Operations Solv all the Phænomena of Life, are all as absurd in their Attempt, as it is possible for men to be: For tho we may shew the Way how objects are Applied to the Organs of Sense; how Sounds do Enter the Eare, and Smite upon the Drum; How Figures, and Colors Enter the Ey, and are Represented upon the Retina, in the Brain, or carried by the optick Nerv to the Fancy; How Smels in fumy Exhalations pervade the pores in the Nose, and Tastes in more Solid Juices permeat those of the Tongue: Finally, how tangible Qualities affect the Nerves, and Stir the Fibres that are Rooted in the Brain, and communicat their Impressions by Motions of the Nervs, or Spirits there: yet what that is, that has Power to perceiv the least effect, Impression, or Idea, that is made in the Brain, any more then a looking-glass perceivs the Images that are in it, or a Lute the Quaverings of the Strings that are touched; can by no Principles merely Mechanical ever be unfolded. (1: 409)

Under the influence of a mechanical metaphysics, Hobbes was a die-hard determinist. He thought of the world as composed of bodies, much as the physicist conceives it, which move and rest according to laws of causation. Bodies in motion, he thought, constitute the one universal fact. The universe is bodies in motion; it is a continuous process of one system of motion evolving into another, a process of continual change. The setting of a body into motion, or any change in its movement whatsoever, is caused, in Hobbes’s words, by some other ‘body contiguous and moved’ [Elements of Philosophy].… (281)