Chapter 35

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

1726. Divine wisdom has placed order in the world. This order, however, is not in and for the world in isolation from the spirit. It is order in the spirit and for the spirit in which the exterior world receives the substantial completion through which it passes from non-ens to ens. Order in the world isolated from the spirit is not order, but the beginning of order which is then found in the world existing in the spirit. The cosmological law of harmony, therefore, must be followed by the psychological law which completes it. These are two parts of the same law, two relationships in which the same law is considered.(368)

This connection pertaining to the synthesism of nature made it imperative for me, when speaking about the cosmological law of harmony, to deal in part with the question 'What does the soul contribute of its own in positing harmony?' There, however, I restricted myself to the sensitive soul which, in relationship to the rational principle, pertains to the world, that is, to the term of the rational principle, because the animal feeling and its felt element are truly the natural term of human intelligence.

Here we have to continue our investigation of what is posited in the constitution of harmony by the soul in so far as it is rational. This will enable me to complete in some way the question I have proposed. However, we cannot deal with rational harmony without examining certain things about the animal harmony mixed with it. This discussion is always new, and contains inexhaustible richness.

1727. It is a fact that everything tends to operate with regularity and that the rational principle delights in regularity. We now have to investigate the origin of this law and tendency.
Regularity can be considered in the operation carried out (subjective regularity) and in the object contemplated (objective regularity).

1728. What is the origin of this subjective regularity, of this tendency and of the pleasure we feel in operating with regularity? Pleasure and tendency are common to both the sensitive and the rational principle. Indeed, it is an extremely general law, proper to all agents which pass from potency to act and hence have transient acts in themselves. What kind of origin, what kind of causes explain this law?

1729. Three causes combine in every agent to produce delight in the regularity of its operations;

1. The natural order proper to the constitution of every agent.
2. The law which determines the mode of spontaneous operation.
3. The unity of the agent.

We must consider each of these separately.

1730. Every simple ens has an intrinsic order without which it would not be an ens. Moreover, every agent in nature composed of several elements is united and organated in a wonderful order by the wisdom of the Creator. Now, because order resides in the nature of the agent, it must also be present in its potencies and acts. It follows that the operation of every agent must be ordered by nature.

1731. The concept of natural regularity of operation in entia must be drawn from this truth. In other words, when asking: 'What does the regularity of their operation consist in?', we cannot impose an arbitrary regularity on the agents but rely on the order in which these agents are constituted by nature. For example, apparent regularity is found in gardens laid out in the French manner where plants are pruned and cruelly cut back in the shape of pyramids, columns, vases, statues. This is not regularity, but barbarous destruction of their natural, true regularity. What we say about plants can equally be said about the education of human beings who have their own natural regularity which must be protected and developed as a result of wise education and good governance. Capriciousness in education is equivalent to denaturing human beings.

1732. Natural regularity is not therefore comprised in a single formula applicable to all entia; regularity varies according to the nature of each.

1733. Spontaneity in the operation proper to entia depends upon the following law: having received an impulse, spontaneity seconds and continues the movement along the path marked out by the impulse.(369) Such constancy of direction is by nature a font of regularity because it causes movements to go ahead without digressing to left or right. If, however, during spontaneous movement in one direction, another impulse is applied which forces spontaneity to interrupt its course and proceed in another direction, the agent is upset because prevented from completing the operation to which it had already spontaneously directed itself. On the other hand, pleasure is found if spontaneous operations are not disturbed or broken off halfway. Pleasure is to be found, therefore, in that regularity of movement which consists in continued motion until an ens reaches its natural rest.

1734. I have already indicated the law of inertia as the reason why spontaneity does not change course of itself. This law affects spontaneity because inertia consists in the tendency towards rest, which is the contrary of labour, and towards repose, which is the contrary of movement. No agent, as we saw, is moved unless it aims at reaching a state in which it can rest. Similarly, no agent moves from rest unless it is disturbed by a foreign influence putting it into motion. Once forced to move, it continues in order to find eventually a better state of quiet, or at least a condition of uniform or immanent activity. Spontaneity, therefore, does not start, but continues movement. This law governs not only animality, but all agents, even rational agents, although allowance must be made for free will.

1735. The law of habit also depends on the law of spontaneity. Habit consists in the developed sense of ease which is felt by a sensitive or rational agent when repeating operations rather than carrying out altogether new operations. Actions which have already been done do not totally cease in the agent, but leave certain traces which serve as a path marked out for repetition of the operation. This explains our instinct for taking the way already clearly marked out for us; it is easier to do this than to open or find a completely different way. The entire operation, which had apparently ceased, remains slightly actuated in the operating principle. An outline remains as a virtual operation which is actuated at every new, slight impulse. Acting through habit, therefore, means continuing a preceding operation which has only partly ceased.

Consequently, we find 1. purely spontaneous regularity and 2. habitual regularity.

1736. But explanation of habit remains incomplete as long as we do not have recourse to the unity of the operating subject. The very closest attention must be given to this unity which, as we have already seen, explains in a wonderful way the facts of the spirit that Aristotle attributed to what he called 'common sense'. Animality is composed of an extended, multiple term and a simple principle in which what is extended and multiple resides, and from which it receives unity. The principle, as we saw, is present equally in all the assignable parts of the continuum which forms its term. It can operate according to the laws of its own spontaneity in all or many of these parts simultaneously, and produce in them several contemporaneous movements. These movements must, therefore, receive a twofold order: one from the organisation possessed by the parts of the extended term, the other from the unity of the principle which moves these parts and from the laws of spontaneity of the principle which, precisely because it is single, maintains the same law in all the parts of the continuum embraced by its action. If the parts of the animal body are disposed with regularity, and the principle moving them is single, regular movements must necessarily take place.

1737. This, however, is not sufficient. The law of imagination, wonderfully ordered by the Creator, also contributes to this regularity. This law states: 'The world is indicated in miniature in the brain in the way that it is indicated in the optic sensory by light-bearing impressions. The world indicated in the brain (the sensory of the imagination) has such a correspondence with the human body that the vestiges of the world found in the tiny aureoles of the brain (which considered subjectively are images) become the principles and roots of opportune movements. This happens because the sensitive principle needs only to act in the extreme, tiniest parts of the brain to produce the movements it desires. These movements, then, are propagated to the bodily members.'

