Chapter 3

Origin Of The Idea Of Our Own Body, As Distinct From Exterior Bodies,
Through The Fundamental Feeling

705. What do we mean when we say that our first feeling of change in a bodily organ is simply a mode of the fundamental feeling of life through which we feel all the sensitive parts of our body? This feeling begins when life begins and ends with life itself, but what does it enable us to feel? As we have said, the matter of this feeling are the sensitive parts of our body. But when we feel them, it is natural for us to feel them as they are; and if we feel these parts as they are, it follows that we feel them differently when they change their state. The matter of feeling has changed because the state of these sensitive parts has changed.

706. The activity of the fundamental feeling, therefore, is always the same in so far as it is alert to feel the state, whatever it may be, of our sensitive body. Consequently all the changes taking place in our bodily organs must be perceived by us through the act of the primitive, fundamental feeling. The act by which the feeling is modified as changes take place in the body constitutes the first of the two elements forming our adventitious sensations which arise when foreign bodies influence our body (here I follow common opinion).

Our body is perceived by one and the same act in two ways, substantially and accidently. The primary feeling and the change it suffers are two facts from which I conclude that the spirit, on first uniting itself individually with an animal body, must direct its activity in such a way that it mingles, as it were, with the body which it embraces and unceasingly perceives. As long as this vital union endures, the spirit perceives the body in the act and state in which it finds itself. When the body changes through external influence, the sense-activity of the spirit united with the body also undergoes a change of form. The spirit's activity experiences inevitable modification because its matter changes, although without deliberate intervention on its part. It is as though a person finds a scene changing before his eyes not because his glance varies, but because the object of his vision changes. In our case, the act of feeling is the same whether we are dealing with the body's first state, or with all the other acts and states and partial modifications of the sensory powers that follow the first state.

707. If the nerves possess all the necessary conditions (11) for sensitivity, they feel when suitably touched and affected by external bodies. If we then go on to say that the sense-faculty of the soul is spread throughout the sensitive body, and that the soul with its power of feeling is therefore present to every part of the body, we are not offering a theory affirming what observation tells us. Because our power of feeling possesses a primary, essential act (the fundamental feeling), extending to all sensitive parts of our body, it is inevitable that this power, or rather the ever-present soul, experiences a disturbance (I mean, undergoes some passive experience) when the sensitive parts of the body are changed through the action of some external body. Perception of this passivity, experienced in a determined way according to the quality of the sensation, is what we call sense-perception of bodies, as I said above (cf. 674).

708. If our previous observations are correct, they show that two different forces affect our spirit. One causes our vital, fundamental feeling; the other modifies and changes the matter of this feeling, producing simultaneously both subjective sensation and bodily perception. According to our definition, the essence of body consists of an action done in us in such a way that we feel ourselves passive relative to the energy perceived intellectually as a being at work in us but different from us (cf. 674, 684). Experiencing two species of feeling, undergoing two kinds of action, and feeling two sorts of energy, we realise that there are two species of body, our own and external bodies.

The existence of these two kinds of body is proved by the fact of our consciousness, and is as certain as that fact [App. no. 14]. Not even sceptics deny conscious facts. The existence of these two bodies, therefore, is proved by observation, not by reasoning. In the same way, their definition does not exceed the limits of observation because we make it consist in a certain energy which we feel working in us without our being its authors.

709. But because it is difficult to reflect upon the fundamental feeling of our sensitive body, we need some suggestions to help us observe what takes place within us and become aware of this feeling which has escaped observation by so many thinkers. What follows, therefore, is not a proof from principle, but an attempt to make observation easier.

710. First, it is necessary (and we cannot insist sufficiently on this) to distinguish the existence of a feeling within us from our awareness of it. We can indeed experience a sensation or a feeling without reflecting upon it, or being conscious of it, although without reflection and the consciousness resulting from it, we could not affirm, even to ourselves, that we have and experience such a feeling. Indeed, if we did not know how to advert to it, we could happily deny its existence. [...] In order to conclude that a feeling was not present in the first moments of my existence it is not sufficient therefore to say: 'I did not notice then and do not notice now the universal feeling of my body that you posit'. You could have experienced it, and could be experiencing it now, without paying sufficient attention to advert to it.

