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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

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Book I Chapter 51

Chapter 51 · The senses

How many senses there are, and the substance and activity of each.¹⁹⁶⁵

1 · Hearing as the teacher of the mind

Simylus.

Five are the senses that a human being has: [touch, sight, hearing, taste, smell]. Of all these one has the greatest authority, hearing: no one grew wise by eating, nor by ⟨touching, nor smelling⟩, nor by seeing what is beneficial . . . . . . . . . . But through hearing and learning good things many have become wise; for this alone the mind has kept as its own teacher: . . . . . . . . . . . . . as a judge, an arbiter, or a master.¹⁹⁶⁶

2 · Five specific senses

⟨Aëtius.⟩

The Stoics hold that the specific senses are five: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch.¹⁹⁶⁷

3 · Common perception

Aristotle does not speak of a sixth sense, but of a common perception, ⟨the faculty⟩ that judges composite forms. To it all the simple senses contribute, each its own impressions; in it resides the capacity to pass from one thing to another, for example between shape and movement.¹⁹⁶⁸

4 · More senses

⟨Aëtius.⟩

Democritus holds that there are more senses in nonrational animals, in the wise, and in the gods.¹⁹⁶⁹

5.1 · The fivefold perceptive capacity

⟨Didymus.⟩

Aristotle. The perceptive capacity, which is the characteristic shared by all animals (for perception distinguishes an animal from a plant), appears to be fivefold. One part of it is sight, another hearing, another smell, another taste, another touch.¹⁹⁷⁰

5.2 · Imagination, memory, and belief

There is also a certain composite perception, in which the whole capacity for forming images arises, together with ⟨the⟩ capacity for memory and the capacity for belief; the latter is therefore not without a share in intellect. We perceive when the perceptive faculty undergoes some affection.¹⁹⁷¹

6 · From perception to knowledge

Plato, from the Phaedo.

“The brain is what provides the perceptions of hearing, seeing, and smelling; from these memory and belief would arise, and from memory and belief, once they have attained stability, knowledge would arise in accordance with these.”¹⁹⁷²

7 · Like perceived by like

Empedocles.

For with earth we have seen earth, with water water, with aether divine aether, and with fire destructive fire.¹⁹⁷³

1965.The editor restores this heading from Photius p. 112b30 and the Laurentian table of contents; it is absent from the witnesses FPL. Ousia concerns what each sense is or consists in, energeia its activity. Decimal subdivisions in longer excerpts are modern comparison divisions.

1966.The poem privileges hearing as the means of instruction. The five-sense list is rejected by the editor and remains in square brackets. The angle brackets mark a restoration within the Greek words for touching and smelling, represented by the corresponding English phrase. Both printed gaps are retained, with ten and thirteen points. The last line has lost its governing construction: the apparatus explains that the senses should acknowledge the mind as judge, not the mind acknowledge hearing as judge. No missing verse is invented.

1967.The supplied attribution is printed in Latin and covers excerpts 2-3: Aëtius IV.10.1-2, Diels p. 399. Specific senses translates eidikas; the list distinguishes their separate functions. The different order from the preceding poem is retained.

1968.Common perception coordinates the contributions of the separate senses; it does not mean ordinary practical judgment. The supplied article makes the judging faculty explicit. Compare I.50.5. This shorter report is preserved independently: the apparatus criticizes an earlier editor for combining the two passages.

1969.The editor supplies Aëtius IV.10.4, Diels p. 399. The compressed report says more, without specifying a number or naming additional senses. Its three classes are kept distinct. Compare the report about nonrational animals in I.50.7.

1970.The Latin editorial attribution identifies Didymus, Epitome of Physics, fragment 15, Diels p. 455; the Greek heading names Aristotle as the authority reported. The repeated infinitives belong to indirect discourse. The claim distinguishes the animal from the plant by perception, while the fivefold classification concerns the perceptive capacity.

1971.Phantastikon concerns the formation of images or presentations, not necessarily invention. The English takes the relative hoper as referring most immediately to the capacity for belief; the compressed wording also allows a broader reference to the composite faculty. The article before the capacity for memory is supplied in the edition. An affection is something undergone by the faculty.

1972.The edition identifies Phaedo 96b. The passage reports a proposed sequence from the brain and perception to stable knowledge. Its shifts from a finite statement to an optative and then an infinitive are smoothed in English without presenting the sequence as an unqualified final doctrine of Plato. The printed kata tauta, in accordance with these, is retained.

1973.The edition cites verses 333-334 in Stein. The elemental pairings express perception of like through like. Aïdēlon describes fire as destructive or consuming. Only these two verses occur here; no continuation from another source is added. This completes chapter 51.