The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 03 (of 11) — Thomas Hobbes — John Shaqi
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 03 (of 11)
Thomas Hobbes · en
Concerning the thoughts of man, I will consider them first singly, and
afterwards in train, or dependence upon one another. Singly, they are
every one a _representation_ or _appearance_, of some quality, or other
accident of a body without us, which is commonly called an _object_.
Which object worketh on the eyes, ears, and other parts of a man’s body;
and by diversity of working, produceth diversity of appearances.
The original of them all, is that which we call SENSE, for there is no
conception in a man’s mind, which hath not at first, totally, or by
parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense. The rest are derived from
that original.
To know the natural cause of sense, is not very necessary to the
business now in hand; and I have elsewhere written of the same at large.
Nevertheless, to fill each part of my present method, I will briefly
deliver the same in this place.
The cause of sense, is the external body, or object, which presseth the
organ proper to each sense, either immediately, as in the taste and
touch; or mediately, as in seeing, hearing, 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 of the heart to
deliver itself, which endeavour, because _outward_, seemeth to be some
matter without. And this _seeming_, or _fancy_, is that which men call
_sense_; and consisteth, as to the eye, in a _light_, or _colour
figured_; to the ear, in a _sound_; to the nostril, in an _odour_; to
the tongue and palate, in a _savour_; and to the rest of the body, in
_heat_, _cold_, _hardness_, _softness_, and such other qualities as we
discern by _feeling_. All which qualities, called _sensible_, are in the
object, that causeth them, but so many several motions of the matter, by
which it presseth our organs diversely. Neither in us that are pressed,
are they any thing else, but divers motions; for motion produceth
nothing but motion. But their appearance to us is fancy, the same
waking, that dreaming. And as pressing, rubbing, or striking the eye,
makes us fancy a light; and pressing the ear, produceth a din; so do the
bodies also we see, or hear, produce the same by their strong, though
unobserved action. For if those colours and sounds were in the bodies,
or objects that cause them, they could not be severed from them, as by
glasses, and in echoes by reflection, we see they are; where we know the
thing we see is in one place, the appearance in another. And though at
some certain distance, the real and very object seem invested with the
fancy it begets in us; yet still the object is one thing, the image or
fancy is another. So that sense, in all cases, is nothing else but
original fancy, caused, as I have said, by the pressure, that is, by the
motion, of external things upon our eyes, ears, and other organs
thereunto ordained.