Chapter 6

Sense as 'primal potency'

966. I said that the extended felt element is one of the terms of the human soul. Corporeal sensitivity, although related to this term, must not be thought to comprise the whole of the sensitivity of human nature; it is simply a special sensitivity.

967. We recall that the soul has the nature of principle. This principle cannot be conceived without its correlative term because a principle without a term is an absurdity and nothing.
If however we conceive the principle joined to its term, we immediately have the concept of something whose existence is essentially distinct from the term united to it, and endowed with own activity.
The nature of this activity is feeling. This explains why I defined the human soul as a substantial feeling (cf. 81).

A feeling however cannot be conceived without the two poles, so to speak, which I have called sentient and felt. Thus, if on the one hand the human soul is essentially feeling, and on the other is by nature a principle, not a term, we must say that essentially it is felt as principle, not as something whose nature is term. But because the felt element, as such, is by nature term, principle and term are identified in the felt principle. This means that the soul which feels is that which is felt in its term, with the result that the principle in the felt term becomes felt itself; in other words, it is individuated.

968. Two kinds of feeling must therefore be distinguished: that which pertains to the principle of feeling and that which pertains to the term. The principle is sensible in a way different from that of the term. What is felt is properly speaking term, but the principle is present in the term, so that it is felt only because it adheres to, and is situated in the term, whose essence is to be felt. Hence the soul, that is, the principle, does not have its own sensibility but sensibility drawn from its term. Nevertheless the soul's term, which is proper not extraneous to the soul, is produced by the soul itself precisely because the soul is the principle of the term. But if the soul is considered at the moment when it has not yet produced its term, it is totally insensible and not soul. Moreover, although this moment can and must be conceived by the mind because it pertains in fact to the order of being, it would be an error to think of it as an instant different from the moment when the soul becomes a nature and an individual through the production of its term. The soul becomes a nature in a single instant in such a way that the soul which produces the term is not divided by a moment's delay from the soul that has produced the term; in the very instant that the term is produced the soul is producer. Consequently, the principle of the productive act and the completion of the act itself take place at the same instant without any delay whatsoever. Nevertheless, these are two ontological moments distinguishable by the mind. The mind sees an intrinsic action in the entia, an order in the action, and in the order a before and after which is very different indeed from the before and after of time. In other words, we have here not chronological but ontological succession.

969. Let us return to our argument. The soul, when already formed, feels the principle and term, but the way in which the sentient principle is sensible differs considerably from the way in which the felt term is sensible, as follows:

1. The sentient principle is not sensible in itself simply as producer, but through and in the felt element it produces. The felt element, however, is felt and therefore sensible through its own essence.

2. The sentient element is equally sensible in every felt element and can be called universal sense. But the felt elements which exclude one another vary. This sensibility can be called special sense.

3. The sentient element as such is always identical; the felt element varies. Because the sentient element is principle by nature, it is one and simple like the vertex of an angle, although the two lines forming the angle are divergent and of different lengths. Nevertheless the sentient element is felt together with its connections to different felt elements. The soul therefore feels its potencies, functions, faculties, acts, etc.

970. The way, in which the soul feels itself and all that it does, I call psychical sensitivity.

971. I must now say something about special sensitivities. At least four can be conceived as possible in the human soul. I call them corporeal, pneumatic, ideological, and theoric. Corporeal and ideological are certain; pneumatic and theoric are not so evident.

972. The nature of special sensitivity requires the felt element to be a different entity from the feeling element. Hence, in every special sensitivity there is some otherness; the soul feels something different from itself. This otherness is a characteristic common to all possible special sensitivities.

973. Otherness reveals itself in two ways, as passivity and as mere receptivity. Passivity is present in corporeal and pneumatic sensitivity; receptivity, in ideological and theoric sensitivity.

