2. Supposing the substance of the soul to be united in being with the body as the form of the body, while still the intellect is not the acStualisation of any organ, it does not follow that intelledt falls under the law of physical determination, as do sensible and material things: for we do not suppose in- telledt to be a harmony, or function (ratio, y6\os) of any organ, as Aristotle says that sense is.§ 3. That Aristotle in saying that the intellect is 4 unmingled,' or c separate,' does not intend to exclude it from being a part, or faculty, of the soul, which soul is the form of the whole body, is evident from this passage, where he is arguing against those who said that there were different parts of the soul in different parts of the body: — " If the whole soul keeps together the body as a whole, it is fitting that each part of the soul should keep together some part of the body: but this looks like an impossibility: for it is difficult even to imagine what part of the body the intellect shall keep together, or how." II see Bodder, Psychology pp. 314, 315. The mediaeval mystics, as Thaulerus and Blosius, made much of this € substance of the soul 9 (Junius they called it), as distinct from the faculties: in this Junius aninue, they declared, God dwells by grace as in His sanc- tuary, even when he is not actually thought of. It is the fashion now to rail at * faculty psychology,' to scout the idea of * substance,' to deny all ' potential being,* to allow of nothing but present actuality. Whoever is of that way of thinking, and takes up the Aristotelian idea of vovq \wpurr6cy need not be sur- prised to find himself carried further from St Thomas than Averroes and Alexander, even to the setting aside of the individual man altogether.
* The first part of this chapter has been already translated along with Chap. LVI. What now follow are answers to the arguments of Averroes in Chap. LIX.
t x<ty>t0Toc Kal dfuyrjc #c<u airadyc (*De anima, III, v, 2), words generally understood of the active intel- lect, but by Averroes applied to the potential. How- ever in III, iv, 2, 3, the potential intellect is called &ra0cc and afiiyrj.
I 7rcpi 8c tov vov xal tt)q 6ni>prp-uajQ $wa/xe<i>£. De anima, II, ii, 10.
§ Somewhat obscurely in T>e anima, II, xii, 2, 3.
II <Dt anima, I, v, 29, where Aristotle seems to assume that intellect is a part, fwptov, of the soul. Averroes however might have replied that it is a mere argumentum ad bominem against Plato, who did sup- pose so. In n. 25 however Aristotle says clearly, to yivuxmuv tt)q i/o^c tart, k.t.X., which see. But Aris- totle is so careless a writer, so regardless of his own injunctions and definitions, that the minute analysis of his language, far from settling a point, may be positively misleading. In reading him you have often to think, not so much of what he says, as of what on his own showing he should say.
When St Thomas teaches that the soul is the form of the body by its substance, but not by the faculty of intelligence, he supposes a real distinction between the soul and its faculties, a distinction not admitted by the earlier scholastics, sometimes called * Augustinians.' In his ruling that the intelligence has no corporeal organ, one naturally thinks of the brain. But the brain, in the Aristotelian system, had quite another function; it acted as a refrigerator to cool down the vital heat of the body. See the curious chapter, *De partibus animaRum, II, 7. St Thomas however assigned to the brain some share in sensory processes: see <De potentiis aninur, cap. iv, quoted in Dr Maher's Psychology, pp. 568-9, ed. 4.
GOD THE ORIGIN OF CREATURES CHAPTER LXXIII-Tft* / the Potential IntelleSl is not One and the Same in all Men HENCE it is plainly shown that there is not one and the same poten- tial intellect, belonging to all men who are and who shall be and who have been, as Averroes pretends.* e/£ i. It has been shown that the substance of the intelleft is united with the human body and is its form (Chap. LVII). But it is impossible for there # See Chap. LXXVI. Alexander, Avicenna, and themselves. The one really Universal Intellect is that Averroes, are all at one against St Thomas, in affirm- ing the one universal intellect Thus Averroes writes (in Aristot., De anima, III, v): " We agree with Alex- ander in his mode of explaining the active intellect; and differ from him as to the nature of the potential intellect' If Alexander and Avicenna do not expressly affirm the oneness and universality of the potential intellect, the reason is, because they thought it enough to affirm the universality of. the 4 active intellect '; and did not so clearly as Averroes and St Thomas (see Chap. LX) mark off from the spiritual ' potential in- tellect ' the organic and perishable 4 passive intellect 9 (6 & Tafajrucbs vouc +$*fmk. T)e amima, III, v, 3).
