what is derived from heat. The visual organ is said to
be of water, and to see objects, not as being water but, as
being diaphanous, as this quality belongs to air as well as
water, but then water is more protective and condensed
than air, and, therefore, the pupil and the eye are con-
stituted of water. These are rude theories, no doubt,
and sorry substitutes for the knowledge of the brain and
its system; but philosophy cannot rest upon a confession
of ignorance, and this hypothesis, unsatisfactory as it
may now seem, was for ages the admitted theory of
sentient perception. But this theory of Empedocles,
however otherwise faulty, may well be supposed, without
violence to the text, to convey in the terms στοργὴ and
νεῖχος, a knowledge, or perception rather, of attraction
and repulsion; and an assumption of these principles
may be traced in most of the systems of that time con-
cerning elementary combinations. This must be main-
tained with some reserve, however, as some have given a
more literal version of the terms in amor and discordia,
or lis, which, as moral or sentient qualities, seem to be
without any relation to elementary combinations. The
latin version of the phrase is, Terram nam terra, lympha
cognoscimus undam, ætheraque æthere; sane ignis
dignoscitur igne; sic et amore amor, ac tristi discordia
lite; and the French is, "Par la terre nous voyons la
terre; l'eau par l'eau; par l'air, l'air divin; par le feu, le
feu qui consume; par l'amour, l'amour; et la discorde
par la discorde funeste."
Page:Aristotelous peri psuxes.djvu/228
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218
NOTES.
[BK. I.