Part 6

The echo too will arise from the rebound of the air escaping from between the two encountering bodies by reason of its hitting (slapping) against another hard, flat or hollow body filled with air, because of the air that is within it hindering the penetration of the escaped air, and the latter’s striking the ear [again] after the first stroke; on the same wise as in the first instance.

As to the Smelling Power; it smells odors on the sniffing in of air that has received its odor from an odoriferous body, as one body receives its warmth from another warm body. Thus, if an animal snuffs up air like this into its nose until such air touches the front of the brain, and alters it to its own odor, the smelling power feels it.

As for Taste, it arises only on the coming to pass of the following change: When the moisture of the tasting instrument (organ)--to wit the tongue--becomes transformed into the juice of the newly-come food; and when the mass of this instrument (organ) has received that juice, the tasting power will perceive what has happened within the instrument.

As for Touch: it will only arise upon the organ’s (instrument’s) receiving the quality of that which is touched, and upon the touching power’s perceiving what has been thus presented (offered) within the organ.

Furthermore, simple sensibles, that are at once primary and as such the bases of all others, are in pairs, of which there are eight; and if we make each into singles, they become sixteen, to wit:--

(a) Touch, four pairs:--1. heat and cold; 2. moisture and dryness; 3. roughness and smoothness; 4. hardness and softness. The four remaining senses, each having a pair, viz.,

(b) Smelling, one pair, which is fragrant odour, and fetid stinking odour,

(c) Tasting, one pair, viz., sweet and bitter,

(d) Hearing, one pair, namely, heavy sound and sharp sound (or dull and shrill),

(e) Sight, one pair, to wit, white and black.

All other sensibles are made up from these simples, and are intermediates between some two of them, as for example grey (dusty color) from white and black, lukewarm from hot and cold. Moreover all sensibles are felt wholly and solely through a sort of gathering and sundering, shrinking and spreading; except sounds, which are felt only through sundering. Thus:--

1. [Warmth is felt through sundering] 2. Cold is felt through gathering 3. Moisture, through spreading 4. Dryness, through shrinking 5. Roughness, through sundering 6. Smoothness, through spreading 7. Hardness, through repelling, which is a sort of gathering and shrinking 8. Softness, through being repelled, which is not devoid of spreading and sundering 9. Sweetness, through spreading, devoid of sundering 10. Bitterness, through sundering and shrinking 11. Fragrant Odor, through spreading, devoid of sundering 12. Stinking Odor, through sundering and shrinking 13. Whiteness, through sundering 14. Blackness, through gathering [15. and 16. Sounds: one pair, as above under “d.”]

As to the media (intermediaries) between the feeling powers and the felt forms, they are themselves devoid of the forms of sensibles; otherwise it would not be possible for them to be media, since their own forms--if they had any--would then so engage the apposite power as to divert it from perceiving any other forms. Such voidness or freedom from forms is either voidness wholly and altogether, or else relative voidness through equableness of the forms in the media, such as the equable proportion of the qualities touched in meat, which is a medium between the touching power and the quality touched, although meat is incontestably made up of qualities that are touched, yet notwithstanding this the equableness of the qualities has annihilated the forms in it. Examples of the first division--absolute voidness and freedom from form--are the freedom of air, of water, and of what resembles them among the various media of sight, from color; the freedom of air and of water, both which are the two mediums of smelling, from odor; the freedom of water, which is the medium of tasting, from flavor; and the steadiness of the air, which is the medium of hearing, and its freedom from motion.

Further, each of these powers, to wit the five senses, if actually functionating, perceives only through coming into relation with the object felt, nay rather it only perceives at first so much as has been traced in it of the form of the object felt. Thus, the eye only perceives that form which has imprinted itself in it of the object felt; so also the remainder of the powers (or senses). Again, in the case of strong wearying sensibles, such as a loud noise, a strong smell, a shining and a flashing light, if they are repeated upon the organ (instrument), spoil and dullen it through their overworking it. Again, each one of the five senses perceives, through the means of its own rightful perception and besides the same, five other things, to wit: 1. shape; 2. number; 3. size; 4. motion; 5. rest (quiet). That sight, touch, and taste perceive them, is evident. As to hearing, it perceives, in accordance (pursuance) with the variety of the number of sounds, the number of the sound-emitting objects; and, through the strength of the sounds, it perceives the size of the two objects that are hitting against each other; and, in accordance with a kind of change and fixedness of the sounds, it perceives motion and rest; and, in accordance with their volume around the sound-emitter, be the latter solid or hollow, it perceives some sorts of shapes. As to smelling, it knows, in accordance with the change of directions whence the odors are emitted and reach it, and through the variety of these odors in their qualities, it knows I say the number of the things smelt; through the measure of abundance of the smells, the size of such things; through the measure of proximity and distance, changeableness and fixedness, it recognizes their motion and their rest; and, in accordance with the sides on which their odor reaches it from one and the same body, it knows their shape. Still, these discriminations are very weak in this power among mankind, owing to the weakness of the power itself in the human race. [For all this, men have not the keen scent that many other animals have, and therefore such discriminations are in men very weak.]

FOOTNOTES:

Plato’s Dialogue entitled «Timaeos,» 45.

