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And do they not also determine the substance and
generation of conception itself, even against the common
conceptions? For conception is a certain imagination, and
imagination an impression in the soul. Now the nature
of the soul is an exhalation, in which it is difficult for an
impression to be made because of its tenuity, and for which
it is impossible to keep an impression it may have received.
For its nutriment and generation, consisting of moist things,
[p. 425]
have continual accession and consumption. And the mixture of respiration with the air always makes some new
exhalation, which is altered and changed by the flux of the
air coming from abroad and again going out. For one may
more easily imagine that a stream of running water can
retain figures, impressions, and images, than that a spirit can
be carried in vapors and humors, and continually mingled
with another idle and strange breath from without. But
these men so far forget themselves, that, having defined the
conceptions to be certain stored-up intelligences, and memoirs to be constant and habitual impressions, and having
wholly fixed the sciences, as having stability and firmness,
they presently place under them a basis and seat of a slippery substance, easy to be dissipated and in perpetual flux
and motion.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. 4.
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