Disputatio de phrenitide

phantasms and carry them from the anterior part to the middle and posterior part: which, since they are not likely, such a distinction of places ought not to be posited. For nothing can be devised that could carry those images so quickly: unless we wish to imagine in the brain the ship of Ulysses, which Homer made swifter than thought.

XXXVII.

The solution to the fifth argument is also clear from those things which were said by me above. For imagination and memory are not distinguished by reality but only by reason. Reason, however, does not require an instrument with which it operates. That the anterior part of the brain has a different temperament from the middle and posterior, I believe is difficult to prove. For we see in dissections that the substance of the brain is sufficiently uniform in both color and hardness: and the anterior part does not differ at all from the posterior.

XXXVIII.

The sixth is also shown to be false by those things which were demonstrated by me above. For reasoning is the most perfect action of all, and not memory. For memory is subject to corruption, because it depends on matter, while Reason is the contrary.

XXXIX.

From these things, therefore, which have been said up to now, it can be easily gathered that the brain is the subject of phrenitis as it is something composite: then that the phantasy is harmed first in this illness: and by accident, the Mind or Reason. Furthermore, these principal actions do not occur in diverse and distinct places, since memory and phantasy do not differ among themselves except by reason, and the intellect depends on the operation of the phantasy, and therefore it is necessary to establish reason also where the phantasy is. It remains, therefore, for us to demonstrate first in what place of the brain these actions are performed: for some wish these operations to be engaged in and completed in the ventricles, others in the substance of the brain: then whether the harm of the principal actions in phrenitis proceeds from a similar or organic disease.