974. Passivity must be carefully distinguished from receptivity. These are two ways by which the soul feels and perceives otherness, that is, some entity different from its own entity. The double characteristic distinguishes them as follows:

1. In receptivity, the thing received is not modified by the soul receiving it, because the thing is immutable. For example, the nature of a gold coin is not changed by being placed in a purse, nor does the coin cease to be what it was simply because it is placed in the purse. In the same way, ideal being is in the human soul.(73) In the case of passivity, the entity acting in the soul takes something from the nature and activity of the receiver, that is, of the soul, which responds by giving being to the entity. Thus the extended felt element receives extension from the soul.(74) The foreign force, although acting in opposition to the tendency of the soul, changes the extended felt element with the help of the soul which is aroused to terminate its act spontaneously in another extension.

2. In receptivity, the soul is not properly speaking modified but simply acquires what it had previously lacked. Although the purse in which the coin was placed does not change nature, it is worth more full than empty; although a shaft of wood is not changed or modified when a metal arrowhead is added to it, it becomes a new instrument, is given a new name and has a new capacity. In the same way, when ideal being is added to a sentient principle, the principle properly speaking is not modified; it has simply acquired what it previously lacked. From being a sensitive soul, it has become a rational soul. On the other hand, passivity properly speaking modifies the soul, as in corporeal sense. If the felt element is posited in act by the soul itself, the soul does more than receive. It acts, and its action is reduced to the general concept of modification. Moreover, when its felt element is changed, the soul again needs to concur with the change, although it may resist for a short time. Resistance followed by inducement to action is already a modification of the acting subject.

The soul, which cannot offer any resistance to ideal being, nor co-operate in forming it, must simply receive. The soul, which cannot act before it exists, does not exist prior to its contact with ideal being. It cannot therefore oppose ideal being. Consequently modification of the soul is out of the question. What happens is this: on the one hand, the soul simply acquires something; on the other hand, the power which posits ideal being in the soul acts creatively.
Action therefore corresponds to passion; giving to reception. The Scholastics, who sometimes confused the two, introduced a tendency to sensism in their teachings. They spoke about the intellect as if it were a fully passive, not receptive potency, and thus made it too much like sense.

975. The term of corporeal sensitivity is the extended element with its passions and modifications, that is, the intestine movement of the extended felt element. The term is also the organisation, that is, a given arrangement of the parts, and hence the harmony of the sensible movements.
The extended felt element supposes the continuum, and only one continuum;(75) if there were two continua, the two felt elements would have no relationship or communication with each other. Moreover, because the sentient and felt elements are always together, there would be two sentient elements just as there are two continua, without any relationship or communication between them.

But if the parts of the continuum move according to some law, without ceasing to be continuous, stimulation of the sentient element takes place. Together with stimulation there is vivid sensation corresponding to the intestine movement of the felt parts. These movements and corresponding sense-experiences can be simultaneously multiple and in different localities because they are joined by a felt continuum in which they arise, and by the oneness and simplicity of the sentient principle.
Our actual, reflective attention is drawn much more easily to stimulated sense-experiences corresponding to local, intestine movements, than to a general, uniform feeling. We think we feel simultaneously in many separate places. In fact, we feel a single, continuous extended element which is not felt uniformly but more vividly and variedly in certain parts where the tiny movements are aroused, as I said.

976. Although the fundamental, extended felt element is limited, it is not in itself shaped. Shape is perceived only when we distinguish the lines and surfaces surrounding and forming it. These lines and surfaces, which are not distinct in the fundamental feeling, are distinguishable only by the perception of something outside their boundaries.(76) But the fundamental feeling does not distinguish the boundaries, outside of which feeling ceases, because it does not exceed the confines of its extended element. If we take sight as an example, we will be able to understand the difference between boundaries marked by a perceived line or surface and those determined by the cessation of feeling. When I look at the table where I am writing, I distinguish lines which terminate the table, and I distinguish them because my eye also encompasses what is outside them, that is, the rest of the room. But I cannot see or determine the boundaries of my field of vision, much less compare the field of vision with another larger area, even if I wished to do so. My vision does not extend but ceases beyond the field. Consequently, if I determine the shape of my field by my vision alone and not by reasoning, I cannot say whether the area enclosed by my vision is round rather than square, or any other shape.

