Return to Contents

Chapter 11

(Part 2)

455. I have already demonstrated the simplicity of the feeling principle (cf. 92-134) and shown that its unity of action springs from this simplicity. Every animal activity emanates from the first act of the life instinct; the sensuous instinct is only a second act, as it were, of the life instinct itself. I have also made use of the animal's unitive force to explain how an animal perseveres at length in a pleasurable action, or even gradually increases the degrees of intensity of this action in order to derive more pleasure from it (cf. 370-400).

We now have to consider this unitive force as the principle of order in animal activity. This is an immense subject which I cannot hope to exhaust, but I shall have done sufficient if I succeed in opening a door on the matter and allow others a glimpse of a marvellous world in which so much delicate work remains for careful, discerning researchers.

456. The unitive force under discussion is present, I think, in all animals, although it does not seem to exist at an equal level in all species. The quantity and quality of the unitive force, therefore, could perhaps serve as a foundation for the philosophical classification of the animal kingdom. It would be a surer foundation than those already discovered, and could serve as their meeting point and perfecting principle.

This animal unitive force should be subject to careful analysis in the hope of 1. indicating all its functions; 2. showing which of these functions is found in each animal species; 3. describing all cases of possible lesion that could render the force unsuitable for its functions; and 4. thus classifying imperfections or defects in the animal in so far as the animal is a feeling and instinctive being.

457. This last work would moreover offer a solid foundation for the classification of lesions in the human intellective and volitive faculties in so far as they require for their matter what is prepared and submitted to them by feeling and instinct.

Here I shall indicate only the principal functions of the unitive force which, however, will serve to show clearly that every operation of animal instinct, whatever apparent signs of intelligence it offers, can be explained on the basis of the animal's own intrinsic properties, and especially of the properties of the unitive force with which the animal is endowed.

The first function of the animal unitive force:
to join together the sensations of different senses,
especially those of sight and touch

458. In The Origin of Thought(200) we have described at length how sight, by administering signs of corporeal tactile properties to animals, assists touch and movement. An animal without sufficient unitive force to bring together and unify, as it were, touch sensations (associated with movement) and sight sensations could never perceive the solidity of exterior bodies with sight alone. On the other hand, when touch sensations (united with movement) are associated with sight sensations, the latter are coupled indivisibly in the animal with a phantasy-retention of the corresponding touch sensation (it is touch which, through movement, possesses the property of perceiving any determined, corporeal solidity). As a result, sight sensation then represents and suggests to the animal's internal sense the solidity of bodies whose size is given by movement and touch. In other words, the sight sensation now offers more than is actually seen. The person born blind described by Cheselden perceived only a bodily surface adhering to his eye when he recovered his sight; he did not perceive corporeal solidity. Use of touch then taught his eye to discern solids intuitively. This could not have occurred, however, if the person were not endowed with the unitive force enabling him to associate several sensations, that is, visual sensations with touch sensations and images of touch sensations. Acting according to a specific law of association, he formed a single, internal affection aroused in him as the eye received colour. This affection enabled him to perceive solids through colours alone when he realised that colours are distributed in solid space, the term of the fundamental feeling, where movement traces limited corporeal solidity.(201)

459. Lack of harmony between sight and touch sensations is often observed in congenital or contracted mental illness. Dr. Pinel, in describing some of the mentally ill amongst his own patients, says:

The same can be said about sight perception of distances which depend upon perceptions of touch and movement. This kind of sight perception, unaccompanied by touch and movement, requires some unitive force in the animal in order that the perceptions produced by touch and movement may be associated and stably tied to the sight perception. As a result, sensations produced by touch and movement are aroused in the phantasy when the eye receives its own proper, corresponding sensation. The internal sensation of the phantasy, a reproduction of the external sensation, is an indication and measure of the corresponding distance. This association must come about according to a certain proportion and an instinctive law so that an internal image of the exact distance is aroused in response to the corresponding eye sensation.

Cabanis speaks of a boy completely unable to judge distance, although his eyes were perfect. The defect must have been in the unitive force which was incapable of carrying out the function we are describing. However, an observation is necessary before we can induce anything definite from this fact. What criterion was used in deciding that the child could not distinguish distance with sight? Probably the conclusion depended upon his being unable to direct his movements on the basis of sight alone without the help of touch, which would have been needed to allow his movements to correspond to the distance he wanted to cover. But this would only prove, absolutely speaking, that the child did not know distance with sight alone, and that he was defective in unitive force capable of connecting sight and touch sensations. In order to move according to the distances perceived, the child's unitive force would have to perform yet another function about which we shall speak later, the function uniting passive with active feelings.

