Section Four - Chapter 1 (Part 2)

False Theories Assigning a Superfluous Cause of Ideas

250. The Scholastics, aware of the embarrassing difficulty in this area of Aristotle's philosophy, endeavoured to present his thought in a more favourable light.
They offered the following subtle distinction. The word universal has two meanings: either it indicates common nature itself in so far as it is subject to being understood as universal, or it indicates the universal in itself [App., no. 18].
Consequently, universal in its first meaning, that is, nature itself which is not actually universal but is to be subjected to the intention of universality - in other words, is apt to be considered common - was the term of sense. On the other hand, universal in its second meaning, that is, as actually universal, is merely the object of the intellect. In this way, it seemed possible to explain the transition from sense to intellect, that is, to show how the term of sense became the object of the intellect. Although the mind grasped only the universal, there seemed to be a way in which sense itself administered it to the intellect. By applying this distinction, it could be said that sense too perceived the universal provided the word universal was taken in a somewhat different sense from that in which it was attributed to the intellect, that is, as universal in potency, not in act. This condition, however, removes the whole impact and value of the distinction.
If we are really accurate in our examination, we find that the same difficulties keep recurring.

First of all, let us dwell a moment on this phrase: 'Common nature itself is called universal in so far as it is subject to the intention of universality.'
Everyone will agree that nature cannot be called common if no account is taken of the universality to which it is subject. Without universality, nature is singular and cannot be predicated as common. Only when we compare this singular nature in our thought with other singular natures, themselves existent in our minds and not in themselves, do we find the similarity. Then, wanting to show that we see nature from this point of view, we add the predicate common. This nature, with the addition of the standpoint from which we view it, we call the universal or that which is common.
No nature, therefore, can be called common until the understanding has completed this operation and the relationship between a number of individuals perceived by us has been discovered. This relationship only occurs in an intellectual concept because it does not consist in either of the single terms, that is, in the individuals between whom the relationship falls, but solely in their union and comparison. This union is found only in the understanding where two or more things find a species, a common idea.

If some nature always remains singular, that is, remains as it is in itself before it was conceived and examined by the understanding, it would be misleading to call it common or universal as long as it is considered independently of the relationship it has with the common idea in the intellect. If we propose to exclude the intellect entirely, and wish to consider external things only in relation to sense, we cannot call them common. This predicate is attributed to them subsequently, that is, only from the moment when we suppose them to be conceived by the intellect where the ideas showing their similarities and differences are found. However, all this must be completely excluded when we propose to examine the powers of sense alone. At this point, we must consider external things without adding to them any contribution from the intellect as it perceives and compares them. If it is true, as Aristotle himself grants, that the intention of universality is added to them by the mind, we are obliged to exclude this aspect completely. We do this by adding to nature the predicate common. Consequently we are not entitled to say that sense perceives common nature or the universal, which gives rise to the common element in things.

What therefore is meant by: 'Sense perceives common nature'?
It would seem to mean: 'Sense perceives a singular nature which, later on, when it is perceived by the intellect acquires from a certain point of view the predicate common because it is united to the idea, which is always endowed with universality. This predicate is attributed to nature to express the way in which the intellect perceives it by means of the idea.'
If the predicate common expresses only what the understanding adds to the nature it perceives, it is easy to see that the Scholastic distinction does not contribute in any way to the task of explaining how the term of sense can become an object of the intellect. The aim of this distinction was to show that even the term of sense can, like the term of the intellect, be called universal in some way. In this case, it would not be strange to find that the intellect can be provided with its objects by sense, although only the intellect is capable of perceiving universals. But, as we have seen, the term of sense can be called universal only to the extent that it is considered in relationship with the future act of the intellect. But if we prescind from this future act and try to define the sensible term solely in its relationship to sense, we must call it singular; and it does not contain within it anything that is, or can be, common. Where does the intellect discover the universal which makes it common? The problem remains unsolved, and untouched, as though it had never been discussed.

251. The term of sense and the object of the intellect are different and essentially opposite. Sense perceives only singulars; the intellect adds what is universal [App., no. 19].
If we suppose, therefore, with Aristotle, that all ideas have their origin in the senses, we still have to face the difficulty of discovering how sense can put before the understanding an object adapted and proportionate to it. Sense, as we know, has no common or universal element.

As we have seen, Aristotle in such a difficulty establishes an acting intellect which he designates as mediator between sense and the intellect. This mediator is responsible for taking sensible, singular phantasms and transforming them into universals. Aristotle assigns this duty as proper to the acting intellect which however is also responsible for discovering how to carry out the important, awesome duty which the philosopher has entrusted to it. Fortunately the mysterious power which we call intellect continues its work with complete disregard for philosophical speculation and for the laws which we want to lay down for it.
I confess that I would really be at a loss were I charged with the task of teaching the acting intellect how to fulfil the role which our philosopher prescribes for it, granted his explicit condition that it should not bring any idea whatsoever to the task, but derive all ideas from sensible phantasms.

252. First, must this intellect perceive sensible, singular phantasms or not?
If it does not perceive them, it would seem that it cannot operate upon them or distinguish within them what is proper from what is common.
If it does perceive them, as sense does, it is a faculty [App., no. 20]. But if it perceives singulars in the way sense does, how can it find, in singulars, universals which are not there?

We have already remarked that singulars, as long as they remain such, contain no universal. We also saw that the word universal merely expresses a relationship which a thing has with other possible similar things. It is, therefore, the kind of object which only the intellect apprehends: sense knows nothing of it. But, if the intellect alone is responsible for adding the universal attribute which is not present in the terms of sense, where does the intellect find it?

