The Passive Faculties
Of Human Understanding
504. We have already dealt with the passive faculties of human understanding in various writings on the theory of knowledge(212) which we need not repeat. I shall restrict myself, therefore, to recalling some of the principal matters already demonstrated, and in particular the nature of the different faculties of human understanding. Any new observations will be brief and in accordance with the requirements of this book.
Chapter 1
The Intellect As An Element
Of Human Nature And As The Source
Of All The Intellective Powers
| The intellect is an element of human nature |
505. As we have seen, human beings in so far as they intuit being are said to be endowed with intellect (cf. 39). The intellect, therefore, is not merely a power, but a constitutive element of human essence. This is why we have included intellect in the definition of human being.
We do not want to investigate here how this intuition of being is produced. It is a primordial fact, and truly transcendental. What we can say is that the intellect, if deprived of the intuition of being, no longer exists. It has been annihilated. If, on the other hand, we consider the intellect as endowed with this intuition, we find that it is receptive, and that understanding consists simply in receiving intellectual light, that is, the idea. But we can also see that, given this intuition, the subject itself, in receiving that light, has to contribute some activity. Of its very nature every reception presupposes some degree of activity in the recipient. A being without any activity whatsoever could neither receive nor experience anything - although the activity itself does not have to precede the receptivity. Both can be brought into existence at the same instant.
| The difference between the essentially felt element in animal feeling and the essentially understood element of understanding |
506. Understanding presupposes the intelligent principle just as feeling
presupposes a sentient principle.
The first act by which the intelligent principle intuits being, that is,
cognoscitive light, is that by which its nature as intelligent is constituted.
The understanding, therefore, contains the duality already discerned in
feeling where our analysis presented us with two elements, that which feels and
that which is felt. In a manner perfectly analogous with feeling, understanding
presents us with two elements, that which understands and that which is
understood. But the difference is immense when we begin to compare the
felt with the understood element.
507. The felt element in animal feeling, of which we are speaking, is real
and contingent; the understood element is of its nature ideal, necessary and
infinite. The difference, therefore, between what is simply felt and what is
simply understood is nothing less than infinite.
What is felt is the matter of feeling, and as such inferior to that
which feels; what is understood is the form of understanding, and
superior to the one who understands. What is felt takes its desirability from
that which feels; what is understood, on the contrary, makes the one who
understands desirable. What is felt is a mere term of the activity of
that which feels; but what is understood is a universal, unchangeable
object to which the intelligent principle adheres.
| Analogy between the feeling principle in animal feeling and the intelligent principle in understanding |
508. If, therefore, we compare what is felt with what is understood, we find an immeasurable distance between them. This accounts for all the differences distinguishing and dividing animal feeling from human understanding. On the other hand, if we compare the other two elements, that is, the feeling principle and the understanding principle, we see a wonderful analogy between them.
We have already noted that all animal powers and activity proceed from a first act by which the feeling principle concurs in the production of the fundamental feeling. We may now apply a similar reflection to the intelligent principle. We shall find that all intellective powers - the whole of the human being in so far as this subject is a being endowed with intelligence - have their source in that first act by which the human spirit intuits being and so, together with being and aroused by being, concurs in positing its own intelligence.
509. In fact, an accurate analysis of our thoughts shows that in the order of mental operations any thought or mental operation whatsoever resulting in a new cognition is always reduced to a determination and limitation of some presupposed cognition. In other words, we learn explicitly what we already knew implicitly. An implicit cognition, from which all cognitions develop as from a seed, necessarily precedes these other cognitions which are only a limitation, continuation and further actuation of the first cognition. The spirit, with the activity by which it intuits universal being, also intuits every particular entity because everything is already contained in universal being. All that is needed is for universal being to reveal more of itself to the onlooker who like a spectator at a play sees everything that appears on the stage by the very act with which he sees the stage. And this stage, on which everything is manifest to our spirit, is universal being at which by nature we gaze steadfastly. The eye of our mind, which can never close or blink, is focused ineluctably on the scene before it.
In this way every intellective activity of the mind is explained by the single act with which the spirit intuits being in general. And this explanation coincides in great part with the way in which the activity of the feeling principle is presented. The variety of all partial sensations is received by this principle through that first act with which it produces the fundamental feeling.(213)
The activity of the human will also depends on the first, original act with which human beings understand. But we shall speak about this later.
Notes
(212) Principally in OT [666 ss.], Certainty [1205 ss.] and Rinnovamento della Filosofia in Italia, etc.
(213) It would be impossible to explain how the spirit could begin to think, that is, jump the abyss from not thinking to thinking, unless nature itself had provided the human spirit with a first act of intelligence. As St. Thomas says: `Nothing can be brought from potency to act except through some being in act' (S.T., I, q. 2, art. 3, corp.).