CHAPTER I.
OF SENSE.
[Sidenote: Sense.]
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.
But the philosophy-schools, through all the universities of Christendom, grounded upon certain texts of Aristotle, teach another doctrine, and say, for the cause of _vision_, that the thing seen, sendeth forth on every side a _visible species_, in English, a _visible show_, _apparition_, or _aspect_, or _a being seen_; the receiving whereof into the eye, is _seeing_. And for the cause of _hearing_, that the thing heard, sendeth forth an _audible species_, that is an _audible aspect_, or _audible being seen_; which entering at the ear, maketh _hearing_. Nay, for the cause of _understanding_ also, they say the thing understood, sendeth forth an _intelligible species_, that is, an _intelligible being seen_; which, coming into the understanding, makes us understand. I say not this, as disproving the use of universities; but because I am to speak hereafter of their office in a commonwealth, I must let you see on all occasions by the way, what things would be amended in them; amongst which the frequency of insignificant speech is one.
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