. . . the poets reduced the spirit’s external functions to the body’s five senses, which were keen, vivid, and strong, while their minds served only as a vigorous imagination with very little or no reason. The Latin words for the five senses may serve as proof of this.
The verb for hearing was audire, as if from haurire, to draw in: for the ears drink in air which has been set vibrating by other physical bodies. Seeing distinctly was called ‘separating with the eyes’, cernere oculis. This may be the origin of the Tuscan verb scernere, to sift: for the eyes are like a sieve, and the pupils are like two holes. And just as rods of dust issue from a sieve and touch the earth, so rods of light issue from the pupils and touch those objects which we see distinctly. (This is the visual rod or ray, which the Stoics theorized and whose existence Descartes has successfully demonstrated.) Seeing in general was called usurpare oculis, to occupy with the eyes, as if one’s vision actually took possession of the things it sees. The verb tangere, to touch, also meant to steal: for when we touch an object we take something away from it, as our most astute physicists are beginning to understand. Smelling was called olfacere, as if to smell an odour is to make it, ol-facere. (In careful experiments, scientists later discovered that the senses truly create what are called sensible qualities.) Finally, tasting was called sapere: properly, the verb refers to things which have a taste, and then to the testing of things for their proper taste. Later, by a fine metaphor wisdom was called sapientia, tastefulness, because it puts things to their natural uses, rather than to artificial ones.