Chapter 34 (Part 2)

Psychological laws corresponding to the cosmological laws
directing practical reason —
The psychological law of spontaneity

1698. The law, 'reflection falls on the last link of our rational activity, not on preceding links', has another consequence which may be stated as follows: 'Principles which arouse and direct our rational operations remain hidden from us unless we freely make them terms of our attention.' It is clear that these principles are not, of their nature, the last link in the chain of rational operations, but the first.

1699. To know ourselves therefore, we need to return freely upon ourselves and investigate the secrets of our own heart. This is often an extremely difficult task and almost impossible to carry out completely. Hence, the great value of the ancient saying: 'Know yourself.'

1700. The first principles of human activity are animal instinct, in so far as it resides in fundamental perception, and being in general, intuited by us. Animal instinct is a principle of movement; the idea of being is a directive rule. In our ordinary state, we act in accord with these first principles, but without paying them any attention, and without knowing that we are moved and directed by them. This kind of knowledge is not of great importance to us; what is important is to reach our aim.

But animal instinct develops by clothing itself in habits proper to different passions, and thus as it were multiplying itself.
The rational principle, in so far as it perceives animal instinct, accompanies it throughout its development. However, with another act the very same principle refers everything to being and sees that being itself, the supreme norm of good and evil, disapproves, forbids, approves or commands in these operations. We find ourselves, therefore, at a fork. The rational principle either holds to what being prescribes, or abandons itself blindly to instinct, or forms a conspiracy with instinct. Vice is the effect of the last two steps.

1701. But the rational principle does not stop there; it also classifies good and evil into different genera. 'Mediate rules' are formed, each of which shows and makes immediately known to the rational principle an entire class of good and bad things. The principle chooses between the genera of what is good, and the genera of what is evil. This choice means that the principle embraces 'some of these mediate rules' as directives for its activity. Other rules are rejected.

1702. This choice between mediate rules which discerns between good and evil, is in practice the foundation of the desires and general aversions to which we give our assent. Just as we have certain general rules in our mind, so we have certain general desires and aversions in our heart. These desires habitually and freely arouse our appetite for an entire class of good things, or at least for things thought to be good; our aversions habitually and freely cause us to reject an entire class of evil things, or at least of things thought to be evil. Thus, our spirit finds itself habitually determined towards and against certain things in general, although these determinations can be changed at every moment by free intervention on our part. As long as such freely consented habits remain in us, they constitute a number of secret principles of action which, given appropriate circumstances, readily determine us to a given action, as though it had already been deliberated.(362)

1703. I maintain that these principles of human activity, these freely consented general desires, remain secretly within us until we make them the object of our research. At this point, they become final rather than first or mediate links of our rational activity. We give them our attention and become conscious of them. (There are, of course, principles and desires which are not freely consented to. These should properly speaking be called innate or acquired inclinations. In addition, there are other desires and principles to which we consent imperfectly, with different levels or modes of consent, and with different tacit conditions.)

1704. We must also note that moral characteristics vary according to the quality of these principles and habitual rules, which are secretly taken as directives of our activity. These very different characteristics have profound origins and present a hard task to philosophical investigation.

1705. We have, therefore, two kinds of cognitions: those hidden from us, others clear, luminous, reflective. The first kind does not normally interest us. We find no need to be conscious of them; we use them as a means without paying attention to them.
This is another extremely important fact which, in addition, shows how essentially reasoning beings such as ourselves can err; it also shows how vice has its place in essentially moral beings such as ourselves.(363) This fact clearly demonstrates that it depends upon ourselves to take an interest in and to pay attention to certain cognitions which need to be made clear and luminous to us. It also shows that we leave other cognitions in the shade, in an inferior condition to those which we choose as our end and in which consequently our activity rests.

1706. Sometimes, for example, the person making mistakes is the principle living a reflective life. But self-deception or perverse actions should not surprise us if the information which could save a person from error, the rules which could protect him from vice, are left as it were buried in the silent night of direct life and not brought to the light of reflective life. We must not wonder at the errors and waywardness of a reflective principle which has, as its sole guide, cognition leading to error and favouring vice.

1707. Here, I must mention a fact which I have experienced myself on many occasions. Others, too, will have experienced it if they are accustomed to consider what takes place in their spirit.
I refer to that slow work which the mind carries out of its own accord and through which information and teaching, deposited in the treasure of our memory without our realising it, is gradually sorted out and correctly ordered. It happens many times that people who devote themselves to study, and especially to philosophical speculation, think about some subject for a long time and then find themselves exhausted and unsatisfied with the result of their effort. A day or two passes without their giving any further deliberate attention to the subject.

