Psychic Integration 



Thomas Hobbes identified imagination with fancy, "orig- 

 inal fancy" with sense, and "decaying sense" with memory, 

 and held sense to be caused by "so many several motions of 

 the matter, by which it presseth our organs diversely," and 

 when he defended the general doctrine that "there is no 

 conception in a man's mind which hath not at first, totally 

 or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense," 1 he 

 did indeed blaze a trail which might easily lead to an over- 

 exaltation of the sensuous and emotional side of life. But 

 the eminently practical character of Hobbes' undertaking 

 being remembered (he was writing not for the love of specu- 

 lation but to save his country from political chaos and mis- 

 ery begotten as he believed from false theories and impossible 

 desires and ambitions) one may expect to find in him ele- 

 ments of steadiness and restraint which would make for safety 

 in speculation. 



One such element is clearly seen in his opinion that he who 

 is "born a man" and lives "with the use of his five senses" 

 has all the native equipment necessary to realize the best in 

 him both for himself and for his country. 2 The necessity 

 of being "born a man" is the point to be especially noticed. 

 That, with all it may imply, is on a par with the necessity 

 of using the five senses. So whatever of scientific hobby- 

 riding under such captions as "sensationalism," "empiric- 

 ism," "associationalism," may have followed in the wake of 

 Hobbes' writings, Hobbes himself, I am quite sure, was at 

 heart a genuine organismalist and is entitled to high es- 

 teem as one of the very first moderns to speak strongly for 

 the importance of the body generally to the psychic life of 

 man. Listen to this : 



"Natural sense and imagination are not subject to ab- 

 surdity. Nature itself cannot err ; and as men abound in 

 copiousness of language, so they become more wise, or more 

 mad than ordinary." "Between true science and erroneous 

 doctrines, ignorance is in the middle." 