460. In answer to questions about the law according to which sight sensations are harmonised with those of touch and take their place, we say that the first condition for such a law is the unlimited solid space given by nature as the term of the fundamental feeling. Granted this, the law then depends upon the equal proportions according to which colours seen by the eye are distributed in the visual orbit, and according to which objects felt by touch are distributed in space, as we have already shown at length in our theory of knowledge.

461. Consequently, any sudden change in the proportions of the colours in the visual orbit would lead to mistakes. For instance, we would reach out to touch bodies which, although seen, would not be where we placed our hand. Illusions of this kind cause us to place our feet wrongly, and stumble.

In passing, I could mention something that happened to a servant of Monsignor Sardegna, retired bishop of Cremona. After losing an eye, this servant no longer cut all the tonsures of the bishop's resident priests in the middle of the head but on the side. When he wanted to light the altar candles with a taper, he mistook the distance of the wick and held the taper about six inches away from the candle.

The reason for this will be clear if we remember that the total visual orbit had been diminished and rendered defective on the side where the eye had been lost. The servant, who, presumably, was used to putting his hands on objects in the centre of what had been presented by the visual orbit of two eyes, now put them in the centre of the orbit presented by his one remaining eye. As a result, he put his hands towards the side on which the good eye was, and went further than necessary.

462. Nevertheless, I must add another observation connected with the unitive activity enabling the animal to connect sight sensations with touch sensation and movement. Although it directs its movements solely according to the tenor of its sight sensations, and therefore in harmony with the requirements of touch and movement, another synthesis is needed if the animal is to complete this operation. The animal, in carrying out this action, does not simply unite and harmonise actual sight sensations and mobile touch sensations (this is the first synthesis we described, in which the animal appears to use its sight without constantly comparing the size and shape of the spaces it sees with its touch experience); it also unites actual sight sensations with past touch sensations now re-activated in the phantasy. This is precisely the reason why it can succeed in knowing what effort to put into jumping a ditch, and how to measure its own movements according to the spaces in which it does them. But the following reflections on this second synthesis will help us understand it better.

The second function of the unitive force:
associating sensations and images
(the bond enabling images to co-exist)

463. This function presupposes as a law of operation that external sensations already felt by an animal are easily re-aroused in the internal sensory faculty, that is, in the imagination. This law is revealed by experience.

464. But explaining the law is not easy. My own opinion is that the explanation is not to be found solely in the nerve fibre, nor in the feeling principle, but in both together. The feeling principle, or soul, having been moved at one time to experience a given sensation retains its inclination or tension towards that sensation through the law of spontaneity; at the same time, the living fibre retains greater mobility relative to the movement already suffered than to other movements. This, however, is mere conjecture on my part.

465. On the other hand, there can be no doubt about the ease with which previously experienced sensations are renewed in the phantasy as a result of very slight stimuli. Similarly, it would seem that the phantasy is incapable of furnishing the soul with images other than those already experienced in sensation. The imagination remains sealed, as it were, until sensation releases it.(203)

Granted this, let us see how this function is carried out, and examine the importance to the animal of the help provided by the function when the animal recalls and connects present sensations with `re-aroused past sensations', as I call the images.
The union of several sensations in the animal (the first function of the unitive force) comes about because these sensations are simultaneous. If all these sensations are taken together, and all the animal feels is taken as constituting a single sensation, their union gives rise to a single feeling, a single feelable state in the animal. This state is as simple as the feeling animal is simple, although many simultaneous sensations contribute to form it.

The whole of this single, complex feeling is preserved in the animal by the sensuous retentive faculty, as we have called it. This faculty retains traces, as it were, of the single feeling, of the `feeling in potency', of its `susceptibilities', its `habit' - expressions which are more or less equivalent.
It follows that a single part of this multiple feeling (a single sensation of the many that went to form the feeling), when aroused in the animal by some external cause, is sufficient to revive in the animal phantasy all the other sensations originally felt along with the single sensation and forming with it the general feeling or feelable state. Nothing more is needed to revive the whole feeling and recall it to act.

Consequently, when an animal receives a sensation experienced on other occasions it does not move simply according to the requirements of that sensation alone, but according to the requirements of the general feeling which the sensation helps to reproduce and renew.