977. I explained elsewhere how special sense-experiences are caused by stimulation of the fundamental feeling (cf. 315-317, 420-428). But it has to be admitted that philosophy still cannot explain all the very extraordinary varieties of feelingexperiences, nor classify and list them fully.
I distinguished sense-experiences into shaped and nonshaped. I called the former 'surface shapes' because they constitute the surface or part of the surface of our body and of bodies exterior to our own, for example, sense-experiences of touch, sight, etc. Non-shaped sense-experiences, although dealt with more attentively by physiologists, have been practically ignored by psychologists.

978. A shaped felt element, we must note, is not felt in us. In other words, we do not feel it by referring it to ourselves. It is felt in itself as a surface, which is certainly not in us in the way that a small surface is in a large surface. In fact, it has no place or, if we prefer, is itself its own place. For example, the field of vision is not in another space larger than itself, but is exactly the total space seen. The place where sense-experiences are located therefore is formed either when we consider a part of the surface sensation relative to the whole felt surface, or when our imagination joins many felt surfaces together to form a single surface which, as I explained,(77) is, if not felt, at least imagined or understood in the way we form the concept of unlimited space by means of movement. But I discussed the locality of sense-experiences in the Anthropology (cf. 205-229).

979. Here, I simply wish to point out that because shaped, surface sense-experiences have as such no other space than themselves, we can understand how the internal sense of phantasy is able to reproduce them. These feeling-experiences have no relationship of place with our body, that is, they do not appear to us as located on the surface of our body or within it, but in themselves, as I said. It is fully possible therefore that the image of a bell-tower or church, for example, corresponds to the movements of that part of the brain which is the organ of phantasy. The felt element is that which appears to us; it is not the brain as anatomically known, nor what appears in the brain, which is not seen. Indeed, its only locality is that which appears in the image or in the vision.

980. How then do we perceive the surface of our body? How do we know that the surface of the human body which we see is the surface of our body and not of someone else's?
Surface sensation alone does not tell us, but surface sensation in relationship with other sense-experiences does. For example, if I am touched by a foreign body, I have a single sense-experience, but if I touch myself, I have two sense-experiences, which I refer to the same place. I conclude that I am both toucher and what is touched. Thus, if I see a body and experience a tactile sensation when this body is touched by any other body at a point I can see, I conclude that the touched body I see is mine. This also was discussed at great length in the Anthropology (cf. 205-228).

981. As I said, no one has yet managed to explain the different kinds of sense-experiences. The general principle for their explanation however can be deduced from my whole theory of corporeal feelings and stated as follows:
'Intestine movement which takes place in the continuous felt element is at least the co-relative, extrasubjective phenomenon of sense-experiences, if not their cause. Variety of movement must therefore correspond to a variety of sense-experiences. Hence, this variety of movement can be, even if in fact it is not, the explanation of the variety of sense-experiences.'

In order to apply the principle, we first have to list all the varieties of the continuous felt element and of the different organs that can be conceived in the intestine movement. We would also have to establish, with the aid of experience, what kind of senseexperience corresponds to each of those varieties. This task pertains to the future progress of philosophy. I am quite unable to undertake it, and must be satisfied with some suggestions which may perhaps open the way to the great study necessary for the application of the principle.

982. 1. Intestine movement is as varied as organisation. Indeed, diversity of organisation not only causes diversity of intestine movements but even prior to this causes some diversity in fundamental feeling, and in a variety of ways. For example, the concentration of the fundamental feeling is greater in those parts of the sensible body where texture is more delicate and compact than in another equally sized space where texture is porous, less dense and less compact.

983. 2. The total size of the sensible animal body determines the extension of the fundamental feeling, which therefore varies as size varies.

984. 3. The intestine movement which produces acquired sense-experiences varies in keeping with the variation of the fundamental intestine movement in different parts of the animal body. The fundamental intestine movement itself is produced by the life and sensuous instincts whose very action receives its law from organisation.