This does not happen in exactly the same way as a pianist plays simply by touching the keys of his instrument, or as the captain of the ship, seated on the bridge, can with a tiny lever move and govern at will a ship's huge rudder. These likenesses are approximate, but do not match completely. Movement produced by the pianist immediately on the keys, and that produced by the captain on the rudder, is propagated to the strings of the instrument and to the rudder by means of an entirely mechanical movement. The sensitive principle, however, accepts from the image only the stimulus and direction needed to carry out immediately the act which moves the members of the whole sensible body to the need felt in its appetite.

For example, a starving animal experiences some disquiet which serves as the start of a principle of movement towards the satisfaction of its appetite. But if the animal imagines itself going to the place where it has satisfied its hunger and found food, the complex image of its state in that place, of the satisfaction it received there, and of the path which led it there, is an association of several images fused into one, into a single feeling. This is sufficient to arouse a quantity of motor forces in the animal and to determine accurately the direction of movement which brings it swiftly to the actual place corresponding to the imaginary one. This depends on the correspondence of the images with the real entia that caused the sensations, and this again on the sensible confrontation between sensation and image, which are proportionate to one another. Proportion in turn is present because space, that is, unlimited extension, is present to the animal feeling and exists in it, as I have said. At the same time, the limits which shape this space are equally marked by external sensation and by image, two modes of one feeling. The movements which cause the animal to stride to the place where it has already fed are active feelings which it carries out to perfect, through sensation, the satisfaction which is already present in the image.

Thus the animal passes from an imaginary state (unsatisfying) to a state of sensation (satisfying). The movements propelling the legs are a series of active feelings which bind these two states, that is, of feelings which, starting from the imaginary state of satisfaction, reach a state of felt and fully enjoyed satisfaction. This series of active feelings and consequent movements is outlined in the sensory, and reproduced as a result of that outline. If, on the contrary, these active feelings and consequent movements had not been experienced, they could arise as a kind of attempt to escape a troublesome state of disquiet. But in this case the animal disengages itself from disquiet only with difficulty. The desired satisfaction is not easy to find.(370)

1738. Here we have to remember that what was said about the brain, which is solely 'the sensory of the imagination', not of thought, must also be said of every other sensory which contains some force of retention. Animal feelings do not consist solely in images, but are multiple and extremely varied.(371) However, in order to simplify the argument, I shall speak only of movements which begin and are directed as a result of images.

1739. From what has been said about the way in which animals move to reach the place where they have satisfied their hunger, we can conclude:

1. that imagination or retention of the satisfying state now lacking to the animal is the principle determining its movement;

2. that its movement is aimed at seeking the imagined satisfying state, that is, in passing from the state of imagined satisfaction to the state of felt and enjoyed satisfaction;

3. that these two states are divided by a more or less long series of other states through which the animal must pass in order to obtain its desired state of felt satisfaction;

4. that the animal, when moved to this passage, attempts to pass through a series of states, beginning with its state of imagined satisfaction, through which it is led finally to a state of felt satisfaction;

5. that the intermediate states are the successive states in which the animal is found during its movements towards satisfaction — for example the movements with which it sets out to reach its feeding place;

6. that if the series of intermediate states was not experienced by the animal nor, consequently, marked in its encephalous sensory, the animal is forced to use various attempts to reach it, as the wolf does when, after moving in different directions, it finally turns in the direction where it has scented the sheep;

7. that when a series of states has been disposed successively, the succession itself, although apparently unsuitable for being marked in the brain as succession, remains there in virtue of the unity and identity of the sensitive principle. It is this unity and identity which enables the principle to be present to the multiplicity of successive series as it is present to the multiplicity of assignable parts in an extended element. The law of habit also plays its part here; the principle has the power to retrace the steps in the succession. It does this with one, single, principal act as it extends its simple activity immediately to the entire succession. And I think that further help is provided for the principle by the docility of its organism in which several movements are so linked together that some must follow almost necessarily upon others. This has to be the case with entia which dream of running or flying.

We have therefore to uphold three distinct parts in the chain of operations according to which animal instinct progresses: 1. the state from which the animal starts, that is, a state of imagined, presented, awaited satisfaction; 2. the state which the animal reaches by its own movements and efforts, which is a state of felt, complete, total satisfaction; 3. the intermediate states through which the animal passes in order to move from the first to the second state.

1740. The intermediate states through which the animal passes to fulfil the satisfaction in its phantasy or, in general, in the internal sensory, vary in number. This variation depends upon the distance between the state at which the animal starts and the state which it aims to reach. Let us imagine that none of these intermediate states exists. Here, the case of fulfilled or increased satisfaction would follow very soon after the state of imaginary satisfaction. This is precisely what occurs in the animal when it tends to increase some sensible satisfaction or pleasure simply by actuating its sensories more intently for the sake of feeling more vivid pleasure and delight in that which it has already begun to feel slightly.

Here, too, relative to this fact of immediate passage from an initial state of satisfaction to one of complete satisfaction, we have to generalise what was said about imagination and apply it to every species of internal feeling. Imagination is only a way of feeling; it is feeling in the brain where the optic sensations which take the form of the image are principally reproduced. There are, however, many other sensories and each animal feeling, whatever sensory it pertains to, is a source of instinct. Whenever an animal begins to feel a pleasurable sensation, it endeavours to complete it, using all its powers to bring the sensation to the greatest degree of intensity beyond which its effort is limited by its fatigue.

1741. Here again we are face to face with formative energy through which living elements are composed into seeds and animals. Seeds develop into animals, and animals grow, develop, mature, corrupt and die. But in every aggregate put together by formative energy, there is a single principle of action and a union made up of feelings disposed in an extended term. From this we easily understand that formative energy can be considered under two aspects: 1. from the point of view of the single principle underlying its efficacy; 2. from the point of view of the felt term, with its harmoniously connected sensations, which stands as the norm directing the principle in its operation. This term, considered as sensuous instinct, can conveniently be represented almost as a living stamp, operating on its own. It should, I think, be called plastic force.

