Chapter 5

How human nature is constituted

672. Let us ask instead why the intuition of being is given only to a subject whose animality possesses such perfection of feeling and therefore of organisation.
If we were content to refer to the will of the Creator, we would be affirming something very true and just which, however, would not help in the solution of the question. Properly speaking, we should ask whether the Creator saw some reason of natural necessity or at least of fittingness for establishing things in this way.

673. It is obviously fitting that the dignity of ideal being should be manifested to a perfect, not an imperfect animal subject. We see that the whole of nature is governed by the following law: 'Imperfect things are brought to perfection through successive grades.'(358) Granted this, it was fitting that bodily feeling should be left to progress through the gradual scale of perfection proper to it. Only when it reached the final level as a result of optimum organisation, beyond which the perfection of the sentient principle may not go, should it attain a new perfection by going out of itself and reaching the object which lifts it to the condition of intelligent being.

674. It would be more difficult, however, to show that this was required by some necessity of nature. That is, if someone, having considered the nature of the sensitive principle and the idea, noticed that this principle could not intuit the idea without its first having acquired the best possible specific organisation; or again, in the case of such organisation, thought that the idea should be unveiled and manifested. Some probable conjectures can be made about both propositions, as follows.

It is possible to conjecture that an animal principle cannot intuit the idea before reaching the greatest power of animality by supposing that every power of a sensitive principle which has not reached its greatest specific potency remains suspended and absorbed in its tendency to obtain the state of organic perfection it lacks.

Consequently it is unable to ascend to the vision of ideal being, which is per se essentially intelligible and everywhere present (if being is not seen, the defect lies in the subject which is powerless to turn to it). In fact, if we suppose that the virtue of a sensitive principle is entirely absorbed in organising matter, nothing remains with which it can actuate itself towards ens. But after the specific perfection of the organism and feeling has been fully achieved, the principle no longer uses the power and force which it employed in the labour of organisation. At that point it encounters being, which is everywhere present, as I said, and renders itself intelligent by taking being as its term. I repeat, we have to consider that being is everywhere, and everywhere intelligible, because it cannot be otherwise; this is its proper essence. If, then, we posit the existence of some universally sensitive power (some subject) which is capable of seeing everything present to it, this power will feel being, which is never lacking, and simply by feeling being will be made intelligent. The only condition required is that the power is not occupied and totally taken up with something else.

The nature of the sentient principle is determined by what is felt. The nature of being, however, is such that when felt it renders the sentient principle intelligent precisely because it is the intelligibility itself of being, and as such essentially objective and unable to mix with anything else. To understand this fact, it is sufficient to suppose that the power or sensitive principle, which I call subject, can terminate its act in everything present, but that its limited power sometimes draws the act to a close through exhaustion, and sometimes provides it with the vigour needed to feel intelligible being.

675. This thought will be still better grasped if we consider the nexus between body and ens, rather than the power of the sentient subject which tends to increase as much as possible and, having reached its highest grade, finds the force needed to push its act outside matter. Body, term of the act of the sentient principle, has different levels of being, and is apprehended successively by the sentient principle in these different levels.
At the first level, it is like some extended-sensible thing. As long as the sentient principle apprehends the body only in this way or, as we said, under the relationship of sensility, such apprehension renders the principle sentient, not intelligent.

At the second level, the extended-sensible called body is an ens. It is rendered intelligent and rational as soon as the sentient principle apprehends the body as ens. Indeed, to apprehend the body as ens means simply to apprehend it as a certain determined, limited realisation, that is, as a certain term of the act of being.(359) If, then, we suppose in the sensitive principle a first tendency to apprehend the body to the greatest degree possible, it will follow that after having apprehended the body, that is, the extended-felt, in its greatest perfection, the sensitive principle will tend to apprehend the felt still better in its entity, and in virtue of this instinct be led to apprehend it in ens in general, which is what forms the body-ens, an object whose principle is indeed ideal being (called initial being) and whose term is the extended-sensible. In a word, the tendency to apprehend the body will lead the sentient principle to apprehend it as ens, and thus be led from the extended-sensible to its essence which pertains to being in general, and consequently to see being itself in general. This is the way in which it seems possible to explain the passage made by the sentient principle from the order of mere sensitivity to the order of intelligence, that is, from a less to a more perfect state.(360)

It is the sentient principle's need to become rational which makes it intellective; it is its need to perfect itself relative to the apprehension of its proper term (the body) that urges the sentient principle to the ideal essence which is per se intimately united to every sensible reality and which through such union becomes ens, that is, object.
The sentient principle cannot therefore apprehend the body at its highest level of being except by pushing its power beyond the body to a more ample term in which the body is contained and rendered intelligible. This term, in which the body is present with its essence, is being in general.

Notes

(358) I have spoken about the wisdom of this law in Teodicea, bk. 3, c. 20.

(359) We say that what is real (as we think it) is the term of an act of ideal essence, according to the principle posited by St. Thomas: 'Every participated thing is related to what participates as its act' (S.T., I, q. 75, art. 5, ad 4). Subsistence is a participation of essence, and is therefore called an act of essence. More correctly, however, it is a term of its act. NE, vol. 3, app. no. 6.

(360) Clement of Alexandria uses this principle to prove against the Platonists that the human soul is not sent from heaven. If this were the case, God would make it pass from a more to a less perfect state, which is not fitting. 'The soul is not sent from heaven to those things which are inferior. GOD MADE ALL THINGS ACCORDING TO WHAT IS BETTER' (Strom., bk. 4).