Opus Majus of Roger Bacon, Vol. II (Burke English trans.)

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the end of the work on Sense and the Sensible and in the second book on the Soul. This common sense forms a judgment concerning the differences of impressions on the senses—for example, that in milk, whiteness is different from sweetness. This is a distinction which sight alone cannot make, nor taste, because they do not distinguish things in other categories, as Aristotle maintains in the second book on the Soul. It judges concerning the operations of the particular senses; for vision does not perceive that it sees, nor hearing that it hears, but another faculty does—namely, the common sense—as Aristotle maintains in the second book on Sleep and Waking.

The final action of this faculty is to receive the forms coming from the particular senses and to complete a judgment concerning them. However, it does not retain these impressions, owing to the excessive slipperiness of its own organ, according to the statement of Avicenna in the first book on the Soul. Therefore, there must be another faculty of the soul in the back part of the first cell, the function of which is to retain the forms coming from the particular senses, owing to its tempered moistness and dryness. This is called imagination and is the coffer and repository of the common sense. Avicenna cites as an example a seal, the image of which water readily receives but does not retain owing to its superabundant moistness. Wax, however, retains the image very well owing to its tempered moistness with dryness. Wherefore he says that it is one thing to receive and another to retain, as is clear from these examples. Such is the case in the organ of the common sense and of imagination. The whole faculty, however, composed of these two—namely, that which occupies the whole first cell—is called phantasia or the virtus phantastica (the imaginative power). For according to the second book on the Soul, the book on Sleep and Waking, and the book on Sense and the Sensible, it is evident that phantasia and the common sense are the same according to subject but differ according to being, as Aristotle says, and that phantasia and imagination are the same according to subject but differ according to being. Wherefore phantasia includes both faculties and does not differ from them except as the whole from the part. Therefore, since the common sense receives the form and imagination retains it, a complete judgment follows regarding the thing, a judgment formed by phantasia.