In this dispute about the one universal intellect these two questions should be kept distinct: — A. Do Alexander, Avicenna, and Averroes, or does Aquinas, speak the true mind of Aristotle?
B. In point of psychological fad, is the truth with St Thomas or with his three opponents?
A. On the former question I observe that there is no complete and coherent account of rove in Aristotle, so that any commentator who will give such a complete account is obliged to overshoot his author. The question then comes to this: On which side is Aristotle's meaning eked out with least violence to what he actually says? My opinion is that St Thomas is the better Aristotelian in speaking of the human soul in this world, and Averroes in speaking of the soul in the next world. I think that Aristotle would have admitted that the intellectual soul is in the body, and is individually multiplied in the bodies of individual men. Averroes's theory of the continuatio (ittis&l), or union of the individual passive intellect with the universal potential intellect, is to me far- fetched, inconsistent with the sound sense of Aris- totle, a remnant of Moorish mysticism (although Averroes himself was no mystic) rather than a deve- lopment of Greek philosophy. But coming to the existence of the intellectual soul after death, I fear that the following words of Averroes declare the mind of Aristotle more faithfully than St Thomas's doctrine of the permanence of as many separate souls as there brtte been bodies* 44 Of all things the soul is most like light; and as light is divided by the division of illuminated bodies, and then becomes one when the bodies are taken away, such is the state of souls in their relation with their bodies " ('DestruBio de- stru&ionum, disp. 1, p. 2 1, ed. 1 574). See note p. 1 28.
B. For a Catholic, the second question is settled by the decree of the fifth Council of Lateran under Leo X in 1 5 1 3 against the Avcrroists of the age: "The soul is immortal, and individually multipliable, and multiplied according to the multitude of the bodies into which it is infused." No Catholic can deny the immortality of the individual soul, or hold any view subversive of individual responsibility, as though saint and sinner alike were automata, ad- ministered by an intelligence and will foreign to of God; and the Divine Mind works upon our mortal minds, not formally, as a constituent of them, but efficiently, as guiding them, while respecting their native liberty. In his work, T>e sninue beatitndine, cap. iii, Averroes says very justly that the 4 active in- tellect ' is so called, not merely in an efficient, but in a formal sense, 44 The active intellect is a cause in re- gard of the potential intellect not only by way of efficiency and movement, but also by way of final perfection, that is, by way of form and consummation 99 (p. 151). It would then be pantheism, which even Averroes avoids, to make God the 4 active intellect 9 of the world, in the Aristotelian sense. But God is the efficiently illuminating intellect of all other intel- lects. The modus operandi whereby God acts upon the minds of mortal men, whether indirectly through sensible objects, or in any more direct way, is an in- teresting and comparatively unexplored region of psychology. The intellectual is allowed on all hands to be the universal; and the universal is our natural avenue to the divine. 44 Material forms," says Aver- roes, 44 when abstracted in the soul from their matters, become science and understanding; and understand- ing is nothing else than forms abstracted from matter, ...nothing else than a comprehension of things understood,...nothing else than a comprehen- sion of the order of the world 99 (Destructia destruc- tionum, disp. 6, p. 86). He goes on to show how intellect is impeded and retarded by having to study these forms in matter.