Nevertheless, the mind has adjusted itself of its own accord, and ideas appear with such order that difficulties vanish and the solution of the problem takes place spontaneously and clearly.
This, it is true, must have happened in part even during initial meditation. The imagination works, grows tired and muddies the purity of reasoning by intruding importunate, unstable phantasy. When peace has been found, the work of strict reason remains untarnished.

1708. This must also explain how the memory, having studied something at night without grasping it before falling asleep, is fresh in the morning. Once the imagination has been calmed and comforted by sleep, the memory offers a faithful impression of what it has received the evening before when tiredness or some disturbance rendered it incapable of working.

1709. It is, of course, a good rule to allow our deliberations to rest and mature for a time in the mind. Prudent people do this. These thoughts then improve of their own accord without our expressly thinking of them. The rapidly formed opinion improves with time, even though we give it no attention; with all probability it will succeed not only because it is re-examined, but because it matures of its own accord through hidden activity by direct, intellective life, unmarked by consciousness.

1710. For this work to continue, we need the secret spring which, through dedication and habitual desire, moves a person to find the truth. This characteristic should be present in the scholar who seeks a solution to some question, and in the prudent person who is habitually concerned about the business with which he is engaged.

1711. There is another mental task operating in our minds without reflection or consciousness. This work is confused in part with the first.
There are certain concepts, certain thoughts, which as it were attract one another, show some affinity to one another, and are associated in various ways.(364) This affinity and association is carried out or completed in our understanding without our realisation. The following are the ways in which this happens.

1712. First, human thought finds a bond which naturally reduces these concepts to unity in the idea of being, the supreme principle of all cognition. This super-eminent being is the hidden regulator of the human mind, which is always turned to the idea of being. Without realising it (or realising it only perfunctorily), the mind through this habitual operation sees many convergences between the things it knows. This work is therefore a continual return, made by thought, from multiplicity to the unity of being.

1713. Again, we have to consider that different thoughts in the human mind produce a sensible effect in us, who are essentially feeling. Thoughts which are per se different sometimes move us to a single sensible effect, a special feeling of the same nature. But because feelings easily become instinctive principles of operation, these identical or similar feelings dispose us equally towards the manner of thoughts which gave rise to them.

1714. This fact is supported by the presence in us of general desires and affections which are already formed, as I have said. They are like musical strings which respond in the same way whether we touch them with a feather or a piece of metal or anything else. Such affections aroused by different concepts or thoughts become a guide to the attention of the mind and the thinking activity which takes a spontaneous direction and often works unknown to ourselves, who do not reflect upon this fact as it runs its course in us.

1715. General affections in the human spirit use and direct thoughts to their own advantage by associating them in groups and recalling even their distant memory. For instance, we see ourselves reaching today some thought or determination with strict affinity to a year-old thought or deliberation, although we cannot remember it. This previous, now forgotten thought causes our present thought because it left the spirit disposed and ready to tend towards it. Given the slightest occasion, the spirit then produces this thought.

1716. Even more notable, however, is the way in which habitual, general affections, which rely upon the mediate rules we have discussed, sometimes develop of their own accord. They are like a seed moving underground. Reaching a high level of intensity, they gradually reinforce the persuasion which serves as their foundation. Nevertheless, they remain hidden in the spirit unless some stimulus draws our reflective attention to attend to them. In this case, they sometimes explode in full, tumultuous light. This is perhaps the hidden cause which explains the sudden manifestation of heroes who find themselves in circumstances consonant with their internal hidden disposition.(365) It is also the cause of upheavals brought about by political revolutions.

1717. This also explains many other facts found in humanity. A poet or a writer gains great notoriety in an age or in a nation when he becomes the faithful and talented interpreter of those feelings and great persuasions which each individual unknowingly carries in himself, without being able to express them, because he has never thought about them. Great jubilation and applause greets the person who knows how to draw universal attention and reflection to those secret, but powerful persuasions, and is able to provide suitable formulas for furnishing such persuasions with reflective, splendid existence. These formulas can make persuasions noble and beautiful, like hidden treasure. People possess these persuasions without realising how fine they are, and are grateful to the genius who first expresses what all would have wanted to say if only they had known how. They willingly consent and adhere to such a person.

1718. This also explains the sudden, furious reaction of any apparently calm, tranquil people, at times of sedition. They seemed tranquil because they were unaware of the affections causing pressure within; they were tranquil because their reflective life hid the ferment of passion deep within direct life. The turbulence of passion had not yet spilled forth into reflective life.

