Chapter 21

Second psychological law:
limitation and concentration of attention

1474. The soul, granted that it has been given the necessary terms and stimuli to express its acts, maintains a mode of its own in these acts. This mode is such that the soul, when it wishes to unite itself more closely to its term, concentrates its limited activity on a single point of the term while withdrawing its activity from the other parts. This is the origin of both material and formal analysis, which in turn depends upon the extension or non- extension of the object on which the activity is exercised. Formal analysis is abstraction in the strict sense. In an ideal or spiritual object it considers one element independently of the rest. This is the psychological law corresponding to the ontological laws described above.

1475. But how can an ideal or spiritual object, extremely simple in itself, be analysed and as it were divided into parts by the application of human attention? Are these parts real, or simply apparent and false?

Before replying, I must make the following observations.

1.A simple thing is often multiplied by the spirit which considers it in relationship to many others things. For example, when we say: 'Ideal being is the possibility of things', we are simply considering this being relative to its realisation, without predicating possibility of ideal being itself. Thus the ideas I have called 'elementary ideas of ideal being'(280) can be reduced to relationships of ideal being. The many relationships that a simple being may have do not deprive it of its simplicity, just as the centre of a circle does not lose its simplicity when seen in relationship with all the assignable, innumerable points in the circumference.

These relationships clearly show that that simple ens is not alone: other entia exist to which thought can refer and compare it, and vice versa. Indeed, if there were only ideal being and no real ens (which is impossible), nothing could be distinguished in ideal being, which would remain internally uniform. If Parmenides had understood his one ens as an ideal ens or the idea of an ens, the objections made against him by Plato(281) and Aristotle(282) would have been effective. They claimed that he contradicted himself by attributing to that ens immortality, immobility, uniformity, integrity, perfection, etc. In their view, if the ens were simply one, nothing else could be added to it. But because the ancients did not realise that an ens is under several forms, they inadvertently reasoned about it now under one form, now under another. These great minds were thus lost in inextricable labyrinths. Generally speaking, however, deeper reasoning ended in the idea of an ens , while the properties of the idea were attributed to the ens itself. Hence, because this idea does not have internal variety except in the presence of what is real, the ancients denied internal variety and order to ens. This explains the objections which appear so difficult to solve.

1476. 2.An ens can be simple but still have variety deep within it. Any argument supposing the contrary shows that our only concept of simplicity is that taken from a mathematical point. This is a negative concept which totally denies extension. But simple entia do not consist in mere negation; they are positive, more positive even than extended entia. A thing is simple when nothing can be taken from it without destroying it.

1477. According to this definition, an ens containing many different things is not contrary to simplicity, although everything in it must be so unified that the removal of one element alone is sufficient to destroy the ens.

1478. Hence, various classes of simple entia.
A mathematical point is not an ens but a negation , as I said. It is not an object of our spirit, but an act carried out by our spirit on an object (extension).
An ideal ens is totally uniform. As long as it remains one ens, nothing can be discerned in it. Only by comparing it with a real ens can something be distinguished within it.
A spiritual ens is simple and not internally uniform; on the contrary, it is organated in such a way so that none of its organs, of its essential elements, can be removed without destroying it. This must be understood in several ways:

a )If we are speaking about the reality of a spiritual ens, its accidental parts can be changed into others without being divided by the change. It can also be multiplied , if its term is multiplied, as in the case of the animal principle. But this is still not division into several parts.

b )If we are dealing with the idea of a spiritual ens, we can: 1. conceive multiplication of the ens and changes in its accidents, and 2. divide the elements by abstract thought , although not by all-embracing thought , which always remains in the mind. The fact that abstract, partial thought can find these distinctions does not contradict either the simplicity of the ens or the truth, because the elements, although truly distinct in the ens, are not separate; abstract, analytical thought merely distinguishes them without separating them although, at the moment of their distinction, they are kept individually united by total, all-embracing thought. We may perhaps mistakenly believe we separate them, but in this case our belief originates from judgment, the source of errors, not from thought.

Notes

(280) NE, vol. 2, 575-578.

(281) In Sophist .

(282) Phys ., 1.