“This is then another new faculty which might exist only potentially in matter, like all the others”

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie

Source: The Natural History of the Soul (1745), Ch. VI Concerning the Sensitive Faculty of Matter
Context: [W]e must admit, with the same frankness, that we are ignorant whether matter has in itself the faculty of feeling, or only the power of acquiring it by those modifications or forms to which matter is susceptible; for it is true that this faculty of feeling appears only in organic bodies.
This is then another new faculty which might exist only potentially in matter, like all the others which have been mentioned; and this was the hypothesis of the ancients, whose philosophy, full of insight and penetration, deserves to be raised above the ruins of the philosophy of the moderns.<!--p.160

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "This is then another new faculty which might exist only potentially in matter, like all the others" by Julien Offray de La Mettrie?

Julien Offray de La Mettrie 42

French physician and philosopher 1709–1751

Tatian Address to the Greeks

Chap. xii.—The two kinds of spirits.
Address to the Greeks

“The artist in realizing his own individuality reveals potentialities hitherto unrealized. The revelation is the inspiration of other individuals to make the potentialities real, for it is not sheer revolt against things as they are which stirs human endeavor to its depth, but vision of what might be and is not. Subordination of the artists to any special cause no matter how worthy does violence not only to the artist but to the living source of a new and better future.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

“Realisation is not acquisition of anything new nor is it a new faculty. It is only removal of all camouflage”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

“There comes up another difficulty which more nearly concerns our vanity: namely, the impossibility of our conceiving this property [the faculty of feeling] as a dependence or attribute of matter.”

Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1751) French physician and philosopher

Source: The Natural History of the Soul (1745), Ch. VI Concerning the Sensitive Faculty of Matter

“Peace will come only if we truly love one another. We might have hurt others and the environment in the past, and we should repent in this new year.”

Eduardus Sangsun (1943–2008) Indonesian bishop (1943-2008)

Church Leaders Ask People to Work For Peace, Care For Nature https://www.ucanews.com/story-archive/?post_name=/2008/01/10/church-leaders-ask-people-to-work-for-peace-care-for-nature&post_id=29096 (9 January 2008)