Part Two

Origin of all ideas in general through the idea of being

CHAPTER 3

Third way of explaining the origin of acquired ideas
in general: by the potencies that produce them

487. I have said that reflection, which can produce ideas, differs from sense-instinct, found also in irrational animals as the means by which the animal responds to sensations with its potency of feeling, seeking and concentrating on a pleasant sensation so as to enjoy it fully (cf. 448-450).
Reflection is a function of reason and differs from simple perception(31) in the following way.

Perception is limited to the object perceived and does not go beyond it; in so far as I perceive a thing, I know nothing outside it. In reflection however I direct my attention to things perceived. As a result my reflection is not limited to the object of a single perception; it can review many perceptions at once and make a single object of several objects and their relationships. Relative to perception, reflection is general, because it is not limited to any number of perceptions for its object; perception, relative to its corresponding reflection, is particular. Hence reflection could be called a general perception, a perception of many perceptions. Therefore when I reflect, I act at a higher level than when I perceive. From this vantage point I observe the objects below me as I contemplate, compare, join or separate my different perceptions, creating natural or even absurd compositions as I like.(32) I am reflecting when I turn my attention to the ideas in my mind and say to myself: 'I have some cognitions', and then reason about them, put them in some order, deduce one from the other, and so on.

488. If I concentrated on only one of my ideas, would I be reflecting? We must distinguish. If I have some definite end for concentrating on that idea, my concentration is an act of reflection. However, such a case is contrary to the hypothesis which says: 'If I concentrate on only one idea.' When I concentrate for some end, I am no longer concentrating on one idea because the idea of the end is also present: I am considering both the idea on which I concentrate and the end to which the idea is directed. I am considering the idea and its relationship with the end.

On the other hand, if I concentrate on the idea involuntarily, captivated by the pleasurable action of its light in the same way that sense-pleasure delights and instinctively captures the activity of my feeling, then my concentration is not reflection, but simply direct attention drawn to and held naturally in a more intense act. This heightening of activity must be carefully distinguished from reflection.
'Reflection therefore is voluntary attention to our concepts,' an attention governed by an end, which supposes an intellective ens capable of knowing and pursuing a purpose (cf. 73-74).

489. Reflection therefore enables us to form ideas of relationship, grouping them together (synthesis) or dividing them (analysis). When I use reflection to analyse an idea, separating what is common from what is proper in it, I am carrying out an abstraction. All these actions are functions of reflection.

490. Abstraction is quite different from universalisation and many errors have been caused by confusing them. In abstraction, something is subtracted from knowledge, for example, its particular characteristics; in universalisation, something is added [App., no. 8], and knowledge is universalised. Subtraction and addition are opposites.

491. In universalisation we add universality (intentio universalitatis, to use the Scholastic expression) which, as I have shown, is only the possibility of the thing (cf. 418-419). A precise description of universalisation would be: I receive a sensation; I add the idea of an ens that is causing the sensation (intellective perception); I consider this ens as possible; it is therefore universalised (pure idea). For example, let us suppose the ens is a dove. When I universalise the dove acting on my senses, I certainly do not remove anything from it: while I still have a vivid image of the dove before me with all its physical features clearly defined, I can add the possibility of other real doves corresponding in every detail to that phantasm. My representation of the dove is universal although it has remained entirely as it was before I universalised it. It has both the essential and the accidental characteristics of doves; only the reality is missing.

492. But if I had mentally taken away its colour, shape, movement, in fact, all its accidental qualities, replacing them with only what is essential to the genus dove, I would have also carried out an abstraction. My representation of the bird would be pure, abstract thought; it would be incomplete, imperfect and deficient.

493. Bearing in mind this distinction between universalisation and abstraction, we can say that all ideas are universal but not abstract. It is helpful to keep this distinction clear so that we may distinguish ideas which, because of their affinity, can be easily confused.

494. The reason for the confusion is that in every universalisation we set aside our judgment on the subsistence of the thing; this resembles abstraction.