1742. Whether this sensory called imagination contributes in more perfect animals with a brain to some conformation, to certain accidents, to certain dispositions of the foetus, is a question beyond my knowledge. But I think it possible to say: 1. that not only the mother's imagination but her entire maternal feeling, together with the feeling connected with the elements making up the foetus, and the composed foetus itself, contribute to the foetus' formation and disposition; 2. that because imagination is a part of maternal feeling, it is likely that it has some more or less mediate influence on the foetus. In fact, imagination certainly influences the whole animal being of the mother, which remains modified by the passions to which imagination gives rise and strength.(372)

1743. But to complete this discussion, we still have to investigate the principle which moves imagination. — We have to consider that every image is composed of several parts, with straight and curved outlines, with colours of varying tint and even with different movements that make the image rather like a horse in motion. Parts, tints and movements are not there by chance; they fit one another. But what wonderful painter has been able to arouse so many tiny movements in the encephalic sensory, movements so mutually proportioned that the image is perfect? One movement more, or one less, would have ruined everything.

Careful consideration shows that this wonderful work is proper to nature itself. The sensory is per se suitable for rendering not only those internal images, but their parts and even certain unrepresentative colours. But what is the single principle determining the sensory to the complex of sensations which renders the image so complete and beautiful? Note that this is done not successively as though tint were added to tint and brush-stroke to brush-stroke by a painter, but by positing the image in act immediately and totally without mistakes and in a single instant. Take, for example, what nature does to colour flowers and insects. Harmonious colours are all posited simultaneously, and the delightful picture appears totally formed and whole; not one leaf or one wing has been painted without its matching completely the leaf or wing which is its counterpart. To explain this fact of order and perfect regularity of the image which appears entire in a single instant, we have recourse to three principles: 1. to the operator, the efficient cause, which is simple. This cause is the sensitive principle (although other excitatory causes may contribute), present simultaneously to the whole of the primitive sensation which the image reproduces; 2. to habit which renders the act already performed several times more easy to posit.

The beginnings of the primitive act, that is, of the sensation, remain although the sensation has ceased. The soul can, therefore, determine itself to perform an act which it has already experienced; 3. but because the images which are present in a dream or even during wakefulness are not the exact reproduction of sensations already experienced, we have to appeal to a third principle: 'The animal always does that which is easier and more pleasurable.' This principle has to be used relative to all the conditions in which the animal's sensitive and instinctive principle is found.

But the simple, single, sensitive principle, when moved to produce images in itself, is set in motion by a multitude of internal stimuli. These are principally the bodily humours which by their regular or irregular movement, excite both the internal sensory of the imagination to its acts, and the single principle from which arises the vital action of the sensory. This principle, therefore, allows itself to be aroused to action by the concurrence of this multitude of stimuli. Its spontaneity is determined according to the complex action easiest and most pleasurable for the principle, which does not resist any urge from any stimulus unless led to do so by some greater, more urgent stimulus. At the same time, its singleness and simplicity, aided also by habit, makes the sensitive principle necessarily and spontaneously posit order amongst all the tiny images or parts of images provoked by the stimuli in its sensory.

This must happen because the principle could not simultaneously produce all these images in a single act without first synthesising and ordering them to unity. If this were not the case, the principle would find it extremely troublesome to leave them scattered, or to suppress them by resisting the stimuli which arouse them. Moreover, the harmonious union between these images is more pleasing and more delightful for the principle which has no difficulty in finding the harmony immediately because it is determined by nature itself, that is, by the law of what is easiest and most pleasurable. The principle, therefore, posits its ruling, organising activity in this event, and thus obtains a scene of images which, although partly different from sensations already experienced, are well ordered — like a story, for example — and bound together. The dominant activity of the sensible principle on the images which are about to be excited has a very great part to play here.

The act, therefore, with which the image is re-presented is single, although it extends to many simultaneous movements in the various fibres of the brain. These movements have to reproduce the image. This comes about because the sensitive soul can, with a single act, carry out several effects to which it is contemporaneously present in its simplicity.
Every group of different effects is in fact a single, different act. Moreover, if spontaneity obeys habit, the sensitive soul is determined, at least in part, to reproduce more easily the images of which it has sensations. Habit is, as it were, a continuation and strengthening of a preceding act which has not entirely ceased.

1744. There is, therefore, in the animal a single principle governing all its instinctive operations. This principle is 'the tendency to reach the already initiated state of satisfaction.' This principle, which must provide an extraordinary regularity to the animal's operation, is at odds with everything irregular, that is, with everything opposed to the regularity following on the unity in its multiple nature.

1745. Having found such regularity in animal operations, it is even more certain that this regularity must be present in the operations of the rational principle. However, the term of the rational principle is the object. We must, therefore, deal with objective regularity.

Why is the mind happy to contemplate what it finds set out with regularity?

1746. The first reason, which shows how it is more pleasing to contemplate several things when they are regularly disposed, lies in the way that many things, disposed with regularity, are more easily conceived and embraced by thought. But we always prefer what is easier, according to the law of spontaneity which governs every agent. Indeed, to be disposed in a regular way means to be disposed in order which, in turn, means to be disposed according to a single rule in which the mind sees what the entire disposition is and must be. For example, imagine that a series of numbers is disposed in arithmetic or geometric proportion in the mind. The person who knows the first number of this series and the difference between the first and the second, or the result of the first divided by the second, needs no other number in order to know how all successive numbers will be distributed.

The simple information he has enables him to describe, of his own accord, those series, however long they may be. Hence in the rule of distribution (that is, difference for the arithmetic series and proportion for the geometric), which is the final and extremely simple rule, the intelligence embraces in summary all the multitude of things in so far as they are regularly disposed. Indeed, the intelligence embraces any multiplicity it is prepared to imagine as disposed in a similar way. People with some mathematical knowledge know very well how curves are indicated by means of algebraic equations which simply present the rule according to which all points assignable in a curve are disposed. In other words, the rule indicates the order taken by determined points in their positions relative to one another. It is true that the algebraic equation does not offer the form of the curve to the imagination, but it does provide the intelligence with the key to the curve. It teaches the intelligence how to describe the curve whenever it wishes to do so, either on paper or in its own imagination. Such simplified, abbreviated knowledge is extremely delightful to the mind which uses it to obtain and know far more than anything it could conclude from some sense-perception limited to a number of individuals. Consequently, the intellective rule enables us to know the pluralities of things in species, not in individuals. Such specific knowledge embraces very much more than knowledge of the individual.

