CHAPTER 16

The natural disharmonies between the perception of
our body as co-subject, and as agent foreign to 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 an ens is perceived as foreign to the subject, an agent is felt. But in the perception of an ens as subject or, to be more exact, as co-subject, the one who has the experience is felt, that is, feels himself in and with the subject.(235)
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 sensations; second, as something passive that feels but does not produce 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
he 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 of light with my sense of touch.(236) 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 stimulated in any 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, contrary 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 has the experience is sensible to himself.
But that which acts is the opposite of that which experiences an act (cf. 983).
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' and vice versa.

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 inconfusable 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 by us as subject, in us . 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 sensories, particularly of sight and touch. This is not a sensation but an external term of our sensories.

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 do indeed perceive the impression with their touch and sight equally with the person receiving it, but he also experiences the sensation accompanying the impression.

987. 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.

989. Epicurus thought sensation could be explained by imagining tiny statuettes emerging from bodies, flying through the air and reaching us. These perfect little images of bodies constituted our sensations. This explanation is a flight of fancy and explains nothing.
The error consists in turning what we know as the external term of our senses into a subjective sensation. The notion of the statuettes, a creation of Epicurus' phantasy, could come only from what we know with our senses, from things perfectly similar to what we touch and see. Nevertheless, instead of being able to touch and see them in reality, our phantasy imagines them to be so small that our sensories are too large to perceive them; our touch and sight would need to be more delicate. Sensation cannot be anything like this: it does not have a particle affecting our senses and capable of being seen with a microscope or touched with something more sensitive than our hand. Sensation could not be anything extrasubjective. It can be the act only of that which feels, the very opposite of what is extrasubjective and felt.(237)

990. Aristotle likened the sensation caused in us by external bodies to an imprint made in soft wax: the wax receives the form of the seal but nothing of its matter. This likeness is false and materialist. When we speak about an impression made in wax, we are speaking about something we see with our eyes and touch with our hands, in other words, about something external to our senses. But sensation is not at all like this; it is not an external agent. It is an experience felt internally by our sensories, or better, something experienced by our sensitive principle. If an impression made in wax is to resemble the sensation, the impression would have to feel itself. In this case, we would not have explained the sensation but simply transferred it from our skin to the wax, and would still need to know what it is. The impression and the sensation in the wax would be foreign to each other, two incommunicable opposites, lacking any likeness.

991. Hume called sensations 'impressions'. Reid rightly points out that he should have told us whether this word meant the operation of the mind or the object of the mind.(238) Many sophists have founded their theories on this confused and improper use of the word.

992. Darwin defines idea as 'a contraction, movement or configuration of the fibres forming the immediate organ of sense';(239) sensation is 'an actuation or change of either the central parts of the sensory or all of the sensory. It begins from an extreme part of the sensory in the muscles or organs of sense'.(240) We clearly see here the gross confusion between the extrasubjective term of perception and the subjective sensation. The words 'contraction', 'movement' and 'configuration' were coined precisely to indicate terms of the experience of touch and sight, because words indicate things in so far as we perceive them. But sensation expresses the experience of the sentient subject itself and not a term. Hence, a contraction, movement and configuration can be touched, at least with a more delicate touch and eye than ours. But it is ridiculous and absurd to say that an idea is something that can be submitted to the observation of touch or sight, no matter how sharp these senses may be.

993. The same ambiguity, the same clumsy confusion, is present everywhere in Cabanis, another materialist. Although he does not make impression and sensation altogether identical, he says that sensation consists in the reaction of the brain to an impression carried to it. He finds nothing strange in establishing an analogy between the stomach and the brain, and defining the brain as the bowel which digests thought! Yet he never ceases to call for the greatest exactitude in philosophical expressions! He claims to follow a precise, experimental method and to use a kind of surveyer's measure in the sequence of his propositions. The following is a sample of his strict, philosophical style:

Someone may object that organic movements by which functions of the brain are carried out are unknown to us. But the action by which the stomach nerves determine the different operations constituting digestion and the way they use the gastric juices which have a very active solvent power do not invalidate our research in any way. We see nutrients enter the stomach and emerge with new qualities. We conclude that the stomach has brought about this alteration. We also see impressions that reach the brain by means of the nerves and then become isolated and incoherent. This bowel becomes active and acts upon them, and at once sends them back changed into ideas which are manifested externally by facial expression, gesture or verbal and written signs. With the same certainty we can conclude that the brain somehow digests impressions and organically produces the secretion of thought.(241)

We certainly cannot doubt that, simultaneously with the sensation felt in our consciousness, our eye perceives our organs in another configuration; it perceives impressions upon them and movements. But this means that although the order of our subjective modifications (that is, our own) is by nature totally unlike the order of the extrasubjective modifications (that is, of the external agent on our sensories, or of our organs themselves understood in a material sense), they are governed by a law of relationship which needs to be carefully observed and determined. We must therefore pay very close attention to and note the movements and shapes presented to our touch and sight in the affected organs when we are internally experiencing a sensation. At the same time however, the experienced sensation, because we cannot touch or see it (this itself is an absurd and unintelligible statement), must be distinguished from the movement and shapes observable by touch and sight, granted the shapes are large enough. In fact, shapes exist for us and are named solely because they are convenient terms of touch, sight and the other senses. They are not perceived by another faculty.

