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But to return, the object we pursue or avoid in the field of
action is, as has been explained, the original of movement, and upon
the conception and imagination of this there necessarily follows a
change in the temperature of the body. For what is painful we avoid,
what is pleasing we pursue. We are, however, unconscious of what
happens in the minute parts; still anything painful or pleasing is
generally speaking accompanied by a definite change of temperature
in the body. One may see this by considering the affections. Blind
courage and panic fears, erotic motions, and the rest of the corporeal
affections, pleasant and painful, are all accompanied by a change of
temperature, some in a particular member, others in the body
generally. So, memories and anticipations, using as it were the
reflected images of these pleasures and pains, are now more and now
less causes of the same changes of temperature. And so we see the
reason of nature's handiwork in the inward parts, and in the centres
of movement of the organic members; they change from solid to moist,
and from moist to solid, from soft to hard and vice versa. And so when
these are affected in this way, and when besides the passive and
active have the constitution we have many times described, as often as
it comes to pass that one is active and the other passive, and neither
of them falls short of the elements of its essence, straightway one
acts and the other responds.
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