1747. This is another reason why intelligence loves regularity in the multiple object of its contemplation. It loves regularity not only because regularity enables the mind to think of multiplicity in an easier way, but also because it enables it to think further. Again, regularity enables the mind to think in such a way that it can reproduce multiplicities for itself at its pleasure. It is true that an irregular multiplicity can be changed by the mind into a species through contemplation separated from sensible perception, but this is extremely tiring, especially if the irregular multiplicity is large. Moreover, this kind of multiplicity cannot be increased by the mind without a rule according to which such increase is possible, as happens in series. Consequently, multiplicity always remains limited.

1748. At this point, we can indicate a third reason why the rational principle finds regularity delightful. Regularity does in fact make the principle capable of operating. Consequently, when the principle is in possession of a rule which orders and disposes the multiplicity of things in a given way, the rule becomes the principle and norm of its operation relative both to reasoning and to every other way of acting.

Let us go back to Descartes' immortal discovery. He reduced curves to algebraic formulae. As we saw, expressing a curve in an algebraic formula simply means expressing it in a rule according to which the points assignable in the curve are distributed. Now everyone knows that the possession of these formulae is of immense assistance to science in determining the many beautiful properties of curves which would otherwise remain unknown. But mathematicians determined these properties only by founding their reasoning on the rule which enabled them to discover the disposition of points assignable in various curves. They then expressed these dispositions in formulae or equations. Granted knowledge of the formula which expresses the regularity of curves, the formula then becomes an immense source of new mental cognitions. Knowing the rule according to which regularity is formed in a multiplicity of things is an extremely fruitful principle of ever new cognitions, all virtually contained in that principle.

1749. Note that these cognitions, which are discovered when the reason begins with information about the rule which orders the relationships between several things, not only provide delight for the mind but, in addition, practical applications. This is well-known to those who are aware of the extent to which much mechanics and hydrodynamics have benefited by the discovery of rules which set out in summary fashion the regularity of different straight and curved lines and of their various systems. Human beings, therefore, must be led to love regularity in things for this reason also: that in regularity, once its rule has been discovered, we have a principle which: 1. opens the way to obtaining new cognitions; 2. and increases our powers of action in the exterior world to a new, incredible degree.

1750. We must add a fourth, more subtle reason why the regularity of things contemplated by the mind and expressed in a brief rule helps us to order ourselves, and thus become better, morally speaking. We actually like reproducing in ourselves the order that we are accustomed to contemplate mentally. We even do this instinctively because the rational principle does not lack its own instinct. The order of cognitions present in the human mind is the instinctive principle of well-ordered operations.

1751. But the fifth reason for the rational principle's inclination towards regularities explains and completes all the preceding reasons. This reason springs from the principle of cognition: 'The object of thought is an ens'. Now an ens is one by essence. Hence in the contemplation of an ens the intelligence rises to the degree that it begins to notice unity in the multiplicity of things. What is the unity of multiple things? It means considering them in universal being and referring them to being, their supreme container. But because its own term is good the intelligence aspires to see all things in universal being where they are found united. Hence the principal reason why intelligence loves what it knows through principles rather than through consequences is that principles not only extend infinitely further than a multitude of consequences deduced from them and thus possess greater light, but because consequences are resplendently unified within principles. And knowing multiple things in the rule which gives them regular distribution means knowing them through principles.

It is true that knowledge of things through principles, taken on its own, is simply initial, virtual cognition. From this point of view, knowledge through principles is knowledge at a lesser level than knowledge through consequences. However, consequences known without principles provide only perceptive cognition which is extremely imperfect because limited in an extraordinary manner relative to the extension of its light. In the same way, the knowledge of pure principles without any distinct reference to consequences is abstract knowledge. It, too, is imperfect, not relative to the extension of its light which is infinite, but relative to the intensity of the light, and as a result of defective communication with reality. But when principles and consequences are known at the same time, and consequences are known in principles (as for instance in the case of a multitude of things in which we are aware of the rule according to which they are distributed and disposed), then we have perfect knowledge which entirely satisfies the intelligence, and endlessly arouses and increases human activity.

1752. These are the reasons why the rational principle loves to contemplate things regularly disposed.
But this regularity can be extremely varied. The rule determining regularity can vary infinitely, and the classification of these different rules through demonstration of their properties would be an immense work to be undertaken by anyone wishing to write a treatise on Callology. Here I will have to content myself with distinguishing these rules into two great genera:

1. The genus of those rules which distribute entia in an exterior order, according to their position (symmetry) and their number (proportion) — Co-ordination.

2. The genus of those rules which distribute entia according to the convergence between interior and exterior, principle and term (organism), end and means, principles and consequences, cause and effect, etc. — Subordination.

1753. The first genus of regularity is easier to know because it appears even in things perceived with our senses.
The second is more difficult. The difficulty arises because such regularity often appears absent where the first genus is not seen. Nevertheless, it is present and is indeed more noble and excellent. In this respect, defective vision allows a gardener to believe he renders a tree more regular by shaping it as a cross. In forcing this shape on the tree he seems to impose the first genus of regularity. In fact, he destroys the regularity proper to the nature of the tree, a regularity of the second genus unknown to the uneducated gardener and his master.

1754. It will help us considerably if we distinguish accurately the kind of species and nature of harmony which the sensitive principle can enjoy from that which only the rational principle enjoys. Let us consider for a moment the opinion of Leibniz who defined music as 'an arithmetic of the soul.'
Does the sensitive soul truly enjoy numbers and their proportion? Does it enjoy the symmetry present in parts? Does it enjoy proportional movements?

This opinion entails several distinctions and reflections.

