THE LUCRETIAN THEORY OF SENSE

PERCEPTION

In approaching this subject it will be necessary to determine the poet's view of the nature of elemental substance, the nature of objective matter, and the nature of the sentient being. It may then be possible to discover his theory of the effect of the impact of the former upon the latter.

The first beginnings of things are very minute, colorless, hard, homogeneous bodies, infinite in number, fashioned in a small variety of shapes, possessed of inherent motion, and exist mixed in all perceivable objects. Idols emitted from the surface of all things are composed of like primal elements as the objects they leave, preserve for some time the outline of those objects, are infinite in number, so thin they do not appear separately to our senses, move in all possible directions, but only in straight lines, and travel faster than light. Like idols, light, heat, smoke, smell, taste, and sound are emitted from things, but these travel forth less swiftly than do idols because they are not stationed in the front rank on the surface of things, and must come from their inner depths. They are broken up and torn in passing outward on their winding way. The reason then for the swift motion of the idols is that they are very thin, are stationed in the front rank on the surface of things, and have a cause at their back to impel them forward.

Emitted bodies are the cause of sensation. Vision is produced by idols, taste by flavors, smell by odors, sound by flying bodies. No single emitted body is felt; sensation arises from the impact of the constant and unbroken stream of emissions on the sentient body, as when the wind blows we feel only its general effect upon us. Idols supplement other effluences from objects and suggest the qualities appreciated by other sense organs than the eyes. All composite bodies are porous. Emitted bodies fill all space but are not admitted by all substances alike. Some may be transmitted, others reflected, and still others absorbed, showing that they differ in the shapes of their first beginnings. Pleasure or pain arises from the contact with sense of smooth and round, or hooked and angular seeds composing the effluences. The former enter the senses easily and smoothly, the latter tear open passages into our senses and in entering in break through the body. The atoms then are in motion. This motion is shared by bodies emitted from the surface and from the interior of things. These effluences come in contact with sense organs and produce sensation. For motion mounts up from first beginnings and step by step issues forth to our senses.

We now turn to the sentient being. This being is composed of non-sentient seeds. The primal ele

ments can have no sense. But sensations can be begotten out of no sensations just as the chick is hatched from the egg and as worms burst forth from putrefying earth, after heavy rains. There is no sense apart from bodily organism. For all sense is bound up with flesh, sinews and veins, which we see in everything are soft and formed of mortal body. Moreover the sense organs were not born in the body that we might use them but that being born they might beget for themselves a use. Seeing did not exist before the eyes were born nor the employment of speech ere the tongue was made. Consigning the tired body to rest is much older than a soft cushioned couch, and the slaking of thirst is older than cups. Couches and cups have been invented to meet the uses and wants of life.

For the Epicureans the universal sense is touch. This applies to sensations arising from the outside and to those issuing from within. Thus we see that sound, smell, taste, and sight are all caused in the same way as is touch. For example, voices and words consist of bodily first beginnings since a man by much speaking loses a part of his body and becomes hoarse. Smoothness of elements causes pleasure in hearing, roughness causes pain. If the distance between the speaker and hearer is too great the words must be huddled together in passing through much air and the voice be disorganized in its flight through space. A single word spoken in the presence of an assembly is immediately separated into many voices suited to the ear of each listener. The echo of a word shows clearly that the word has a bodily form and retains that form even when reflected from a hard surface.

Again, smells are bodily emissions from odorgiving objects. The smell of honey attracts bees, of carrion vultures, of game dogs. Odors are composed of larger primal elements than is voice, since they cannot penetrate as far as sound. The impact of odor cools down as it loiters through the air and the courier particles of things are no longer hot when they finish their race to sense.

Again, taste results from contact. The tongue and palate are provided with intricate openings and cavities. Some of these openings are larger, some smaller in size, some are three-cornered, some square, some round and others many-angled. The openings differ as the shapes and motions of the primal elements require. The passages vary as varies the texture formed by the seeds which bound them. Thus the same thing may taste bitter to some, to others sweet.

