inward swift review
Strictly sifts the false and true?

Of these ample potencies
Fitter cause, I ween,
Were Mind's self than marks impressed
By the outer scene.
Yet the body through the sense
Stirs the soul's intelligence.

When light flashes on the eye,
Or sound strikes the ear,
Mind aroused to due response
Makes the message clear;
And the dumb external signs
With the hidden forms combines.

FOOTNOTES:

[R] A criticism of the doctrine of the mind as a blank sheet of paper on
which experience writes, as held by the Stoics in anticipation of Locke.
See Zeller, 'Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics,' Reichel's translation,
p. 76.

V.

'Now, although in the case of bodies endowed with sentiency the
qualities of external objects affect the sense-organs, and the activity
of mind is preceded by a bodily affection which calls forth the mind's
action upon itself, and stimulates the forms till that moment lying
inactive within, yet, I say, if in these bodies endowed with sentiency
the mind is not inscribed by mere passive affection, but of its own
efficacy discriminates the impressions furnished to the body, how much
more do intelligences free from all bodily affections employ in their
discrimination their own mental activities instead of conforming to
external objects? So on these principles various modes of cognition
belong to distinct and different substances. For to creatures void of
motive power--shell-fish and other such creatures which cling to rocks
and grow there--belongs Sense alone, void of all other modes of gaining
knowledge; to beasts endowed with movement, in whom some capacity of
seeking and shunning seems to have arisen, Imagination also. Thought
pertains only to the human race, as Intelligence to Divinity alone;
hence it follows that that form of knowledge exceeds the rest which of
its own nature cognizes not only its proper object, but the objects of
the other forms of knowledge also. But what if Sense and Imagination
were to gainsay Thought, and declare that universal which Thought deems
itself to behold to be nothing? For the object of Sense and Imagination
cannot be universal; so that either the judgment of Reason is true and
there is no sense-object, or, since they know full well that many
objects are presented to Sense and Imagination, the conception of
Reason, which looks on that which is perceived by Sense and particular
as if i