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Chapter 9

How The Feelable Principle
Is Distinguished From
The Feeling And Sensiferous Principles

230. The argument outlined in the preceding chapter would require much greater development than we can give it in a work devoted to moral anthropology. What we have to say here will simply continue and clarify the matters already dealt with. We begin by making an observation about the nature of bodily or material feeling.
If we consider the general notion of feeling, we find that it does not include the concept of extension. And it is certain that there are feelings which do not furnish the spirit with anything extended.

231. But we are also aware that we experience sensations or feelings that of themselves furnish us with some extension, and others that provide us with at least some location. These we have called corporeal feelings.(107) We saw that this extension is found in the corporeal fundamental feeling and its modifications, especially in those arising from touch and sight. But we also saw that the feeling principle(108) is totally unextended. We first ask, therefore, how that which is extended can be contained in what is unextended.

232. This question has its source, however, in a material way of conceiving the inextension of the feeling principle.

In the case of two bodies, the more extended of the two certainly cannot be contained in the less extended. In the same way, if the inextension of the feeling principle were that of a mathematical point, in the normal understanding of mathematical point, we would be dealing with an impossibility: there is no extension in a mathematical point. But such a way of conceiving one thing's existence in another is altogether material and false when applied to our present case. We have to consider carefully that the relationship between the feeling principle and extension is not a relationship of size, according to which two extended things are measured with one another. It is a relationship of sensility, which means that the extended, besides being an extended element, has (relative to the feeling principle) feelable entity. In other words, it is an entity superior to that of extension and, as such, simple in itself and altogether different from and foreign to extension. The soul receives extension in itself according to this feelable beingness. That which feels receives what is extended as feelable; what is unextended does not receive as extended what is extended.

233. I realise that this will be a difficult, if not impossible notion for all those who depend upon matter alone for their concepts, and cannot understand how things can have other than a material mode. But such persons should begin by distrusting the exclusive, restricted concepts drawn from matter which they have arbitrarily generalised. They have to persuade themselves that their material way of perceiving things does not adequately explain the entity of things. It is subjective, relative, limited, phenomenal and - let us be clear about this - highly misleading for those who want to be misled.

234. It remains that two irrefutable facts have to be taken into account, whether one understands or not my way of stating how the feeling principle feels what is extended. They are:

1st. that in its own nature the feeling principle is without the slightest likeness to the nature of extension. Hence its description as `unextended';

2nd. that extension is presented in what we have called corporeal feeling.

And here we must stop to meditate on these two facts. They show that the analysis of corporeal feeling furnishes two very different elements: 1. the unextended feeling element; 2. the felt element, endowed with extension, which can be called feelable in so far as it is capable of being felt.(109)

What is the difference, therefore, between what is feelable, what feels and what we have called sensiferous?

What is feelable is the opposite of the feeling principle, as we have said. It is therefore distinct from that which feels, although it has its seat in the feeling principle. But that which is feelable is no less distinct from the sensiferous principle. This principle provides sensations only as an agent stimulating feelings in the feeling principle.

235. In itself, therefore, the sensiferous principle is present in feeling only through its action; for the rest, it is outside feeling. What is feelable, however, is an element of feeling itself, as we have also seen.
Besides the feeling principle, or soul, therefore, there are two things distinct from it and from one another: the force that causes feeling without contributing its own proper entity to the formation of feeling, and the force which is an element in already formed feeling.

236. These two things give rise to the different notions people have about body and matter, which can however be interpreted correctly.
In the first place, it is not wrong for common sense to judge that what is feelable is totally different from the soul: that which is extended and feelable is not the soul, which is simply the sentient principle.

237. In the second place, common sense does not err in judging the sensiferous principle as the substance of body and something unknown. Although the sensiferous principle acts in the feeling, it does not become, with its own entity, an element in the feeling. Its entity is not therefore perceived in itself by us.
If we go on to reflect that this substance which produces feeling in the soul could not do so without bringing its action to bear on the soul, we will easily see how common sense is right in seeing a body (the corporeal substance) present where common sense feels what is feelable. In fact, corporeal substance acts in this situation. Finally, if we note that a body must be in act where something feelable is present, we realise how common sense attributes what is feelable to body as a quality of the body. The effect of bodily action is taken as the nearest indication we have of the qualities hidden in a body itself.

