On the Soul (De Anima) with Simplicius Commentary

is necessary that the power which is connective of body should be incorporeal. But soul is connective of animated bodies. Every soul, therefore, is incorporeal. In the present treatise, however, Aristotle, after having in many ways confuted these opinions, adds: “Why do I speak of the other powers, since the last of the gnostic Meaning "cognitive" or "knowing." powers of the soul, sense, is demonstrated to be incorporeal by linear necessities?” If, therefore, the last power is incorporeal, much more are the superior powers. How, therefore, does he demonstrate this? No body, says he, is capable of receiving contraries at the same time, according to the same part. For the whole finger cannot, at one and the same time, partake of black and white; nor can it be, at the same time, according to the same part, refrigerated and heated. But sense at once apprehends contraries in the same time. For in reading it apprehends, at once, black and white. Hence it knows that this is first, and that second, by distinguishing the black letters from the white paper. How, therefore, does the sight apprehend contraries in the same time? Shall we say that it apprehends them according to the same part; or that, by one part, it apprehends the black, and by another part, the white? If, therefore, it apprehends them according to the same part, it apprehends them impartibly Indivisibly; not by parts., and is incorporeal. But if by another and another part, it is just as if I perceived one thing, but you another. Just as if you should say that which I saw is different from that which you saw. For it is necessary that what judges should be one and the same, and that it should also apprehend the objects that are judged according to one and the same. But it is impossible that a body can apply itself, in the same time, according to the same part, to contraries, or, in short, to different things. Sense, however,