Psychology

Conclusion To The Whole Work

2228. I have written enough. I realise that this book on the laws of animality, where so little has been said about such a limitless subject, will seem long to those who restrict psychology to the study of the intellective soul and fail to understand how investigation of the sensitive principle necessarily conditions such study. I have tried to make this clear, but I am not at all sure that I have succeeded in persuading every type of person.

Doctors, for instance, will point, reasonably enough, to the many inexact and erroneous statements resulting from my work in their field. I can only beg their forgiveness, correct what is inexact and eliminate what is false (and I shall be very glad to do this). Something worthwhile may still be left, and the more learned, who are always the most forgiving, will perhaps harvest it. But let me make clear to doctors and psychologists alike what I had in mind.

Modern scientists have divided the human being in two. Some have dealt with the spirit, some with the body. Each side, opposing and despising the other, thinks itself the sole possessor of the whole science. The factions are divided still further as contempt displaces reason. The result is two sciences instead of one; two sciences at loggerheads with one another, two contradictory, bitterly divided sciences. One, less guilty than the other, makes the human being wholly spiritual, a kind of angel miraculously moving a body; the other looks only to matter which, by a much greater miracle, is self-animating and thus capable of doing all that the spirit does.

Surely such discord should cease? Science needs to reacquire the unity present in nature; science should be purified of these imperfect, fallacious methods of study which have led to two centuries of disagreement about man, and to inability to attain the knowledge for which we long. In fact, neither the human being proposed by doctors, nor that of certain psychologists, is truly a human being.

As far as I can see, the aim of this present work needs no further explanation. My hope is that medical people will not take issue with such a good purpose but, in its light, excuse what is imperfect. They will realise, I hope, that my sole desire (I am not saying that it has been fulfilled) in touching upon their noble endeavours in science is to restore medicine to the dignity it has lacked for so long. We must see that the science of the soul depends on medical science, which forms a great part of psychology. In other words, psychologists who deal with physiology, and physiologists and doctors who deal with the soul, should no longer take one another to task for invading one another's field. The human being is one; the two sciences are one. Reconciliation and union will prepare the way for a single, genuine science about the human being.

2229. What I have said in this work, especially about medicine in the final book, may perhaps arouse criticism and blame from even more serious people. - Are these lay studies suitable for a priest? How could he devote so much time to sciences so far removed from sacred doctrine? Why does he descend from the heights of the sacred mountains to such lowly, swampy fields? - I would be happy to respond at length, but there is no space here; I have to bring the work to an end, not start some new discussion. But perhaps what I have just said is sufficient. Science dealing with the spirit needs considerable knowledge about animality, without which it would be imperfect. Science dealing with animality would be even more imperfect if it were cut off from science of the spirit; animality would be material, and its science nothing more than gross materialism, from which Christian theologians ought to protect it.

Nevertheless, even without the obvious necessity of placing spirit within the dead clay upheld by modern physiologists and doctors, I would not regret having indicated, or at least having wanted to indicate, where modern medicine goes astray in the cure of illness, and where it is damaged so badly by systematic errors that it forgets its own end, that is, the cure or at least the alleviation of disease. The chief work of a Catholic priest is not only truth, but truth accompanied by charity; and it is a universal opinion, upheld by all the learned, including practitioners of the art, that medicine is in a terrible state. The best doctors themselves are the first to complain; only the mediocre defend the present state. Endless thousands of people have been killed because of the obstinacy with which medicine does nothing more than measure the quantity of stimulus to see if it is defective or excessive. No account is taken of the innumerable circumstances which render stimulus appropriate or inappropriate.

This is perhaps the principal difference between ancient and modern medicine. The new type of practice is extremely simple and consists in a single question: is stimulus excessive or defective? For many, medical wisdom ends here. Ancient practice was different. It took as its starting point: 'Ars longa, vita brevis; time presses, experiment is risky, judgment difficult.' Accidents were so variable, so fleeting and so complicated that the ancients thought it necessary to observe carefully and calculate precisely before deciding the best cure for an illness.

Surely those who understand that the Christian priesthood was instituted to lighten all the evils weighing on humanity, and to obtain and increase everything good for humanity, will see nothing undignified or extraordinary in a priest's lifting his voice with many others to implore the restoration of an art which when flourishing saves many endangered lives, when decadent endangers and destroys those it should save? But if people are unaware of this, and in their ignorance wonder and take scandal because of my efforts (greater perhaps than my capacity) to revive and redirect medical studies, let me say that medical knowledge would mean nothing to me, and my time would not have been dedicated to it, if the One who alone knows how to speak clearly in the depth of the heart had not said 'Love one another'. After such a solemn, efficacious word, should we wonder if Catholic priests write about medicine also? The word of the Lord has impelled people to do much greater things than that; a high number of persons have willingly appeared idiots and been treated as such rather than disobey that voice. Treat me like that if you will. The divine word forces me to accept your judgment in peace.

2230. I want to conclude this lengthy work now by attempting to summarise it. In the first and second parts of the work, I spoke about the extreme simplicity of the nature of the soul and about the indefinitely multiple development of its wonderful activity. Together, my readers and I saw in the first part how the soul is one in each human being; how it is the simple principle of all human acts; how it is a substance and at the same time the principle of feeling; how this substantial, feeling principle is intellective; how this intellective principle has an immediate, imminent perception of a living body and how, through this immanent perception, the intellective principle compenetrates with the sensitive principle in such a way that there is, as a result, a single intellective, sensitive principle with a twofold term of action. This term is, on the one hand, ideal being, the understood element; on the other, the subjective body, the felt element.