Cabanis would not have been subject to this strange mental confusion and obscurity if he had controlled his imagination and kept to the facts which he claimed to follow. It seemed clear to him that we see impressions come to the brain through the nerves in the same way that we see food enter the stomach. We see the brain change these impressions into ideas, judgments, etc., just as we see the stomach change food. I am well acquainted with Spallanzani's experiments on the digestion and force of the stomachs of chickens and other animals; I am aware that in opening many stomachs, he had the opportunity of allowing the senses to observe food in all the different states it passed through under the action of the bowels. But relative to the digestion of the brain, for which Cabanis says we have the same certainty as for the stomach, I honestly confess that I have never read of experiments by any scientist on the impressions transmitted by the nerves to the brain and then digested by the brain. It would indeed be profitable if various animals could be opened and we could follow these impressions on their way and extract them like food from the bowel or find them in the brain in various states of digestion, changed now into the state of ideas, now into that of judgments, now into other combinations. It would be helpful to be able to put these impressions under a microscope and submit them to any other experiment we choose, just as a mixture is extracted in different stages of digestion from the bowels and intestines of animals. Cabanis asks us to believe that these impressions are seen to enter the brain in the same way as food enters the stomach. I cannot say whether he has seen these impressions or not, but I know that I myself and others have never seen them. Moreover, I note that his very expressions contain the seed of his error. This superficial man supposes that everything we know is known through sight and touch and the other senses, and that only the external terms of these senses exist. According to this supposition, even ideas must be seen and touched, because we know them. His expressions, taken from the sense of sight and applied to feelings and ideas as well as to food in the stomach, are clear proof of this. But it is also clear from the following extract that he was unaware of internal experience, the other source of our cognitions, and reduced everything solely to the external experience of the senses:

The only ideas we have of objects come from the observable phenomena they present us. Their nature and essence must be found solely in the composition of these phenomena.(242)
Because he excluded observation of the internal facts of feeling and consciousness, he inevitably fell into absurd, material empiricism. This was the result of very defective observation which forgets and excludes the series of sublime, noble facts of nature presented by the feeling, thinking subject to himself.

994. We must however acknowledge that the distinction between subjective and extrasubjective is not easily determined. We see this in authors of sound teaching who, unaware and unsuspecting, use inexact expressions which favour materialism and, like tiny roots which hold the teaching so firmly in the earth that it can never be uprooted or revealed, contribute to sad, ignoble teaching [App., no. 43].

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 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 object, he does so only through the relationship between object and subject. But this science does not terminate in the object; its proper purpose and concern is the consciousness proper to 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.

999. I note that it has always been customary to consider the body under this limited respect. As a result, great philosophers regarded as absurd and contradictory the opinion that the body as presented externally to our senses communicates with the spirit. They rejected physical influence and turned to other systems, the most famous of which is Malebranche's occasional causes and Leibniz's pre-established harmony.
The necessity of these systems, however, arose from defective observation of the body: the body was considered purely as it appears externally to our senses through which it makes itself partially known as something outside us.(243) But the problem requires the body to be considered as co-subject, that is, how is the body one subject with the soul?

1000. The union of the body with the soul was falsely imagined as an intermingling of two fluids or the close combination of two solids. They are things subject to external experience; we can examine them with our eyes, touch them and perform many sense experiments on them, except that the spirit was imagined to be so fine that it escaped external observation even by the most sensitive instruments. But all the time the spirit and its union with the body was considered to be and made to be like very small visible things and therefore subject to the observation of the senses if these were delicate enough to correspond to the extremely delicate intricacy of the objects.

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.
In this way the body could be found in feeling itself, as St. Thomas thought, because action which has a mode and a term called space is done in the soul.
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 primal fact, constituting our very nature, its light dispels all difficulties we experience in admitting the existence of this union. These difficulties are inconceivable; they make no sense.

