Page:Aristotelous peri psuxes.djvu/315

CH. IV.] Note 1, p. 153. There is a distinction between positive, &c.] All the passages, under this head, are obscure, if not incomprehensible; their purport seems to be whether the mind judges, by one and the same faculty, of realities, (qualities, that is, perceived through the senses) and realities viewed, abstractedly, in their essence. Thus, the inquiry seems to be whether the mind is sensibility or associated, so to say, with sensibility, or altogether distinct from it; whether the sentient perception which is engaged upon particulars, can ever be capable of the abstract reasoning which detects the essence of things, and so generalises and groups them for universal laws. This does not, however, apply, it is said, to all subjects, as, with some, "the two states are identical;" and this is the case with abstractions or immaterialities, which fall within the province of the mind apart from sense.

Note 2, p. 153. Now, it is by the sensibility that we judge, &c.] This phrase seems to allude to the then admitted doctrine that the sense of Touch either is flesh or in the flesh, and that it, therefore, directly or indirectly, is perceptive of hot and cold, and other such qualities; and this assumed sentient property may have led to this