What ordinary mortals call ' intellect,' or ' under- standing,' is the 'potential intellect.' It is called ' potential ' because it is open to all intellectual im- pressions, and, prior to experience, is void of all impression, and has no predisposition of itself to one impression rather than to another. This by the way seems to militate against the Kantian doctrine of intellectual ' categories,' or ' forms of mind.' But it does not militate against the doctrine of heredity. Heredity works in the body, in the domain of the sentient soul: we are here concerned with pure intellect. Of that, Aristotle says it is "impassible [i.e., not directly acted on by matter], yet apt to receive the intelligible impression, or form; but has no formed impression upon it, before the process of understanding is set up." The ' active intellect ' on the other hand is the act of spontaneous energy, whereby the intellect transforms the image, sent up to it by sense and phantasy, from particular to uni- versal, making out of it an ' intelligible impression.' A further distinction is drawn between the ' intelli-. gible impression ' {species intelligibilis impressa) thus created and received in the mind, and the ' intelli- gible expression ' (species intelligibilis expressa), or precise act whereby the mind understands. See Bodder, Psycbologia, pp. 153-156. This distinction has been already drawn by St Thomas (B. I, Chap. LIII).
For further elucidation see Father Mailer's Psycho- logy, pp. 304-313, ed. 4, who however speaks of intelleclus pattens tel possibilis, and takes no account of the intelleclus pass'fpus of St Thomas (B. II, Chap. LX), probably because it simply is not intellect.
t « 6 vov% cforXow iarl kcu dirajOks kcu firfiwl firjOey c^ci koivov (if the intellect is a simple being and impassible andhas nothing in common with anything), De anima, III, iv, 10.
GOD THE ORIGIN OF CREATURES because the potential intelleft receives all impressions of sensible things, and is in potentiality to them all, it must be devoid of all to begin with, as the pupil of the eye, which receives all impressions of colours, is devoid of all colour; because if it had of itself any colour, that colour would prevent other colours from being seen; nay, nothing would be seen except under that colour; and the like would be the case of the potential intellect, if it had of itself any form or nature of sensible things, as it would have were it the form of any body; because, since form and matter make one, the form must participate to some extent in the nature of that whereof it is the form.* These passages moved A verroest to suppose the potential intellect, whereby • ivdytcrj £pa, hrtl ram roc?, tyuyrj cutu tva yrupt£jj* wap€fi$cLiy6fi€vov yap icuAvct to dXkArpwv koX <jbrcfV>oTTCi* Bio ovoc pcfux&u cvAoyor avrov trwfwri (For since it understands all, it must be un- mixed with any, in order to know: for any strange element coming in besides ads as an obstacle and a barrier to knowledge; therefore it is reasonable that it should not be mixed up with the body). — De anima, t Abu Walid Mohammed Ibn Roschd (Averroes), called by the schoolmen ' the Commentator,' as Aris- totle was * the Philosopher,' was born at Cordova in 1 1 20, and died in Morocco, 1 198. He practised as a physician and a lawyer, and had a place about court, but was above all things a philosopher and an uncom- promising Aristotelian. Fallen into neglect among his own countrymen, his philosophy embroiled the schools of Western Europe for four centuries, 1 230-1630, at Paris, at Oxford, but particularly at Padua. Numerous Latin editions were printed. I shall cite the Venice edition of 1 574 in the Bodleian Library, ten volumes.
The origin of this dispute about the intellect is to be found in a passage of Plato, Tkeatetus, 185:" Being and not-being, likeness and unlikeness, sameness and difference, number...there is no bodily organ for the cognition of these entities, but the soul by herself regards them; so it appears that the soul regards some things by herself and other things through the bodily faculties." This passage is the foreshadowing of the celebrated and much disputed chapters, De anima, III, iv, v. Two words there call for notice: (1) amide?, meaning unimpressed, at first hand, by matter; (2) x»purrfc, separable, or separate, on which word the great contention turns. It may apply to the 'active,' or to the 1 potential' intellect: but it matters not to which, for Averroes and St Thomas agree that the two go together. It may refer to the state after death, and signify that the intellec- tual soul is not destroyed by separation from the body: on this point again there is a general agree- ment between Averroes and St Thomas. The battle between them begins when the word is referred to the intellect as it is in this mortal life. St Thomas takes the term merely to mean * capable of operating apart from any bodily organ,' — according to the tenor of the passage above quoted from Plato. Averroes will have it that it means, not only that, but much more than that: the meaning being according to him, that even while we live on earth, our intellect, ' potential ' and * active,9 is outside of us, and is one and the same numerically for all men.
