Chapter 8

Why the human soul no longer perceives the body
when the organisation is dissolved

685. Let us sum up what has been said about the death of the human being.

1. The soul apprehends the body successively as sensible and as ens. In this apprehension of the body as ens, the soul intuits being and in it the felt-body. The power of the soul, in raising itself like this to its final degree of activity, does not lose the degrees it has already acquired. Consequently, while it perceives being in general, it continues to perceive the body as sensible and hence to perceive it in being as ens.

2. The most elevated act of the soul, that is, the intellect, continues to dominate all inferior acts, and thus becomes the substance of the soul. Substance is in fact the first act of an ens, to which all other acts are appended. It is the first act dominating all others, which exist through and in the first act (cf. 52).

3. It seems that at the beginning of human generation the act of the sentient principle does not possess its final act, that is, the act which brings it into being by rendering it intellective and rational. At least this was the opinion of the ancients, and of St. Thomas. In the order of generation, therefore, it seems that the sentient act is anterior in time to the intelligent act. When human beings are fully natured, however, the act which was last is the first of the human ens. It is the act which prevails in the ens, and that on which other acts depend. Thus it becomes substance.

4. In so far as it is sensitive, the soul feels the body; as intellective, however, it perceives the felt body. In this way, the union between the intellective soul and the felt body comes about through a natural, immanent perception.

5. At the death of the human being, the intellective soul ceases to perceive the felt body but does not cease to intuit being in general, which constitutes it as intellective. It remains, therefore, without a body. The separation of soul from body is called 'death' in the human being.

6. In other words, that which according to the order of generation was the first act of the soul, but has then become a subordinate act, ceases with the death of the human being. The act which according to the generative order was the last to be formed has become by nature the first, and has acquired the condition of substance, subject and person.

686. Human death does not, therefore, remove the identity of the principle which, by losing a term, undergoes change in its nature, that is, substantial but not personal change (cf. 190-195). The identity of such a principle consists in the conservation of the intellective substance, and hence of the same subject and same person.

687. But why, we may ask, does the human soul no longer perceive the body after the body's dissolution? From what has been said, we can come to some conclusions. We have considered the human soul united to the body in its three special acts: 1. in the act with which it feels the sensible body; 2. in the act with which it intuits ens in general; 3. in the act with which it sees the body in this ens in general, that is, with which it perceives the body as ens. The last two acts begin under certain conditions, and subsist under certain conditions.

The condition on which the soul passes from the act with which it feels the body as sensible to the act with which it feels the body as ens and thus first intuits ens, is this: bodily feeling has attained its specific perfection. But the breakup of the organisation leads to the breakup of the perfect, human feeling into several imperfect feelings, none of which is capable of possessing a principle suitable for intuiting ens. These new, sensitive principles, originating from the destruction of the human body, no longer have any aptitude for seeing ens. None of them, therefore, is the human soul; they have lost their identity with this soul. On the contrary, once the act which intuits ens has been posited, it no longer needs the animal feeling, from which it is altogether independent, for subsistence. This act is the human soul, which formerly was identical with the sensitive principle.

688. Just as different sensitive principles can be unified in a single principle, so a given sensitive principle can be unified and identified with the principle of the intellective act. But just as a sensitive principle can multiply, so it can be separated from the intellective principle. In this case, it loses its identity; it is no longer a human principle, which remains the principle of the act intuiting being. Where there is an act, there is a principle; and where there is a principle, there is a subject, a substance. And such is the separated soul.

689. Care must be taken to understand correctly the way in which I speak of the identification of the sensitive principle with the intellective principle. I do not mean that the former is confused with the latter. What identifies it in some way is rational perception in which a single thing is made from what is perceived and the perceiver, without confusion between the two elements. Perception presupposes the prior existence of that which has to be perceived, which in our case is feeling; perception perceives feeling under the relationship of entity. It seems, therefore, that the rational principle feels, although it is not the proximate principle of feeling.

In a word, the essence of the human soul is to be intelligent and to perceive the body only when a sentient principle of body is identified with this essence and becomes one of its faculties. Simple feeling is not a human, but an animal act. The human being does not feel until he knows in some way that he feels; nor does he know he feels unless he apprehends the body as ens, that is, the essence of the body. Such apprehension is an act of the rational soul, which is his soul.(366)

Notes

(366) This explains St. Gregory of Nyssa's excellent distinction between the human soul and the principle of sensitive life. This principle is not the human soul except in so far as it is apprehended and perceived rationally by the human soul. 'That soul is perfect which is endowed with the power of INTELLIGENCE and REASON. Whatever is not of this nature can indeed share a common name with the soul, but in fact it is NOT THE SOUL. It is only A CERTAIN FACULTY OF LIFE which, by common consent, is given the name soul' (De hominis opificio, c. 15).