253. Plato presumed this attribute was innate. According to him, the soul added the universal idea of singulars when sense perceived them; the soul was called intellect in so far as it bore this concept within itself. Or he assumed - this comes down to the same thing - that the intellect bore in itself the exemplars of things. These are possible things, and dictate, as distinctive norms, the classification of sensible realities. The problem, Plato thought, was solved.
Avicenna resorted to an intellect completely separate from human beings. We receive from this intellect fully formed ideas from which we then isolate the realities perceived by the senses. This system also met the difficulties to a certain extent.

In Aristotle, however - at least according to later commentators - there is nothing like this.(166) According to him, the acting intellect adds the idea of universality to singulars perceived by the senses - this is what the mind does in every system of thought - though the senses do not have such an idea within them, and the acting intellect itself does not bring it to them!

254. Occasionally, Aristotle puts every effort into solving a difficulty forcefully put to him, though it seems present more to his feeling than to his intellect.
He will say, for example, 'What is received, is received as though by a receptacle. And just as liquid takes on different shapes in different shaped vessels, so what is received by our sense and spirit must be different. They are like two vases which give a different form to the same thing. The form bestowed by sense allows the thing to remain singular; the form bestowed by the intellect is the universality of the thing, because this alone is the way the intellect can conceive mentally.'
It is easy to see traces of kantian thought in such teaching. This would require us to accept, without knowing why, the presence in the human spirit of a certain form to which perceived entia would conform.

Now, either this form is the type of truth and, in this case, the type, that is, the essence of truth, must be innate in us (this is my position), or nothing of this kind is admitted in the spirit. In this case, the spirit, limited and determined as it is, will endow what it perceives with a purely subjective form. This is the foundation on which modern scepticism and critical philosophy is founded.

255. However, it is easy to see that in this supposition all the immense work of critical philosophy would be based upon the material analogy of a receptacle.
I see perfectly well how a liquid can be placed into a vase without its initially having the form which it receives as it is gradually poured in. But I do not understand how singulars can enter the intellect if we accept the principle that the intellect apprehends only universals.
And if they do enter, why do they inevitably have to be transformed there into universals? If singulars do not enter the mind, they cannot receive the form which the intellect would give them, just as the liquid, unless it enters the vase, cannot take on the shape of the vase.
If they do enter, the intellect is no longer constituted so that it can apprehend only under a universal form. If the intellect has this form, necessarily, it is conditioned by it and the singular is inconceivable in it.
In the example of the vase, two stages stand out: the liquid prior to its introduction and the liquid already poured in. Here again, the liquid is distinguished from its accidental form: the former can exist without the latter.

On the other hand, common nature has nothing singular about it; it is a completely different object from that perceived by sense. The object does not exist for us before the intellect apprehends it; it begins to exist with the act whereby the intellect knows it.

On the other hand, if the object of the intellect had such a form because the subjective intellect bestowed that form upon the object, scepticism - as I have indicated - would be inescapable. There would only be subjective truth, that is, nontruth (truth is essentially objective and absolute). This is the case in Kant's system which is, in fact, merely the Aristotelian analogy of the receptacle, developed and ingeniously sustained.

256. To avoid this rock of scepticism, Aristotle occasionally refrains from using the image of the receptacle which receives everything and arranges it in its own likeness.
According to him, the acting intellect does not alter anything; it simply separates what is common from what is proper in things. Once this separation has taken place, the passive intellect perceives only what is common in things. Apprehending only part of something does not mean perceiving it in an altered, false way, but apprehending it partially, though at the same time unerringly.
Aristotle, expounding his theory in this way, appears to present his acting intellect as a kind of prism which breaks up light and separates colours. This suggests that it does not separate them by an act of will, but by a kind of blind necessity.

257. If we compare the acting intellect to the senses, we could say that it separates what is common in things from what is proper, as the eye and the ear distinguish light and sound by taking what is appropriate to each. But this way of explaining such a separation, however ingenious it may appear, is as unjustified and ineffectual as all the others.
First, it is based upon an obviously false premiss; it assumes that proper and common are two elements which go to make up the external thing as colours combine to form a single cluster of light, or as light and sound, in striking both sensories, arouse feeling only in the relevant sense organ. On the other hand, as I said, what is common does not exist in things before the mind puts it there; the word 'common' expresses only a relationship with an idea, and an intellectual view of things.

To state that the mind apprehends the universal, that is, what is common by separating it from what is proper is to posit that the universal, or what is common, pre-exists the act of intellect. But the whole question consists in knowing how the universal appears to the intellect when it is not to be found in the nature of things which contain only singular individuals.
My question is about the origin of universals, and you tell me that I separate them from what is proper. But this does not explain them; it supposes their existence, and assumes what is to be proved.

258. Next, is it possible to imagine a blind operation in the intellect, as in physical actions such as the choice of canals in digestion or the separation of colours by a prism?
Some momentary credence might be possible as long as the discussion is abstract and universal, and does not consider the intimate nature of the intellect. But such credence is impossible when we think and reflect about this nature.
The intellect is the cognitive faculty, whose acts cannot be blind. They are essentially knowing acts. We are in fact discussing the source of our light and knowledge.