A person acting as reflective principle is at peace because the person as direct principle, which is burning within, does not manifest himself outwardly, although interiorly he prepares the outburst. It is true that in the case of sedition another principle helps to change people's nature. Each individual feels the force of all; each feels that he possesses the power of the mass-force of which he is a part; each senses the fervour which increases persuasion as a result of the new unanimity of an assembled multitude. All of this produces enthusiasm and pride, together with a stimulus to dominion, and the abuse of force. But this cause alone would be insufficient unless there were already in the spirit uniform, internal, hidden and long-prepared dispositions, together with opinions and general affections harmonising and conspiring in everyone to produce that immediate, powerful outburst which, capturing and disturbing reason, easily turns to exultation and cruel anger. Without this condition, sedition does not take place. The people disperse either before assembling or after if curiosity alone has brought them together.

1719. The same can be said about national revolutions. The sole reason for their success is the hidden disposition present in the minds and spirits of the masses. If this disposition is present, raising a flag is sufficient to reveal what all are thinking. No revolution attains its end unless such a hidden disposition has been accumulated in the spirit. In the same way, all failed revolutions, despite the heroic valour and magnanimous sacrifice of certain individuals, come to nothing simply because the excited reflection does not find arms sufficient to produce success in the direct life of the people, which is the arsenal of force.

1720. The psychological law, 'Attention is centred only on the last link of rational activity; reflection is present only where attention halts (although not always even here); and consciousness is acquired only of things on which we reflect', is an extremely precious tool for explaining other innumerable, mysterious phenomena present in the human spirit. One important example is found partly in the celebrated controversy about the worship of images.

There is no doubt, as every proficient observer can see, that when a person makes use of an image, his thought never halts at the image but moves on to the ens represented by the image.
The image serves only as an aid to phantasy; it directs thought immediately to the absent object, where it halts. This depends on the cosmological law of motion which says: 'What is real, that is, the term of the rational principle, arouses the attention and draws it to subjective acts of knowledge.'

1721. No one is going to say, for example, that a girl who is delighted with a portrait of her fiancé and kisses it repeatedly has the portrait itself as the object of her love. What she really wants is to bestow those acts of affection on the person represented by the portrait. Nobody in his right mind would say that she is in love with the piece of paper or inanimate canvas, or the slab of cold marble or bronze, which reminds her of her beloved. If this were the case, and the portrait were the true object of her affections, the presence of the portrait would be sufficient. The absence of the beloved would not distress her; she would not anxiously count the minutes to his return. Her good would lie in the portrait; she would want nothing more.

Again, if the portrait were the object of her love, many portraits of the same person would entail many objects of love. If you were to question her about that, she would insist that she had only one love, and would be unfaithful if she shared him with others. Nevertheless, you have to agree that sometimes she pours her heart out to one portrait and sometimes to another. How can she insist that she has only one love, and that one is sufficient? Because it is absolutely clear that she does not halt at the multiple images but rests in the true object portrayed by them all.

Again, different portraits are not equally representative of her husband-to-be. One shows only his face; another, the entire person. Nevertheless, each of them arouses in her heart acts of the same love. Indeed, these acts arise not only in the presence of a portrait but even when a letter arrives. She kisses it in the same way, and holds it tight; she does the same with any little present, any little sign of her lover, or with anything which represents for her the sole object of her love. She does not care if the portrait is not entirely accurate; it is sufficient for it to remind her of the object in whom she hopes to find her future happiness. It would be madness, therefore, to believe that the thoughts of a girl in love end and halt in such a portrait or sign. The term of her thoughts is found only beyond the portrait. This is the final link of her rational activity; this is where her attention and reflection rest. The portrait is only a mediate link through which her thought passes rapidly without stopping.

1722. Nevertheless, we have to note here that in its different perceptions the rational principle does nothing more than develop, specify and actuate fundamental perception. This fundamental perception, and consequently all acquired perceptions, have in themselves something corporeal-sensible and something intellective. The rational principle, uniting animality and intellect, makes these elements a single term, that is, the term of perception. Hence, when the object is not perceived per se, but by way of image and vicarious sign, the rational principle by the very law of perception composes the term of perception from 1. the sensible, vicarious sign in place of the sensible-action of the ens, and 2. the intellective element. It thus individuates in some way the sensible sign with the ens itself which is in the intellective concept. Consequently, the intellective object, although the true, real object, is so intimately associated with the sign that it appears to form a single thing with it. The intellect, therefore, sees and contemplates an object in the sign in a way totally like that in which it sees an ens in sensations. The sensations, as we know, are not the ens thought by the understanding. Nevertheless, the sensations, in the act of perception, clothe and determine an ens. The same happens when a person or other ens is perceived through an image.