466. For example, a hunting dog, when it sees its master take a gun, becomes very excited, as though it understood that a day's shooting was to take place. But the dog does not in fact understand anything. Intelligence is not required to explain the dog's agitation; the association of pleasurable sensations already experienced by the dog when hunting is sufficient. The animal's unitive force associates many other pleasant sensations in the dog's phantasy with sensations of the shotgun and of the master picking up the gun. These sensations taken together compose and form a single feeling and state which is recalled and renewed by the animal as soon as a part of the feeling is reproduced in the external sense. It is this multiple feeling which causes the dog's excitement and consequent agitation.

Innumerable other animal activities can be explained in the same way. The dog, for example, tracks a wild beast by means of scent or finds its master, although he is a long way off; it discovers objects deliberately hidden; it learns tricks that seem to require great intelligence. But all this is carried out through the association of sensations and images. They are bound together in such a way that the experience of one sensation gives rise to other images connected with it which complete a feeling previously produced in the animal as a result of the co-existence in it of many things felt simultaneously. The animal, when it feels a part of the total feeling which has brought it such pleasure, spontaneously seeks the rest of the feeling. It experiences some discomfort as long as the feeling is incomplete, and is stimulated to search for what it still lacks.

467. This is the foundation of all animal training, which is mainly based on the following principle: `Associate pleasurable sensations with actions required of the animal, and unpleasant sensations with actions to be avoided.' Such association is impossible without the animal's synthetic or unitive force, which is one as the animal is one. Through this force the animal forms, from several simultaneous sensations, a single, pleasurable or disagreeable act or state. It then seeks or avoids the total sensation.

If the activity from which one wishes to dissuade the beast is very pleasant, disagreeable sensations have to be connected with it until they completely overcome the pleasure experienced in the activity. The animal now receives a single bitter-sweet feeling in which the unpleasant element is greater than the pleasant. The unity of the feeling and the prevalence of the unpleasant element makes the feeling as a whole unpleasant and to be avoided. In this way dogs are trained not to eat food thrown to them, and to undergo other privations. The training depends upon the image of the punishment meted out to them if they do what is forbidden.

468. All these matters seem at first to call for some use of reason in animals. We believe easily enough that like us they act on a calculation of pros and cons, or by understanding sufficiently to work from a sign to what is signified as though they knew rationally, for example, that the master's handkerchief was an indication of his presence. But there is no question of arguing from a sign to what is signified, or of weighing pros and cons. The animal passes from a state of imperfect, partial feeling to a state in which the feeling is entire and complete, and does this spontaneously through instinctive law.

The third function of the unitive force:
fusing several sensations and images
into a single, well-ordered affection (the effecting bond)

469. So far we have explained two apparent traces of reason in animal activities.
Animals seem able to measure and relate proportionately forms and shapes seen by the eye with those presented by touch. This phenomenon was explained by means of the first function of the unitive force. No intelligence is at work; sensations, which themselves possess proportionate sizes and shapes, encounter one another in the unity of the animal, as we have explained, and are their own mutual measure and proportion.

It would also seem that animals recognise signs, and move from signs to that which is signified. This second apparent act of reason was explained by means of the second function of the unitive force, without our needing to presuppose reason.

But there is a third apparent indication of reason at work in animal activity. Each operation is composed of various movements bound together for the purpose of producing a single effect. Moreover, many animal activities are ordered in relationship to one another. This harmony between animal movements and activities cannot be explained through sensations and images which are either separate from one another or at most connected by the bond of co-existence of which we have spoken. Such activities would seem therefore to require the use of some understanding and reason. We have to show that even here there is no need to have recourse to reason for an explanation of the phenomena.

470. Let us recall something we have already seen: movement in the animal does not originate directly from sensations and images, which only initiate the nerve movements that affect the soul's spontaneous activity (cf. 385-400, 419-429). In turn, this activity arises to prolong and perfect the movements.(204) These nerve movements first produce a diffused feeling, which I call an affection or even a universal affection. As we saw, the soul's activity is present throughout the body. Consequently, this affection expands more or less everywhere. But the very diffusion of feeling and activity is a third function of the animal unitive force in which several sensations and images are fused and harmonised into a single prevalent affection which, ruling the sensations and images, makes them subservient to itself. This is the unique, proximate cause of animal movements and activity.

471. We can now see why these animal movements and activity are sometimes well-ordered and well formed, and sometimes show signs of disturbance and disarray.

