On the Vital Principle/Book 2/Prelude to Chapter 8
This chapter is upon sound and hearing; and as these subjects had been but desultorily alluded to in the other works, they are treated of at some length on this occasion. It opens with the distinction of bodies into sonorous and insonorous, and after tracing the analogy between the acute and grave, and the sharp and blunt (of touch), it passes by a rapid transition to the voice, which is dwelt upon at some length. The term ἐνέργεια, which had been used in place of ἐντελεχεία, to express the active as opposed to the potential or negative state of the diaphaneity, is again employed here to signify the analogous and contrasting quality of sound. The distinction between the terms is not very apparent now, although this may not have been the case then; for the ἐνέργεια may have conveyed the idea of action in the transition from potentiality, and so have been more expressive of actual, as opposed to virtual light or sound. Thus, if sound be a quality or condition, it may be active, and it may be only virtual or faint; but although to us inaudible, it is not to be supposed that silence any more than darkness is ever absolute; so that the text has limited the range of sound too absolutely by the activity of the sense. Aristotle[1] assigned, as has been said, a high privilege to this sense, because through it instruction is orally conveyed, and thus the blind from birth are more intelligent (φρονιμώτεροι), he observes, than "the deaf and dumb;" but the argument would have been more correct had the second term been omitted, as individuals are of necessity dumb when hearing is quite shut out. The phraseology, however, is still sanctioned in common parlance.
- ↑ De Sensu et sensili I.11.