me
with taste; this sense is only an affecting of the substance and form of
the tongue; the tongue is the subject. It is the same with smell; it is
well known that odor affects the nostrils, and that it is in the nostrils,
and that the nostrils are affected by the odoriferous particles touching
them. It is the same with hearing, which seems to be in the place where
the sound originates; but the hearing is in the ear, and is an affecting
of its substance and form; that the hearing is at a distance from the ear
is an appearance. It is the same with sight. When a man sees objects at a
distance, the seeing appears to be there; yet the seeing is in the eye,
which is the subject, and is likewise an affecting of the subject.
Distance is solely from the judgment concluding about space from things
intermediate, or from the diminution and consequent indistinctness of
the object, an image of which is produced interiorly in the eye according
to the angle of incidence. From this it is evident that sight does not
go out from the eye to the object, but that the image of the object enters
the eye and affects its substance and form. Thus it is just the same
with sight as with hearing; hearing does not go out from the ear to catch
the sound, but the sound enters the ear and affects it. From all this it
can be seen that the affecting of the substance and form which causes
sense is not a something separate from the subject, but only causes a
change in it, the subject remaining the subject then as before and
afterwards. From this it follows that seeing, hearing, smell, taste,
and touch, are not a something volatile flowing from their organs, but
are the organs themselves, considered in their substance and form, and
that when the organs are affected sense is produced.

42. It is the same with love and wisdom, with this difference only, that
the substances and forms which are love and wisdom are not obvious to the
eyes as the organs of the external senses are. Nevertheless, no one can
deny that those things of wisdom and love, which are called thoughts,
perceptions, and affections, are substances and forms, and not entities
flying and flowing out of nothing, or abstracted from real and actual
substance and form, which are subjects. For in the brain are substances
and forms innumerable, in which every interior sense which pertains to
the understanding and will has its seat. The affections, perceptions,
and thoughts there are not exhalations fro