398 ZOOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY 



by the emotion which it has derived either from a need or inclination, 

 or from an idea which awakes a need or inclination ; and that it 

 promptly brings them into consciousness, by carrying back to the 

 sensitive nucleus the modifications of movement which the nervous 

 fluid has acquired from these outlines ; 



4. That when the functions of our inner feeling are suspended or 

 disturbed, it ceases to direct the movements which may then set our 

 nervous fluid in motion ; so that if some cause then agitates this fluid 

 in our intellectual organ, its movements bring back to the sensitive 

 nucleus disordered ideas, strangely mixed and without any connection 

 or sequence ; hence dreams, delirium, etc. 



We thus see that the phenomena in question everywhere result from 

 physical acts which depend on the organisation and its condition, and 

 on the circumstances in which the individual is placed, as well as on the 

 variety of causes, likewise physical, which produce these organic acts. 



Let us pass to an examination of the fourth and last kind of the 

 principal operations of the intellect, viz. those operations which con- 

 stitute judgments. 



OF JUDGMENT. 



The Fourth of the Principal Faculties of the Intellect. 



The operations of the intellect which constitute judgments are the 

 most important to the individual of any that his understanding can 

 perform ; they are those which can least easily be dispensed with, and 

 which he is most often called upon to use. 



It is in this faculty of judgment that the will takes its origin ; it is 

 also this faculty which gives rise to moral needs such as desires, wishes, 

 hopes, anxiety, fear, etc. ; lastly, it is always as a result of judgments 

 that those of our actions, in which our understanding has had some 

 share, are performed. 



We cannot carry out any series of thoughts without forming judg- 

 ments ; our reasonings and analyses are pure results of judgments ; 

 the imagination itself has no power, except through its judgments, 

 with regard to the models or contrasts used in the creation of ideas ; 

 finally, any thought, which is neither a judgment nor accompanied 

 by a judgment, is a mere act of memory or else constitutes a barren 

 inspection or comparison. 



How important it is then for every being endowed with an intellectual 

 organ to accustom himself to use his judgment, and to endeavour 

 gradually to improve it by means of observation and experience ; 

 for he is then exercising his understanding at the same time, and he 

 increases its faculties to a proportional extent ! 



