What is The Soul? on Superphysics

Sound and Hearing

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Now let us, to begin with, make certain distinctions about sound and hearing.

Sound may mean either of two things (a) actual, and (b) potential, sound. There are certain things which, as we say, ‘have no sound’, e.g. sponges or wool, others which have, e.g. bronze and in general all things which are smooth and solid-the latter are said to have a sound because they can make a sound, i.e. can generate actual sound between themselves and the organ of hearing.

The Powers of Living Things

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Since what is clear or logically more evident emerges from what in itself is confused but more observable by us, we must reconsider our results from this point of view.

The Powers of Living Things

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Of the psychic powers above enumerated some kinds of living things, as we have said, possess all, some less than all, others one only.

Those we have mentioned are the nutritive, the appetitive, the sensory, the locomotive, and the power of thinking. Plants have none but the first, the nutritive, while another order of living things has this plus the sensory.

The Powers of Living Things

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

It is necessary for the student of these forms of soul first to find a definition of each, expressive of what it is, and then to investigate its derivative properties, &c. But if we are to express what each is, viz. what the thinking power is, or the perceptive, or the nutritive, we must go farther back and first give an account of thinking or perceiving, for in the order of investigation the question of what an agent does precedes the question, what enables it to do what it does.

The Powers of Living Things

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

In dealing with each of the senses we shall have first to speak of the objects which are perceptible by each.

The term ‘object of sense’ covers three kinds of objects, two kinds of which are, in our language, directly perceptible, while the remaining one is only incidentally perceptible.

The Powers of Living Things

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Smell and its object are much less easy to determine than what we have hitherto discussed; the distinguishing characteristic of the object of smell is less obvious than those of sound or colour.

The Powers of Living Things

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What can be tasted is always something that can be touched, and just for that reason it cannot be perceived through an interposed foreign body, for touch means the absence of any intervening body.

The Powers of Living Things

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Whatever can be said of what is tangible, can be said of touch, and vice versa; if touch is not a single sense but a group of senses, there must be several kinds of what is tangible.

The Powers of Living Things

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The following results applying to any and every sense may now be formulated.

(A) By a ‘sense’ is meant what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter. This must be conceived of as taking place in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold; we say that what produces the impression is a signet of bronze or gold, but its particular metallic constitution makes no difference: in a similar way the sense is affected by what is coloured or flavoured or sounding, but it is indifferent what in each case the substance is; what alone matters is what quality it has, i.e. in what ratio its constituents are combined.

The Senses

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Having made these distinctions let us now speak of sensation in the widest sense.

Sensation depends on a process of movement or affection from without, for it is held to be some sort of change of quality. Now some thinkers assert that like is affected only by like; in what sense this is possible and in what sense impossible, we have explained in our general discussion of acting and being acted upon.

What is soul?

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What is soul?

We are in the habit of recognizing, as one determinate kind of what is, substance, and that in several senses,

(a) in the sense of matter or that which in itself is not ‘a this’, and

Transparency

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The object of sight is the visible, and what is visible is (a) colour and (b) a certain kind of object which can be described in words but which has no single name; what we mean by (b) will be abundantly clear as we proceed.