Classical literature; Knowledge, Theory of -- Early works to 1800
And now we may suppose that numerous images present themselves to the
mind, which begins to act upon them and to arrange them in various
ways. Besides the impression of external objects present with us or just
absent from us, we have a dimmer conception of other objects which have
disappeared from our immediate recollection and yet continue to exist in
us. The mind is full of fancies which are passing to and fro before it.
Some feeling or association calls them up, and they are uttered by the
lips. This is the first rudimentary imagination, which may be truly
described in the language of Hobbes, as 'decaying sense,' an expression
which may be applied with equal truth to memory as well. For memory and
imagination, though we sometimes oppose them, are nearly allied; the
difference between them seems chiefly to lie in the activity of the one
compared with the passivity of the other. The sense decaying in memory
receives a flash of light or life from imagination. Dreaming is a link
of connexion between them; for in dreaming we feebly recollect and also
feebly imagine at one and the same time. When reason is asleep the
lower part of the mind wanders at will amid the images which have been
received from without, the intelligent element retires, and the sensual
or sensuous takes its place. And so in the first efforts of imagination
reason is latent or set aside; and images, in part disorderly, but also
having a unity (however imperfect) of their own, pour like a flood over
the mind. And if we could penetrate into the heads of animals we should
probably find that their intelligence, or the state of what in them is
analogous to our intelligence, is of this nature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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