Disputatio de phrenitide

XXXIV.
The third also abounds in many errors, for first, it is not true that actions of this kind, since they are instrumental (as will be demonstrated later), occur from the temperament of the brain. Then, when they say that sometimes reason is harmed, while the imagination is unhurt, and conversely: I respond that it is impossible that reason be harmed while the imagination is entirely unhurt and conversely, because its harm depends on the harm of the phantasy.

XXXV.
The examples, however, by which they try to prove this, manifestly demonstrate that their opinion is not true. For if what is brought forward from the book On the Differences of Symptoms 3 is correctly considered, it can easily be understood that the imagination was not entirely unhurt: for first, it cannot happen that the intellect errs in reasoning, unless some fictitious illusion creeps in from images which disturbs it. When, however, from the cited passage they bring forward that the phrenetic patient had neither the function of imagining harmed nor the memory of names deleted, since he properly named the individual vessels, which had been preserved in memory: I say that the phantasy also erred, because it did not conceive the vessels as vessels, that is, their use. Furthermore, that he properly called each vessel was not the work of Memory alone, but also of Reason, which is called the principle of speech: for external speech is the sign of internal Reasoning. The remaining examples which are brought forward by them, since they are of the same flour of the same nature, there is no need for me to respond to each one.

XXXVI.
In the fourth argument that they bring forward, that there is nothing in the intellect that was not previously in the sense (if it is correctly understood) is very true, but what they infer from that, that phantasms are represented first in the anterior, then in the middle, and finally in the extreme part of the brain, is not likely: for it would follow that a long time intervenes between the action of one faculty and another: then that there would be something else that would simulate those