Chapter 9

The efficacy of the acts of the rational principle on the body

311. The first question is: 'How great is the power of the rational principle over the body?'

312. I reply that the rational principle, which communicates directly with the sentient principle, has per se absolute power to produce in the body it informs all those movements which the feeling principle itself produces in the body.
I say absolute power because it is one thing for the rational principle to be able to produce these movements, considering its nature and its nexus with the sentient principle; it is another for it to produce them constantly without regard to circumstances.

313. Certainly, the power of the rational principle to move the different parts of the body cannot be activated unless certain conditions, about which I will speak later, are verified. In their absence, the rational soul is apparently powerless to cause such movements, or encounters different degrees of difficulty in accomplishing them.

314. I now wish to examine the efficacy exercised over the body by the rational principle with its special acts. I shall maintain that it changes the body through two kinds of activity: intelligence and will.

315. The first act of the rational principle is special perception, which immediately presents an extraordinary fact. As soon as our senses are struck by some corporeal stimulus, the rational principle is moved to execute the act of perception. What is the origin of this immediate spontaneity of movement?

316. If the impression moved only the sense, the rational principle would not know that it had a sensation or a body to perceive, and consequently could not move itself to perceive it.
This fact becomes very clear when we consider the fundamental perception. If it is true that the rational soul, by means of a law of its nature, perceives continually the whole animal feeling, it is clear that it must also perceive both the changes which occur violently in the feeling and the force producing these changes, that is, the stimulating body.

317. There is also the other question: 'In perception, does the soul exercise some activity on the body?'

Let us first consider sensitive perception in brute animals, and then rational perception.
Sense-perception takes place naturally and spontaneously, as I have explained elsewhere. The fundamental feeling necessarily feels its own modifications.(145) Initially, when the animal is not yet developed, this action follows the same law of spontaneity by which the sense-principle pervades what is felt.(146)
Next, the sensitive principle acquires a habit which increases its activity. It does this in virtue of the same law of spontaneity, immersing itself more, as it were, into what it finds pleasant, and refusing to co-operate with what is painful.

We have seen that the level of intensity and activity of the sentient principle can vary in sensitive perception.(147) Nevertheless, this greater intensity of certain feelings produced by the activity of the instinctive, sentient principle(148) does not appear to be a direct effect of the principle. On the contrary, it seems to be an effect obtained through intimate movements produced by the principle in the sensory organ, that is, through an action on the body.

318. In the case of the rational principle, we have seen that it has as much power over the body as the instinctive-sentient principle, which it perceives and controls (cf. 311). We shall have to say therefore that in perception the rational principle can modify the sensory organ by moving the sensitive principle to accept a more intense perception.

319. Furthermore, the rational principle perceives more intensely and distinctly when it increases its rational attention. This attention, which may not heighten the intensity of the perception as sensitive, does heighten it as rational. Even the different degrees of intensity in the attention of the intelligent spirit can probably produce certain minimum movements in the body for the reason given above (cf. 309).

320. Images are internal sense-experiences reproduced from external sense-experiences.
Generally speaking, they receive from memory, or the faculty which retains previously experienced sensations, the aptitude to indicate an external body whose sensible picture, as it were, we seem to see in them.
Why is the arousal of our perception of external bodies restricted for the most part solely to sensations and not to phantasms, unless the latter are aided by the memory of sensations?

321. The aptitude of sense-experiences rather than phantasms to make us perceive external bodies is due to their two characteristics:

1. In sense-experiences we perceive a foreign body which violently stimulates and alters the external part of our sensory organ. Images do not do this; they are not stimulated by any foreign body, but by internal stimuli and movements of our body. The stimuli and movements therefore are either felt subjectively, or not felt with the same constancy as external stimuli.

2. Granted the number of our different organs, many different sense-experiences can be repeated; we can experience the same foreign body through our various organs as often as we like. We thus recognise in our body a constant power to produce sensations; this power gives us the concept of a permanent corporeal substance. But these experiences are not present in phantasms.(149)

322. Nevertheless, when external sense-experiences have given us concepts of bodies, phantasms easily re-present these concepts to us as if they were the sense-experiences themselves renewed internally. We readily unite to them the concept of the body previously formed through the external experience.

