Observations, censures, and confutations of notorious errours in Mr. Hobbes his Leviathan and other his bookes to which are annexed occasionall anim-adversions on some writings of the Socinians and such hæreticks of the same opinion with him / by William Lucy ...

Sect. 14.

Having brought the stroak of the fire, as he conceives to the brain, he then saith (that the brain, by resistance or reaction, makes that motion rebound to the Optick Nerve, which we not conceiving as motion, or rebound from within, do think it is without, and call is light, as hath been already shewed by a str••ak) Why he should so insist upon this strange, and, until by him, unheard of rebound, I cannot i∣magine; he gives no reason for it, nor doe I think the subject is capable of any; certainly the eye it self is a most tender part, and apprehensive of a stroak from a∣broad, as well as from a rebound, and certainly the stroak is stronger coming from the fire immediately, then re∣bounding from the brain, neither is the brain a fit object to make a rebound, rebounds are made by hard and solid bodies, the stroaks made upon beds, cushions, and the like, sink, and are lost in them; the rebound is scarce a∣ny thing, if any thing, but the brain is such. Now, as I have said before, there is no reason why the brain should expell every object; and againe, it may be urged, that either the brain or the eye is the organ of this sense, (no man knows by his discourse what he will say) If the brain, why should it only then perceive the object when it rebounds to the Optick Nerve, and not whilst the stroak is within it self? If the eye be the organ, as certainly it is, why doth it not perceive the object before the re∣bound, as well as after; as it passeth to the brain, as well as when it cometh from it? I am perswaded he can answer nothing to this Dilemma; what he saith, that (we not conceiving as motion, or rebound from within, do think it is without) is true, if he affirm it of light or colour, as he doth, for we can learn from him no reason to the con∣trary,

and all sense shewes us the thing without, and therefore we conceive it such; what he speaks of his in∣stance of a stroak, I have spoke to it before, but here add, that there is a mighty difference betwixt that violent motion, which he expresseth from a stroak upon the eye, which flasheth fire out of the eye, and this natural moti∣on, which proceeding from the visible object, creeps in∣to the eye by the sight of it: I can conceive the first may happen to a blind eye; such sparks, with a vio∣lent blow, may be beat out of it; I am confident, if his Philosophy were true, that it comes from the Optick Nerve, it may be done upon an eye that is blind, but this other passage of the object to the eye, is onely by the sight, and cannot be where the eye is not fitted for vision.

Notes

• No rebound from the brain to the Optick nerve.