1755. First, it is certain that everything enjoyed by the sensitive principle is subjective; all enjoyment is a modification of the sensitive principle. The intellective, rational principle, on the other hand, enjoys the object; it enjoys what it knows as present in the object, not as present in itself; it enjoys good which it considers outside itself and without reference to itself.

1756. Nevertheless, the sensitive principle also has an extended, multiple term characterised by symmetry, number in movement, and (between movements) proportion in number and time. But does it enjoy all these things?

What we have said excludes objective enjoyment, which pertains only to the intellective and rational principle, from these different kinds of orders. This exclusion means that the sensitive principle cannot enjoy symmetry and proportion considered as good and beautiful in themselves, independently of the subject. The rational principle, however, which considers symmetry and proportion objectively as good independently of itself, esteems and praises them even if they are accidentally harmful to itself. This principle esteems and praises symmetry and proportion solely for the excellence it sees in them itself. If the effects of symmetry and proportion are painful for the subject, he will make a contrary judgment about the effects; he will judge them as evil (and in these effects there is already some disorder). But while he makes this judgment about the effects, his preceding judgment about the cause, that is, about symmetry and proportion, will remain intact. The beauty and good admired in symmetry and proportion by the subject are unchangeable and eternal, like being itself.

All this is outside the possibilities of the sensitive principle which can neither know nor consequently appreciate symmetry and proportion in themselves, but can only feel and enjoy their effects if these are good for it. The effects of symmetry and of proportion found in the term of feeling are not symmetry and proportion themselves, although the effect (the feeling produced) is analogous and corresponds to them. It could even be said that this effect has symmetry and proportion in itself. The sensitive principle, therefore, does not enjoy symmetry and proportion as such.

1757. But if sensible enjoyment possesses symmetry and proportion, the sensitive principle surely enjoys them?

This is not the case. When something is enjoyed, that which is enjoyed is one thing; enjoyment itself is another. To say that enjoyment enjoys itself is tautologous; the affirmation duplicates what is simple. Enjoyment does not enjoy itself; the human being simply enjoys through it. If, therefore, enjoyment itself, contemplated by the mind, contains some order similar to that of symmetry and proportion, it does not follow that the sensitive principle enjoys these dispositions. Rather, we have to say that enjoyment is a kind of living, enjoying symmetry and proportion. It is not the things that possess symmetry and proportion which enjoy the order they have in themselves; symmetry and proportion are enjoyed by the person who contemplates them and notices them. Hence, the rational principle, which finds symmetry and proportion in the intimate constitution of animal enjoyment, enjoys the order present in the enjoyment. Enjoyment itself is only an extremely simple fact, ignorant of self and its own nature. Constituted by the symmetry and proportion in its term, enjoyment is an effect of these harmonic dispositions; it is not enjoyment of them.

1758. The following, therefore, are very different questions: Does the sensitive principle enjoy symmetry and proportion? Does the sensitive principle enjoy, as an effect, that which the symmetry and proportion proper to its term produce in it?

The first question must be answered negatively. This is confirmed when we note that the sensitive principle, if it were suitable for enjoying symmetry and proportion, should enjoy all symmetry and proportion present in its term in the same way as the rational principle, which contemplates such order in its object. But there is no doubt that the sensitive principle, which experiences enjoyment as a consequence of certain symmetries and proportions taken by its term, does not enjoy other symmetries and proportions which do not have the pleasurable effect aimed at by the sensible principle. The sensitive principle does not enjoy the essence or reason for symmetry, but the effect which symmetry sometimes, but not always, produces in it.

1759. Confusing these two very distinct questions caused great men, such as Plato and Leibniz, to posit in the sensitive soul a certain hidden, mysterious reasoning power enabling it to exercise some kind of expertise in exquisite arithmetic and sublime geometry. Such a sublime error is possible only to those rare geniuses who have succeeded in uncovering symmetry and proportions innate in the felt term. However, they did not have the same success in distinguishing the pleasurable feeling which is the effect of symmetry and proportion. Consequently, they attributed to feeling itself the enjoyment of the cause constituting feeling. But feeling does not even know this cause; it enjoys its symmetrical, proportional term, but not symmetry and proportion themselves.

1760. It is not difficult for great minds to be deceived at this point. The sensitive soul does seem to perform the same operations as the arithmetician although, in fact, it does nothing of the kind.
Take, for instance, the way in which the sensitive soul seems to add two quantities. Imagine that we are crossing a lake in a small boat while another small boat passes us in the opposite direction. Our eye, which looks at the boat as it passes, seems to add the speed of the two boats with extreme accuracy; the apparent movement of the other boat registers a speed equal precisely to the speed of both.

The sensitive soul also appears to subtract. Imagine that while we are slowly crossing the lake, another boat going in the same direction overtakes us at two or three times our speed. Our eye, as it looks at the other boat, sees its speed as precisely the difference between its speed and ours. No calculation could be more exact than the precision with which our eye notices the difference.

Let us see how the sensitive soul seems to multiply or divide. We can shorten our investigation by examining a fact according to which the sensitive soul seems to carry out both operations together, and sets up a true geometric proportion in order to reach its conclusion. Imagine that our boat is moving in a straight line across the lake. From the boat, we see two mountain peaks, one further away than the other. What is the speed of the movement by which these two peaks seem to approach or distance themselves from one another? Some calculation has to be made to indicate the distance between the two peaks, and the distance of the nearer one from the boat. Only the person who can calculate will be able to say that the apparent movement of the two peaks results from an equation expressing a geometric proportion. But the eye has unhesitatingly solved the problem without measuring anything. It sees the relative movement of the two peaks proceed with the speed, neither more nor less, found in the calculation. The difference is that the mathematician's result can be mistaken, while the result seen in nature by the eye is never mistaken.

Do we have to say, therefore, that sense does in fact calculate, and calculate the speed with greater accuracy than the mind of geometricians. This would be crazy; it would transform sense into a mind more perspicacious than the mind itself. It is not sense that finds these results, but nature, which first produces them and then offers them to sense. Nature, as we said, is ordered in this way although it neither feels nor knows its own order. The movement given to sight follows its own laws, and is seen in accordance with those laws. We should not be surprised, therefore, that sense has such quantities as its terms, with their relevant dispositions and proportions, and that the mathematician who wishes to know the disposition and order of these things needs to undertake extremely complicated calculations.