My reading of Averroes has not revealed to me where he places this one separate universal intellect. He does not make it to be God: thus he says in his DestruBio destruBionum (or Refutation of the Refutations of Algazel): " If man only understood this, then his intellect would be the intellect of the God of glory; and that is false " (disp. 6, p. 87b). The notion of his day, in which he shared, that the heavenly bodies have souls, might have tempted him to place rove X«dp«rr<fc in some heavenly sphere: that doctrine how- ever belongs to the disciples of Averroes, not to the master. Renan, jtferroes et P Averroisme, p. 138, gives this explanation: Une humaniti fivante et permanent, tel semble done itre le sens de la thiorit J>erroistiaue de Puniti de Pints 11/ a. Vimmortahti dePinUlleB aBif [znd of the potential intellect with it, on which Averroes chiefly insists] nyest ainsi autre chose que, la renaissance itemelle de Pbumaniti, et la perpetuiti de la civiPuation. This interpretation derives support from Averroes's comments on the De anima, III (pp. 1 49-1 51). Holding as he did the eternity of the world, he tells us there that the human race is eternal, and that some portion of the human race is always civilised, — positions set aside by our astronomy and geology, and at variance with the received anthropology. He says: 44 There must always be some philosopher amongst mankind." I have some hesitation however in agree- ing with Renan's explanation: because this position, which he attributes to Averroes, is clearly suicidal, and the Commentator was no fool. If no individual man had a head on his shoulders, the race would be headless. Averroes (see Chap. LX) does not seem to allow to the individual man, as man, any higher faculty than a faculty proper to the sentient soul: how can a race of such sentient beings constitute an intel- ligence? The intelligence of the race can only mean the intelligence of this man and of that, combining to form society. But it is difficult to form any rational conception of vovs xuocoro? as Averroes understood it. If Renan's interpretation be taken, then when Averroes speaks (De anima, III, p. 161) of the "active and potential intellect " as being "eternal substances," we must understand him to call them eternal with the eternity of civilised mankind, an eternity which he positively asserts (De anima, p. 149).
The main point of St Thomas's attack upon the Commentator is his theory of the continuatio (ittishVw the Arabic name, much used by the Arabian mystics), or point of contact between the universal intelligence outside and the mind of the individual man. Aver- roes's words are these (De anima, III, pp. 178, 148b, 185b):" The potential intellect is not conjoined with us primarily and ordinarily: nay, it is not conjoined with us at all, except inasmuch as it is conjoined with the forms in our phantasy...Since it has been shown that intellect cannot be conjoined with all men so as to be multiplied as they are multiplied, it re- mains that the said intellect is conjoined with us by conjunction with our intellectual impressions which are conceptions in the phantasy, that is to say, through that part of those conceptions which exists in us and serves in a manner as a form...Since the impres- sions of speculative intellect are conjoined with us by the soul understands, to be separate in being from the body, and not to be the form of the body. But because this intelleft would have no connexion with us, nor should we be able to understand by it unless it were somehow united with us, Averroes fixes upon a mode in which it is united with us, as he thinks, sufficiently. He says that an impression actually made in the under- standing is a 4 form * of the potential intelledt, in the same way that an actually visible appearance, as such, is a 4 form * of the visual faculty; hence out of the potential intellect, and this form or impression aftually made in the same, there results one being. With whatever being therefore this 4 form ' of the understanding is conjoined, the potential intellect is also conjoined with that being. But this c form ' is conjoined with us by means of the c phantasm/ or image in the phantasy, which image is a sort of subject receiving in itself that 4 form * of understanding.
1. It is easy to see how frivolous and impossible all this construftion is. For what has understanding is intelligent; and that of which an intelligible impression is united with the understanding, is understood. The fadt that an intelligible impression, united with a (foreign) understanding, comes some- how to be in man, will not render man intelligent; it will merely make him understood by that separately subsisting intelligence.
