The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 01 (of 11)
Thomas Hobbes · en
administered by the arteries, and not by the nerves.
The proper phantasm of sight is light; and under this name of light,
colour also, which is nothing but perturbed light, is comprehended.
Wherefore the phantasm of a lucid body is light; and of a coloured body,
colour. But the object of sight, properly so called, is neither light
nor colour, but the body itself which is lucid, or enlightened, or
coloured. For light and colour, being phantasms of the sentient, cannot
be accidents of the object. Which is manifest enough from this, that
visible things appear oftentimes in places in which we know assuredly
they are not, and that in different places they are of different
colours, and may at one and the same time appear in divers places.
Motion, rest, magnitude, and figure, are common both to the sight and
touch; and the whole appearance together of figure, and light or colour,
is by the Greeks commonly called εἴδος, and εἴδωλον, and ἱδέα; and by
the Latins, _species_ and _imago_; all which names signify no more but
appearance.
The phantasm, which is made by hearing, is sound; by smell, odour; by
taste, savour; and by touch, hardness and softness, heat and cold,
wetness, oiliness, and many more, which are easier to be distinguished
by sense than words. Smoothness, roughness, rarity, and density, refer
to figure, and are therefore common both to touch and sight. And as for
the objects of hearing, smell, taste, and touch, they are not sound,
odour, savour, hardness, &c., but the bodies themselves from which
sound, odour, savour, hardness, &c. proceed; of the causes of which, and
of the manner how they are produced, I shall speak hereafter.
But these phantasms, though they be effects in the sentient, as subject,
produced by objects working upon the organs; yet there are also other
effects besides these, produced by the same objects in the same organs;
namely certain motions proceeding from sense, which are called _animal
motions_. For seeing in all sense of external things there is mutual
action and reaction, that is, two endeavours opposing one another, it is
manifest that the motion of both of them together will be continued
every way, especially to the confines of both the bodies. And when this
happens in the internal organ, the endeavour outwards will proceed in a
solid angle, which will be greater, and consequently the idea greater,
than it would have been if the impression had been weaker.
[Sidenote: The magnitude of images, how and by what it is determined.]