This description of sense-perception Aristotle explains more fully in what follows (De Anima, III. 2), and expatiates upon this unity and its contrasts, in the course of which explanation there appear many clear and far-reaching glimpses into the Nature of consciousness. “The bodily organ of each sense-perception receives the object perceived without matter. Hence, when the object of sense is removed, the perceptions and the images which represent them remain in the organs. In the act of sense-perception the object perceived is no doubt identical with the subject that perceives, but they do not exist[97] as the same; for instance, sound and the hearing are the same when in active exercise, but that which has hearing does not always hear, and that which has sound is not always sounding. When that which is the potentiality of hearing comes into exercise, and likewise that which is the potentiality of sound, hearing and sound, being in full activity, coincide,” they do not remain separate energies. “If then movement and action, as well as passivity, have a place in the object on which activity is exercised (ἐν τῷ ποιουμένῳ), it follows necessarily that the energy of hearing and sound is contained in that which potentially is hearing, for the energy of the active and moving is in the passive. As therefore activity and passivity are manifested in the subject which receives the effect, and not in the object which produces it (ποιοῦντι), the energy both of the object and of the faculty of sense-perception is in the faculty itself. For hearing and sounding there are two words, for seeing only one; seeing is the activity of the person who sees, but the activity of the colour is without name. Since the energy of that which is perceived and that which perceives is one energy, and the aspect they present is alone different, the so-called sounding and hearing must cease simultaneously.” There is a body which sounds and a subject which hears; they are twofold in the aspect they present, but hearing, taken by itself, is intrinsically an activity of both. In like manner, when I have by sense the perception of redness and hardness, my perception is itself red and hard: that is, I find myself determined in that way, even though reflection says that outside of me there is a red, hard thing, and that it and my finger are two; but they are also one, my eye is red and the thing. It is upon this difference and this identity that everything depends; and Aristotle demonstrates this in the most emphatic way, and holds firmly to his point. The later distinction of subjective and objective is the reflection of consciousness; sense-perception is simply the abrogation of this separation, it is that form of identity which abstracts from subjectivity and objectivity. What is simple, the soul proper or the I, is in sense-perception unity in difference. “Further, every sense-perception is in its organ, and distinguishes everything that is perceived, like black and white, and so on. It is thus not possible for separate perceptions, white and sweet, to be distinguished as separate indifferent moments, for both must be present (δῆλα) to one subject. This one subject must therefore determine one thing to be different from another. This, as distinguished, can also not be in a different place or time, for it must be undivided and in undivided time. But it is impossible that one and the same thing should be affected by contrary movements, in so far as it is undivided and in undivided time. If sweetness affects sense-perception in one way, and bitterness in the contrary way, and whiteness in yet another way, the power of judging is numerically not discrete nor divisible, but according to the Notion (τῷ εἶναι)[98] it is distinguished. That which is the same and indivisible thus possesses in potentiality opposite qualities; but with its true existence (τῷ εἶναι) that cannot be the case, for in its activity it is separable, and cannot at the same time be both white and black. Sense-perception and thinking are like that which some term a point, which, in so far as it is one, is inseparable, and in so far as it is two, is separable. So far as it is undivided, the judging faculty is one and acts in a single point of time, but so far as it is divided” (not one) “it employs the same sign twice simultaneously. So far as it employs two, it by limitation distinguishes two, and separates them as having separate origin; but so far as it is one, it judges by one act in one single point of time” (_supra_, p. 172).