§ 3: On Knowledge

Knowledge is the idea acquired from an impression and the fruit of perception that occurs through attention; it is a work of the mind and an enjoyment. To acquire knowledge of something, we must direct our attention to it; the mind must illuminate its qualities; the images placed must remain in consciousness; knowledge by which man is enriched. Does the same occur in the animal? Do representations become knowledge?

Unfortunately, what we have said about the memory of man we cannot say about the animal; that representations do not change into knowledge; this is evident from the following: (1) from the complete inattention and the lack of curiosity because of which, though full of remarkable and worthy of investigation systems, they remain so; (2) from the lack of internal and external speech, so that it may generalize and reason; (3) from the lack of memory similar to that of man; because how without attention can the representation be impressed? How without perception can the mind and speech attribute its qualities to it? How without impression can it perceive an object, examine it, and attribute it? The attribute drawn is information, idea, knowledge; how can it judge unless it remembers, so that it may compare and parallel it to others and know their differences or relations to previous ones? The animal thus remains passive, not active toward the stimuli from the senses; the representations are wholly sensory, which, since they did not receive a deep impression, neither became knowledge.

Through the discerning mind, as representations examine them as third, therefore the animal cannot acquire such knowledge, nor can it be perfected, nor can it learn any art with genuine knowledge. We will speak about science in the following section.