On Images (BC)

"Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality) [...]." (Plato, "The Symposium", cca. 385–370 BC)

"[...] images are like sensuous contents except in that they contain no matter." (Aristotle, "De Anima", cca. 350 BC)

"[Imagination is] that in virtue of which we say that an image occurs to us and not as we speak of it metaphorically." (Aristotle, "De Anima" III, cca. 350 BC)

"Since it seems that there is nothing outside and separate in existence from sensible spatial magnitudes, the objects of thought are in the sensible forms, viz. both the abstract objects and all the states and affections of sensible things. Hence no one can learn or understand anything in the absence of sense, and when the mind is actively aware of anything it is necessarily aware of it along with an image; for images are like sensuous contents except in that they contain no matter. Imagination is different from assertion and denial; for what is true or false involves a synthesis of thoughts. In what will the primary thoughts differ from images? Must we not say that neither these nor even our other thoughts are images, though they necessarily involve them?" (Aristotle, "De Anima", cca. 350 BC)

"The intellectual capacity thinks the forms in the phantasmata (mental images) […] And for the following reason, as without having perceptual awareness no one could either learn or understand anything, so when one engages in intellectual activity one must at that time do so by means of a phantasma. For, phantasmata are just as perceptual states (aisthemata) are [in actual external perception] but without matter." (Aristotle, "De Anima" III, cca. 350 BC)

"Thinking is different from perceiving and is held to be in part imagination, in part judgement: we must therefore first mark off the sphere of imagination and then speak of judgement. If then imagination is that in virtue of which an image arises for us, excluding metaphorical uses of the term, is it a single faculty or disposition relative to images, in virtue of which we discriminate and are either in error or not? The faculties in virtue of which we do this are sense, opinion, knowledge, thought." (Aristotle, "De Anima", cca. 350 BC)

"For imagination is different from either perceiving or discursive thinking, though it is not found without sensation, or judgement without it. That this activity is not the same kind of thinking as judgement is obvious. For imagining lies within our own power whenever we wish (e.g. we can call up a picture, as in the practice of mnemonics by the use of mental images), but in forming opinions we are not free: we cannot escape the alternative of falsehood or truth." (Aristotle, "De Anima", cca. 350 BC)

"As regards the question, therefore, what memory or remembering is, it has now been shown that it is the having of an image, related as a likeness to that of which it is an image; and as to the question of which of the faculties within us memory is a function, it has been shown that it is a function of the primary faculty of sense-perception, i.e. of that faculty whereby we perceive time. " (Aristotle," De Memoria et Reminiscentia" ["On Memory and Recollection"], 4th century BC)

"But since we have, in our work on the soul, treated of imagination, and the faculty of imagination is identical with that of sense-perception, though the being of a faculty of imagination is different from that of a faculty of sense-perception; and since imagination is the movement set up by a sensory faculty when actually discharging its function, while a dream appears to be an image" (for which occurs in sleep - whether simply or in some particular way - is what we call a dream): it manifestly follows that dreaming is an activity of the faculty of sense-perception, but belongs to this faculty qua imaginative." (Aristotle, "On Dreams", 4th century BC)

"For according to the arguments from the existence of the sciences there will be Forms of all things of which there are sciences, and according to the argument that there is one attribute common to many things there will be Forms even of negations, and according to the argument that there is an object for thought even when the thing has perished, there will be Forms of perishable things; for we can have an image of these." (Aristotle, "Metaphysics", 4th century BC)

"He [Simonides] inferred that persons desiring to train this faculty [of memory] must select places and form mental images of the things they wish to remember and store those images in the places, so that the order of the places will preserve the order of the things, and the images of the things will denote the things themselves, and we shall employ the places and images respectively as a wax writing-tablet and the letters written on it." (Marcus Tullius Cicero, "De Oratore", 55 BC)

"As infinite kinds of almost identical images arise continually from the innumerable atoms and flow out to us from the gods, so we should take the keenest pleasure in turning and bending our mind and reason to grasp these images, in order to understand the nature of these blessed and eternal beings." (Marcus Tullius Cicero, "De Natura Deorum" ["On the Nature of the Gods"], 45 BC)

"Imagination (VIKALPA) is a thought based on a mental image describable by words but not based on an object directly observable." (Patanjali, "Yoga Sutra" cca. 500 BC - 400 AD)