495. However I think it is clearer not to use the word abstraction in this sense, because universalisation does not take anything away from the representation. It will help if I clarify the matter further.
The difference between the idea of a thing and judgment on its subsistence (cf. 402-407) has been pointed out: I can have the full idea of a thing without judging that it subsists. But when I judge that a thing subsists, I have at the same time the idea of it, and the judgment of its subsistence. The idea of the thing accompanied by the judgment is what I call intellectual perception of the thing (cf. 417).(33)

Intellectual perception certainly requires the idea of a thing but it also determines and fixes the idea on an individual actually felt. The idea, applied to something felt, illuminates it [App., no. 9], enabling the perception within it of an ens which we call 'body'.
If we consider the idea alone (one of the elements of perception), we see that it is universal; this universality, considered as an element of perception, exists in the idea. But the universality lies unnoticed in perception because it is considered in its relationship to the particular thing perceived by sense.

When I detach an idea from complete perception in order to consider it by itself, I seem to have abstracted it because I have removed its bond with the image and with the real thing; I have dismissed the subsistence of the thing. In this action, as I have said, there is apparently a kind of abstraction which could be called abstraction from subsistence or judgment.
When, in intellectual perception, I separate judgment about subsistence from an idea and retain only the idea, I do not remove the core, as it were, of the idea but only those things that are not its own and adhere to it without forming its nature. The persuasion of the subsistence of the thing represented by the idea is not the idea nor anything belonging to it. So the idea itself does not undergo the slightest abstraction or change; it remains just what it was when joined with the persuasion of the subsistence of the thing.
Strictly speaking, therefore, abstraction has not taken place; what abstraction there was concerned only the intellectual perception and not the idea, a part of the perception. If we wish to keep the word abstraction in this case, we must say that the idea was obtained by an abstraction carried out on the perception.

496. Again, if nothing is abstracted from the idea which is an element of intellective perception, the nature of the idea does not change when considered separately. If it is universal when contemplated separately from the perception, it was also universal in the perception, and not universalised through abstraction. Universalisation took place at the moment of the intellectual perception before the apparent abstraction (cf. 90-97).

497. This process, inappropriately called abstraction, concerns the perception, not the idea. In it the following three steps must be noted:

1. Corporeal sensation, phantasm, sense perception.

2. Union of what is felt corporeally with the idea of being in all its universality; this takes place in our own unity, as thinking subjects (intellective perception); thus: a) a judgment about the subsistence and b) the intuition of the particular ens or idea of the thing, take place in intellective perception simultaneously and with one operation.

3. Abstraction, or separation of the judgment from the idea, which gives the pure idea alone. Although the idea was universal from the first moment of its existence in the perception, it was considered still bound to the subsisting individual; dissolved from this bond, it stands alone in its universality.

498. Universalisation therefore is the faculty that produces ideas,(34) while abstraction is a faculty that changes their form and mode of being.

499. The whole of the ancient world classified things in two ways, as genera and species. Such a universal consensus suggests that the classification was not arbitrary but followed a distinction actually found in the faculties of the human spirit. This is in fact the case; close investigation shows that species and genera correspond to the faculties of universalisation and abstraction. The faculty of universalisation, which is the faculty of forming ideas, is the faculty relative to species (hence species are also called ideas);(35) to form genera, the faculty of abstraction is also needed.

500. We now have the key to understanding an important theory of Plato on ideas. We must note that ideas, which he understood to be substances separated from things and subsistent in themselves, were species and not genera [App., no. 10]. This makes me suspect that he had some notion of the difference between universalisation and abstraction.
Plato included types of individual things among his ideas. Now the type according to which a craftsman, for example, models his product must be complete in all its parts (cf. 398-401): it must have not only what is essential but also all the accidents due to it. The accidents may vary, but the product must have at least some of them -were the craftsman to have only the idea of an abstract thing without being able to add anything to it mentally, he could never produce it in reality.