323. However, we still need to explain how we acquire this inclination for adding the idea to the phantasm. For example, we add the idea of a stone to the phantasm of a stone, knowing that the stone whose phantasm we have is neither present nor perceptible. How do we explain this natural, spontaneous association between phantasms and corresponding ideas?(150)

324. The basic reason was given when I explained the spontaneity of the perceptions of external bodies (cf. 309). The rational principle, united to our animal-fundamental feeling through a natural, continuous perception, is always actuated to perceive intellectively every change it undergoes. However, perception of this change, which takes place in the fundamental feeling, is not sufficient in itself to explain how the idea of an external body is added to the change. The addition is explained by the association of the phantasms with the corresponding external sense-experiences and with the idea of the body formed through these experiences. This association becomes habitual and always ready to act. Thus, we must not presume that babies think of a body, for example, every time a phantasm is aroused in them; they have not yet formed ideas of external bodies nor associated phantasms with the ideas.

325. The rational principle is clearly more active on the body through the function by which it activates and composes positive cognitions habitually stored in it. Positive cognitions result from the two elements of idea and feeling, or the vestiges of feeling. In order to recall these cognitions to its attention, the rational soul must exercise an action on the corporeal feeling. If we suppose that this feeling pertains to phantasms, the soul can exert its power to arouse them, but must also renew the movement of the cerebral organ.(151)

326. Certain physiologists, who know very little about psychology, do not hesitate to call the brain 'organ of thought'. The truth however is that pure thought has no organ; the brain is simply the organ of corporeal imagination. Their error is caused by the soul's readiness to associate idea with image.

327. The re-memorising and composing of positive information is accomplished by the varying re-stimulation of the images. The movements in the nerves of the brain correspond, in the extrasubjective order, to this re-stimulation.
The power needed by the rational principle to arouse images, compose them into various groups and heighten their vividness (which depends on the strength of the intellective concept and on the feelings and passions moving the understanding) is well known and discussed by many authors. The thought of what is conceived as good conjures up joyful, bright images; what is conceived as evil, conjures up sad, frightening images. The former can induce great joy; the latter, extreme sadness.

328. The reason why we clothe our ideas with images analogous to our ideas is exactly the same as the reason why images arouse thoughts in our intelligence; in other words, it lies, as we said, in our association of images with sensations and of sensations with ideas. The image replaces the sensation to which the intellective perception of the external body is naturally united, and the positive idea is included in the intellective perception. As intellective-feeling beings, our thought is necessarily composed of intuition and sense-experience, and is incomplete unless it results from both these elements. This function, by which the concept calls up the image, and the image the concept, I call human-synthetical force.

All these facts are very easily explained by means of the fundamental perception.

329. The objects we perceive cause feelings in us which are joyful if the object is perceived as good, or sad if perceived as bad. They are called rational feelings (or intellectual, if caused by the intuition of pure concepts) in contradistinction to animal feelings which, to exist, require only sense and instinct, but not the use of reason.
With internal observation as our guide once more, let us see what kind of activity rational feelings have in changing the subjective body and thus producing extrasubjective movements.

First of all, the object of the information that moves feeling can differ from the subject, but also be the subject itself when contemplated as object. These two classes of rational feelings can be called objective and subjective-objective.

330. Purely objective feeling arises in the rational subject whenever the subject apprehends any entity whatsoever, because every apprehended entity is a source of joy - this explains the saying of the Scholastics that ens and good are interchangeable.(152) The feeling therefore naturally increases in proportion to the entity, which, when the greatest, produces the greatest mental enjoyment.

331. Subjective-objective feeling arises whenever the subject perceives something that is good or bad for itself. We need to define what is good and bad for a subject, and strictly speaking for the human subject. In general, for the human subject, good is a pleasant state or action, and evil, a painful state or action. Pleasure and pain (I use these words in their widest sense) pertain to feeling. Hence, good and bad for a human subject are respectively pleasant and painful feelings. Among the pleasant and painful feelings of a rational subject, some are intellectual, such as those which arise, as we said, from every object of the mind; others are animal; many are a mixture of both. When the rational principle perceives some good proper to it, a feeling of rational joy is immediately produced; when it perceives some evil proper to it, a feeling of sadness (also rational) is produced. Furthermore, a subjective-objective feeling of joy and sadness arises in human beings not simply when they intellectively perceive something good or bad for themselves, but also when they perceive something with the power to cause, or to increase or diminish, this good or evil. Hence, a subjective-objective feeling is that which arises in the human being as a result of the information about his own good and evil, or of the cause of these.

332. We see therefore that subjective-objective feelings follow upon the orders of reflection so that the orders of subjective-objective feelings (pleasant or painful) correspond to the orders, indefinite in number, of reflection possible to a human being. Thus, after I have enjoyed the contemplation of an ens, I can, by reflecting upon myself, take pleasure in my enjoyment. If I then reflect upon this pleasure, it can itself be the cause of delight and satisfaction. I can say the same about this satisfaction, and so on ad infinitum.

