Chapter 16

The Natural Disharmonies Between The Perception Of Our Body As Co-Subject,
And As Agent Outside The Subject

983. Our body is felt subjectively and extrasubjectively like any other body. It is the same entity felt by us in two ways. But what distinguishes extrasubjective from subjective perception? When a being is perceived as outside the subject(1), an agent is felt. In the perception of a being as subject or, to be more exact, as co-subject, the one who feels is felt; the feeler feels himself in and with the being. Now to be active and to be passive are contraries. The same nature, therefore, is perceived in both ways but in different and opposite respects. First, it is perceived as something acting that produces but does not feel the sensations; second, as something passive that feels but does not produce the sensations.

984. These two aspects are so opposed to each other that they have nothing in common. Consequently what is perceived in these two ways is presented as two entities, two different natures; they are not different levels but different aspects of the same thing, one of which directly excludes the other.

It is not simply the case of an idea of an acting body being the opposite of an idea of a passive body, but of the action and passivity particular to sense. If we consider our passive feeling, that is, our feeling of pleasure or pain, we have in the external principle producing the feeling the concept of an agent. If we consider the feeling in its term, that is, as terminated and experienced in itself, we have ourselves, modified and experiencing.

985. An external body touching a sensitive part of our body produces movement in that part, that is, an impression. This impression, caused by the external body, is either perceptible to our sight and touch or can be argued to. When a needle pricks my hand, I can see and touch the wound and notice the change in my body. If the impression is not large enough to be seen or touched, I can deduce it by analogy. Thus the impression made by light on my eye or the movement of my optic nerve is so minute and faint that I am not able to advert to the tiny particles with my sense of touch(2). In the same way, the very faint impressions that the minute particles make on my organs of smell, taste and hearing cannot be noticed by sight and touch, and are perhaps too small for any microscope. But knowing the mechanical actions of bodies, I can reason that the minute particles must be acting on the eye, nostrils and palate, producing small irritations and alterations.

The idea that we have, therefore, of the impression of external bodies is the same as that of any impression, for example, on wax, or of a mark left behind or any movement in our body. These effects are terms of our touch and eyes, like the changes of our body, and give rise to sensations.

986. It is my opinion that impressions like these do not have the least similarity with sensations, considered in their subjective part, even if sensations follow immediately upon the impressions. In fact there is a real opposition between them. An imprint, a feature, a movement, an external body, perceived (with the touch) is an agent producing sensation in our organ. Sensation on the other hand is a kind of passivity; the one who feels is feelable to himself. But something acting is the opposite of something passive (cf. 983) and therefore an impression made on a sensitive body, causing sensations, has no similarity at all with sensations in their subjective part. An impression is of its nature entirely the opposite of sensation; the one excludes the other just as 'yes' excludes 'no'.

To make the difference clear, let us suppose a ball-bearing is pressed into a sensitive part of a person's body so that half of it forms a hemispherical impression in the skin. The person clearly feels two things: 1. the part of the body where the impression is made, and 2. the ball-bearing itself or agent. The feeling in the affected part is different from the perception of the ball-bearing; they are two simultaneous feelings, referred to the same spot, but quite different.

For example, anyone who feels discomfort in his arm, feels passively what he is experiencing. When however he perceives the ball-bearing, he feels what is acting. These two feelings are opposites and cannot be confused. The part of the arm he feels affected is the concave surface where the bearing is being pressed, so that a body of concave form is felt. The part of the bearing he perceives is the convex surface pressing into the skin, so that a body of convex form is felt. A feeling is being experienced in the concave surface of the arm; a body undergoing an experience is felt. No sensation is referred to the convex surface of the bearing; it is not a body undergoing an experience but an insensitive body causing the experience. In sensation therefore an external body (extrasubject) and our body (co-subject) are inconfusible opposites. The perception of the external body is the sensation itself but only as term of an action coming from outside.

Let us apply this distinction to sensation and impression. The word 'impression' means something perceived by us as external agent; the word 'sensation' means something perceived in us and by us as subject. In the case of the ball-bearing, the impression (leaving the sensation aside for the moment) is perceived in exactly the same way as the bearing that in itself feels nothing. The person in our example, feeling discomfort, sees the hollow made by the bearing and then touches it with his finger; in this way he is seeing and touching the impression.

