The Imagination of Men and Women

The imagination of women

We have given some idea of the physical causes of the disorder of men’s imagination in the other part; we shall try in this one to make some application of these causes to the most general errors that may be called moral.

One could see from what was said in the preceding chapter that the delicacy of the fibers of the brain is one of the principal causes that prevent us from being able to bring enough application to discover truths that are somewhat hidden.

I. This delicacy of the fibers is ordinarily found in women, and it is this that gives them that great intelligence for everything that strikes the senses. It is for women to decide on fashions, to judge of language, to discern good air and fine manners. They have more knowledge, skill, and subtlety than men in these matters. Everything that depends on taste is within their province, but ordinarily they are incapable of penetrating truths that are somewhat difficult to discover. Everything abstract is incomprehensible to them. They cannot use their imagination to develop composed and entangled questions. They consider only the surface of things, and their imagination has neither enough force nor enough extent to pierce to the bottom of them and to compare all their parts without being distracted. A trifle is capable of diverting them; the least cry frightens them; the smallest movement occupies them. In short, the manner and not the reality of things suffices to fill the whole capacity of their mind, because the least objects producing great movements in the delicate fibers of their brain, they excite by a necessary consequence in their soul feelings vivid and great enough to occupy it entirely.

If it is certain that this delicacy of the fibers of the brain is the principal cause of all these effects, it is not equally certain that it is generally found in all women. Or if it is found in them, their animal spirits sometimes have such a proportion with the fibers of their brain that there are women who have more solidity of mind than some men. It is in a certain temperament of the size and agitation of the animal spirits with the fibers of the brain that the strength of the mind consists, and women sometimes have this just temperament. There are strong and constant women and there are weak and inconstant men. There are learned women, courageous women, women capable of everything, and on the contrary there are soft and effeminate men, incapable of penetrating anything and of executing anything. In short, when we attribute some defects to one sex, to certain ages, to certain conditions, we mean it only ordinarily, always supposing that there are no rules without exception.

For one must not imagine that all men or all women of the same age, or of the same country, or of the same family, have brains of the same constitution. It is more appropriate to believe that as one cannot find two faces that entirely resemble each other, one cannot find two imaginations altogether similar; and that all men, women, and children differ from one another only in more or less in the delicacy of the fibers of their brain. For just as one must not too quickly suppose an essential identity between things between which one sees no difference, one must not place essential differences where one finds no perfect identity. For these are defects into which one ordinarily falls.

What one can therefore say of the fibers of the brain is that ordinarily they are very soft and very delicate in children; that with age they harden and strengthen; that nevertheless most women and some men have them extremely delicate all their lives. One cannot determine anything further. But this is enough about women and children; they do not meddle in seeking truth and instructing others: thus their errors do not cause much prejudice; for they are hardly believed in the things they advance. Let us speak of grown men, of those whose mind is in its force and vigor, and whom one might believe capable of finding truth and teaching it to others.

The Imagination of men

The ordinary time of the greatest perfection of the mind is from thirty to fifty years. The fibers of the brain at this age have ordinarily acquired a moderate consistency. The pleasures and pains of the senses hardly make any impression on them. So that one has no longer to defend oneself except against violent passions, which occur rarely and from which one can shelter oneself, if one carefully avoids all occasions of them. Thus the soul, being no longer diverted by sensible things, can easily contemplate truth.

A man in this state, who would not be filled with the prejudices of childhood, who from his youth would have acquired facility for meditation, who would wish to stop only at clear and distinct notions of the mind, who would carefully reject all the confused ideas of the senses, and who would have the time and the will to meditate, would no doubt fall into error only with difficulty. But it is not of this man that we must speak; it is of ordinary men, who ordinarily have nothing of this one.

I say therefore that the solidity and consistency that is found with age in the fibers of men’s brains makes the solidity and consistency of their errors, if one may speak thus. It is the seal that seals their prejudices and all their false opinions, and that shelters them from the force of reason. In short, as much as this constitution of the fibers of the brain is advantageous to well-educated persons, so much is it disadvantageous to the greater part of men, since it confirms both one and the other in the thoughts they have.

