Indeed that this is so is made quite
evident as follows. Light or darkness, sounds and smells leave
bodies quite unaffected; what does affect bodies is not these but
the bodies which are their vehicles, e.g. what splits the trunk of a
tree is not the sound of the thunder but the air which accompanies
thunder. Yes, but, it may be objected, bodies are affected by what
is tangible and by flavours. If not, by what are things that are
without soul affected, i.e. altered in quality? Must we not, then,
admit that the objects of the other senses also may affect them? Is
not the true account this, that all bodies are capable of being
affected by smells and sounds, but that some on being acted upon,
having no boundaries of their own, disintegrate, as in the instance of
air, which does become odorous, showing that some effect is produced
on it by what is odorous? But smelling is more than such an
affection by what is odorous-what more? Is not the answer that,
while the air owing to the momentary duration of the action upon it of
what is odorous does itself become perceptible to the sense of
smell, smelling is an observing of the result produced?
Book III
1
THAT there is no sixth sense in addition to the five
enumerated-sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch-may be established by
the following considerations:
If we have actually sensation of everything of which touch can
give us sensation (for all the qualities of the tangible qua
tangible are perceived by us through touch); and if absence of a sense
necessarily involves absence of a sense-organ; and if (1) all
objects that we perceive by immediate contact with them are
perceptible by touch, which sense we actually possess, and (2) all
objects that we perceive through media, i.
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