Chapter 12

Causes of the errors of the animistic school

391. In all the foregoing discussions we have always supposed that in the fundamental feeling there is only a totally simple, active principle which we have called 'sentient principle' or 'sensitive principle'. Hence, the sole cause of all animal phenomena must be seen in this principle. In the same way, the rational principle can act on the body only through the same principle of feeling.
In the Anthropology I demonstrated the existence of the sensitive principle, its simplicity and its immense activity over the body. I distinguished this activity into two branches, life and sensuous instinct.

Nevertheless deep-seated prejudices oppose this teaching, and in order to dispel some of these, I think I must pause here to discuss the animistic school. Although this school was closer to the truth than the others, its excess was disturbing, and made the world tend to the other extreme.

392. We have therefore two schools: the materialistic school, which claims that all phenomena apparent in the animal body are explained by the laws of matter, and the animistic school, which attributes all these phenomena to the rational principle. Both schools are erroneous because of the extremes to which they go.
The materialistic school is so crude and base that it cannot really do harm to our teaching, especially as we have already refuted it in many places. We need only submit the animistic school to a just critique and show how the truth lies midway between the extremes of the two schools.

393. All the errors of the animistic school can be reduced to one: its failure to see clearly that the cause of all animal phenomena is the sentient principle.

394. The principal causes of its inability to see this precise activity of the soul, to which the facts of animality should have been referred, were its failure to:

1. distinguish between subjective and extrasubjective phenomena;
2. see the specific difference between feeling and understanding.
3. distinguish the fundamental feeling from sense-experiences.
4. reflect that only the term of the sensitive soul is extended, and that the unextended principle (the soul) can multiply, but not divide, without harming its simplicity.

Let us look at each of these four causes.

395. Kurt Sprengel says: 'The universality of organic effects, even in the vegetable kingdom, seems to be the strongest objection to the psychological system. Indeed, no supporter of the psychological system has been able to sufficiently refute this objection'.(164)

396. He is correct, but the objection loses its force in the face of what I have said, namely:

1. We simply need an hypothesis devoid of absurdity but capable of explaining this universality to show that universality cannot lead to any conclusion opposed to the psychological explanation of animal phenomena. There is nothing contradictory in admitting that feeling is individually united to the primal elements of matter. In the hypothesis, these elements would simply be the extrasubjective term of feeling.

397. 2. Even if we omit this hypothesis (which is not hot air, as it may seem at first sight), the objection can be demolished by the clear distinction between subjective and extrasubjective phenomena. This irrefutable distinction shows the total falsehood of the so-called universality of phenomena.

All thinkers who do not attribute feeling to vegetables, or to their parts or elements, must acknowledge that vegetables, although they certainly manifest extrasubjective phenomena consisting in movements similar to those seen in animals, do not manifest any subjective phenomena whatsoever of feeling. Because we perceive material forces as causes of movements, we have in the case of vegetables analogous causes and effects. It is difficult therefore, if not impossible, to demonstrate that the gentle, organic interaction of material causes cannot explain the movements of vegetables. On the contrary, the class of subjective or sensed phenomena which cannot in any way be explained by extrasubjective motive forces is found only in animals, and proper in them.
The real cause preventing an answer to this question until now is the very important line, which had not yet been drawn, between the two classes of above-mentioned phenomena. This cause however needs further investigation and we will return to it later.

398. The second cause preventing natural scientists from acknowledging the soul as the principle of animal phenomena was that the psychologists who first saw the need for recourse to a soul did not stop at the sensitive principle; ignoring the correct term, they introduced the rational principle into the discussion. Their excess was due to the fact that they never properly understood the essential difference between feeling and knowing, between sense and idea. Sensism was at the root of all their reflections, and even remains in those philosophies which today are vaunted as spiritual and rational. It is not easy to understand that the difference between feeling and idea is far greater than one of degree or of accidental qualities. Feeling with its acts cannot be changed into idea. Acts and idea are two different and opposite entities; feeling is subjective, idea essentially objective. All modern philosophers, including Cousin and his disciples, find it impossible to conceive a feeling totally devoid of consciousness. They confuse the sensible element with the intelligible element, that is, they unconsciously and arbitrarily endow feeling with an intellective element. Because of this first error, they have at their disposition a feeling not present in nature, but formed by their own imagination. Starting from here they obviously have no difficulty in deducing all the functions of reason. All they have to do is develop the intellective germ they have planted in feeling of which, they say, it is a part.

399. At the time of Giovann'Alfonso Borelli,(165) Jan Swammerdam,(166) Claude Pérault,(167) and George Ernst Stahl,(168) the world was just emerging from Aristotelianism. It is not surprising to find that sensation and idea were not carefully distinguished. Aristotle's system took various forms with the result that sensism, as well as the materialism of Pomponazzi and others, was drawn from it. The animists made the understanding part of their explanation of animal phenomena. They were incapable of conceiving pure feeling, that is, feeling without any knowledge joined to it.

400. Let us consider Borelli's confusion between the principle of feeling and the rational soul. As a former prince of 'iatromathematicians', he must be rightly placed at the head of modern animists. He recognised, before others, that animal phenomena must be explained by a principle of subjective activity.

401. In part of his very famous work De motu animalium he tries to show that it is possible for the movement of the heart to be produced a facultate animali COGNOSCITIVA [by the COGNITIVE animal faculty].(169) His argument however simply demonstrates that this movement results from the activity of the sensitive principle.

He notes that, when the principle of feeling (animae sensitivae facultas) is greatly affected by joy, the circulation speeds up, and when greatly affected by sadness, slows down. This fact undoubtedly demonstrates the activity of the feeling on the circulation, but Borelli, instead of being satisfied with this wholly true conclusion, confuses sensible activity with intellective activity and argues that the cognitive soul is the principle of the heart's movements. He considers feeling itself as an action of the cognitive soul; he says, utraque enim pulsationis variatio fit ab apprehensione et persuasione quae sunt ANIMAE COGNOSCENTIS facultates [both changes in the pulse are caused by intellectual apprehension and conviction which are faculties of the COGNITIVE SOUL]. He then adds, again confusing sensibility with the soul: Ergo talis motus cordis fit a facultate sentiente et appetente, non vero ab IGNOTA necessitate [This movement of the heart therefore springs from the sentient, desiring faculty, not from UNKNOWN necessity].(170)

402. We can see here the origin of modern sensism. The world had received an ancient inheritance (of which scholasticism was the last witness), namely, the prejudice that feeling was a kind of knowing. In vain had St. Thomas said in certain places, almost in passing, that feeling was not in fact knowing; according to him, the expression was used only in a metaphorical way. His wise, but very brief comment was not enough to correct the wide-spread, mistaken way of speaking nor the erroneous opinion it brought with it.
Nevertheless, although his reasoning mistakenly confused feeling with knowing, Borelli grasped an important truth which had been accepted by the animist school but later rejected by scientists in general for the very same reason which provoked the acceptance of the error.

403. In fact, whenever an error is presented to the world accompanied by some truth, it is accepted because people pay attention only to the accompanying truth. Later, after the error has been accepted, the connection between error and truth is rejected because the truth, now seen as incoherent with the error that has prevailed, is not wanted. Lastly, a third, totally new stage comes: the whole is dismantled, the truth separated out from the error and retained, the error rejected. This is the kind of chemistry of opinions which I have tried, as far as I can, to apply to the most controversial philosophical questions.

404. But what contributed greatly to the deception of Borelli's fine mind was the fact that he considered the effect of passions in human beings and animals in a general way. When we receive unexpected, happy news that fills us with joy, our heart certainly beats hard; on the other hand, very sad news stuns us, and the heart sinks. But here we are dealing with information, which puts us into the intellective order. Information in the understanding has indeed the power to stimulate affections of joy and sadness, but it does not prove that we have the power to move or to directly slow down our heartbeat. If information influences circulation, it does so by means of the affections it first arouses in the human subject. These affections pertain to the order of feelings and are aroused even in brute animals not through the information animals may have but by virtue of blind instinct and the unitive force (I dealt with this at greater length in the Anthropology).

405. The intellective soul communicates with the sensitive principle, setting its activity in motion. All this happens within the subject. But the effects that modify matter and body as term of the principle must be attributed to the activity of the sensitive principle.

406. Our next question, separate from the previous one but highly important, is: 'How does the intellective principle exercise an action on the sensitive principle?' Both questions, which are very different, must be dealt with by psychology. I began by differentiating them and indicating why they have so far been confused by the most serious scholars. This, I think, is the first step to reflection.

407. We need to continue our explanation of the causes prompting philosophers to accept intelligence (which they confused with feeling) as the sole means of explaining animal phenomena. As we shall see, they were led into error by the vestiges of supreme wisdom that are visible in the actions of animal instinct.