Again, the nature of sight is impact, resulting from the same essential cause as does touch. When we apprehend by touch in the dark that any particular object is square the image of that square figure will fall on our sight in the light revealing to us the identity of that object. Thus the cause of seeing is idol impact and nothing can be seen without idols. These enter the eye wherever we turn our gaze, but the subsequent history of the idols Lucretius does not tell. Certain idols, it is said, are afforded a ready passage out of the eye, but this is only an exceptional case. The sweeping of the air through the pupil makes possible the judgment of distance. As with the other senses sight is pleasureable or painful according to the nature of the first beginnings present in the idols, and according to the nature of their impact. Idols of the sun strike the eye with such force that they produce blindness. Idols of blazing bright objects contain seeds of fire which hurt the eyes. One afflicted with jaundice sees things overcast with a yellowish hue because idols of such color emitted from his body meet and mingle with emissions from all other objects round about and many too are mixed up in his eyes.

For Lucretius light and darkness are both positive principles, though the former is more active. His ingenious explanation of the reason why we see objects that are in the light but cannot see anything in a dark place, irrespective of our own position whether in the light or in the dark, shows how near he came to adopting light as a medium of vision.

The senses altogether are all-discerning, everoperating, clearly-appreciating, truth-revealing, and infallible in their nature. The all-discerning senses are kindled into action in each living thing only when the living thing has first been begotten and the primal elements have met together and combined appropriately the vital motions. Two phenomena, sleep and fainting, impede the operation of the senses in the living body. Perception is attributed to the senses. Because of their brightness and well defined form the sun and moon must appear to the senses in their true outline and in their actual size. Many phenomena of light are delusive but this delusion must be ascribed to the frailty of the mind and not to the failure of the senses. The square tower appears round at a distance because the angles are not seen at all or are obscured as the idols move through space. To the unwitting ships in the harbor seem all askew, and the oar appears bent at the surface of the water. At night when the wind drives the clouds the stars seem to be in motion. Reflected in a pool of water the sky, clouds and birds appear below the surface. One fording a swift stream seems to be borne against the current. A long portico seems to converge to a vanishing point. When we press the eye-ball everything appears double. But the greatest part of these cases cheats us on account of the mental suppositions which we add on of ourselves, taking those things as seen which have not been seen by the senses. For nothing is harder than to separate manifest facts from doubtful which straightway the mind adds on of itself.

Furthermore the senses must be infallible. For what surer test of truth and error can we have? The knowledge of the true first comes from the senses. That which can and does refute things false by things true must have the higher certainty. If the senses are not true all reason which is wholly founded on the senses must be false and therefore unable to contradict them. Moreover the senses are equally certain. And the same sense is not more true at one time than at another. If the senses are not to be trusted all reason and life itself must fail. What therefore has appeared at any time true to the senses is true. A building constructed by a wry rule, an untrue square, or a false level cannot stand.

What then is the agency of sense? This no doubt exists in us not through any harmony but by the agency of the soul which resides in and fills the body and is as much a part of the body as are the limbs. This soul is corporeal in its nature but is composed of much finer and fewer seeds than is the body. Its power may be dulled as when one is struck a heavy blow, or as when one faints. Or it may be dormant as when one sleeps. At such times the soul in part is forced out and in part withdraws into the inner recesses of the body. A part too scattered abroad through the frame cannot get united together and so act and be acted upon by motion; for nature intercepts all communications and blocks up all the passages; and therefore sense retires deep into the frame as the motions are all altered. The rapid kindling sense like a flame springing up from hidden fire shows that the soul is only dormant in sleep. Though it is not the life death results when the soul is forced entirely out of the body. Although the soul is the agency of feeling yet it is the body and not the soul mingled therein that feels. The soul is wont to perform motions in the sinews and in the body, and motion is necessary to sense. Arising from impact this motion is present and shared by the soul thus producing sensation only when the relation between the body and the soul is normal. When anything happens to interrupt this normal relation the particles of the soul become so disarranged that they cannot respond to sense-giving motions. Sensation, therefore, is in the body and results from sense-giving motions shared by the soul in its normal interaction with the body. This would seem to show that the soul functioning normally in the sense organs is sufficient to produce sensation and perception by sense.

