A Treatise on Mechanics

Placed in the material world, Man is continually exposed to the action of an infinite variety of objects by which he is surrounded. The body, to which the thinking and living principles have been united, is an apparatus exquisitely contrived to receive and to transmit impressions. Its various parts are organised with obvious reference to the several external agents by which it is to be effected. Each organ is designed to convey to the mind immediate notice of some peculiar action, and is accordingly endued with a corresponding susceptibility. This adaptation of such organs to the particular influences of material agents, is rendered still more conspicuous when we consider that, however delicate its structure, each organ is wholly insensible to every influence except that to which it appears to be specially appropriated. The eye, so intensely susceptible of impressions from light, is not at all affected by those of sound; while the fine mechanism of the ear, so sensitively alive to every effect of the latter class, is altogether insensible to the former. The splendour of excessive light may occasion blindness, and deafness may result from the roar of a cannonade; but neither the sight nor the hearing can be injured by the most extreme action of that principle which is designed to affect the other.

Thus the organs of sense are instruments by which the mind is enabled to determine the existence and the qualities of external things. The effects which these objects produce upon the mind through the organs, are called sensations, and these sensations are the immediate elements of all human knowledge. Matter is the general name which has been given to that substance, which, under forms infinitely various, affects the senses. Metaphysicians have differed in defining this principle. Some have even doubted of its existence. But these discussions are beyond the sphere of mechanical philosophy, the conclusions of which are in nowise affected by them. Our investigations here relate, not to matter as an abstract existence, but to those qualities which we discover in it by the senses, and of the existence of which we are sure, however the question as to matter itself may be decided. When we speak of “bodies,” we mean those things, whatever they be, which excite in our minds certain sensations; and the powers to excite those sensations are called “properties,” or “qualities.”