THE PRINCIPAL ACTS 385 



Thought must be regarded as an action carried out in the organ of 

 intelligence by movements of the nervous fluid. It works on ideas 

 already acquired, either by restoring them unchanged to the conscious- 

 ness of the individual, as in memory ; or by comparing some of these 

 ideas together so as to draw judgments from them, or to ascertain 

 their relations, which are also judgments, as in reasoning ; or by 

 methodically dividing and decomposing them as in analysis ; or 

 lastly, in creating new ideas on the model of the old, or in contrast 

 to them, and thence new ideas again, as in the operations of the 

 imagination. 



Is every thought either an act of memory or a judgment ? I at 

 first thought so ; in that case thought would not be a special intellectual 

 faculty, distinct from recollections and judgments. I beheve, however, 

 that we should classify this act of the understanding as one of its 

 special primary faculties, for the thought which constitutes reflection 

 and consists in the inspection or examination of an object, is more than 

 an act of memory and yet is not a judgment. Indeed comparisons 

 and investigations of relations between ideas are not mere recollec- 

 tions, nor are they judgments, although these thoughts nearly always 

 terminate in one or more judgments. 



Although all acts of the understanding are thoughts, we may yet 

 regard thought itself as the result of a special intellectual faculty, 

 since some of its acts cannot be ranked either as memory or judgments. 



If it is true that all intellectual operations are thoughts, it is also 

 true that ideas are the raw material of these operations and that the 

 nervous fluid is the sole agent which gives immediate rise to them, 

 as I have already explained in the previous chapter. 



Thought, being an operation of the understanding wrought on 

 previously acquired ideas, can alone give rise to judgments, reasonings, 

 and acts of the imagination. In all this, ideas are the raw material of 

 the operation and the inner feeling is always the stimulating and 

 controlhng cause, for it sets the nervous fluid in motion in the 

 hypocephalon. 



This act of understanding is sometimes produced as a result of some 

 sensation, which gives rise to an idea and thence to a desire ; but it 

 is usually carried out without any immediately preceding sensation, 

 for the recollection of an idea, giving rise to a moral need, is enough 

 to stir the inner feeling and incite it to stimulate the act. 



The organ of intelligence thus sometimes carries out its functions 

 as a result of an external cause, which evokes some idea and stirs 

 the individual's inner feeling ; while sometimes the organ enters into 

 activity of its own accord, as when some idea recalled by memory 

 gives rise to a desire, that is, to a moral need, and subsequently to an 



