Divine Love and Divine Wisdom

...to which it is applied. The sense of feeling does not exist in the things being felt, but in the substance and form of the skin, which is the subject; the sense is simply an affection original: "affection"; here meaning a state or change produced in the sense organ by an external force of the skin caused by the things applied to it. It is the same with the taste; this sense is only an affection of the substance and form of the tongue; the tongue is the subject. It is the same with the smell; it is well known that odors affect the nose, that they are in the nose, and that the sense is an affection of the nose caused by odor-producing substances touching it. It is the same with the hearing; it appears as if the hearing were in the place where the sound begins, but hearing is actually in the ear and is an affection of its substance and form; the idea that hearing happens at a distance from the ear is only an appearance.

It is the same with the sight; when a person sees objects at a distance, it appears as if the sight were actually there at the object, but nevertheless, it is in the eye—which is the subject—and is likewise an affection of the eye. Distance is only a conclusion reached by our judgment, which calculates space based on intermediate objects or from the shrinking and consequent blurring of the object, whose image is produced within the eye according to the angle of incidence The angle at which light hits the eye. Therefore, it is clear that sight does not travel from the eye to the object, but rather the image of the object enters the eye and affects its substance and form. It is the same with sight as it is with hearing; hearing does not go out of the ear to catch a sound, but the sound enters the ear and affects it. From this, it appears that the affection of a substance and form, which constitutes a sense, is not something separate from the subject; it only causes a change in that subject, while the subject remains the same before, during, and after. It follows, then, that sight, hearing, smell, taste, and feeling are not some "volatile" original: "volatile"; meaning something fleeting, airy, or unstable thing flowing out of those organs, but are the organs themselves considered in their substance and form; while those organs are affected, the sense is produced.

42. It is the same with love and wisdom, with this only difference: the substances and forms which constitute love and wisdom are not visible to the eyes like the organs of the external senses. Yet, no one can deny that the elements of wisdom and love—which are called thoughts, perceptions, and affections—are substances and forms. They are not fleeting entities emerging from nothing, nor are they abstracted from that real and actual substance and form which is their subject. For there are in the brain innumerable substances and forms in which every interior sense—related to both the understanding and the will—resides. All the affections, perceptions, and thoughts there are not "exhalations" from these substances; they are actually and really the subjects themselves. These subjects do not emit anything from themselves, but only undergo changes according to the influences that affect them, as is clearly shown by what has been said above concerning the physical senses. Of the influences (alluentia) original: alluentia; a Latin term for things flowing toward or reaching the subject which affect them, more will be said below.