Page:Aristotelous peri psuxes.djvu/170

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160
ARISTOTLE ON THE
[BK. III.

actuality, there is nothing to preclude the mind when thinking upon extension, from thinking upon it as indivisible, for it is indivisible, actually, and in time which is indivisible; as time, like extension, is both divisible and indivisible. It may not then be said that the mind thinks upon any subject in each half; for extension exists only in potentiality, unless it have been divided. But the mind, when thinking upon each of the halves separately, divides the time simultaneously, and then time becomes such as the two extensions; and if the mind make a whole of the two halves, it does the same with time in its relation to them. The mind, however, thinks upon the indivisible as species and not as quantity, in an indivisible portion of time and by an indivisible part of Vital Principle; and this neither by accident, nor in so far as the subjects thought upon, or the part by which, or the time in which, it thinks, are divisible, but as they are indivisible. There is, in fact, in such cases a something indivisible, although it may not be separate, which makes time and extension to be one; and which holds good for all continuity, whether of time or extension. Now, the point and every analogous division, and whatever is as the point indivisible, are made known as being privation of something. The reasoning upon other subjects is like this, for were it asked how the mind is to recognise bad or black, it may be answered, that it recognises them in some way by their contraries;