Hobbes Author:Sir Leslie Stephen Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III 1. Psychology Man is a body with certain organs. Other bodies coming into contact with the organs of sense propagate motions through the nerves... more » to the brain and heart. The reactions or " endeavours " set up in the central organs generate the sensations or phantasms which constitute the whole mental world. We are directly conscious of nothing else, although they enable us to perceive what happens "outside of the mind." The laws of motion, again, tell us that a thing once in motion "will be eternally in motion unless somewhat else stay it." " Whatever hindereth it will 1 The second part of Hobbes's philosophy considered in this chapter is expounded in the early chapters of the Leviathan (vol. iii. of English works) and the Human Nature. The last, originally published in 1650, consists of the first thirteen chapters of the treatise written in 1640. The later part of the same treatise also appeared in 1650 as De Gorpore Politico. These two form the fourth volume of the English works. A later treatise, De ffomine, in Latin, appeared in 1658, but adds nothing to the earlier books. Hobbes never fouud himself able to give the fuller exposition which he had intended of the doctrines summarised in the Human Nature and the Leviathan ; but he states the essence with sufficient terseness and clearness. Ill take some time to destroy the motion." "Though the wind cease, the waves give not over rolling for a long time after; so also it happeneth in that motion which is made in the internal parts of a man, then, when he sees, dreams, etc." The "image" thus formed remains for a time after the object is removed, and the faculty of retaining such images is therefore called "the imagination." Imagination is therefore "nothing but decaying sense." All knowledge and thought thus ...« less