To press the matter further, let me ask: Does the acting intellect, when it operates this so-called separation between what is proper and what is common in things, know what is proper and what is common in such a way that it can reject the former and choose the latter? If it grasps the difference between them, it does not operate blindly but knowingly sets what is proper to one side and what is common to the other. In such a case (the only case in which we can conceive a similar distinction made by the intellect), it must possess ideas prior to this separation, which serve as guides. The thought, 'This nature is common' is the same as the thought, 'There can exist an infinite number of natures similar to this one.' But thought of this kind supposes the idea, that is, the simple apprehension of that nature, which is not determined by time, place or any other individual circumstances. It is mere possibility; in short, it is a universal.
I have to conclude that I am quite unable to find any evidence for the role which Aristotle assigned to the acting intellect by which it converts single sensations into ideas without itself possessing anything innate.

259. Aristotle himself, however, in happier moments when he was less concerned with combating Plato, suspected or glimpsed that the conditions which he imposed on his acting intellect were harsh and unjust, and that it would have carried on just as before even if he had not relaxed them.
Consequently, he seems at times inclined to attribute some kind of universal to the intellect and by referring sense perceptions to this universal converted them into universals. As I have often said, this universality consists solely in their relationship with a universal, that is, with an intellectual idea through which they are called common. However, he touches upon this matter so elusively that I do not know if we can form a really clear picture of his views, which he puts in two words.(167)

These words show that the acting intellect, in drawing universals from particular things perceived by the senses, must have an act within itself. This act must be substantial to the intellect which otherwise would be unable to carry out the operation referred to, that is, drawing the ideas of things from sensations.
Aristotle's concept, if we follow his usual principles, seems to come down finally to the following argument:
The sensations, or more accurately the phantasms which sensations leave in our souls, are not, as such, objects of the intellect. In other words, they are not true ideas except in potency. They are particulars, and the intellect can apprehend only universals. We must, therefore, accept the presence in the soul of a faculty (whatever it may later turn out to be) which has the power to convert these phantasms, that is, ideas in potency, into ideas in act. This faculty is called the acting intellect. However, for one thing to change another from potency into an act, it has to be itself to be in act. According to Aristotle's principles, for example, one body cannot move another unless it is itself already in motion. Therefore this acting intellect, Aristotle concludes, must be, of its nature, in act in order to reduce into actual knowledge the phantasms received by the senses.(168)

Aristotle goes no further and I am not aware that he gives any clearer explanation elsewhere of what he understands by the act of this intellect.

260. One can, however, state that by firmly establishing this proposition (if indeed he concedes that this intellect in act is primordial and innate in us, and does not become active only on the occasion of phantasms), he went a step further than Locke and the modern sensists brought up in Locke's school who, although admitting a cognitive faculty in us, do not get near the thorny issue of the nature of this faculty. They are content to assume that it fulfils its purpose. On the other hand, Aristotle maintained that 'there is in us a faculty enabling us to abstract universals from particulars', and adds that this faculty has to be in act. He arrives at least at the threshold of the great and difficult question of the innate element in the human mind. According to this teaching of Aristotle, we must have in our potency for knowledge a substantial and consequently innate act. However mysterious this expression is, and however vague and brief it may be, it is nevertheless true that it indicates progress in Aristotle's thinking and justifies the belief that he had at least touched upon the difficult problem we have been discussing, that is, the origin of ideas.

261. If we wish to offer a rational explanation of Aristotle's cryptic, reserved manner of writing, we may perhaps approximate to the truth.
What can the act of a cognitive faculty be? First, it is inconceivable unless it conveys some information.
Consequently, when Aristotle says that the acting intellect has itself to be in act in order to form universals, that is, intellective cognitions, he seems to mean that this intellect possesses by nature some species of notion enabling it to produce other actual notions when sensible phantasms provide the opportunity. It also seems that he went no further with his examination of this species of innate knowledge because he was afraid either of the difficulty of self-contradiction in determining the problem, or of uncovering something too favourable to the platonic system he was opposing.
It could also be, as occasionally happens, that Aristotle, after having this fleeting vision leading him to recognise the need for an innate act in the cognitive faculty (which is the same as the need for some innate species), was distracted by other thoughts from his pursuit of such a felicitous idea that could have elicited marvellous fruit in his incomparable mind.

262. Commentators have shown little interest in this passage from Aristotle which, though brief, is nevertheless one of the most significant.
Nevertheless, St. Thomas's remarks on it confirm me in my views.
Aquinas, seeking to discover how Aristotle grants in us a substantially actuated intellect, first points out that Aristotle could not have meant that the intellect had innate ideas of all things. This would, in fact, be the platonic theory which Aristotle had refuted in so many passages. Moreover, the intellect, if it were predetermined to know all things of itself, would ruin another principle constantly taught by Aristotle and confirmed by experience: in order to think, our intellect needs to acquire phantasms of external things from the senses.
Discarding this interpretation, Aquinas asks about the nature of an intellective faculty which is in act, but does not contain the ideas of all things.
It seems that this is possible only as an intermediate state between being in act and possessing the ideas of all things, and being in act and possessing one of these ideas.

St. Thomas, the most acute of all critics, says:

This is the metaphor he uses to explain it:

263. This aristotelian metaphor is remarkably apposite to the argument.
In fact light, although it does not already have colours divided and separated in itself, is nevertheless capable of such division by means of a body able to refract and reflect the cluster of white light.
According to this likeness, therefore, we should affirm exactly the opposite to what has previously been stated about the theory of ideas when it was said that the action of the acting intellect consisted in separating what is proper from what is common in things. This theory falsely assumed that there was something common per se in things independently of the operation of the intellect. In this hypothesis, we have compared 1. external things to a cluster of light containing a number of colours, that is, what is common and what is proper, and 2. the intellect to a prism able to separate one from another. Here, however, we are no longer comparing sensible things to light, but the acting intellect to light. In other words, we are comparing to light the act in which the acting intellect terminates. The prism, that which divides this light into its elementary rays and determines the various colours, are sensible things. What is common, therefore, would be in the mind, not in things, and would become particular and individuated by means of the things to which it is applied. These particularisations and individuations would in fact correspond to the colours; what is common would correspond to the light which pre-exists in the intellect.

