Seite - 838 - in The Complete Aristotle

we cannot perceive; what we perceive must have a degree of the sensible quality lying beyond the neutral point. This implies that the sense itself is a ‘mean’ between any two opposite qualities which determine the field of that sense. It is to this that it owes its power of discerning the objects in that field. What is ‘in the middle’ is fitted to discern; relatively to either extreme it can put itself in the place of the other. As what is to perceive both white and black must, to begin with, be actually neither but potentially either (and so with all the other sense-organs), so the organ of touch must be neither hot nor cold. Further, as in a sense sight had for its object both what was visible and what was invisible (and there was a parallel truth about all the other senses discussed), so touch has for its object both what is tangible and what is intangible. Here by ‘intangible’ is meant (a) what like air possesses some quality of tangible things in a very slight degree and (b) what possesses it in an excessive degree, as destructive things do. We have now given an outline account of each of the several senses. 12 The following results applying to any and every sense may now be formulated. (A) By a ‘sense’ is meant what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter. This must be conceived of as taking place in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold; we say that what produces the impression is a signet of bronze or gold, but its particular metallic constitution makes no difference: in a similar way the sense is affected by what is coloured or flavoured or sounding, but it is indifferent what in each case the substance is; what alone matters is what quality it has, i.e. in what ratio its constituents are combined. (B) By ‘an organ of sense’ is meant that in which ultimately such a power is seated. The sense and its organ are the same in fact, but their essence is not the same. What perceives is, of course, a spatial magnitude, but we must not admit that either the having the power to perceive or the sense itself is a magnitude; what they are is a certain ratio or power in a magnitude. This enables us to explain why objects of sense which possess one of two opposite sensible qualities in a degree largely in excess of the other opposite destroy the organs of sense; if the movement set up by an object is too strong for the organ, the equipoise of contrary qualities in the organ, which just is its 838