985. Apart from this, we can say that the intestine movement which corresponds to acquired sense-experiences is explained in all its varieties by the following three causes: 1. the varying organisation of the body and of its individual parts; 2. the varying activity of the animal instinct, and 3. the variety of stimuli that initiate the movements.

986. But is the intestine movement under discussion a subjective or purely extrasubjective phenomenon? The answer is provided by factual description.

But how do we know that the optic and acoustic nerves oscillate? Reason tells us, although it is not absurd to imagine that the oscillation can be externally observed. When we imagine vibration or oscillation, we are certainly speaking about something we know by external observation; if we had never seen or experienced vibration, we could not imagine vibration of the nerves of sight and hearing. Vibration is therefore a phenomenon whose nature is the same as that of phenomena which fall under our sight and external senses.

For example, if we look at the oscillatory movements of a spring, we have another visual sense-experience in which the spring and its movement are the felt element. A similar movement is found precisely in the intestine movement of the optic nerve to which the first sensation of colour corresponds. Relative to this first sense-experience, the intestine movement is extrasubjective, as we saw, but relative to the second, it becomes subjective because it forms the felt element of this senseexperience. Every intestine movement therefore to which a sense-experience corresponds is extrasubjective relative to the sense-experience, but can stimulate a second sense-experience which takes the stimulus as its term.

Here, we must bear in mind that the reasoning we make about the first sense-experience can be applied to the second. If the second sense-experience had as its term the intestine movement of the first, it certainly did not have as its term its own intestine movement, which could become the term of a third sense-experience. A person who saw the frequent movement of the spring as it expanded and retracted, or even saw the oscillation of the other person's optic nerve, would not therefore see the oscillation aroused in his own optic nerve to which his own sense-experience corresponds.
We could go on to infinity with a series of sense-experiences, but it would always remain generally true that 'the intestine movement of each sense-experience is not the felt element of the sense-experience. Nevertheless it can have the nature of a felt element for the next sense-experience, and therefore be something extrasubjective relative to the first, and subjective relative to the second'.

987. We must next consider carefully how movement can pertain to the felt element. Movement in the felt element is not a single, simple sense-experience but a succession of sense-experiences aroused in the extended felt element. If we perceive a movement with an organ - for example, our eye catches sight of a shooting star - we have to suppose that our organ is organised with a complex of parts, each of which can be freely moved independently of the others. The organ is thus a kind of complex of distinct organs. This is how I described the structure of the optic nerve, that is, it is not a single nerve but a bundle of filaments, like little tubes. Each of these can oscillate internally and externally with varying frequency. This causes a different colour and successive, different colours, according to the oscillations of the different filaments.(78) Here we see how varying organisation changes the manner of feeling. If the eye were so constructed that each of the tiniest filaments making up the cord were unable to move with its own movement, but all the filaments had to move as one with the same rhythm and at the same time, there would be no variety of colours nor sensation of movement.

988. Various colours and sounds correspond to the number of vibrations or oscillations of the nerves which control the vibrations. It is also clear that the greater power and rapidity with which some parts of our body move depends on 1. their special organisation which makes them more prompt and swift to move, and 2. the greater activity of their animal instinct. Once again therefore different organisation and the resulting different action of instinct explain the different human sensories.

989. There is then no relationship and similarity between the number of vibrations and the sensation of sound. As I said, vibrations relative to sound are an extrasubjective phenomena; sound itself is subjective and of a totally different nature. Nevertheless, if we accept that feeling is connected with the atoms of matter, we can easily conceive how intestine movement, which does not sever continuity, would alter but not displace the felt element, whose nature is to be continuous and without sensible parts. Intestine movement alters the felt element by producing in it stimulation, which I have described elsewhere. Stimulation depends on the primal laws of the life instinct, whose ultimate explanation is found in the depths of creation.

