PREFACE TO MERSENNE’S BALLISTIC
This document is approximately 5 sides of A4.
[309] In Proposition 24 of Ballistic, [n.1] I refer to many of the opinions of that most acute philosopher, Thomas Hobbes. I have read certain parts of the philosophy of which he is such a distinguished proponent, a philosophy which explains virtually everything in terms of motion. In particular, I should like to add something about the way he derives the workings of all our faculties from motions. This is so that the reader can see whether whatever happens within us can be attributed to ballistic power, so that objects appear to excite motions in us in various directions by emitting projectiles through our external senses, [n.2] and influence us with a perpetual ballistic.
It is certain that sensation happens through the action of objects on the organs of a sentient being. Since sensation implies action as much as passion, which are hardly distinguishable from motions, sensation can be defined as a motion in the internal parts of a sentient being, brought about by the motion of the object in the sensorium of the agent. For example, seeing happens as the result of the motion of a luminous object propagated through the transparent medium, and continued through the eye to the retina, and then through the optic nerve into the spirits — and not just in the brain, but right as far as the heart, because of the wonderful interconnection of the whole body.
[310] Similarly, the motion which is set up when two bodies collide or break apart, is propagated through the air to the ear, and from there through the nerves to the brain, and to the heart. The same goes for the remaining objects of the other senses. When their motions reach the heart, they give rise to pleasure if they help its vital motion, or to pain if they harm it. But since a patient reacts and resists, there occurs a motion of the heart towards the brain, and from there into the nerves as far as the external surface of the body, where a phantasm comes into being. This phantasm is a motion in the brain, even though it appears like the external thing. However, it represents it as being other than where it is, as happens when stars are seen in water or a mirror, or a voice where there is an echo.
As a result of these phantasms or motions, the body of the sentient being is itself set in motion, and this is the origin of animal motion. However, these motions do not cease, even when the objects are no longer active, since an agent is just as necessary for stopping a motion as for starting it up in the first place. Motions set up in the spirits and the blood can only be extinguished by a contrary motion — for example, one arising from gravity, perhaps, as happens to water when a pebble sets up a circular wave motion in it. [n.3]
But since the brain and heart are stimulated by many different motions, the dominant motion can be said to be the present phantasm. As long as the object is still acting, the phantasm can be described by different names, depending on the relevant sense organ. If the motion is stimulated through the eye, it is called ‘light’ or ‘colour’; if through the ear, it is called ‘sound’, etc.; and if through the surface of the body, it is called ‘warm’, ‘cold’, ‘smooth’, ‘rough’, etc.
Just as the passion itself is called ‘sensation’, so the left-over motion, when the object is no longer present, is customarily called ‘imagination’, the name being derived from ‘images’. Although an imagination was originally identical with a sensation, the only difference seems to be that that a sensation requires the presence of the object. Now since every motion [311] consists in succession, imagination always contains something prior to the present; and when we consider it in respect of the past, we call it ‘memory’. When we consider an imagination of the past without reference to the phantasm itself, that is, simply in respect of the successiveness of the imagining, we call it ‘time’. This means that one and the same motion of the mind acquires four different names on account of four different aspects. It is true that phantasms are clearer during perception than when objects are absent. [n.4] However, objects are constantly being replaced by new ones in all the sense organs. These do not destroy the preceding motion, which does not disappear with age, but rather it goes into the background. This is obvious from sleep, when imaginations are no less clear than in sensation itself, because the other sensoria prevent objects from getting in. And since the phantasms of people who are asleep have their origin in sensation and are the same motion, dream will be the fifth name of imaginations.
Again, when a number of different motions are set up in a liquid, the result is a single motion which is a compound of different ones. The same thing happens when a number of phantasms come from the spirits, the brain, and the heart, and coalesce into a single phantasm — for example, in imagining a golden mountain, or a centaur as compounded from a horse and a man. This is how we can attach to ourselves the magnificent achievements of heroes while we are dreaming or boasting. So we can attach the sixth name of fiction or figments to the continuation of the original motion. Further, we can attach the seventh name of discourse to a continuous sequence of imaginations, in which [n.5] one phantasm customarily arises from another one next to it, just as when a part of some water is moved, it leads and draws the neighbouring part with it. However, there are also neighbouring phantasms [312] which immediately follow each other in sensation itself.