In this supposition, many difficulties would be overcome and the intellect, although it would not see any separate colour without the external prism of sensible bodies which break up and determine its light, would nevertheless still possess an innate light. It would have no knowledge of anything particular and determinate,(171) but would be granted the most common of all ideas, a form quite indeterminate prior to sensations. In a word, although it would not possess any derived ideas, as Plato, Aristotle's rival claimed, it would have the primal, most universal idea as innate. Only the principle would be innate, not the consequences. The idea of what is most common is that which is called principle (as we shall see in the proper place), when applied to less common things. And Aristotle holds that principles are to be taken as undemonstrable.

264. St. Thomas, therefore, when he comes to explain the source from which the intellect receives its ungenerated light, concludes:

that is, (according to Aquinas) from God himself.(173)

265. A passage such as the one we have examined is directed against other commentators on Aristotle's work who, when they read in some passages in Aristotle that we have no innate knowledge and that our intellect is a mere potency, are unable to harmonise this with other passages when the master says that the acting intellect is not merely a cognitive potency, but is in act substantially. If it were not, it would be unable to convert into actual cognitions the things perceived by the senses. In other words, it could not supply ideas, all of which are by nature universal, to the possible intellect. As a result, they chose to assume that Aristotle, when speaking of the acting intellect, was referring to some intellect separate from man. This would be either the divine intellect or the intellect of some angel which, in act (that is, actually possessing the ideas of all things), could exert some influence on the possible intellect, that is, on our intellect, a mere cognitive potency. Whenever sensations occurred, this separate intellect would communicate to the them the universality which, united with the phantasms provided by the senses, furnishes the ideas of external things.

266. St. Thomas, however, rejects and dismisses this interpretation as intrinsically wrong and as contrary to the mind of Aristotle. He maintains that Aristotle, in referring to the human intellect as a merely potential faculty of thought, is to be understood as speaking of the possible intellect. When he maintains that the intellect is not merely in potency, but in act, he would be speaking of another intellective faculty also found in us and called the acting intellect. This acts continuously, not prompted by phantasms, but of its own active nature. Certainly, if I viewed Aristotle in a more favourable light by concentrating solely on some of his more felicitous passages, I think that I could fairly express what he saw in passing as follows: 'Experience shows that we do not have the ideas of external things before receiving sensations. We must not therefore gratuitously admit that such ideas are innate in our spirit; if we possessed them as innate, we would also know that we possessed them.(174) On the other hand, it is true that sensations, which are essentially particular and relate to the single individual producing them, are not ideas. Ideas, as essentially universal, are types of all similar individuals. Consequently, we have to assume that human beings, who receive particular sensations, have within themselves a potency for universalisation. Universality, however, which is not to be found in sensations, must be attributed to them by a universalising potency already in possession of universality. This universal view, added to things experienced by our senses, makes them actual ideas. Previously they were ideas only in potency.(175) Making the phantasms received with the bodily senses actual ideas means universalising them, and nothing more, because universalisation bestows upon them the act through which they can be called ideas. But nothing can be reduced to act except by something which is itself in act. This potency, therefore, which is able to place our cognitions in act must have this act in itself. In other words, it must possess that which constitutes universality and then add it to the phantasms.'(176)

267. Returning to Aquinas, we see that he proves the impossibility inherent in supposing that the acting intellect may be an ens external to us. For him, it is absurd to suppose that human nature should lack whatever it needs in order to know, that is, to perform the act for which it is essentially destined.

According to St. Thomas:

that is, an intellect in potency and an intellect in act.

268. Next, to show that Aristotle speaks of the acting intellect as a faculty found in the human spirit, St. Thomas points out that the philosopher calls his acting intellect 'as it were a habit or a light.' This term, according to Aquinas, would not be appropriate to the acting intellect if it were some substance separate from human beings. St. Thomas, while he concedes that the power of actuation essential to the acting intellect comes from the influence of some higher intelligence, never states that the acting intellect is, like some separate substance, external to us.

269. Aristotle's discovery of a cognitive faculty in us which is not simply in potency, but essentially in act, is, I think, of great importance even though he did not subsequently venture to investigate the nature and extension of this act.
It is possible that Aristotle, who initially refused to subscribe to the Platonic system because he saw, or thought he saw, its errors, later adopted a stance directly contrary to it. His first hope, perhaps - as is often the case with someone who has not yet investigated questions with the profundity they require - was to explain acts of the mind while resolutely denying that the mind has anything innate in it. However, when he later investigated this thorny problem in greater depth, he realised for himself that some compromise was necessary and admitted that the very faculty which produces ideas contains some connatural and innate light, that is, some primal idea which can serve as the faculty's benchmark and rule for forming all other ideas.

