"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."
Chapter One: Of Sense
- Hobbes continues/reinforces the sentiment in his introduction that man is a part of nature, and nature is a machine. "For what is the heart but a spring; and the nerves but so many strings, and the joints but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body such as was intended by the artificer?"
- He argues that the mind is a blank slate incapable of generating thought on it's own - rather, thought is merely a reaction to experience. The cause-and-effect result of nature (as a machine) moving, which in turn causes motion in man (also just another mechanism).
- The argument follows, that the individual also reacts/is set in motion by the movements of other men. "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 actions."
- Here, Hobbes makes his first critique on the common thinking of the day. He asserts that "where we know the thing we see is in one place, the appearance in another." Meaning that the descriptors we ascribe to objects, such as the red color of an apple, is not in fact a quality/attribute inherent in and projected by that apple. Rather, the color we perceive as red is a "fancy it begets in us", or the way our bodily machinery/mind choose to interpret the sight.