Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
ON THE FIVE SENSES. [1] Even the question of those five senses we learn about in our first schooling comes our way, since heresy draws something from it too. There is sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. [2] Their reliability the Academics condemn rather harshly, and according to some so do Heraclitus and Diocles and Empedocles, and certainly Plato in the Timaeus, pronouncing sense-perception irrational and entangled with mere opinion. So sight is charged with lying, because it insists the oars in water are bent or broken, against the plain fact of their soundness, because it persuades us that a square tower seen from a distance is round, because it slanders a perfectly even colonnade as narrowing at its far end, because it joins the sky, hung at such a height, to the sea. [3] Hearing stands accused in the same way, as when we take a heavenly rumble for a cart, or, anticipating thunder, believe for certain that the sound came from a cart. So too smell and taste are indicted, since the same perfumes and the same wines lose their savor with later use. So too touch is faulted, since the same pavements are judged rougher to the hands and smoother to the feet, and in the baths the same tub of hot water is reported scalding at first and then, later, merely comfortable. [4] So, they say, we are deceived by our senses even as we go on changing our judgments about them. The Stoics are more moderate: they do not charge every sense, nor at every time, with falsehood. The Epicureans more boldly defend an equal and constant truthfulness in all of them, but by another route — not that sense lies, but that opinion does; for sense undergoes, it does not opine, while the soul is what opines. Thus they cut opinion off from sense, and sense off from soul. [5] But where does opinion come from, if not from sense? Unless sight had perceived the tower as round, there would be no opinion of roundness at all. And where does sense come from, if not from soul? A body without a soul is a body without sense as well. So sense comes from soul, and opinion comes from sense, and the soul underlies the whole. It will, however, be granted at best that there is something that causes a thing to be reported otherwise by the senses than it stands in reality. But if something can cause a report of what is not in the object, why should something not equally cause a report by means of what is not in the senses themselves, but in those circumstances that intervene under their own name? [6] And indeed we may examine these circumstances one by one. That the oar appears bent or broken in water — the water is to blame; take the oar out of the water, and it is whole to the sight. The very thinness of that substance by which a mirror is made out of light means that, as it is struck or stirred, it likewise sets the reflected image trembling and throws the straight line off. Again, that the tower's shape deceives us is forced by the condition of distance in the open air: the evenness of the surrounding air, clothing the angles with equal light, blots out their outlines. So too the uniform colonnade is narrowed toward its end, because the line of sight, hemmed in within an enclosed space, is thinned out there even as it is stretched out. So too the sky is joined to the sea, at the point where vision is used up — vision, which distinguishes things only so long as it retains its strength. [7] And what will deceive the hearing but the similarity of sounds? And if afterward a perfume smells fainter, or a wine tastes weaker, or a bath feels less scalding, in almost every case the whole force of the impression lay in the first encounter. As for rough and smooth, the hands and the feet reasonably disagree, being respectively tender and calloused members. [8] So then, in this way, no failure of the senses will lack its cause. But if it is the causes that deceive the senses, and through the senses the opinions, then the fault of deception must be located neither in the senses, which follow their causes, nor in the opinions, which are guided by the senses that follow theirs. [9] The insane see one person as another — Orestes sees his mother in his sister, and Ajax sees Ulysses in a flock of cattle, as Athamas and Agave see wild beasts in their own children. Will you lay this lie at the door of the eyes, or of the Furies? Those whose bile runs to excess find everything bitter with jaundice. Will you then charge the taste with treachery, or the illness? So every sense is overturned or circumvented for a time, in such a way that it is cleared of the peculiar charge of deceit. [10] Indeed, not even the causes themselves ought to be branded with the accusation of deceit. For if these things happen by reason, reason does not deserve to be called deceitful. What must happen as it does is not a lie. So if even the causes themselves are acquitted of the charge, how much more the senses, which the causes freely precede — since it is above all from this that truth and reliability and integrity must be vindicated to the senses, namely, that they report nothing other than what that same reason has commanded, the reason that causes a thing to be reported otherwise by the senses than it stands in reality! [11] What are you doing, Academy, most shameless of schools? You overturn the entire condition of life, you throw all the order of nature into confusion, you blind the very providence of God, who has set false and lying masters over all his works, for their understanding, cultivation, management, and enjoyment — the senses! Is it not through these that the whole of creation is put at our service? Is it not through these that a second furnishing has been added to the world — so many arts, so many talents, so many pursuits, occupations, duties, trades, remedies, counsels, comforts, foods, refinements, adornments, all of which have seasoned the entire savor of life — since it is by means of these senses alone that man, of all living creatures, is recognized as a rational animal, capable of understanding and knowledge, and capable even of the Academy itself? [12] But Plato, so as not to concede any testimony to the senses, in the Phaedrus, speaking as Socrates, denies that he can know even himself, as the Delphic inscription bids him do; and in the Theaetetus he denies himself the power to know and to perceive; and in the Phaedrus he puts off judgment about the truth until after death — a posthumous verdict indeed — and yet, not being dead yet, he went on philosophizing all the same. [13] It is not permitted, it is not permitted us to call these senses into question, lest the same doubt be turned on the reliability of the senses concerning Christ — lest it be said that Satan was falsely seen falling from heaven, or that the Father's voice testifying of him was falsely heard, or that he was deceived when he touched Peter's mother-in-law, or that he later perceived one kind of spirit in the ointment which he accepted for his burial, and a different taste again in the wine that he blessed as a remembrance of his own blood. [14] For this is exactly why Marcion preferred to believe him a phantom, disdaining the truth of a real body in him. And yet not even in his apostles was his nature made a mockery: sight and hearing were trustworthy on the mountain, the taste of that wine was trustworthy too, though water before it, at the wedding in Galilee, and touch was trustworthy afterward for doubting Thomas. Read out John's testimony: 'what we have seen,' he says, 'what we have heard, we have seen with our own eyes, and our hands have handled, concerning the word of life.' A false testimony indeed, if the nature of the senses of eyes and ears and hands is a liar.