Note 34 — Chapter II · TIME AND SPACE

It is perhaps necessary to point out that subjective does not mean ‘mental’: there is no ‘mentalism’ at this stage of the history of thought: the subjective is ‘the work of the mind,’ and is practically always limited to the work of the Imagination. This is why we find so much confusion in the interpretation of philosophies which belong to this period of transition. It is frequently the case that the work of the mind as reason is considered unimpeachable, while the work of the mind as imagination is the source of constructions which may be, as we still say, ‘put upon’ things. The phrase here means that an imaginative construction is not necessarily more than imaginative. It seems strange that after his comprehension of the futility of abstract counting (p. 712) Gassendi should not have avoided this error. But Space, in spite of being a substance, so combines plurality and unity (for many spaces are one space) that Gassendi lost his way.