990. Relative to the different kinds of sense-experiences and their varying modes and degrees, attention is needed to the size of the sensible body, to its form and the form of the individual organs, to the diversity of textures and to the diversity of molecules contained one within another. In the case of molecules, we need to study their different, denser orders, their varying smallness of size, their shape and their points of contact, their special mobility, the different directions in which they move and the varying degree to which they communicate and propagate this movement, together with its rapidity and frequency. All these and other similar varieties found in animal bodies and in their parts are circumstances that need study. They offer an explanation of the various kinds of sense-experiences.

991. The second special sensitivity I distinguished was pneumatic sensitivity, as I call it. By this kind of sensitivity, I understand the faculty by which we feel the spirit of others, or receive from them a feeling which makes them present to us.

992. This faculty has scarcely been studied and may appear something new. However, I think that observation makes its existence probable. It is true that because human beings are mixed beings, their sensitivity can never have a pure spirit as a direct term. Nevertheless, I think that one soul may feel another soul or spirit by means of the body and in the body.
In fact, an animate body gives sense-experiences which differ in character from those given by an inanimate body. I remember reading in a work of Count de Maistre a very acute and eloquent passage about that mysterious, profound communication present in a kiss and in the feelings it produces. In such communications there would seem to be something living and spiritual which cannot be attributed to matter alone. In love and friendship, two souls seem to feel each other and communicate with each other by affection and the union of their bodies.

993. Furthermore, it seems to me that this spiritual communication must not be restricted to beings of the same nature. Angels could also in some way make themselves sensible to human beings by acting on their bodies in an appropriate way.
This topic is highly promising and deserves careful study.

994. Leaving the above investigation to the philosophers who follow me, I will interrupt my argument to consider the merit of the works of Gall and Spurzheim in the light of what has been said so far.
The teaching of these two physiologists begins from the following principle: 'The brain is not a single organ where all the actions of understanding originate, but a complex of nerve systems or distinct organs, whose individual function is to produce a particular faculty.'

995. In this principle and in the teaching which the authors develop from it, we must distinguish what is true, the solid base of phrenology, from what is false. The erroneous element results from ignorance of the most important and evident psychological truths. The observations which the authors use as evidence support the truth of their claims, but the mistakes, far from being the result of accurate observations about the form of the brain and its parts, are simply a product of the imagination and arbitrary judgment. This is quite common in the works of physiologists.

996. The true part can be reduced to the following:

The soul, although a single principle, has several terms. One of these is the extended element which arouses general corporeal sensitivity in the soul. Various organs can be distinguished in this term. These cause corporeal sensitivity, when modified in different ways, to divide into different modes of feeling, which are then considered as separate faculties. Consequently, it is acceptable for the brain, although primarily considered as a single organ, to be seen as an aggregate of various organs. Each of these controls a branch of corporeal sensitivity, provided we do not think each is independent of the others, that is, a continuous extended element separate from the others. As we saw, the term of the soul is certainly a single continuum with differently organated parts which move with such harmony that all the others concur with the particular movement of each.

997. This, and this alone, can be the foundation of phrenology. The errors which Gall, Spurzheim and other phrenologists have introduced into it, are principally the following:

1. First error. They confuse the order of sensitivity with the order of intelligence. The functions of the different organs of which the brain is composed can indeed be regarded as faculties of sensitivity but never of intelligence. This confusion resulted from the following fact: sensitivity provides the matter for intelligence; the latter, in receiving new matter, develops in a new way for every new branch of sensitivity.

2. Second error. At least some phrenologists fail to realise that the potency of sensitivity considered in itself is not a production of the organ, which is only the term of the sentient principle called soul. The potency of feeling arises from the union of the principle with the term, of the soul with the organ, not from the latter alone. Indeed, the potency pertains to the principle, not to the term; it pertains to the soul, not to the organ. The principle is the subject of all the acts of the potency and therefore of the potency itself.

