Imagination Creates Reality

Philosophers might be able to produce a few convincing arguments that objects can exist without a mind to observe them.

Philosophy tells us that everything we perceive are dependent on the mind.

Whereas ordinary people give a distinct and continued existence to the things they feel or see.

• They mix up their perceptions and the things that they are perceiving.

The continued and distinct existence of bodies is assured only by our imagination, not our reason.

Imagination Creates Existence from the Habitual Coherence and Constancy of Impressions

All impressions appear as, and are, internal and perishing existences.

The idea of the distinct and continued existence of our impressions arises from a concurrence of the qualities of those impressions with the qualities of the imagination.

This idea of the distinct and continued existence of our impressions does not extend to all our impressions.

Instead, we only apply it to some impressions that have certain qualities.

People think that:

• we grant reality and existence to some impressions because of those impressions':
  • involuntariness, and
  • superior force and violence,
• we refuse reality and existence to some impressions because of those impressions':
  • voluntariness, and
  • feebleness,
• the impressions of shape and size, colour and sound, are permanent beings existing external to us, and
• our pains and pleasures, passions and affections exist only within our perception.

These feelings operate with greater violence and are equally involuntary as the impressions of shape and size, colour and sound.

The heat of a flame exists in the flame.

• But the pain it causes on touch, exists only in the perception.

I reject these unphilosophical opinions.

All those objects that we assign a continued existence have a peculiar constancy.

• This constancy distinguishes them from the impressions which exist to us depending on our perception.

Those mountains, houses, and trees, which I see, have always appeared to me in the same order.

• When I lose sight of them by closing my eyes, they return without change after I open my eyes.

My bed, table, books, and papers, present themselves in the same uniform manner.

• They do not change when I stop seeing them.

This is the case with all our impressions from objects that have an external existence.

Other impressions that exist only in our minds do not have this constancy, whether they be:

• gentle or violent, and
• voluntary or involuntary.

However, this constancy has very considerable exceptions.

Bodies often change their position and qualities.

• After a little absence or interruption, they may become hardly knowable.

But even in these changes, they:

• preserve a coherence, and
• have a regular dependence on each other.

This is the foundation of a reasoning from causation.

• It produces the opinion of their continued existence.

When I return to my room after an hour’s absence, I find my fire gone.

But then in other instances I am used to seeing a similar change produced in a similar timespan, whether I am:

• present or absent, or
• near or remote.

Therefore, this coherence in their changes is one of the characteristics of external objects, as well as their constancy.