If the animal operates in virtue of an affection produced by several partial sensations and images, each of which possesses its own degree of natural force, the operation also reveals unity and order. In it one dominant, governing feeling presides over all the other partial feelings. If, however, one or several images take on unnatural, excessive strength, and thus control the sensuous activity, they necessarily weaken the action of the other images and sensations. These immoderate images take up the dominant position and themselves alone produce an exclusive affection generating partial, disharmonised and disordered movements. The unitive force is weakened in this state; it no longer has the energy to unite all the images and sensations harmoniously, each with its own correct proportion of strength so that it may contribute with the others to forming the single affection and its corresponding movements. At this point, the animal exhibits signs of disturbance, rage and in the human being even delirium.

472. But overwhelming constraint is not the only impediment blocking the unitive force as it attempts to carry out the function we have described, that is, to produce the affection by harmonising images and sensations. Very often the weakness of the images, or the extreme ease with which they can be eliminated from the sensuous retentive faculty, serves as an impediment to the unitive force. Very languid images are associated with idiocy. Excessive, but brief and momentary images which leave no trace, give rise to a kind of dementia, mixed with some form of mental disability and incipient rage.

473. Let us consider examples of all four cases.
1st. Lack of unitive force due to weakness of images, the cause of true idiocy.

There are many cases of people in this state who reveal such obtuse senses and languid images that universal affection is totally lacking in them. They remain in an almost absolute state of stupor and immobility, without giving any sign of spontaneous movement even for primary needs such as food. Everything has to be done for them. Even nourishment has to be forced down their throats (cf. 459).

474. 2nd. Lack of unitive force due to the brief duration of images, despite the liveliness and strength with which they are impressed on the phantasy.
Dr. Pinel has given a description of one of his alienated patients in whom images must have been extremely forceful, but of short duration:

We cannot say that this unfortunate person was lacking in sensations or images, or that these were weak and incapable of producing the universal affection which is the proximate cause of instinctive movement. The images were extremely vivid, but of such brief duration that the unitive force was unable to connect them and produce a well-ordered, harmonious affection from them all. As a result, they formed only isolated affections, and isolated, disconnected movements.(205)

475. 3. Lack of unitive force due to the extreme violence of one or a few images.
If the violence of one or a few images is excessive, and produces an affection which governs instinctive movements, the outcome will be rage. We should note here that every passion present in the irascible part, such as anger, pride, ambition and excessive jealousy, degenerates into rage. Instances of this are not rare, and we do not have go to hospitals for the deranged to find them.

476. 4. The same lack of unitive force due to the extreme violence of one or a few images can induce delirium in the rational animal if the deficiency influences the will and through the will, the understanding. Unfortunately examples of this are very common.

477. Rage and delirium, therefore, normally have a common root, that is, the immense power of a few images. If the force of this power prevails only in the animal part, it causes rage; if it prevails in the understanding, it brings delirium.

478. We must note one other case in which the unitive force of the animal loses much of its activity without harm to the animal itself. This occurs in sleep. Barthez asserts that in sleep each organ exists on its own account without retaining its correspondence with any other. This is perhaps exaggerated, but it is clear that the unitive power decreases in sleep, and especially in cases of somnambulism when some senses are fully exercised, and others quite inoperative.

The fourth function of the unitive force: to unite
passive and active feelings (the bond of innermost sense)

479. We saw that as a result of the animal's unity the third function of the unitive force produced in the animal a single affection from several external and internal feelings. This affection is the proximate cause of spontaneous motion.
Nevertheless, such an affection would not itself be sufficient to enable us to explain fully how animal movements receive order and regularity. A fourth function of the unitive force is needed by means of which the animal itself proportions and balances its movements according to the intensity and quality of its affection. This takes place in the innermost sense.

480. In order to clarify this concept we must remember once more that I call feelings passive in so far as they are received by us and aroused by an external agent; active feelings are those to which our own activity, our own movement, has been joined (cf. 428).

481. A second observation. Positing feelings connected with our own activity is not opposed to what I have said about the feeling soul's not feeling itself as a feeling principle, nor to the fact that feelable extension is the soul's felt term. We can affirm that the soul does not feel itself as an isolated principle of its feeling without denying that it feels the activity it develops in feeling.

As we know, felt extension is the product of two causes, the body and the soul. Consequently we must recognise that along with what is felt, the soul must have a sense of its own activity provided that this activity is understood as felt in its term and effect, not in its principle. In this way, the soul feels itself as mingled, we might say, with what is felt. It does not feel itself as something separate and abstracted from what is felt, nor can it be conceived as feeling itself in this way.

