Page:Aristotelous peri psuxes.djvu/256

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246
NOTES.
[BK. II.

although possessed, yet, if not exercised, is only in potentiality; but when actually exercised, it is raised up and converted into reality. It is not easy, without periphrasis, to fix upon an apposite term for the ἐγρήγορσις, which signifies, of course, a state the opposite to sleep—watching, adopted here, and the French réveil seem to imply a forced condition; and "being awake" is hardly definite enough.

Note 6, p. 59. Only this is to be understood of a body which may be organised, &c.] Organs are instruments subservient to the purposes of the living body, as the living body is subservient to the Vital Principle, and Vital Principle, in its turn, subservient to nature's design in creation. So that even plants, although insentient, have organs, but organs which, in contradistinction to those of animals, are homogeneous; as the leaf is said to be formative of all the parts of the fruit. Aristotle [1] distinguished the parts of animals, as is known, as homogeneous (ἀσύνθετα), that is simple or of one nature, as flesh, bone and sinew, and compound (σύνθετα), as hand, foot, &c., which are made up of different or unlike parts. Thus, all the parts which are heterogeneous or unlike, are made up of parts which are homogeneous or like, as a hand, for example, is made up of flesh, tendons and bones; while the parts of plants, on the contrary, are but developments of one simple part, that is the leaf. It is manifest that Aristotle here points, suggestively, to the

  1. Hist. Animalm,I. I. 3.