Chapter LXI, Section 1a

CHAPTER LXI. Of the Forming of Man, of the External Senses, also those Inward, and the Mind; and of the Three-Fold Appetite of the Soul, and Passions of the Will . It is the opinion of some divines that God did not immediately create the body of man, but by the assistance of the heavenly spirits compounded and framed him; which opinion Alcinous and Plato favor, thinking that God is the chief creator of the whole world, and of spirits, both good and bad, and therefore, immortalized them; but that all kinds of mortal animals were made only at the command of God; for, if he should have created them, they must have been immortal. The spirits, therefore, mixing Earth, Fire, Air, and Water together, made of them all, put together, one body, which they subjected to the service of the soul, assigning in it several provinces to each power thereof; to the meaner of them, mean and low places: as to anger, the midriff; to desire, the womb; but to the more noble senses, the head—as the tower of the whole body—and then the manifold organs of speech. They divide the senses into the external and internal. The external are divided into five, known to every one, to which there are allotted five organs, or subjects, as it were foundations; being so ordered that they which are placed in the more eminent part of the body, have a greater degree of purity. For the eyes, placed in the uppermost place, are the most pure, and have an affinity with the nature of Fire and Light; then the ears have the second order of place and purity, and are compared to the Air; the nostrils have the third order, and have a middle nature betwixt the Air and the Water. Then the organ of tasting, which is grosser, and most like to the nature of Water. Last of all the touching is diffused through the whole body, and is compared to the grossness of Earth. The more pure senses are those which perceive their objects farthest off, as seeing and hearing; then the smelling, then the taste, which doth not perceive but that which is nigh. But the touch perceives both ways, for it perceives bodies nigh; and as sight discerns by the medium of the Air, so the touch perceives, by the medium of a stick or pole, bodies hard, soft and moist. Now the touch only is common to all animals. And it is most certain that man hath this sense, and, in this and taste, he excels all other animals; but in the other three, he is excelled by some animals, as by a dog, who hears, sees and smells more acutely than man; and the lynx and eagles see more acutely than all other animals and man. Now the interior senses are, according to Averrois, divided into four, whereof the first is called common sense, because it doth first collect and perfect all the representations which are drawn in by the outward senses. The second is the imaginative power, whose office is, seeing it represents nothing, to retain those representations which are received by the former senses, and to present them to the third faculty of inward sense, which is the phantasy, or power of judging, whose work is also to perceive and judge by the representations received, what, or what kind of thing that is of which the representations are; and to commit those things which are thus discerned and adjudged, to the memory to be kept. For the virtues thereof in general, are discourse, dispositions, persecutions, and fights, and stirrings up to action, but in particular, the understanding of intellectuals, virtues, the manner of discipline, counsel, and election.