The Imagination on Superphysics

General idea of the imagination

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In the previous book we discussed the senses. We sought to explain their nature and define precisely how they ought to be used; we identified the main and most common errors into which they lead us, and we sought to set proper limits to their power, so that we may trust them where they serve us, and fear them only if we fail to keep them within the bounds we have described. In this second book we shall treat of the imagination; the natural order of our inquiry requires it, for the connection between the senses and the imagination is so close that they ought not to be separated. As we shall see later, these two faculties differ only in degree, not in kind.

How to Raise Children

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In the preceding chapter, we considered the brain of a child in its mother’s womb; let us now examine what happens to it as soon as it has come out. At the same moment that it leaves the darkness and sees the light for the first time, the cold of the outside air seizes it; the most caressing embraces of the woman who receives it offend its delicate limbs; all external objects surprise it; they are all subjects of fear for it, because it does not yet know them, and it has of itself no strength to defend itself or to flee. The tears and cries by which it consoles itself are infallible signs of its pains and its fears; for they are indeed prayers that nature makes on its behalf to those present, so that they may defend it from the evils it suffers and from those it apprehends.

The Animal Spirits

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The animal spirits and the changes to which they are subject in general

Everyone sufficiently agrees that the animal spirits are only the most subtle and most agitated parts of the blood, which is subtilized and agitated principally by fermentation and by the violent movement of the muscles of which the heart is composed; that these spirits are carried with the rest of the blood by the arteries to the brain, and that there they are separated by certain parts destined for this use, about which there is not yet agreement.

Whether the air we breathe also causes some change in the mind

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The second general cause of the changes that occur in the animal spirits is the air we breathe. For although it does not at first make impressions as noticeable as chyle, nevertheless in the long run it does what the juices of meat do in a short time.

Third Cause of Changes in the Animal Spirits

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The third cause of the changes that occur in the animal spirits is the most ordinary and the most active of all; because it is this cause that produces, sustains, and strengthens all the passions. To understand it well, one must know that the fifth, sixth, and eighth pairs of nerves send most of their branches into the chest and the abdomen, where they have uses very useful for the preservation of the body, but extremely dangerous for the soul; because these nerves do not depend in their action on the will of men, as do those that serve to move the arms, the legs, and the other external parts of the body, and because they act much more upon the soul than the soul acts upon them.

Memory and Habits

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Of all material things, there is none more worthy of human attention than the structure of our body and the correspondence between all the parts that compose it; and of all spiritual things, there is none whose knowledge is more necessary to us than that of our soul, and of all the relations it has indispensably with God, and naturally with the body.

Changes in the Brain

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The fibers of the brain are not subject to changes as rapid as the spirits

All the parts of living bodies are in continual motion, both the solid parts and the fluids, the flesh as well as the blood; there is only this difference between the movement of the one and the other, that the movement of the parts of the blood is visible and perceptible, and that of the fibers of our flesh is entirely imperceptible. There is therefore this difference between the animal spirits and the substance of the brain, that the animal spirits are very agitated and very fluid, and that the substance of the brain has some solidity and some consistency; so that the spirits divide into small parts and dissipate in a few hours, transpiring through the pores of the vessels that contain them, and often others come in their place that are not at all similar to them. But the fibers of the brain are not so easy to dissipate: considerable changes do not often happen to them, and their whole substance can change only after several years.

Mother and Child

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It seems to me fairly evident that we are connected to all things and that we have natural relations to everything that surrounds us, which are very useful to us for the preservation and convenience of life. But all these relations are not equal. We are much more connected to France than to China, to the sun than to some star, to our own house than to that of our neighbors. There are invisible bonds that attach us much more closely to men than to beasts, to our parents and our friends than to strangers, to those on whom we depend for the preservation of our being than to those from whom we neither fear nor hope anything.