238. Common sense wisdom has not found worthy interpreters amongst philosophers. Those who badly misunderstood common sense and rebelled against it took refuge in idealism, which should more truly be called sensism, because its proponents, so-called idealists, reduced external bodies not to ideas (which these `idealists' did not understand), but to sensations.(110)

239. Reid stood out against this error, but was no less disloyal to common sense when he maintained: `People attribute two very different meanings to the words "colour", "taste", and so on. One meaning expresses the sensation, the other a body perceived as alien to the sensation.' But it is impossible to show that the feelable qualities, which are indeed comprised in feeling, are not attributed by ordinary people to bodies.(111)

240. The teaching of the Schools,(112) especially as it is explained in various places by St. Thomas, harmonises far more easily with common sense, which it takes as its master. In fact, our interpretation of the word `body', which depends upon the analysis of both sensation and common sense opinion, is in perfect agreement with Aquinas' assertion that it is more fitting to say `The body is in the soul' than `The soul is in the body'. The body does indeed act in the soul by revealing itself there and positing in the soul that which is feelable as one of the elements of sensation. To say `What is feelable is a mode of the soul itself', is to speak materially, unreasonably and absurdly. The soul, as feeling principle, can feel itself only as a feeling entity. In that which is feelable the soul feels nothing, not even the act of feeling; it simply feels the term of this act.

241. The same teaching harmonises with St. Thomas' other affirmation: `That which feels and that which is felt "unite" in the act of feeling'; and `That which is feelable in act is feeling itself [sensus] in act.'(113) This can only mean that the feeling act terminates in the act of that which is feelable.(114)

242. We have to affirm unambiguously therefore that although the extended, feelable element is in the soul, it is nevertheless essentially distinguished from the soul. A most important corollary, which we must not overlook, follows from this truth.

Note that the distinction and opposition between these two elements (the unextended feeling element and the extended feelable element), together with their in-existence, are unavoidable data dependent upon simple observation of feeling. Only an hypothesis intended to eliminate feeling itself would abolish these relationships. In other words, in order to destroy these observed data we would have to invent an hypothesis which would enable us to believe that the two elements, although distinguished in our observation, were in fact one single thing, that is, the single, identical soul. Now although it is true that the hypothesis can be shown to be absurd, we have no need to show its absurdity. We live in a century in which the only scientific method worth considering is that recognised by Galileo, a method principally aimed at firmly establishing observed facts. Any hypothesis whose avowed aim is to destroy undeniable facts is out of place. Such a mistake in method, which is concomitant with any attempt to annihilate the clear distinction between the elements uncovered by us in feeling, would be sufficient to exclude opposition based upon it.

243. But the corollary we wish to draw from the quality called feeling is this: fact and careful observation of fact show undeniably that `two beings can exist, one within the other (with their activity), and form a third without destroying one another, without mixing with one another, and without being confused'. This is an ontological truth of the greatest relevance, directly opposed to the sensists' common prejudice that `one thing cannot exist in another', at least not without confusion and admixture between them. Such a conclusion springs from the sensists' observation that impenetrability prevents one body's existing in another (cf. 232), and from their usual headlong rush to a universal conclusion from a particular premise. Even Leibniz, a truly great man, was subject to this prejudice, on the basis of which he decreed the impossibility of interchangeable activity between his monads. However, the truth we have indicated stands as a renewed confirmation of our teaching on ideas, a teaching which ordinary people find difficult to understand principally because they cannot see how `being can be present in our spirit and not be confused with our spirit itself'.(115)

244. It is difficult to exaggerate the errors springing from this ontological prejudice, or the evils which accompany these errors. The prejudice itself has become the foundation of a popular philosophy that has ruined science through sensism, and morality through hedonism.(116) This philosophy is thus summarised by one of its principal exponents:
Just as it is absolutely impossible for a person to go outside himself(117) and feel outside himself, so it is absolutely impossible for him to act except from self-love. Virtue can only be self-love expressed outwardly(118) in such a way that the common pressure for exclusive, individual interests is forgotten.(119)

The fallacy contained in this passage depends entirely on the gratuitous, false supposition: `Within us there is nothing different from us.' If it were true that there could be, and were, nothing in ourselves except ourselves, it would be in some way legitimate to conclude that we could love only ourselves.(120) In fact, we would have no object other than ourselves. If, however, we find through analysis that an entity different from ourselves, which is not and cannot be confused with us, has its place in us (by means of the action it exercises, or its immediate manifestation), the conclusion `Self-love is the only possible effect' is totally mistaken. There is indeed something for us to love other than ourselves.

245. One difficulty remains to be solved. According to what I have said in this chapter, common ideas about bodies have apparently been justified; in the preceding chapter, however, they seem to have been condemned.

I answer that although the first ideas we form of bodies are correct, our first reflections upon these correct ideas are mistaken. These reflections, however, are more appropriate to beginners in philosophy than to people in general. And sensists never pass beyond the stage of beginners. This is why I said that common sense finds unfaithful interpreters amongst philosophers.