2. Besides, the impression aftually in understanding is the form of the potential intelleft, in the same way that the adtual visible appearance is the form of the visual power, or eye. But the impression actually in understand- ing is to the phantasms as the a6tual visible appearance is to the coloured surface, which is outside the soul. This similitude is used by Averroes, as also by Aristotle. Therefore the supposed union of the potential intellect (by means of the intelligible form) with the phantasm that is in us will resemble the union of the visual power with the colour that is in the stone. But this union does not make the stone see, but be seen. Therefore the aforesaid union does not make us understand, but be understood. But, plainly, it is properly and truly said that man understands: for we should not be investigating the nature forms of phantasy; and the active intellect in con- tasms...but the said phantasm is not a form (or joined with those intellectual impressions; and the idea) of the potential intellect: an idea in the potenintellect which takes cognisance of those impressions, tial intellect is obtained only by abstraction from that is to say, the potential intellect, is the same [as phantasms. If then there were but one intellect for the active]: the necessary conclusion is that the active all men, no diversities of phantasms in this man and intellect is conjoined with us by the conjunction of that could ever cause a diversity of intellectual actithose intellectual impressions." See St Thomas, Sumtna vity between one man and another, as the Commen- Tbeol. i, q. 75, artt. I and 2: where he explains tator pretends."
Averroes thus: "The Commentator says that this So far as the Averroistic Potential (and Active) union is by means of the intellectual impression, Intellect can be identified with the Zeitgeist, or which has a twofold residence, one in the potential Educated Opinion of the day, and adapted to Comte's intellect [universal, eternal, independent of the indi- theory of progress, the reader will find some discusvidual], and another in the impressions of phantasy, sion of it in my Oxford and Cambridge Conferences, which are in the bodily organs [of the individual; in First Series, pp. 135 sq.; also Political and (Moral his phantasy, or sensory memory, or in the fis cogi- Essays, p. 132, note.
tatiya, an organic faculty allied to phantasy]. And thus, On De anima, III, the Commentator (p. 149) through this intellectual impression, the potential specifies three kinds of intellect: " the potential intelintellect is continued and conjoined with the body of lect, the aQfte intellect, the acquired or made intellect: the individual man" (art. 1). St Thomas criticises of these three, two are eternal, the active and the this theory as follows (art. 2): u So long as the intel- potential: the third is partly producible and perishlect is one, however all other things are diversified able, and partly eternal." By the * acquired intellect * which the intellect uses as instruments, in no way can he appears to mean the * passive intellect' of each Socrates and Plato be called other than one intelligent individual, inasmuch as it is illumined by conttnuatio being...I grant that if the phantasm, or impression (ittisal) with the universal potential intellect. Does in the phantasy, inasmuch as it is other and other in that mean the mind of the individual in so far as it you and me, were a form (or idea) of the potential comes abreast of the Zeitgeist? If so, but I cannot intellect, then your intellectual activity and mine feel sure of the conclusion, then Arabian mysticism might be differentiated by the diversity of phan- ends in positivism.
of understanding were it not for the fadt that we have understanding. The above mode of union then is insufficient.
5. The intellect in the adt of understanding and the objedt as represented in understanding are one, as also the sense in the adt of sensation and the objedt as represented in sense. But the understanding as apt to understand and its objedt as open to representation in understanding are not one, as neither is sense, so far as it is apt to have sensation, one with its objedt, so far as that is open to be represented in sensation.* The impression made by the objedt, so far as it lies in images of the phantasy, is not any representation in the understanding. Only by undergoing a process of abstradtion from such images does the impression became one with the intelledt in the adt of understanding. In like manner the impression of colour is adtually felt in sense, not as it is in the stone, but as it is in the eye. Now, on the theory of Averroes, the intelligible form, or impression in the understanding, only comes to be con- joined with us by finding place in the images of our phantasy. Therefore it is not conjoined with us inasmuch as it is one with the potential intelledt, being its form. Therefore it cannot be the medium whereby the potential intelledt is conjoined with us: because, in so far as it is conjoined with the potential intelledt, it is not conjoined with us; and in so far as it is conjoined with us, it is not conjoined with the potential intelledt.
