The Soul Has No Power to Produce Ideas. Cause of the Error into Which One Falls on This Subject

The second opinion is that of those who believe that our souls have the power to produce the ideas of things they wish to think about, and that they are excited to produce them by the impressions that objects make on the body, although these impressions are not images resembling the objects that cause them. They claim that it is in this that man is made in the image of God, and that he participates in His power; that just as God created all things from nothing, and can annihilate them and create entirely new ones, so man can create and annihilate the ideas of all things he pleases. But one has great reason to distrust all these opinions that elevate man; they are ordinarily thoughts that come from his vain and proud depths, and which the Father of lights has not given.

This participation in the power of God that men boast of having in order to represent objects to themselves and to perform several other particular actions, is a participation that seems to hold something of independence, as it is ordinarily explained; but it is also a chimerical participation that the ignorance and vanity of men have made them imagine. They are in a dependence much greater than they think upon the goodness and mercy of God; but this is not the place to explain it. Let us only try to show that men do not have the power to form the ideas of the things they perceive.

No one can doubt that ideas are real beings, since they have real properties; that some differ from others, and that they represent entirely different things. One cannot reasonably doubt either that they are spiritual and very different from the bodies they represent, and this seems strong enough to make one doubt whether the ideas by means of which one sees bodies are not more noble than the bodies themselves. Indeed, the intelligible world must be more perfect than the material and terrestrial world, as we shall see in what follows. Thus, when one asserts that men have the power to form for themselves such ideas as they please, one runs great danger of asserting that men have the power to make beings more noble and more perfect than the world that God has created. One does not, however, reflect on this, because one imagines that an idea is nothing, since it is not felt; or if one regards it as a being, it is as a very thin and very contemptible being, because one imagines that it is annihilated as soon as it is no longer present to the mind.

But even if it were true that ideas were only very small and very contemptible beings, they are nevertheless beings, and spiritual beings; and men not having the power to create, it follows that they cannot produce them; for the production of ideas in the manner it is explained is a true creation; and although one tries to palliate and soften the boldness and hardness of this opinion, by saying that the production of ideas supposes something, and that creation supposes nothing, one does not nevertheless give account of the depth of the difficulty.

For one must take heed that it is no more difficult to produce something from nothing than to produce it by supposing another thing from which it cannot be made and which can contribute nothing to its production. For example, it is no more difficult to create an angel than to produce it from a stone, because a stone being of an entirely opposite kind of being, it can serve nothing to the production of an angel; but it can contribute to the production of bread, gold, etc., because stone, gold and bread are only one and the same extension diversely configured and all these things are material.

It is even more difficult to produce an angel from a stone than to produce it from nothing, because to make an angel from a stone, as far as this can be done, one must annihilate the stone, and then create the angel; and to simply create an angel, one need annihilate nothing. If therefore the mind produces its ideas from the material impressions that the brain receives from objects, it always does the same thing, or something as difficult, or even more difficult, than if it created them, since ideas being spiritual, they cannot be produced from material images that are in the brain and have no proportion with them.

If one says that an idea is not a substance, I agree; but it is always a spiritual thing: and as it is not possible to make a square from a spirit, although a square is not a substance, it is not possible either to form from a material substance a spiritual idea even if an idea were not a substance.

But even if one granted to the human mind a sovereign power to annihilate and create the ideas of things, with all that it would never use it to produce them; for just as a painter, however skillful he may be in his art, cannot represent an animal he has never seen and of which he has no idea, so that the picture he would be obliged to make of it cannot resemble that unknown animal; thus a man cannot form the idea of an object if he does not know it beforehand, that is to say, if he does not already have the idea of it, which does not depend on his will. If he already has an idea, he knows the object, and it is useless for him to form a new one. It is therefore useless to attribute to the human mind the power to produce its ideas.

One might perhaps say that the mind has general and confused ideas that it does not produce, and that those it produces are particular, clearer and more distinct; but it is always the same thing. For just as a painter cannot draw the portrait of a particular man, so as to be sure of having succeeded, if he does not have a distinct idea of him and even if the person is not present, so the mind that has, for example, only the idea of being or of animal in general, cannot represent to itself a horse, nor form a very distinct idea of it, and be assured that it is perfectly similar to a horse, if it does not already have a first idea with which it compares this second: now if it has a first one, it is useless to form a second, and the question concerns this first. Therefore, etc.

