The soul, unlike wax, assimilates sensory forms into its own substance

Evidence

The wax does not, indeed, take in the form, for the impression remains on it as external figure (äußerliche Gestaltung) and contour, without being a form of its real essence (keine Form seines Wesen). If it were to become such, it would cease to be wax. The soul, on the contrary, assimilates (assimiliert) this form into its own substance, and for this reason the soul is in itself, to a certain extent, the sum of all that is perceived by the senses. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 436

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• XREF: This assimilation-of-form-into-substance is the seed of the plasticity concept this reader is tracing to brain plasticity — sensation here is not passive impression but active incorporation.

Related

• Plastic reception requires assimilating form into substance, unlike wax’s passive impression (similarity 0.93)
• The noetic soul is paradoxically both impassible and receptive to form (similarity 0.81)
• Sensation is the first stage through which substance awakens into subjectivity (similarity 0.79)
• Sense perception receives forms of things without their matter (similarity 0.79)