The Imagination

Abstract

The imagination is sometimes understood as our faculty of imagining and sometimes as an act or operation of that faculty. In the latter sense it seems that we could apply this term to all the mind’s thoughts which represent some object to it as present before its eyes or its other senses and which are not stimulated in the mind by, nor depend on, the presence or action of external objects. To explain this clearly, I should first show the difference between perceptions of our imagination and the other perceptions of the mind; secondly, what our faculty of imagining is, what it consists in and how far it extends; and finally, what is the cause and source of the mistakes of the imagination of people who dream while asleep, of phrenetics, and of other types of foolishness.