It now becomes necessary to determine if possible what is the function if any of the rational soul (animus) in perception. As is the soul (anima), so is the mind (animus) corporeal in its nature. Animus belongs to all living creatures and to the gods. Although it is extremely fine in its nature the force of the soul (anima) supports the weight of the body, because it is so closely conjoined and formed into a single being with it. The force of the mind (animus) also is said to be closely joined with the body as the air is joined with the earth. It is able to lift the body and to guide the limbs. Not only are the mind and soul each in close union with the body but they are themselves united, making one nature. The directing principle however is the mind (animus) and the understanding (mens). Unlike the soul which is scattered throughout the body the mind has a fixed place in the middle region of the breast. Moreover as the body depends for its existence on the soul, and perishes utterly when the soul is forced out, so without the mind no part of the soul can maintain itself an instant in the frame. The soul and the mind are related to each other as the eye-ball is related to the pupil of the eye. As the first may in part be removed without injury to the pupil so the soul in part may be lopped off with the limbs without peril to the mind. As the interaction of the soul and the body produces sensation and perception so also the interaction of the mind and the body produces life. The mind and soul are said to form one united substance, and with respect to composition and destiny are used as synonymous terms. To the activities of the mind belong the passions, belief, reason, attention, comprehension, conjecture, error in inference, volition and memory. Such expressions as iactus animi, iniectus animi, voluntas animi, mens animi, concilium animi, and sensus animi seem to indicate that the mind possesses not only reflective and volitional powers, but also possesses feeling. But the term sensus animi quite invariably seems to relate to consciousness and to have no reference to sensation. Yet there is a sense in which the mind is said to feel. This feeling, however, is in connection with the reflective and volitional powers of the mind, since these powers are stimulated to action by mind impressions. For example, one walks because the idols of walking provoke the mind and the will determines to walk. We direct our steps by the same process of predetermined will exercised over the limbs by the mind. Aside from this class of mind impressions three passages of the poem deal with the mind as impressed with idols of unusual types. These passages are 4.722-756; 3.359-369; 4.962-986.

The first of these passages follows immediately upon the explanation of the operation of the senses. Its declared purpose is to explain the origin and operation of things that move the mind. It continues thus: Many idols are emitted from objects which on meeting readily join together in the air. These idols are of much finer texture than those that enter the eye and provoke vision since they penetrate the pores of the body, excite the fine nature of the mind and provoke its sense. Thus

appear Centaurs, Scyllas, and Cerberus-like forms, and ghosts of the departed dead, since idols of every kind are everywhere borne about, partly those which are spontaneously produced, partly those which withdraw from various things, and those which are formed from compounding the shapes of these. Shapes of centaurs are formed from the union of idols of horse and man due to the character of these idols. All other such like things are produced in the same way. Because of their fineness these idols are borne swiftly along, and any one of them by a single stroke moves the mind; for the mind is itself fine and wondrously nimble. Thus far we have a clear statement of the nature of things that come into and move the mind. They are all idols of non-existing things, unlike the ordinary idols both in their composition and in their method of operation.

The next statement in this passage is a comparison of the operation of the senses with the operation of the mind. So far as the processes are alike, seeing with the eyes and seeing with the mind must be produced in a like way. But we must note here the emphasis on the process. Lines 749-776 of this passage are offered in explanation of this impact of idols on the mind, comparing it with the impact of ordinary idols on the eyes. And since 3.359-369 contains a practical denial of the participation of the mind in the ordinary acts of vision it seems quite clear that the objects of vision in the two cases are not the same. The real point of similarity is the process, i. e. idol impact. Ordinary idols strike the eyes and provoke vision. Thus we see a lion by such idols of a lion as fall upon our eyes. Extraordinary unusual idols affect the mind directly, yet by impact. Thus the mind is moved by idols to see also those other things which it sees just as clearly as do the eyes except that it sees much finer ones. The passage continues: And for no other reason does the mind's intelligence wake, when the body sleeps, except that these same (unusual) idols (line 733) provoke our minds as provoke them when we are awake, and to such a degree that we seem for sure to see him whom death and earth hold fast. Nature requires this to be so, because during sleep the inoperative senses and dormant memory cannot refute these apparitions as they can and do refute them when we are awake. The Poet surely cannot mean by these words that the ordinary sense impressions of our waking hours would so operate on our minds in sleep as to produce the phenomenon of a wraith.

