Return to Contents

Chapter 15

Thoughts On The Communication Of Life

323. We must sum up some of the things we have said.
We located the essence of the animate being in corporeal feeling.
We then analysed this feeling, and found that it resulted from two elements: 1. a feeling principle (the form of feeling); 2. a felt extended element (the matter of feeling).(152)

Finally, we examined the connection between these two elements (this connection gives rise to feeling and, as it were, creates animate being). Our analysis showed a supremely intimate connection culminating in true individuation: if one of the elements were removed, the other would cease to be.

This wonderful union requires unending reflection. As we said, the nature of the feeling principle observed in animate beings is such that the principle is no longer conceivable when all its matter is eliminated. If we remove all matter from the act of feeling, feeling itself ceases. And if feeling ceases, the feeling principle also ceases. Any surviving principle that feels nothing is no longer a feeling principle.

Only our imagination allows us to posit something in the place of absent feeling. We imagine something that either still feels, or does not feel. In the first case, some feeling persists, against our supposition; in the second case, what remains has no connection whatsoever with the preceding feeling.
On the other hand, the matter of feeling is no longer such when it ceases to be the term of feeling. It can be perceived only in true or imaginary, actual connection with the feeling principle itself.

324. It may be objected that this matter could be felt, even if it were not actually felt, and thus enable the matter to be called `matter of feeling'. The same objection can be made about the feeling principle if it is defined as a principle capable of feeling rather than a principle which actually feels.
Objections of this kind, however, indicate serious neglect of philosophical method and fundamental misunderstanding of what we have tried to explain. Overcoming them requires care on the part of those who raise them.

One of the neglected laws of sound, philosophical method states: `Take care not to deny to your opponent what you yourself need in order to prove your supposition.' The objectors state: `The matter of sensation can exist without actually being felt.' But what is this matter? Inanimate bodies not actually present to our senses? In this case, we have to ask what is understood by `inanimate bodies'? If such bodies are understood as shaped, resistant, coloured, and so on, we see immediately that this definition of body can be the result only of sensations. Inadvertently, the body has been defined as the matter of feelings by its being imagined in actual union with feelings, not separate from them. And it could not have been defined in any other way as long as it is considered as the matter of feeling.
The matter of feeling, therefore, has an essential relationship with the feeling principle. If this relationship is removed, the matter of feeling, the felt element and the feelable element are also removed. It is true, of course, that actually feeling this matter is not in question, but in speaking about it I nevertheless either imagine or think the matter as actually felt. In other words, it is in an actual relationship with a possible feeling. If it were not, I could not form any thought about it for myself.

325. This shows that in the order of real things, the two elements composing animate beings cannot be posited separately and then united to form animate beings. United, they have to be posited as part of nature's datum. Feeling (animate being) must be given together with its two elements, which can be distinguished by us only mentally. This, however, is not the sole case of such synthesism in nature. Synthesism is the law and key sustaining the nature of all things in the universe, as ontology shows.(153)

326. The elements of animate being do not pre-exist animate being itself, nor is one element in existence prior to the other. The elements subsist in unity to form animate being.
Animate being exists: this is the primary fact.(154) And because it exists, its elements are present within it: this is the second fact which we find by observing animate being present in nature.

327. But animate being falling under our observation presents more than the two elements of feeling and felt which are sufficient to make up the concept of animate being. It also reveals other laws and conditions of its existence. These laws complete the concept of animate being which is then expressed through the word animal.

328. Animal existence is principally conditioned by two of these laws which indicate respectively the animal's subjective and extrasubjective subsistence. The first law states: `In its external and extrasubjective appearance, a body must order its particles in a certain, determinate matter (organisation), and undertake certain determinate movements, etc., for it to be matter of the stimulated feeling.'

329. The second law states: `A certain series of extrasubjective phenomena must correspond in a body to the series of subjective phenomena for a body to be known as animate and matter of feeling.'

330. Note that not all these extrasubjective phenomena, nor everything present in each of them, appertain to the animalisation of a living, organic body. The body of the individual, animate being contains, besides the life force, other mechanical, physical, chemical, organic forces, etc.(155) which can be considered as different operative principles, essentially independent of the vitality of the whole individual. These foreign forces can alter the matter of the animal feeling by drawing it away from the normal state in which it is capable of being a term of feeling. The normal state is itself constituted and determined in general by the two laws given above.

