Sight [is] clearer than hearing, and [hearing clearer] than smelling, and smelling [clearer] than taste and touch. However, touch does not seem to be a sense, for each of the other senses operates as a single opposition with regard to some of the sensible objects and is its intermediate. For instance, sight [operates as a single opposition] with regard to black and white, and the colors that are intermediate to black and white; hearing with regard to a bass or sharp sound, or its intermediates; smelling with regard to what has a good or bad odor; taste with regard to what is sweet or bitter, and what is intermediate to this. By contrast, touch contains oppositions regarding many things, since it is not subordinate [to anything else]. In fact it is present with regard to what is hot or cold, moist or dry, hard or soft, heavy or light, rare or compact, [properties] that, precisely, cannot be subordinated [to anything else]. The senses, in apprehending the greater sensible objects, cannot apprehend any more along with those [sensible objects] that are smaller. For the person tasting flavors that are more ready to strike than the gentler ones cannot have any perception. And the person who has heard the stronger sounds cannot perceive the weaker sounds; and the one who looked intently at the sun is incapable of recognizing [anything] and cannot accurately apprehend the other visible objects, either. In the case of touch occurs similarly, too. But the intellect opposes to these, for the more it apprehends the superior intelligible objects the more accurate it is with regard to the apprehension of the inferior objects. And the excesses of sensible things destroy the senses, for excess of light or darkness destroys sight. It occurs similarly in the case of the other [senses]. By contrast, the apprehension of the greater intelligible objects produces a more sharp-sighted intellect.
For other [details] on sense[s] search in the [entry] “membrane”.[1]
The common sensibles [are] 5: movement, rest, number, figure, magnitude.[2] These are called “common” not because each one of them falls under all the senses but because each one falls under many [senses], not under a single one, and some of them also fall under all the senses at once. For magnitude is a sensible common to sight and touch. In fact, we see that the man is by chance big and, by making use of touch, we perceive that the encountering bulk, that is, the extension, is big or small. We also say that we have already perceived a strong or a weak sound but the magnitude is apprehended in this case by analogy, not in a strict sense. For we say now that a magnitude is what is continuous to the common sensibles. A strong sound displays an intense and tenuous quantity; for that reason in the case of sounds it is stricter and suitable to say “faint” and “strong”. Figure is common to sight and touch. But a triangle or a circle is not a figure [in this sense] –- for it is reasonable to say that a figure is that which is limited by a single line, or by three, or whatever quantity of lines -–, but what is circumscribed without qualification, and every outline is produced according to some figure. Certainly, when the incommensurable [magnitudes] fall into a small height and hill of the earth arrive at passing through, for obviously they are known, insofar as the magnitude is circumscribed and it is possible to pass through [such magnitudes]. But when falling into a high or sheer [magnitude], one does not try to come to [something] perceiving simultaneously the figure of a magnitude. Number is a common sensible of all [sense-perceptions]. For we see five men by chance, but in feeling it (and certainly in hearing it too), we know it.
Sense-perception differs from presentation. Search under the [entry] “presentation”.[3]