Moreover, what is felt can suffer modifications by means of movement of its parts. This movement is felt necessarily because it is a change in what is felt. But when this change - movement in the parts of what is felt - takes place, the soul either experiences some kind of passivity if the cause of the movement is external, or itself acts if the very cause of the movement is the spontaneous activity of the soul.

These two states cannot be indifferent relative to the soul, which must feel not only the movement that takes place in the term of its feeling, but also some new passivity in itself. Force is exerted upon it in so far as movement arises without positive co-operation on the soul's part, although the soul must then feel what happens in so far as it contributes to what is taking place. The result is four feelings: 1. that which has for its term the extended felt element, felt as extended; 2. that which has for its term the movement taking place in what is felt as extended; 3. that which has for its term the disturbance brought to bear on the soul when its movement arises without its own intervention; 4. that which has for term the soul's own activity, if the movement is generated through its spontaneous activity. The first three feelings are passive; the fourth is what I call active feeling.

482. It is my opinion, therefore, that when the animal is about to move itself, it has the feeling of its own activity (active feeling), and with it instinctively measures the quantity of movement it begins to excite in the organs of movement. This quantity of movement is of course the direct effect of that feeling. Let us imagine that a brute animal has the passive feeling of some distance which has to be covered. Disharmony and lack of proportion will prevail between the animal's movement and the distance it has to travel, unless this feeling can influence and inform its powers of movement, and hence impress upon them the right quantity of movement necessary to travel the distance. If not, the movement will be greater or less than the distance, and the unitive force will have failed to fulfil its function of harmonising and balancing the passive feeling which prescribes movement with the active feeling which actually determines it. The active feeling has its origin in the depths of the passive feeling, and must be commensurate with it if the action is to be done well. The feeling of the distance could be present together with disproportionate movement towards it. This would depend not on lack of the unitive force necessary to produce the feeling of distance by sight alone (the first function), but through lack of the unitive force enabling the animal to apportion and balance its actual movement with the feeling of the distance it wishes to travel (fourth function).

For example, a person could have an ear for receiving the sounds and experiencing the emotions associated with music; he could also have a pleasant voice. Nevertheless, he may not have sufficient unitive force (of the kind we are discussing) to be able to accord and harmonise his active feelings (his vocal activity) with his passive feelings (the sounds heard). He may never succeed in using his voice to reproduce the sounds and cadences he hears; he may be incapable of discovering the cords in his throat or of impressing on them the movement or pressure of air necessary for singing the desired sounds and melody. And it is certain that he will appear to have a faulty ear and discordant voice until he learns to carry out sufficiently well this operation of unitive force.

483. This explains why music has to be learnt, although its elementary faculties may be innate. It is an habitual balance achieved by the unitive force between passive and active feelings, between sounds heard and sounds to be reproduced. Such balance is not easily attained by the unitive force.

484. We must now summarise the principal elements in our study of the various functions of the unitive force contributing to the production of instinctive movement.
Instinctive movement is for the most part the effect of multiple, hidden activities. Although it seems to arise without much preparation, like an underground river suddenly surfacing, it is the gradual product of much delicate work on the part of nature. And the animal's unitive force plays an extremely busy part in this step-by-step preparation.

485. The following are the steps taken by nature to produce the instinctive movement on which it relies for reactivating a pleasurable act or state already experienced.

1st step: a state of motion or rest in which the animal experiences pleasure or satisfaction.(206)

2nd step: the union or association, brought about by the unitive force of the soul, between the feeling of the animal's state of rest or motion, and the pleasant feeling accompanying this state. This union or association consists (if the state is not pleasant in itself) in joining, in the animal, the feeling of movements and circumstances with phantasms of already experienced pleasant sensations, and vice versa. Consequently, the feeling of movements and circumstances are represented in the animal imagination and accompanied by the arousal of enjoyment from pleasant sensations already experienced. Movements, circumstances and preceding pleasant sensations become, as it were, a single entity.

3rd step: the representation in the imagination of some of these circumstances and movements as a result of external or internal events. At the same time, the pleasure which accompanied the circumstances is also recalled in the phantasy.

4th step: the general effect or affection produced throughout the whole animal by the representations and phantasms together. This affection is like a feeling pervading the entire animal and initiating in it the movements which are direct or indirect causes of its pleasure.(207) In considering the beginning of movement, we need to reflect on what we have repeatedly stated: that is, the sensation, imagination and affection arising from several sensations and images contain in themselves and of their own nature whatever local change - tremor, slight impulse, contraction or extension - is needed in the nerve filaments or fluids governing analogous movements. The intimate connection between feeling and instinct is characterised by the prior presence, in the feelable passive experience, of the beginning of instinctive activity. Instinct is generated in the depth of sense.