Mental experience, a witness too little heard in this discussion, reveals to us this fact, that the more absorbed we are in intellectual occupation, the more forgetful we are of ourselves. Aristotle places happiness in contemplation; and contemplation is a process of being universalised and de-individualised. The *adri of our animal organism, our bodily needs and apprehensions, drive us back upon ourselves. Happiness puts us out of ourselves: misery is a pain- ful consciousness of self. Some such painful isolation in the next world, some state in which the soul is driven in upon itself, excluded from the universal truth and universal good, and as it were crushed within its own individuality, may be the penal con- sequence of selfishness and sin.
Phantastic and objectionable on many points as Averroes is, there is a world of thought in Averroism; and his great opponent St Thomas owes not a little to the Commentator. Renan indeed goes the length of saying: Albert (Albertus Magnus) doit tout a AViceme; Saint Thomas, comme phdosophe, presque tout a Averroes (Ayerroes et TAyerroisme, p. 236).
The reader may consult Roger Bede Vaughan's St Thomas of Aquin (Longmans, 1 87 1), vol. I, pp. 300, 301, for Averroes's doctrine of the passive and active intellect; and vol. II, pp. 799-809, for an analysis of St Thomas's Opusculum de unitate intelleclus.
to be one form otherwise than of one matter. Therefore there is not one intellect for all men.
A. 2 and 3.* It is not possible for a dog's soul to enter a wolfs body, or a man's soul any other body than the body of a man. But the same propor- tion that holds between a man's soul and a man's body, holds between the soul of this man and the body of this man. It is impossible therefore for the soul of this man to enter any other body than the body of this man. But it is by the soul of this man that this man understands. Therefore there is not one and the same intellect of this man and of that.
A. 4. A thing has being from that source from whence it has unity: for one and being are inseparable. But everything has being by its own form. Therefore the unity of the thing follows the unity of the form. It is impos- sible therefore for there to be one form of different individual men. But the form of any individual man is his intellectual soul. It is impossible therefore for there to be one intellect of all men.
But if it is said that the sentient soul of this man is other than the sentient soul of that, and so far forth the two are not one man, though there be one intellect of both, such explanation cannot stand. For the proper activity of every being follows upon and is indicative of its species. But as the proper activity of an animal is to feel, so the proper activity of a man is to understand. As any given individual is an animal in that he has feeling, so is he a man by virtue of the faculty whereby he understands. But the faculty whereby the soul understands, or the man through the soul, is the potential intellect. This individual then is a man by the potential intellect. If then this man has another sentient soul than another man, but not another potential intellect, but one and the same, it follows that they are two animals, but not two men.
B. To these arguments the Commentator replies by saying that the potential intellect is conjoined with us through its own form, namely, through an intelligible impression, one subjeCt of which [is the said poten- tial intellect, and one subjeCt again] is the phantasm existing in us, which differs in different men; and thus the potential intellect is multiplied in different men, not by reason of its substance, but by reason of its form.
The nullity of this reply appears by what has been shown above (Chap. LIX), that it would be impossible for any man to have understanding, if this were the only way in which the potential intellect were conjoined with us. But suppose that the aforesaid conjunction {continuatid) were sufficient to render man intelligent, still the said answer does nqjt solve the arguments already alleged.
B. 1. According to the above exposition, nothing belonging to intellect will remain multiplied as men are multiplied except only the phantasm, or impression in phantasy; and this very phantasm will not be multiplied as it is aCtually understood, because, as so understood, it is in the potential intellect, and has undergone abstraction of material conditions under the operation of the aCtive intellect; whereas the phantasm, as a potential term of intelligence, does not transcend the grade of the sentient soul.
B. 2. Still the objection holds, that this man will not be differentiated * St Thomas argues upon this passage, *De anima, itself in any body: whereas it seems proper that I, iii. 26: "They try to describe to us the qualities every body should have its own species and form. It of the soul, but add no further details as to the body is as though they said that the carpenter's art got which is to receive it, as though it were possible, as into the bagpipes: for as art uses its instruments, so the Pythagorean fables have it, for any soul to array the soul has to use the body."
