Chapter 6
Origin Of The Life Instinct
380. Animate being is found in nature. If we want to divide it into its two elements, we destroy both it and its elements. But this does not prevent us from examining the reciprocal action of the co-elements which produce feeling and animate being. In fact, if we succeed in distinguishing one element from the other in feeling, we should also be able to observe their mutual aptitude and reciprocal action.
381. We have seen that the first element, the feeling principle, is passive relative to the second element, the sensiferous principle. Vice versa, the sensiferous principle is active relative to the feeling principle. We have also seen that the feeling principle, although passive, is not inactive (inactivity and passivity are different and should not be confused). Indeed the feeling principle could not be passive and receive feeling if it did not co-operate and contribute in large measure to the act. These conclusions result from an analysis of animal feeling.
382. However, if we put feeling aside and consider only the extrasubjective phenomena of an animal body, another question arises because the extrasubjective phenomena of an animal body differ from those of material body. We must therefore conclude that animation influences the extrasubjective state of a body, although it is simply the act by which a body acts on the feeling principle by becoming its term. We have to establish the origin of this act, an act which is prior in nature but not in time to the animal feeling principle.
We have attributed this act of the body to the action of the feeling principle itself, an action prior in nature to feeling but not in time. We did this because the difference between the extrasubjective phenomena exhibited by what we see of an animate body and the phenomena presented by what we see of an inanimate body shows how the body is modified. To this extent, therefore, the body is passive; and if passive, the animating principle must be acting as an active principle. Thus we see that in animation both body and soul are active and passive in turn.
When we speak about an animal body in which life is visible, the first action is that of the soul. The purpose of this action is to direct the well-prepared body to that actuation in which the body, thus constituted, acts on the soul itself, inducing animal feeling. The second action therefore is that of the body (now an animal body) on the soul. The soul therefore is first active and then passive; the body is first passive and then active. The co-operation of the soul in the production of animal feeling consists in an act prior to the act of the body. This act has the double effect of making the body active and the soul itself passive.
Our understanding of this reciprocal action of the two constituent principles of what is animal is helped by an illustration taken from Dobereiner's lantern. When we open the tap of a container in which hydrogen has been produced by the immersion of a small, solid cylinder of zinc in acid, an inflammable liquid is released. Although the liquid is cold to the touch, it has the property of immediately making red-hot a piece of platinum held to the tap. When red-hot, the metal ignites the hydrogen issuing from the tap. The flame of the burning hydrogen then ignites the wick of a lamp placed close by for the purpose. This lamp, or rather the lamplighter, is a similitude of the reciprocal animal action of the soul and body. The platinum is cold, and cannot therefore ignite the hydrogen. But the hydrogen, as it forcefully strikes the platinum, has the property of making the metal red-hot and thus conditioning it to ignite the very hydrogen which had made it red-hot. In a similar way the body cannot stimulate the feeling of the soul unless the soul, by first acting on a body endowed with organs, makes the body suitable for acting on the soul itself and thus give rise to the proper induced animal feeling of excitation. In this way action produces passive experience, and passive experience produces action. This goes on continually, and can be noted not simply in our case but throughout nature, as Ontology shows.
383. It may be asked how the first act of the soul by which the sensiferous principle is brought into act can itself be posited. We must note that, prior to the induced feeling (which requires some stimulus from the sensitive body - a stimulus in which the soul then co-operates), I presuppose the feeling of the continuum. When stimulated, the principle of this feeling is effective in animating with induced life a suitably prepared body, endowed with organs.
384. But what is the origin of the act of the principle which feels the
continuum? - The act is the essence itself of the soul; and nothing exists
prior to the essence of a thing except the act by which the Creator posits the
essence. The soul therefore is passive in its first act (if by passivity we
mean indeed the reception of existence) but only relative to the first agent
who makes it be what it is.
Granted its first act, therefore, the soul, by giving the body life and feeling
it, works throughout the whole body endowed with organs. This is the origin of
that activity of the soul which we have called life instinct.