The names of the different parts of the eye are:

a. al-tabaqah al çalbah = sclerotica, hard-coat b. » » al-mashîmiyyah = choroid, vascular skin c. al-ghashâ-al-shabaky = retina, net skin d. al-ratûbah al-zajâjiyyah = glassy moisture e. al-ratûbah al-jalîdiyyah = crystalline lens f. » » » ´ankabûtiyyah = ciliary, fibrous, hairy web g. al-hadaqah = pupilla h. al-tabaqah al-´inabiyyah = berry, grape coat i. qarniyyah = cornea k. al-multahimah = conjunctiva.

perhaps we ought to read «the ray».

SECTION SEVENTH

=Dealing in Detail with the inward Senses, (and the Motion-Promoting Powers).=

I. Not one of the outward senses unites within itself perception of color, odor, and softness; and yet, we often come upon a body that is yellow, and perceive at once so much about it, namely that it is honey, sweet, nice of smell, and fluid, although we have neither tasted, nor smelt, nor even touched it; whence it is manifest that we possess a power wherein are assembled the perceptions of the four senses, and have thus become summed up in it into one single form; and were it not for this power we should not know that sweetness, for instance, is other than blackness, since the discriminator between two things is he who has known them both. This is the power which is designated as the common-sense, and the picturing (or representing) power. And were it one of the outward apparent senses, its sway (dominion) would limit itself to the state of wakefulness only; whereas ocular observation attests what is quite otherwise; for this power does at times perform its action in both the states of sleep and wakefulness.

II. Furthermore, there is in animals a power which sets up such forms as have assembled in the common-sense, discriminates between them, and differentiates them, without the forms themselves disappearing from the common-sense. And this power is undoubtedly other than the aforesaid picturing power; since in the latter there are none but true (real) forms that have been acquired (obtained) from sense; whereas in this power the case may be otherwise, and it may imagine and picture wrongly and falsely, and what it had not received after such a [wrong and false] pattern (shape) from any one of the senses. This power is the one named imagination.

Further, there is in animals a power that passes judgment, upon such or such a thing that it is so or not so, decisively, and through which the animal flees away from shunned evil and seeks chosen good. It is also evident that this power is other than the imaginative, since this last imagines (pictures to itself) the sun, in accordance with what it has got from the apposite sense, to be of the size of its disc; whereas the matter stands in this power quite otherwise. So too the lion finds his prey from far off of the size of a small bird, yet its form and size in no way perplex him, but he makes for it. It is also evident that this power is other than the imaginative, and this because the imaginative power performs its manifold deeds without belief and conviction on its part that matters are in accordance with its imagining. This power is what is named the conjecturing or the surmising faculty (or judgment).

III. Further, there is in living beings a power that preserves the purports (or thoughts and conceptions) of what the senses had perceived, such as, for instance, that the wolf is an enemy; the child, a darling next of kin. Wherefore, so much at least if not more is evident, that this power is other than the common-sense (or picturing), inasmuch as in the latter there are no forms but such as it has gained from the senses; whereas, again, the senses did not feel the wolf’s enmity, nor the child’s love, but alone the wolf’s image, and the child’s bodily shape; and as to love and fierceness, it is the mind’s eye alone that has got them, and then stored them up in this power. It is also clear that this power is other than the imaginative power, for the reason that this last does at times imagine what is other than that which the mind’s eye has deemed right, found true, and has derived from the senses; whereas the former power, i.e., the one here dealt with, imagines none other than what the mind’s eye has deemed right, has found true, and has derived from the senses.

This power is also other than the conjecturing (surmising) power, for the reason that this last does not preserve what some other has deemed to be true, but it of its own self deems to be true, whilst the power here treated of does not itself pass judgment of truth or falsehood, but only preserves what another has deemed to be true. This power is called memory, the preserving or keeping faculty.

Again, the imaginative power is called by this name--imagination--if the conjecturing (or surmising) power alone use it: and if the speaking (rational) power use it, it is called the thinking (cogitative) power.

The heart is the source (spring) of all these powers (faculties), in Aristotle’s opinion; yet the sway over them is in different organs (instruments). Thus the sway over the outward (apparent) senses is in their known organs; whereas the sway over the picturing (representing common-sense) power is in the anterior hollow (ventricle) of the brain; the sway over the imaginative, in the middle hollow thereof; the sway over the remembering, in the posterior hollow thereof; and the sway over the conjecturing, throughout all the brain, but above all in the compartment of the imaginative within the brain [or, throughout the whole of the brain, but more especially alongside of the imaginative thereof]. And in so far as these hollows (ventricles) suffer harm and hurt, so will the manifold workings of these powers suffer also; for were they, (the powers,) standing independently, that is to say subsisting in themselves, and efficient independently, that is to say putting forth their workings of themselves, they would not need, for their proper and peculiar actions, any sort of instrument or organ: in this wise one recognizes that these powers do not subsist in themselves, but that the undying power is the Speaking (Reasoning) Soul, as we shall hereafter set forth; yet for all this, the soul does maybe at times seek out for itself after a fashion (so to speak) the purest quintessences of the kernels of these powers, and cause them to exist of themselves, the setting forth of which shall, D.v., soon follow.