ABSTRACT
As it has been suggested above, there was an important difference of opinion, fairly long-standing by the time Locke wrote, as to the nature of the processes involved in the formation of our concepts of the objects of experience. The dispute hinged on the question of the existence of a distinct faculty of intellect. For the Aristotelians, the active intellect was a separate, immaterial, immortal faculty necessary for the formation of universal notions. For Descartes, the pure intellect was simply the unitary immaterial soul as it thinks on its own, without attending to the common sense or corporeal imagination. Hobbes and Gassendi, on the other hand, rejected an intellect in either sense (although Gassendi wavered in his last work when faced with the task of allowing for immortality).74 Hobbes was at any rate not alone in holding firmly that for any thought, particular or universal, 'we need no other faculty than that of our imagination'.75 Since the seat of the imagination was widely agreed to be material, the issue was commonly seen as ontological as well as epistemological. Nevertheless there could be a purely epistemological motive for imagism, and some imagists, such as Joseph Glanvill, the author of The Vanity of Dogmatizing, were firm believers in an immaterial soul.
