Man, therefore, who is called the lesser world, has five senses, like five gates, through which the knowledge of all the things that are in the sensible world enters into his soul.  For through sight there enter the sublime and luminous bodies and all other colored things; through touch, solid and terrestrial bodies; through the three intermediate senses, the intermediate bodies; through taste, the aqueous; through hearing, the aerial; through smell, the vaporable, which have something of the humid, something of the aerial, and something of the fiery or hot, as is clear from the fumes that are liberated from spices.  There enter, therefore, through these doors not only the simple bodies, but also the mixed bodies compounded of these.  Seeing then that with sense we perceive not only these particular sensibles—­light, sound, odor, savor, and the four primary qualities which touch apprehends—­but also the common sensibles—­number, magnitude, figure, rest, and motion; and seeing that everything which moves is moved by something else, and certain things move and rest of themselves, as do the animals; in apprehending through these five senses the motions of bodies, we are guided to the knowledge of spiritual motions, as by an effect to the knowledge of causes.

In the three classes of things, therefore, the whole of this sensible world enters the human soul through apprehension.  These external sensible things are those which first enter into the soul through the gates of the five senses.  They enter, I say, not through their substances, but through their similitudes, generated first in the medium, and from the medium in the external organ, and from the external organ in the internal organ, and from this in the apprehensive power; and thus generation in the medium, and from the medium in the organ, and the direction of the apprehensive power upon it, produce the apprehension of all those things which the soul apprehends externally.

This apprehension, if it is directed to a proper object, is followed by delight.  The sense delights in the object perceived through its abstract similitude, either by reason of its beauty, as in vision, or by reason of its sweetness, as in smell and hearing, or by reason of its healthfulness, as in taste and touch, properly speaking.  But all delight is by reason of proportion.  But since species is the ground of form, power, and action, according as it has reference to the principle from which it emanates, the medium into which it passes, or the term upon which it acts, therefore proportion is observed in three things.  It is observed in similitude, inasmuch as it forms the ground of species or form, and so is called speciosity, because beauty is nothing but numerical equality, or a certain disposition of parts accompanied with sweetness of color.  It is observed in so far as it forms the ground of power or virtue, and thus is called sweetness, when the active virtue does not disproportionally exceed the recipient virtue,