The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 01 (of 11)Hobbes, Thomas
Philosophy
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 01 (of 11)
Hobbes, Thomas
Philosophy, English -- 17th century
20. When we say a living creature, a tree, or any other specified body
is _generated_ or _destroyed_, it is not to be so understood as if there
were made a body of that which is not-body, or not a body of a body, but
of a living creature not a living creature, of a tree not a tree, &c.
that is, that those accidents for which we call one thing a living
creature, another thing a tree, and another by some other name, are
generated and destroyed; and that therefore the same names are not to be
given to them now, which were given them before. But that magnitude for
which we give to any thing the name of body is neither generated nor
destroyed. For though we may feign in our mind that a point may swell to
a huge bulk, and that this may again contract itself to a point; that
is, though we may imagine something to arise where before was nothing,
and nothing to be there where before was something, yet we cannot
comprehend in our mind how this may possibly be done in nature. And
therefore philosophers, who tie themselves to natural reason, suppose
that a body can neither be generated nor destroyed, but only that it may
appear otherwise than it did to us, that is, under different _species_,
and consequently be called by other and other names; so that that which
is now called man, may at another time have the name of not-man; but
that which is once called body, can never be called not-body. But it is
manifest, that all other accidents besides magnitude or extension may be
generated and destroyed; as when a white thing is made black, the
whiteness that was in it perisheth, and the blackness that was not in it
is now generated; and therefore bodies, and the accidents under which
they appear diversely, have this difference, that bodies are things, and
not generated; accidents are generated, and not things.
[Sidenote: An accident cannot depart from its subject]
21. And therefore, when any thing appears otherwise than it did by
reason of other and other accidents, it is not to be thought that an
accident goes out of one subject into another, (for they are not, as I
said above, in their subjects as a part in the whole, or as a contained
thing in that which contains it, or as a master of a family in his
house,) but that one accident perisheth, and another is generated. For
example, when the hand, being moved, moves the pen, motion does not go
out of the hand into the pen; for so the writing might be continued
though the hand stood still; but a new motion is generated in the pen,
and is the pen's motion.
[Sidenote: Nor be moved.]
22. And therefore also it is improper to say, an accident is moved; as
when, instead of saying, _figure is an accident of a body carried away_,
we say, _a body carries away its figure_.
[Sidenote: Essence, form, and matter, what they are.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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