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. 2.

The first argument he proves this by, is drawn from sounds, and, in them, from ecchoes, (A man (saith he) may heare double, or treble, by multiplication of ec••••••es, which ecchoes (saith he) are sounds, as well as the o••••ginal, and, not being in one and the same place, cannot be inherent in the body that maketh them.)

This argument receives its answer variously from Philosophers, according to their divers conceits of the nature of sounds; for such as conceive sounds to be car∣ried in their real nature, by the motion of the ayr, to the organ of sense, these conclude an eccho to be a new sound propagated by the former, differing from the first individually, not naturally, we may call it, if you will, another of the same, as some Psalms of Hopkins and Sternholds Translation; So that as we see musical in∣struments, two in the same room, one Violl touched, the other, out of harmony of parts, being fitted and pre∣pared for such a motion and sound, receives the same, and that sound is the first, but a little softer, which in a whis∣pering place, as I have observed at Gloucester Church, it would be stronger: Now this is another motion, a deri∣ved motion, and a derived sound from the same first cause; but as the motion was the immediate cause of the first sound; so the first sound was parent and immediate cause of the second sound. Now here is a divers sound and a divers subject, the ecchoing place, or the ayre dis∣sipated and expulsed the subject of that eccho, but the bo∣dies moved, or the ayr forced by these bodies, the sub∣ject of the first. This is one way of Philosophers, and doth abundantly satisfie his objection, and shew there are outward subjects to these two sounds, each hath his own.

But others make this eccho a kind of rebound of that sound, not onely stopping the ayre, which carried the sound from going farther; but retorting it againe from whence it came, like a Ball, which moves at the first by the hand that banded it out, but, when it is stopt by a wall, returnes towards the place it moved from first, if it meet with the wall in a right line to its motion, or, if oblique, moves obliquely, and may in that motion be retorted by two or three walls; and this answer shews the outward subject of this sound to be the ayre, which carries it about with it, and is retorted.

A third way is, of such who conceive the subject of this sound to be ayre, in which at the first it was propa∣gated; and that sound, from that place and subject of its birth, emitts, as colours do, its species and likenesse which by ecchoing places are entertained, as the images of colours are in looking-glasses, and there shew them∣selves, and from them multiply themselves to the ear, or perhaps to other ecchoing places, as glasses transmit their species; and this likewise fully answers his objecti∣on, and shews how there may be one subject, and divers ecchoes of the same sound; if the sound be double, it hath a diverse subject; if it be a rebound, the same ball is di∣versly retorted from the power of the same stroak by divers wals; if it be a species or likeness, the same colour with divers images of it. Let no man expect my opi∣nion, be it any of these; it serves my turne to invalid his argument; and these opinions, and some expres∣sions like these, might he have observed in Philoso∣phers, and ought to have confuted.

Notes

• The Philoso∣phers fi••st o∣pinion concer∣ning ecchoes.
• A second opi∣nion of theirs concerning Ecchoes.
• Their third o∣pinion con∣cerning ec∣choes.