The second passage continues: It is foolish to say that the eyes can see nothing and that the mind sees through them as through open doors. The sense of the eyes contradicts this, especially since we cannot see blazing bright objects at all; for the sense draws and forces back the lights to the very pupils where they become entangled in our eyes. This is not the case with doors, for they do not where we see through them suffer pain. Moreover if the mind does see through the eyes it would see much better if the eyes were entirely removed. This seems to be a strict denial of the participation of the mind in the act of perception by vision. Touch, smell, taste, and hearing, as well as sight, seem to be accomplished fully in the several sense organs. One criticism of Heraclitus was that he believed the senses can truly perceive fire but did not believe they can perceive all other things which are not a whit less clear. The perfect adaptation of the primal elements in effluences to the structure of the sense organs produces pleasurable sensations, the maladaptation of these produces pain, additional evidence that sensations are accomplished in the normally functioning sense organs.

The third passage introduces a special case in which the mind is called into action under unusual stress of pursuit, zeal, or inclination. Often during sleep the lawyer is busy with courts, the general with campaigns, the sailor with the elements. All other pursuits and arts at times of unusual excitation are seen to occupy and mock the minds of men in sleep. The same is true when for days together men give constant attention to the games. We often notice that after they have ceased to perceive these with their senses there yet remain passages that have been opened in the mind where the surviving idols of these same things may come. Accordingly for many days those same objects present themselves to the eyes, so that even when awake men seem to see the dancers, to hear the clear music of the harp, to behold the same assembly, and the decorations of the stage. So great is the influence of zeal, inclination and pursuit. Under the necessity of explaining the recurrence of past events Lucretius here introduces the mind as a factor in sense perception. We have seen that when the senses and the memory are dormant the idols of unreal things make their impression on the mind unchallenged and uncorrected. But under great excitation passages are made and left in the mind whereby surviving idols of real things past may enter, and make the same real things reappear. It is for this very reason that sights and sounds no longer present continue to appear to the mind, viz.: because under unusual excitation the ordinary sense idols have forced temporary passages into the mind and have impressed it directly. Naturally this direct impression would cease when the passages are again closed and the idols too have disappeared. But this condition does

not exist in the normal process of perception through sense.

There are then two types of idols each performing its peculiar function. The one type includes the countless ordinary idols emitted from the surface of all perceivable things; and these wherever we turn our gaze enter the eye and there provoke vision, yet only by their constant and unceasing impact. The other type includes much finer, spontaneously begotten and compounded idols; and these enter the pores of the body and can separately impress the mind, their seeming reality occurring in sleep when memory and sense are dormant. Thus idols of the ordinary type have no direct relation to the mind except at times of unusual and prolonged stress. If such idols were wont to reach the mind we should see everything we had ever seen for some time after the things themselves had passed away. This would result in utter confusion.

The function of the mind seems to be reserved for the forming of concepts and conclusions based upon the senses. Here is room for error which cannot exist in the senses. And this error could not arise unless we experienced in ourselves some other motion connected with, but going beyond, direct perception. If opinion resulting from this secondary motion is not confirmed or is contradicted error arises; if it is confirmed or not contradicted truth results. The power of confirmation and contradiction rests with the senses. Opinion and supposition are functions of the mind but these are not involved in the act of perception.

A review of later theories of sense perception shows that scholars have differed widely in their explanation of this phenomenon. To say that Lucretius's theory is inadequate is to ask what theory is adequate. Valuable contributions have been made to our knowledge of the interaction of the self and the not-self but the mystery is yet unsolved.

ROBERT B. ENGLISH.

WASHINGTON AND JEFFERSON COLLEGE.

REVIEW

The World of Homer. By Andrew Lang. London and New York: Longmans, Green, and Co. (1910). Pp. xiv + 306. 6s.3d.

This book is closely akin in title and matter to Homer and his Age, written by the same author in 1906, but it marks the great advance which Homeric scholarship has made in four years, and is a new, though similar, book. The purpose of the author is to show that Homer does not picture a mosaic civilization with traces of many ages and many races, but a real civilization lasting for a brief period in a perfectly well defined space of Greek culture. This culture is the one which followed close after the destruction of the Cretan palaces not far from 1400 B. C. and had ceased to be long before the Dipylon Age. This culture is the Achaean culture; Greek was the spoken language; iron had ceased to be a precious metal to be used only for rings, but was employed for tools and implements, while bronze still held its place for swords, spears, and armour, since the warrior hesitated to trust himself to the newer and more pliable metal; the dead were not buried, as formerly, but were cremated. In the poet's vision the Greek mainland is the center of Achaean dominion, Crete is a dependency, and there is no suggestion that Crete had been the center of another civilization, and had sent its arts to the mainland of Greece. Homer avoids the Athenian tales about Cretan tyranny, about the Minotaur, and the prowess of Theseus in aid of the freedom of Athens. These things are not touched upon, as they certainly would have been had Athenians freely interpolated the poems. Homer entirely ignores all Athenian and Ionian traditions.