Thinkers accustomed to concentrating on what takes place in their consciousness notice matters connected with the human soul that totally escape ordinary, unreflective people. 'Know yourself' is a much-needed reminder of where we normally stand with regard to self-knowledge. It is extremely difficult to discern what really takes place at the source of our passions, where our affections, habitual tendencies, and intentions are rooted. Only those generous enough to pursue virtue with all their mind and heart attain to adequate self-knowledge.

We must insist, therefore, that those who have not yet recognised in themselves the feeling of which we are speaking should focus their attention more carefully and delicately upon themselves rather than reject blindly any notion of the feeling. But if people have not been able to distinguish between feeling and noticing feeling, they are certainly ignorant of the essential difference between sensation and idea. Sensation can never be aware of itself; the understanding alone is aware of sensation because such awareness is either intellective perception of sensation, or reflection upon intellective perception. The act by which we understand sensation is altogether different from the act of sensation itself, that is, from the act with which we feel. If a being undergoing sensations does not perceive them intellectively, and remains unaware of possessing them, it can never indicate them to others or to itself. This explains why beasts lack the power of speech: they lack reason.

711. On the other hand, it may appear easy to advert to the existence of the fundamental feeling. In this case, there could be danger of mistaking the nature of the feeling. We need to remember that it always remains in us, even after the elimination of all acquired, external sensations. If I sit in a totally dark room, and stay perfectly still for some time while trying to disengage my phantasy from every image I have ever received, I will eventually arrive at a point where I seem to have lost all knowledge of the limits of my body. My hands and feet, and other parts of my body, will no longer be located in any discernible place. When I carry out this experiment as perfectly as possible, or try to arrive by abstraction at a moment anterior to all acquired sensations, I find that I still have a vital feeling of the whole of my body. It is easy to see, therefore, that if this feeling exists it must be very difficult to recognise and indicate because we do not normally pay attention to what is in us unless we experience change, without which we lack awareness, reflection and a means of comparison. Change is necessary for awareness; it is not necessary in order to have feeling.

Let us imagine that we move from a cold to an oppressively warm room. Obviously we notice the higher temperature immediately. But this is not the case with people who are accustomed to such warmth. For them it is tolerable and perhaps natural. Because they are used to it and experience it stably, they feel the warmth of the room without adverting to it. Hence, if we are going to believe we feel something, it must be enough simply to know that it acts upon our senses. We have to reason in this way: because the heat acts upon my senses, it is felt, although it may not be adverted to.

712. It may be objected that the feeling of life, or of being alive, which only death can obliterate, extends to all the sensitive parts of my body. In that case, it would seem that my feeling necessarily puts me in touch with the size and shape of my body without the intervention of sight and the other senses.

The objection is based upon a misunderstanding of the point at issue. The size and shape of our body are not comprised in the vital feeling of which we are speaking. This feeling alone would never enable us to form visible or tactile images of our body which depend upon the use of sight and touch. The phantasy simply imitates what our eyes and hands have presented to us. But the primary, primitive feeling contains nothing like this. What we see and what we touch is only the matter of this fundamental feeling; and we have already noted the difference between perceiving bodies through the (supposed) representations coming from our external senses, and perceiving our own body through the fundamental feeling. The two, or rather three kinds of perception of our own body, are to be kept separate and distinct (cf. 701-707). I cannot say: 'Perceiving my body in the first way (with the fundamental feeling), I do not perceive it in the third way (through sense-presentations); therefore I do not perceive it at all'. This kind of argument is mistaken because it implies that the first kind of perception has to possess the characteristics of the third.

The real difficulty consists in forming a precise, well-defined concept of the fundamental feeling. If more is demanded of the fundamental feeling than it actually possesses, it immediately appears absurd and pointless. But its denial in these circumstances is nevertheless unreasonable.

713. There is another difficulty to overcome. Attention is normally given to feelable representation of bodies, the third kind of perception which naturally holds our attention for several reasons. First, because exterior sensations are more vivid and impressionable than the other two kinds of bodily perception. Second, because sensations continually change and, as we have said, change draws the attention to differences and comparisons in such a way that we think we understand things only through this attention. Third, the direct act of understanding, through which our intelligence perceives exterior bodies, is our first, easiest and most natural intellection. On the other hand, in order to perceive intellectually our subjective body, we have to turn back and reflect upon ourselves. This is not easy. Drawn outside ourselves almost naturally, reflection is our last act and seems to lack light when compared with our vision of exterior things (12) [App. no. 15].

