Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

240 RENAISSANCE AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RATIONALISM
399; L, ch. 8, E III 57), is not really a capacity distinct from sense (De corp. ch.
25, viii, E I 399). Neither, apparently, is memory or imagination. Even the
distinction between imagination and dreaming is not very firmly drawn (cf. EL,
Pt 1, ch. 3, viii, 12; L, ch. 2, E III6f.; De corp. ch. 25, ix, E I 399f.)’ The reason
is that Hobbes tries to mark differences between these psychological capacities
with the same apparatus he has applied in the account of sense proper. To explain
the variety of sense experience he appeals to the variety of the sense organs, the
different ways in which the sense organs are linked up with the nervous
and arterial systems, differences in the objects of sense, and differences in the
motions they impart to the sense organs. But when it comes to accommodating
the variety of ways in which sense information can be operated upon after
transactions between the sense organ and external objects are completed, he no
longer has available to him a wide enough array of distinct causes for the distinct
operations. He must make the retention of motion in the sentient suffice as a
basis for memory, imagination and many other apparently quite distinct mental
capacities. Unsurprisingly, this basis proves too slight for explaining the range of
effects proper to the individual capacities. By memory, for example, we are not
only supposed to be able to compare and distinguish the individuals we observe;
we are also supposed to be able to hit upon regularities involving them so as to
be able to form expectations (EL, Pt 1, ch. 4, vii, 15). Can all of this be managed
by short-lived reflection on qualitative similarity and difference in objects we
have fleeting contact with? Can even qualitative comparison and discernment be
accomplished by memory if it is no more than a device for storing and scanning
the colours, shapes, smells etc. of unsorted bodies? Hobbes offers a sophisticated
reconstruction of the mechanisms that make it possible for us to be affected with
phantasms, but he lacks the resources for a substantial account of the various
operations—memory is only one—that cognition involves.
Hobbes’s account of the motions of the mind extends beyond sensation and
cognition. There is also a theory of the passions. Passions are understood as aftereffects
of sense. For example, when someone sees something, the thing imparts
motion to the innermost part of the organ of sight. One effect of the motion is to
set up an outward reaction to the brain that produces visual experience. But there
can be an additional effect. The ‘motion and agitation of the brain which we call
conception’ can be ‘continued to the heart, and there be called passion’ (EL, Pt
1, ch. 8, i, 31). The heart governs ‘vital motion’ in the body, that is, the
circulation of the blood. In general, when motion derived from an act of sense
encourages vital motion, the sentient creature experiences pleasure at the sight,
smell or taste of the object of sense, and is disposed to move his body in such a
way as to prolong or intensify the pleasure (De corp. ch. 25, xii, E I 407). If the
object of sense is at some distance from the sentient creature, the creature will
typically move toward it (ibid.). In De Corpore Hobbes describes the
physiological processes that underlie the approach. Animal spirits impulse into
the nerves and retract again, causing muscular swelling and relaxation and
eventually full-scale movements (E I 408). The ‘first beginnings’ of this process,