Chapter 7
The first thing that human beings understand
681. We can draw the following corollary from the theory expounded in the previous chapter. Indeed, the Scholastic opinion, expressed by St. Thomas, can be given an interpretation which renders it true. He says:
| The FIRST thing understood by us in our present state of life is the QUIDDITY OF SOME MATERIAL THING which is the object of our intellect.(362) |
From what we have said, it is clear that the sensitive principle, when it has reached its perfection, tends to know the nature of the body (the QUIDDITY OF SOME MATERIAL THING). In other words, it tends to perceive the body as an ens. Consequently, the first real object of the intelligence is the body.
682. It may be objected that our fundamental perception does not, properly speaking, make the body the object, but the animal feeling. This is true. Nevertheless, if we consider that the sentient principle is indivisible from what is felt, and that as a result we perceive it in the felt and with the felt, it follows that the felt body, the live body, is truly the term of perception.
683. It will also be objected that St. Thomas is speaking about the extrasubjective body perceived with the five special sensories. But I do not claim that the opinion I have put forward is exactly the same as that of Aquinas; I simply say that the two opinions come close to one another. Note that my opinion offers the reason why intellectually we perceive an external body almost through instinct as soon as it acts on our sensory organs. This reason lies in the first, immanent perception. Because the rational principle perceives the fundamental animal feeling through nature, it must also perceive its modifications and the action of any foreign force upon it. This is why I said that the Scholastic proposition receives from the theory I have expounded an interpretation which renders it true.
684. There is a final objection: what is first understood by us is not the body, but being in general through which we understand the body. My answer is that at the deepest level this is the teaching of St. Thomas. I say that we perceive the body with THE IDEA OF BEING; St. Thomas, following St. Augustine, says that the human being perceives the body WITH THE LIGHT OF THE FIRST TRUTH. In fact, St. Thomas makes the same objection:
| That IN WHICH we know all other things, and through which we judge them, is known first, as THE LIGHT is known by the eye and the first principles by the intellect. But we know all things IN THE LIGHT OF THE FIRST TRUTH, and through it we judge all things, as St. Augustine says.(363) |
St. Thomas does not deny that we know things in the light of truth. He affirms it unequivocally.
| We understand and judge all things in the light of the first truth in so far as THE LIGHT ITSELF of our intellect is a certain impression of the first truth.(364) But the same light of our intellect is not related to our intellect as THAT WHICH IS UNDERSTOOD, but as THAT WITH WHICH WE UNDERSTAND.(365) |
that is, the means of knowledge. What I have done is to show that this universal means of knowledge is being in general. This was my aim in A New Essay concerning the Origin of Ideas where I attempted to clarify what the ancients had said obscurely. Note that St. Thomas concedes that the impression of the light of eternal truth is the principle 'BY WHICH WE UNDERSTAND', and also concedes that 'that in which all things are known is what we KNOW FIRST'. When he says, therefore, the quiddity of the body is what is first understood, he is speaking about another way of knowing, different from the other according to which we first know the light of the intellect, of being. What I have done is to name appropriately these two ways of knowing by calling one intuition, the other perception. I also said that being in general is what we first know through intuition; the body is what we first know through perception. Thus, St. Thomas is reconciled with himself.
Notes
(362) S.T., I, q. 88, art. 3; and q. 84, art. 7; and q. 85, art. 1; and q. 87, art. 2, ad 2.
(363) De vera Relig., c. 3.
(364) He had shown this in the Summa itself: I, q. 12, art. 2.
(365) S.T., I, q. 88, art. 3.