2
It is the same also with hearing and smell; to hear and smell
accurately mean in one sense to perceive as precisely as possible
all the distinctions of the objects of perception, in another sense to
hear and smell far off. As with sight, so here the sense-organ is
the cause of judging well the distinctions, if both that organ
itself and the membrane round it be pure. For the passages of all
the sense-organs, as has been said in the treatise on sensation, run
to the heart, or to its analogue in creatures that have no heart.
The passage of the hearing, then, since this sense-organ is of air,
ends at the place where the innate spiritus causes in some animals the
pulsation of the heart and in others respiration; wherefore also it is
that we are able to understand what is said and repeat what we have
heard, for as was the movement which entered through the
sense-organ, such again is the movement which is caused by means of
the voice, being as it were of one and the same stamp, so that a man
can say what he has heard. And we hear less well during a yawn or
expiration than during inspiration, because the starting-point of
the sense-organ of hearing is set upon the part concerned with
breathing and is shaken and moved as the organ moves the breath, for
while setting the breath in motion it is moved itself. The same
thing happens in wet weather or a damp atmosphere.
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