CHAPTER LX-TAat Man is not a Member of the Human Species by possession of Passive Intelle&f but by possession of Potential IntelleEt AVERROES endeavours to meet these arguments and to maintain the position aforesaid. He says accordingly that man differs from dumb animals by what Aristotle calls the * passive intelledt,' which is that 4 cogitative power* (Yts cogitative) proper to man, in place whereof other animals have a certain 'estimative power' fastimativaj.f The fundtion of this 4 cogitative power 9 is to distinguish individual ideas and compare them with one another, as the intelledt, which is separate and unmixed, compares and distinguishes between universal ideas. And because by this cogitative power, along with imagination and memory, phantasms, or impressions ot phantasy, are prepared to receive the adtion of the 4 adtivc intelledt,' whereby they are made adtual terms of understanding, therefore the aforesaid cogita- tive power is called by the names of 4 intelledt ' and 4 rcason.'J Doctors say that it has its scat in the middle cell of the brain. According to the disposi- tion of this power one man differs from another in genius, and in other points of intelligence; and by the use and exercise of this power man acquires the habit of knowledge. Hence the passive intellect is the subjeSt of the Various habits of know- ledge. And this passive intelledt is in a child from the beginning; and by virtue of it he is a member of the human species before be actually understands anything. So far Averroes. The falsity and perverseness of his statements evidently appears. § # This aptness, openness, or potentiality, is pre- $ Upon careful study of this chapter, it appears cisely what idealists ignore. They will have every- that there is little in the above statement which St thing actual. Thomas really disagrees with. He makes his own all t The text reads vis cognoscitiva. But as it is called the description of the * passive intellect.' Only the hujus cogitatiy* virtutis in the very next line, I opine conclusion he finds fault with; and to mark what he that vis cogitatiya should be the reading. The * esti- holds objectionable, I have printed it in italics, mative power' is that by which a dog knows its master Habits of knowledge he would place in the * poten- as a particular object. tial intellect.' The passive intellect is and must be t It is called, as we have seen, * passive intellect • exercised in the acquirement of knowledge to prepare and 'particular reason.' the materials: but it can do no more than prepare; "5 1. Vital a&ivities stand to the soul as second aftualities to the first.* Now the first aftuality is prior in time to the second in the same subject, as know- ledge is prior in time to learned speculation. In whatever being therefore there is found any vital a&ivity, there must be some portion of soul standing to that activity as the first a6luality to the second. But man has one activity proper to him above all other animals, namely that of understanding and reasoning. Therefore we must posit in man some proper specific principle, which shall be to the aft of understanding as the first actuality to the second. This principle cannot be the aforesaid 'passive intellect': for the principle of the aforesaid aftivity must be "impassible and nowise implicated with the body," as the Philosopher proves,t whereas evidently quite the contrary is the case with the passive intellect. Therefore that cognitive faculty called the 'passive intellect ' cannot possibly be the speciality that differentiates the human species from other animals.
2. An incident of the sensitive part cannot constitute a being in a higher kind of life than that of the sensitive part, as an incident of the vegetative soul does not place a being in a higher kind of life than the vegetative life. But it is certain that phantasy and the faculties consequent thereon, as memory and the like, are incidents of the sensitive part. J Therefore by the aforesaid faculties, or by any one of them, an animal cannot be placed in any higher rank of life than that which goes with the sentient soul. But man is in a higher rank of life than that. Therefore the man does not live the life that is proper to him by virtue of the aforesaid € cogitative faculty,' or c passive intellect.'
4. The c potential intellect ' is proved not to be the adtualisation of any corporeal organ § from this consideration, that the said intellect takes cogni- sance of all sensible forms under a universal aspe£t.|| Therefore no faculty, the adtivity of which can reach to the universal aspe6ts of all corporeal forms, can be the a&ualisation of any corporeal organ. But such a faculty is the will: for of all of the things that we understand we can have a will, at least of knowing them.^f And we also find afts of the will in the general: thus, as Aristotle says (Rhet. II, 4), we hate in general the whole race of robbers. The will then cannot be the aftualisation of any bodily organ. But every portion of the soul is the aftualisation of some bodily organ, except only the intelledt properly so called. The will therefore belongs to the intelleftual part, as Aristotle says.** Now the will of man is not extrinsic to man, planted as it were in some separately subsisting intelligence, but is in the man himself: otherwise he would not be master of his own afts, but would be worked by the will of a spirit other than himself: those appetitive, or conative, faculties the intellectual assimilation of those materials belongs t The reference is to Aristotle, Of memory and to a higher power, to intellect proper. recolle8'wny I, 9: " It is clear to which of the several #In the Aristotelian terminology, the* first adtua- portions of soul memory belongs, that it belongs lity * is the being in readiness to act, the ' second where phantasy belongs; and the ordinary objects of actuality ' is the being in action. A locomotive with memory are the objects of phantasy, while objects steam up is in the ' first actuality ': a locomotive on of intellect, which cannot be without phantasy, are its way is in the ' second actuality.' We must secure incidental objedts of memory." — The vis cogitativa, or the ' first actuality ' of science and skill, before we can passive intellect, St Thomas refers to the same class exercise the ' second actuality ' of a skilful scientific as phantasy and memory.
