Each sense then is relative to its particular group of sensible
qualities: it is found in a sense-organ as such and discriminates
the differences which exist within that group; e.g. sight
discriminates white and black, taste sweet and bitter, and so in all
cases. Since we also discriminate white from sweet, and indeed each
sensible quality from every other, with what do we perceive that
they are different? It must be by sense; for what is before us is
sensible objects. (Hence it is also obvious that the flesh cannot be
the ultimate sense-organ: if it were, the discriminating power could
not do its work without immediate contact with the object.)
Therefore (1) discrimination between white and sweet cannot be
effected by two agencies which remain separate; both the qualities
discriminated must be present to something that is one and single.
On any other supposition even if I perceived sweet and you perceived
white, the difference between them would be apparent. What says that
two things are different must be one; for sweet is different from
white. Therefore what asserts this difference must be
self-identical, and as what asserts, so also what thinks or perceives.
That it is not possible by means of two agencies which remain separate
to discriminate two objects which are separate, is therefore
obvious; and that (it is not possible to do this in separate movements
of time may be seen' if we look at it as follows. For as what
asserts the difference between the good and the bad is one and the
same, so also the time at which it asserts the one to be different and
the other to be different is not accidental to the assertion (as it is
for instance when I now assert a difference but do not assert that
there is now a difference); it asserts thus-both now and that the
objects are different now; the objects therefore must be present at
one and the same moment.
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