For the potential intellect, like every other substance, operates according to the mode of its nature. Now according to its nature it is the form of the body. Hence it understands immaterial things, but views them in some material medium; as is shown by the fact that in teaching universal truths particular examples are alleged, in which what is said may be seen. There- fore the need which the potential intellect has of the phantasm before receiving the intellectual impression is different from that which it has after the impression has been received. Before reception, it needs the phantasm to gather from it the intellectual impression, ao that the phantasm then stands to the potential intellect as an object which moves it. But after receiving the impression, of which the phantasm is the vehicle, it needs the phantasm as an instrument or basis of the impression received. Thus by command of the intellect there is formed in the phantasy a phantasm answering to such and such an intellectual impression; and in this phantasm the intellectual impression shines forth as an exemplar in the thing exemplified, or as in an image. J G. 8. If the potential intellect is one for all men and eternal, by this time there must have been received in it the intellectual impressions of all things that have been known by any men whatsoever. Then, as every one of us understands by the potential intellect, — nay, as the act of understanding in each is the act of that potential intellect understanding, — every one of us must understand all that has been understood by any other men whatsoever.
H. To this the Commentator replies that we do not understand by the potential intellect except in so far as it is conjoined with us through the impressions in our phantasy, and that these phantasms are not the same nor * " And they say well who call the soul the place the faculty of accomplishing this process is the faculty of ideas, except that not the whole soul, but only the of " imagination," a faculty intellectual rather than intellectual soul is such; nor are the ideas in actuality, one of sense, because it means intellect leading and but in potentiality" anima, III, iv, 5). phantasy serving. Therefore the Aristotelian (payraaCa t " Whenever the mind intellectually considers (described in *De anima, III, iii, 9 sq.), called by St a thing, it must simultaneously consider some phan- Thomas imaginatio, I have chosen to render by the tasm." T>e anima, III, viii, 5. old word phantasy. It is a faculty of the sentient J This latter process, in which the phantasm is nature, and therefore not imagination in the Words- called up at the beck of the already informed intel- worthian sense. The word fancy has other meanings, lect, is what Wordsworth calls " imagination," — and inappropriate in this connexion, ed by Google GOD THE ORIGIN OF CREATURES similar amongst all men. And this answer seems to be in accordance with the doctrine that has gone before: for, apart from any affirmation of the unity of the potential intellect, it is true that we do not understand those things, the impressions whereof are in the potential intellect, unless the appropriate phantasms are at hand. But that this answer does not altogether escape the difficulty, may be thus shown.
When the potential intellect has been actualised by the reception of an intellectual impression, it is competent to act of itself: hence we sec that, once we have got the knowledge of a thing, it is in our power to consider it again when we wish: nor are we at a loss for lack of phantasms, because it is in our power to form phantasms suitable to the consideration which we wish, unless there happens to be some impediment on the part of the organ, as in persons out of their mind or in a comatose state. But if in the potential intellect there are intellectual impressions of all branches of knowledge, — as we must say, if that intellect is one and eternal, — then the necessity of phantasms for the potential intellect will be the same as in his case who already has knowledge, and wishes to study and consider some point of that knowledge, for that also he could not do without phantasms.* Since then every man understands by the potential intellect, so far as it is reduced to a6t by intellectual impressions, so every man should be able on this theory to regard, whenever he would, all the known points of all sciences: which is manifestly false, for at that rate no one would need a teacher. Therefore the potential intelleft is not one and eternal.
