"Generally, about all perception, we can say that a sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold; what produces the impression is a signet of bronze or gold, but not qua bronze or gold: in a similar way the sense is affected by what is coloured or flavoured or sounding not insofar as each is what it is, but insofar as it is of such and such a sort and according to its form."
— Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
Author
Work Title
Date
w. 350 B.C.
Metaphor
"Generally, about all perception, we can say that a sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold; what produces the impression is a signet of bronze or gold, but not qua bronze or gold: in a similar way the sense is affected by what is coloured or flavoured or sounding not insofar as each is what it is, but insofar as it is of such and such a sort and according to its form."
Metaphor in Context
12. Generally, about all perception, we can say that a sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold; what produces the impression is a signet of bronze or gold, but not qua bronze or gold: in a similar way the sense is affected by what is coloured or flavoured or sounding not insofar as each is what it is, but insofar as it is of such and such a sort and according to its form.
(424a18-424a23 p. 674)
(424a18-424a23 p. 674)
Categories
Provenance
Reading; found again in M.H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (London: Oxford UP, 1953), 57. And again, in Margreta de Grazia’s "Imprints: Shakespeare, Gutenberg, and Descartes," in Printing and Parenting in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005): 29-58, p. 30.
Citation
Some text from The Complete Works of Aristotle, The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton UP,1984).
Reading in Aristotle, Introduction to Aristotle, trans. R. McKeon. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1973).
Reading in Aristotle, Introduction to Aristotle, trans. R. McKeon. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1973).
Date of Entry
06/06/2013
