Chapter 5

Concerning Averroes' opinion that the body is united to the rational soul by means of the intelligible species

274. Averroes glimpsed something of the preceding teaching about the union of soul and body, but the imperfection of Aristotelian philosophy did not allow him to grasp the truth. Instead, he proposed a system rife with errors: according to him, the soul is united to the body by means of the intelligible species.(130)

275. This opinion demonstrates Averroes' clear awareness that only a rational act could unite the rational principle to the body; if the act of union were not itself rational, the union would have been brought about by a potency different from the rational principle.

Ignorant of the rational act and its nature (which unites soul and body), he declared that it came about by means of the intelligible species. This species, he said, was present both in the phantasms pertaining to the corporeal organ and in the possible intellect.

276. It is erroneous however to say that the intelligible species is present in phantasms. St. Thomas himself noted that phantasms are what is understood; the intellect is that which understands. Averroes' statement would not explain how a person who has phantasms in the corporeal organs is the same person who understands. Such a person would be like a wall that has colours which are not exclusively in the eye of the one who sees them. St. Thomas concluded correctly therefore that no system is suitable for explaining the union of soul and body unless it can demonstrate that the soul by which the human being lives, feeds, feels, has phantasms, moves and understands, is the soul itself. In other words, the system necessary for explaining the nexus between soul and body must be able to demonstrate that the rational soul is joined to the body as intimately as form to matter.(131) However, after establishing this important truth that ipsa anima, cuius EST HAEC VIRTUS (intellectiva) est corporis forma [the soul, which HAS THIS (intellective) POWER, is the form of the body],(132) the Saint does not go on to propose the system. I want to take this valuable argument from St. Thomas and, if possible, develop it further. Let us look more carefully at the defects of the system proposed by the Arab commentator.

277. The deficiency in Averroes' thought was:

1. He did not advert to the nature of perception, which really joins perceived and perceiver into one. On the other hand, species, when defined as a likeness of phantasms (as the Aristotelians define it), is something entirely abstract and purely intellectual. It does not unite phantasms to itself and, still less, the corporal organs where the Aristotelians located phantasms.

278. 2. It is false that the intelligible species has two subjects, the possible intellect and phantasms, because the intelligible species is not in phantasms. But in the case of perception, the contrary is true: feeling exists not only in itself as feeling but in the idea as an essential entity. This juncture of idea with feeling gives rise to perception, to which the human being adds a more or less explicit affirmation, which is simply a disposition and movement of the rational principle itself.

279. 3. In the third place, Averroes did not see that phantasms are only accidental modifications of the fundamental feeling. Hence, they cannot be assumed to explain the substantial union of soul and body.

280. 4. Much less did he notice the two ways we perceive our body. Our body presents itself to us as two things of different nature, although they are not so. We called these two things subjective body and extrasubjective body. Averroes did not realise that the union of soul and body remains inexplicable if we ignore the concept of extrasubjective body. This concept, instead of revealing the intimate nature of the body, presents mostly a phenomenal body relative to our faculty of external feeling. The greatest modern philosophers, such as Malebranche and Leibniz, ignorant of the subjective body, declared such a physical influence impossible and invented the hypothesis of occasional causes and pre-established harmony.

281. 5. Similarly, Averroes was unaware that the body, adhering to the soul from the very beginning, is not isolated. It adheres to the soul because included in the fundamental feeling, whose term it is. This feeling becomes object of the first perception through which the rational principle communicates with the body.

282. 6 Finally, the intelligible species is not itself an act but an object contemplated by the mind, as Aquinas notes. The rational soul must also be united to the body with its own act. Even if the object of its intuition were united, the soul itself would not be united, because the object it intuits does not itself intuit.

283. Averroes' error, that the intelligible species is the means of communication between soul and body, inevitably resulted in the strangest consequences.
Although the intelligible species is a pure idea, the Arab thinkers had made phantasms subject to it, and maintained that the soul, by means of this species, communicates with bodies. Consequently, they had to attribute to the intellect and imagination (which are subjects of the intelligible species) a extraordinary power over bodies. This power was not only over one's own body but over distant, foreign bodies which, although not actually perceived, were present through their phantasms. The Arabic school never gave up this absurdity. Such is the force of idolised false principle!

284. Avicenna,(133) for example, stated that the human soul could, with a strong imagination, alter both its own and foreign bodies, making them ill or healthy; it could produce hail, snow or wind, extract unusual powers from the stars, unhorse distant riders and hound them into the ground; it could grow plants without seed or generate human beings without use of the generative organs! The same prodigies were attributed to the Moorish philosopher, Avicembron, and to Al-Gazzali.(134)

285. The Platonists, taking another road, made the same extraordinary errors. They confused what is real with what is ideal, that is, they made ideas subsistences. Other philosophers mixed Platonism with Aristotelianism.(135) According to them, the intelligible species and phantasms worked marvels. This explains the prodigies of Apollonius of Tyana, and so many other marvels narrated by historians, a part of which were probably illusions resulting from induced sleepwalking.

Notes

(130) De Anima, bk. 3, text. 5 & 36.

(131) S.T., I, q. 76, art. 1.

(132) Ibid., ad 1.

(133) Sen., 2, bk. 1; Doct., 2. c. 14; Natural., 4, 7; Metaph., c. 6 & 9.

(134)Al-Gazzali, Phys., bk. 5, c. 9.

(135) Cf. Marsilio Ficino, Theol. Plat., bk. 3, c. 1; Andrea Cattaneo da Imola, Lib. 1 de intellectu et de causis mirabilium effectuum; Pomponazzi, L. de incantat.; Paracelsus, L. de signat. rerum; Agrippa, L. de occ. philos.; Giacomo da Forlí, Tech., 3, q. 11; Coelius Rhodiginus [Ludovico Ricchieri of Rovigo], bk. 20, c. 15. - A rich source of learning in this matter can be found in Prefazione storica at the start of Fatti relativi al mesmerismo e cure memeriche by Drs. Cogevina and Orioli, Corfú, 1842.