IMAGINATION. 45 



experiences, to whicli the ordinary processes of associa- 

 tive thought give rise. 



When represented with surroundings concrete enough 

 to constitute a date, these pictures, when they revive, form 

 recollections. We have already studied the machinery of 

 recollection in Chapter XVI. When the mental pictures 

 are of data freely combined, and reproducing no past com- 

 bination exactly, we have acts of imagination properly 

 so called. 



OUR IMAGES ARE USUALLY VAGUE. 



For the ordinary ' analytic ' psychology, each sensibly 

 discernible element of the object imagined is repre- 

 sented by its own separate idea, and the total object 

 is imagined by a ' cluster ' or ' gang ' of ideas. We have 

 seen abundant reason to reject this view (see p. 276 if.). An 

 imagined object, however complex, is at any one moment 

 thought in one idea, which is aware of all its qualities to- 

 gether. If I slip into the ordinary way of talking, and 

 speak of various ideas 'combining,' the reader will under- 

 stand that this is only for popularity and convenience, and 

 he will not construe it into a concession to the atomistic 

 theory in psychology. 



Hume was the hero of the atomistic theory. Not only 

 were ideas copies of original impressions made on the sense- 

 organs, but they were, according to him, completely ade- 

 quate copies, and were all so separate from each other as 

 to possess no manner of connection. Hume proves ideas 

 in the imagination to be completely adequate copies, not 

 by appeal to observation, but by a priori reasoning, as fol- 

 lows : 



"The mind cannot form any notion of quantity or quality, without 

 forming a precise notion of the degrees of each," for " 'tis confessed 

 that no object can appear to the senses; or in other words, that no im- 

 pression* can become present to the mind, without being determined in 

 its degrees both of quantity and quality. The confusion in which im- 

 pressions are sometimes involved proceeds only from their faintness 

 and unsteadiness, not from any capacity in the mind to receive any im- 

 pression, which in its real existence has no particular degree nor pro- 

 portion. That is a contradiction in terms; and even implies the flattest 



* Impression means sensation for Hume. 