270. I am persuaded of this because, in so many passages in his works, Aristotle's language shows constant signs of hesitation. Moreover, the little phrases often introduced to condition his argument are significant. These half expressions, while saying nothing determinate and forthright on the one hand, tell us only too clearly what he would rather conceal. They show that the writer, as though suspended between two opinions, does not wish, or dare, to come out with a full, absolute statement, for fear of the consequences. Or at least they show that in his conscience there remains some doubt or obscure, indeterminate exception opposed to his teaching.
For example, in the passage to which I was referring, he clearly states, when speaking of the act of the agent, that the intellect in act is not at all like the intellect in potency 'which sometimes understands and sometimes does not understand'. But he continues by saying that it is 'as it were a habit and a light',(178) without daring to say outright that it is a habit, a light.

271. As further confirmation of this view, I point to another passage in which Aristotle's diffident treatment of this matter is very clear.
Towards the end of the second of the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle asks how we come to know first principles. After establishing that we cannot deduce them by demonstration, and do not possess them as innate, he sets out to explain their origin from the senses. He says that the phantasms obtained from sensations remain and form memory. Then, from a number of these memories, we come to test what is constant and common in them. This becomes the principle of knowledge and skill [App., no. 21].
Such an easy explanation of the knowledge of the first, most universal principles would lead, apparently, to the exclusion of innate, habitual knowledge. This is not the case. Aristotle hesitates and shows that his previous explanation does not banish all doubt from his spirit. He does not conclude absolutely that there are in us no innate habits, but merely says that there are no innate DETERMINATE habits in us.(179)

272. The reader should note how this expression, which excludes from the innate elements in man only determinate habits, fits exactly my own thinking and language.(180)
Plato's mistake, according to me, lies in his supposition that we possess innate ideas of special entia, that is, determinate ideas wholly in conformity with subsistent things. Against this, I maintain that his system is partly true if he admits the presence in us of innate ideas not of ultimate entia, such as real things, but only of some universal essences, some completely indeterminate ideas. Moreover, these universal, indeterminate ideas are not to be more than are necessary to explain the formation of other ideas.(181) Aristotle also seems to have felt the need for this. He was not bold enough to exclude innate, indeterminate habits but only innate, determinate habits. Nor did he exclude light, but light already divided into colours.

273. I shall conclude these observations upon Aristotle by referring to a remarkable passage by Aegidius, doctor fundatissimus, on the extract from Aristotle.
I find it a remarkable passage because it shows how this shrewd commentator recognised that Aristotle did indeed acknowledge (willingly or unwillingly) innate, though indeterminate habits in the human spirit. These indeterminate, innate habits in us constitute the acting intellect and help to explain what passed through Aristotle's mind when he was confronted by the act with which the human spirit must be essentially endowed if it is to acquire habits or determinate ideas. The indeterminate habits or ideas are this act.

Aegidius writes:

274. The favourable interpretation of some of Aristotle's passages which I have endeavoured to present could be taken still further.
Although Aristotle has for so long been held and acclaimed as 'the master of those who know', I could not show how close he came to what I believe is the true teaching on the origin of ideas, without expounding the whole system concerning this origin.
At the same time, bearing in mind other passages of Aristotle's work, we would have to admit that it contains a number of defects even more serious than those already noted. Taking everything into account, we would perhaps have to conclude that Aristotle, despite his amazing subtlety, lacks the sublimity of Plato.

275. It is time to return to Plato.
In my previous remarks, I tried to show how Aristotle's defection from the school of Plato was caused by several factors. One of these was the unsatisfactory way in which Plato himself expounded the reasons which led him to accept ideas as natural to man, and the unjustified lengths to which he pushed his teaching or at least the lack of scientific precision with which he expounded it.
I will now present another cause for the constant opposition which Plato's system has encountered in every age, though such a long and obdurate opposition has never been able to weaken and banish it from human memory in the way that other opinions, now shown to be completely false and empty, have been set aside.

This aspect of Platonism involves two considerations: on the one hand, a sustained, intense opposition to the system that seemed on the verge of overwhelming it and, on the other, a continual reaction on the part of this philosophy that revealed a tenacious and inextinguishable vitality. Even in periods when anti-Platonism was at its most rabid, the Platonic corpus of teaching could never be considered unanimously condemned by mankind. Although many condemned it, there was obvious hesitation in their judgment which was never entirely free from the seed of doubt or laid down with absolute security. Even those who were intellectually convinced of its absurdity exhibited some uncertainty. When least expected, enthusiastic champions of the derided theory came to the fore only to be met with indignation by others who believed that society, by not following them, was going backwards rather than forwards. Such constant protest by a few against the multitude who derided Platonism is inexplicable unless we presuppose that it contains a core of truth. Similarly, we cannot explain the constant opposition unless we presuppose that Platonism contains some false or inaccurate parts, or at least some obscurity, or lack of precise expression.

Plato was reproached for being obscure,(183) and many, while asserting that his system is false, earnestly assure you that they do not understand it.
What is certain is that the major opposition Plato encountered was from a crowd of pseudo-philosophers who portrayed him to a crowd of readers in the way their poor minds mentally imagined him.
However, Aristotle is not to be numbered amongst these common or garden philosophers, hundreds of whom were produced by France alone in the last century. Though he joined forces with the opposition to his master, partly out of ambition and emulation, his mind was, as I have said, great enough to identify inaccuracies in Plato's teaching.

276. But even if we ignore this imperfect and erroneous aspect of Plato's system, the following observation helps explain its various vicissitudes.
Two sets of teaching are found side by side in Plato's works: one practical and traditional, the other rational.
The distinction between these two sets of teaching is recognised throughout antiquity and it is a key as it were which unlocks knowledge of ancient philosophy. Aristotle himself notes it clearly enough and refers to a twofold division of scholars as though it were generally accepted. Some were called theologians, others philosophers.(184) Theologians must have been those who undertook to collect truths which, communicated by God in the earliest ages of the world, were never completely lost but handed down by tradition from one generation to the next. Philosophers, on the other hand, must have been those who were not satisfied with tradition and authority, and often expected little from them, applying themselves instead to the study of truth with their own individual reason as companion.