1761. It is clear, therefore, that order in matter and in the movements of matter entails the presence of order in the sensory organs, which are composed of matter. Again, there is no doubt that the sensitive principle tends to possess as its term both a determined organism, and one which is more suitable than another because it enables the sensitive principle to develop great sensitive activity. It is not surprising, therefore, that the sensitive principle itself tends to have some movements rather than others in its sensory organs. These movements, moreover, are regulated according to certain proportions of size and time.

1762. We also need to consider that the direction and communication of movement receives its form from the configuration and composition of a body itself. For example, a body of a certain shape which receives an impulse to movement carries out different movements dependent on the point and direction in which the motor force is applied. This same force, applied to a body of another shape, produces another kind of movement. But the sensory organs themselves possess a certain regular configuration suitable for the sensitive principle. Their movements, therefore, if suitable for them, must share in the same regularity and consequently possess a certain order.

1763. Again, it is natural that one of the elements in this order is the proportion between the various times in which the different movements, impressed at these times, come about. The communication of movement obeys the law of time. The same movement impressed on two bodies, one of which is double the size of the other, takes double the time to pass through the whole of the body and communicate itself to all the molecules. Hence, time is proportioned to the proportion of the mass. If the density of the body is equal, and the volume double, communication of movement from molecule to molecule will take place relative to the volume.

What is said about simple communication of movement by way of impulse must also be said equally, or similarly, of movement through affinity or attraction, through waves or vibrations, and of simple and composite movement resulting from a single force or several forces, and so on. Granted the law: 'The sensitive principle finds pleasure in completing its acts, in not being disturbed half-way and made to begin new acts', it is clear that the movements which it seeks in its term must be proportioned in time. They must not be jammed upon one another, or interspersed and confused, but distinct and ordered so that their regular pauses leave time for the sensitive principle to complete its actions and develop all that is actually taking place in it without turning back. The sensitive principle, therefore, does not take pleasure in this order per se, but for the sake of developing leisurely the activity which it always wants to finish and complete. The principle would suffer if this activity were impeded.

1764. When sensations such as sight and sound are produced, one extremely simple sensation, white or red, alarmire or feffaute, corresponds to a given number and rhythm of vibrations. This is a clear proof that the number of vibrations and their proportions has no part in the feeling, which arises as a single effect of multiple, extrasubjective movements.

1765. It may be objected that greater light renders the eye insensible to lesser, or that in entering two equally red rooms the first seems more red than the second.(373) A sudden passage from a high temperature to a much lower one gives a cold sensation. And in general where the same length of time contains a more marked passage between one state of stimulation and another, greater liveliness is found in sensation. In other words, it seems that sensation is produced not in proportion to the absolute action of the external stimulus, but in proportion to various, successive stimuli. — This does not prove that the sensory feels the proportion between the stimuli, but only that the effect of this proportion in certain circumstances is a more or less lively sensation. To complete its acts, the sensory needs to be stimulated with order and proportion, not by chance. Over-violent and disproportionate movements can produce a lesser or null feeling relative to lighter, suitably proportioned movements.

1766. The rational principle, therefore, enjoys symmetrical, proportional regularity, that is, order, which is essentially objective; the rational principle alone discovers and contemplates more or less distinctly the single, simple rule which determines regularity.
Another observation confirms this. A given multitude of things can be considered from different points of view by the intelligence. Consequently, it presents different regularities, different symmetries, without any change in the real distribution of these things. If different regularities exist within the same distribution of things, this regularity comes about as a result of different mental reflections; it is not proper to things materially considered, nor to any feeling of them.

What are these different mental aspects? How are things distributed regularly in different ways? This certainly comes about because the mind sees that the very distribution of things can be determined in this way by different rules. The mind, by applying different rules (using as it were, different paths), comes to distribute those things in the very same order. Let us take a chessboard as our example.

Everyone knows that a chessboard is a square surface divided into sixty-four lesser squares. The distribution of these squares is very simple, and follows a single pattern. But the mind can consider the small squares placed and united in various ways; the aspect they present looked at in one way is very different from that presented from another point of view. If I consider these squares united along their sides, I have a different pattern from that which is present if I look at them united at their corners. I can also form a shape from several of them. This shape, constantly repeated, embraces the whole of the chessboard, and gives me a new pattern.

Let us consider for a moment the movement of different chess pieces. I limit myself to three for the sake of brevity: the rook, the bishop and the knight. The rook's movement goes from one end of the board to the other along a row in which the squares are united at their sides. If I now take an entire row of eight squares, I can define the chessboard as 'a board made up of eight rows of equal squares united at their sides'. This is a rule which determines one symmetric distribution. I now take the bishops, which move diagonally along rows of squares joined at their corners. These rows of squares, touching at their corners, give me the same chessboard which I can now define as 'a square composed of sixteen rows of chess squares joined diagonally at their corners.'

If I fix my eye on the sixteen rows making up the board, I now seem to have a pattern totally different from the first. Now take the knight's move. It is made up of three squares, one of which is in an oblique direction. I now focus my eye on the shape resulting from these three squares, and then consider them repeated in such a way that they fill the whole chessboard which I can now define as 'a square divided into twenty-one shapes each of which has the shape of two small squares in one direction and one oblique, plus one other small square.' If I consider the chessboard as an aggregate of such shapes, it now appears with a totally different pattern from that seen previously. In other words the same, real chessboard becomes a plane possessing different symmetries according to different relationships between its shapes, resulting from different mental points of view which come to indicate different rules used by the mind to determine symmetry. These rules or principles enable symmetry to be conceived in its reason, in its rule, in a way suitable for the intelligence.

1767. This shows clearly that the regularity contemplated by the mind is posited by the mind itself which, however, would be unable to posit it if the multiplicity forming the object of its contemplation did not have certain relationships and correspondences with what is ideal, where the rules of things are present. Once again, we see a synthesis between what is real and what is ideal.