501. But such an explanation would still not be enough for a proper understanding of Plato's ideas or for forming a true concept of the nature of species. We have to know more than that. Plato noticed that every ens in this universe is capable of greater or less perfection; he said that we can mentally assign to any ens its final and complete perfection, or at least that it is not absurd for us to be able to do that. Every ens, therefore, has a concept that can represent it in its full, natural perfection without defect. For Plato there could be only one such full and absolute concept; no ens could be thought of as having its final perfection except in one way only. This sort of intellectual optimism does in fact seem probable. However, leaving aside an investigation into the truth of the matter, which is the subject of ontology, I offer the following consideration.

If an ens has two forms of natural perfection, it has two primal concepts, two types, two ideas, which form two species of things. In this sense, the opinion that the individual of a species has only one form of natural perfection is true; if it had two, it would be two species or would belong to two species. All the ideas then that represent some defective ens are reduced to this idea of the ens that constitutes its ideal perfection; they are all the same idea more or less deficient and imperfect.

502. If a craftsman had in his mind the perfect idea of the product, he could produce a perfect work from it, and produce imperfect objects even more easily, since these are relative to the perfect idea, as everything imperfect is relative to its perfect form.

503. We can now see how the species of a thing originates. It is constituted by the most perfect idea, which contains all the accidents of the thing. This idea, being the type of perfection, requires and determines these accidents because, from among all accidents, they are demanded by its perfection. However, the idea also has an infinite number of other ideas subject to it, which represent the ens in its various states of imperfection without forming a new species. They are not truly other ideas, but the most perfect idea without some part or endowment which lessens but does not change it.

504. Besides the faculties mentioned above, we also have the power to devote our attention to several ideas at once and reduce them to unity by means of their relationships. This means that we can form composites ideas.

(31) I recognise two kinds of perception: sense perception and intellective. [Cf. App., nos. 3, 4, 5].

(32) We can say that all this teaching is contained in the following passage of St. Thomas Aquinas: Intellectus enim UNICA VIRTUTE cognosit omnia quae pars sensitiva diversis potentiis apprehendit (perceives), et etiam ALIA MULTA; intellectus etiam quanto fuerit altior (that is, the higher the reflection), tanto ALIQUO UNO plura coognoscere potest, ad quae cognoscenda intellectus inferior (a lower reflection) non pertingit nisi per multa [The intellect knows WITH A SINGLE POWER everything that the sensitive part apprehends (perceives) with its different powers. The intellect also knows MANY OTHER THINGS. The higher the intellection (the higher the reflection), the more the intellect can know many things WITH ONE INTELLECTION. A lower intellection (a lower reflection) would know these things only through many things] (C. Gentiles, I, q. 31).

(33) The distinction between these two mental operations, idea and judgment, did not escape the great St. Thomas. In the following passage, where he makes the distinction, he calls knowledge what I call perception, and apprehension what I call idea: Ad cognitionem duo concurrere oportet, scilicet APPREHENSIONEM, et JUDICIUM de re apprehensa [Two things are necessary for knowledge: APPREHENSION, and JUDGMENT of the thing apprehended] (De Veritate, q. 10, art. 8). Whenever I can, I very happily quote similar passages, from Aquinas and others. In the present work, it is often sufficient to express the teachings of antiquity in contemporary language. Furthermore, St. Thomas' use of 'judgment' refers not only to subsistent things but to anything which is affirmed as such after it has been perceived. The word in our mind also has this extension of meaning because everything we affirm is considered an ens, according to the law to which, as we saw, our mind is subject.

(34) Note how all the greatest philosophers of antiquity were aware that human knowledge is simply universal apprehension. Both Plato and Aristotle expressly say this in many places. In the Metaphysics, for example, Aristotle says, Quatenus universale quid est, eatenus omnia cognoscimus [In so far as there is something universal, we know all things] (bk. 3, less. 9). St. Thomas comments, Sic igitur scientia de rebus singularibus non habetur nisi in quantum sciuntur universalia [Knowledge of individual things is totally dependent on their being known universally]. We must therefore have something universal in us, if we are to know individual things. This explains why, in full agreement with antiquity, I make the faculty of universalisation the source of knowledge.

(35) Originally 'species' meant 'aspect', 'something seen', 'representation', 'idea', etc., but it came to mean certain classes of things because every idea, being universal, is the foundation of a class.