331. The subsistence and conservation of animals, therefore, requires `an amalgam of all the necessary mechanical, physical, chemical, organic forces and so on which, together with the life forces, are suitable for continually preserving the matter of feeling in a state capable of allowing the matter to act as the unique term of animal feeling'. If the harmony and balance between these forces breaks down as a result of a defect in even one of the forces, extinction of the individual feeling results inevitably.

Observation and experience, therefore, bring us to conclude that a certain state, determined by the two laws we have mentioned, is necessary in the body if the animal is to be sustained. The different kinds of forces and the continual movements they produce have to act ceaselessly and, as it were, with continual, supportive, interior, circular effect in order to realise the unending conservation and refurbishing of the external, material, extrasubjective condition of the body that signifies the complex life of the organic whole. Where such forces are balanced and harmonised in this way, animal life can exist and be preserved.

332. It is clear that the simultaneous action of so many different forces and changes in the animate body will bring about within the body a constant tendency to abandon the normal state needed for the conservation of life. The activities of individual forces, together with the movements of individual particles, are ceaseless attempts to change place and state, and hence to draw the animal body to some other mode of being. This takes place without regard to the normal state of the body required for the maintenance of life. Only the life force, unique in its capacity for reaching out to the whole being, tends to subject matter to life. Other forces - mechanical, physical, chemical and organic - are governed in their nature only by the need to carry out blindly their own urges without regard for the complex life of the body to which they adhere.

333. We have within the body, therefore, an amalgam of brute forces which tend continually to its destruction. These alien forces have to be restrained and directed by equivalent forces tending continuously to conserve the body, or producing effects that balance those of the destructive forces. This state of animal antagonism, as I call it, furnishes the animal with what it needs for its conservation, balance and progress towards perfection.

334. One of the effects of the brute forces continually acting within the animal body is the living body's constant loss of particles which, when ceasing to share in the life of the whole, no longer form part of the same organism. This deleterious effect, which needs to be overcome and corrected by forces of conservation, could if uncontrolled lead to continual diminution and final destruction of the united animate matter. Nature has, however, established a way of entry into the animal body for other particles which compensate for the losses. These particles, continually introduced and inserted into the body, are `animalised', that is, they become new matter for the feeling of the animal. `Nutrition' is the means by which the particles come to receive the life common to the whole body. In the more perfect animals the whole digestive system is ordered towards nutrition.

335. The three following operations certainly form part of nutrition.

1st. The food must be broken down and decomposed to the final elements suitable for contributing of themselves to the organisation of the animal molecules.

2nd. These elements must be carried to the orifices of passages and tiny ducts scattered throughout the animal body where they can be received and introduced into the blood or into any place suitable for turning them into molecules that can be assimilated along with the other animal molecules.

3rd. Finally, these elements arrange themselves and unite with the body as a whole in such a way that they become part of the single organic whole and thus communicate their own life to the life of the whole. At the same time, they receive from the whole being an equal communication of life, stimuli and vital activities, and participate in the single life proper to the whole animal body.

336. Little imagination is needed to visualise tiny elements entering the pores and ducts of the body and organising themselves, when viewed externally, so that they change into parts of organs. The truly extraordinary difficulty lies in the communication of life, through which particles foreign to the animal become its felt and feeling parts. And this gives rise to the profoundly mysterious question: `How do particles, lifeless in the animal's regard, come to share the animal's life?' or `How does brute matter change and become matter for the animal's feeling?'

337. Speaking in general, I think the following can be said without positing any hypothesis.
We have already shown that it is intrinsically necessary for the felt body to form a true continuum. As we said, we obtain our idea of extension from felt continuity, without which the idea of extension would be inexplicable. Consequently, the animal's appropriation of foreign molecules can take place only on condition that they first put themselves into perfect contact with the particles already animated by the animal's own life.

