The Anatomy of Melancholy eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 2,057 pages of information about The Anatomy of Melancholy.

The Anatomy of Melancholy eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 2,057 pages of information about The Anatomy of Melancholy.
soul includes the powers, and performs the duties of the two other, which are contained in it, and all three faculties make one soul, which is inorganical of itself, although it be in all parts, and incorporeal, using their organs, and working by them.  It is divided into two chief parts, differing in office only, not in essence.  The understanding, which is the rational power apprehending; the will, which is the rational power moving:  to which two, all the other rational powers are subject and reduced.

SUBSECT.  X.—­Of the Understanding.

“Understanding is a power of the soul, [1011]by which we perceive, know, remember, and judge as well singulars, as universals, having certain innate notices or beginnings of arts, a reflecting action, by which it judgeth of his own doings, and examines them.”  Out of this definition (besides his chief office, which is to apprehend, judge all that he performs, without the help of any instruments or organs) three differences appear betwixt a man and a beast.  As first, the sense only comprehends singularities, the understanding universalities.  Secondly, the sense hath no innate notions.  Thirdly, brutes cannot reflect upon themselves.  Bees indeed make neat and curious works, and many other creatures besides; but when they have done, they cannot judge of them.  His object is God, ens, all nature, and whatsoever is to be understood:  which successively it apprehends.  The object first moving the understanding, is some sensible thing; after by discoursing, the mind finds out the corporeal substance, and from thence the spiritual.  His actions (some say) are apprehension, composition, division, discoursing, reasoning, memory, which some include in invention, and judgment.  The common divisions are of the understanding, agent, and patient; speculative, and practical; in habit, or in act; simple, or compound.  The agent is that which is called the wit of man, acumen or subtlety, sharpness of invention, when he doth invent of himself without a teacher, or learns anew, which abstracts those intelligible species from the phantasy, and transfers them to the passive understanding, [1012] “because there is nothing in the understanding, which was not first in the sense.”  That which the imagination hath taken from the sense, this agent judgeth of, whether it be true or false; and being so judged he commits it to the passible to be kept.  The agent is a doctor or teacher, the passive a scholar; and his office is to keep and further judge of such things as are committed to his charge; as a bare and rased table at first, capable of all forms and notions.  Now these notions are twofold, actions or habits:  actions, by which we take notions of, and perceive things; habits, which are durable lights and notions, which we may use when we will.  Some reckon up eight kinds of them, sense, experience, intelligence, faith, suspicion, error, opinion, science; to which are added art, prudency, wisdom:  as also [1013]synteresis,

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Anatomy of Melancholy from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.