Note 25 — Chapter XXVIII · THEÆTETUS.

Bacon remarks that the processes called mental or intellectual are quite as much relative to man as those called sensational or perceptive. “Idola Tribûs sunt fundata in ipsâ naturâ humanâ. Falso enim asseritur, Sensum humanum esse mensuram rerum: quin contra, omnes perceptiones, tam Sensûs quam Mentis, sunt ex analogiâ hominis, non ex analogiâ Universi.”

Nemesius, the Christian Platonist, has a remark bearing upon this question. He says that the lower animals have their intellectual movements all determined by Nature, which acts alike in all the individuals of the species, but that the human intellect is not wholly determined by Nature; it has a freer range, larger stores of ideas, and more varied combinations: hence its manifestations are not the same in all, but different in different individuals — ἐλεύθερον γάρ τι καὶ αὐτεξούσιον τὸ λογικόν, ὅθεν οὐχ ἓν καὶ ταὐτὸν πᾶσιν ἔργον ἀνθρώποις, ὡς ἑκάστῳ εἴδει τῶν ἀλόγων ζώων· φύσει γὰρ μόνῃ τὰ τοιαῦτα κινεῖται, τὰ δὲ φύσει ὁμοίως παρὰ πᾶσίν ἐστιν· αἱ δὲ λογικαὶ πράξεις ἄλλαι παρ’ ἄλλοις καὶ οὐκ ἐξ ἀνάγκης αἱ αὗται παρὰ πᾶσιν (De Nat. Hom., c. ii. p. 53. ed. 1565).