Chapter 3
The Purely Intellective Subject
797. We have no experience of a purely intellective subject. Our experience
is simply of the human subject, which is simultaneously animal, intellective
and rational. Abstraction, therefore, is our only way of forming the concept of
a purely intellective subject. We have to strip the human subject of its animal
part and, by retaining only the constitutive elements of intelligence, obtain
the notion of a purely intellective subject.
Just as there are two constitutive elements of feeling, so there are two
constitutive elements of intelligence. Feeling is constituted by the feeling
element and the felt element, the intelligence by that which understands and by
that which is understood.
There is a first felt element and a first understood element. That which is
first felt places the fundamental feeling in act; that which is first
understood constitutes the intellect.
798. There is, however, an immense difference between the first felt and the first understood. The former is the body, the latter is being; one is finite, the other infinite. Moreover, the way in which the felt adheres to the feeling element is very different from the way in which the understood element adheres to the intelligence. The bond between that which is felt and that which feels is one of action, the former acting in the latter; the bond between that which is understood and that which understands is properly speaking one of knowledge, not action. A bond of action is present when one being makes a force felt in another; a bond of knowledge when one makes itself known to another.
799. The being that acts is called real; the bond joining it to another
being is called a real bond. The being that is revealed to another is
called ideal, and the bond revealing it is called an ideal bond.
Only ideal being can reveal and make itself known; it is light, and its
presence constitutes the intellect. Real being can only act; it is force, and
its presence constitutes feeling.
800. The principle that understands is the intellective subject, or at least
constitutes the foundation of the intellective subject, just as the principle
that feels constitutes sensitivity.
The feeling subject feels only its term (cf. 793), that is, the felt element;
in the same way the intellective subject knows only its term, the understood
element.
If the intellective subject did not communicate at all with the real world and
were purely intellective, its existence would be solely in the world of ideas.
801. These ideas, or ideal beings, objects of the subject's understanding, could be limited solely to that which is the foundation of human intelligence, namely, universal, indeterminate being. If the subject's intelligence were limited in this way to one object (an object that presents nothing definite or subsistent and lacks restriction and variety of any kind) the subject's existence would also be indefinable. It would not feel itself but would feel, or rather intuit, only being. It would exist in intuited being, without any action, movement, or even a true passivity in the common sense of the word because being does not use force to make itself known; it would exist without turning back on itself. In this state, the understanding subject would be entirely absorbed by being, and forever hidden from itself and from all other things that are outside God, who is Being itself.
On the other hand, the ideal being present to the subject could be varied. It could take different determinations by means of images that are truly felt but do not elicit affirmation. In this way many ideal beings could made known to the understanding subject. However, even in this case, the subject would still remain unknown to itself; its existence would still be absorbed and hidden in the ideal beings that it intuits. These beings alone would constitute the subject's knowledge, the known element, felt by its intelligence.
For the understanding subject to begin to have some indication of itself, therefore, it must not be purely intelligent, communicating only with the ideal world. It must also have contact with the real world, and have an action of its own which gives it some feeling of its own activity in which the nature of what is real reveals itself.
802. Let us now suppose that the intelligent subject possesses a feeling capable of eliciting affirmation (the feeling need not be corporeal). In this case, if the infinite being which manifests itself under the form of idea communicated itself also as substance, the subject would possess the maximum of feeling, that is, would feel God.
803. In the same way, we must believe that every real being has its own mode of acting on other real beings and, as it were, of infusing its own energy into them (energy which is a part of itself). In this way, one being exists in other beings by exercising its action in them and arousing a feeling conformable with the action. In the physical order of nature our only experience is of material feelings, unless we grant that even souls feel each other in friendship and love and mutually exercise some mysterious action of their own - which I think is the case.
804. Here, it is sufficient for us to indicate that the existence of a purely intelligent subject is the existence of a subject without action, intense excitation or movement of any kind, a subject sunk in fixed contemplation which detains the subject outside itself in such a way that the subject can never move towards finding itself. If, however, we wish to conceive an intelligent subject enjoying consciousness, we must first posit its communication with the world of realities, and think of it as capable of receiving an external feeling from the action of real beings, and of thus becoming an active principle itself. It will then feel its own experience, its own action, and the unity of its own forces. When it has perceived unity in its feeling, the intelligent subject will be able to apply ideal being to the feeling and in ideal being see the activity as one. In the light of this being, the intelligent subject will be able to find the subject of the force on which it depends. In short, it will be able to find itself, recognising that the intelligent subject from which the unity of experience and action depends is the same subject that intuits being and discovers the necessity of a perceiving, understanding subject. In this way consciousness is born, and the understanding subject pronounces the word I, as we shall see in the following chapter.