Digby, K. (1644). Of simple apprehensions. In K. Digby, Two treatises in the one of which, the nature of the bodies; in the other, the nature of man's soule; is looked into: In a way of discovery, of the immortality of reasonable soules (pp. 355-365). Paris, France: Gilles Blaizot.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/11811-039
This chapter considers simple apprehensions and the right apprehension of things. The author argues that the very thing itself is truly in his understanding who rightly apprehends it. The apprehension of things coming unto us by our senses are resolvable into other, more simple apprehensions. The apprehensions of a a being is the most simple and the basis of all the rest. The apprehension of a thing is in next degree to that of being, and is the basis of all the subsequent ones. The apprehension of things known to our senses consists in certain respects between two things. Respect or relation has not really any formal being, but only in the apprehension of man. The existence or being is the proper affect of man; man's soul is a comparing power. A thing coming into the understanding of man loses nothing of its own peculiar nature. A multitude of things may be united in man's understanding without being mingled or confounded together. The author considers abstract and concrete terms, as well as universal notions. He also considers apprehending a multitude under one notion. The power of the understanding reaches as far as the extent of being. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)