Page:Aristotelous peri psuxes.djvu/318

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308
NOTES.
[BK. III.

ut omnes veritatis numeros habeant, et veræ notionis vim consequantur."

Note 2, p. 156. Knowledge in activity is identical with, &c.] This passage seems to be the complement of what had just been asserted, that the agent is ever more influential than the subject, and the originating cause than the matter; for the intellect, in activity, may be said to create, to identify with itself that is, the knowledge which it acquires concerning external things through abstract reasoning. Knowledge pre-exists, however, as has been said, in every well-constituted individual, because each is furnished, at birth, with faculties for acquiring knowledge; but yet it cannot strictly be said to pre-exist, since it may, or may not be developed by education or reflection; as the mind, moreover, is impassive, it is not impressionable, and cannot, therefore, be the seat of memory. But what means the impressionable mind which is perishable? may it not be again said that, suggestively, the brain is here implied; since this organ is the sensorium, the seat of memory, and dependent, besides, like all other organs, upon life, for its functions and its continuance.