Discourse, or the sequence of imaginations, is either orderly, or disorderly, and as if random — for example, when someone’s thoughts wander from Pythagoras to a bean, [n.6] and from a bean to a fable, and from a fable to Aesop; and this is the way people think when they are dreaming or delirious. Orderly discourse, on the other hand, is governed by some objective which someone wants to achieve and strives after — whether supplied by some initial starting-point, or by the imagination of the objective itself. An example of the first is when we want to find something which has been lost because it is so small, for we scan the whole area with our eyes, and it does not matter where we begin. Poets do the same when they want to find words which fit the metre; not to forget dogs, which cover a whole field no matter where they started from — and this seems to be almost a kind of discourse. [n.7]
But when the one takes the starting point of a discourse which runs from the objective, which happens when the imagination of the route to the objective follows the imagination of the objective, whatever starting point is taken, the sequence of imaginations proceeds through a sequence of causes and effects, whether from cause to effect, or from effect to cause.
If the process runs from the imagination of a cause to the imagination of an effect in the direction of the objective (which is always the last effect), it is called synthesis, or composition. If it runs from effect to cause, one after another in the direction of what happened earlier, it is called analysis or resolution. But both of them consist in recollection.
An example of the former is when someone imagines some building work, and starts from the materials in order to propose a form for the house. In this case, the imagination proceeds from the materials to their transportation, and then to the foundations, [313] walls, roof, etc. And this is like how birds build their nests. An example of the second process is the move from the thought of the form of the house to the thought of the place where it is to be built, and following that, the transportation of the materials to that place, etc. And it would be the same in the case of birds, if they could go backwards from fledglings, through eggs, nest, and materials, back to the location, and thus put the analytic method into practice.
This recollection of means to an objective is called an art, if, whenever we imagine the objective, the imagination runs through the means in the same order, proceeding from cause to effect. It is called scientific knowledge of causes if the process is from the effects to the cause.
If there is a memory of the succession from one thing to another, [n.8] and from one event to another, in other words of antecedent and consequent, this is called experience. Consequently, someone [n.9] who sees an event similar to a past event will believe that a similar effect will also follow, or that there had previously occurred an event similar to the one they now see. For example, someone who sees a thick, black cloud will expect rain, because they previously saw rain to follow; or if they see rain, they will say that such a cloud preceded it, because they remember this to have been the case in the past. For what else is imagination of the future than imagination of the past? We imagine or suppose its order to be connected with the present, by taking similar events (namely the present and the past) not as similar, but as numerically identical. This is why an event which really preceded the present [n.10] event seems to follow it, by our own supposition and fiction. But whatever presupposes the present is called future.
Just as memory of particular experiences relating to [314] the past is called experience, [n.11] so memory relating to the future is called expectation. Consequently, a wide variety of experience is the same thing as foresight, or prescience of the future, since it is wholly dependent on experience. Hence the more [n.12] experience quick-witted people have, the more foresightful they are.
Those who have observed and remembered the similarity of a sequence of events have the consequent as a sign of the antecedent, and the antecedent as a sign of the consequent. So there can be conjecture of the future and of the past only from signs; and causes and effects, because of the following of the one from the other, are signs of each other for those who have experienced them.
When we imagine the difference between two things perceived in sensation, this comparison is the beginning of discourse. But this cannot happen with the clarity we usually need for reasoning, unless we attach fixed marks to them, which enable us to connect present things to past things. These marks we call names, and they help us to examine and investigate the causes of things. For how could we compare things or their phantasms, without being able to bring them back into our memory by means of various words functioning as labels? Since brute animals do not have them, they are far inferior to us. Indeed, they cannot even distinguish things from phantasms, and enjoy no pleasures other than sensual ones. [n.13]
The human word which we impose on things in order to signify them, conjures up the same imagination in us as does the thing itself. Hence all things which are similar to each other should be allotted the same name. Such a name is therefore called a universal (even though the things signified by it are particulars), as when the name ‘white’ is applied to an egg, as well as to [315] paper, snow, etc. And since there is nothing which is not similar to other things in some respect or other, everything has innumerable names. For example, a human has the name ‘human’ in common with all other humans, ‘father’ in common with all other fathers, ‘body’ in common with all other bodies, and ‘animal’ with all other animals, etc. But if you add a negative particle to a positive name, it becomes a note of dissimilarity or difference, and it is called an ‘infinite’ name, such ‘non-human’, or ‘non-white’.
