However, in the automata and the toy wagon
there is no change of quality, though if the inner wheels became
smaller and greater by turns there would be the same circular movement
set up. In an animal the same part has the power of becoming now
larger and now smaller, and changing its form, as the parts increase
by warmth and again contract by cold and change their quality. This
change of quality is caused by imaginations and sensations and by
ideas. Sensations are obviously a form of change of quality, and
imagination and conception have the same effect as the objects so
imagined and conceived For in a measure the form conceived be it of
hot or cold or pleasant or fearful is like what the actual objects
would be, and so we shudder and are frightened at a mere idea. Now all
these affections involve changes of quality, and with those changes
some parts of the body enlarge, others grow smaller. And it is not
hard to see that a small change occurring at the centre makes great
and numerous changes at the circumference, just as by shifting the
rudder a hair's breadth you get a wide deviation at the prow. And
further, when by reason of heat or cold or some kindred affection a
change is set up in the region of the heart, even in an
imperceptibly small part of the heart, it produces a vast difference
in the periphery of the body,- blushing, let us say, or turning white,
goose-skin and shivers and their opposites.
Pages:
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25