Principle of perception: perception is the first and larger interventionist of understanding. Perception is the first given data.
Power of objective reference: Judgment gives substance and significanceand makes real perceptions, also transforms subjective into objective.
Relationship at the Judgment: The soul, when performing judgment, makes a new relationship and therefore creates.
“A painter, who doubts nothing, will make little progress in art. When the work exceeds the judgment of the performer, this will not advance more; but when the judgment exceeds the work, it will always get better, unless greed is not prevented.” Leonardo Da Vinci.
Principle of conscience, gives relationship.
Continuity: Relations of space, time and causality.
Relationships
The inventive power of soul is based on the following relationships:
– Similarities (things that are alike).
– More and less ( relative quantities).
– Equality (things whose resemblance makes them almost indistinguishable).
– Number (absolute quantities).
– Succession (things that precede and anticipate among them).
– Coexistence (things that exist simultaneously, without defeating one to another).
– Cause and effect (constant succession of two determined phenomena).
– Extra-position or space (where a thing is in relation to another).
Ideas come from perception and from the renewal of the perception that is to say from an objective feeling. Therefore, the idea is neither eternal nor immutable.
Position of the instinct: connection coming from cause-effect is the result of a tendency or instinct.
Even ideas that do not seem to come from a direct observation come indirectly through certain instincts. Therefore, instincts cause the mobility of imagination.
Instinct is the replacement of innate Ideas. Instinct of the Spirit has the original faculty “Of formulating in universal proportions”.
Consciousness gives the primitive type of relations Identity, continuity and unity (what Freud called “Primary Thinking”). Therefore, intuitive judgments are judgments of necessary connection: if I perceive that I desire, then I necessarily desire.
Supremacy of touch: touch gives objective reference to perception. Touch is the master of senses, which gives the primary instinctive data, but sight is thefirst disciple of touch.
Principle of Composition: different from simplicity, it is a relationship of the soul product with other elements of the same or other different species. Ithas to do with the affinity (resemblance) of the idea or renewed perception,resurrected or revived. This likeness is perfect.
a) The creation of Perceptions: qualities or states create perceptions. A combination of qualities or states (actions of being) create new perceptions.
b) Creation of complex ideas: a set of sensations by which we know a Complex object, form a complex concept. A complex object creates sensations that leave complex ideas. One, that wants to leave complex sensations, must create complex ideas.
– Renewed perceptions: when there is a condition of something that produces a spiritual feeling, then there is a current perception. When it finishes, what remains of this condition or rises after, in the soul, is a renewed perception, a memory, an idea.
Soul has the power or ability to see or look at itself; it has knowledge of what happens in it. All acts or faculties of the soul are perceptions, memory, imagination and thought.
– Visual sensation: a visual perception (visual organic printing) is created by a corporeal agent which works in the eye (eyesight), thereby impressing the visual organ (eyes, retina, nerves that go from retina to the brain). Thus, to impress there is to create a strong visual perception, forceful, through a corporeal agent that impresses and excites.
– Principle of Excitement: An excited corporeal agent generates internal sensitive perceptions, which excite the qualities or states of the body such as hunger, thirst, fatigue, as well as other sensations, like pain and pleasures.
– Sensitive external perceptions: they are the so-called external senses: eyesight, smell, taste, touch and hearing.
To create strong perceptions, first, it is necessary to excite the externalsensitive perceptions, as well as the internal sensitive ones. We must then create a corporeal agent that will overwhelmingly excite.
Idea (image) or generating ideas
There are two kinds of ideas: our own remembered perceptions,absolute or relative, and the improper, imperfect, additional, intellectual signs that may substitute ideas concerning those things that cannot reach perceptive faculties of understanding.
The idea is a renewed perception, so we refer to representations of the memory, imagination and fantasies.
“While I travel, for example, in a carriage, or after a good meal, while I give a tour, or at night, when I cannot sleep, then it is better because ideas come, they emerge like a crowd. I save in my head the ones I like, and, without doubt, the constant humming for me, at least if we believe whatothers say. When I have this, entire fine in my head, the rest comes soon, onething after the other one; I think where I could use the fragment to make a complete composition following the rules of counterpoint, the tones of the different instruments, and so on. Then, my soul flares, at least when I am not interrupted. The idea grows, I develop it, everything is increasingly clear, and the fragment is almost over in my head, even if it is long, so that immediately I can, at a glance, see it in my imagination as a beautiful painting or a beautiful sculpture. I mean, in my head, I do not hear each part one by one in the order they should be chained; I hear them all together at once. Delicious moments! However, the whole discovery and implementation occur inside of me as a beautiful dream, very lucid. However, the most beautiful thing is to hear everything at once”. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Ramon Marcel Arellano Baez 