But Anaxagoras says that perception is produced by opposites; for like
things cannot be affected by like. He attempts to give a detailed
enumeration of the particular senses. We see by means of the image in
the pupil; but no image is cast upon what is of the same colour, but
only on what is different. With most living creatures things are of a
different colour to the pupil by day, though with some this is so by
night, and these are accordingly keen-sighted at that time. Speaking
generally, however, night is more of the same colour with the eyes
than day. And an image is cast on the pupil by day, because light is a
concomitant cause of the image, and because the prevailing colour
casts an image more readily upon its opposite.[726]
It is in the same way that touch and taste discern their objects. That
which is just as warm or just as cold as we are neither warms us nor
cools us by its contact; and, in the same way, we do not apprehend the
sweet and the sour by means of themselves. We know cold by warm, fresh
by salt, and sweet by sour, in virtue of our deficiency in each; for
all these are in us to begin with. And we smell and hear in the same
manner; the former by means of the accompanying respiration, the
latter by the sound penetrating to the brain, for the bone which
surrounds this is hollow, and it is upon it that the sound falls.[727]
And all sensation implies pain, a view which would seem to be the
consequence of the first assumption, for all unlike things produce
pain by their contact. And this pain is made perceptible by the long
continuance or by the excess of a sensation. Brilliant colours and
excessive noises produce pain, and we cannot dwell long on the same
things. The larger animals are the more sensitive, and, generally,
sensation is proportionate to the size of the organs of sense. Those
animals which have large, pure, and bright eyes, see large objects and
from a great distance, and contrariwise.[728]
And it is the same with hearing. Large animals can hear great and
distant sounds, while less sounds pass unperceived; small animals
perceive small sounds and those near at hand.[729] It is the same too
with smell. Rarefied air has more smell; for, when air is heated and
rarefied, it smells. A large animal when it breathes draws in the
condensed air along with the rarefied, while a small one draws in the
rarefied by itself; so the large one perceives more. For smell is
better perceived when it is near than when it is far by reason of its
being more condensed, while when dispersed it is weak. But, roughly
speaking, large animals do not perceive a rarefied smell, nor small
animals a condensed one.[730]
Footnote 724:
Beare, p. 37.
Footnote 725:
Theophr. _de Sensu_, 27 sqq. (_Dox._ p. 507).
Footnote 726:
Beare, p. 38.
Footnote 727:
Beare, p. 208.
Footnote 728:
_Ibid._ p. 209.
Footnote 729:
_Ibid._ p. 103.
Footnote 730:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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