f those things that
fall under the head of opinion, some are true, some false: sense gives
us a false presentation of those things only which are the objects of
our understanding; but the imagination gives us a double error, both of
things sensible and things intellectual. Empedocles and Heraclides,
that the senses act by a just accommodation of the pores in every case;
everything that is perceived by the sense being congruously adapted to
its proper organ.

CHAPTER X. HOW MANY SENSES ARE THERE?

The Stoics say that there are five senses properly so called, seeing,
hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. Aristotle indeed doth not add
a sixth sense; but he assigns a common sense, which is the judge of
all compounded species; into this each sense casts its proper
representation, in which is discovered a transition of one thing into
another, like as we see in figure and motion where there is a change of
one into another. Democritus, that there are divers species of senses,
which appertain to beings destitute of reason, to the gods, and to wise
men.

CHAPTER XI. HOW THE ACTIONS OF THE SENSES, THE CONCEPTIONS OF OUR MINDS,
AND THE HABIT OF OUR REASON ARE FORMED.

The Stoics affirm that every man, as soon as he is born, has a principal
and commanding part of his soul, which is in him like a sheet of
writing-paper, to which he commits all his notions. The first manner of
his inscribing is by denoting those notions which flow from the senses.
Suppose it be of a thing that is white; when the present sense of it is
vanished, there is yet retained the remembrance; when many memorative
notions of the same similitude do concur, then he is said to have an
experience; for experience is nothing more than the abundance of notions
that are of the same form met together. Some of these notions are
naturally begotten according to the aforesaid manner, without the
assistance of art; the others are produced by discipline, learning,
and industry; these only are justly called notions, the others are
prenotions. But reason, which gives us the denomination of rational, is
completed by prenotions in the first seven years. The conception of
the mind is the vision that the intelligence of a rational animal hath
received; when that vision falls upon the rational soul, then it is
called the conception of the mind, for it hath derived its name from the
mind [Greek omitted] from [Greek omitted]. Therefore these visions are
not to be found