1003. Subjective and extrasubjective perception, therefore, provide two different and in some ways contrary concepts of the body as co-subject and extrasubject.
The opposition arises simply from the limitation of these mutually exclusive concepts which furnish contrary propositions about the 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 the 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 the 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 through determinate 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 some 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 'my body' 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 the matter of our interior feeling in so far as it is felt by this feeling. It is term and stimulus of our individual sensories 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 potency is that the object is not necessary for the subsistence of the power while the matter is a constituent of the potency 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 potency. As we know, every potency is a first act which, given the necessary conditions, produces various other acts dependent upon differing conditions. The first, constant act is called potency relative to the secondary, transient acts. Every potency, 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 potency or first act needs its own internal term without which it could neither be nor be thought. Similarly, because a potency is something stable, while its operation is transient, 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 potency remains; but if the term of the potency is removed, the potency ceases to exist.

1009. Matter is a stable term, proper to certain potencies, with which it forms a single reality. Because this term is joined with the potencies, 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 act finishes externally), but matter. Nevertheless, this characteristic of indivisibility from the potency is insufficient to constitute the matter of a potency because every potency has a term, but not matter.

1010. The second difference between the object and matter of a potency is that the object as such is neither receptive of action nor capable of being receptive of action.(244) On the other hand, the matter of any potency is mentally conceived as modifiable, that is, having no activity of its own relative to the potency. The objects of my cognitions 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 potencies, are in a state of mere presence to them, an impassive state, while the terms of our practical potencies are definitely passive. Now if the term of the first act, which constitutes the potency itself, presents itself to us in an impassive state of simple presence to the potency 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 potency, that is, an object so contantly united with the subject that it places the subject in first act. This first act, the cause of many operations, is called potency. Hence I have called the idea of universal being, the objective form of the intellect. Our body, as felt, on the other hand, I 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 the 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 the movement 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 potency without which development cannot take place. The lack itself is an obstacle to the perfection that could be comunicated to an ens. Matter, therefore, does not offer a real, active resistance to the 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 the matter of the fundamental feeling because it shows that this 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 constitute: 1. the relationship of the sensitive body with external bodies; and 2. 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 potency. The force of its matter is therefore the passive, imperfect part of the potency, 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.(245)

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 sensories 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 an ens can draw this ens 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 conditions. 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 on the body as on 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 entia 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 disposed in this way, 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 entia.
2. These different entia arise: a) partly because subjectivity plays a great role in the perception of bodies, causing them to exist as different proximate terms of our 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 ens). 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.(246)

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 the 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 it own action and the law governing this 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 not particular laws but the mechanical, physical and chemical laws common to all inanimate bodies. 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 our spirit.

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

I. 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. II. It seems evident, if we go on to speak about the action of our body on the spirit, that this action also 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 the 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 ens, which receives but does not give.(247)

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 ens can stimulate activity in another, which can in its turn act upon the ens 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:

I. 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.

II. 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, imparting to it the activity we call 'life', through which the body acquires the final properties of living bodies.

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

IV. The fundamental feeling pervades the body and makes it its matter, that is, its seat, its mode of being, its extension.

V. 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.

(235) I refrain from saying 'as an object' because the body is only an object relatively to intellective perception, in which it is apprehended as an ens. sense perception perceives only an action foreign to 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. Hence St. Thomas' statement: Species intelligibilis principium formale est intellectualis operationis, sicut cuiuslibet forma agentis principium est propriae operationis [The intelligible species is the formal principle of intellectual action, just as the form of any agent is the principle of its action] (C. Gent., I, 46).

(236) 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.

(237) It would seem impossible to confuse the subjective perception of a body with the extrasubjective perception in the crude way we find in certain materialists. They allow themselves to be deluded by phantasy and believe they have explained something when they have joined together what is essentially opposite and irreconciliable. In a lecture he gave on light (Lect. 7), Robert Hook, a founding member of the Royal Society of London, to which he gave many lectures, makes ideas material substances. He thinks that the brain is composed of a certain matter capable of manufacturing the ideas of each sense. According to him, the ideas of sight are formed by a kind of matter similar to Bologna stone or some kind of phosphorous. The ideas of hearing are made from matter similar to violin strings, or to glass which receives a sound from vibrations of the air. The soul can construct hundreds of these ideas in a day. As soon as each idea is formed it is pushed away from the centre. All these ideas together with the last idea, which remains nearest the centre, form an unbroken chain. It seems impossible that a sane man can think things like this, worthy only of someone deranged!

(238) Essay on the Powers, etc., Essay 1, c. 1.

(239) Sect. 4, c. 3. - Darwin and all materialists do not know the real distinction between sensation and idea.

(240) Sect. 5, c. 1.

(241) Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme etc., Mem. 2.

(242) Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme etc., Mem. 2.

(243) If everything we perceive with the senses is outside us, how could an action inside us be explained by what is essentially and by hypothesis outside us?

(244) 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 there are no objects, the concept of which demands sameness and impassibility.

(245) 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 or extended. 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 [App., no. 44].

(246) 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.

(247) Hence St. Thomas shows that the soul is something different from the body (S.T., 1, q. 75, art. 1).