In treating of the animal powers, he treats first of the fives senses,
and then of the animal Powers. These latter he gives in this section
three times, and each time varies the order somewhat, thus:--
1st. Order of mention:
a. participating, picturing
b. remembering, preserving
c. imaginative, restoring
d. conjecturing, surmising
e. moving
2nd. Order of mention:
a. picturing, participating
b. imaginative
c. conjecturing, surmising
d. remembering
3d Order of mention, in the final Allegorical Summing Up:
a. motion-promoting
b. feeling, sentient, 5 outward senses
c. perceptive
d. imagining
e. conjecturing
f. remembering.
[12] Moreover, the Text seems in Doctor Landauer’s opinion to need
an emendation, in this Allegory, which is furnished by the Latin
Translation preserved in Florence. According to the text, we get a
wholly superfluous intermediary notion, to wit the Post, which disturbs
the parallel and similitude of the allegory. Instead of _barîd_, we
should read _wazîr_ = Latin, inter vicarium principis. If this is done,
the whole passage becomes clearer, and hangs together better. Yet, for
all this, the _barîd_ was in those days a highly important branch of
the government service: witness, the office of _câheb-ul-barîd_.
SECTION SIXTH
=Treating in Detail of the Five Senses, and of How they perceive.=
As to the seeing power, philosophers have differed on the question of
How they perceive. Thus one set among them asserts that they perceive
wholly and solely through a ray that shoots out beyond the eye, and so
encounters the sensible objects that are seen. This is Plato’s way.[13]
Others assert that the perceiving power itself encounters the sensible
objects that are seen, and so perceives them. Still others say that
visual perception consists in this:--When the intervening transparent
body becomes effectively transparent by light shining upon it, then an
impression of the outspread (flattened) individual of such sensible
objects as are seen is effected in the cristalline[14] lens of the eye,
just such a pictorial impression as is effected in looking-glasses
(mirrors); indeed the two effects are so similar that were mirrors
possessed of a seeing power they would perceive the form imprinted in
them. This is Aristotle’s way; and it is the sound reliable opinion.
That Plato’s view is false, is quite clear. For, were it true that a
ray goes out from the seat of sight and encounters sensible objects,
then sight would be in no need of light, but would on the contrary
perceive in the dark, and would rather illuminate the air on its exit
into the dark. Moreover such a ray will not fail of one of two modes:
either it will subsist throughout the eye only, in which case Plato’s
opinion that it goes forth from the eye is wrong; or else it will
subsist throughout a body other than the material of which the eye is
composed; for it must inevitably have a vehicle to carry it, seeing
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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