3. Third error. The second confusion, of the organ with the sentient principle, is tied up with the other confusion between the order of sensitivity and the order of intelligence, and gives rise to the false concept of human intelligence formed by some phrenologists. They claimed that as the brain is an aggregate of organs, so human understanding is the complex of a multitude of very different acts. Careful consideration would have shown that despite the many varied acts the person performs, it is always the same subject who understands. This would have led to the recognition of the unity and simplicity of intelligence as a faculty of a single, very simple subject. The understanding does indeed perform many, very different acts, but it is not the aggregate of its own acts; it is the author, cause or sole principle of its acts, to which it is logically, and in most cases, chronologically prior.

4. Fourth error. There is nothing more fatuous than the pride these physiologists take in having anatomised intelligence. They think that by simply applying the scalpel to the encephalic mass, they have actually inserted intelligence into it! Clearly, they confuse the most disparate things, and are incapable of forming a correct classification of the faculties of the human spirit. For example, Spurzheim, when dividing the faculties of the soul and spirit into affective and intellective, does not see that some affective faculties are intellective: the intelligent subject has affections arising from his intelligence.

Again, after dividing affective faculties into inclinations and feelings, he reduces inclinations to the precise number of nine. The names he gives them would make a cat laugh: inhabitivity, affectionivity, combativity, destructivity, constructivity, eativity and secretivity. By these he means the inclination to inhabit, to be affectionate, to fight, destroy, construct, feed and secrete fluids, but forgets all intellective and moral inclinations. Moreover, he does not include the primal inclinations of the soul, but only some effects produced in animals through the collaboration of many primal inclinations and faculties. For example, the inclination to have and build a dwelling-place is not a primal faculty but the result of various needs felt by animals which react instinctively to satisfy themselves. The same can be said about all the other inclinations.

The feelings of the soul, according to Spurzheim, are exactly twelve. Four of them, self-love, approbation, circumspection and benevolence, are common to humans and beasts. However, he fails to see that intelligence is present in all four feelings which, therefore, are appropriate only to human beings. On the other hand, the affections of beasts, although resembling these four, are in fact totally different. A wise philosopher will determine the recondite, essential distinction between one kind and another, and not allow himself to be deluded so grossly by their apparent phenomenal similarity.

Spurzheim claims that the eight feelings proper to humans are veneration, hope, supernaturality and justice, from which he derives the religious and moral notions of perseverance, wit or pleasantry, ideality and imitation. There are other feelings, totally different from primal feelings, which result mainly from the use of many primal faculties, their products and effects. Thus the humorous, witty person depends for his persiflage only on a certain temperament and a certain measure of various faculties. He adds that some of these feelings, like imitation, depend on an obviously animal instinct, which reveals its power in monkeys more than in any other being.(79)

The same imperfection is noticeable in Spurzheim's classification of intellective faculties, which he divides into three orders: 1. functions of the external senses; 2. perceptive faculties; 3. reflective faculties. The first, however, do not pertain to intelligence but to corporeal sensitivity, something totally different. The perceptive faculties are divided into two groups. In the first, he places those which concern perception of individuals, and in the second, those concerning perception of the relationships of objects and their phenomena. Thus in the first group he puts the faculties of individuality, configuration, extension, weight and colour. But these, when separated from each other, pertain to abstraction, not to perception, which refers always to the object endowed with all its perceptible properties, according to the nature of different perceptions. In the second group he places the faculties of place, number, order, phenomena, time, melody and artificial language. These things, far from pertaining to pure perception, are functions of abstraction and reasoning, effects of many primal and secondary faculties which act and co-operate to produce them. For example, the faculty of language is certainly not a primal faculty; it is an exceedingly complex effect of nearly all human faculties, and depends on the external senses, animal instinct, judgment, reasoning, etc. The third order of intellective faculties (that of reflection) is divided by Spurzheim into the two faculties of comparison and causality. Every philosopher who has meditated only a little on the human spirit can easily see the insufficiency of this classification. Furthermore, a primal faculty of causality does not exist. There is only an ontological law, obeyed by the intellect that seeks the cause of everything contingent.

