An example of this can be frequently seen in the fingers, which learn
to perform on an instrument the things which the intellect commands,
and the lesson once learnt they will perform it without the aid of the
intellect. And do not the muscles which cause the legs to move perform
their duty without man being conscious of it?
72.
You will see palsied and shivering persons move, and their trembling
limbs, such as their head and hands, quiver, without the permission of
the soul, and the soul, though it expend all its might, cannot prevent
these limbs from trembling. The same thing occurs in epilepsy or when
limbs are partially truncated, as in the case of tails of lizards.
[Sidenote: Intellect]
73.
It happens that our intellect is that which prompts the hand to create
the features of figures in {30} divine aspects until it finds
satisfaction; and since the intellect is one of the tones of our soul,
by means of the soul it composes the form of the body where it dwells,
according to its volition. And when it has to reproduce a human body,
it takes pleasure in repeating the body which it originally created;
whence it follows that they who fall in love are prone to become
enamoured of what resembles them.
[Sidenote: Of the Senses]
74.
There are the four powers: memory, intellect, sensuality and lust. The
first two are intellectual, the others sensual. Of the five senses,
sight, hearing, smell are with difficulty prevented; touch and taste
not at all. Taste follows smell in the case of dogs and other greedy
animals.
75.
Why does the eye perceive things more clearly in dreams than with the
imagination when one is awake?
[Sidenote: Time]
76.
Although time is included among continuous quantities, being
indivisible and immaterial it does not altogether fall into the scope
of geometry,--by which it is divided into figures and bodies of
infinite variety, which are seen to be continuous inasmuch as they are
visible and material,--but it agrees only with its first principles,
{31} i.e. with the point and the line; the point in time may be
compared to an instant, and the line to the length of a certain
quantity of time. Just as the point is the beginning and end of a
line, so is an instant the beginning and end of any given space of
time; and just as a line is infinitely divisible, so can a given space
of time be likewise divided, and as the divisions of the line are in
proportion to each other, so likewise are the divisions of time.
77.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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