Chapter 23

The origin of the intellective soul

647. If we had to explain only the generation of a purely sensitive soul, as in animals, the difficulties of the problem would be far less. We have already seen that the soul is multipliable through the division of its felt term (cf. 455-499), and that this kind of multiplication does not in any way affect the soul's simplicity. But in the case of an intellective principle, the difficulty increases immensely.

648. Aristotle himself noticed this. In his work on the generation of animals, he first says that their souls do not come from outside and cannot exist without a body, because all their actions are done with the aid of a bodily organ. And then, speaking about intelligence, he adds, 'Only the mind is added from outside; it alone is divine, because bodily action has nothing in common with its action.'(342)

In fact, the most influential philosophers have all acknowledged that there is something divine in the human being, that is, something which only God himself can give directly. Elsewhere Aristotle says, 'Among animals, only the human being shares in divinity,'(343) and when speaking about the life of contemplation he does not hesitate to affirm that it 'exceeds human nature'.(344) Here he means that human beings can in their contemplation pass beyond the limits of their nature and attain divine things, such as ideas. He adds that 'human beings do not live in this way because they are human, but because there is something divine in them';(345) also, 'This (intellective principle) differs from the composite human being as much as its action differs from the action of other kinds of power. But if the mind is a divine element relative to the human being, the life proceeding from this element is divine relative to human life.' Hence he teaches that 'we must not think too much about mortal things but, as much as possible, make ourselves immortal.'(346)

649. This is why I said that human generation cannot be explained in any way without recourse to God.(347)

But this divine element, seen and acknowledged by all the greatest thinkers on human nature, still required accurate determination if it was not to be confused with anything alien to it.

650. The ancients were in fact content to say that the human mind was divine, but as far as I know they went no further.(348) When I investigated the matter myself, I found that two things had to be distinguished in the human mind, subject and object, as I called them. I saw that subject, because limited and contingent, could not in any way be called divine; only object could be ranked among divine things as something truly unlimited, eternal, necessary and furnished with other totally divine qualities. This object, standing immovably before the human subject, is being itself, in its ideal mode.

651. All we can say about this communication which the object makes of itself to the human subject is what St. Augustine said about the nature of the intellective soul, that is, it is 'close to the substance of God'(349) but is not itself divine. Indeed, as Claudius Mamertus stated so well, it is like God in the way that WHAT IS INTELLECTUAL is like WHAT IS INTELLIGIBLE.(350)

652. The object, that is, the form of intelligence, cannot therefore be generated. God himself unveils it to the soul which is thus made intelligent. He did this for all human nature when he infused a soul into Adam in whom human nature was contained. After this, human nature had only to multiply into many individuals by means of generation.(351) Just as God, at the beginning, gave fixed laws to all created things, so he gave this fixed law that every time human beings multiplied individuals through generation, being was present to these new beings in such a way that it drew and bound to itself their intuiting gaze.

653. The new individual before whom being shines must be a living thing organated in the same way as its generator. This organisation is certainly the most perfect that animality can have. In it, stimulation is probably supreme, the harmony of supreme stimulation perfect, and the central power of feeling at its highest level. The animal subject, having reached its extreme perfection, had to pass beyond the confines of animality and attain eternal things, the idea.

654. Between the specific perfection of this animal organism and the vision of being, there is no time lapse. At the precise moment that the human animal is formed in nature, it is made intelligent because admitted to the vision of being through a law of nature established by the Creator at the beginning.

655. Nor can the organism proper to the already formed human being ever be found without the intellective principle. The intellective principle, once united to the body, gives it its final formation and modification which thus makes the body fully proper to the human being. The intellective principle continues to exercise the same activity, influence and dominion over the body which I described when I said that the rational soul by acting on the body, gives it a certain actuality previously impossible for it. Consequently, there must be an organism totally proper to the formed human being who cannot be without the intellective soul because the intellective soul, by informing the human being, bestows on him the last act. Animality and its organism must therefore be first brought to their greatest perfection so that the intellective, rational soul may be added. But then the intellective soul, by its very addition, imparts to the organism the sort of completion, actuality, kind of movement, vitality and life that could not be present in any purely animal ens.

656. Granted this, there is nothing contradictory in the multiplication of the subject under discussion through generation. The subject as subject (prescinding from the object) is simply a living creature.

But, we may ask, where does the animal principle acquire the power to intuit being? This power is created by being itself, when it joins itself to the principle. Essentially intelligible, being cannot join itself to any subject without being understood; its being joined consists in it being understood. Being therefore has the power to create intelligences. As Aristotle would say, 'A sentient principle can, without contradiction, be intelligent in potency; it can, without contradiction be raised to a state of understanding.' A sentient principle is simple; it is not a body. On the contrary, body is its term. If another term is given to it, its activity is necessarily widened. It must therefore be conceived as a capacity to receive, like a remote potency drawn into a new act. At the beginning, it was given an extended term; now, it is also given an unextended and, by nature, superior term. But if this second term cannot be confused with the first, it cannot be modified by it. In short, the second term is an ESSENTIALLY knowable object, with the result that the sentient principle has in this way become intellective. Having been actuated in another principle, it has certainly lost its previous identity as principle. This transnaturation however, when correctly understood, contains nothing contradictory.

657. Just as St. Thomas said that the sensitive soul is an act of the body (this is true provided that by 'act' we understand 'principle' of the body which is respectively term), so we can say that intelligence is an act which originates from the sensitive soul. This is indeed true provided we add that this act constitutes a subject, independent of the body and of the sensitive principle, and sustained now by a new, imperishable term.

658. This solves another difficulty which may be stated as follows. 'In the human being there is only a rational soul. But the human being is also an animal and as such has a sensitive principle. The nature of the animal and of the sensitive principle is to multiply through generation. This universal law of animal cannot be nullified by human beings, who also generate. If therefore the individual animal generates and multiplies in this way, the rational soul which is one and, in human beings, identical with the sensitive soul, must also multiply.' In reply, I say that this is in fact the case, as long as we presuppose the first law which decreed that universal being be united to all individuals of human nature, a law that was fixed by God when he breathed the breath of life into Adam.

659. In fact the Fathers constantly attribute the origin of human souls to that first act. 'Human beings,' says St. Athanasius speaking generally, 'received their soul from the divine in-breathing. Hence they know divine things, pursue and understand heavenly things, are rational and endowed with a mind.'(352)

This also confirms the opinion of Athanagoras that 'the soul, because it does not generate a soul, cannot claim the title of genitor; it is the human being who generates a human being'.(353)

Notes

(342) De Generat. Anim., bk. 2, c. 3.

(343) De Anima., bk. 2, c. 10.

(344) Ethicor., bk. 10, c. 8.

(345) Ibid.

(346) Ibid.

(347) AMS, 812-831.

(348) Sometimes the Alexandrian philosophers seem to touch the truth. The Valentinian heretics said that the human being was generated by * and *. But * retained its double meaning of subjective reason and of objective reason (idea). Consequently they neither thought nor expressed themselves clearly, in addition to the vague errors they later added to their teaching.

(349) In Ps. 145.

(350) 'It is like (God) in the way that INTELLECTUAL LIGHT is like INTELLIGIBLE LIGHT; unlike God in the way that the changeable creature is unlike the unchangeable Creator' (De Statu Animae, bk. 1, c. 4). He calls the soul intellectual light in so far as it is enlightened by what is intelligible.

(351) AMS, 812-831.

(352) In questionibus de Anima.

(353) De resurrectione mortuorum. Prudentius expresses himself in an extraordinary way on the origin of the human soul: