Development Of The Human Soul

Appendix 14. (1461).

This fact of sense deceived the Aristotelians, who attributed a species of abstraction to sense. But St. Thomas uses it most aptly to demonstrate that abstraction does not pertain to the object but to a psychological law. He says: 'We can see a similarity of this in sense. Sight sees the colour of an apple without its odour. If we ask where is the colour seen without the odour, it is clear that the colour is seen only in the apple. The fact that it is perceived without the odour is partly due to vision in so far as the likeness of colour but not of odour is in vision. Similarly the humanity we understand is only in this or that human being, but the apprehension of humanity without its individual conditions, which is abstraction FOLLOWED BY THE CONSIDERATION OF UNIVERSALITY, concerns humanity as perceived by the intellect in which lies THE LIKENESS OF THE NATURE OF SPECIES, but not of individuating principles' (S.T., 1, q. 85, art. 2, ad 2). We must note several points here. An agent acting in two differently disposed patients produces two different passions. Hence the one and same body acting in different organs produces different passions. One organ cannot receive the action proper to another organ; for example, the organ of sight cannot receive the action of odour but only the action which causes colour; it is limited to colour and totally without odour or other sensations.

This is still not what the Scholastics call intentio universalitatis [consideration of universality], because real odour is as particular to the organ of smell as colour is to the eye, and a body to any sensory. Sense therefore contains what is particular, which can be partial in the way, if we prefer, that the effect of smell is partial relative to all the other effects which a body can produce in the various sensories. There is nothing universal here. Sense contains something exclusive and negative: the sensation of colour excludes that of odour and the other sensations pertaining to the other senses. But what is universal does not have this characteristic of exclusivity and negativity; rather it is something that broadens out and encloses particular infinities in its possibility. Furthermore it cannot be partial because both a part and a whole can be universalised provided they are considered possible (ideal): an odour or sound can be universalised as a body can, even when endowed with all its sensible qualities without exception - the idea of a body is certainly universal. Hence, because the consideration of universality consists in what is possible, only the mind, not sense, can attain to this consideration. Sense does not feel what is possible but only what is real. Universalisation therefore and its sequel, abstraction, are operations of the mind, different operations which must not be confused. The mind can universalise only by adding what is possible, that is, the idea, to things perceived by sense. It cannot therefore extract this idea from sense; on the contrary, it adds it to things felt.

The Aristotelian illusion was caused by their failure to consider that sense, stripped of all that the understanding adds to it, feels only its modified self, and in this modification feels the direct (extrasubjective) modifier. The understanding however perceives an ens, an object, in opposition to itself as subject. Thus the modifications of sense receive a limit from the simple limitation of the sentient subject and of the action done in the subject. But the object, the ens, is that which is, and can be given only in its entirety to the understanding. Hence, when the understanding limits it by abstraction, it necessarily does so by limiting its attention but without ceasing to have the entire object before the mind. A particular sensory however has only its own passion, for example, odour; the other passions do not pertain to it. But the whole of ens pertains to the intellect, and subjective attention alone is limited by a special act so that a part of ens may be considered more vividly. If this were not the case, the human being would take the abstract as the entire ens.