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Ars Brevis | | |
5.The Imaginative
5. The Fifth Subject, or the Imaginative
Faculty
In the imaginative, the principles and rules
are specified toward imagining imaginable
things, in the same way that in a magnet,
they are specified toward attracting iron.
And it is defined as follows: the
imaginative is the power whose proper
function is to imagine objects. And so the
imaginative is sequentially combined with
the principles and rules that belong to the
imaginative. The intellect has great
knowledge of the imaginative and of the
things that belong to it; the imaginative
draws species from objects sensed by
particular senses, and it does this with its
correlatives, signified by the second
species of C. With goodness, it makes
these species good, with greatness it
magnifies them, as when imagining a
mountain made of gold. And it diminishes
them with minority, as when imagining
one indivisible point. The imaginative has
instinct, for instance, irrational animals
have their ways of ensuring survival, and
goats instinctively stay away from wolves.
The imaginative has an appetite for
imagining objects, so it can find repose in
them by imagining them.
While the particular senses deal with
sense objects, they impede the
imaginative from exercising its act; for
instance, while one is looking at a colored
object with his eyes, the imaginative
cannot act, given that it cannot imagine
the external imaginable object until the
viewer closes his eyes, for only then does
imaginative begin to act, or is able to act.
Someone looking at a colored object
attains it more by seeing it than by
imagining it, given that a sense object is
closer to the senses. But the imaginative
perceives imaginable objects by means of
the senses. In sentient beings, the
imaginative is not as general a power as
the power of the senses, as can be
observed in the sense of touch, whereby
someone holding a stone feels many
diverse sensations, namely the weight of
the stone, its coldness, roughness and
hardness; but the imaginative cannot
perceive all these things at once, it can
only proceed in sequence. And likewise
with other things like these. And this is
enough, for the sake of brevity.
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