246. These mistakes consist:

1st. in forgetting the body perceived subjectively, and reflecting solely upon the body perceived extrasubjectively; this imperfect reflection helps to compound imperfect concepts which then give rise to errors;

2nd. in attributing to a body other than our own the felt element of our feeling, which is an effect of the action of our own subjective body on our soul;

3rd. in the conviction that we perceive distant bodies without need of the unlimited space given by nature to our fundamental feeling, and solely by relying on the phenomena of sight that serve as signs of unlimited space, or on the images that depend upon movement (in this case, it would be the eye that leads us to believe that we touch coloured things although our eye, restricted to its own limits, could only enable us to believe that the visual image of the hand which touches something takes the place of the visual image of the body it touches - sight cannot tell us that the hand touches, and that the body is truly touched);

4th. in applying to the soul the concept we have formed of the body conceived extrasubjectively, and describing the soul through principles and arguments that can express, as we have said, nothing more than bodies perceived extrasubjectively.

Notes

(107) The only source of our concept of extension is feeling. Cf. OT, 820-839. This is an irrefutable proof that extension is found in feeling itself.

(108) We sometimes call this `the feeling principle' and sometimes `the sentient principle'. They differ only in so far as the sentient principle is the feeling principle considered in act.

(109) The difference between what is felt and what is feelable is the same as that between the sentient and the sensitive principles: that is, they differ as act and potency differ in the same being.

(110) It is well-known that Berkeley's idealism is founded on the definition of body as `a complex of sensations'.

(111) Many very penetrating ideas have been proposed in Italy (`lazy, slow old Italy', as they say, yet hopeful of revival), without their receiving the attention they merit. The same ideas, when regurgitated by writers of other nations, were sometimes acclaimed as discoveries and the foundation of systems. As a contribution to some future history of philosophy in Italy, allow me to note that `feeling', which attracted such attention when proposed by the Scottish school in their endeavour to eliminate ideas as intermediaries between things and ourselves, is very similar to, if not identical with, the concept suggested by Niccolò Cantarini in Italy three centuries ago. In his book, Della perfezion delle cose, Cantarini set out to destroy systematically the `intellective species' of Aristotle. Cf. De Perfectione Rerum, bk. 6, c. 6, Venice, 1576.

(112) The teaching of the Schools means the teaching of Aristotle understood and modified by the Schools.

(113) `In operations present in the acting subject, the object identified as term of the action is in the agent itself as the operation in act. Hence in bk. 3 of De Anima, what is feelable in act is a feeling in act.' (S.T., 1, q. 14, art. 2).

(114) `The feeling act is that which is feelable in act. Not in the sense that the power of feeling is itself a likeness in the feeling of the feelable thing, but because together they make one being, as act and potency do.' (S.T., 1, q. 55, art. 1, ad 2). Note carefully that in this Scholastic theory the feelable species, or the image of what is feelable (which is also called simply the `feelable') was not the substance of body, but the term of the act of body.

(115) Cf. my Rinnovamento della filosofia, bk. 3, c. 47.

(116) The teaching on pleasure.

(117) I have already noted that this phrase is proper to bodies in their relationship to one another. It cannot be applied, except metaphorically (I sometimes use it in this way), to spirits in relationship to one another or in their relationship to bodies. Body is not properly speaking outside the spirit, but different from, although in, the spirit.

(118) How can human beings express self-love outside themselves if it is absolutely impossible for them to go outside themselves?

(119) Romagnosi, Note all'articolo `Progressi e sviluppi della Filosofia e delle scienze metafisiche dal principiare del XIX secolo', in the Indicatore Lombardo, t. 1, 4th series, pp. 36 ss. This quotation from Romagnosi gives us some idea of the so-called experimental method which gives its name to the school. The experiments they bring forward are reduced to: `It is impossible for a person to get outside himself, it is impossible for a person to act other than for self-love, etc.' Are these experiments, or are they absolute, dogmatic opinions? These authors introduce experiments and facts in the prefaces to their books, but then abandon them to fill the rest of their volumes with strings of axioms and general opinions proclaiming what is possible or impossible for nature. Nature herself never gets a hearing, but she goes on producing her facts nonetheless.

(120) `In some way' because strictly speaking even love of ourselves would be impossible if in us there were nothing different from us. Love always presupposes the twofold presence of subject and object, loving principle and loved term. But `ME, the object' is not `I, the subject'. For `I, the subject' to become `ME the object', I have to conceive myself intellectively, that is, as a being. There must be present in me, therefore, the essence of being (an element different from me) in order that I may conceive myself mentally and so become an object of my own love.