5th step: the beginning of movement initiates a disturbed, pressurised, and hence restless sensation. A need is felt, therefore, to perfect these tenuous, initial movements by means of spontaneity and according to the laws of inertia, as we have explained. Consequently, a new synthesis is forged, as we mentioned above, of the progressively increasing degrees of movement and pleasure which through synthesis are grasped by a single apprehension, itself the source of progressive movement. We note that in the animal (where spontaneity is united with inertia, unlike the case of inert matter where no spontaneity is present) a normally progressive action can be retained in its forward movement by the animal's own inertia. The movement, once begun, would prolong itself according to both mechanical and animal laws. Nevertheless, it finds obstacles first in the inertia of the corporeal parts still at rest (to which it attempts to communicate itself), and secondly in the instinctive activity of the animal.

Although the movement would tend to communicate itself by mechanical law to contiguous parts equally and without distinction, the instinctive activity producing the movement does so only for the sake of the pleasure it expects to derive from the movement. Hence, this activity is bent on propagating the movement only in the way, in the parts, and in the mode suitable for causing pleasure. At the beginning, the animal does not succeed in finding these parts easily, nor has it any expertise in directing the movement, stimulating the nerves or vibrating the fluids needed to obtain the pleasure it desires. Consequently the animal, as long as it continues to make efforts of this kind, and until it finds the right path to controlled movement, manifests signs of troubled, disturbed, stressful feeling. This passes when, having taken the necessary trouble to activate its movement, the animal finds full satisfaction.

The 6th step is the instinctive movement itself, the final effect of the dispositions and attitudes taken up by the animal in the preceding steps.

486. The instinctive movement, therefore, cannot arise if one of the five preceding actions is lacking. For example, let us imagine that no affection is produced, so that this effect of the fusion of several feelings, or of the propagation of a single feeling (4th step), is lacking. In this case, spontaneous movement, which has its source in affection, cannot be generated. And this defect may be the cause of the case described by Pinel: `I saw a seven-year old girl whose acoustic organ was extraordinarily sensitive to even the slightest sound. Nevertheless, she seemed unable to distinguish articulate sounds or the difference in sounds expressing joy, menace or love.'(208)

487. Finally, I want to deduce the explanation of the phenomena of the imitative instinct from what has been said.

Imitation is one of the most wonderful guides given by Providence to animal activity. Through imitation, animals seem to possess reason itself; it is extremely strong in some species — monkeys, for example — and can produce extraordinary results in the human species; it is effective at any age, and in entire social bodies; and infancy is guided almost exclusively by the two needs of feeling and imitation.

488. We must turn once more to the animal unitive force for an explanation of the phenomena of imitation, and especially to the fourth of the functions we have described.
Imitation, in fact, is reduced finally to active reproduction through movement of what has been perceived passively through feelings. Imitative activity therefore consists in that function of the synthetic force by which the animal unites, balances and measures its active with its passive feelings.

The passive feelings, united and balanced with the active feelings in the functions of imitative instinct (that is, with feelings springing from the subject's own power and action), are of two kinds: 1. pleasure and pain, according to which the quantity of movement is proportioned and balanced (motion and its accompanying pleasure, as we have seen, become a single thing in the animal and a state in which it perseveres) (cf. 485); and 2. phantasms, according to which the quality of movement is proportioned and balanced. Quality refers to the direction and form of movement, and is the principal source of the imitative instinct.

489. This will be seen more clearly if we recall that phantasms initiate the nerve movement which stimulate the soul's spontaneity. This explains sympathy, the phenomenon which makes us share in another's sorrow or contentment as soon as we see or imagine their suffering or happiness.