CHAPTER LXXIV-Of the Opinion of Avicenna, who supposed Inte/Ie&ua/ Forms not to be preserved in the Potential Inte//e&f THE above arguments (against Averroes) seem to be obviated by the theory of Avicenna. He says that intellectual impressions do not remain in the potential intellect except just so long as they are being actually understood. J And this he endeavours to prove from the fa6t that forms are aftually apprehended so long as they remain in the faculty that apprehends them: thus in the a6l of perception both sense and intelleft become identified with their objc6ts:§ hence it seems that whenever sense or intellect is united with its objedt, as having taken its form, actual apprehension, sensible or intellectual, occurs. But the faculties which preserve forms while not actually apprehended, he says, are not the faculties that apprehend those forms, but storehouses (thesauros) attached to the said apprehensive faculties. Thus phantasy is the storehouse of forms apprehended by sense; and memory, according to him, is the storehouse of notions apprehended independently of sensation, as when the sheep apprehends the hostility of the wolf.|| The capacity of these faculties for storing up forms not actually apprehended, comes from their having certain bodily organs in which the forms are received, such reception following close upon the (first) apprehension;^ and • He cannot study without phantasms, but he $ Inasmuch as the object is represented in sense has the command of the requisite phantasms, and and intellect by a sensible or intelligible form, brings them up at his will. Thus whoever knows the II These notions, though independent of sensahistory of the reign of Elizabeth, can impress into tion, are not intellectual: they are formed by that his service phantasms of the Queen and her Court, faculty which Avicenna calls 'judgement,' and St Given the knowledge, the phantasms will come when Thomas vis <rstimativa. See p. 125.
called for. f Receptione propinqua apprehension]. M. 1'AbW t Which is tantamount to supposing that there Ecalle in his French translation (Vives, Paris, 1854) is no intellectual memory, but a series of recurring has d'une maniire qui est une disposition prochaine a) inspirations from without. See Summa, 1, q. 79, P apprehension proprement dite. He takes the form to art. 6. be in the storehouse of phantasy or memory before it I On the duration of these impressions see Father is in the intellectual faculty. I take it to be first seized Bodder, TsycMogia, p. 162. by the apprehensive faculty, then consigned to the thereby the apprehensive faculty, turning to these storehouses, apprehends in aft. But it is acknowledged that the potential intellect is an apprehensive faculty, and has no bodily organ: hence Avicenna concludes that it is impossible for intellectual impressions to be preserved in the potential intellect except so long as it is actually understanding. Therefore, one of three things: either (i) these intellectual impressions must be preserved in some bodily organ, or faculty having a bodily organ: or (2) they must be self-existent intelligible forms, to which our potential intellect stands in the relation of a mirror to the objeCts mirrored: or (3) whenever the potential intellect understands, these intellectual impressions must flow into it afresh from some separate agent. The first of these three suppositions is. impossible: because forms existing in faculties that use bodily organs are only potentially intelligible.* The second supposition is the opinion of Plato* which Aristotle rejeCts. Hence Avicenna concludes that, whenever we actually understand, there flow into our potential intellect intellectual impressions from the aCtive intellect, which he assumes to be an intelligence subsisting apart. If any one objeCts against him that then there is no difference between a man when he first learns, and when he wishes to review and study again something which he has learnt before, he replies that to learn and con over again what we know is nothing else than to acquire a perfeCt habit of uniting ourselves with the (extrinsic) aCtive intelligence, so as to receive therefrom the intellectual form; and therefore, before we come to refleCt on and use our knowledge, there is in man a bare potentiality of such reception, but reflection on our knowledge is like potentiality reduced to aCt. And this view seems consonant with what Aristotle teaches, that memory is not in the intellectual but in the sensitive part of the soul.f So it seems that the preservation of intellectual impressions does not belong to the intellectual part of the soul. J But on storehouse, from whence it is brought out again and Sina translated by J. M. Macdonald, M.A.y Beyrurh, re-apprehended at will. So I understand the words 1884. Four faculties are distinguished by Avicenna, that follow, of revival, not of first apprehension. all of them belonging to the sentient part of the soul, For a loan of this translation, the only transla- none of them to the inteWtgent part. They are called tion that I have seen, I am indebted to the kindness "conceptual faculty," "imagination," "judgement," of the Reverend James Bredin, late Professor of "memory."