When he touches and sees the hollow, he certainly does not touch and see the sensation he has experienced and is experiencing as a result of the hollow. The sensation itself is neither visible nor touchable; it can be felt only through an internal feeling of the soul, only through itself.

After seeing and touching the hollow a few times, he says to those about him: 'Look at the impression the ball-bearing has left.' He calls an impression what he touches and sees or what is offered to his touch and sight. The meaning he is giving to the word 'impression' is that of a modification experienced by a body in the arrangement of its parts, a modification perceived by us with our sense-organs, particularly of sight and touch. This is not a sensation but an external term of our sense-faculties.

Is what I see and touch, that is, an impression made on a body by the action of another body, similar in any way to the sensations of touch and sight with which it is perceived? All the by-standers perceive the impression with their touch and sight equally with the person receiving it, who also experiences the sensation accompanying the impression.

987. We must note carefully that when the person perceives the impression in his arm with his touch and eyes, new sensations take place, and these can be analysed in exactly the same way as the sensation of the ball-bearing. In fact when he touches the hollow in his arm, he has simultaneously a feeling composed of two basic parts or feelings: 1. a feeling of his finger, at the point where he is feeling with it, and 2. a feeling of the little hollow, which he is touching. We can say about this twofold feeling what we said previously about the feeling of the arm and of the ball-bearing, that is, the finger is felt as co-sentient, and the hollow as acting. He feels his finger with a sensation referred to a convex extension; he feels the hollow with a sensation referred to a concave extension.

The sensation he experiences by touching the hollow is not referred to the hollow but to his finger. Both his finger and his eye perceive the hollow as having no feeling; relative to his touch and eye, the hollow is only a term of action. His touch and eye is subject, or rather belongs to the subject. The hollow experiences no sensation but makes my eye and touch experience a sensation.

The hollow, as presented to the eye and external touch, is called an impression but in itself has no feeling. It is completely outside the sensations of touch and sight, and is in fact the opposite of sensation. Hence there is no similarity but only opposition between the sensation as subject and the impression. An impression therefore cannot be seen in any way as a degree of sensation, nor a sensation as a degree or kind of impression.

988. All materialistic arguments are based on the confusion between impression and sensation, because the opposite natures of these two things are not distinguished. Materialists search for a similarity between them, explaining sensations by means of impressions or finding sensations in impressions. They do not take into account the meaning given to names like 'impression', 'movement', etc., which as extrasubjective words indicate agents without feeling. These words have been coined to express things external to our senses and perceived by them, not things with feeling. Sensation is excluded by definition from things indicated by these words.

Materialists, and others inclined to the same error, try to explain sensation by reducing it to a movement of parts or an impression. This is to abuse terms and confuse ideas in a manifest contradiction. The movement of parts and impressions does indeed need sensation to be felt, but sensation, precisely because it is sensation, does not; sensation cannot be seen or touched or compared to anything seen and touched.

995. The difference between sensation and impression, between our subjective feeling and what we see and touch or perceive extrasubjectively, establishes the dividing line between physiology and psychology. Physiology and medicine are and can be only the product of external observation, that is, of observation made by touch, sight and the other senses. Psychology on the other hand is founded on internal observation, that is, of all that takes place in our consciousness. Physiology and medicine deal with the body as an external object but the purpose of psychology is the spirit and what belongs to it as subject.

Physiology investigates the natural state of the human body, the different effects to which it is subject, the classification of these effects, their uniformity, that is to say, the laws of the body's operation. All these effects, movements, modifications and laws to which the body is subject, are only terms of touch, sight and the other senses, and objects of the understanding. Thus in these sciences the body is considered as something purely external and objective. The same can be said about medicine: it uses continual external observation to note the diseased changes or modifications in the human body and the remedies necessary for good health.

996. It is true that in these sciences we must pay attention to what takes place in our consciousness, but that is not their aim. If they turn their attention to human feelings, to the force that can be exercised on the body by an intense application of the spirit, they do so for the sole purpose of knowing the effects of such actions. If these sciences take into account the effect different habits of the body produce on the soul and on intellectual faculties, they do so to discover a way of restoring the body to that health which enables it to serve the spirit. In all these researches the physiologist and the doctor observe the body through external observation and therefore purely as an object.