Examination of the distinctive features of the two famous schools of the ancient world, the Italic and the Ionian, shows, I think, the fundamental difference between them: Pythagoras, the founder of the Italic school, posited traditional and symbolic teaching as the basis of his philosophy; Thales, the founder of the Ionic school, grounded all his research on reasoning alone and offered it as rational teaching. As a result, the Italic school favoured analysis, the Ionians synthesis. The former started from the whole, broke it down to arrive at its parts, and invariably returned to the whole, the object of its thinking; the latter, starting from the parts, wanted to assemble them to arrive at the whole but, on its infinite journey, was forever falling back on the parts, the sole focus of its attention. The Italic school began from God, and journeyed in the pure regions of the spirit; the Ionians started from Nature and struggled in vain to escape from matter.

Plato, a descendant of Pythagoras through Archytas and of Thales through Socrates, combined both types of teaching.
The positive feature of the trend of the Pythagorean school was its resolve to gather together the sound teaching preserved by society which God had originally entrusted to mankind;(185) the positive feature of the school of Thales was its active exercise of human reason.
Plato's travels to collect Pythagorean teachings are very well known; Socrates, on the other hand, had taught him how to philosophise, that is, to use his own reasoning powers. In fact, it can be said that the whole of Socrates' teaching is, in the last resort, merely a method of reasoning on all things presented for our consideration. Socrates perfected the aim of Thales, the first thinker in Greece to think for himself without reference to a school.(186)

Socrates, however, was not content to perfect Thales' method:(187) he took a step forward in applying it. Until the time of Archelaus, Socrates' teacher, formal philosophical reasoning was concerned almost solely with physical entities.(188) It took more than a century (the time-span between Thales and Socrates) before Socrates changed the focus from physical objects to ethical issues. However, when Socrates said: 'Things above us do not concern us'(189) he revealed the source of his ideas. His statement bore the imprint of the Ionian school which, by compelling human beings to discover truth purely by their own thinking, obliged them to shift their gaze from the consideration of sensible, natural phenomena, and presented them with a slow, laborious journey bristling with dangers. The transition from physical to moral considerations was itself seen as a miracle, and taken as the foundation of a new school. This transition was not, in fact, accomplished in stages, nor could it be; it was achieved in one leap by Socrates, a most extraordinary man who came to it not as a result of his own prompting, but swayed by the obvious needs of a more mature society. From that moment Ionian philosophy showed its insufficiency. The more society grows, the more it exhibits the need of ethical truths to survive. Socrates himself, after his tremendous endeavour to make the transition into the realm of ethical teaching, halted weary and exhausted, despite his great ability. To avoid forming a philosophy too onerous for humanity, he thought it better to throw out physical investigation, and as far as possible to banish metaphysical speculations which he considered superfluous to our human needs.

277. Plato, therefore, presented in his works philosophical arguments to which he added positive, traditional teachings. These, however, were inevitably altered because the people, amongst whom they circulate, are never faithful guardians of a teaching. People cannot tell the same story twice without adding or removing, exaggerating or diminishing elements according to the state of their extraordinarily fickle fancy and their ever unreliable passions.
Nevertheless, these popular doctrines, rendered strange and wonderful by absurdities, helped Plato to adorn his incomparable eloquence, to which he devoted so much care, and to use it to insinuate himself more easily into the minds and hearts of the multitude. But the fables, mixed with philosophical arguments and unwisely used to support them, were a cause of the war waged against Platonism. It was thought that the whole system would be ruined if it could be shown that the peripheral attractions with which Plato, another deceitful human being, bedecked and furnished it were absurd and false. Plato was sure he could achieve the impossible, that is, please at one and the same time both the sages and the corrupt society in which he lived.

The difference between these two species of teaching is obvious enough in the Meno and in my discussion of the origin of ideas. Having stated the difficulty of the origin of ideas to which I referred (that is, in order to discover some truth which we seek, we need some preconceived notion of it - otherwise we could not recognise what we are seeking if we bumped into it). Plato was not content to solve the problem by rational argument, but sought the assistance of positive, fable-like teaching. The distinction between the second and first type of teaching is evident in Plato's own words. When he expounds the first type of teaching, he argues in his usual vein; when he deals with the second, he suddenly halts rational argument and resorts to authorities of a higher order.

In this passage, it is clear that Plato summoned traditional science, disfigured as it was by popular and poetic fables, to buttress his theory of ideas. But the mass of people just could not conceive how these innate ideas of Plato were able to exist in our minds prior to sense experience, or where they came from. It was in order to stimulate the minds of ordinary people that Plato used a story adapted to the popular mind to make his system more acceptable. In fact, it had the opposite effect, and later did great harm to the system. Time destroys falsehoods and often, along with them, the truths mistakenly associated with them. This goes on until such truths are completely detached from the falsehoods and made to stand on their own. Truth, when bereft of all other forms of support, remains unshakeable.