GOD THE ORIGIN OF CREATURES from that except by the sentient soul; and the awkward consequence follows that this man and that together do not make a plurality of men.
B. 3. Nothing attains its species by what it is potentially, but by what it is actually.* But the impression in phantasy, as multiplied in this man and thaty has only a potentially intelligible being. Therefore that impression, as so multiplied, does not put any given individual in the species of 4 intelligent animal,' which is the definition of 4 man.' Thus it remains true that the specific ratio of 4 man ' is not multiplied in individual men.
B. 4. It is the first and not the second perfcftiont that gives the species to every living thing. But the impression in phantasy is a second perfedtion; and therefore not from that multiplied impression has man his species.
B. 6. That which puts a man in the species of man must be something abiding in the same individual as long as he remains: otherwise the individual would not be always of one and the same species, but now of one species and now of another. But the impressions of phantasy do not remain always the same in the same man; but new impressions come, and previous impressions perish. Therefore the individual man does not attain his species by any such impression: nor is it anything in the phantasy that conjoins him with the formal principle of his species, which is the potential intellect.
C. But if it is said that the individual does not receive his species by the phantasms themselves, but by the faculties in which the phantasms are, namely, the phantasy, the memory, and the >is cogitatfoa which is proper to man, and which in the De anima. III, v, Aristotle calls the 4 passive intelleft/l the same awkward consequences still follow.
C. 1. Since the >is cogitatha operates only upon particulars, the impressions of which it puts apart and puts together;§ and further, since it has a bodily organ through which it a<5ts,|| it does not transcend the rank of the sentient soul. But in virtue of his sentient soul, as such, man is not a man, but an animal. It still therefore remains true that the element, supposed to be multi- plied in us, belongs to man only in his animal capacity.
C. 2. The cogitative faculty, since it a6ts through an organ, is not the faculty whereby we understand. But the principle whereby we understand is the principle whereby man is man. Therefore no individual is man by virtue of the cogitative faculty: nor does man by that faculty essentially differ from dumb animals, as the Commentator pretends.
C. 3. The cogitative faculty is united to the potential intelleft, the prin- ciple of human intelligence, only by its action of preparing phantasms for the aftive intelleft to render them actual terms of intelligence and perfc6tions of the potential intellect. But this preliminary activity of the cogitative • How then is the human embryo man? The putting together to affirmation: but affirmation and question is irrelevant for this reason: every species negation are not sentient but intelligent acts. Remain- contains imperfect individuals, but they are not types ing in the sentient order, the vis cogitativa seems to of the species: the type is the perfection of the species, associate and dissociate rather than to affirm and deny, the standard to which various individuals variously II "The middle cell of the head," according to attain. The point under discussion here is the proper Averroes in Chap. LX. If any one will have it that type of the human species. the grey matter of the brain is the organ even of t That is to say, what the thing can do, not what intelligence itself, the scholastic reply is: 'Of intelliit does; the power, not the act. See note, p. 126. * gence as needing the concurrence of phantasms, yes: X This is what Averroes is represented as saying of intelligence pure and simple, exactly the vovc in Chap. LX, which see for explanations. EtinUlIigit xupcoToc, no.' The difficulty remains, that precisely AristouUs per inteUeBum fassibilem ipsam firtutem cogi- over the most abstract thinking, where the thinker tatovam is Averroes's comment on the wuBrjrucos vovc does his utmost to dispense with phantasms, does the fyQaproQ of T>e anima, III, v, 3. Alexander had taken grey matter of the brain get most exhausted. Perhaps the Tra&rjTucoc vovc to be the potential intellect. St the effort to dispense with phantasms docs violence Thomas is Averroist on this point. to the phantasy, and thereby consumes the tissue S The putting apart leads up to denial, and the which ministers to that sentient faculty.
faculty does not always remain the same in us. Therefore it cannot be the means whereby man is conjoined with the specific principle of the human species, or made a member of that species.
