Aristotle ON THE PARTS OF ANIMALS Complete

Translated by W. Ogle.

Aristotle Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristotle in Print

144 pages - You are on Page 45

In man, then, the head is destitute of flesh; this being the necessary consequence of what has already been stated concerning the brain. There are, indeed, some who hold that the life of man-would be longer than it is, were his head more abundantly furnished with flesh; and they account for the absence of this substance by saying that it is intended to add to the perfection of sensation. For the brain they assert to be the organ of sensation; and sensation, they say, cannot penetrate to parts that are too thickly covered with flesh. But neither part of this statement is true. On the contrary, were the region of the brain thickly covered with flesh, the very purpose for which animals are provided with a brain would be directly contravened. For the brain would itself be heated to excess and so unable to cool any other part; and, as to the other half of their statement, the brain cannot be the cause of any of the sensations, seeing that it is itself as utterly without feeling as any one of the excretions. These writers see that certain of the senses are located in the head, and are unable to discern the reason for this; they see also that the brain is the most peculiar of all the animal organs; and out of these facts they form an argument, by which they link sensation and brain together. It has, however, already been clearly set forth in the treatise on Sensation, that it is the region of the heart that constitutes the sensory centre. There also it was stated that two of the senses, namely touch and taste, are manifestly in immediate connexion with the heart; and that as regards the other three, namely hearing, sight, and the centrally placed sense of smell, it is the character of their sense-organs which causes them to be lodged as a rule in the head. Vision is so placed in all animals. But such is not invariably the case with hearing or with smell. For fishes and the like hear and smell, and yet have no visible organs for these senses in the head; a fact which demonstrates the accuracy of the opinion here maintained. Now that vision, whenever it exists, should be in the neighbourhood of the brain is but what one would rationally expect. For the brain is fluid and cold, and vision is of the nature of water, water being of all transparent substances the one most easily confined. Moreover it cannot but necessarily be that the more precise senses will have their precision rendered still greater if ministered to by parts that have the purest blood. For the motion of the heat of blood destroys sensory activity. For these reasons the organs of the precise senses are lodged in the head.

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