Another proof of the superorganic nature of the human intellect as compared with sentiency, both exterior and interior, is one adduced by Aristotle himself: “But that the impassivity of the sense,” he says, “is different from that of intellect is clear if we look at the sense organs and at sense. The sense loses its power to perceive, if the sensible object has been too intense; thus it cannot hear sound after very loud noises, and after too powerful colors or odors it can neither see nor smell. But the intellect, when it has been thinking on an object of intense thought, is not less, but even more, able to think of inferior objects. For sense-perception is not independent of the body, whereas the intellect is.” (“Peri Psyches,” Bk. III, Ch. iv, 5.) This temporary incapacitation of the senses consequent upon powerful stimulation is a common experience embalmed in such popular expressions as “a deafening noise,” “a blinding flash,” “a dazzling light,” “a numbing pain,” etc. Weber’s law of the differential threshold tells us that the intensity of sensation does not increase in the same proportion as that of the stimulus. On the contrary, the more intense the previous stimulus has been, the greater must be the increment added to the subsequent stimulus before it can produce a perceptible increase in the intensity of sensation. In short, stimulation of the senses temporarily decreases their sensitivity with reference to supervening stimuli. The reason for this momentary loss of the power to react normally is evidently due to the organic nature of the senses. Their activity entails a definite and rigidly proportionate process of destructive metabolism in their bodily substrate, the organism. In other words, the exercise of sense-perception involves a commensurate process of decomposition in the neural tissue, which must afterwards be compensated by a corresponding assimilation of nutrient material, before the sense can again react with its pristine vigor. This process of recuperation requires time and temporarily inhibits the reactive power of the sense in question, the duration of this repair work being determined by the amount of neural decomposition caused by the reaction of the sense to the previous stimulus. When, therefore, a weaker stimulus supervenes in immediate succession to a stronger one, the sense is incapable of perceiving it. All organic activity, in short, such as sense-perception and imagination, is rigidly regulated by the metabolic law of waste and repair.