Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3: Essays and Miscellanies

Chapter 94

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The Stoics say that there are five senses properly so called, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. Aristotle indeed doth not add a sixth sense; but he assigns a common sense, which is the judge of all compounded species; into this each sense casts its proper representation, in which is discovered a transition of one thing into another, like as we see in figure and motion where there is a change of one into another. Democritus, that there are divers species of senses, which appertain to beings destitute of reason, to the gods, and to wise men.