Chemistry at Oscott College. I. Conceptual faculty, "There is nothing in the * Understand, — 'and have never yet come to be conceptual faculty besides the true forms derived actually understood, and therefore are not revivable from sense" (p. 28). This seems to correspond to as ideas in intelligence.' what St Thomas calls virtus apprebenstpa sensibiUs, the t " Memory is incidentally of what is under- faculty of sense perception, stood, but ordinarily of what is primarily perceived II. Imagination. " In animals there is a faculty by sense. Wherefore it is found in sundry other which compounds whatever forms have been col- animals besides men: — whereas, if it were one of lecled in the common sense, and distinguishes be- the intellectual parts, not many animals would have tween them, and differentiates them, without the any memory, perhaps even no mortal would have any" disappearance of the forms from common sense; and (Aristotle, De memoriaf I, i, 7). this faculty is named imagination" (p. 28). "The X Avicenna's theory tends to make the active imaginative faculty performs its actions without perintellect from without supply the potential intellect ceiving that things are according to its imaginings " with intelligible forms: in which case phantasms (p. 28). "The imaginative faculty may imagine cease to be necessary as a previous condition for the things other than that which the judgement considers acquisition of intellectual ideas; and the arguments desirable" (p. 29). If we might assume that this in the last chapter, which suppose such necessity of ' imagination ' is purely reproductive of sense phanphantasms, fall to the ground. Averroes supposed one tasms, it would answer to the 4 phantasy' {imaginatio) universal intellect of all men, at once potential and which St Thomas ascribes to Avicenna.
active: he left the individual, merely as suck, nothing III. Judgement. "Then in animals there is a higher than the sentient powers. Avicenna denied to faculty which decides decisively upon a thing, whether the individual the active intellect, and supposed one it is this or not. And by it the animal flies from that universal active intellect for all mankind. The poten- which is to be guarded against, and seeks that which tial intellect is reduced by his theory to a momentary is desirable. This faculty is called the judging and impressibility. the supposing faculty" (pp. 28, 29). It is not difficult Avicenna (Abu Ali Ibn-Sina), a native of Persia, to recognise here that highest faculty of animal lived a.d. 980-1037. Like Averroes, he was physician nature, called in other animals v is <esttmativa, in man and philosopher. I quote from The Psychology of Ibn- vis cogitatfta (Chap. LX).
GOD THE ORIGIN OF CREATURES careful consideration this theory will be found ultimately to differ little or nothing from the theory of Plato. Plato supposed forms of intellect to be separately existing substances, whence knowledge flowed in upon our souls: Avicenna supposes one separate substance, the active intellect, to be the source when knowledge flows in upon our souls. Now it makes no matter for the acquirement of knowledge whether our knowledge is caused by one separate substance or by several. Either way it will follow that our knowledge is not caused by sensible things: the contrary of which conclusion appears from the fact that any one wanting in any one sense is wanting in acquain- tance with the sensible objects of which that sense takes cognisance.
i. It is a novelty to say that the potential intellect, viewing the im- pressions made by singular things in the phantasy, is lit up by the light of the active intellect to know the universal; and that the action of the lower faculties, phantasy, memory, and cogitative faculty, fit and prepare the soul to receive the emanation of the active intellect. This, I say, is novel and strange doctrine: for we sec that our soul is better disposed to receive impressions from intelligences subsisting apart, the further it is removed from bodily and sensible things: the higher is attained by receding from the lower. It is not therefore likely that any regarding of bodily phantasms should dispose our soul to receive the influence of an intelligence subsisting apart. Plato made a better study of the basis of his position: for he supposed that sensible appearances do not dispose the soul to receive the influence of separately subsisting forms, but merely rouse the intellect to consider know- ledge that has been already caused in it by an external principle: for he supposed that from the beginning knowledge of all things intellectually knowable was caused in our souls by separately existing forms, or ideas: hence learning, he said, was nothing else than recollecting.* IV. Memory. 44 Then there is in animals a faculty existence of an intellectual essence, distinct from which preserres the meaning of that which the facul- bodies, standing in the relation of light to sight, and ties have conceived, e.g., that the wolf is an enemy." in the place of a fountain: and the proving that, It is a store-house of judgements rather than of sense when human souls separate from bodies, they unite perceptions: for 44 the senses do not perceive the with this essence" fTitle of Section x, p. 40).
