Aristotle · a new plain-English translation from the original language
1| Why do people go numb, and why more in the hands and feet? Is it because numbness is a chilling? For it comes about through a deprivation of blood and its displacement. These parts are the least fleshy and most sinewy, especially the feet. So they are, by nature, made ready in advance for being chilled quickly. Why do we lie down pleasantly on our left side, but sleep more on our right? Is it because, turned away from the light, we do not see it? For sleep takes hold more quickly in the dark. Or is it because we are awake while lying on our left side, and our activities are thus ready to hand there, so that the opposite posture is advantageous? For each posture summons a person toward its work more than the other does. Book Seven. Problems Arising from Sympathy Why do people yawn back in return when others yawn, for the most part? Is it because, if they are reminded while already aroused, they act, especially in things that move easily, such as urinating? Yawning is breath and a motion of moisture. So it is ready to hand, if one merely thinks of it; for it lies close by. Why is it that if we see someone stretching out a hand or a foot or something else of that sort, we do not do the same thing in response, but if we see someone yawning, we yawn back? Or is this too not always so, but only when the body happens to be aroused and disposed in such a way that the moisture is being warmed up? For then memory produces the motion, just as it does with sex and with eating; for what produces memory is the having of an impulse toward the imagined affection.
2| Why is it that when we stand by a fire we feel the urge to urinate, and if we stand by water, for instance by a river, people urinate? Is it because all water gives a reminder of the moisture in the body, and calls forth what is approaching it? Fire itself, for its part, loosens what is congealed in the body, just as the sun does snow. Why do people who associate with those suffering from certain diseases become sick themselves, while no one becomes healthy from associating with health? Is it because disease is a motion, but health is a state of rest? So the one moves people, the other moves nothing. Or is it because the one comes about against one's will, the other by one's will? And indeed involuntary things differ from voluntary ones, and from things done by forethought.
3| Why is it that some of the unpleasant things heard make us shudder, such as a saw being sharpened, or pumice being cut, or a stone being ground, while things seen that are signs of an affection produce the very affections themselves in us? For we get a tingling in our teeth watching people eat something sharp, and some people faint on watching others being strangled. Is it because every voice and every sound is breath? And this, entering into us, is by nature able to move us. And it moves us more, either through its size or through a more violent blow, by producing or altering something within us. Now large, smooth currents of breath move the very seat of perception, which is why such things please us; but rough ones, producing a violent blow, shake that place and transmit the force of the blow far off. Cold things also transmit far off; for coldness too is a kind of power. That this is why it makes us shudder, then, has been stated. Rough sounds, by producing a rapid succession of blows, striking against the root of the hairs, push it back the other way; and as it is pushed back, the tip of the hair must necessarily turn back on itself; that is why the hairs come to stand up, for they all naturally incline downward. And the movement of the breath, through hearing, into the body is from above downward.
4| Since the sounds mentioned are rough, then, the shuddering would come about for the reasons stated. And this happens more in the rest of the body than in the head, because the hairs there are weaker and the affection is weak. Now since hearing is a duller sense than sight, the affections that come from it are also superficial; and shuddering is such a thing, which is why it also arises from many dissimilar causes. But since sight is the most vivid of the senses, what results from it is correspondingly vivid; that is why the affections that come from it turn out to be the same ones that come from the actual truth, though lighter than the truth. But from hearing we do not feel the affections themselves, but we shudder at the expectation arising from them; for it is an expectation of a painful evil. Why do people yawn back when others have yawned, and when they see someone urinating, do they urinate too, especially pack animals? Is it on account of memory? For when the animal is reminded, this part is set in motion. Now in the case of human beings, because they are more sensitive, it happens that on merely seeing it they are at once moved and reminded; but for pack animals, seeing is not enough, and they need another sense besides; that is why they also need to smell it, since this sense is more easily set in motion in creatures without reason. And this is also why they all urinate in the same spot, wherever the first one urinated. For they are most set in motion when they smell it, and they smell it when they come close.
5| Why is it that when we see someone being cut or burned or racked or suffering some other terrible thing, we suffer along with them in our mind? Is it because our nature is common to us all? So it suffers along with the sufferer, whenever it sees such a thing, on account of kinship. Or is it because, just as the nostrils and the ears receive certain emanations according to their own proper powers, so too sight itself is affected by pleasant and painful things alike? Why is it that people who associate with those suffering from consumption, ophthalmia, and scabies are caught by these diseases, but people are not caught from dropsy, fevers, and apoplexy, nor from the others? Is it that ophthalmia spreads because the eye is the most easily moved of the organs, and is most fully assimilated to what it sees, of all the organs, being moved by what is moved, so that one who looks back at a disturbed eye is himself most disturbed? While consumption spreads because it produces a foul and heavy breath, and these diseases attach themselves most quickly to everyone, namely all those that arise from the corruption of this breath, such as the plague-diseases. And the person who associates with a consumptive breathes in such breath. So he becomes sick because it is disease-bearing; and he becomes sick from this alone because the consumptive exhales it, while the other diseases work in a different way; and he catches the same disease, because whatever part has grown weak in the sufferer, he breathes out through it in such a way as if he too had been afflicted there. And scabies spreads more than the others, such as leprosy and the like, because what flows off is superficial and sticky; for itchy things are of this sort. That is why these take hold, through occurring on the surface and being sticky. Of the others, some do not take hold because they do not occur on the surface, and others, though occurring on the surface, do not take hold because they do not remain there, on account of dryness.