It is true 1° that when we conceive a square by pure intellection, we can still imagine it, that is to say, perceive it in ourselves by tracing an image in the brain. But one must note first that we are not the true nor the principal cause of this image, but it would be too long to explain it. 2° That so far from the second idea that accompanies this image being more distinct and more accurate than the other; on the contrary, it is accurate only because it resembles the first, which serves as a rule for the second. For finally one must not believe that the imagination and even the senses represent objects to us more distinctly than pure understanding, but only that they touch and apply the mind more. For ideas of sense and imagination are distinct only by the conformity they have with ideas of pure intellection [13]. The image of a square, for example, that the imagination traces in the brain, is accurate and well made only by the conformity it has with the idea of a square that we conceive by pure intellection [14]. It is this idea that regulates this image. It is the mind that guides the imagination and obliges it, so to speak, to look from time to time to see if the image it paints is a figure of four straight and equal lines whose angles are exactly right, in a word if what one imagines is similar to what one conceives.

After what has been said, I do not think one can doubt that those who assert that the mind can form the ideas of objects are mistaken; since they attribute to the mind the power to create and even to create with wisdom and order, although it has no knowledge of what it does: for that is not conceivable. But the cause of their error is that men never fail to judge that a thing is the cause of some effect when the one and the other are joined together, provided that the true cause of this effect is unknown to them. That is why everyone concludes that an agitated ball that encounters another is the true and principal cause of the agitation it communicates to it, that the will of the soul is the true and principal cause of the movement of the arm, and other similar prejudices; because it always happens that a ball is agitated when it is encountered by another that strikes it, that our arms are moved almost every time we will it, and that we do not sensibly see what other thing could be the cause of these movements.

But when an effect does not follow so often from something that is not its cause, there is still always a very great number of people who believe that this thing is the cause of the effect that occurs; but not everyone falls into this error. For example, a comet appears, and after this comet a prince dies; stones are exposed to the moon and they are eaten by worms; the sun is joined with Mars in the nativity of a child, and it happens that this child has something extraordinary; this suffices for many people to persuade themselves that the comet, the moon, the conjunction of the sun with Mars are the causes of the effects just noted and others similar to them, and the reason why not everyone believes it is that one does not see at every moment that these effects follow these things.

But all men ordinarily having the ideas of objects present to their minds as soon as they wish them, and this happening to them several times a day, almost all conclude that the will that accompanies the production or rather the presence of ideas is the true cause of it, because they see nothing at the same time to which they can attribute it and they imagine that ideas no longer exist as soon as the mind no longer sees them, and that they begin to exist again when they present themselves to the mind. It is also for these same reasons that some judge that external objects send images resembling them, as we have just said in the preceding chapter. For not being able to see objects by themselves but only by their ideas, they judge that the mind produces the idea because as soon as it is present they see it, as soon as it is absent they no longer see it, and that the presence of the object almost always accompanies the idea that represents it to us.

However, if men did not precipitate themselves in their judgments, from the fact that the ideas of things are present to their minds as soon as they wish them, they should only conclude that according to the order of nature their will is ordinarily necessary so that they may have these ideas; but not that the will is the true and principal cause that renders them present to their minds, and still less that the will produces them from nothing or in the manner they explain it. They should not conclude either that objects send species resembling them because the soul ordinarily perceives them only when they are present, but only that the object is ordinarily necessary so that the idea may be present to the mind. Finally they should not judge that an agitated ball is the principal and true cause of the movement of the ball it encounters in its path, since the first does not itself have the power to move. They can only judge that this encounter of two balls is an occasion for the author of the movement of matter to execute the decree of his will, which is the universal cause of all things, by communicating to the other ball a part of the movement of the first; that is to say [15], to speak more clearly, by willing that the latter acquire as much agitation as the former loses of its own: for the motive force of bodies can only be the will of Him who preserves them, as we shall show elsewhere.