There is no doubt that reason plays a great part in such events; it is through reason that human beings come to know and appreciate others' joy or misery. But reason is neither the sole nor proximate cause of what takes place. Rather, reason simply reinforces the imagination and makes it more active than it would be otherwise. In itself, the phenomenon is part of animal life because sympathy always concerns physical good and evil which we not only conceive abstractly, but really feel in ourselves as we imagine it in others. Such a phenomenon, therefore, is an entirely animal effect whose origin is the first nerve movements stimulated by the imaginative apprehension of another's pain, and by the spontaneity of the soul which immediately arises to support and propagate these first movements. This leads to the production of a painful or sad affection more or less similar to what has been seen or imagined by us to exist in the unfortunate person. The intensity of such a sympathetic effect depends on the delicacy of the organs and the way in which they are habitually activated. And perhaps this would account for the story told about Mindyrides of Sybaris who ordered a labourer to stop digging a ditch in his presence because the heavy work oppressed him!(209)

490. Something similar takes place in every imitation. Actions imitated by an animal are first perceived by the animal with its senses, especially the sight. Such things are first seen, that is, become sensations and are then made images; they are passive feelings from which corresponding active feelings have to be produced along with activity reproducing the action which has been seen. The passive feelings, however, begin the movements at the nerve apices. These movements are followed by greater movements, complementing what has already been initiated in the imagination by means of minimum nerve movements. These minimum movements, as we said, are seconded by animal spontaneity leading them to reproduce and imitate the perceived action in precisely the same way that a sound is reproduced by an animal that has heard it (cf. 438).

491. Another observation has to be made about the correspondence between active and passive elements in the animal, that is, between what the animal receives in feeling and what it produces in space.
I have already noted that one cannot say with propriety: `The body is outside the soul', but only that the body is essentially distinct from the soul. That which feels and that which is felt, the constitutive animal elements, are not situated or united in any place, but concur in reciprocal action. I also said that active feelings must be classed amongst felt things which include the following: that which is extended, the continuum, size and shape, and even movement, which changes size and shape.

If all these things are united with the soul in such a way that the soul acts upon them all, that is, acts in what is extended by changing the size and form of what is extended, it can obviously unite in itself and balance its active with its passive feelings. It can also make certain movements follow upon determined feelings and reproduce in space what it beholds in the imagination. We do indeed marvel at such occurrences, but they are all contained in the first notion of animal and confirmed by experience.

492. Let us consider carefully two obvious facts presented by experience.

1st. A person throws a stone at a given target, and succeeds in hitting it.

In throwing the stone, he must first have measured internally the space between himself and the object, and then, relative to the distance, have employed the forces necessary for throwing the stone in the right direction and hitting the target. He will have calculated his throw and made it correspond to the space he has measured. But when he throws the stone, he has only the sensation of the space provided by his sight, that is, a passive feeling (cf. 168-170). However, this felt space is enough for him to determine (by means of an active feeling) the quantity and direction of muscular movements needed to throw the stone.

This shows that in balancing the active with the passive feelings and proportioning the feeling of effort to the feeling of visual space (something the animal must do in order to obtain the pleasurable effect), the passive feelings do not always provide the soul immediately with the real measure of the movements it has to make. Sometimes, as in our present case, they provide only a proportionate measure. The movements, therefore, are not reproduced mechanically by the initial nerve movements accompanying passive feelings, as though such movements were a physically necessary, immediate consequence. They depend upon the kind of influence exerted by the soul's spontaneity which in turn requires for its activity some measure proportionate to the desired movement. The soul, possessing solely this proportionate measure, easily reproduces the measure on a larger scale by means of its own unitive force. In other words, the soul associates a great effort towards movement with a small nerve movement. This explains how animals can walk, run and jump in space accurately enough to avoid mistakes even in difficult and dangerous places.

This association of the quantity of motion with spatial sight sensation is of course brought about by exercising the appropriate faculties and by experience. Experience itself is possible in the animal through its sensuous retentive faculty which shows the animal the measure of motion corresponding to every visual space and thus balances the visual sensation and movement directly, without the mediation of touch. In fact, even animals like the horse, with almost no touch in its hooves, are very safe jumpers.

2nd. A blind person walks without stumbling.

Persons born blind, or blind for a long period, do not find walking difficult. And the even more wonderful feats of somnambulists could be mentioned here.

493. While sight sensation is totally lacking in these persons, we nevertheless have to say that there is a measure of external space in the imagination or in the animal retentive faculty. This internal or image mode of space is produced either by sight, by touch or by the other senses from the experience of movements undergone on previous occasions and provides the soul with a definite standard for determining the quantity and direction of movements that it has to command and activate in the real world.(210)

494. These facts and the preceding reflections easily explain many of the most difficult and complicated animal movements. The internal world of imagination is necessarily as complicated as the external, real world. In both cases, it is indeed the same world, but with two different relationships. The internal world can therefore give rise to any kind of complicated movement. When understood in this way, certain instinctive movements, which are otherwise inexplicable (for example, sexual intercourse), lose some of their mystery.

