Albert the Great on the Classification and Localization of the Internal Senses

ion.27 The common sense is distinct from the five proper senses, because it receives its forms from the five proper senses and not directly from the object itself. 28 Nonetheless, all are senses, because they are in the first level of abstraction. Thereafter, imagination is classified in the second level as the power that accepts the form of an object even when the object is not present. Imagination does not separate this form from the "appendages or conditions" of the matter of the object (sed non ab appendiciis materiae sive condicionibus materiae).29 By "appendages or conditions," Albert explains, are meant the individual things that are associated with the sarne object, such as the placement of limbs, the color of a face, age, the shape of a head. Imagination apprehends these things as they are in one particular form but not in abstraction from that form or in any other form in exactly the same way.30 The third level of abstraction contains both fantasy and estimation. At this level the