On the other hand the psychologist uses another kind of observation, internal observation. The facts of consciousness are the objects at which his observation stops; he considers 'myself', the subject. And if he concerns himself with the body as an object, he does so only through the relationship between the object and the subject. But this science does not terminate in the object; its proper purpose and concern is the consciousness of the spirit, related to which all other things are only means and aids.

997. We can therefore conclude that even if the surgeon's knife were able to reveal the minutest fibres in animal bodies and if the most powerful microscopes imaginable had been invented to reveal the hidden structure of bodies more perfectly than ever before, it could never replace internal observation of the facts of consciousness. The science of psychology would not profit in the least from these discoveries.

998. It is impossible to find any likeness between body and soul as long as the former is restricted to its guise of term of our external senses. But without some likeness between the two, there is no possibility of mutual communication. It is even possible to demonstrate the inherent repugnance of communication if the body is seen simply as the term of the external senses.

1001. [...] External observation, however, is not the only way in which we come to know our body. Interior observation also contributes to revealing the body in a very different light from that presented by the external senses. Through interior observation, we come to see its inner, essential properties. Thus it becomes matter and co-cause of the fundamental feeling.

We need, therefore, to consider ourselves and the content of our awareness by reflecting upon 'myself' without allowing our external imagination to intrude in any way. Our concept of the union between soul and body cannot arise from any other source.

1002. In the feeling of 'myself', therefore, we find a force different from 'myself' itself, but felt by it. As 'myself' feels this force, it diffuses its own sensation in an extended term. This feeling, to which 'myself' is drawn by natural force (relative to which it is passive), is a fact. Consequently, the union of soul and body should have been considered as a fact derived from observation of our own experience. As a primitive fact, constituting our very nature, its light dispels every difficulty we experience about admitting its existence as a fact.

1003. Subjective and extrasubjective perception, therefore, provide two different and in some ways contrary concepts of body as co-subject and extrasubject. The opposition arises simply from the limitation of these mutually exclusive concepts which furnish contrary propositions about body. For example: the body is in the soul, and the soul is in the body; both are true, but refer to opposite concepts of body. It is true that the body is in the soul in the concept of the subjective body, because in this case the body is only something acting in 'myself' (in the soul). It is true that the soul is in the body, when the body is considered as foreign to the subject and the soul is considered in the effects it produces in this extrasubjective element.

1004. We have to emphasise 'in the effects it produces' because the soul, considered in itself, is a subject which can never be a term of feeling, nor measured in relationship to space. If the intelligent soul is considered in itself (as a subject) and compared with a body or with anything extended, we can add a third true statement: the soul has no place because it is simple. These distinctions help to eliminate a great number of difficult questions to which there are no solutions except by determined efforts to clear up inexact language.

1005. When we dealt with the fundamental feeling, and with the subjective part of sensation as a modification of the fundamental feeling, we said that strictly speaking such a feeling can never have an object, but only matter in which it terminates. We perceive external objects and call them 'bodies' when thought is united with the operation of the senses, although we also realise that one of these perceived bodies, which we call 'mine' is the matter of our feeling. What difference is there, however, between object and matter? This problem requires careful investigation.

1006. Our body, whether in its natural state or modified, is matter of our interior feeling in so far as it is felt by this feeling. It is term and stimulus of our individual sense-organs in so far as it is perceived by them; and it is also the object of our understanding. Consequently, the matter of feeling is something halfway between pure subject and the term of sense. It is not the sentient subject because it is itself felt, nor is it a pure term of sense because sense cannot exist without it.

1007. The first difference, therefore, between the matter and object of any power is that the object is not necessary for the subsistence of the power while matter is a constituent of the power which, without it, could not be conceived mentally. It is true, for instance, that although there could be no sight without light, the eyes nevertheless subsist and can be thought of irrespective of light. The same is true, mutatis mutandis, for the other organs. The stimuli, therefore, are not matter of the organs, but simply terms of their acts, and objects when the understanding has perceived them.

1008. The difference between matter and object can only be understood through a correct concept of a power. As we know, every power is a first act which, given the necessary conditions, produces various other acts dependent upon differing conditions. The first, constant act is called power relative to the secondary, adventitious acts. Every power, therefore, is an activity held in check as it were, ready for action. With this in mind, it is easy to see that as every second act needs a term for it to take place, so a power or first act needs its own internal term without which it could neither be nor be thought. Similarly, because a power is something stable, while its operation is adventitious, it must have a stable term along with which it either remains in existence or perishes. If the term of its operation is removed, the power remains; but if the term of the power is removed, the power ceases to exist.

