Kitap 10
1.48
Besides this, remember that the production of the images is as quick as thought. For particles are continually streaming off from the surface of bodies, though no diminution of the bodies is observed, because other particles take their place.If vision is to be not merely intermittent but continuous, images must be perpetually streaming from the objects seen to our eyes; there must be a continual succession of similar images. Cf. Fr. 282 (Us.); Lucr. ii. 67-76, iv. 143-167. And those given off for a long time retain the position and arrangement which their atoms had when they formed part of the solid bodies, although occasionally they are thrown into confusion. Sometimes such filmse.g. mirage and monstrous shapes of clouds: Lucr. iv. 129-142; Diod. iii. 56. are formed very rapidly in the air, because they need not have any solid content; and there are other modes in which they may be formed. For there is nothing in all this which is contradicted by sensation, if we in some sort look at the clear evidence of sense, to which we should also refer the continuity of particles in the objects external to ourselves.
1.49
We must also consider that it is by the entrance of something coming from external objects that we see their shapes and think of them.Thought, as well as vision, is explained by images, but images of a much finer texture, which fail to affect the eyes but do affect the mind: cf. Fr. 317 (Us.); Lucr. iv. 777 f. For external things would not stamp on us their own nature of colour and form through the medium of the air which is between them and us,This was the view of Democritus; cf. Beare, Greek Theories of Elementary Cognition, p. 26. or by means of rays of light or currents of any sort going from us to them, so well as by the entrance into our eyes or minds, to whichever their size is suitable, of certain films coming from the things themselves, these films or outlines being of the same colour and shape as the external things themselves.