The story-like explanation which Plato gives of the introduction of ideas into the human soul is one thing; his philosophical system, worked out and established by purely rational arguments, is another. Yet Plato's greatest opponents usually take issue with the fabulous part of the system. They show that the theory by which human souls had existed in the stars before their incarnation, and then gone up and down several times as the body dies and frees them, was unwarranted, untrue and vile. They then go on to argue that Plato's system is an empty dream, a profane religion to be shunned,(191) as if the system consisted in the embellishment which Plato thought he could add to make it more attractive to popular imagination, and especially to the collective phantasy which served as the background to his writing.

(166) In Aristotle's works we come across passages which show him dissatisfied with his own system and only a step from another, as the reader will see in the following article.

(167) He says that the acting intellect est ACTU ENS.

(168) De Anima, bk. 3, lect. 10.

(169) It should be noted that, in St. Thomas's view, anything immaterial is per se knowable. It follows that the word intellect is to be understood here in the objective sense of understood rather than of understanding. Otherwise the argument would not be valid.

(170) This metaphor of light, which is so appropriate when explaining what is innate in our intellect, is a term used in all schools, a word used in all languages.

(171) A careful reading of St. Thomas reveals that his denial of the existence of innate ideas refers solely to determinate ideas or species. Anima intellectiva est quidem actu immaterialis, sed est in potentia ad DETERMINATAS SPECIES rerum [The intellective soul is indeed immaterial in act, but is in potency to DETERMINATE SPECIES of things] (S.T., I, q. 79, art. 4, ad 4). This is precisely my teaching. I deny that the human soul is endowed at birth with determinate ideas or species. I attribute to it only one absolutely indeterminate idea. St. Thomas calls this light, not idea, and says that it makes the soul immaterial in act.

(172) De Anima, bk. 3, lect. 10.

(173) Intellectus separatus secundum nostrae fidei documenta est ipse Deus [According to the documents of our faith, God himself is separate intellect] (S.T., I, q. 79, art. 4, ad 4).

(174) This is not a correct inference; it is possible for a person to have ideas without being aware of having them, as Leibniz so correctly observed. This, however, is the standard line of argument of those who deny innate ideas; Aristotle uses it (Poster., bk. 2, final chapter).

(175) He calls phantasms cognitions in potency in De Anima, bk. 2, lect. 12. This means that they are not cognitions. Consequently we have to explain the intellectual operation by which they become cognitions, universal concepts, ideas. In the same passage, however, Aristotle comes very close to the truth because, in his desire to bring out the difference between senses and intellect, he locates this difference in the fact that 'the active part of sensitive activity is outside the soul while the active part of intellectual activity is in the soul itself'. He means that sensations occur as a result of the action upon us of bodies external to us; intellective perceptions, which contain ideas, occur as a result of the inner, essential activity of our soul. Aristotle's remark could be taken further by reasoning as follows: 'This universality of intellectual conceptions is either created by the intellect or merely added to the phantasms by the intellect which already possesses them. Granting the intellect the force to create universality is clearly greater than granting the power to add it, this reason alone would be sufficient for us to opt for the second alternative. Moreover, observation and analysis show that intellectual activity does not produce anything; it is simply a vision of what has already been produced. Understanding means only seeing interiorly, and seeing is not producing. Consequently, the intellect does not create the universal species of things; it sees them.'

(176) Pondering Aristotle's views on the history of our thoughts, it seems fairly clear that, in dealing with ideas in the human intellect, he often confined his attention to the ideas of external things. Consequently, he could not acknowledge any idea in us before sensible things steered his thought to something real. It was inconceivable for him that the idea of indeterminate being could exist in the human mind. For him, it was a light, not yet an idea. Moreover, even if the word idea were restricted to meaning some universal conception determined in some way, I too would say that only a light, not an innate idea, is to be found in the human mind. We ought not to cavil over words; things alone should be our concern.

(177) De Anima, bk. 3, lect. 10.

(178) De Anima, bk. 3, lect. 10.

(179) Posterior., bk. 2, in f.

(180) Where the two opposing systems are restrained, they can come quite close to one another. Here Aristotle rejects innate ideas, yet does accept some species of innate habits. Some Cartesians also accept innate ideas, but when explaining what they mean say that they are like innate habits. Here the two systems are extremely close. Galluppi expounds the thought of the Cartesians in this way: 'Some of them compared (innate ideas) to habits of the will. Whenever a dominant passion is lodged in the human heart, even when we are totally unaware of its effects, it is still real in the spirit, according to the philosophers to whom we refer. An ambitious man, for example, who has conceived an overwhelming desire to obtain a position, still has the same passion in his mind and heart even when he is not consciously thinking of the position. We may truthfully say of him, therefore, that he is still coveting the position. The Cartesians ask what exactly is the habitual love existing in the heart of the ambitious man even at times when he is quite unaware of any ambitious act. It would appear, they maintain, that this habitual love is the very act of prolonged, lasting love which, however, is unconscious. Absence of feeling of this love marks it off, in fact, from the actual love of which the ambitious man is aware. Similarly, a priori and innate notions are real, lasting notions in our mind, but dissociated from the act of consciousness before sensible notions can render them present to consciousness. This is how, among others, the anonymous author of the treatise on the human mind against Locke and his followers, determines the nature of innate ideas' (Saggio Filosofico sulla Critica della Conoscenza, vol. 4, pp. 2 and 3).

(181) In fact, only one idea is needed to explain the generation of all others, as I shall show. Similarly, there is and can be only one perfectly indeterminate idea.

(182) This passage is mentioned by Dominic of Flanders in the questions which he wrote upon the Commentaries of St. Thomas on the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle.