enmity of the wol£ or the love of the child": only Speaking of the belief in mathematical axioms, he the >is <estimatfta perceives that, "then it treasures says: 44 It must be either by the use of sense and them up in this faculty." It is not a store-house of experiment, or by divine continuous overflow...fancies, as the 44 imagination " is: for 44 this faculty overflow continuous with the rational soul, and the does not picture anything which the judgement does rational soul continuous with it...This overflow, not approve. This faculty does not declare anything which is continuous with the soul, is an intellectual to be true, but preserves what something else declares to essence, not a body, not in a body: it stands by be true. And this faculty is called the preserving and itself holding the relation to the intellectual soul of remembering faculty" (p. 29). All this answers exactly light to sight" (pp. 40, 41). 44 The soul remains to the account of 44 memory" which St Thomas after death ever immortal, joined on to this noble attributes to Avicenna. essence, which is universal intelligence " (p. 42).
- We come now to the main argument of this In Avicenna, as in Averroes, one recognises in chapter, which is Avicenna's belief in the 4 active the doctrine of ittisdl9 however misdirected, that intellect' as a separate intelligence, working causa- craving for some connexion of man's intelligence tivety upon the mind of man, and generating therein with a spirit above his own, which a banal materialism universal concepts, such concepts not being stored in or positivism labours to extirpate, making man highest the human mind for future use, but directly created of beings and (perforce) self-sufficient. That craving afresh for every recurrence of them, by the action of is the root of mysticism; and in the doctrine of the this extrinsic intelligence. Against this doctrine of Incarnation, with its corollaries of grace and sacra- Avicenna, Averroes writes explicitly (De aninue ments, it has become the animating principle of beatitudine, cap. iii, p. 151): IntelleQus agens non tan- Christianity.
tnm est causa in intelleSu material [sc. possibili] per # Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: yiam efficients et motoris, sed per yiam ultinue perfectiouis, The soul that rises with us, our life's star, hoc est, per yiam forme et finis. (See note, p. 135.) Hath had elsewhere its setting Averroes united the active and the potential intellect, And cometh from afar: and made both eternal: Avicenna and Alexander But trailing clouds of glory do we come made the active intellect alone eternal. Avicenna's From God, who is our home.
theory of the universal active intellect is thus given (Wordsworth's Ode, Intimations of Immortality in his own quaint words. — 44 The proving of the firm RecolleSions of Early Childhood.)
H3 3. Intellectual knowledge is more perfect than sensory. If therefore in sensory knowledge there is some power of preserving apprehensions, much more will this be the case in intellectual knowledge.
6. This opinion is contrary to the mind of Aristotle, who says that the potential intellect is "the place of ideas": which is tantamount to saying that it is a "storehouse" of intellectual impressions, to use Avicenna's own phrase.
The arguments to the contrary are easily solved. For the potential intellect is perfectly actuated about intellectual impressions when it is actually considering them: when it is not actually considering them, it is not per- fectly actuated about them, but is in a condition intermediate between potentiality and actuality.* As for memory, that is located in the sentient part of the soul, because the objects of memory fall under a definite time: for there is no memory but of the past; and therefore, since there is no abstraction of its object from individualising conditions, memory does not belong to the intellectual side of our nature, which deals with universals. This however does not bar the potential intellect's preservation of intelle&ual impressions, which are abstradted from all particular conditions.