But men are not only confirmed in their errors when they have reached the age of forty or fifty. They are still more subject to falling into new ones, because believing themselves then capable of judging everything, as indeed they should be, they decide with presumption and consult only their prejudices, for men reason about things only in relation to the ideas that are most familiar to them. When a chemist wishes to reason about some natural body, his three principles come first to his mind. A Peripatetic thinks first of the four elements and the four primary qualities, and another philosopher refers everything to other principles. Thus nothing can enter a man’s mind that is not immediately infected with the errors to which he is subject and that does not increase their number.

This consistency of the fibers of the brain has another very bad effect, principally in older persons, which is to render them incapable of meditation. They cannot bring attention to most of the things they wish to know, and thus they cannot penetrate truths that are somewhat hidden. They cannot relish the most reasonable sentiments when they are supported by principles that seem new to them, although they are otherwise very intelligent in things of which age has given them much experience. But all that I say here is understood only of those who have passed their youth without making use of their mind and without applying themselves.

To clarify these things, one must know that we cannot learn anything if we do not bring attention to it, and that we can hardly be attentive to something if we do not imagine it and do not represent it vividly in our brain. Now, in order that we may imagine some objects, it is necessary that we bend some part of our brain, or that we imprint upon it some other movement, so as to be able to form the traces to which are attached the ideas that represent these objects to us. So that if the fibers of the brain have become somewhat hardened, they will be capable only of the bending and movements that they had formerly; and thus the soul will not be able to imagine, nor consequently to be attentive to what it wished, but only to things that are familiar to it.

From this one must conclude that it is very advantageous to exercise oneself in meditating on all sorts of subjects, in order to acquire a certain facility for thinking about what one wishes. For just as we acquire a great facility for moving the fingers of our hands in every way and with very great speed by the frequent use we make of them in playing instruments; so the parts of our brain, whose movement is necessary for imagining what we wish, acquire by use a certain facility for bending that makes one imagine the things one wishes with much facility, quickness, and even clarity.

Now, the best means of acquiring this habit, which makes the principal difference between one man of wit and another, is to accustom oneself from youth to seek the truth of even very difficult things, because at that age the fibers of the brain are capable of all sorts of inflections.

I do not pretend, nevertheless, that this facility can be acquired by those who are called studious persons, who apply themselves only to reading without meditating and without seeking by themselves the resolution of questions before reading it in the authors. It is quite visible that by this route one acquires only the facility of remembering things one has read. One observes every day that those who have much reading cannot bring attention to new things that are told to them, and that the vanity of their erudition, leading them to wish to judge them before conceiving them, makes them fall into gross errors of which other men are not capable.

But although the lack of attention is the principal cause of their errors, there is still another that is particular to them; it is that, always finding in their memory an infinity of confused species, they at once take some one of them that they consider as the one in question; and because the things that are said do not suit it, they ridiculously judge that one is mistaken. When one wishes to represent to them that they themselves are mistaken and that they do not even know the state of the question, they become irritated; and being unable to conceive what is said to them, they continue to attach themselves to this false species that their memory has presented to them. If one shows them too manifestly its falsity, they substitute a second and a third, which they defend sometimes against all appearance of truth and even against their own conscience, because they have hardly any respect or love for truth and they have much confusion and shame in recognizing that there are things that others know better than they.

THe Imagination of the elderly.

All that has been said of persons of forty and fifty must be understood still more reasonably of the elderly; because the fibers of their brain are still more inflexible, and, lacking animal spirits to trace new vestiges there, their imagination is quite languishing. And as ordinarily the fibers of their brain are mixed with many superfluous humors, they lose little by little the memory of past things, and fall into the weaknesses ordinary to children. Thus, in decrepit age, they have the defects that depend on the constitution of the fibers of the brain, which are found in children and in grown men; although one can say that they are wiser than the one and the other, because they are no longer so subject to their passions, which come from the emotion of the animal spirits.

These things will not be explained further, because it is easy to judge of this age by the others that have been spoken of before, and to conclude that the elderly have even more difficulty than all others in conceiving what is said to them; that they are more attached to their prejudices and their ancient opinions; and consequently that they are still more confirmed in their errors and their bad habits, and other similar things. It is only warned that the state of old age does not arrive precisely at sixty or seventy years; that not all the elderly dote; that not all those who have passed sixty are always delivered from the passions of young men; and that one must not draw too general consequences from the principles that one has established.