If two names are joined together by the verb ‘to be’, [n.14] you get a proposition, by which we mean that the consequent (the second name) applies to the same thing as the antecedent (the first name) belongs to. For example, when we say that a human is an animal, we signify that the name ‘human’ and the name ‘animal’ both apply to the same thing, and that the thing which is called ‘human’ is also called ‘animal’; and hence that this proposition is true, since truth and falsehood seem to be the same as a true and false proposition.
Again, when two propositions are joined together, they form a syllogism, or the addition of both into a sum, provided that they have one name in common, which is established as the intermediary between those which are not in common. For example, when we say ‘A human is an animal, and an animal is a body,’ we conclude [n.15] that a human is a body. Through this syllogism we note that the third name ‘body’ applies to everything to which the first name ‘human’ belongs; and similarly, that the second name ‘animal’ applies to the same things as the first name ‘man’, and the third name ‘body’ to the same as the second name ‘animal’. If the names do in fact apply, the syllogism is said to be true, otherwise it is said to be a paralogism.
The invention of names and of propositions forming syllogisms is essential for the unwavering advance of the mind from innumerable acts of imagination about individual things. It progresses to linguistic discourse, [316] and compresses it into universal theorems, so that now it cannot make mistakes in discourse, provided that all names are grounded in definite imaginations before they are admitted into speech.
If we are said to understand universals, and if a universal is nothing other than a name, then the understanding will not be of things themselves, but of names and of names combined into speech. And we are said [n.16] to understand a name, when hearing or reading it recalls the imagination to which the name was applied. Similarly, we are said to understand a proposition, when hearing it brings back into the memory the fact that its subject (the antecedent name) is contained in its predicate (the consequent name), or that the second name applies to everything that the first name applies to.
This is why reason is called the faculty of syllogising, since reasoning is the continuous adding together of propositions into a single sum, or the calculus of names. If the names refer to numbers, we get arithmetic; if to magnitudes, we get geometry; and if to sounds, we get the science of music. [n.17] All these presuppose right reasoning, which starts from the precise definition of names, and proceeds through syllogism, or the continuous connecting together of true propositions. This process arises from right reason, or the capacity of proceeding in this way whenever we wish, which we can call the infallibility of reasoning. [n.18]
Having explained the nature of our cognitive faculties, I should now say something about the will and our motivational faculties. First, when a motion is propagated right into the heart by the action of objects, it is called [317] pleasant if it helps the motion of the heart, and unpleasant if it harms and impedes it. The motion which pleasure consists in is the beginning of animal motion towards the object by which it is set in motion, and is therefore called appetite. Similarly, the beginning of the motion of avoiding the object is called avoidance, or aversion, or unpleasantness. If there is no conation to approach the object because it is seen to be present, the pleasure is called love. Likewise aversion without a conation to avoid it is called hatred. [n.19]
Pleasure consists either in imagination alone, or in sensation and imagination combined. If the former, it consists either in memory or in creative imagination, and there will be only memories and after-effects of past pleasures and displeasures, or expectations of future ones, which is the same as memory of the past. Sensation and imagination often interfere with each other and interact so quickly that they seem to merge into something half-way between the two. This is why they subsequently give rise to mental disturbances or passions such as hope, fear, anger, jealousy, ambition, regret, the affections of those who laugh or cry, and an almost infinite number of others which have no name.
Strictly speaking, good and evil are attributed to objects. Whatever pleases, or delights, or is sought after by each person is said to be good as far as they are concerned; and what is unpleasant, evil. The attractive is that in which there are signs of good, and the offensive in which there are no such signs. So good and evil are said to be relative to the individual person.
Things which please and things which displease (or good and evil) are so interconnected that we cannot see right to the end of the chain at a single glance; and they are connected by so tight a bond, that they have to be accepted or rejected as a whole. If in the whole sequence there is more good than evil, the whole is good, and it is good to accept the whole; otherwise it is evil to accept it. We make a mistake [318] on occasions when there is more evil than good, but we fail to anticipate it. On such occasions we are said to have chosen the apparent good.
But we are said to deliberate when at first there seems to be more evil, and then there seems to be more good; and at first we are deterred, and then we are immediately attracted towards a particular course of action, depending on whether the good or evil weighs more heavily. [n.20] So deliberation is the alternation between appetite and avoidance. This alternation between avoidance and appetite does not come to an end until there is no more freedom to act or not to act; and the end of deliberation is the renunciation of freedom. [n.21]
If you like this style of philosophy, please implore the author not to begrudge the whole corpus [n.22] to posterity.
Go to Index to the Preface to Mersenne’s
Ballistic