The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan by Ibn Tufail
page 61 of 141 (43%)
page 61 of 141 (43%)
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Forms. And that other which still abode in the same State, (which was
the _Clay_, in our last Instance) did represent _Corporeity,_ which is in all Bodies, of what Forms soever. Now that which we call _Clay_ in the foregoing Instance, is the same which the Philosophers call _Materia prima_ [the first Matter] and [Greek: Hylè], which is wholly destitute of all manner of Forms. §. 48. When his Contemplation had proceeded thus far, and he was got to some distance from sensible Objects, and was now just upon the Confines of the intellectual World, he dissident, and inclin'd rather to the sensible World, which he was more used to. Therefore he retir'd from the Consideration of abstracted _Body_,(since he found that his Senses could by no means reach it, neither could he comprehend it) and applied himself to the Consideration of the most simple sensible Bodies he could find, which were those four, about which he had been exercis'd. And first of all he consider'd the _Water_, which he found, if let alone in that Condition which its Form requir'd, had these two things in it, _viz_. Sensible Cold, and a Propension to move downwards; But if heated by the Fire or the Sun, its Coldness was remov'd, but its Propension to move downwards still remain'd: But afterwards, when it came to be more vehemently heated, it lost its tendency downwards, and mounted upwards; and so it was wholly depriv'd of both those Properties which us'd constantly to proceed from it, and from its Form: Nor did he know any thing more of its Form, but only that these two Actions proceeded from thence; and when these two ceas'd, the Nature of the Form was alter'd, and the watry Form was remov'd from that Body, since there appear'd in it Actions, which must needs owe their Origin to another Form. Therefore it must have receiv'd another Form which had not been there before,from which arose those Actions, which never us'd to appear in it whilst it had the other Form. |
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