The molecules that are to become the term of the animal feeling must take a form allowing them continuity with the matter that is already term of the feeling, whatever this matter may be (perhaps something in the nerves). The particles that have to become feelable relative to the fundamental feeling must penetrate the matter already felt by the fundamental feeling, perhaps by inserting themselves between pre-existing animated particles in such a way as to mingle with and become assimilated to the former matter. This cannot happen, however, without the following law: `Where one or more similar particles insert themselves between particles composing the matter of feeling, and separate the particles very slightly without breaking continuity, the single, dominant feeling principle does not abandon the particles to which it has given life, but continues to vivify them by passing with its action through the new particle lying between them.' This particle becomes a kind of conductor of feeling, when the feeling principle, through the same law of continuity of sensation, comes to feel the new particle or particles which it now makes its term along with the already animated particles.

As far as I can see, this explanation does not go beyond a description of fact. Whatever causes may intervene in such a event, the fact does not seem possible in any other way.

338. Having found through observation of fact that the activity of the single feeling principle is extended to matter which it had not previously reached, we have also found the way in which the animal grows and develops. To explain growth and development we simply need to add: `The animal assimilates, organises and invests with life-activity a number of inanimate particles greater than the number it is continually losing.' In this way, if we grant the presence in nature of some first animal matter, however small, we find that this matter contains a capacity for forming other matter indefinitely. When the fundamental feeling is provided with matter and suitable conditions, the feeling principle must be unrelentingly active.

339. What we have said, taken with what was shown previously, clearly demonstrates `the feeling principle's dependence on the matter of feeling'. We may express this dependence in the following way: `The feeling principle is modified in accordance with the modification of its matter and its organism, which determine its mode of being.'

340. On the basis of this wonderful law furnished by experience, the multiplication of animals is no longer difficult to explain, generally speaking - or rather, it is not difficult to find a general formula to express adequately this multiplication. If the feeling principle takes its mode of being from the matter of feeling, and is modified in accordance with the modification of the disposition and quantity of the matter, the following cases can be verified.

1st. If the matter is entirely destroyed, the feeling principle of which it is the term, will also cease to exist because it cannot exist without matter.

2nd. If some given matter decreases quantitatively without being destroyed, the feeling principle of the remaining matter expands its feeling activity in a lesser extension.

3th. If, on the other hand, the continuous matter increases, the feeling principle necessarily expands its sensitivity in a more extended space.

4th. If, finally, the matter of feeling is divided without its being destroyed, and two independent continuities provided with the necessary conditions for preserving their continuity and organic disposition take the place of a single continuum, the feeling principle is also multiplied and becomes two principles. In other words, the animal is multiplied as animate matter multiplies.

341. The final case explains generation, and provides a general formula covering the different kinds of generation to be found in the animal kingdom. It is a new proof of the feeling principle's indefinite capacity (cf. 338) for extending, multiplying and stimulating itself, granted certain conditions, all of which depend upon the presence of some matter suitable as the term of the feeling principle.

342. As we have seen, different forms of perfection in animals depend upon the variety, unity and intensity of their fundamental feelings. In turn, greater variety of feeling presupposes more complicated organs; greater unity, a lesser number of centres amongst the sense organs; and greater intensity, a larger quantity of excitatory motion. Perfect animals, therefore, have a single feeling centre, and their multiplication can depend only upon the formation of a new centre independent of the first.

343. The teaching we have outlined may easily present a difficulty arising from the simple, unextended nature of the feeling principle. Is it possible to divide something simple if only that which has parts can be divided?

The objection would be insuperable if the two or more elements were parts of the so-called simple being; that which is made up of parts cannot be simple. The objection is not valid, however, if simple and unextended beings are not divided into parts, but multiplied so that the resultant entities are each entire, perfect and simple. And this is what we are dealing with.

344. The whole difficulty experienced in understanding this fact arises, as we have said repeatedly, from the false concept we form of that which is simple and unextended. People cannot conceive a being without extension unless they consider it in relationship to a mathematical point, which has no parts. If the unextended being of which we are speaking were only a mathematical point, it would indeed be difficult to think of it as capable of multiplication - although some kind of multiplicity can be associated with it as the term not of one but of many lines, such as the centre of a circle in which many radii terminate.

