|
Illud in his rebus nequaquam sumere
possis, Democriti quod sancta viri sententia ponit; Corporis atque animi primordia singula privis Adposita alternis variare ac nectere membra. |
[223] Aristotel. De Respiratione, c. 4, p. 472, a. 10; De Animâ, i. 2, p. 404, a. 12.
Different mental aptitudes attached to different parts of the body.
Though Demokritus conceived those mental particles as distributed all over the body, yet he recognised different mental aptitudes attached to different parts of the body. Besides the special organs of sense, he considered intelligence as attached to the brain, passion to the heart, and appetite to the liver:[224] the same tripartite division afterwards adopted by Plato. He gave an explanation of perception or sensation in its different varieties, as well as of intelligence or thought. Sensation and thought were, in his opinion, alike material, and alike mental. Both were affections of the same peculiar particles, vital or mental, within us: both were changes operated in these particles by effluvia or images from without; nevertheless the one change was different from the other.[225]
[224] Zeller, Phil. d. Griech., i. p. 618, ed. 2nd.
Plutarch (Placit. Philos. iv. 4), ascribes a bipartite division of the soul to Demokritus: τὸ λογικὸν, in the thorax: τὸ ἄλογον, distributed over all the body. But in the next section (iv. 6), he departs from this statement, affirming that both Demokritus and Plato supposed τὸ ἡγεμονικὸν of the soul to be in the head.
[225] Plutarch, Placit. Philos. iv. 8. Demokritus and Leukippus affirm τὴν αἴσθησιν καὶ τὴν νόησιν γίνεσθαι, εἰδώλων ἔξωθεν προσιόντων· μηδενὶ γὰρ ἐπιβάλλειν μηδετέραν χωρὶς τοῦ προσπίπτοντος εἰδώλου.
Cicero, De Finibus, i. 6, 21, “imagines, quæ idola nominant, quorum incursione non solum videamus, sed etiam cogitemus,” &c.
In regard to sensations, Demokritus said little about those of touch, smell, and hearing; but he entered at some length into those of sight and taste.[226]
[226] Theophrastus, De Sensu, s. 64.