From Chapter VIII, paragraph 2, “Of the Pleasure of the Sense,” of Hobbes’ Elements of Law, Natural and Politic:
And first for the pleasures of the body which affect the sense of touch and taste, as far forth as they be organical, their conception is sense; so also is the pleasure of all exonerations of nature; all which passions I have before named sensual pleasures; and their contraries, sensual pains; to which also may be added the pleasures and displeasures of odours, if any of them shall be found organical, which for the most part they are not, as appeareth by this experience which every man hath, that the same smells, when they seem to proceed from others, displease, though they proceed from ourselves; but when we think they proceed from ourselves, they displease not, though they come from others: the displeasure therefore, in these is a conception of hurt thereby as being unwholesome, and is therefore a conception of evil to come, and not present.
Could this be the first philosophical discussion of the well known phrase, “Whoever smelt it, dealt it”?
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