Chap. V. A N T I E N T METAPHYSICS. 



95 



things not exiting ; therefore, fen/e is aUvaye true, imagination ohzn 

 falfe a id deceiving. Bat this dillindion, 1 apprehend, only belongs 

 to the rational nature : For it is only man that Is a poet, and makes, 

 of the images in his phantafia^hj joining and disjoining, arranging"- 

 and compounding them together, pidures of things that have no ex- 

 iftence in nature. But the brute has nothing of the poetical faculty ; 

 and, therefore, there is nothing in his pJoantafia, but the images of 

 things really exifling, fuch as he received them from his fenfes ^'■. 

 The fifth is, fays Pliiloponus, the folution of an objevftion, rather than 

 making a diftindion of the two : For, when we fee a thing at a di- 

 ftance, and do not fee it diftindly, we fay, that ive Jancy ive fee it ; 

 therefore, fancy , or imagination^ is nothing more than a weaker or ob- 

 fcurer fenfation. But, if this were true, fays Philoponus, a more di- 

 ftind vlfion would be a more perfeSl fancy \ which is what no bodjr 

 will fay. The fixth and lafl: difference is, that, when our eyes are o- 

 pen, we fee a colour, or any other objed ; but, when we fluit our 

 eyes, we only imagine it ; that is, fee it in the phantafia. And 

 this laft I hold to be the eflential difference betwixt the tv^^o, that 

 what we perceive by the fenfe is prefent, and operating upon the 

 fenfe, whereas the objed of imagination is not prefent. The confe- 

 quence of which, is another 7;z^/m^/ difference, very much to be at- 

 tended to ; becaufe it applies to all the faculties of the mind ; fome of 

 which operate on things without the mind, others on things within. 

 Now, the imagination is one of the latter, and, in that refped, may 

 be compared to intellcB \ and, accordingly, it is called by Ariftotle n-<>,;; 

 TTx^nn^oiy or intcl/e^ paj/ive, as yiiiloponus informs us t« As to the 



dif- 



♦ This, I find, is the opinion of Simplicius in his commentary upon the ^th 

 chapter of the third book De Animuy foL 60. of the commentary. 



f The paflage is in his introdutlion to his commentary upon the books Dc .^nima. 

 I will give the words, becaufe they fliow that Philoponus makes the efleiuial difTe- 

 r£nce betwixt fenfe and imagination the fame that I do. T«» Si uXoyaif rr.( ^^xf^i 



tvvauiuv, Ml fiif tte-t r^vucTiKXi' «'< h, 'OiTmui xui c^lKTiKxt. K*t yyoxfliKUi tin, fjevT<*5-.«» 