998. Our conclusions therefore must be the following:

1. The brain is an aggregate of various organs which are harmoniously interconnected in a single continuum.

2. Each organ has particular functions, but only in the order of sensitivity.

3. In human beings, varying development of intelligence, which receives the matter of its operations from sensitivity, corresponds to different functions of corporeal sensitivity and to the development of these functions. Nothing like this happens in beasts, who have no intelligence at all but only sensitivity whose instinctive effects simulate intelligence.

4. The different functions of corporeal sensitivity corresponding to different organs of the brains are primal, direct functions, functions of sight, hearing, taste, etc. They are succeeded by corresponding active faculties; for example, the function of hearing is succeeded by the faculty of vocal sounds (not by the faculty of speech, which pertains to intelligence). An accurate listing of these primal, direct functions of corporeal sensitivity relative to the organs of the brain still needs to be achieved by phrenology. Such a task has hardly begun: very few propositions have been accurately verified by observation. But I will cite a proposition of Gall which has great probability: 'The cerebellum is the organ of physical love'. Physical love is in fact a primal function of corporeal sensitivity.

5. When we say that an organ presides over a function or a branch of sensitivity, we must not think that it alone is sufficient for producing the corresponding sense-experiences. On the contrary, one organ separated from the others no longer has an effect. Phrenologists must also establish, by repeated observations and careful experiments, the necessary connection which each organ has with others in order to produce its effect. In general, they must identify not only the nature of the organ of a given function of sensitivity, but also 'the nature of the apparatus of organs which is ordered to produce the function'. Finally, after demonstrating these two things, they must investigate 'the nature of the connection between every apparatus, the whole nervous system and the entire structure of the animal'. This vast field, studied today by physiologists, has the potential to be a very rich source of solid knowledge.

999. The third kind of sensitivity is ideological.

We are indeed conscious of intuiting ideas, but unless we felt ourselves as intuiting, we could not be conscious of our intuition. We must therefore have a feeling of ourselves as intuiting. It may seem that this way of feeling is one with that of psychical sensitivity. It certainly can be conceived as a branch of this sensitivity, because in both cases the soul feels as a principle. However in psychical sensitivity (as I have called it), the soul feels as principle in the extended term; in ideological sensitivity it feels in the idea; the two terms of the soul are the extended element and the idea and, as we know, a principle feels in its term. Because there are two terms which by nature are not connected in any way, the same principle has a double feeling. Note that the feeling which the soul has in so far as it terminates in the idea is an objectified feeling. The soul, a subject, feels itself objectively, almost losing its individuality in pure intuition. Here lies the mysterious point of union between the subjective and objective orders, between sense and intelligence, about which I intend to speak more fully in Theosophy.

The idea however is not the proper term of ideological sensitivity but of intuition alone. This difference between the term proper to feeling and the term proper to intuition is of the utmost importance. The term proper to feeling must pertain to the sentient element; the term of intuition is something intuited as different from the sentient element, something purely in itself. The soul which sees the idea feels itself in ideal being. This is the special ideological sensitivity under discussion. The soul, when it feels itself in possession of the idea, feels itself intelligent and enriched, and acquires an intellectual and rational instinct. This is the active part of ideological sensitivity.

1000. Finally, what I call theoric sensitivity is that which God produces in the soul by giving himself to it to be perceived.

1001. God grants himself to the potency of the intellect alone, provided we understand the intellect in general as 'the potency of being', which alone has an infinite capacity because being is infinite.(80) As we saw, being is one, but in three forms. If the potency of intellect is considered relative to being, it is one, but considered relative to the forms, it takes on three forms, that is, appears as three potencies.

Under the ideal form, intuited being is the light of the soul. The intellect natural to the human being (which I often call simply 'intellect') refers only to the soul.