1009. Matter is a stable term, proper to certain powers, with which it forms a single reality. Because this term is joined with the powers, it helps to constitute them and cannot be thought without them. This explains why it is not called simply term (a name common to everything in which the acts finish externally), but matter. Nevertheless, this characteristic of indivisibility from the power is insufficient to constitute the matter of the power because every power has a term, but not matter.

1010. The second difference between the object and the matter of a power is that the object as such is neither receptive of action nor capable of being receptive of action(3). On the other hand, the matter of any power is mentally conceived as modifiable, that is, having no activity of its own relative to the power. The objects I know do not stimulate my mind, but allow it to know by informing it; the impression of external light, on the other hand, is a forceful action, stimulus and term drawing my sensitivity to the act of sense-perception. Generally speaking, objects of knowledge, which have no active state relative to cognitive powers, are in a state of mere presence to them, while the terms of our practical powers are definitely passive. Now if the term of the first act, which constitutes the power itself, presents itself to us in an impassive state of simple presence to the power which does nothing except receive it, I call it 'object', not just 'term', although it is such. I do not call it 'matter', because this word includes the concept of experiencing something, or modifiability. I also call it 'form' of the power, and thus indicate it as an object which, constantly united with the subject, posits it in a first act called 'potency', that is, a power causing many other operations. Hence we have called the idea of universal being, the objective form of the intellect. Our body, as felt, on the other hand, we have called matter of the feeling in so far as it is 'a stable term of the first act of our feeling, bereft of activity relative to the completed act of feeling.'

1011. However, the matter of the fundamental feeling has a third, truly noble characteristic. As we have said, it is a term without activity related to the completed feeling, and capable only of presenting itself to the feeling as a passive term. This capacity or passive susceptibility, however, is very imperfect because matter resists, with a certain inertia, acceptance of the state that the activity of the feeling could offer it, and thus serves as a brake to the perfect operation of the feeling. Nevertheless, we cannot say that this inertia must be a force relative to and in contrast with the feeling. We must note that readiness to be moved easily denotes perfection when there is a question of movement that improves the nature of what is moved. The capacity for receiving improvement is an intrinsic activity. On the contrary, incapacity for receiving improvement indicates a lack of what I would call seminal activity, as it were, an activity and hidden power without which development cannot take place. The lack itself is an obstacle to the perfection that could be communicated to a being. Matter, therefore, does not offer a real, active resistance to feeling, but incapacity or inertia.

It would not be correct to object that this is merely abstract speculation. Observation provides the ground for such a description of matter because it shows that the fundamental feeling does not expand in an 'empty' extension (as it were), but in one where it experiences certain resistances, and even changes and disturbance, according to stable laws which: 1. constitute the relationship of the sensitive body with external bodies; and 2. constitute the relationship of the sensitive body (matter) with 'myself', the act of feeling.

But we ought to reflect even more on the perfection of the feeling than on that of the body. The feeling would be more perfect, the more it were capable of possessing a perfect body obedient to its will. If, therefore, harmful alterations take place in the body and the feeling suffers as a result, we may indeed posit a force in the body, but it will be such as to harm the feeling. As we showed, the feeling with its matter forms a single thing, or a single power. The force of its matter is therefore the passive, imperfect part of the power, not its formal, perfect part. This is the chief reason for calling our body, in so far as it is felt by us, the matter of the fundamental feeling(4).

1012. At this point, a difficulty presents itself. In this work, I have described the body as something acting on the spirit, in which it causes and excites the fundamental feeling. How is it possible now to describe the matter of the fundamental feeling, which is the body itself, as passive and inert relative to the action of this feeling?

In the first place, we have to remember that the matter of the fundamental feeling is not the body with all its qualities. The fundamental feeling, in its matter, perceives the body only relatively to the special organs in so far as the body offers itself as a passive and inert term of the feeling itself. The activity the body may possess for producing the feeling is not comprised in the matter of the feeling. But we have to reflect carefully to see how this is possible.

1013. 'A force working in a given way on a being can draw this being to an act terminating in the very force that has stimulated and encouraged it, so that the force becomes passive relative to the act which it caused. Moreover, it can stimulate an act terminating outside itself'. Let us examine the first of these two cases.