333. All these objective or subjective-objective rational feelings can be considered in two ways, either apart from any possible influence of the will upon them, or as modified by the action of the will.

334. Considered in themselves apart from the influence of the will, they obey some necessary laws rooted in the nature of the object and subject, and can be reduced to the following.
The law governing purely objective feelings makes them as great as the contemplated ens which produces them. They constitute the universal, human faculty of loving objectively: by nature, we love every being, major entia more, minor entia less.

335. The laws governing subjective-objective feelings are more complex. These feelings originate from the good and bad we perceive rationally in ourselves or from their causes. This good or bad in the human subject results from many elements: 1. from what is good and bad for the animal (animal feelings), 2. from intellectual good and evil (objective feelings and subjective-objective feelings), and 3. from moral good and evil.
The rational principle perceives all these kinds of good and evil, whose fusion produces the complex good and evil we rejoice in or suffer from.

The perfection of the perception of this complex good or evil (the perception is also itself a kind of fusion of many perceptions) depends on more or less perfect nature in human beings, and the extent to which they have reached perfection. It would take too long to describe how the perfection of this perception of the three kinds of subjective good and evil depends on the perfection of human nature in itself or the development of this perfection by means of its physical, intellectual and moral progress. I will omit such a long investigation and reduce to a single general formula the laws governing the natural formation of subjective-objective feelings: 'The human being receives joyful or sad feelings in proportion to the natural perception of what is good or bad for him. The degree of rectitude of this perception will depend on the degree to which intellectual light and moral feeling prevail over animal feeling or vice versa. The perception can also vary in vividness and efficacy.'

336. Granted this, let us see how the rational principle, with its own different feelings, influences animal feeling and, by means of this, produces certain movements in the body.
Rational feelings always proceed from some intellection. The intellections of the human mind can primarily be so cut off from space and time that they are immune from every corporeal image; they do not need to be formed by any corporal organ. At least the idea of being in general is an intellection of this kind. But can such a pure, immaterial thought cause feelings?

337. Let us distinguish the various accidents pertaining to this kind of thought.
First accident: the object of some thought is in itself pure from every corporeal image, but human beings, who tend naturally and habitually to represent everything by images, very easily associate with the act of thought another act with which they arouse in themselves images of varying refinement and subtlety. These images clothe the object and make it appear, they think, more intense, although in fact they falsify it. This role of the imagination has to be rejected because our question concerns a pure idea.

338. The second accident: human beings are multiple subjects, that is, principles of many faculties; they never (or with very great difficulty) move one faculty alone. When thinking reflectively of the object of intuition and not simply intuiting, they cannot move their reflection without activating some other faculty. I do not doubt therefore that the effort to contemplate a pure idea and, still more, the effort to silence every other activity within us, sets in motion the very powers we wish to subdue. We cannot turn again to a pure idea without some activity of the brain nerves; the brain must play a part because its modification follows upon that of the mind as an automatic sequel of the mind's action. We must also reject from our calculation the action of other faculties which per accidens accompany the pure act of the mind, because our question concerns only some sensed effect of a pure idea.

339. Ignoring every image-involvement and every consequent movement connected with it, I believe therefore that a pure idea causes a merely objective intellectual feeling of pleasure, and that the degree of this feeling corresponds to the degree of perfection and vividness of the intuition.
But does this feeling, foreign to the order of corporeal things, influence the animal feeling, and by means of this, cause movements in the body?

It is certain that this feeling pertains to some nature of totally immaterial things. We must however keep in mind the identity of the human subject, who is simultaneously principle of spiritual and corporeal feelings. When the spiritual affections of this subject modify his state, making him more perfect or imperfect, more or less happy, they necessarily produce some effects and modifications, even if indiscernible, in the animal life of which he is the principle. Indeed, experience shows that the human soul, when affected to any degree by a spiritual joy, becomes more active relative to the body, quickening the blood's circulation; sadness has the opposite effect.

340. If we consider the subjective effect, that is, the good and bad state of the soul, whatever its cause, we easily understand that it differs not in species but in degree, although the causes responsible for joyful or sad states can vary specifically, generically and even categorically. Because the soul is simple, its manner of being, its state is simple. Although it has only one natural perfection, this perfection admits of indefinite degrees. This perfection is its happiness. The strength of the soul corresponds to the degree of its perfection and happiness, and as vital principle exercises on the body an energy proportionate to its perfection. Objective feelings are joyful in proportion to their perfection, and make the soul happier and more active.

