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. We have, however,
to inquire whether necessity may not also have a share in the
matter; and it must be admitted that these mutual relations could
not from the very beginning have possibly been other than they are.
For heterogeneous parts can be made up out of homogeneous parts,
either from a plurality of them, or from a single one, as is the
case with some of the viscera which, varying in configuration, are
yet, to speak broadly, formed from a single homogeneous substance; but
that homogeneous substances should be formed out of a combination of
heterogeneous parts is clearly an impossibility. For these causes,
then, some parts of animals are simple and homogeneous, while others
are composite and heterogeneous; and dividing the parts into the
active or executive and the sensitive, each one of the former is, as
before said, heterogeneous, and each one of the latter homogeneous.
For it is in homogeneous parts alone that sensation can occur, as
the following considerations show.
Each sense is confined to a single order of sensibles, and its organ
must be such as to admit the action of that kind or order. But it is
only that which is endowed with a property in posse that is acted on
by that which has the like property in esse, so that the two are the
same in kind, and if the latter is single so also is the former.
Thus it is that while no physiologists ever dream of saying of the
hand or face or other such part that one is earth, another water,
another fire, they couple each separate sense-organ with a separate
element, asserting this one to be air and that other to be fire
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