The present article is devoted to a study of two of John Toland's major works, Letters to Serena (1704), and Pantheisticon (1720). In Letters to Serena, John Toland argues that the universe is made of homogeneous matter, so that it is only through a process of mental abstraction that we consider the bodies the universe is seemingly made of as substantially distinct from the universe itself. Yet imagination goes well beyond abstraction, and deludes us into viewing bodies as substantial realities : according to Toland, it is the same process which is at work in superstition, and leads men to attribute substantial reality to their own delusions. In Pantheisticon, however, Toland falls prey to the workings of an imagination run wild. The initial analogy posited between minerals, plants and animals is expanded into a metaphorical description of the universe as a great living whole : yet Toland himself endows this metaphor with a cognitive content.

Lurbe Pierre. Imagination, analogies et métaphores chez John Toland. In: Interfaces. Image-Texte-Langage 10, 1996. La Couleur parle (2) pp. 169-182.