=Dealing in Detail with the inward Senses, (and the Motion-Promoting
Powers).=
I. Not one of the outward senses unites within itself perception of
color, odor, and softness; and yet, we often come upon a body that is
yellow, and perceive at once so much about it, namely that it is honey,
sweet, nice of smell, and fluid, although we have neither tasted, nor
smelt, nor even touched it; whence it is manifest that we possess a
power wherein are assembled the perceptions of the four senses, and
have thus become summed up in it into one single form; and were it not
for this power we should not know that sweetness, for instance, is
other than blackness, since the discriminator between two things is he
who has known them both. This is the power which is designated as the
common-sense, and the picturing (or representing) power. And were it
one of the outward apparent senses, its sway (dominion) would limit
itself to the state of wakefulness only; whereas ocular observation
attests what is quite otherwise; for this power does at times perform
its action in both the states of sleep and wakefulness.
II. Furthermore, there is in animals a power which sets up such forms
as have assembled in the common-sense, discriminates between them, and
differentiates them, without the forms themselves disappearing from the
common-sense. And this power is undoubtedly other than the aforesaid
picturing power; since in the latter there are none but true (real)
forms that have been acquired (obtained) from sense; whereas in this
power the case may be otherwise, and it may imagine and picture wrongly
and falsely, and what it had not received after such a [wrong and
false] pattern (shape) from any one of the senses. This power is the
one named imagination.
Further, there is in animals a power that passes judgment, upon such or
such a thing that it is so or not so, decisively, and through which the
animal flees away from shunned evil and seeks chosen good. It is also
evident that this power is other than the imaginative, since this last
imagines (pictures to itself) the sun, in accordance with what it has
got from the apposite sense, to be of the size of its disc; whereas the
matter stands in this power quite otherwise. So too the lion finds his
prey from far off of the size of a small bird, yet its form and size in
no way perplex him, but he makes for it. It is also evident that this
power is other than the imaginative, and this because the imaginative
power performs its manifold deeds without belief and conviction on its
part that matters are in accordance with its imagining. This power is
what is named the conjecturing or the surmising faculty (or judgment).
III. Further, there is in living beings a power that preserves
the purports (or thoughts and conceptions) of what the senses had
perceived, such as, for instance, that the wolf is an enemy; the child,
a darling next of kin. Wherefore, so much at least if not more is
evident, that this power is other than the common-sense (or picturing),
inasmuch as in the latter there are no forms but such as it has gained
from the senses; whereas, again, the senses did not feel the wolf’s
enmity, nor the child’s love, but alone the wolf’s image, and the
child’s bodily shape; and as to love and fierceness, it is the mind’s
eye alone that has got them, and then stored them up in this power. It
is also clear that this power is other than the imaginative power, for
the reason that this last does at times imagine what is other than that
which the mind’s eye has deemed right, found true, and has derived from
the senses; whereas the former power, i.e., the one here dealt with,
imagines none other than what the mind’s eye has deemed right, has
found true, and has derived from the senses.
This power is also other than the conjecturing (surmising) power, for
the reason that this last does not preserve what some other has deemed
to be true, but it of its own self deems to be true, whilst the power
here treated of does not itself pass judgment of truth or falsehood,
but only preserves what another has deemed to be true. This power is
called memory, the preserving or keeping faculty.
Again, the imaginative power is called by this name--imagination--if
the conjecturing (or surmising) power alone use it: and if the speaking
(rational) power use it, it is called the thinking (cogitative) power.
The heart is the source (spring) of all these powers (faculties), in
Aristotle’s opinion; yet the sway over them is in different organs
(instruments). Thus the sway over the outward (apparent) senses is in
their known organs; whereas the sway over the picturing (representing
common-sense) power is in the anterior hollow (ventricle) of the brain;
the sway over the imaginative, in the middle hollow thereof; the sway
over the remembering, in the posterior hollow thereof; and the sway
over the conjecturing, throughout all the brain, but above all in the
compartment of the imaginative within the brain [or, throughout the
whole of the brain, but more especially alongside of the imaginative
thereof]. And in so far as these hollows (ventricles) suffer harm and
hurt, so will the manifold workings of these powers suffer also;
for were they, (the powers,) standing independently, that is to say
subsisting in themselves, and efficient independently, that is to
say putting forth their workings of themselves, they would not need,
for their proper and peculiar actions, any sort of instrument or
organ: in this wise one recognizes that these powers do not subsist
in themselves, but that the undying power is the Speaking (Reasoning)
Soul, as we shall hereafter set forth; yet for all this, the soul does
maybe at times seek out for itself after a fashion (so to speak) the
purest quintessences of the kernels of these powers, and cause them
to exist of themselves, the setting forth of which shall, D.v., soon
follow.
* * * * *
The following is the terminology of the five inward senses: