found, when brought under the light of evolution, that which unites elements seemingly irreconcilable.
(2) The development of mind, once more, is opposed to the view that the simplest or earliest mental states most completely reproduce reality. Aristotle seems to countenance this view when he says that imagination is a weakened sensation; as though he meant ultimately to ascribe to sensation the only direct contact with the real world. But Aristotle can, as it were, amuse himself with creating this suspicion, since nothing can be farther from his mind than the supposition that sensation is the passport to truth. In the region of the external world, he virtually says, it is all very well to speak of senses and a weakened sense; but, when we are in quest of truth, we must betake ourselves to another region, in comparison with which the material world is little more than a kingdom of shadows. Hobbes, too, repeating Aristotle so faithfully in his doctrine of the connection of imagination with sense, is acrobat enough to ride two horses. When he comes to discuss reason, he remarks, "Reason is not, as sense and memory, born with us; nor gotten by experience only, as prudence is; but attained by industry."[1] This is, indeed, very unconventional language for a philosopher, but it means in more orthodox phraseology that reason is a self-originating activity; and it also suggests the idea that reason, if a motion at all, requires no antecedent motion. Hence reason is not, according to Hobbes, a lower region, reached by easy descent from the upper air of imagination, but rather a region apart. Like Aristotle and Plato, Hobbes is not prepared to assert the unity of all the faculties.
But the case is different with Hume, who insists upon bringing the capacities of mind into something approaching unity. Thus he opens his Treatise of Human Nature with the bold words, "All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, which I shall call Impressions and Ideas. The difference betwixt these consists in the degrees of force and liveliness, with which they strike upon the mind, and make their way into our thought or consciousness.
- ↑ Leviathan, pt. I, chap. v.