1768. This also explains why beasts do not give any sign of appreciating what is beautiful, even musical harmony, although they do react to some kind of melody as, for instance, in the case of snakes which do not savour what is beautiful but what pleases the senses.

1769. Multiplicity is contemporaneous or successive. Consequently the harmony which can be found in multiplicity is also contemporaneous as a result of the order possessed by the simultaneous presence of several things. This order is manifested in the symmetry of which we have spoken, in the order that parts have relative to the whole, in harmonic sensations, and so on. On the other hand, harmony is successive if it results from the order and convergence which preceding and successive terms of a series of facts have with one another.

We have already dealt with successive harmony when we spoke about the sensitive soul. Our example was the imaginary colours and sounds which spontaneously succeed one another in the optic and acoustic sensories. Let us consider these examples now in the rational principle itself, which is the whole man.

1770. The five reasons given above show why the rational principle takes pleasure whenever it contemplates order.
The rational principle can consider this order both in something different from itself and in its own proper feeling. The order that a person contemplates in his own feeling constitutes what I call aesthetic beauty. One's own feeling is ordered when it is pleasurable. Consequently aesthetic beauty is simultaneously beautiful and pleasurable for the senses. But beauty, considered in things outside one's own feeling, is beautiful without being pleasurable to the senses themselves, without being aesthetic.

This does not mean that the sight of something beautiful is not pleasant, but that the pleasure of pure beauty is wholly intellective. Properly speaking, it is contemplation of what is beautiful that pleases, rather than the object which is contemplated, the beautiful thing itself. If, however, we speak of order in our own feeling, there is present, in addition to the intellective pleasure in contemplation itself, the pleasure which constitutes the nature of what is contemplated, that is, the pleasing feeling. In this case, pleasure itself is the rule for knowing whether feeling is well-ordered (I am speaking about true, natural, prevailing pleasure). However, authors dealing with what is beautiful have not made these distinctions between aesthetic beauty and what is beautiful in general, and between pleasurable beauty and what is simply pleasurable. They have almost always confused what is pleasurable with what is beautiful, and restricted the science of callology to the narrow limits of aesthetics.

1771. We need to recall that every animal sensory is so ordered that on stimulation it is immediately determined and moved to a given series of successive movements, not to others. This is partly the result of the laws of the matter composing it and the laws of the communication of motion, partly the result of the organism and partly the result of the relationships of matter and organisation with the activity of the sentient principle. If, however, another series were to interrupt and disturb the first series, sensitive nature would find this unfitting and upsetting. It follows that the spontaneity of the sentient principle, which always tends to the state and act of greatest pleasure, assists and promotes the first series of movements while refusing to further the second series. Thus, if a violin string is plucked, it gives isochronic oscillations which diminish in extension and speed in a constant proportion. If the string were animated or were a sensory organ, it would tend to complete all its oscillations until it came to rest. It would resist the forces which wished to interrupt or alter the isochronism, that is, the activity which is more easy and natural to the string.(374)

We now need to consider that the animal, although it has a single, constitutive, sentient principle, possesses many sensories. These are very many in the human being, the most perfect animal of all, who possesses as many species of sensations as he has organs and sensitive apparatus. Each one of our human sensories has a series of successive movements which are connatural and pleasing to it, that is, has a series of sensations through which sensation passes before being totally extinguished.
Moreover, exterior stimuli are pleasant if they correspond to such oscillation in the sensory organ and help it pass through the ordered series of sensations with a fixed rhythm, rendering them more lively. Otherwise, they are troublesome, annoying and, in varying degrees, even painful.

1772. Amongst other circumstances determining the natural succession of sensations proper to a sensory organ, we find frustration and tiredness. These arise when sensations have not posited those pauses which, in giving rest to the organ, refresh and strengthen it. The need for rest depends on the same law that prescribes rhythm. This law determines the pauses between sensations, the duration and the intensity of these pauses, and so on.

1773. But, you may say, if the sensories are many and each has its own rhythm proper to the series of pleasing sensations, why do different sensories, operating simultaneously, not come into collision? — We certainly have to suppose that the wise author of human nature has first of all harmonised the sensories in the wonderful organism he has created. Besides, over and above all the rest, stands the single, sensitive principle which dominates and harmonises all the sensories. The prevalent taste of this sensitive principle is that which determines the true pleasure that we enjoy as human beings. This also explains why the contemporaneous and successive operation of various sensories receives a supreme rule determining the duration of their operation, their pauses, their proportions, their intensities, and so on.

1774. Finally, there is in human beings, besides animal feeling, an intellective feeling and a moral feeling. These two extremely noble feelings possess their own natural harmony in their operations and pleasures. On the one hand, the intellective feeling, which must prevail because it belongs to a more sublime order, modifies with its own harmony the animal harmony in us, which it unites with itself. Similarly, moral feeling modifies and tempers with its own proper harmony the animal, intellective harmony which it unites with itself and makes use of. The result is a single harmony, possessing an extremely high degree of unity.

1775. Consequently, the following harmonies, which fuse into a single harmony, are preordained and pre-established in the human being:

1. The harmony of naturally successive acts in the singular sensories.

2. The harmony between sensories as a result of the unity of the sensitive principle. This accounts for animal harmony.

3. Animal harmony dominated, ruled and informed by the intellective principle. This accounts for animal-intellective harmony.

4. Animal-intellective harmony, ruled, informed and completed by the moral principle. This truly confers total harmony to the human being — human harmony.

1776. This entire complex of harmonic activities possesses, predetermined by nature, a certain succession of acts disposed in various ways.
Human beings have an instinct for this succession, an instinct which is indeed truly human, but does not always act at full strength on account of some defect or weakness and vice in us. The result is disharmony. But these disharmonies, which indicate weakness and vice in our great human instinct, do not indicate total cessation of the instinct. It operates, and the partial harmonic instincts operate with it. This complex of activities determines the successive dispositions, propensities and aversions which we experience during our life on earth. It also accounts for the same tendencies in nations, and in the way centuries evolve.

