The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World. Volume 1Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'
Religion
The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World. Volume 1
Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'
Materialism; Philosophy and religion; Psychology
_Memory_ is the faculty which the brain has of renewing in itself the
modifications it has received, or rather, to restore itself to a state
similar to that in which it has been placed by the sensations, the
perceptions, the ideas, produced by exterior objects, in the exact order
it received them, without any new action on the part of these objects,
or even when these objects are absent; the brain perceives that these
modifications assimilate with those it formerly experienced in the
presence of the objects to which it relates, or attributes them. Memory
is faithful, when these modifications are precisely the same; it
is treacherous, when they differ from those which the organs have
exteriorly experienced.
_Imagination_ in man is only the faculty which the brain has of
modifying itself, or of forming to itself new perceptions, upon the
model of those which it has anteriorly received through the action of
exterior objects on the senses. The brain, then, does nothing more than
combine ideas which it has already formed, which it recalls to itself,
from which it forms a whole, or a collection of modifications, which
it has not received, which exists no-where but in itself, although the
individual ideas, or the parts of which this ideal whole is composed,
have been previously communicated to it, in consequence of the impulse
given to the senses by exterior objects: it is thus man forms to himself
the idea of _centaurs_, or a being composed of a man and a horse, of
_hyppogriffs_, or a being composed of a horse with wings and a griffin,
besides a thousand other objects, equally ridiculous. By memory, the
brain renews in itself the sensations, the perceptions, and the ideas
which it has received or generated; represents to itself the objects
which have actually moved its organs. By imagination it combines them
variously: forms objects in their place which have not moved its organs,
although it is perfectly acquainted with the elements or ideas of which
it composes them. It is thus that man, by combining a great number
of ideas borrowed from himself, such as justice, wisdom, goodness,
intelligence, &c. by the aid of imagination, has formed various ideal
beings, or imaginary wholes, which he has called JUPITER, JUNO, BRAMAH,
SATURN, &c.
_Judgment_ is the faculty which the brain possesses of comparing with
each other the modifications it receives, the ideas it engenders, or
which it has the power of awakening within itself, to the end that it
may discover their relations, or their effects.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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