It is clear that I can put in motion a force producing some effect upon myself; for example, if I pick up a knife, I may easily cut myself. This truth can be seen even more clearly in the case of a spiritual agent which moves with remarkable spontaneity, as our experience shows. In fact, we only need an occasion, rather than a cause, to stimulate the spirit whose interior activity comes into play spontaneously, granted the necessary occasion and causes. Our body may possess a force drawing the spirit to an act of feeling which, at the same time (because it also is an activity), may turn back to the body as to its necessary term. In fact, the laws according to which the spirit is first moved to feel are unknown, at least to me. Nevertheless, it is not absurd to conjecture that their hypothetical existence flows from the very nature of the spirit. In all the beings of which we have experience in the universe, we constantly find two things: 1. that they follow certain laws in their operations; 2. that these laws are not arbitrarily imposed upon them, but result from their nature.

If we apply the same observation to the spirit, it is not unreasonable to think that the active nature of the spirit is to operate under certain conditions. One necessary condition for the fundamental feeling, as we can see from our analysis of feeling itself, is the existence of an organised body. Given a body rightly organised, it could happen that the union and feeling result from a law inherent in the very nature of the spirit. What is certain, however, is that the body can be passive relative to the fundamental feeling which it originated and encouraged, and of which it was undoubtedly a necessary condition. Considered under this respect alone, the body is called 'matter' of the fundamental feeling. The activity moving the spirit to feel is the principle of the feeling; the body enfolded by the spirit is its matter and term. And although reflection on our experience shows us that we are passive when we feel, because of the external agent acting in us, the activity itself cannot as such be the matter of our feeling. Following this line of thought, we may understand a little better the ancient distinction between matter and body.

1014. In the second place, we note that although the body is capable of receiving in itself the activity over the spirit of which we have spoken, this concealed activity is less noticed than other bodily qualities, especially extension and inertia. We shall understand this better by setting out in order the propositions we have already demonstrated.

1. The various ways of perceiving bodies offer such different perceptions that bodies appear to be different entities.

2. These different entities arise: a) partly because subjectivity plays a great role in the perception of bodies, causing them to exist as different proximate terms of perception (the variation depends on the different 'mix' of subjectivity); b) partly because one kind of perception uncovers properties of a body that remain hidden in other kinds of perception (so that the body seems to be a different being). Perceiving an external body with our organs, we obtain what we may call 'blind' qualities, rather than perceive the body's aptitude for being the matter of feeling, which we recognise only through our own feeling.

3. Consequently, the word 'body' takes various meanings as we use it to describe what we perceive in different ways.

4. The normal meaning attributed to 'body' depends upon what we perceive of external bodies with our five organs, because we easily advert to this perception, while perception originating in the fundamental feeling or in the subjective sensation is very difficult to reflect upon and distinguish(5).

Observations of this kind enable us to understand why 'body' is not used, commonly speaking, to indicate the intimate force with which it acts upon our spirit, causing the spirit to react and bring about union. Here, we may usefully observe what happens in acquired sensations from which we normally obtain the idea for which we invent the word 'body.'

1015. When an external body acts upon an organ, it simply produces a change in the sensitive form of our organ or, more generally speaking, causes movement in it. Given this movement, the spirit feels a new sensation which does not, however, stimulate it to some totally new activity. The law governing its feeling of the body is: 'The spirit feels the body in the sensitive state in which it finds it' (cf. 705 ss.). When an external body acts upon a living body, therefore, it changes the living body's sensitive state while the sensitive principle, following this change according to the law governing its own action, now feels the new state of the organ. But there has been no radically new action of the body on the spirit. The action here can be reduced to that between our own body and an external body whose mutual activity follows the mechanical, physical and chemical laws common to all inanimate bodies. But the spirit does not unite itself to any new body while this is happening, and no new body acts upon it. Its own body's action, which it has not experienced in any new way, was present antecedently to what occurred. In an acquired sensation, therefore, all that can be perceived and noted of bodies is external action of the kind that external bodies exercise on one another. Because the action of our own body on the spirit is not comprised in this sensation, the action is not normally associated with the word 'body' which is generally reserved for the mutual extrasubjective action of bodies according to mechanical, physical and chemical laws. It is not difficult to see, therefore, how the word 'body' is void of any meaning indicating activity on the spirit.

