Animality
Definitions
I
45. We call animate `the extended, immediate term of a sense-principle'.
II
Animal is `an individual being, materially feeling and instinctive, organically formed and with organic-excitatory movements'.
III
Animal life is `the unceasing production of corporeal and material feeling'.
IV
Life as attributed to the sense-principle, that is, to the soul, is `the corporeal or material principle itself'.
V
Life as attributed to the body is `the act with which the body, acting in the soul, produces unceasingly in the soul the corporeal or material feeling'.
VI
Life as attributed to the anatomical body is `the unceasing reproduction of all the extrasubjective phenomena which in parallel with the material feeling precede, accompany and follow it'.
VII
Life in general is `the act of a substantial feeling'.
46. As we begin to study the human being relative to the animality he has in common with brute beasts, we have to remember that our aim is not a complete treatise of animal nature, but an endeavour to clarify our notion of animal relative to animal activity, and to show that the animal's various operations can all be reduced, without call for intelligence and will, to an efficacious sense-principle. Our conclusions about animal activity should enable us to consider the same kind of actions in the human being, where they are found along with, and in relation to, the intellective principle and free will.
47. This difficult, mysterious study of the way in which brute beasts are determined towards action, and do in fact act, depends for light on an exposition of the nature of feeling, from which animal instinct and activity originate.
48. We shall first turn our attention, therefore, to the passive faculties of the animal, and then to the active faculties which flow from them. In this way, our study of animal nature will have two parts, the first dealing with feeling and the second with instinct. We do in fact reduce all passive animal powers to the feeling-power and all active animal powers to instinct, and this explains why, in our definition of animal as `a feeling, instinctive being', we think we have indicated all possible animal powers.
49. We shall see later how animal desire and instinct are rooted in the feeling-power; and as a consequence we shall also see how the feeling-power properly constitutes radical animal essence. For the moment, we begin by showing the error of those who aim to place the definition of animal in something other than the feeling power.
The Passive Animal Faculties
50. Everything that can be said about animal feeling falls under two principal headings, that of fundamental feeling, which constitutes the essence of animal, and that of acquired, accidental feelings, which are modifications of the fundamental feeling.(22)
51. The accidental feelings are of two kinds, figured and non-figured. External sensations and images belong to the first group. This whole section on animal feeling, if rigorously divided, would therefore follow this pattern:
| 1. The fundamental feeling. | ||
| 2. The modifications of the fundamental feeling. | ||
| a) Non-figured feelings. | ||
| b) Figured feelings: | ||
| i) sensations | ||
| ii) images. | ||
52. However, if the various parts were discussed as completely separate from one another, it would be necessary eventually to draw them together in order to indicate their mutual relationships and dependencies. Consequently, we think it better to relate them as we go along, if this proves more convenient, especially as the order of ideas seems sufficiently outlined in the schema set out above. Our only division will be that of the chapter headings that follow.
Notes
(22) What we have to say in this book about the fundamental feeling and its modifications can be considered as a continuation of the same subject in OT [692-748].