Chapter 5
The Chain Of Beings
81. I would like to indicate an erroneous consequence of the naturalists'
attempt to define life. For them, life lies in certain external qualities of
bodies (which, however, are often only uncertain signs of life - life is an
internal power). They believe that a continual gradation can be found in the
beings of nature, without any intervening gap.
It is clear that once the subjective element is ignored, only the
extrasubjective characteristics remain as a basis for classifying natural
beings. These characteristics do indeed exhibit a kind of finely graduated
scale. As long as we consider corporeal beings solely in their external,
sensible appearance, we notice only variation in colour, shape and movement, a
combination of colour, shape and movement according to certain laws, and their
being ordered in systems or functions. These variations can constitute only
accidental differences, never an essential difference of genus and species.
Accidental differences can be arbitrarily classified, even according to a
gradation not observable by our senses.
But the case is quite the opposite if in addition to considering natural beings in their extrasubjective existence, we also note in them subjective existence. Immediately we discover two essences that are so different, so contrary (as are a sensation and what I call the sensiferous quality, which produces the sensation), that they admit of no dividing grades, nor of any passage from one to another. The distance between feeling and non-feeling is one of essence, not of grade, just as the distance between what is active and what is passive, between cause and effect, is a distance of essence and not of grade.
82. Some naturalists, therefore, observing that the higher and more perfect organisation of some plants resembles that of some of the more imperfect animals, thought they had found the two links in a chain that joined plants to animals. But they did not notice that in comparing the organisation of animals and plants, they were comparing only something external to an animal (its sensible organisation), not the animal itself;(43) animality, which is internal and not subject to external observation, entirely escaped their attention. Even if the gradation of animals is ascertained through what they exhibit externally, the immense leap (if we can call it that) from feeling to non-feeling, that is, in what they are, always remains [App., no. 2].
83. These observations are true even granted the hypothesis which claims that everything is animate. Such a hypothesis can be conceived only by distinguishing the feeling soul from its body, an insensitive or non-feeling term which is simply felt. This immense difference remains to separate that which feels from that which does not feel, in other words, to separate the soul from the body. Hence, even in this hypothesis, the classification of natural beings into those that give signs of feeling and those that do not, remains true.
Notes
(43) St. Thomas says: `"Animal" is that which has a feeling nature' (S.T., I, q. 3, art. 5).
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