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Ch. I.].
vital principle
15

but whether thought be imagination of some kind, or never unaccompanied by imagination, still we must admit that it cannot be exercised without the body. If, then, there is any one function or emotion which is peculiar to the Vital Principle, we should admit that it might be isolated from the body; but, if no one belongs to it, exclusively, then we say that it cannot be separate from one. But, just as many accidents concur in the quality straightness, in so far as straightness (as, for instance, among others, to touch a brazen sphere at a point, which, were it apart from some kind of body, it could not do), so straightness is inseparable from a body, since it is ever found together with one. In the same way all the emotions of the Vital Principle (such as courage, gentleness, fear, pity, daring, joy, love and hatred,) seem to be manifested together with the body; for the body is affected, simultaneously, by them. As evidence of which, there are times when we are neither excited nor alarmed, although misfortunes may be trying and palpable, while, at other times, when the body is plethoric, or in a state akin to that of anger, we are moved by incidents which are trivial and unimportant. And what makes this yet more apparent is, that, at times, without the occurrence of aught to occasion alarm, we are thrown into the state of persons under terror; and if this be true, it is clear that all such emotions are material conditions. So