Introduction to the Philosophy of Saint Augustine
. What to the ears?
Sound.
. What to smell?
Odor.
. What to taste?
. Flavor.
. What to touch?
bi Bots te fk i. Softness and hardness, smoothness and roughness, and many such things.
A. How about the shapes of bodies: large, small, square, round, and such? Do we not perceive them both by touch and by sight, so that we cannot properly assign them either to touch or sight alone but only to both?
E. That is clear.
A. You see then that certain senses have individually their own proper objects about which they tell us, and that certain others have some objects in common.
E. I see that too.
A. Now can we by means of any of these senses distinguish what is proper to each sense, and what all or certain senses have in common?
E. By no means: we judge that by a sort of interior sense.
A. Is that perhaps reason itself, which the beasts have not? For it is by reason, I think, that we grasp these things, and so know that we have senses.
E. I think rather that by reason we comprehend that there is a certain interior sense, to which all things are referred by the five ordinary senses. For the sense by which a beast sees is one thing; and that by which it seeks or avoids what it perceives by sight, is another; for the first sense is in the eyes, but that other is in the soul itself. By it animals seek and appropriate what they like and avoid and reject what they do not; not only what they see, but what they hear or perceive by the other senses. Nor can this sense be called sight or hearing or smell or taste or touch; it is something other that presides over all of them together. While we comprehend this by reason, as I have said, we cannot nevertheless call it reason, since the beasts also evidently have it.
9. A. I recognize that, whatever it is, and do not hesitate to call it the interior sense. But unless it goes beyond what is brought to us by our bodily senses, it cannot attain to knowledge. For what we know, we hold in the grasp of reason. But, not to mention other things, we know that we cannot perceive colors by hearing nor voices by sight. And when we know this, we know it neither by our eyes nor by our ears nor by that interior sense which the beasts also have. For one cannot believe that they know that ears do not perceive light nor eyes voices, since we discern such things only by rational attention and thought. E. I cannot say that I see that clearly. For what if they do discern also by that interior sense, which you admit they have, that colors cannot be perceived by hearing nor voices by sight? A. Well, do you think that they can distinguish from one another the color that is perceived and the sense that is in the eye and that interior sense within the soul and the reason by which these are defined and enumerated one by one?
E. By no means.
A. Could reason, then, distinguish these four from one another and set bounds to them by definitions, if color were not referred to it by the sense of the eyes and that sensation again by the interior sense by itself, assuming that there is not yet another something interposed?
E. I do not see how else it could.
A. And do you see that color is perceived by the sense of the eyes, but that the sensation itself is not perceived by the same sense? For you do not see the seeing itself by the same sense by which you see color.
E. Not at all. A. Try also to distinguish these; for I think you will not deny that color is one thing; and seeing color, another, and that it is yet another, when color is not present, to have the sense by which it could be seen if it were present.
E. I distinguish those too and grant that they are different.
A. Do you see any of these three with your eyes, except color?
E. Nothing else.
A. Tell me then how do you see the other two; for if you did not see them, you could not distinguish them.
E. I know nothing further. I know that I do, nothing more.
A. You do not know then whether this is reason itself or that life which we call the interior sense, which is superior to the bodily senses, or something else?
E. No.
A. You know at least that these things can be defined only by