714. Our primitive feeling, therefore, does not make us know the shape or the visible size of our body; it makes us perceive our body as quite different from external sensations, and can be grasped only by intense concentration upon ourselves and the vital feeling quickening us. As we turn our attention and observation to this feeling, we must be careful to become aware of it as it is, without speculating about its nature or adding to it products of our imagination and reason.

715. This feeling must also extend to all the sensitive parts of our body. To recognise this, it is sufficient to note the movements continually occurring inside the body, such as the circulation of the blood, the constant movement of liquid substances, the various kinds of assimilation, and general vegetable life, which inevitably act on the sensitive parts of the body through the pressure they exercise. These facts also help to remove vestiges of doubt about the existence of the great number of small, habitual, unadverted sensations which take place in us without ceasing. It is clear that when a nerve is touched and modified some sensation must be present, even though our capacity for adverting distinctly to it has been obliterated by its constant recurrence.

I have no wish to investigate here the mysteries of the origin and continuity of life, but I must note that our habitual, fundamental sensation would be easier to understand if some interior movement amongst the components of the body were considered essential to life (and certainly here on earth such movement is a necessary condition for life). It is not difficult to conceive the existence of sensation where the sensitive parts of the body undergo change.

716. Some detailed observations may help us to understand that we feel our body continually.

1. Atmospheric pressure on all parts of the human body is constant [...]. Changes in this pressure, which may be felt when climbing a mountain, produce nausea, vomiting and dizziness, forcing us to admit what we can so easily deny: that we feel habitually.

2. Circulation of the blood must also cause some sensation, although we appear to feel it only minimally. But if some change takes place, through anger or fright for example, we feel our heart thump and our pulse race, or we faint. Previously we had felt our circulation, but had been unable to advert to it because there was nothing new to attract our attention.

3. Our body has a certain temperature which we feel because we feel heat. Nevertheless, we scarcely notice it unless some change takes place. Let us imagine that different degrees of temperature, from freezing to very hot, are applied successively to a part of our body. We feel them all, and we notice that we feel them. Amongst these changes in temperature is the degree of heat normally experienced by our body which, however, we do not normally notice. We do notice it, however, amongst other variations in temperature because we compare various feelings produced by the different temperatures. The comparisons we make do not produce sensations and are not felt because we make the comparison. Comparisons are possible because we feel each sensation independently of any other, and independently of any comparison. However, comparisons are necessary if we are to advert to the sensations which exist even when no comparison has been made. We have to say, therefore, that we feel habitually the natural temperature of our body, although we do not notice this habitual sensation.

4. All the particles forming our body are attracted to the earth by the force of gravity. There is continual action on every molecule of our body and although we do not advert to it, some sensation must result from it. This is more noticeable in overweight people, but it also causes tiredness when people walk a lot. Nevertheless, we are naturally accustomed to a uniform feeling from the first moments of our existence, and normally are unaware of it. If, however, the attraction of gravity were to cease, or fall appreciably, we would experience a new kind of general sensation which would attract our attention by its novelty. We would notice in ourselves a sense of lightness, agility and mobility never before experienced. If the attraction increased suddenly, we would be overburdened by the weight of our body and immediately notice the change even in the shape of our body. On the other hand, without gravity our body would at least lengthen (there may be other difficulties as well) because all its particles, instead of pressing on one another, would tend to expand rather than move downwards. If these changes in the force of gravity caused the feeling in our body, this would take place because the attraction does indeed exercise an effect on our sensitive body which excites the feeling. This would also happen relative to the force actually exercised in normal circumstances, although the evenness of such a force would provide no stimulus for attention.

The same argument could be used about the cohesion present in the body, about the continual movements and alterations caused by breathing, digestion, growth and the infinite chemical changes taking place in us. Everything leads us to think that our body must be felt by us with a feeling of its own, made up of many tiny, particular feelings habitual in us from the first moments in which we are joined to our body.

