minous radiance.

"Altho each one may have its autonomy, they never separate, and, even as
a fan from which one blade has disappeared can only remain an imperfect
object little to be desired, even so, the symbolic fan of reasoning, when
it does not unite all the required qualities, becomes a mutilated power,
which can only betray the destiny originally attributed to it.

"Consequently, starting from common sense as the central point of
reasoning, we find, first, perception.

"This is the action by which exterior things are brought near to us.

"Perception is essentially visual and auditory, altho it influences all
our senses.

"For example, the fact of tasting a fruit is a perception.

"The seeing of a landscape is equally one.

"The hearing of a song is also a perception.

"In a word, everything which presents itself to us, coming in
contact with one of our senses, is a perception; otherwise, the
inception of an idea.

"This is the first degree of reasoning.

"Immediately following is memory, without which nothing could be proved.

"It is memory, which, by renewing the motive power of reason, allows us
to judge of the proportion of things, grasped by the senses in the
present as related to those which come to us from the past.

"Without memory it would be impossible to make a mental comparison.

"It would be most difficult to determine the true nature of an event,
announced by perception, if an analogous sensation, previously
experienced, had not just permitted us to classify it by close
examination or by differentiating it.

"Memory is a partial resurrection of a past life, whose reconstruction
has just permitted us to attribute a true value to the phases of
existence.

"It is in preserving the memory of things that we are called upon to
compare them and then to judge of them.

"Thought is produced immediately after perception, and the recollection,
very often automatic, that it creates within us.

"It is the inception of the idea which it engenders by a series of
results.

"Thought permits the mind to exercise its judgment without allowing
itself to be influenced by the greatness or humility of the idea.

"By virtue of corresponding recollections, it will associate the present
perception with the past representations, and will take an extension,
more or less pronounced, according to the degree of intellectuality of
the thinker, and according to the importance of the object of its
reflections.