But the simplicity of the feeling principle is altogether different. It excludes both extension and every relationship with extension, even the relationship found in a point as the end of a line. This non-extension consists in a power capable of producing certain effects, and is called simple and unextended because it pertains to a group of things entirely different from those in space.

345. The kind of simplicity proper to the feeling principle does not prevent the principle's terminating its operation in some extended continuum, as observation shows. We have already noted there could be no continuum whatsoever without its being perceived by a simple principle (cf. 94-97). As we said, the concept of the continuum requires that all its parts appear mutually contemporaneous and uninterrupted. This is impossible unless we suppose that they are presented to some simple principle whose comprehensive power is such that it can diffuse itself simultaneously to all the points of the continuum while remaining identical.
The feeling principle is then said to adhere to all the parts of the continuum which form the term of a feeling. Its adherence is such that the same identical power is found simultaneously in all points of the felt, extended thing. And I have to repeat: it is only under these conditions that an extended, continuous thing can be felt.

The co-existence of the feeling principle in all the assignable parts of what is felt and extended can indeed seem mysterious and truly singular, but this should not deter us from accepting the fact for what it is. And it cannot be otherwise, granted that we have a continuous sensation and an idea of the continuum.

346. If, therefore, we accept this fact as we find it in nature, can there be any difficulty in imagining that if a felt continuum divides in two, its feeling principle can be assigned to both continua? The principle was present in all the points of the continuum before the division. After the division, the feeling principle must be found in all the assignable points of the two smaller continua. But the feeling principle found inherent in all the points of one continuum cannot have any communication with the feeling principle adhering to all the points of the other continuum because the two continua, already divided, no longer form one but two things.

If we supposed that a single, identical principle terminated its action in the two separate continua, this could depend only upon the imagination's adding to the feeling principle something not contained in the concept of a feeling principle. If the same feeling principle were to feel the two separate continua, we would have to suppose that this feeling principle felt itself, and in the feeling of itself felt also the two continua. This does indeed happen, as we shall see, when the feeling principle not only feels, but possesses a higher and more general activity such as intellection. If, however, the feeling principle only feels, we have to be careful not to suppose that it can feel anything except an extended body. If it could feel something other than what is extended, it would no longer be merely a feeling principle, such as an animal, but something superior to animal, which is against our hypothesis.

We must remember that we are dealing only with animal feeling and take great care to acknowledge that in such feeling the thing felt is always and solely extension.(156) The nature of animal or corporeal feeling is found here. If, therefore, the animal feeling principle feels only and solely what is extended,(157) and does not feel itself or anything else separate from the continuum, it has to be granted that two separate continua, forming two things felt separately, form two separate feelings and, therefore, two separate feeling elements. This kind of multiplication is no more contrary to the simplicity of these entities than the feeling principle's capacity for being present simultaneously to all the assignable parts in a continuum.

347. Rather 1. the capacity of the animal feeling principle for being present simultaneously to all the assignable parts of a continuum and 2. the principle which makes the identity of feeling dependent upon the continuity of its extended term, result in the capacity of the feeling principle to multiply in the same way as the continuum. Simultaneous presence to all the parts assignable in a continuum does not detract from, but reinforces the argument for the simplicity of the feeling principle - nothing extended could be present in several places because that which is extended has by essence one part outside another. In the same way, possible multiplicity without self-destruction, as we have explained it, is a consequence and evident proof of the total simplicity and non-extension of the feeling principle

348. Our observations in this chapter on conservation, growth, nutrition and generation show clearly that the definition of animal can be perfected and made more explicit through the progress of natural sciences. Animal properties, however, which can be indicated in a definition must be distinguished into two classes.

Some properties form the essence of animal; others, although not absolutely essential to the definition of animal, could be shown by experience to be common to all existing animals. The essential properties are contained in the definition we have already given of animal; the other properties, which might be found common to all animals without constituting their essence, could form part of the definition which would then be continually perfected through new discoveries.