But besides this complex of innumerable, particular feelings which fuse into a universal, constant feeling in the human being (as I have said, I do not wish to say whether they form part of life, although they are certainly necessary conditions for it in our present state), I believe that there is in the spirit itself, joined to matter and to being, a single, fundamental feeling that embraces and mingles with all other feelings, forming them into an undelineated, undefined feeling through which we feel our spirit and its body. It is a pure, very simple feeling, not an idea, from which it differs according to the distinction already established by which feelings actualise ideas.

717. Feeling, therefore, is an original datum. Consequently, we are not investigating its origin, but discussing its modifications and the genesis of sensations.

718. Those philosophers who imagine that human beings began to exist without feeling make their fellows statues, and then go on to claim that sensations arise in these statues when they are touched by external bodies. Such a sequence of events, however, only creates inexplicable difficulties at odds with nature's normal way of acting. That feeling should suddenly arise where no feeling had previously existed would be as difficult to understand as creation from nothing. According to this hypothesis, sensation comes about in the statue when exterior bodies act upon it, and provide it with a sense of its own existence. In this case, we feel something different from ourselves without being able to feel ourselves!

But the hypothesis (and it is nothing more than an hypothesis) is not only impossible to understand; it is also contrary to the constant order of nature which never works by leaps. There certainly would be a leap if we passed, when touched by an external body, from not feeling ourselves to feeling both ourselves and something outside. The external movement, which has nothing in common with sensation, would be accompanied by the creation of a spirit within us. How could we form the idea of a spirit totally devoid of any feeling and thought? Spirit has no extension, nor any other bodily qualities. Deprived of spiritual qualities such as feeling and understanding, it is annihilated or rather its idea is abolished from the mind even though imagination may pretend to fill its place with a spirit not attested by observation and consciousness.

719. All these reflections confirm the existence within us of a fundamental feeling. Serious attention to the nature of 'myself' would indicate the existence of this feeling because 'myself', reflecting upon itself, in the last analysis discovers itself to be a feeling constituting a sentient and intelligent subject.

720. What we have said explains the classical teaching, repeated by St. Thomas, that 'the soul is in the body by containing it rather than by being contained' (S.T. I, q. 52, art. 1).

The word 'body' indicates something known, as we noted earlier; we give names only to what we know (cf. 678). In order to know the meaning of body, therefore, we have to rely on experience (cf. 672-673), not on speculative reasoning or a priori deduction. Experience indicates as fact a certain action done in us of which we are not the cause. The essence of body was found consequently to be a certain (13) force modifying us (cf. 676). We feel this force from the first moments of our existence, although we do not advert to it; we feel it (cf. 715-716) in a constant, uniform way in a determined mode; and this is what we call 'our body'. This force, although essentially different from 'myself' (cf. 668-669), nevertheless acts in 'myself', in our spirit. We can rightly say, therefore, 'Our body is in our spirit' rather than 'Our spirit is in our body'. Later, we shall explain why common usage prefers the second to the first way of speaking.

721. This also explains why long arguments about the question of harmony between soul and body are unnecessary. We have to find the answer to this celebrated question in the fact provided by consciousness. Examining this fact, I find that which is passive to action and that which acts, that is, spirit and body. My body, therefore, is in fact and by definition a substance acting in a special way in my spirit. The physical influence needs no proof because it is already contained in the notion of body.

Notes

(11) For example, communication with the brain. Without this, the organ feels nothing.

(12) The chronological order of feelings, therefore, is the inverse of the order of advertence to them. First, we have our interior and fundamental feeling; second, our exterior sensations. But we advert to our exterior sensations first, and then to our feeling. Moreover, in order to advert to our feeling, we need to have acquired control over our will so that we may freely reflect on and advert to our internal feeling. I have already shown, however, that we acquire this control over our thoughts only after having formulated abstract ideas (cf. 525-526). In order to advert to our interior feeling, therefore, we must have: 1. adverted with our understanding to external sensation, and perceived bodies; 2. obtained ideas from these perceptions; 3. obtained (generic) abstract concepts from these ideas. When our spirit has developed to these three levels, and by means of the last of them, acquired dominion over our thought (which is done only with the help of language) (cf. 521-522), we are in a position finally to direct our thought to our interior, fundamental feeling.

(13) Later, when we perfect the definition of body, we shall specify the precise meaning of 'certain'.