investigation. St Thomas quotes Aristotle, T>e anima, § As sight is the actualisation, frrcXcgcia, of the II, i: "This actuality is understood in two senses: eye.
the first is represented by habitual knowledge, the II e.g. * brightness ' simply, and not merely ' this second by the actual use of the understanding to mark brightness.'
a truth. Wherefore soul is defined, ' the first actuality 11 e.g. the chemical components of the fixed of living body.' " stars.
t De anima, III, iv, 2, 4. ** De anima, III, ix, 5.
alone would remain in him, the a&ivity whereof is conjoined with passion, to wit the irascible and concupiscible* in the sentient part of his being, as in other animals, which are rather afted upon than a<5t. But this is impossible: it would be the undoing of all moral philosophy and all social and political science, t Therefore there must be in us a potential intellect to differentiate us from dumb animals: the passive intellect is not enough.
6. A habit and the adt proper to that habit both reside in the same faculty. But to view a thing intellectually, which is the adt proper to the habit of knowledge, cannot be an exercise of the faculty called 4 passive intellect/ but must properly belong to the potential intellect: for the condition of any faculty exercising intelligence is that it should not be an aftualisation of any corporeal organ. Therefore the habit of knowledge is not in the passive intellect, but in the potential intelledt.
8. Habitual understanding, as our opponent acknowledges, is an efledt of the c adtivc intellect.' But the effects of the adtivc intelledt arc adtual repre- sentations in understanding, the proper recipient of which is the potential intelledt, to which the adtivc intelledt stands related, as Aristotle says, "as art to material."! Therefore the habitual understanding, which is the habit of knowledge, must be in the potential intelledt, not in the passive.
CHAPTER LXl-That the aforesaid Tenet is contrary to the Mind of Aristotle ARISTOTLE defines soul, "the first adtuality of a natural, organic body, potentially alive"; and adds, "this definition applies universally to every soul." Nor does he, as the aforesaid Averroes pretends, put forth this latter remark in a tentative way, as may be seen from the Greek copies and the translation of Bocthius. Afterwards in the same chapter he adds that there are "certain parts of the soul separable," and these are none other than the intelledtual parts. The conclusion remains that the said parts are adtualisations of the body.§ * Plato's Ovftfc and i-ri&vyda. Plato, curiously Arabian school any better off for Greek than St enough, makes no provision for the will, a neglect Thomas (Renan, p. 48).
connected with his determinism. " Plato, following To this particular explanation of Aristotle how- Socrates, is from first to last a thorough determinist: ever the Commentator would have been at no lots he always assumes that to know good is to do it: he for a reply. The Greek referred to is *De anima, II, never contemplates the case of a man looking away i, 6, 8. Aristotle adds (n. 12), after saying that from the good that he knows, or failing to regard it some parts of the soul are not separable from the steadily" (Political and Moral Essays, 249, 250). body: "There is nothing to prevent some parts of t Destruilivum totius human* philosophic et politic* the soul being separable from the body, because they considerationis. In St Thomas, considerare, consideration are actualisations of nothing corporeal." A conclusion answers to Aristotle's Ouoptlv, 0tup/a. — The next two seems to follow, the very opposite of that which St arguments are directed against Averroes's saying, Thomas draws, and exactly what Averroes wishes, above quoted, that " the passive intellect is the sub- namely, that the intelledtual part of the soul is not ject of the various habits of knowledge." the actualisation, or form, of anything corporeal, but X De anima, III, v, 1. dwells apart from all body. In the above quoted $ St Thomas may have seen Greek M SS. of Opusculum, T>e unitate in telle ft us contra Averroistas, Aristotle in Italy, or at Paris, but I doubt if he which I take to be a later production, St Thomas could read them for himself. He is dependent on recognises the force of this reply, and re-adjusts his Latin translations, often bad ones. See an example in position thus: "The intellect is a faculty of the soul, my Aquinas Ethicus, I, p. 1 1 1. In his Opusculum de and the soul is the form of the body: but the power Unitate Intellects, he mentions his having seen a that is called intellect is not the actualisation of any thirteenth and fourteenth book of Aristotle's Meta- bodily organ, because the activity of the body has physics, but declines further reference to them as nothing in common with the activity of intellect." being "not yet translated into our tongue." St IntelleBus est potentia anima, qua est corporis forma,