a subject of thought to itself as is any other topic, since that which thinks and the subject of thought are among immaterialities; for speculative knowledge is the same as the subject which is so known. But we have to consider why the mind is not always thinking, as each subject of thought, in potentiality, is among materialities; so that the mind will not be present in any one of them (for the mind is the immaterial faculty which judges of them), although each of them will be subject to the mind.