Chapter 13

The law according to which the sentient principle carries out the organising function

474. THIRD QUESTION:

The following facts cannot be denied:

1. The feeling of the animal has different pleasant and painful states, varying in degree and kind.

2. The body, which is term of the animal-feeling, has, as experience tells us, a state corresponding to every state of the feeling. Indeed, the state of the animal-feeling is always determined by what it feels, and it feels only and always in the corporeal, extended element. Consequently the good or painful state of the sentient principle must obviously depend on the state of the corporeal extended unit, that is, of the felt.

3. Finally, the feeling is active, and this activity is directed to procuring the most pleasant and consequently (for the feeling) most natural state. The activity therefore must act in the body, term of the feeling, and produce all the animal's movements; for example, it explains why an insect placed on its back tries its hardest to upright itself into its natural position.

These three facts cannot be denied. Hence, our investigation must determine first the cause of an animal-feeling's contented state and then the cause of the other less pleasant states and states of increasing unpleasantness, and finally why the animal-feeling ceases to exist.

475. If we consider the fundamental, substantial feeling as a specifically determined ens, our investigation can have only one possible result: the reason for the feeling's different pleasant and unpleasant states lies in the feeling itself, that is, in the law of its nature, and proceeds directly from the intrinsic order of its constitution. Every ens has an interior order whose ultimate cause is the intrinsic order of essential being. Essential being and its order is the first fact containing the ontological, sufficient and ultimate reason for all other facts.

476. However, animal-feeling, although one and simple in its principle, presents to observation and analysis its own multiplicity and composition as a result of certain intimate actions and passive experiences. This gives us some indication that the reason for its accidents and vicissitudes is to be sought in its internal constitution. Let us try to glance, as it were, through the cracks and catch a glimpse of this nature.

477. I take for granted the following principles:

1. Animal-feeling is essentially pleasant; it is enjoyable activity. Consequently its entity diminishes as enjoyable activity diminishes (enjoyable activity is fundamental enjoyment).

478. 2. Feeling, that is, enjoyable activity or fundamental enjoyment, can be diffused more or less equally in a continuum while being centralised to some degree in a physical point or many points of the continuum, which would be centres of enjoyment and activity caused by incessant stimulation or other means. Centralisation and condensation of fundamental enjoyment means that it is more intense and vivid in one place than in another.

479. 3. The instinctive activity of continuous fundamental enjoyment is proportionate to the intensity of the enjoyment.

4. In more perfect animals, fundamental enjoyment is more centralised and intense, and functions of life more numerous. In imperfect animals fundamental primitive enjoyment is less centralised and more uniformly diffused. Because many centres replace a single centre, the activity, functions and indications of life are sparser and less observable. In my opinion, this varying centralisation and intensity of fundamental primitive enjoyment gives rise to the specific difference of the fundamental feeling which constitutes the animal, and therefore to the basis for a philosophical distinction of the various classes or species of animals.

480. 5. A different choice of matter, its varying elaboration and primitive organisation corresponds in the extrasubjective world to different fundamental feelings. If suitable matter is removed or not correctly worked, or no fitting organisation is chosen, the fundamental feeling suffers to varying degrees and even ceases, that is, it breaks down into many feelings, having lost the unity of its term.

481. Granted all this, I am of the opinion that the specific agglomeration of the feeling posited by nature at the first moment of an animal's existence (or at least of the feeling considered according to its type) can never be increased by the animal's own activity. This activity is totally directed to preserving the agglomeration and so opposes destructive forces. It also tries to obtain pleasant, transient sensations (sensuous instinct) which, however, do not make the fundamental feeling more concentrated in some point; they are simply transient, second acts of the feeling itself.

482. It is of course true that animals develop, but I consider this development an effect of the activity by which the animal seeks to preserve itself (life instinct), that is, to preserve the type of its fundamental feeling. This activity is associated with that by which the animal seeks transient sensations (sensuous instinct) without any direct end regarding development and growth, to which they both tend. Although the fundamental feeling wishes to preserve itself in keeping with its type and to carry out its acts, that is, transient sensations, it can do so only by means of the vital movements which develop and perfect it for a short time. Once this period of perfection is past, however, the sensations cause it to deteriorate and age. Hence, development and deterioration, although natural consequences of the use of the vital and sensuous activity, are not the proximate end to which these two branches of animal activity tend.

