The next question is whether perception is concerned only with need. The soul, isolated, has no sense-perception; sensations go with the body; sensation itself therefore must occur by means of the body to which the sensations are due; it must be something brought about by association with the body. Thus either sensation occurs in a soul compelled to follow upon bodily states- since every graver bodily experience reaches at last to soul- or sensation is a device by which a cause is dealt with before it becomes so great as actually to injure us or even before it has begun to make contact. At this, sense-impressions would aim at utility. They may serve also to knowledge, but that could be service only to some being not living in knowledge but stupefied as the result of a disaster, and the victim of a Lethe calling for constant reminding: they would be useless to any being free from either need or forgetfulness. This This reflection enlarges the enquiry: it is no longer a question of earth alone, but of the whole star-system, all the heavens, the kosmos entire. For it would follow that, in the sphere of things not exempt from modification, sense-perception would occur in every part having relation to any other part: in a whole, however- having relation only to itself, immune, universally self-directed and self-possessing- what perception could there be? Granted that the percipient must act through an organ and that this organ must be different from the object perceived, then the universe, as an All, can have no organ distinct from object: it can have self-awareness, as we have; but sense-perception, the constant attendant of another order, it cannot have. Our own apprehension of any bodily condition apart from the normal is the sense of something intruding from without: but besides this, we have the apprehension of one member by another; why then should not the All, by means of what is stationary in it, perceive that region of itself which is in movement, that is to say the earth and the earth's content? Things of earth are certainly affected by what passes in other regions of the All; what, then, need prevent the All from having, in some appropriate way, the perception of those changes? In addition to that self-contemplating vision vested in its stationary part, may it not have a seeing power like that of an eye able to announce to the All-Soul what has passed before it? Even granted that it is entirely unaffected by its lower, why, still, should it not see like an eye, ensouled as it is, all lightsome? Still: "eyes were not necessary to it," we read. If this meant simply that nothing is left to be seen outside of the All, still there is the inner content, and there can be nothing to prevent it seeing what constitutes itself: if the meaning is that such self-vision could serve to no use, we may think that it has vision not as a main intention for vision's sake but as a necessary concomitant of its characteristic nature; it is difficult to conceive why such a body should be incapable of seeing.

Presiding over the ear and the eye, the organs of touch, taste, and smell, and also over the mind, he experiences sense-objects.

They are thought-concepts, and cannot be recognised by the senses; whereas quality, quantity, etc., are sense-concepts. Just as the ear cannot take co...

For neither without sensing can one think, nor without thinking sense. But it is possible [they say] to think a thing apart from sense, as those who f...

That sense doth share with thought in man, doth constitute him man. But 'tis not [every] man, as I have said, who benefits by thought; for this man is...

For man is the sole animal that is twofold. One part of him is simple: the [man] “essential,” as say the Greeks, but which we call the “form of the Di...

What does such a soul want with the generation which is in pleasure, or the restitution which is in it to a natural condition, since such a soul is ab...

And hence it is, that the Body (seeing all Things out of the eternal Nothing are caused to be Something which is comprehensible [or palpable,] and yet...

The Cosmic Sense is the container of all sensibles, [all] species, and [all] sciences. The human [higher sense consists] in the retentiveness of...

Not only is there a great deal more to light than anyone has ever seen but there are also unknown forms of light which no optical equipment will ever ...

Worldly senses are the ladder of earth, The health of the former is sought of the leech, The health of the latter from "The Friend." The health of...

Let be this everywhere and this ought, in comparison or this nowhere and this nought. Reck thee never if thy wits cannot reason of this nought; for...

For the soul comprehendeth the highest sense, it beholdeth what God its Father acteth or makes, also it cooperateth in the heavenly imaging or framing...

The head containeth the five senses, viz. seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling, wherein the stars and elements qualify, and therein...

I do indeed wish, I replied, that I could pay, and you receive, the account of the parent, and not, as now, of the offspring only; take, however,...

It is necessary, therefore, to admit a thing of this kind in partial souls. For such as is the life which the soul received, prior to its insertion...

Every Beast has a Mind, having a Will, and the five Senses therein, so that it can distinguish therein what is good or ill for it. But where remain...

The senses of such men are like irrational creatures'; and as their [whole] make-up is in their feelings and their impulses, they fail in all...

When the object dwells in the mind, clear of memory-pictures, uncoloured by the mind, as a pure luminous idea, this is perception without exterior or...

Thus Scripture says, that "the spirit of perception" was given to the artificers from God. And this is nothing else than Understanding, a faculty of...

The wise, therefore, speak as follows: The soul having a twofold life, one being in conjunction with body, but the other being separate from all...