Galen's amazement at these philosophers and his repudiation of the Epicureans who rejected providence were justified.(171) He also made a very acute observation when he criticised those who gave the name 'nature' to the cause of generation and of other animal phenomena. Inventing a word, he maintained, does not explain facts.(172) However, he erred in attempting to explain how the substance which comprises first the embryo and then the foetus, and acts with such regular and complicated movements, was something non-rational.(173) He did not understand how we must be certain about the presence of an intelligent cause without confusing it with animal substance. In short, he neither distinguished the ultimate, creating cause (God) from the proximate cause (nature), nor conceived the proximate cause as feeling - feeling, although blind, is a most fitting servant of the divine intelligence that created it.

408. The great Stahl made the same mistake as a result of another truth which he had seen but applied badly. He saw that the understanding does many acts of which the human being has no consciousness. This was indeed a valuable truth but we cannot arbitrarily conclude from it, as he did, that animal actions are in fact the work of such non-conscious intellective acts.(174)

409. Stahl made two mistakes: 1. he wrongly distinguished non-conscious intellective actions from those which accompany consciousness, and 2. classified acts of animal feeling as acts of the non-conscious intellective soul. He very correctly distinguished reason (*) from reasoning (*) but was totally wrong in attributing non-conscious acts to reason, and acts accompanied by consciousness to reasoning. The most attentive observation of our internal acts shows inductively 1. that we reason without any consciousness, and 2. generally speaking reveals the wonderful law that 'every act whatsoever of our spirit is unknown to itself and needs another act (reflection) for it to be revealed'.

410. Internal observation also exposes the second error, which classifies acts of feeling with acts of non-conscious reason. First of all, it is not true that everything occurring in our feeling is devoid of consciousness. On the contrary, 'we CAN be conscious of any feeling whatsoever'. If not, the feeling would not be OUR OWN because 'our own feeling' means precisely feeling of which we can become conscious. However, although we can become conscious of all our feelings, we do not in reality do so.

411. Feeling certainly does not include consciousness, which we have to form for ourselves through internal observation of feeling within us. Furthermore, we must distinguish our own feelings from those which can be in our body, but are not ours. Our own feelings consist of:

1. Those of which we can be conscious but are not, because we do not think about them.
2. Those of which we are actually conscious.

412. We also have feelings in our body which are not ours because we cannot in any way be conscious of them; entozoa are an example. We may conjecture that every corporeal element has such feelings which however lie outside our individuality. Only the first two classes, which do indeed pertain to us as individuals, are our own.

413. Turning our thoughts to the second class of feelings, of which we have actual knowledge, we can easily discern whether they are of a rational or non-rational nature precisely because we know them and are conscious of them. Consciousness in fact tells us that these feelings lack the characteristics of knowledge because they have no object, but only an exclusively subjective character. They are simple modifications of the subject; the knowledge and consciousness which accompany them does not pertain to them. This difference is what essentially separates knowledge from other entities: every cognition is an act that terminates in an object without being confused with it. Nothing like this is found in animal feeling, which is a purely subjective act and does not go out of itself to terminate in some distinct object, that is, one which it distinguishes from self. It is therefore an error to confuse feelings with rational acts of the soul, as the animist school has done.

414. The third cause for not recognising the true principle of animal phenomena was ignorance of the nature of the fundamental feeling, and belief that all feeling lay only in particular sensations aroused by extrasubjective stimuli.

415. The result was extraordinary. Galen, and many others after him, saw that human beings and animals move their muscles and nerves for the sake of their needs without knowing the nature or organisation of nerves and muscles. These philosophers and natural scientists thought it impossible for the human will to use wisely parts of which it was ignorant. Only the learned who studied anatomy would know this.

416. Those who reasoned in this way did not see first that anatomical knowledge is neither the only knowledge we can have of the human body, nor the most faithful, that is, it is not knowledge which truly lets us know the nature of the body. They did not see that external experience, which guides anatomists in their dissection and examination of bodies, is subjectively conditioned by the action of the external senses, the eyes, the touch, etc. The external senses do not present the nature of things but simply the phenomena resulting from two simultaneous causes: 1. the nature of the organs that have feeling and are the instruments of this kind of observation, and 2. the varying nature of the stimuli applied to the organs. Consequently, only phenomena are observed which contain much that is subjective and truly foreign to the proper, intimate nature of the observed body. These natural scientists, having failed to recognise the importance of this kind of observation, trusted blindly to extrasubjective observation as the sole, safe means to know animal-bodies.