483. We could also conceive the full development of the animal as a state of maximum perfection, and suppose that only in this state has the fundamental feeling attained its maximum intensity in keeping with its natural basic form. In this case we would have to assume that the constant type or specific stamp of the animal is the proportional division of the feeling among the different points of its term. In other words, it is the nature and characteristic of the harmonious action proper to the animal. Where there is a single sentient principle, there is a single, fully harmonious action originating in the feeling. But because the activity of the animal is greater where the feeling is greater, this action will have only one centre, if the feeling has only one centre. If on the other hand the feeling has many centres, the animal activity will also have many centres. Thus, varying degrees of activity in the different points of the felt will depend on varying degrees of feeling - we are of course speaking about the feeling of stimulation, which presupposes the feeling of continuity. Granted that this proportionate distribution of feeling remains equal, the characteristic of the harmony of animal activity will also remain equal in every state that the animal subsequently passes through in its development. This constant characteristic of harmonious activity can constitute the species of the animal.

484. If therefore we accept the proportionate distribution of feeling and activity as the distinguishing characteristic of species, we must acknowledge as a constant law that animal activity, at least if not thwarted by foreign forces and accidents, works neither to change nor improve this characteristic, primitive distribution of feelings and activity. Indeed, it tends to preserve and use it by deriving pleasant sensations from it. Later however the change takes place praeter intentionem, so to speak.

485. Granted this law, the following corollaries result:

I. Whenever the active sentient principle works to preserve the type of the fundamental feeling and to enjoy particular sensations, it acts in matter. Matter either resists and tries to withdraw by using its mechanical, physical, chemical and other forces, or obeys and co-operates in some way with the principle. In the first case, the phenomenon of pain begins, that is, the sentient principle battles with its matter and with matter's incipient domination, but is frustrated in its effort. The feeling, now placed in a condition contrary to its nature (which is essentially one of enjoyment), is truncated, reduced or exhausted by its ceaseless effort to attain the unattainable; it becomes downcast and suffers. In the second case however, contrary effects occur because matter obeys and brute forces co-operate with the aim of the feeling.

486. II. The fundamental feeling may lose out in the struggle. If so, the form of its species deteriorates. If further specific reduction of the feeling and its consequent harmonious activity are rendered impossible, the specific feeling also becomes impossible and the animal dies.

487. III. Granted however an animal whose specific characteristic is the equal diffusion of its feeling to the whole felt element without any reduction, such an animal ought to multiply into as many animals as the pieces that came from it, because the feeling which constitutes the species of the animal would be equally distributed in each. This would also help us to understand how the vital principle could easily repair wounds, if we granted the presence in every case of at least the external conditions necessary for nourishing the principle.

488. IV. In addition, animals in which feeling is concentrated in many centres with equal intensity, must, when dissected, easily multiply or reproduce like buds, because centres would remain in various quantities in each piece. Hence the law of their harmonious action and the proportion in which the feeling is divided remains the same. This explains the multiplication of infusoria, and removes any surprise at the strange way the tricod, or charon as Müller calls it, multiplies: its stomach, first transparent and then opaque, swells like a bubble and finally bursts with such force that the little animal explodes into more than a hundred pieces, each of which becomes a perfect tricode.(224) My theory is not unlike St. Thomas' explanation of the multiplication by severance of linked animals:

489. V. Finally, if the vital, sensuous movements produced by the animal caused the feeling to change its centre or intension or type, a total change in the organisation would result, and, without dying, one animal would change into another. This is precisely the case of certain living species, for example, caterpillars that pass through a state of chrysalis to butterfly.

The VI. and most important corollary of the theory, however, is the possibility of spontaneous generation, which I will now discuss.

Notes

(224) Histoire des verm. etc., p. 83, n. 2511.

(225)De Anima, art. 10, ad 15. Aristotle had said that these animals had only one soul in act and many in potency (De Anima, bk. 2, text. 20). This however does not explain the multiplication of souls by severance; it simply states the fact in Scholastic terms.