Hobbes writes as follows in his Lessons to the Savilian Professors (Molesworth, EW.VII.341):

‘Even if these two [Gassendi and Sir Kenelm Digby], or any of those I associated with at Paris, had published my own doctrine before I did, they ought not to be said to have found it out before me, since it was known in Paris, and announced as mine by Mersenne in the preface to his Ballistic. The first six pages are devoted wholly to expounding my opinion about sensation and the other faculties of the soul.’

Mersenne’s Ballistica was published in Paris in 1644, the same year as he published Hobbes’s Tractatus Opticus. Hobbes was in Paris at the time, and it seems that, apart from the first and last paragraphs, the extract below is either in Hobbes’s own words, or very closely based on them.

Page numbers refer to Molesworth, Latin Works, Vol. 5.

Go to Index to Hobbes’s Preface to Mersenne’s Ballistic