(he appears to think) than any of the other organs of sense, though all of them are so connected more or less closely. Having gone through the five senses seriatim, Aristotle offers various reasons to prove that there neither are, nor can be, more than five; and then discusses some complicated phenomena of sense. We perceive that we see or hear;* do we perceive this by sight or by hearing? and if not, by what other faculty?+ Aristotle replies by saying that the act of sense is one and the same, but that it may be looked at in two different points of view. We see a coloured object; we hear a sound: in each case the act of sense is one; the energy or actuality of the Visum and Videns, of the Sonans and Audiens, is implicated and indivisible. But the potentiality of the one is quite distinct from the potentiality of the other, and may be considered as well as named apart.‡ When we say-I perceive that I see-we look at the same act of vision from the side of the Videns; the Visum being put out of sight as the unnoticed Correlate. This is a mental fact distinct from, though following upon, the act of vision itself. Aristotle refers it rather to that general sentient soul or faculty, of which the five senses are partial and separate manifestations, than to the sense of Vision itself.§ He thus considers what would now be termed consciousness of a sensation, as being merely the subjective view of the sensation, distinguished by abstraction from the objective. It is the same general sentient faculty, though diversified and logically distinguishable in its manifestations, that enables us to conceive many sensations as combined in one; and to compare or discriminate sensations belonging to different senses.|| White and sweet are perceived by two distinct senses, and at * In modern psychology, the language would be-" We are conscious that we see or hear." But Sir William Hamilton has remarked that the word Consciousness has no equivalent usually or familiarly employed, in the Greek psychology. Aristot. De Animâ, III. 2, 425, b. 14. Aristot. De Animâ, III. 2, 425, b. 26, 426, a. 16-19. § Aristot. De Somno et Vigil., c. 2, 455, a. 12-17; Aristot. De Animâ, III. 2, with Torstrick's note, p. 166, and the exposition of Alexander of Aphrodisias therein cited. These two passages of Aristotle are to a certain extent different, yet not contradictory, though Torstrick supposes them to be 80. Aristot. De Sensu et Sensili, c. 7, 449, a. 9-20. THE SENTIENT SOUL ONE AND INDIVISIBLE. 643 two distinct moments of time; but they must be compared and discriminated by one and the same sentient or cogitant act, and at one moment of time.* This mental act, though in itself indivisible, has yet two aspects, and is thus in a certain sense divisible; just as a point taken in the middle of a line, while indivisible in itself, may be looked upon as the closing terminus of one-half of the line, and as the commencing terminus of the other half. The comparison of two different sensations or thoughts is thus one and the same mental fact, with two distinguishable aspects.+ Aristotle devotes a chapter to the enquiry-whether we can perceive two distinct sensations at once (i.e., in one and the same moment of time). He decides that we cannot; that the sentient Soul or faculty is one and indivisible, and can only have a single energy or actuality at once. If two causes of sensation are operative together, and one of them be much superior in force, it will render us insensible to the other. He remarks that when we are preoccupied with loud noise, or with deep reflection, or with intense fright, visual objects will often pass by us unseen and unnoticed.