(18:6) For a soldier, for instance, when he sees
the tracks of a horse in sand, will at once pass from the thought of
a horse to the thought of a horseman, and thence to the thought of war,
&c.; while a countryman will proceed from the thought of a horse to the
thought of a plough, a field, &c. (18:7) Thus every man will follow
this or that train of thought, according as he has been in the habit
of conjoining and associating the mental images of things in this or
that manner.
Prop.[XIX] The human mind has no knowledge of the body, and
does not know it to exist, save through the ideas
of the modifications whereby the body is affected.
Proof.- (19:1) The human mind is the very idea or knowledge of the human
body ([xiii] ), which ([ix] ) is in God, in so far as he is regarded as
affected by another idea of a particular thing actually existing: or,
inasmuch as ([Po.iv] ) the human body stands in need of very many bodies
whereby it is, as it were, continually regenerated; and the order and
connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of causes
([vii] ); this idea will therefore be in God, in so far as he is regarded
as affected by the ideas of very many particular things. (19:2) Thus God
has the idea of the human body, or knows the human body, in so far as he
is affected by very many other ideas, and not in so far as he constitutes
the nature of the human mind; that is (by [xi] Coroll.
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