Chapter 11
The Intimate Union Between
That Which Feels
And That Which Is Feelable
258. From what has been said it is clear that corporeal feeling requires what is feelable as one of its essential elements. At the same time, it has no absolute need of a material principle in so far as such a principle is distinguished from what is feelable and exists as an independent force modifying the feelable without acting directly in that which feels.
259. This also explains why we form the concept of matter not simply as something distinct from feeling, but also as some hidden and completely unintelligible substance. If the agent modifying the feelable element, but not acting directly on the feeling principle, were non-existent, we would never attain our present idea of matter (even if we were to grant that what is feelable - or better, what is felt - underwent modifications from our own energy).
260. An analysis of feeling itself will serve to reassure anyone who may
find difficulties with the assertion: `Corporeal feeling can exist only if what
is feelable exists, and therefore only if extension (the mode of what is
feelable) also exists.'
Let us imagine a feeling deprived of its extended term. Nothing remains when it
feels no space of any sort. Corporeal feeling is annihilated without a large or
small space in which to expand; it would be inconceivable, a feeling of
nothingness. For instance, we have a pain, in some part of our body. If we make
this part smaller, the sphere of pain also becomes smaller. The only doubt
which could arise is about the possibility of the pain's being concentrated in
a mathematical point. Several arguments can be employed, however, to show that
such a hypothesis is contradictory and inconceivable.
261. First, the mathematical point does not actually exist in nature, where only solids have a place. Points and lines are the products of abstraction, and nothing more.(123) But if pain is corporeal it must issue from a painful area of our body, and a part of a body can never be a mathematical point.
Secondly, the nature of a point as a simple relationship and as nothing in itself excludes the possibility of focusing material pain in a mathematical point. But this focusing is excluded by the nature itself of the body which we know only through sense and which, as we have shown, is the result of extended elements, not unextended points.(124)
Thirdly, the nature of sensation itself enables us to demonstrate that it is impossible for corporeal pain to be centred in a point. The phrase `to feel pain concentrated in a mathematical point' can only mean that I feel the mathematical point by means of the pain I experience in it. But a mathematical point cannot be felt nor its place assigned except through the relationships of the point with solid extension; that is, it cannot be located and felt except as the term of three lines. A point not determined by any line, distance, or relationship with solid extension can neither be imagined nor exist.
Let us consider the same thing in the case of extrasubjective perception and imagine that we see or touch a point. This point must be in a place and be determined by its place. A point without a place, or without some extension in which it may exist, is an absurdity, is nothing. In fact a point can be felt in sensation only if the extension surrounding it, to which it refers, is felt along with it. The point exists in and through the extension as a limit exists in and through the limited thing to which it appertains, or as a place depends upon adjacent spaces. It is impossible for a corporeal sensation to be restricted to a single mathematical point and not expand into the extension surrounding such a point. If indeed a point could be felt, it could be felt only along with the other extension surrounding it, in which it is assigned a place and located (cf. 160-172).
If therefore we could subtract every extended term from the sensation of which we are speaking, the sensation would be annihilated.
Notes
(123) It is true that surface phenomena exist in nature, as we have seen, but not bodies extended only in a surface plane.
(124) Cf. OT, 846 ss.