tions themselves the sensation of a foreign object and that of the appropriate object, or that of a kindred object and that of the object of the sense in question,[1] are not equally authoritative, but in the case of colour, sight, not taste, has the authority, and in the case of flavour, taste, not sight; each of which senses never says at the same moment of the same object that it at the same time is 'so and not so'. — But not even at different moments does one sense disagree about the quality, but only about that to which the quality belongs. I mean, for instance, the same wine might seem, if either it or one's body changed, at one time sweet and at another time not sweet; but at least the sweet, such as it is when it exists, has never yet changed, but one is always right about it, and that which is to be sweet must of necessity be of such and such a nature. Yet all these views destroy this distinction, so that as there is no essence of anything, so nothing is of necessity; for the necessary cannot be in this way and also in that, so that if anything is of necessity, it will not be both 'so and not so'.
And, in general, if only the sensible exists, there would be nothing if animate things were not ; for there would be no faculty of sense. The view that the sensations also would not exist is doubtless true (for they are affections of the perceiver), but that the substrata which cause the sensation should not exist even apart from sensation is impossible. For sensation is surely not the sensation of itself, but there is something beyond the sensation, which must be prior to the sensation; for that which moves is prior in nature to that which is moved, and if they are correlative terms, this is no less the case.
Chapter 6
There are, both among those who have these convictions and among those who merely profess these views, some who raise a difficulty by asking, who is the judge of the healthy
- ↑ 1010b 16 read αὑτῆς. E.g. the knowledge which smell gives us of savour and of odour respectively.