Under the real form, contingent being is limited; it is not the realisation of infinite, ideal being. Separated from the light of ideal being, contingent being remains as it were, in the dark; it is no longer an object of any intellective potency. But united to light, that is, to ideal being, even real being becomes knowable and an object of the special potency, reason. Precisely because the contingent real is unknowable in itself but needs to have ideal being applied to it by an act of intelligent being, the apprehension of real contingent being is not attributed to the simple potency of intellect but to the potency of reason.

1002. But if infinite ideal being reveals itself as realised, the intellect apprehends infinite being as real and of its nature indivisible from ideal being. In this case the intellect has the perception of God, something impossible to nature (although ancient and modern Platonists imagine otherwise). Considered relative to reality, this is an intellectual-supernatural sense.

1003. But how, relative to God, can the two conditions necessary for sense come about. In other words, how are both agent and soul changed?
First, God is not changeable; in himself he experiences nothing from the soul to whom he communicates himself. But we need to note that the soul does not totally comprehend God. God in himself, unlimited and incomprehensible, is one thing; the qualitative extent or degree to which he communicates his reality to the soul is another. This qualitative degree is determined by the soul itself and formed by the soul's limitation, which itself is restricted to the measure in which God communicates himself. Thus we can say that God is limited by the soul of the receiver to the extent that he is perceived in a limited way by the soul. This measure or limit does not lie in God himself, but in the relationship of union between God and the soul, a relationship through which God makes himself the proximate, direct object of perception.

1004. The modification which the soul receives from the communication of God's reality arises from the action of God's reality in the soul with its consequent marvellous effects. The object of the intellect is the natural aim of rational affection which lies deep in human nature, and also of the primal will which tends to good in general. Consequently, because affection and will find such a great object, they must be strengthened, elevated and transnatured. In addition, the soul must receive a new potency as different from its other potencies as God is different from other objects, that is, infinitely. Theologians call this new potency the 'the light of grace' and 'of glory'. Just as every specifically different term arouses a new potency, so a new potency must be aroused by the object which differs from all others, not only in species, genus and category, but in being itself. The human intellect, therefore, through perception of the divine substance, maintains the same root but receives a new activity. The difference between this new activity and the soul's previous activity is greater than that between any of its potencies.

1005. Explaining how the soul comes to receive the action of the divine essence is difficult, but less difficult than explaining how the divine essence can act in the soul. For the moment, it is sufficient to say in general that God acts in creatures in the way that creatures are in him, for we read: 'In him we live, move and have our being'. Thus, in order to act in creatures, he does not need to act outside himself. It is not contradictory to say that the action which in God is his divine essence has a limited effect outside him. Contingent natures have an existence relative to themselves. When God creates and acts in them, he does not remove, but on the contrary forms their subjectivity and individuality. This act, which does not destroy subjects and individuals but, after creating them, gives them what it wishes, need not be limited in itself in the way that it is limited in its relative term. This discussion however pertains to theology and, God willing, I will deal with it in Theosophy.

Having spoken about the sense of the soul as a passive potency, I should now discuss it as an active potency, that is, as instinct. But in order to avoid continual repetition, it is better to treat the matter in the book dealing with the laws governing the soul's activity.
I will however summarise the various branches of feeling in the following synoptic schema [pp. 124-125].

Notes

(73) Rinnovamento , bk. 3, cc. 39-47.

(74) AMS , 92-134.

(75) NE , vol. 2, 823.

(76) AMS , 134-180.

(77) NE , vol. 2, 821.

(78) AMS , 131-133.

(79) I showed how the imitative instinct pertains to animality in AMS , 487-490.

(80) 'There is nothing wrong in saying that an infinite, passive potency can be present in the creature. As we said, a potency implies relationship to what is possible. A passive potency of the creature is called infinite when it is related to an infinite potency, as the potency of first matter is related to infinite forms and shapes, and the continuum is endlessly sensible. In the same way the possible intellect is related to infinite, intelligible species. It does not follow from this however that something created is purely infinite, but only infinite in potency' (St. Thomas, Opusc. 9, q. 8). Here, the word passive is understood as receptive , a meaning commonly given by the Scholastics.