The faculty of knowing is never moved but remains at rest. Since the
one premiss or judgement is universal and the other deals with the
particular (for the first tells us that such and such a kind of man
should do such and such a kind of act, and the second that this is
an act of the kind meant, and I a person of the type intended), it
is the latter opinion that really originates movement, not the
universal; or rather it is both, but the one does so while it
remains in a state more like rest, while the other partakes in
movement.
12
The nutritive soul then must be possessed by everything that is
alive, and every such thing is endowed with soul from its birth to its
death. For what has been born must grow, reach maturity, and decay-all
of which are impossible without nutrition. Therefore the nutritive
faculty must be found in everything that grows and decays.
But sensation need not be found in all things that live. For it is
impossible for touch to belong either (1) to those whose body is
uncompounded or (2) to those which are incapable of taking in the
forms without their matter.
But animals must be endowed with sensation, since Nature does
nothing in vain. For all things that exist by Nature are means to an
end, or will be concomitants of means to an end. Every body capable of
forward movement would, if unendowed with sensation, perish and fail
to reach its end, which is the aim of Nature; for how could it
obtain nutriment? Stationary living things, it is true, have as
their nutriment that from which they have arisen; but it is not
possible that a body which is not stationary but produced by
generation should have a soul and a discerning mind without also
having sensation.
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