And this ought to be the work of the Schooles; but they rather nourish such doctrine.  For (not knowing what Imagination, or the Senses are), what they receive, they teach:  some saying, that Imaginations rise of themselves, and have no cause:  Others that they rise most commonly from the Will; and that Good thoughts are blown (inspired) into a man, by God; and evill thoughts by the Divell:  or that Good thoughts are powred (infused) into a man, by God; and evill ones by the Divell.  Some say the Senses receive the Species of things, and deliver them to the Common-sense; and the Common Sense delivers them over to the Fancy, and the Fancy to the Memory, and the Memory to the Judgement, like handing of things from one to another, with many words making nothing understood.

Understanding.  The Imagination that is raysed in man (or any other creature indued with the faculty of imagining) by words, or other voluntary signes, is that we generally call Understanding; and is common to Man and Beast.  For a dogge by custome will understand the call, or the rating of his Master; and so will many other Beasts.  That Understanding which is peculiar to man, is the Understanding not onely his will; but his conceptions and thoughts, by the sequell and contexture of the names of things into Affirmations, Negations, and other formes of Speech:  And of this kinde of Understanding I shall speak hereafter.

CHAPTER III

OF THE CONSEQUENCE OR TRAYNE OF IMAGINATIONS

By Consequence, or Trayne of Thoughts, I understand that succession of one Thought to another, which is called (to distinguish it from Discourse in words) Mentall Discourse.

When a man thinketh on any thing whatsoever, His next Thought after, is not altogether so casuall as it seems to be.  Not every Thought to every Thought succeeds indifferently.  But as wee have no Imagination, whereof we have not formerly had Sense, in whole, or in parts; so we have no Transition from one Imagination to another, whereof we never had the like before in our Senses.  The reason whereof is this.  All Fancies are Motions within us, reliques of those made in the Sense:  And those motions that immediately succeeded one another in the sense, continue also together after Sense:  In so much as the former comming again to take place, and be praedominant, the later followeth, by coherence of the matter moved, is such manner, as water upon a plain Table is drawn which way any one part of it is guided by the finger.  But because in sense, to one and the same thing perceived, sometimes one thing, sometimes another succeedeth, it comes to passe in time, that in the Imagining of any thing, there is no certainty what we shall Imagine next; Onely this is certain, it shall be something that succeeded the same before, at one time or another.