those; and this made Democritus say, that either nothing
is true, or else that truth is for us uncertain (ἄδηλον).
From their assuming, as a general proposition, that
reflection is sensation, they maintained that reflection
is change, and that the apparent, through sensation, is, of
necessity, true; and it is from such conclusions, Aristotle
adds, that Empedocles and Democritus as well as their
followers became fettered by those opinions. For Em-
pedocles affirmed, that men, by changing their habit
(ἕξις) change also their judgment, "for man's wisdom is
enlarged," &c.; and elsewhere he says, that "in so far as
men are capable of change, in so far they are capable of
forming different judgments." The opinion of Parmenides
is to the same purport; and there is a recorded saying of
Anaxagoras to some of his followers, that "beings will
be to them such as they may suppose them to be." These
writers attribute the same opinion to Homer, (but it was
shewn in a former note that this reference is faulty,)
because he made "Hector, as if beside himself under the
blow, to lie thinking differently," (ἀλλοφρονέοντα). But
it was incumbent upon these writers, as is observed in the
text, to have dwelt upon the liability to error to which
we are all ever subject through the senses; for if all
appearances are to be held as true, then the same impres-
sion may be at once true and false; which is to admit an
impossibility. The doctrine, in fine, of this school, as
given in the text was, that the power by which animals
move is corporeal, and like to the faculty which thinks,
Page:Aristotelous peri psuxes.djvu/311
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CH. III.]
NOTES.
301
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