Page:Aristotelous peri psuxes.djvu/320

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310
NOTES.
[BK. III.

understood the diagonal which divides the square into two equal triangles; or it may mean the diameter of the circle which is incommensurate with the circumference." In a word, it is by combination that error creeps into our judgments, and falsifies our perceptions.

Note 2, p. 159. It is the mind, &c.] The question of a fact, such as that in the example, is dependent upon the brain rather than the mind, as that organ can combine the individual notices obtained through the senses; but when the mind intervenes, so to say, and judges from what is, of what was or is to be, there is room for error. It is almost puerile to explain that the assertion "something is not white" is not, necessarily, fallacious; and that, if the object be white, the fallacy comes from the addition of the negative. The double sense of indivisibility is to the same purport; extension is clearly divisible, and, therefore, divisibility is made, actually, apparent as a fact; but the mind can realise to itself extension without parts, as indivisible, that is, and in potentiality.

Note 3, p. 160. It may not then be said, &c.] In this version, the term mind is used, and in another, "intelligence," (which is its synonym), as that which thinks, (τί ἑννόει), but the text does not so specify it; and any allusion to halves would but ill-accord with the notion of homogeneity and impassibility assigned to the thinking principle. But no theory which could be framed of the mind would aid in explaining the train of reasoning