CHAPTER LXXV-Confutation of the Arguments which seem to prove the Unity of the Potential IntelleEl ARG. 1. Apparently, every form that is specifically one and numerically multiplied, is individualised by its matter: for things specifically one and numerically many agree in form, and are distinguished according to matter. If then the potential intelleft is multiplied according to number in different men, while it remains one in species, it must be multiplied in this and that man by matter, — by the matter which is that man's body the form of which it is supposed to be. But every form, individualised by matter which it actuates, is a material form: for the being of everything must depend on that on which its individuation depends: for as general constituents are of the essence of the species, so individualising constituents are of the essence of this individual. It follows therefore that the potential intelleft is a material form, and consequently that it does not receive any- thing, nor do anything, except through a bodily organ: which is contrary to the nature of the potential intellect.
Reply. We confess that the potential intelledt is specifically one in different men, and many according to number, — waiving the point that the consti- tuents of man are not put into genus and species for what they are in themselves, but for what they are as constituents of the whole. Still it does not follow that the potential intellect is a material form, dependent for its being on the body. For as it is specifically proper to the human soul to be united to a certain species of body, so any individual soul differs from any other individual soul, in number only, inasmuch as it is referable to numerically another body. Thus then human souls, — and consequently the potential intellect, which is a faculty of the human soul, — are individualised according to bodies, not that the individuation is caused by the bodies.f * So St Thomas rightly explains, c<m /ticv 6/xot'ws t Cf. Bodder, Tsychokgia Rationa&s, pp. 381-383.
koX tote <Wcfyi« TTw?, ov fxi)v dfiotws teal irpiiv fiaOtlv No two human bodies are perfectly alike, and no tj tvpiiv (De anima, III, iv, 7). When you know a two individual men: but it remains a question for thing, though you are not thinking of it, your mind the curious to consider whether the individual is not quite so much in potentiality over that thing peculiarities that distinguish man from man are all as when you have it still to learn. due to bodily conformation merely, or whether there Arg. 2. If the potential intellect were different in this man and that% the impression understood would have to be numerically different in this man, while remaining one in species: for since the proper subject of impressions actually understood is the potential intellect, when that intellect is multiplied there must be a corresponding multiplication of intellectual impressions according to the number of different individuals. But the only impressions or forms which arc the same in species and different in number, are individual forms, which cannot be intellectual forms, because objedts of intellect are universal, not particular. It is impossible therefore for the potential intellect to be multiplied in different individual men.* Reply. This second argument fails from neglecting to distinguish between that whereby {quo) we understand, and that which {quod) we understand. The impression received in the potential intellect is not to be taken for that Vtbicb is understood. For as all arts and sciences have for their objeCt-matter things which are understood, it would follow that the subjeCt-matter of all sciences was impressions on the potential intellect: which is manifestly false, for no science has anything to say to such mental impressions except psychology and metaphysics: though it is true that through those mental impressions there is known the whole content of all the sciences, f Therefore, in the process of understanding, the intellectual impression received in the potential intellect is that whereby we understand, as the impression of colour in the eye is not that which is seen, but that whereby we see. On the other hand, that which is understood is the nature {ratio) of things existing outside the soul, as also it is things existing outside the soul that are seen with the bodily sight: for to this end were arts and sciences invented, that things might be known in their natures {naturis).
Still it does not follow that, if sciences are of universal truths, universals should subsist by themselves outside the soul, as Plato supposed. For though for the truth of knowledge it is necessary that the knowledge should answer to the thing, still it is not necessary that the mode of the knowledge and the mode of the thing should be the same: for properties that are united in the thing are sometimes known separately. Thus one and the same thing is white and sweet: still sight takes cognisance only of the whiteness, and taste only of the sweetness. Thus again intellect understands a line drawn in sensible matter apart from that sensible matter, though it might understand it also along with the sensible matter. J This difference arises according to the diversity of intellectual impressions received in the intellect, which some- times are the likeness of quantity only, sometimes of a sensible quantitative substance. In like manner also, though the nature of genus and species never exists except in concrete individuals, still the intellect understands the nature of genus and species without understanding the individualising elements; and this is the meaning of understanding universals. And so these two positions are reconciled, that universals have no subsistence outside the soul; and yet that the intellect, understanding universals, understands things which are outside the soul.