C. 4. If the potential intelleft of this and that man were numerically one and the same, the aft of understanding would be one and the same in both, which is an impossibility.
D. But if it is said that the aft of understanding is multiplied according to the diversity of impressions in phantasy, that supposition cannot stand.
D. 3. For the potential intelleft understands a man, not as this individual man, but as man simply, according to the specific essence of the race. But this specific essence remains one, however much impressions in phantasy are multiplied, whether in the same man or in different men. Therefore no multiplication of phantasms can be the cause of multiplication of the aft of understanding in the potential intelleft, considering the same species; and thus we shall still have numerically one aftion in different men.
D. 4. The proper subjeft in which the habit of knowledge resides is the potential intelleft. But an accident, so long as it remains specifically one, is multiplied only by coming to reside in different subjefts. If then the potential intelleft is one in all men, any habit of knowledge specifically the same, say, the habit of grammar, must be numerically the same in all men, which is unthinkable.
E. But to this they say that the subjeft of the habit of knowledge is not the potential intelleft, but the passive intelleft and the cogitative faculty (Chap. LX): which it cannot be.
E. 1. For, as Aristotle shows in the Ethics (II, i), like afts engender like habits; and like habits reproduce like afts. Now by the afts of the potential intelleft there comes to be the habit of knowledge in us; and we are com- petent for the same afts by possession of the habit of knowledge. Therefore the habit of knowledge is in the potential intelleft, not in the passive.
E. 2. Scientific knowledge is of demonstrated conclusions; and demon- strated conclusions, like their premises, are universal truths.* Science there- fore is in that faculty which takes cognisance of universals. But the passive intelleft is not cognisant of universals, but of particular notions.
F. The error of placing the habit of scientific knowledge in the passive intelleft seems to have arisen from the observation that men are found more or less apt for the study of science according to the several dispositions of the cogitative faculty and the phantasy.
F. 1. But this aptitude depends on those faculties only as remote condi- tions: so it also depends on the complexion of the body, as Aristotle says that men of delicate touch and soft flesh are clever, f But the proximate principle of the aft of speculative understanding is the habit of scientific knowledge: for this habit must perfeft the power of understanding to aft readily at will, as other habits perfeft the powers in which they are.
F. 2. The dispositions of the cogitative faculty and the phantasy regard the objeft: they regard the phantasm, which is prepared by the efficiency of these faculties readily to become a term of aftual understanding under the aftion of the aftive intelleft. But habits do not condition objefts: they condition faculties. Thus conditions that take the edge off terrors J are not the habit * Wc should say, much to the same purpose, between cleverness and stupidity; and that man is the that science deals with uniformities of nature. cleverest of animals because he is most sensitive to t T>e anima, II, ix, 4, where we further read that touch, delicacy or obtuseness of touch makes the difference J e.g., anaesthetics.
of fortitude: fortitude is a disposition of the conative part of the soul to meet terrors. Hence it appears that the habit of knowledge is not in the passive but in the potential intelleft.
F. 3. If the potential intelleft of all men is one, we must suppose that the potential intellect has always existed, if men have always existed, as Averroists suppose; and much more the aftivc intelleft, because agent is more honourable than patient, as Aristotle says (De anima, III, v).* But if the agent is eternal, and the recipient eternal, the contents received must be eternal also. Therefore the intellectual impressions have been from eternity in the potential intelleft: therefore it will be impossible for it to receive afresh any new intellectual impressions. But the only use of sense and phantasy in the process of understanding is that intellectual impressions may be gathered from them. At this rate then neither sense nor phantasy will be needed for understanding; and we come back to the opinion of Plato, that we do not acquire knowledge by the senses, but are merely roused by them to remember what we knew beforct G. But to this the Commentator replies that intellectual presentations reside in a twofold subjeCt: in one subjeCt, from which they have everlasting being, namely, the potential intellect; in another subjeCt, from which they have a recurring new existence, namely, the phantasm, or impression in phantasy. He illustrates this by the comparison of a sight-presentation, which has also a twofold subjeCt, the one subjeCt being the thing outside the soul, the other the visual faculty. But this answer cannot stand.