341. It seems in fact that actual joy, when it passes a certain limit, can produce movements forceful and sudden enough to disorder the body and cause death. This phenomenon of the sensuous instinct however is not proper to human nature; on the contrary, its origin is in decadent nature, where weakened reason can no longer dominate the affections, which in this case are always man-made and unnatural.

342. What has been said about purely objective feelings applies to subjective-objective feelings. The latter modify animal feelings more closely than purely objective feelings. Objective feelings can modify animal feelings only by subjectivising themselves in such a way that they move the body by communicating their action, which they do by three links, as it were, or series of causes and effects: 1. objective feelings, 2. subjective-objective feelings, 3. animal feelings, 4. extrasubjective movements.

343. The rational feelings we are discussing are sometimes willed, sometimes unwilled. Unwilled feelings in the rational subject are those arising without the will's command; willed feelings, those arising through the will's direct or indirect command.

344. Can the will modify feelings which of their nature are unwilled? Only some, and with a limited action, as I have explained in Anthropology.

345. The action of the human will cannot alter the universal feeling through which human beings tend to good. This feeling is natural, unwilled and superior to the will, which originates from it.

346. The universal feeling through which we tend to good, to every good, gives rise naturally to all objective feelings. These, according to the law governing them, are so proportioned to the greatness of the conceived ens that their natural gradation is the natural gradation of the entia. Ordered and graded in this way, they are natural and unwilled, that is, they naturally originate in us without an act of will. Indeed, we might prefer to say that they themselves initiate spontaneous, consenting acts of the will. The will, however, can influence them by altering their order; it can, by opposing nature and truth, increase the value of some, diminish the value of others. It does this with acts, particularly repeated acts, which leave traces and attitudes in the soul, generating arbitrary opinions, prejudicial habits, and habitual, immoral judgments and affections.
With its energy and free feelings, the will can also preserve the order of these objective feelings, and increase and enjoy their intensity.

347. Unwilled natural feelings of intelligent human nature(153) become willed in the measure that the will alters and increases them.

348. The will also acts swiftly in the body in another way, with such imperiousness that no feeling at all seems involved between its command and the corporeal movement. For example, if I want to move my arm I do so simply by an act of my will, and am unaware of experiencing any enjoyable or painful affection, any pleasant or unpleasant feeling.

349. Nevertheless, careful consideration shows that, in moving a member of the body, the command of the will does not communicate the movement without the intervention of some feeling, a feeling which differs from that of affections and passions. I have already distinguished animal feelings into shaped and unshaped feelings,(154) and the shaped feelings into external sense-experiences (sensations) and internal sense-experiences (images). The will commands movement mostly by means of images; the proximate principle of the movement is the image of the movement that the will wishes to produce or of the final position the animal wishes to assume.(155)

350. I say mostly because I am speaking about human beings in a developed state where they freely act and command their movements through the image possessed by the extrasubjective forms of these movements. In undeveloped human beings the will can produce movement only with the internal feeling of their own activity and of movements subjectively felt beforehand, provided the feeling of these movements is pleasant or springs from needs. In this case, although we move our limbs with an act of our will, we do not know the extrasubjective form of the movement we produce; we do not have present the extrasubjective effect of our internal acts and consequently do not will it; the act of our will terminates directly in subjective, internal space. We neither choose nor command one extrasubjective movement from among many. The movement results from its relationship with the interior activity whose purpose was to improve the state of feeling.

Notes

(145) NE, vol. 2, 677-686.

(146) AMS, 375-386.

(147) Ibid., 426-494.

(148) In AMS [371], I showed how instinct is simply the activity of the sentient principle.

(149) NE, vol. 2, 876-877.

(150) NE, vol. 2, 519-520.

(151) AMS, 350-354.

(152) The Essence of Right, 108-112.

(153) The matter of rational feelings can be animal feelings and animal good, which can both stimulate intellectual feelings whenever the understanding perceives them and JUDGES them as a good.

(154) AMS, 135-229.

(155) The animal movement which is small at the place of the image and then communicated to the limbs is not felt in any distinct way. Only the resulting large movement is felt because its production causes displacement of parts in the mode of extrasubjective bodies. Internal, subjective movements are often indistinct for the reason I have given elsewhere. Moreover, it cannot be denied that exertion and effort are felt, at least when they are notable.