Muelder has made one of his chief arguments for his assumed use of the Elegiac poets by Homer the fact that the preparations for battle assumed fighting in ranks with regular military tactics, but in actual combat this was abandoned and they fought, not as armies, but as individuals, that is, the descriptions of the preparations were drawn from the poet's own age, while the actual descriptions of fighting were traditional. As this argument has seemed convincing to Professors Cauer and Murray, I quote part of Mr. Lang's reply:

According to Mr. Murray, in the Iliad 'the men are, so to speak, advertised as fighting in one way, and then they proceed to fight in another'. they are 'advertised as fighting in one way', that is, in ordered phalanxes of dismounted men-at-arms, and they do fight in that way from dawn till noon, and then when 'the phalanxes are broken', when 'the battle is scattered', they 'fight in another way'; there is flight, pursuit, and examples of individual valour, there is a rally, and the lines of men-on-foot reform. What else could there possibly be? The charge of the Union brigade, at Waterloo, begins by fighting in one way', a resistless charge of squadrons, and ends by 'fighting in another way', in knots, with individual examples of flight, or of single prowess. So, concludes Mr. Lang, they fought at Bannockburn, and so men have always fought before the invention of modern projectiles.

The attack on Reichel's theory of Homeric armour, so ably made in Homer and his Age, is now much strengthened, particularly by the argument drawn from a Cretan seal which shows a corselet so loose that the armour might be pierced and the warrior dodge the thrust, exactly as described in the Iliad. The argument that the 'tower shield' afforded sufficient protection and that it belongs to a different age from defensive body armour is met by showing that in widely different lands and ages warriors have worn both a large shield and defen

sive body armour. Certainly Reichel's theory and the modifications thereof in Robert's Studien zur Ilias are both definitely eliminated by Mr. Lang.

The theory advanced in Homer and his Age that bronze was the metal for instruments of war, iron for knives and tools has had a striking confirmation by the discovery in Crete of a tomb in which were found bronze weapons and iron knives. Also in the city of Gezer a stratum has been found in which all the weapons were of bronze, all tools and domestic implements of iron, a convincing proof of the existence of just such a state of culture as is pictured in Homer.

The general absence of temples in Homer has long been noted; so when a temple is mentioned it is generally supposed to mark the passage as late. Says Mr. Lang on this point: "Given the circumstance of the heroes in both Epics, an army in the field, a wanderer in unknown lands, the rare mention of temples is no proof that, when they appear, they mark late passages, while the altars in the open air mark early passages. Moreover, hecatombs could not be slain in the temple, nor could a large army be accommodated in the house of a god". Nothing could be more acute than the answer to the argument advanced by Bethe that Hector was a Theban hero and that many of those whom he slew in the action of the Iliad had previously been slain by him while defending Thebes: "since Hector slew Thessalians, Aetolians, Phocians, and Boeotians, this shows the road by which the tribe which honored Hector migrated". Mr. Lang shows that Hector slew Stichios, an Athenian, Amphimachus, an Elian, and Periphetes of Mycenae; hence Hector and his tribe must move on to Mycenae and Elis. This kills the argument.

Athenian or Ionian traditions dominate the Cyclic poets, yet are absent from Homer. The complete avoidance of the folk-element, the Maerchen, in the Iliad is one of the things that distinguishes Homer from the Ionian Cyclic poets, the Hesiodic school, and the Athenian tragedians. A careful examination of the Cyclic poets shows how diverse are their ideas, tastes, rites, and legends. These Ionian characteristics never appear in Homer, a fact which shows that the Ionians had no power to change or expand these poems. "In no point or trait of life, religion, legends, armour, tactics, rites, taste, poetic method, or anything else, is Homer affected by Athenian or Ionian influence".

One chapter is given to a discussion of Professor Murray's Rise of the Greek Epic and to a rebuttal of the argument there advanced that the poems of Homer show the gradual expurgation by which they have been freed from many immoral, revolting, and primitive beliefs. "Whose taste was the cause of this expurgation? Not the taste of the Cyclic poets, for they preserved these traits; not the taste