G. 1. For it is impossible that the aCtion and perfection of the eternal should depend on anything temporal. But phantasms are temporal things, continually springing up afresh in us from the experience of the senses. Therefore the intellectual impressions, whereby the potential intellect is actuated and brought to activity, cannot possibly depend on phantasms in the way that visual impressions depend on things outside the soul. \ G. 2. Nothing receives what it has already got. But before any sensory experience of mine or yours there were intellectual impressions in the • Averroes expressly makes all and each of these things, exist in two ways, in both eternally: (a) suppositions. wuUrially, in sensible things, the world being eternal, t The tentative conclusions of the Men$f 82-86, in which sensible things these forms are potentially and the poetry of the Pfucdrus, passed into aphorisms intelligible, being abstracted thence by intellect: among the later Platonists. See Jowett's D 'uUogus of (b) tnUlkBuaUj, in the eternal intellect, which is at Piato, II, pp. 13-19, ed. 3. Later Platonists, we may once potential and active. He added that the same say, were more Platonic than Plato. But it remains forms had an intellectual existence in a third way, a leading line of difference between Plato and Aris- namely, a temporal existence in the mind of this totle, that Plato never gave due recognition, as and that individual, which mind is 4 continued,' or Aristotle did, to the value of sense experience in * conjoined' for a time with the eternal intellect: the genesis of science and philosophy. this asserted 'continuation' of the temporal with the St Thomas's argument here is this, that if the eternal is the theme of contention between Averroes human mind is eternal and one, then human know- and St Thomas.
ledge is eternal and one: whence it follows that, St Thomas might refit his argument (as indeed when the individual seems to be learning by the he does presently) by demanding how intellectual experience of his senses, he is really only recognising presentations come to be in this supposed one eternal what is in his mind already. intellect, whether by abstraction from previous phan- I It is supposed {ad hominen) that the potential tasms or not. To say that the potential intellect had intellect is eternal. — Yet somehow the argument here impressions independent of previous phantasms, would seems to miss the point. The Commentator never put the Commentator in flat contradiction with said that the presentations in the eternal potential Aristotle; e.g., *De anima, III, vii, 3, 4: "To the intellect depended on the phantasms of any indi- intellectual soul phantasms are as sense-perceptions: vidual. He never likened those presentations to the wherefore the soul never understands without a individual's fleeting visual impressions of things: but phantasm." On the other hand, if phantasms are he likened the presentations in the eternal intellect presupposed, there must have been phantasms also to things, and the phantasms of the individual to his from eternity: how otherwise could an eternal mind visual impressions of things. depend on phantasms for all its content?
Averroes contended that 'forms,' or aspects of potential intellect: for the generations before us could not have understood, had not the potential intellect been reduced to aft by intellectual impressions. Nor can it be said that those impressions, formerly received in the potential intellect, have ceased to be: because the potential intellect not only receives, but keeps what it receives: hence it is called the "place of ideas."* Therefore, on this showing, no impressions from our phantasms are received in the potential intellect.
G. 6 and 7. If the potential intellect receives no intellectual impressions from the phantasms that are in us, because it has already received them from the phantasms of those who were before us, then for the like reason wc must say that it receives impressions from the phantasms of np generation of men, whom another generation has preceded. But every generation has been preceded by some previous generation, if the world and human society is eternal, as Averroists suppose. Therefore the potential intellect never receives any impressions from phantasms; and from this it seems to follow that the potential intellect has no need of phantasms to understand. But we (nos) understand by the potential intellect. Therefore neither shall we need sense and phantasm for our understanding: which is manifestly false and contrary to the opinion of Aristotle, f