It is necessary, in order well to study those faculties, that we should comprehend what each of them individually is, and then, in like manner, carry our inquiry into their consequences and other conditions. But if it behove us to say what each of them is, as what is the cogitative, sentient, or appetitive faculty, it should previously be settled what that is which thinks and that which feels; for energies and acts are, abstractedly considered, pre-existent to their functions. Granting, however, that it is so, and that we ought, before the faculties or functions, to have considered their opposites, it might be fitting here also, and for the same reason, first to define the opposites of the functions define, that is, food before nutrition; the object before perception; and the intelligible before thought.
Thus we must first speak upon nutrition and generation, for the nutritive faculty is innate in other beings besides animals; it is the primal and most universal influence of the Vital Principle, and through it life is manifested in all beings. Its functions are to generate and to employ nourishment; for the most
