The passions of the soule in three books the first, treating of the passions in generall, and occasionally of the whole nature of man. The second, of the number, and order of the passions, and the explication of the six primitive ones. The third, of particular passions. By R. des Cartes. And translated out of French into English.

The 21 Article. Of Imaginations caused onely by the body.

Among the apprehensions caused by the bo∣dy, the greatest part depend on the nerves. But yet there are some that depend not at all on them, which are called Imaginations too, as well as those I lately spoke of, from which neverthelesse they differ herein, that our Will hath no hand in framing them, which is the rea∣son wherefore they cannot be numbred among the actions of the Soul, and they proceed from nothing but this, that the spirits being agitated se∣verall wayes, and meeting the traces of divers impressions preceding them in the brain, they

take their course at haphazzard through some certaine pores, rather than others. Such are the illusions of our dreames, and those dotages we often are troubled with waking, when our thought carelessely roames witout applying it self to any thing of its own. Now, though some of these imaginations be Passions of the Soul, ta∣king this word in the genuine and peculiar signi∣fication; and though they may be all called so if it be taken in a more generall acception: yet seeing they have not so notorious and determi∣ned a cause, as those apprehensions which the Soul receives by mediation of the nerves, and that they seem to be onely the shadow, and re∣presentation of the others, before we can well distinguish them, it is necessary to examine the difference between them.