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132 DEVELOPMENT OF CARTESIANISM. of the causal law (III. prop. 2, schol.). — Since the mind iocs nothing without at the same time knowing that it loes it — since, in other words, its activity is a conscious ac- tivity, it is not merely idea corporis humani, but also idea idece corporis or idea metiiis. All adherents of the Eleatic separation 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, sen- suous representation) is the faculty of inadequate, confused ideas, among which are included abstract conceptions, as well as sensations and memory-images. The objects of per- ception are the affections of our body; and our perceptions, therefore, are not clear and distinct, because we are not com- pletely acquainted with their causes. In the merely per- ceptual stage, the mind gains only a confused and muti- lated 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 1 on by universals and their symbols, words, yields opinion ' and imagination merely instead of truth. Quite as value- less and harmful is the idea of ends, with its accompani- ments. 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 fie-