1016. In the third place, the activity we have attributed to the body does not derive from the nature itself of the body, commonly so-called. This needs careful attention, and justifies common sense when it excludes from the meaning of 'body' the activity we have been examining. Generally speaking, therefore, the word 'body' offers no indication of activity, especially on the spirit.

1017. We can see this more clearly by examining the nature of the action of bodies among themselves and on our spirit.

1. Movement, which each body receives from outside, is not essential to bodies. However, the action done by external bodies on our organs seems to depend entirely upon movement. Resistance is simply the division of movement in the various parts of the body. Adherence between the parts only presents us with a law determining the number of parts amongst which movement has to be divided. The action of external bodies upon our own, therefore, as we normally experience it, is an activity received by the body but not essential and proper to it. Hence the body is truly passive relative to the activity of movement, because it only receives and communicates the movement.

1018. 2. It seems evident, if we go on to speak about the action of our body on the spirit, that this action is not comprised in the nature of the (extrasubjective) body, but is received by the body from some principle outside itself. If the aptitude for acting on the spirit were essential to our body as such, every body would have to be thought of as animated. But our normal concept of body tells us nothing of animation. Although the body acts on the spirit, it does not do so through an active principle demanded by its nature as body, but through an activity it has received. Relative to this activity, therefore, the body is an inert, passive being, which receives but does not give(0).

In the fourth place, (and the following observation seems to me the most important of all those made so far), the body, according to its common concept, does not as such act on the spirit, but receives this activity. But could it not receive this activity from the spirit itself? As we have already seen, 'One being can stimulate activity in another, which can in its turn act upon the being which stimulates it.' We have already applied this to the action of the body, but could it not be applied much better to the action of the spirit?

1019. Meditation on this problem offers the following probable result:

1. For some kinds of action, the human spirit is determined by certain conditions, one of which is the existence of a body suitably organised for the spirit. This, however, requires no action on the part of the body, but depends upon a state of the body received from outside.

2. When such a perfectly organised body has been harmonised with the spirit, it seems that the spirit, now possessing the necessary condition for carrying out the action we have indicated, acts with this body, activating it with what we call 'life', and enabling it to acquire the final properties of a living body.

3. This activity received by the body is such that the body in its turn reacts upon the spirit, drawing it to the act called 'fundamental feeling.'

4. The fundamental feeling, pervading the body, makes it its matter, that is, its seat, its mode of being, its extension.

5. The body, as matter of the feeling, retains its inertia, remaining subject to the action of other external bodies. When the matter which is felt changes, the feeling changes, not however through any new action of the matter on the spirit, but through the law obliging the spirit to conclude its act in its matter, which is the passive term of the act.

Notes

(1) I refrain from saying 'as an object' because the body is only an object relatively to intellective perception, in which it is apprehended as a being. Sensitive perception perceives only an action outside the subject. Strictly speaking, the object of intellective perception cannot be said to be active but only present. We do indeed use our intellectual activity to perceive the object, but this activity produces nothing in the object except the act with which we perceive it. The perceived object, which we cannot change and over which we have no power, is what forms our cognition. [...]

(2) The movement of the iris under the action of light is not an effect of light only but depends on other physical principles and on the spontaneity of the soul.

(3) Normally speaking, we say that iron struck with a hammer is the object of the action of the hammer, and the same is true of every other term acted upon by any force or instrument. From an etymological point of view, this would appear correct ('ob-jectum'=thrown against), but this manner of speaking depends upon the way we conceive the fact and how the notion of object is added by the intelligence. But prescinding from this, the two material instruments have nothing outside themselves. Striking one another adventitiously, the two forces unite, contrast and modify one another, but they are not objects, the concept of which demands sameness and impassibility.

(4) We have to distinguish carefully between the principle of an act, and its term. It is undeniable, although difficult to conceive, that the principle can be simple, while its term is multiple. The extension in which a sensation is diffused with its term does not entail diminished simplicity in 'myself' as feeling principle. The reasons set out above (cf. 672-691) leave no room for doubt about this [...].

(5) Moreover, we have to reflect that with the external organs we perceive qualities absolutely necessary to a body, although unhelpful for discerning the nature of the corporeal principle.