THE PRINCIPAL ACTS 389 



for himself a number of new ideas which are impressed on his organ, 

 and out of these many more again, with no limit to this infinite creation 

 beyond that suggested by his endowment of reason. 



I have said that the previously acquired ideas which furnish the 

 material for acts of the imagination are employed in these acts either 

 as models or as contrasts. 



In fact, if we consider all the ideas produced by human imagination, 

 we shall see that some, including the larger number, are modelled on 

 simple ideas which have arisen immediately from sensations, or on 

 complex ideas based upon the simple ideas, and that the rest originate 

 in contrast or opposition to the simple or complex ideas that had been 

 acquired. 



Since man cannot form any true idea, except of objects or things in 

 the likeness of objects, his intellect would have been limited to the 

 elaboration of this one kind of idea, if it had not possessed the faculty 

 of taking these ideas either as models or contrasts, and forming from 

 them ideas of another kind. 



It is by contrast to simple or complex ideas, that man imagined the 

 infinite, basing it on his idea of the finite ; when he had conceived the 

 idea of a limited duration, he imagined eternity or an unlimited dura- 

 tion ; when he had formed the idea of a body or of matter, he imagined 

 mind or an immaterial being, etc., etc. 



It is not necessary to show that every product of the imagination, 

 which does not present a contrast to some simple or complex ideas 

 originally acquired through sensations, is necessarily modelled upon 

 some such idea. How many citations I might make, if I wished to 

 show that wherever man has tried to create ideas, his materials have 

 always been in the likeness of previously acquired ideas or in contrast 

 to them ! 



It is a truth borne out by observation and experience, that the 

 intellectual organ is in the same case as all the other bodily organs ; 

 the more it is exercised the more it develops and the more its faculties 

 extend. 



Those animals, which are endowed with an intellectual organ, never- 

 theless lack imagination, because they have few needs, vary their 

 actions but little, and hence acquire but few ideas, and especially be- 

 cause they rarely form complex ideas and then only of the first order. 



But man, who lives in society, has so largely increased his needs 

 that he has been obUged to increase his ideas to a corresponding 

 extent ; so that of all thinking creatures he is the one who can most 

 easily exercise his intellect, vary his thoughts the most and, lastly, 

 form the greatest number of complex ideas : hence we have reason to 

 believe that he is the only creature that can have imagination. 



