On the Marvelous Occurrences in the World

However, I add this, for to sense in such a way would confuse natural judgment, and it would hardly be the case that one could not feign similar things concerning any sensible object, just as with sound. Thus, color would be nothing unless it were light received in a bounded body and perceived by the eye. Odor would be a smoky evaporation, produced in such a way that it is perceived by the sense of smell. Sound is indeed caused by a motion produced in such a way, but it is not the motion itself. Note that although five common sensible objects are described by the Philosopher Aristotle, Vitellio a 13th-century Polish friar and natural philosopher nevertheless says in the beginning of the third book of his Perspectiva Optics that there are twenty. These are: removal, magnitude, position, corporeality, figure, continuity, separation or division, motion, rest, roughness, smoothness, transparency, density, shadow, obscurity, beauty, deformity, likeness, and diversity. These can be known through sight and hearing, and errors can occur regarding each one of them. Therefore, I say it is possible for Sortes a name traditionally used in medieval logic exercises as a placeholder for a person to appear to hear a bell, or the wind, or water, when he hears nothing at all. This is evident through physicians, who judge the infirmity of the brain on account of vapors or humors of the brain striking the organ of hearing and causing such a disposition in them as a bell, or water, or wind is accustomed to cause. Internal vapors assist in this, along with the disposition of the organ; the internal sensitive faculty perhaps also assists, which, on some occasion during that time when the vapor strikes the organ, then thinks of a bell.