The soul thus acquires its condition as rational principle, in which man is placed in being. The rational principle perceives itself in ideal being, acquires consciousness and, rendered conscious, expresses itself through the word 'MYSELF'. Self-perception is the principle of psychology which, therefore, pertains to the sciences of perception. Self-perception discovers and unfolds itself through interior observation of that which is contained, remains and changes in MYSELF, and of the order of the elements constituting MYSELF. The human soul is not penetrated by any mass of matter; it is therefore spiritual; its primordial term is being whose nature is eternal and infinite. Thus, although the soul can lose its corporeal term (death, as we call the separation of the two parts from which man results), the intellective soul is immortal and directed towards infinite ens. This joyful conclusion brought us to the end of the first part of Psychology.

We began the second part by asking how all the many activities of the soul, manifested in its passions and actions, could remain contained and dormant, as it were, in the extremely simple essence of the soul before being awakened and distinguished from the soul. This investigation forced us to come to grips with certain ontological questions which could have been considerably shortened if I had been able to appeal to already formed ontological teaching. But ontology is still the most imperfect of sciences, as it is the richest. We then found an organated, harmonic multiplicity in the simplicity of the soul and, as it were, adherent to it, although not penetrating it in such a way as to impede its unity and perfect simplicity. We saw that the soul, a single principle, is placed in act through a plurality of terms which actuate, but do not multiply it. Indeed, the soul remains identical in all its different acts, rather like a meeting point or centre of several angles. We then found the way to harmonise the multiplicity of the soul's aptitudes with the simplicity of the principle, and moved from consideration of the terms to deduce, order and classify multiple human activities, potencies and faculties. All these activities, however, observe constant, wonderful laws in their operation.

This brought us to a new investigation, a great sea through which we did not hesitate to navigate. We wanted to unfold and describe the constant laws of operation of human potencies, and here too we sought their first origin and reason in the essence of the soul from which we then saw them all emerge little by little. Finally, the last book, which deals with the laws of animality was added as an appendix. These laws are not strictly speaking laws of human activity, but laws by which human activity is continually conditioned and wonderfully interconnected.

2231. But the final fruit of teaching about the soul, which we have not yet harvested, is found only in the ultimate purpose, the desirable effect of all these various, sublime activities with which the Creator has endowed the soul. What does the soul naturally long for? What destiny has been assigned to the soul by the One who gives it being? Unless we answer these questions, our lengthy discussion will have brought us to the garden gate, but left us standing there, or perhaps brought us to the tree but left us unable to eat the fruit. - We cannot claim that any well-ordered science manifests its usefulness before it has reached its end, nor that the teaching about the activities and laws underlying the development and work of the soul embraces the whole of psychology.

From the beginning, we have insisted that the destiny of the soul is psychology's most important and noble study. Why stop, therefore? Why conclude this work without dealing with the soul's term, the very reason for our journey? - I think my readers will understand if I explain that all my works, although they have a beginning and an end, are only parts or sections; none of them is complete in itself, but part of a single science. Philosophy is one, and knowledge is one, but each is divided into several books and given different titles to lighten the path for students who would find a single, long, almost interminable book frightening and unbearable. This should help the reader to understand that our treatise on psychology is not imperfect and mutilated provided it is united to theosophy and supernatural anthropology, subjects which I shall deal with publicly if God so wills and time is available. Theosophy is the way to supernatural anthropology where the destinies of the human soul will have to be considered at length.

I have already mentioned why I think some delay is necessary (cf. EHS, 49). The human soul is an intelligence, that is, its nature is such that eternal Ens, the essential object, from which the soul draws its act of being, is continually revealed to it. This supreme, essential relationship, which on the part of the eternal object is called manifestation, on the part of the subject intuition, creates the soul, the intuiting subject. Fixed on eternal, divine ens, the soul finds its natural seat there; it is in being. In this sense, Nicholas Malebranche's saying is true: 'God is as it were the place of intelligences'. This would be entirely true if he had known how to distinguish accurately between the concept of God and the concept of what is divine. The intellective soul, dwelling in divine, eternal being, is 'innatured' there, although never confused with it.

It is clear, therefore, that the soul must draw all its perfection and completion from being, from which it receives its origin and holds its essence and existence, and from which it cannot ever be entirely separated without annihilation. I insist upon this because the soul as essentially intelligent is neither joined nor communicates immediately with anything else. It communicates with all things only through ens, to which it is fixed and through which it knows. What is unknown does not exist for the intelligence. And intelligence is the human person. Consequently, eternal being, which naturally enlightens intelligence, is the mediator joining intelligence to all things and all things to it. The intellective soul, like every other intelligence, holds all it has from this manifest and manifesting being which gives intelligence everything.

It is clear, therefore, that the soul is not its own good. This good is different from the soul; it dwells in the eternal object, in infinite ens, in the light which makes the soul itself light; it gives the intelligence all that intelligence is capable of receiving; it acquires for the intelligence all that it is capable of acquiring. Reasoning suitably and fully (in some way) about the perfection and destination of the soul is impossible without stepping away from the soul and taking the sublime argument as far as the divinity itself. The soul has to be abandoned for a time while divine things and God himself are investigated, as far as this is granted to man. Then we can return to the soul.

How can the soul derive its own perfection from eternal ens in which it dwells in perpetuity?
Can it derive this perfection by itself from its own source?
Or is some further, mysterious operation needed perhaps on the part of this ens?

Such questions require research that surpasses the confined limitation of psychology. And this shows clearly that psychology, like all other human sciences, is per se imperfect and incapable of perfection unless, relinquishing the limits of its own sphere, it is taken forward by other, greater sciences away from the created universe to find the Creator. He is the principle and cause of the universe, but also its end, its reason, its perfection, its sublime, eternal destination. This is why I think it altogether necessary to speak about the destiny of the human soul in supernatural anthropology which will serve as the final part, the glorious climax, of psychology.