Notes

(200) Cf. 907-921.

(201) Cheselden's experiments have been fully corroborated recently by T. H. Brett, who restored sight to many Indians born blind. Reports of his work can be found in the Giornale Asiatico (January 1837) and in the Biblioteca Universale di Ginevra (September 1837). Brett's experiments are important as a corrective to other oculists who questioned Cheselden's experiments (OT, 622).

(202) Trattato medico-filosofico sull'alienazione mentale, sect. 2, 11.

(203) It is normally accepted as certain that the phantasy cannot possess images other than those already provided by external sense. I would be inclined to qualify this affirmation and say that the phantasy can furnish only clear, definite images of that which has been experienced in the external sense. But I do not think it can be maintained absolutely that the phantasy can furnish no image whatsoever prior to the arousal of the corresponding sensation in the external sense. Take, for example, a person born blind with perfect eyes except for cataracts which cover them. He has never seen light. Nevertheless, I am not at all sure that he could not have, through some internal stimulus, the sense, say, of sparks of fire. In fact, such a sense is aroused not only by light, but by other stimuli such as pressure on the globe of the eye. We all experience this when, for example, we are struck in the eye, or feel pressure exerted even on other parts of the nervous system. `That hurt,' we say. `I can see stars.' Some physiologists have reported the presence in dreams of images which have had no corresponding sensation. I think such a phenomenon is possible provided that the sensory organs, although they may never have been used, are healthy and without defect.

(204) Niccolò Contarini in his splendid work De Perfectione Rerum (Somaschi, Venice, 1576) observed acutely that the imagination is a cause of motion, but only in so far as it arouses animal spontaneity: `neither the latter (the phantasy) nor the former (the mind) is the cause of movement, but simply arouses the power of movement' (bk. 6, c. 2).

(205) In cases of this kind, alienated people are brought back to sanity if sufficient effort can be made to block the diffusion of the images, and keep the attention fixed for as long as needed. This is done by external signs which can, I think, be usefully employed in the treatment of the severely deranged. For example, it sometimes happens that although these unfortunate people are completely incoherent in speech, they manage to reason logically when writing. The explanation must be that writing produces stabler signs to which the ideas of such persons can be connected. `Some deranged people,' says Pinel, `are capable of concentrating in the midst of their passing moods, and of writing outstanding letters, full of good sense and reasoning, to their relatives and to the authorities. One day I persuaded one of my patients, a very cultured person, to write a letter that I needed for the following day. It was full of logical, good sense although it had been written instantly in the midst of some irrational monologue' (Trattato medico-filosofico dell'alienazione mentale, sect. 2, 3).

(206) Note that animals possess only feeling of these movements or circumstances; human beings soon become conscious of them.

(207) I say direct or indirect because the movements which commence in the animal may not tend directly to pleasure, but to finding places, objects, positions and attitudes in which pleasures are enjoyed by animals. If this is the case, another synthesis or operation of the unitive force intervenes between circumstances, movements and pleasures (three separate things) or between first movements intended to search for the circumstances, the circumstances themselves, second movements required to produce pleasure, and the pleasures themselves. These four things are gathered together in a single apprehension by the unitive force so that once the perception of one of them is aroused in the animal, the other three unite to complete the single, complex apprehension.

(208) Trattato medico-filosofico dell'alienazione mentale (sect. 2, 2). This child received physical impressions in her ears, and possessed local sensations which, however, produced no further effect. No universal affection extended throughout the entire animal system to arouse spontaneity, and consequently no corresponding movements were possible.

(209) `They say that Mindyrides came from Sybaris. When he saw a man digging and raising his mattock, he felt the strain of the effort put into the work, and forbade the labourer to work in his presence' (Seneca, De Ira, bk. 2, c. 25).

(210) St. Thomas (S.T., 3, q. 13, art. 3, ad 3) takes up Aristotle's teaching (De Anima, bk. 3, text 48 ss.) about the imagination as the principle of local motion. Niccolò Contarini, an Italian philosopher of the 16th century, examines the question of the cause of local motion in his admirable De Perfectione Rerum, which we have already quoted. Although he acknowledges that the intellective will can also be the cause of movement in human beings, he affirms that it is never more than a remote cause. For him, the proximate cause of movement is always the imagination. `Hence, we maintain that the remote cause of motion is the mind and the will; the proximate cause, about which Aristotle also spoke, is the imagination itself' (bk. 6, c. 2).