'All the qualities called sensible are, in the object which causeth
them, but so many motions of the matter by which it presseth on our
organs diversely. Neither in us that are pressed are they anything
else but divers motions; for motion produceth nothing but
motion.... The cause of sense is the external body or object, which
presseth the organ proper to each sense, either immediately, as in
taste and touch, or mediately, as in hearing, seeing, and smelling;
which pressure, by the mediation of the nerves, and other strings
and membranes of the body, continued inwards to the brain and
heart, causeth there a resistance, or counter-pressure, or
endeavour.... And because _going_, _speaking_, and the like
voluntary motions, depend always upon a precedent thought of
_whither_, _which way_, and _what_; it is evident that the
imagination [or idea] is the first internal beginning of all
voluntary motion. And although unstudied men do not conceive any
motion at all to be there, where the thing moved is invisible; or
the space it is moved in is, for the shortness of it, insensible;
yet that doth not hinder, but that such motions are. These small
beginnings of motion, within the body of man, before they appear in
walking, speaking, striking, and other visible actions, are
commonly called ENDEAVOUR[1].'
These quotations are sufficient to show that the system of Hobbes was
prophetic of a revelation afterwards declared by two centuries of
scientific research. For they show how plainly he taught that all our
knowledge of the external world is a knowledge of motion; and, again,
that all our acquisitions of knowledge and other acts of mind themselves
imply, as he elsewhere says, some kind of 'motion, agitation, or
alteration, which worketh in the brain.' That he conceived such motion,
agitation, or alteration to be, from its extreme minuteness, 'invisible'
and 'insensible,' or, as we should now say, molecular, is likewise
evident. I can therefore imagine the delight with which he would hear me
speak when I say, that it is no longer a matter of keen-sighted
speculation, but a matter of carefully demonstrated fact, that all our
knowledge of the external world is nothing more than a knowledge of
motion. For all the forms of energy have now been proved to be but modes
of motion; and even matter, if not in its ultimate constitution vortical
motion, at all events is known to us only as changes of motion: all that
we perceive in what we call matter is change in modes of motion. We do
not even know what it is that moves; we only know that when some modes
of motion pass into other modes, we perceive what we understand by
matter. It would take me too long to justify this general statement so
that it should be intelligible to every one; but I am confident that all
persons who understand such subjects will, when they think about it,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account