Page:Aristotelous peri psuxes.djvu/252

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242
NOTES.
[BK. I.

derived from one and the same principle; and if not from one and the same, what that is which combines the parts, and makes them to be one. The passage which follows is an evident allusion to the Timæus, according to which, as has been said, reason is placed, as in a soil fit for the heavenly seed, in the brain, the appetite and passions in the heart, liver, or spleen; and then comes the ques-
tion, what so connects those organs as to make them mutually subsidiary to one another? not the body, cer-
tainly, it may be answered, as the body itself is but the instrument of the Vital Principle.

Note 11, p. 55. But the living principle in plants, &c.] This passage is, to appearance, obscure, owing to its construc-
tion and scientific wording, but yet its meaning is obvious: the living principle in plants, that which constitutes their vitality, is assimilation, (growth, through nutrition, that is,) and it exists in plants without sentient properties; but sentient properties cannot, of course, exist without nutrition, as nutrition is essential to life, and present, therefore, in every thing which lives.