1723. If we are clear about this, we will not be surprised that nations prior to Christ or unenlightened by Christ fell into idolatry by joining and confusing the sign with the thing signified. Their intellectual force was weak, their imagination and sensuality extremely strong, and their intellective development never very far removed from perception. Their idolatry, however, did not consist in adoring rocks, stones and animals as such, but in joining to these as individuals certain superior, divine powers which were the true intellective object of their worship. Later, they changed the nature of natural and artificial beings into divinities, thus deifying the creature. They would never have adored statues or other material entia unless they had mentally united something divine to them.

Ancient idolatry, therefore, consisted not simply in adoring the sign or image (this is impossible for human beings, as we have said, because they cannot fix their attention on an intermediate link of their rational activity such as an image or sign), but in changing the sign and image into an object with their imagination. They associated and individuated the divine object with material forms through an error in thought.

Thus, they adored these material forms, persuaded that they were the divine object or its visible part. This error of ancient peoples was facilitated and brought about when they beheld the matter of the universe full of extremely strong powers which, although not inert matter itself, were presumed to be hidden within it. This kind of reasoning, which I used to discover the necessity of the corporeal principle, is correct — although the ancients were mistaken in deifying it. Hence the adoration of a jinn, of angels and of that worship which is described by holy Scripture; 'All the gods of the gentiles are demons.' Lamennais mistakenly claimed to have shown that the gentiles were not true idolaters because they referred their worship to divine force and power without restricting it to their idols.

1724. We also have to distinguish between the image intended to draw our attention to an absent but sensible object already perceived by us. An example is the case of the engaged girl who sees her future husband in the portrait she has before her. Another example is the image or sign intended to draw our attention to some invisible, spiritual object, such as the divinity. In the first case, there is no cause for confusing the sign with what is signified because the sensible, signed thing is itself known immediately and can be imagined as it is in itself; it is easy to see that it differs from the sign. The same could be said if we had perceived not the identical thing, but other individuals of its species. Thus we do not confuse a man's portrait with the man himself although we may never have seen him.

In dealing with invisible things, however, when our thought is drawn towards them by a sensible sign we would like to pinpoint them in themselves. To do this, we would need to find something sensible in them. This need depends upon the law of motion already described, that is, 'our attention is aroused and held by what is real, namely, the term of our rational principle.' But because our attention cannot be fixed on what is invisible (except with extreme difficulty and in virtue of free thought) without attributing some sensible vesture to it, the uneducated attribute to it the form which they see in the sign. Thus, the likeness of the idol easily becomes the form attributed to the god who is adored. Those nations which furnished the likenesses of gods with human form fell into anthropomorphism as well as idolatry.

1725. We need to remember however that amongst ancient peoples the understanding operated spontaneously. Free thought was either not developed or developed at a very low level. If we keep this in mind, we will understand clearly why God forbade the Hebrews to depict the divinity with pictures and statues. It would have been very easy, if not inevitable, for minds still in a childlike state to fall into the two errors whose natural origin we have indicated, that is, idolatry and anthropomorphism. On the other hand, the following fact shows clearly that free thought can avoid such errors or at least recognise them as errors (one is equivalent to the other). In that ever memorable 6th century before Christ, when Italian genius began its philosophical journey, one of the first truths to become clear was the falsity of human forms and customs attributed by the masses to the gods. Pythagoras and Xenophanes thought in this way.(366) We have, for instance, the following verses of Xenophanes:

Again:

Notes

(362) CS , 76-105; AMS , 745-763.

(363) Cf. Teodicea , 396-410.

(364) Cf. Preface to the Opusculi filosofici , Milan, 1836.

(365) Cf. what I have said about the dominion possessed by thought over people whose zealous activity gains them acceptance as heroes. AMS , 697-703.

(366) Diogenes Laertius, Proem ., Segm. 15, lists Xenophanes in the school of Pythagoras.

(367) Clem. Alex., Strom ., 7, p. 711 — Euseb., Praep. Evang . 14, p. 757 — Theodoret, Graec. Affect ., Serm. 3, p. 49 — Cicero repeats this thought of Xenophanes as follows: 'Do you think there is any beast on land or sea that does not take the greatest delight in beasts of its own kind? — So why are you surprised if in the same way nature prescribes that man should think nothing more beautiful than man, if we think that this explains why we make gods similar to man? (This refers to Greeks and Romans, not to other nations whose gods bore the likeness of beasts or inanimate things ) Do you think that if beasts had REASON, they would not have attributed it in a special way to any of their kind?' (De Nat. Deor ., I, 27). Simon Karsten notes very acutely that Xenophanes says, 'If beasts had hands,' while Cicero says: 'If they had reason.' This indicates a different age of philosophy. At Xenophanes' time, philosophers had still not considered carefully the force of reason through which man is superior to brutes. Philosophorum Graecor. veterum reliquiae , vol. 1, P. 1, p. 43 (Amsterdam, 1830).