(183) Laertius says of Plato: 'He is wont to use a variety of terms so that his works may not be understood by the ignorant and the uncouth.' I do not think, however, that Laertius' other remark is equally true, although it is not entirely false either. He says that Plato 'uses the same terms with different meanings and also uses incompatible terms to refer to the same thing.' This is more apparent than real when we investigate the hidden recesses of Platonism.

(184) Metaphysics, bk. 3, c. 2. - Aristotle usually had little time for traditional philosophy, and poked fun at its teachers, as we can see from this passage of his Metaphysics. He was partly right because theology was represented by poets who had tricked it out with innumerable fables. It can safely be affirmed that rational philosophy from Anaxagoras to Plato tended to co-mingle with the traditional philosophy which was very evident in Socrates and found its final fulfilment in Plato. Aristotle took the opposite direction, going back a step toward Thales but retaining the influence of tradition which had been accepted as a guest by philosophy. Aristotle's De Caelo is sufficient evidence of this.

(185) In the Theodicy (94-124), I pointed out that God gave two things to the recently created human race: 1. some positive truths; 2. activation, through speech, of their reason which, unable to act freely by itself, required to be moved by some principle, stimulus or external need. From these two things, given to us from the first moments of our existence, the two doctrines which I have distinguished came forth as from their own sources. Traditional teaching which human beings were to preserve faithfully in their memory, emerged from positive truth; rational science, which we were to develop by using our reason, or by applying abstract principles received in speech to the positive facts of revelation and the sensations which the entia composing the material universe produced in us, emerged from the movement proper to reason. Thus both branches of human knowledge are eventually reduced to the first cause: they come from God. Often we add only our own aberrations to knowledge.

(186) In other words, Thales endowed philosophical reasoning with a passion similar to that shown in our modern age by Descartes with his self-imposed methodical law of refusing to accept from others any truth before he had subjected it to rigorous, philosophical investigation. This accounted also for his failures, and the flaws in his philosophy. What a catastrophe for mankind! The most noble venture undertaken by reason, which made mankind ruler of the universe, served only to lead us into error or obliged us to admit our infinite ignorance!

(187) Note that the Socratic method is, in fact, the one appropriate to the investigation of truth, the aim of all Ionian philosophy, that is, of a philosophy which is essentially investigative and intelligent. Such a method starts from observation, and rises from particulars to universals. Those who from childhood have imbibed prejudiced views inimical to Plato's philosophy - which has been attacked in recent times not because it is false, but because it was thought to be accompanied by some sublime, spiritual element - imagine that it adopts a totally different method of argument and, beginning from hypotheses, descends to explaining facts. This is precisely what the sensists tell us not to do. But it is these people who, prior to any reasoning upon facts, show they have formed a mental hypothesis which they use to direct their mind in their examination of facts. I dare to say without fear of error that the method of reasoning used in Plato's dialogues is infinitely more rigorous and precise than that used by Aristotle. Why therefore do sensists think that they alone are privileged to observe nature and to reason correctly? The reason could be this: they have already targeted the results of the two philosophies. Their philosophy does not rise above matter; the opposite philosophy arrives at the spirit. But the hypothesis previously established in the sensists' minds states that spirit is purely a dream or, at least, that it is impossible to attain by reasoning. This is enough: anyone who arrives at the spirit must be wrong because he uses an inadequate method of reasoning.

(188) Nevertheless, progress was visible. Although Thales' followers taught only natural science, Anaxagoras, the third in line, abandoned the materialism of his master Anaximenes, and felt the need to posit a spirit with an existence of its own. As a youth, Socrates had listened to the aged Anaxagoras.

(189) Socrates himself complained about Plato's importing alien teachings (that is, those of Pythagoras) into his philosophy. See Brucker Hist. Philos., part 2, c. 2. Xenophantes also accused Plato 'because, having abandoned the sober philosophy of Socrates and investigated too keenly the nature of the gods, he aspired after glory on the basis of much unsuitable, useless knowledge. Captivated by teratolog¬a [marvellous tales] and the astounding wisdom of Egypt and Pythagoras, this gloomy teacher of wisdom lapsed into ridiculous views.'Such was the admission of decadent mankind's total impotence - and it came from the greatest philosophers of the ancient world, such as Socrates and Xenophantes. The supreme endowment of mankind was intelligence which, after attaining the peak of its perfection, imposed limits upon itself which forbade the investigation of what was outstanding and sublime. Why such a limit? Because intelligence foresaw that the result of such investigation would probably have been much more dire than ignorance itself. Error is worse than ignorance. But Xenophantes, when he spoke about the sobriety of Socrates' philosophy, indicated a great humiliation for mankind! Man's rebellion against the Creator reduced not only the individual, but the species, so much that the entire achievement of human genius when abandoned to itself throughout antiquity consisted in transforming ignorance into virtue and encapsulating universal wisdom in the saying: 'This I know, that I know nothing.'

(190) I remarked earlier that Plato considered it necessary to accept all ideas in man as innate because he had not clearly seen how one arises and flows from the other. In this passage by Plato, it appears that he saw a connection between ideas and their mutual dependence. But although he realised there was a certain connection between ideas, which enabled him to explain their association and recollection, he did not understand the connection well enough to be able to infer the formation of them all from a single, first mother idea.

(191) This was not the case with the early Fathers of the Church, especially St. Augustine. He distinguishes what is false and fictitious in Plato from what is philosophical and also true and attacks only the first part with the authority of Christian faith. He argues rationally in the case of the philosophical part. He uses the same weapons as his opponent: he overcomes the fictitious stories by means of revelation and deals with the rational part by the use of reason.