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Aristotle - On The Parts Of Animals
Atec Февраль 16 2008 20:01:06
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In the heart of animals there is also a kind of joint-like division,
something like the sutures of the skull. This is not, however,
attributable to the heart being formed by the union of several parts
into a compound whole, but is rather, as already said, the result of a
joint-like division. These jointings are most distinct in animals of
keen sensibility, and less so in those that are of duller feeling,
in swine for instance. Different hearts differ also from each other in
their sizes, and in their degrees of firmness; and these differences
somehow extend their influence to the temperaments of the animals. For
in animals of low sensibility the heart is hard and dense in
texture, while it is softer in such as are endowed with keener
feeling. So also when the heart is of large size the animal is
timorous, while it is more courageous if the organ be smaller and of
moderate bulk. For in the former the bodily affection which results
from terror already pre-exists; for the bulk of the heart is out of
all proportion to the animal's heat, which being small is reduced to
insignificance in the large space, and thus the blood is made colder
than it would otherwise be.
The heart is of large size in the hare, the deer, the mouse, the
hyena, the ass, the leopard, the marten, and in pretty nearly all
other animals that either are manifestly timorous, or betray their
cowardice by their spitefulness
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