The faCt of the intellect understanding the nature of genus and species are soul-peculiarities also, a peculiar soul being from modem speculation: 'The intellect that grasps unithe first created and infused into a correspondingly versals, should itself be universal.' peculiar body. St Thomas seems to favour the second t The distinction here drawn between quod and alternative. See Chap. LXXXI, reply to arg. 2, with quo founds the standing reply of Scholasticism to note. Idealism.
* The argument is this, and it has its weight in t You may take either a geometer's or an artist's view of the lines of a building.
stripped of its individualising elements, arises from the condition of the intelleftual impression received in understanding, which impression is rendered immaterial* by the attive intellect, inasmuch as it is abstracted from matter and materialising conditions whereby a thing is individualised. And therefore the sentient faculties can take no cognisance of universals, since they cannot receive an immaterial form, seeing that they receive always in a bodily organ.
It is not therefore necessary that the intellectual impression of this and intelligence should be numerically one: for it would follow thereupon that the a<5t of understanding in them both was also numerically one, since activity follows form, which is the principle of species: but it is necessary, to the end that one objeCt should be understood by both minds, that there should be a like impression of one and the same objeCt in them both. And this is possible enough, although the intellectual impressions differ in number: for there is no difficulty in having different images of one thing; hence the contingency of one man being seen by several persons, t There is nothing inconsistent then with the universalising knowledge of the understanding in their being different intellectual impressions in different minds. Nor need it ensue, because these intellectual impressions are many in number and the same in species, that they are not aCtual but only potential terms of understanding, as is the case with other individual things. Mere individuality is not incon- sistent with intelligibility: for we must admit the potential and aCtive intellects themselves, if we may suppose the two to subsist apart, united to no body, but subsistent by themselves, to be individual beings and still intelligible. What is inconsistent with intelligibility is materiality: as is shown by this consideration, that for the forms of material things to become actually intel- ligible, abstraction has to be made from the particular matter in which they are lodged; J and therefore in cases in which individuation is due to particular matter involving particular dimensions,§ the things so individualised are not actually intelligible. But where individuation is not due to matter, such indi- vidual things may without difficulty be actually intelligible. Now intellectual impressions, like all other forms, are individualised by their subject, which is the potential intellect; and since the potential intellect is not material, it does not stand in the way of the aCtual intelligibility of the impressions indivi- dualised by it.
But though we have said that the intellectual impression, received in the * * Immaterial ' means ' stripped of individual t Or being simultaneously photographed by particularities.' It does not quite mean 'abstract': for several photographers.
you might ' immaterial ise,' or ' universalise,' let us t Thus uneducated people, bound up in their say, the whole of Nelson's monument, so far as con- domestic surroundings, often show inability to undertour and structure go. It is not true, as associationists stand, because they cannot conceive of qualities apart have taught, that the sight of a house ordinarily from the familiar objects in which they see them: brings up to my consciousness impressions of similar e.g., ' weight ' to them means tbeir heaviest piece of buildings which I have seen: all that I am conscious furniture, ' learning ' is their parson, etc. This is of is the image of this house now before me: but in amusingly illustrated in Plato's Hippias Major.
considering it as a house I consider it apart from the § Individuatio Jit per hanc materiam signatam. For tbisness; and so doing I am said to 'purify it of materia signata see B. I, Chap. LXIII, p. 45, note, material,' i.e., particular ' conditions.' This explains The doctrine that matter is the principle of indiviwhat St Thomas says presently, " what is inconsis- duation is one of the most intricate in the scholastic tent with intelligibility, is materiality." You cannot system, and cannot be entered upon here, understand ' house ' in such a way that your intelli- Things ' not actually intelligible ' nevertheless gence is limited to this house now before you, so are potentially intelligible: i.e., they lend themselves that, if you happened to encounter another, you to a process of de-particularising under the active would not know what it was. To understand is to intellect; and so as universals become actual terms of take for a type. intellect. This is explained at length in Chap.
LXXVII.
GOD THE ORIGIN OF CREATURES