Indeed, as the whole soul feels, she localizes the passion in the
organ which has received the blow, and which suffers. If she herself
experienced the suffering, as the whole of her is present in the whole
body, she could not localize the suffering in one organ; the whole of
her would feel the suffering; she would not relate it to any one part
of the body, but to all in general: for she is present everywhere in
the body. The finger suffers, and the man feels this suffering, because
it is his finger. It is generally said that the man suffers in his
finger, just as it is said that he is blond, because his eyes are blue.
It is therefore the same entity that undergoes passion' and suffering,
unless the word "suffering' should not here designate both the passion,
and the sensation which follows it; in this case no more is meant than
that the state of suffering is accompanied by sensation. The sensation
itself is not the suffering, but the knowledge of the suffering. The
potentiality which knows must be impassible to know well, and well to
indicate what is perceived. For if the faculty which is to indicate the
passions itself suffer, it will either not indicate them, or it will
indicate them badly.
THE APPETITES ARE LOCATED NEITHER IN BODY NOR SOUL, BUT IN THEIR
COMBINATION.
20. Consequently, it may be said that the origin of the desires should
be located in the common (combination) and in the physical nature. To
desire and seek something would not be characteristic of a body in any
state whatever (which would not be alive). On the other hand, it is not
the soul which seeks after sweet or bitter flavors, but the body. Now
the body, by the very fact that it is not simply a body (that it is a
living body), moves much more than the soul, and is obliged to seek
out a thousand objects to satisfy its needs: at times it needs sweet
flavors, at others, bitter flavors; again humidity, and later, heat;
all of them being things about which it would not care, were it alone.
As the suffering is accompanied by knowledge, the soul, to avoid the
object which causes the suffering, makes an effort which constitutes
flight, because she perceives the passion experienced by the organ,
that contracts to escape the harmful object. Thus everything that
occurs in the body is known by sensation, and by that part of the soul
called nature, and which gives the body a trace of the soul. On one
hand, desire, which has its origin in the body, and reaches its highest
degree in nature, attaches itself thereto. On the other hand, sensation
begets imagination, as a consequence of which the soul satisfies her
need, or abstains, and restrains herself; without listening to the
body which gave birth to desire, nor the faculty which later felt its
reaction.