§ Often the two simultaneous sensations will combine or blend into one compound, so that we shall feel neither of them purely or separately. One single act of sensational energy may however have a double aspect; as the se me individual object may be at once white and sweet, though its whiteness and its sweetness are logically separable.T To the sentient soul, even in its lowest manifestations, belong Aristot. De Animâ, III. 2, 426, b. 18-12. οὔτε δὴ κεχωρισμένοις ἐνδέχεται κρίνειν ὅτι ἕτερον το γλυκὺ τοῦ λευκοῦ, ἀλλὰ δεῖ ἑνί τινι ἄμφω δῆλα εἶναι—δεῖ δὲ τὸ ἓν λέγειν ὅτι ἕτερον· ἕτερον γὰρ τὸ γλυκὺ τοῦ λευκοῦἀχώριστον καὶ ἐν ἀχωρίστῳ χρόνῳ. —b. 29, also III. 7, 431, a. 20. + Aristot. De Animâ, III. 2, 427, a. 10-14. womeр v kaλovoi Tives στιγμὴν, ᾗ μιά καὶ ᾗ δύο, ταύτῃ καὶ ἀδιαίρετος καὶ διαιρέτη ᾗ μὲν οὖν ἀδιαίρετον, ἓν τὸ κρῖνον ἐστι καὶ ἅμα, ἡ δὲ διαίρετον ὑπάρχει, οὐχ ἵν' δὶς γὰρ τῷ αὐτῷ χρῆται σημείῳ ἅμα, It is to be remarked that in explaining this mental process of comparison, Aristotle, three several times, applies it both to alonois and to vonois 426, b. 22-31, 427, a. 9. Aristot. De. Sensu et Sensili, c. 7, 449, a. 8.17. the feelings of pleasure and pain, appetite and aversion. The movements connected with these feelings, as with all sensation, begin and close with the central organ-the heart.† Upon these are consequent the various passions and emotions; yet not without certain faculties of memory and phantasy accompanying or following the facts of sense. Aristotle proceeds by gradual steps upward from the sentient Soul to the Noëtic (cogitant or intelligent) Soul-called in its highest perfection, Nous. While refuting the doctrine of Empedokles, Demokritus, and other philosophers, who considered cogitation or intelligence to be the same as sensible perception, and while insisting upon the distinctness of the two as mental phenomena, he recognizes the important point of analogy between them, that both of them include judgment and comparison; and he describes an intermediate stage called phantasy or imagination, forming the transition from the lower of the two to the higher. We have already observed that in the Aristotelian psychology, the higher functions of the Soul presuppose and are built upon the lower as their foundation, though the lower do not necessarily involve the higher. Without nutrition, there is no sense; without sense, there is no phantasy; without phantasy, there is no cogitation or intelligence.§ The higher psychical phenomena are not identical with the lower, yet neither are they independent thereof; they presuppose the lower as a part of their conditions. Here, and indeed very generally elsewhere, Aristotle has been careful to avoid the fallacy of confounding or identifying the conditions of a phenomenon with the phenomenon itself. (Mill's System of Logic, Book V. ch. 3, § 8.) He proceeds to explain Phantasy or the Phantastic department of the Scul-the Phantasms that belong to it. It is not sensible perception, nor belief, nor opinion, nor knowledge, nor cogitation. Our dreams, though affections of the Sentient * Aristot. De Animâ, II. 3, 414, b. 3-15; III. 7, 431, a 9; De Somno et Vigil., c. 1, 454, b. 29. Aristot. De Partibus Animalium, III. 4, 666, a. 12. Aristot. De Animâ, III. 3, 427, a. 25. § Aristot. De Animâ, III. 3, 427, b. 15. αἰσθήσεως καὶ διανοίας.—ΙΙΙ. 7, 431, a. 16. ματος ἡ ψυχή -De Memoria et Reminiscent. ἔστιν ἄνευ φαντάσματος. pavτaoía yàp eτepov kat οὐδέποτε νοεῖ ἄνευ φαντάσο c. 1, 449, b. 31. νοεῖν οὐκ Soul, are really phantasms in our sleep, when there is no visual sensation; even when awake, we have a phantasm of the Sun, as of a disk one foot in diameter-though we believe the Sun to be larger than the Earth. Many of the lower animals have sensible perception without any phantasy; even those among them that have phantasy, have no opinion; for opinion implies faith, persuasion, and some rational explanation of that persuasion -to none of which does any animal attain.† Phantasy is an internal movement of the animated being (body and soul in one); belonging to the Sentient Soul, not to the Cogitant or Intelligent; not identical with the movement of sense, but continued from, or produced by that, and by that alone; accordingly, similar to the movement of sense and relating to the same matters. Since our sensible perceptions may be either true or false, so also may be our phantasms. And since these phantasms are not only like our sensations, but remain standing in the soul long after the objects of sense have passed away, they are to a great degree the determining causes both of action and emotion. They are such habitually to animals, who are destitute of Nous; and often even to intelligent men, if the Nous be overclouded by disease or drunkenness. § In the Chapter now before us, Aristotle is careful to discriminate Phantasy from several other psychological phenomena wherewith it is liable to be confounded. But we remark with some surprise, that neither here, nor in any other part of his general Psychology, does he offer any exposition of Memory, the phenomenon more nearly approaching than any other to Phantasy. He supplied the deficiency afterwards by the short but valuable tract on Memory and Reminiscence; wherein he recognizes, and refers to, the more general work on Psychology. Memory bears on the past, as distinguished both from the present and Aristot. De Animâ, III. 3, 428, a. 5, b. 3; De Somno et Vig., c. 2, 456, a. 25. κινοῦνται δ ̓ ἔνιοι καθεύδοντες καὶ ποιοῦσι πολλὰ ἐγρηγορικά, οὐ μέντοι ἄνευ φαντάσματος καὶ αἰσθήσεώς τινος· τὸ γὰρ ἐνύπνιόν ἐστιν αἴσθημα τρόπον τινά.-Ibid., c. 1, 454, b. 10. + Aristot. De Animâ, III. 3, 428, a. 10-22-25. Aristot. De Animâ, III. 3, 428, b. 10-15; De Somniis, c. 1, 459, a. lɛ. ? Aristot. De Animâ, III. 3, 428, b. 17. kai woλλà kar' avτηy (¡, e. κατὰ τὴν φαντασίαν) καὶ ποιεῖν καὶ πάσχειν τὸ ἔχον.—ΙΙΙ. 3, 429, Α. 5. καὶ διὰ τὸ ἐμμένειν καὶ ὁμοίας εἶναι τὰς φαντασίας) ταῖς αἰσθήσεσι, πολλὰ κατ ̓ αὐτὰς πράττει τὰ ζῷα, &c. future. Memory and Phantasy are in some cases so alike, that we cannot distinguish clearly whether what is in our minds is a remembrance or a phantasm. Both of them belong to the same psychological department-to the central Sentient principle, and not to the cogitant or intelligent Noûs. Memory as well as Phantasy are continuations, remnants, or secondary consequences, of the primary movements of sense; what in itself is a phantasm, may become an object of remembrance directly and per se; matters of cogitation, being included or implicated in phantasms, may also become objects of remembrance, indirectly and by way of accompaniment. † We can remember our prior acts of cogitation and demonstration; we can remember that, a month ago, we demonstrated the three angles of a triangle to be equal to two right angles; but as the original demonstration could not be carried on without our having before our mental vision the phantasm of some particular triangle, so neither can the remembrance of the demonstration be made present to us without a similar phantasm.‡ In acts of remembrance, we have a conception of past time, and we recognize what is now present to our minds as a copy of what has been formerly present to us, either as perception of sense or as actual cognition ;§ while in phantasms, there is no conception of past time, nor any similar recognition, nor any necessary reference to our own past mental states; the phantasm is looked at by itself, and not as a copy. This is the main point of distinction between phantasm and remembrance; || what is remembered is a present phantasm assimilated to an impression of the past. Some of the superior animals possess both memory and phantasy. But other animals have neither; their sensations disappear, they Aristot. De Memor. et Remin., c. 1, 451, a. 5, 449, a. 10. † Aristot. De Memor. et Remin., c. 1, 450, a. 23. Tivos μèv ovv tŵv τῆς ψυχῆς μορίων ἔστιν ἡ μνήμη, φανερὸν ὅτι οὗπερ καὶ ἡ φαντασία· καὶ ἔστι μνημονευτὰ καθ ̓ αὑτὰ μὲν ὅσα ἐστί φανταστά, κατὰ συμβεβηκός δ' ὅσα μὴ ἄνευ φαντασίας. deì yàp őτav éveρyî ὅτι πρότερον τοῦτο Aristot. De Memor. et Rem., c. 1, 449, b. 20-450, a. 12. § Aristot. De Memor, et Rem., c. 1, 449, b. 22. κατὰ τὸ μνημονεύειν, οὕτως ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ λέγει, ἤκουσεν ἢ ᾔσθετο ἢ ἐνόησεν.—452, b. 28. Aristot. De Memor. et Rem., c. 1, 450, a. τὸ μνημονεύειν, ὡς εἰκόνος οὗ φάντασμα, ἕξις. De Memoriâ, p. 240, ed. Spengel. 28, b. 30, 451, a. 15. Themistius ad Aristot. |