paration of the one pure being from the
manifold and changing world of appearance are compelled to make a
like distinction between two kinds and two organs of _knowledge_. The
representation of the empirical manifold of separately existing individual
things, together with the organ thereof, Spinoza terms _imaginatio_; the
faculty of cognizing the true reality, the one, all-embracing substance, he
calls _intellectus. Imaginatio_ (imagination, sensuous representation)
is the faculty of inadequate, confused ideas, among which are included
abstract conceptions, as well as sensations and memory-images. The objects
of perception are the affections of our body; and our perceptions,
therefore, are not clear and distinct, because we are not completely
acquainted with their causes. In the merely perceptual stage, the mind
gains only a confused and mutilated idea of external objects, of the body,
and of itself; it is unable to separate that in the perception (_e.g._,
heat) which is due to the external body from that which is due to its own
body. An inadequate idea, however, is not in itself an error; it becomes
such only when, unconscious of its defectiveness, we take it for complete
and true. Prominent examples of erroneous ideas are furnished by general
concepts, by the idea of ends, and the idea of the freedom of the will. The
more general and abstract an idea, the more inadequate and indistinct it
becomes; and this shows the lack of value in generic concepts, which are
formed by the omission of differences. All cognition which is carried on by
universals and their symbols, words, yields opinion and imagination merely
instead of truth. Quite as valueless and harmful is the idea of ends, with
its accompaniments. We think that nature has typical forms hovering before
it, which it is seeking to actualize in things; when this intention is
apparently fulfilled we speak of things as perfect and beautiful; when it
fails, of imperfect and ugly things. Such concepts of value belong in the
sphere of fictions. The same is true of the idea of the freedom of the
will, which depends on our ignorance of that which constrains us. Apart
from the consideration that "the will," the general conception of which
comes under the rubric of unreal abstractions, is in fact merely the sum of
the particular volitions, the illusion of freedom, _e.g._, that we will
and act without a cause, arises from the fact that we are conscious of
our action (and also of i