1777. Let us apply some of these principles to explain certain phenomena. Why do we have continual changes in fashion? Are these changes the arbitrary effect of capriciousness amongst vain people, or perhaps the result of decisions made by entrepreneurs? This is what we normally think; when a cause lies hidden because it is too deep, too difficult to find, we attribute the result to some accident. But if we consider this extraordinary fact called 'fashion', manifested at various levels in nations which have reached a certain degree of civilisation, we will easily see that mere arbitrariness on the part of those who introduce a new style of dress and ornament is insufficient to exact such docile obedience that a nation appears unanimous and totally at one in accepting the new fashion.

It is even less possible to ensure that everyone's taste is conformed and changed daily in submission to the entrepreneurs, who do not form but speculate upon universal taste. On the other hand, if we question fashionable people of both sexes, they are quite definite that the fashions are the most beautiful. What was previously most beautiful, but has been in vogue for some time, soon becomes displeasing; it irritates, it seems out of place. In other words, we have to believe that every appearance of the latest fashion provides them with an agreeable feeling, and that the preceding fashion now seems out of date. But there is an explanation of this apparently frivolous phenomenon which in fact is worthy of philosophical attention (although the explanation certainly cannot be used to justify the light-headedness found in the followers of the changeable, inexorable goddess of fashion which, we notice, is more lively and more pronounced in capital cities).

First, we have to accept that a presupposition to the reign of fashion is a developed and actuated sense of the complex of sensual pleasures which fashion itself presents in ever varied ways, a complex resulting from infinite, extremely subtle elements — ethereal essences as it were — and forming something 'unknown and indistinct', as Dante would put it. This sense lies dormant in crude or still youthful, strict societies. But given that it and its consequent instinct have been aroused, actuated and refined, I have no doubt that the flow of fashions, daily created and destroyed, is determined by the law of successive harmony. As a result of this law, the instinct for fashion arising from innumerable feelings and particular instincts has a profound need for certain new forms from which (and not from others) it gains pleasure. This wonderful law secretly directs the varied duration of fashions and their quality. It also contains the natural reason why one kind of cut follows another, why one colour follows another, why one type of dress follows another, etc. Again, it explains why the new fashion pleases, and the previous one does not. The pleasure taken in one fashion or usage should not be attributed to its form and quality in isolation, but to its suitable place in a whole succession of feelings.

Another argument leading to the same conclusion can be drawn from the fact that a fashion which seemed beautiful to various nations during its brief dominion sometimes appears very distasteful to a foreigner coming from a distance who remains uninfluenced by the whole circle of fashions which had previously developed.

A secret law, therefore, determines the course of fashions and frivolous customs with a certain kind of fatality. Harmony, pre-established by the nature of feeling, produces these fashions one after another. Where sense is more delicate and lively, as in capital cities, it enunciates readily and exactly what suits it. This affirmation is generally accepted as a kind of interpretation of common taste which satisfies the public who previously had been unable to provide shape and existence for their indistinct desire. There is no doubt that the universal, docile acceptance of new fashion results from innumerable small feelings, as we said, pertaining to different sensories and faculties, each of which possesses a succession of acts preferable to every other. Every faculty is a sensory and, considered as such, is subject to the same law.

1778. This also explains why the course of fashions and social behaviour varies in different nations. Different circumstances, which dispose the sense of fashion in different ways, determine it along an equally fatal course.

1779. Yet another point which adds emphasis to our argument. Careful consideration shows that the law of successive harmony of which we are speaking has an extremely extended dominion, an incredible extension, even to other things. It is capable of exercising immense influence in determining various customs of peoples, the course of their opinions, and even of historical events.

Taste in arts and literature is also dependent on the law of harmonic succession. Even ideas lose and acquire splendour at different times as a result of hidden, but unavoidable laws. This explains why it would be impossible for the severe virtue of such people as Cincinnatus, Curius and Fabricius to be practised in Rome at the time of Horace and Ovid. Latter-day Rome had lost its feeling for these things, although admiration for them still remained high. But this is explained by the contemplation of unchangeable truth and beauty, which does not have succession as sensible pleasure does.

Many other facts are subject to this law. Why do certain universal tastes reveal themselves irresistibly in one period or another? What is the explanation of certain characteristic opinions, certain characteristic ways of acting? These phenomena are fully explained if we add the law of spontaneity of direct life to the law of successive harmony which secretly guides the whole human being. Apparent leaps then disappear; leaps are only the sudden manifestation in reflection and consciousness of work which has already gone on within human beings without reflection and consciousness. — It is sufficient, I think, to have indicated this vast field of meditation. Philosophers who come after us, with more time and ability than ourselves, will perhaps be able to cultivate it usefully.

Notes

(368) This was already known by the wisest minds. Italy, my country, why not become a disciple of great intellects instead of wasting time in frivolous, superficial reading? Yet you dream of becoming once more mistress of the nations! — To understand how great thinkers realised that all harmony would perish if the sensitive and intellective spirit were taken from the world, it is sufficient to open the Harmonice Mundi of John Kepler (Lincii Austriae, 1619) and read bk. 4.

(369) AMS , 443-451.

(370) AMS , 439-440.

(371) AMS , bk. 2.

(372) Consequently, it is not possible to accept, according to me, the thesis upheld by ancient doctors, that 'the phantasy directs formative energy by way of example through species' (Cf. Fyens, Quaest . 15). One proof that formative energy does not act merely through the species of the phantasy, over which such species have only the slightest influence, is the fact that the operation of formative energy is highly separate from consciousness. If this energy operated through species, it would not be difficult to reflect upon it and come to some awareness of it.

(373) The harmonic colour following red in the optic sensory is greenish. Consequently, in the passage from the first to the second room, the prior sensation of red must degenerate in the eye to greenish. This is perhaps the reason why the red of the second room appears weaker.

(374) The law of isochronism of the oscillations in a violin string corresponds perfectly to the law which demonstrates that the cycloid is the line of most rapid descent. This observation will provide considerable light for readers familiar with physics and mathematics. They will recognise that isochronism of forces is one of those cases in which nature is clearly seen to be regulated by the sublime law of the least means. Cf. Teodicea , 495-503.