On the contrary, the truth is that the body is known through two experiences, extrasubjective and subjective, of which only the latter indicates its real nature.
Subjective experience presupposes the fundamental feeling by which the sensitive principle feels all the parts of the body where the feeling is diffused. Although the external limits of these parts, shapes, etc, which are phenomena of extrasubjective experience, certainly do not fall within this feeling, the extension of the body is felt not only by the external sensations but equally by the fundamental feeling, although in a totally different way.

417. It is also true that this fundamental feeling is not knowledge but purely possible matter of knowledge. However, wherever it is, it presupposes the activity of the sensitive soul. We must no longer be surprised therefore that the soul uses the parts which it feels and invades according to the laws of its individual feeling and in favour of that feeling. A supreme intelligence has constituted this feeling in such way that it can, by its own action, attain wise ends. They are ends, however, only for the Creator; for the feeling, they are terms, conditions, attitudes, pleasant states to which it is continuously directed by its own natural energy, through which it exists.

418. Finally, the fourth cause of the error made by animists was their failure to distinguish the principle from the term of feeling, and their incapacity for forming a correct concept of a sensitive soul, whose essence lies precisely in being the principle, not the term, of feeling.
The failure to make such an important distinction resulted in enormities that contributed greatly to the discredit of their system.

Stahl, under pressure from Leibniz's objections, was forced to confess the necessity of such a conclusion.(175) But if this were true, either human beings would have two souls or the identical soul would share in materiality, extension and mortality! In reply Stahl, who was a religious man, does not hesitate to say that he awaits the immortality of the human soul not from its nature but from grace!(176)

419. Furthermore, if the principle of feeling, which is unextended, is not distinguished from its term, which is extended, we have no means of knowing the teaching about the individuation of sensitive souls, nor about their faculty to multiply without dividing. Granted that this doctrine had not been discovered and that all animal phenomena were to be explained through recourse to the soul, what must we say about certain phenomena which all the disputing parties accept as animal, but occur in the body for some time after the death of the animal, for example, irritability or counter-distension of the muscles? Robert Whytt, who restored the animistic system in Scotland, was quick to affirm that the soul's activity is maintained in these muscles and increases under stimuli!(177)

Notes

(164) Storia della medicina, sect., 15, 1, 56.

(165) †1679.

(166) †1680.

(167) †1688.

(168) †1734. It will be useful to indicate here the real error of Stahl's system. He deserves all respect, and his works are worthy of study. His error did not lie in upholding the identity of the sensitive and intellective soul in human beings, which is true; no one can reproach him for having written: 'We assert and profess that the very same soul, which performs rational acts or reasons, also exercises and administers feeling and movement as well as life' (De febris rationali ratione etc.). But he begins to err in failing to distinguish accurately between the intellectual and the sensuous orders. He claims that in sensuous actions every soul, even that of brutes, acts according to reason, and therefore by force of will, 'and indeed explicitly ACCORDING TO THE UNDERSTANDING it has of the thing present to it, and also ACCORDING TO THE WILL, which it generally has, of preserving and keeping its body or tentlike dwelling from corruption and annihilation' (ibid.). Consequently, the great man endowed feeling with intelligence, confusing the former with the latter. This sensistic rationalism of his would inevitably collapse with the development of the deadly germ within it. Anyone who grants intelligence to feeling does not elevate feeling but degrades reason, which he seems to elevate. Peace in the realm of philosophy is maintained only by observing very carefully the great borderline between feeling and intelligence, and preserving it unchanged. Wars always arise in philosophy when borders are crossed.

(169) P. 2, prop. 80.

(170) Ibid.

(171) Stahl, admiring the very ingenious formation of the foetus and seeking its cause, says: 'This is why we do not believe Epicurus and others who think all things are done by chance' (De formatione foetuum).

(172) He speaks, in the work quoted above, about those who imagine 'they have said a great deal when they assert that the foetus is formed by nature. In fact they have merely repeated a word used by everybody.'

(173) Cf. De foetuum formatione. [App., no. 4].

(174) .Stahl claims that the reason which acts unconsciously is the same as Hippocrates' nature, which acts wisely but without reflection (*); it is the *, which Hippocrates describes as * (*., bk. 6, sect. 5). Cf. Propedeuticon inaugurale, * .

(175) Leibniz, Opera, t. 1, p. 156.

(176) Negotium otiosum, pp. 102-103.

(177) Opuscoli teoretici, Berlin 1790, p. 252.