These common animal properties, which are not strictly speaking essential, could be, for example, nutrition and generation, or a flexible, bulky, cellulose structure. Research could also show that characteristics thought common to all animals are not really so.(158) The definition of animal could then be expressed in different ways in accordance with variations in natural science. Nevertheless, the modifications brought about by progress in experimental sciences could never change the fundamental definition which is always that of an individual, organic, activated feeling. As we have said, only the accessory, non-essential parts of the definition could be changed.

Natural scientists who deny the possibility of a definition of animal, or expect it as a result of some perfect, future research, have overlooked the easy, undoubted experience proved by the constant existence of stimulated corporeal feeling. This is sufficient for forming a stable concept of animal, and for an unchangeable definition. Our inability to perfect accessories to the definition, or our lack of knowledge of the order of extrasubjective phenomena flowing from the activated, material feeling (in which the definition of animal is founded), does not prevent the definition from being true or essentially complete.

349. Finally, I note that the additions to the definition of animal which depend upon persevering observation and experiment can only determine better the law of relationship `between the order of subjective phenomena and the order of extrasubjective phenomena'. It is certain that in common usage the word `animal' indicates the subjective order, accompanied however and revealed by the phenomena of the extrasubjective order (if I may speak in this way). From improvements to the definition, we can rightly expect this connection between the two orders to be clearly described and delineated.

Notes

(152) The sensiferous principle remains outside feeling, according to the distinction we made between sensiferous and feelable. Nevertheless, the sensiferous principle acts in the soul with which it co-operates to produce what is feelable.

(153) Cf. PE, 21-42. And P. Gioachino Ventura, De Methodo Philosophandi, where the author speaks of substantial composition in beings.

(154) In the book of Genesis, animals spring already formed from the earth in which God had placed their fecundated seed; in this sacred book the spirit of animals is never separated from their matter. This is not the case with the human being. God first formed the body of this king of nature, and then breathed the soul into it: `and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.' Here we have a principle, the intelligent soul, that can stand by itself, independently of matter.

(155) I use mechanical force to indicate collisions amongst the various parts, physical force to indicate general attraction, chemical force for affinities, and organic force for distension, contractility and so on. I call all these forces in general material forces. Sensitivity, however is a subjective faculty, not an extrasubjective force, and cannot be confused in any way with the forces we have enumerated.

(156) We do not deny that the feeling principle feels, in extension, its own activity. It feels it, however, as in-existing in extension.

(157) It is imagination, as usual, which prevents our feeling the entire force of this argument. On the basis of an analogy with bodies, we imagine a kind of sub-stans, or root, underlying the feeling principle. While not denying in any way that the feeling principle may be rooted in something other than itself, we must be careful not to confuse this `something', anterior to the feeling principle and lacking individuality, with the feeling principle itself. In fact, although the act by which God creates is a kind of root of all things, this act should not be confused with the things themselves. This would be illogical and pantheistic. We must posit in the nature of things only that which experience and rigorous induction reveals. This means finding the feeling principle where it is, in the feeling, not in something prior to the feeling. The feeling principle will then have to be defined as `the feeling itself considered in its relationship of activity, not of passivity'. This definition removes all difficulty impeding our thought. It does not imply that we hold God's creative act to be the immediate root of feeling, although it is its final root and final cause. We leave room for possible intermediate, unknown causes which, however, have to be understood as links in a single chain finally dependent upon God, the Author of all things in the universe.

(158) There are immense variations in animal nutrition and generation, as we know. Many animals `have no signs of a mouth, and would seem to take nutriment through their pores by absorption' (Cuvier, Le règne animal, t. 2). Sponges, for example, and certain gelatinous forms, which contract when touched, show no trace of any digestive apparatus but have pores scattered over their body which seem to act like little mouths absorbing any tiny animal that makes contact with them. So-called infusoria have been classified as animals principally because of their cellulose texture and their signs of movement. Nevertheless, they seem to lack eyes, muscles, nerves, organs for respiration and generation, mouth, and digestive apparatus. They are small, gelatinous, transparent, contractile and homogeneous, yet irritable at all points. Initial indications of a stomach only begin in vorticellae and rotifera. There is no intrinsic reason why these beings should not feel, but the presence of feeling needs to be proved without doubt before they can be classified with certainty amongst animals.