phantasm

Noun

phantasm (plural phantasms)

1. Something seen but having no physical reality; a phantom or apparition.
   • But night comes in with a more genial spirit: we have done our worst and our bitterest; and we need a small space to indulge any little bit of cordiality that may be left in us. A thousand gay phantasms float in on the sunny south, which has left the far-off vineyards of its birth.1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “Success”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 75
   • He declares that there seems to be no justification for regarding the phantasms of dreams as pure hallucinations; most dream-images are probably in fact illusions, since they arise from faint sense-impressions, which never cease during sleep.1900, Sigmund Freud, translated by James Strachey, The Interpretation of Dreams: Avon Books, page 74
2. An impression as received by the senses, especially an image, often prior to any interpretation by the intellect.
   • When abstracted from the phantasm by the intellectus agens the species effects a modification in the intellectus possibilis which modification is called the species intelligibilis impressa. Actualized by the species impressa the intellectus […]1932, Sr. Mary Anastasia Coady, The Phantasm According to the Teaching of St. Thomas
   • Again, in a sense, the act of understanding as an insight into phantasm is knowledge of form: but the form so known does not correspond to the philosophic concept of form; “insight is to phantasm as form is to matter; […]”1988, Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Frederick E. Crowe, Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, University of Toronto Press, →ISBN, page 38

   Synonyms:

   phantasia