PSYCHOLOGY
Essence of the Human Soul
Definitions
50. I presume that the definitions given at the beginning of the three books on anthropology are known to the reader. What follows has to be added to them if we wish to understand the following books on psychology, which are a continuation of those on anthropology.
I
Psychology (* ) is the science of the human soul.
II
Soul is the principle of a active-substantial feeling which has as its term space and a body.
III
51. Body is a force diffused in extension, that is, in space.
IV
Force is that which produces what is undergone in feeling or in the extended term of feeling.
COMMENT - It may be objected that by defining force in this way, we neglect the effect of bodily force through which brute bodies mutually modify one another. The difficulty vanishes, however, if the reader keeps in mind what I have said elsewhere about this.(25)
V
52. 1st definition: Substance is the first act constituting an ens, through which the ens is mentally conceived without its having to be collocated in some other entity.(26)
COROLLARY - Hence the common definition of substance, 'that which exists per se', has to be understood in such a way that 'per se' is taken not universally, but restrictively, that is, in relationship to the entity of which it has no need in order to be mentally conceived.
2nd definition: Substance is the act by which an essence(27) subsists, whether this act is considered as realised or simply as able to be realised (in the idea).
COROLLARY - There are, therefore, two kinds of substances, as there are two kinds of substantial essences. Certain substantial essences posit a single, indivisible entity, others posit several entities in a complex being, one of which is the principal and constitutes the subject. The minor entity separated from the principal, that is, having lost its identity, is said to be another substance, and properly speaking another substantial form. Take, for example, the human soul, which is an essence resulting from a supreme, intellective principle and a sensitive-animal principle, of which the intellective principle is the principal entity constituting the subject. The sensitive principle is a divisible entity and can stand on its own, as we see in beasts. But the sensitive principle in man and in brute animals is not identical because although considered as substance in beasts, in man it receives another substantial form from its union with the intellective principle. It is not the substance it once was, therefore, but part of another substance.
VI
Accident is an entity which cannot be mentally conceived except in some other entity through which it exists and to which it pertains.
COMMENT - Although an accident can be conceived by way of abstraction as separate from substance, the mind cannot carry out this abstraction unless it has first conceived an accident as united with its substance.(28) Afterwards, when considering the matter abstractly, the mind itself is forced either to retain the information about the substance to which the accident is united, or to suppose the existence of a generic substance to which the accident may adhere.
COROLLARY - Hence the force through which alone body is mentally conceived makes us know body as a substance.
VII
53. Human soul is the principle of an active, substantial feeling which, identically the same, has as its terms 1. extension (and in it a body) and 2. being. It is therefore at one and the same time sensitive and intellective (rational).
VIII
Intuition is a (receptive) act of the soul through which the soul receives the communication of intelligible or ideal being.
COMMENT
1. This act is called intelligence by Aristotle. He says: 'Intelligence is concerned with indivisible things'.(29) For him, the 'indivisible' are the essences of things seen in ideas. For the Scholastics, therefore, cognitio simplicis intelligentiae [knowledge proper to simple intelligence] is equivalent to 'knowledge of possible things'.
2. Kant perverted philosophical language when he usurped the word intuition to mean sensitive perception. Such an alteration in the meaning of the word is another indication of the sensism that lies at the heart of his system; he provides sense with the act proper to the intellect.
IX
Sensitive perception is the act of feeling which receives in itself an extrasubjective force apt to modify feeling.
X
Intellective perception is the act with which the rational soul affirms (habitually or actually) a felt reality. I shall call the corresponding faculty percipience.
COMMENT - This explains St. Thomas' extremely appropriate definition of the word: perceptio experimentalem quandam notitiam significat (30) [perception means some kind of experimental information].
XI
54. The reality of being is being in so far as it is feeling or possesses the force to produce or modify feeling.
COROLLARY - Perception, therefore, is communication between two realities, one sentient, the other sensiferous.
XII
Subsistence is the act proper to real being, that is, the act by which a being is real.
COMMENT - This and the preceding definitions indicate meanings given to words which have been defined by common, consistent use throughout the ages. They are not arbitrary meanings of my own. I have simply attempted to remove the improprieties into which individuals who have used them, and still use them, are apt to fall. This is not the case with the general mass of speakers and writers. Antiquity, for example, formulated the question of universals in the following way, which Porphyry repeats in his introduction to Aristotle's predicamenta: 'Do universals SUBSIST or are they posited in simple intellectual matters alone?', where subsist is obviously taken to indicate the act through which a being is real, in contradistinction to the act in which a being is merely ideal. Ideal being is not nothing, as materialists force themselves to believe. It is rather a manner of being, different however from that which we call 'real'. The question reproposed by Porphyry was argued by all the schools in precisely those terms. In other words, subsisting is used in contradistinction to being ideally or even mentally.
In the same way, my definition of the words real and reality expresses the propriety found in ancient philosophical language and faithfully retained by the Scholastics. One example can be found at the very beginnings of Scholasticism in a little work by Gerbert (d. 1003) on the question proposed by the Emperor Otto III: can we say that making use of reason is, as Porphyry maintains, an attribute of the rational ens (De rationale et ratione uti, libellus)?(31) Gerbert sets out Aristotle's opinion on the distinction between possible and real by saying that this philosopher admits possibilities which can be unaccompanied by reality, and other possibilities which cannot be unaccompanied by reality, and finally some possibilities which can never be in reality. The last are abstract possibilities. This whole manner of speaking, maintained by the Schools, and indeed by all philosophers to the present day, shows that they took 'possible' or 'ideal', and 'real' in the sense attributed to these words. It never entered their heads to confuse what is possible with nothing. What is possible or ideal, therefore, and what is real are two primordial modes of being which have to be kept quite distinct. I also noted that the word possible does not, properly speaking, express pure idea, but idea accompanied by a relationship posited by the mind in comparing idea with what is real.(32)
XIII
55. Myself is an active principle in a given nature in so far as this principle is conscious of itself and enunciates its own act.
COMMENT - In the definition given in Anthropology (cf. 768), I defined myself as a supreme, active principle. Here we have to note that supreme means supremacy within the sphere of human nature. The quality of universal principle could also be added to the definition of myself provided it is clear that the principle is not always universal as active principle, but only as principle, whether passive or active. In fact, when someone says: 'I undergo pain or pleasure', he expresses a principle of passion which undergoes some experience, not a principle of action. And although a principle has a certain activity even in undergoing experience, this species of activity must not be confused with activity properly so-called which does something rather than undergo something.
XIV
56. Nature is everything that contributes to the constitution of an ens and places it in act.
COROLLARY - Here we can note the difference between substance, nature and subject. Substance is the first act through which an essence subsists (cf. 52). Nature, however, includes more than is necessary for the subsistence of a subject: it includes the necessary term of the act by which the subject subsists. For example, the act which gives subsistence to a brute body is force; this is the body's substance. But the nature of this body also includes the extension in which the act called 'force' must be able to diffuse itself. Nature also embraces all accidents, although not taken individually (some accidents can be absent), but as a whole (not all accidents can be lacking). For example, because a body can exist without its having a round shape, this accident does not constitute part of its nature. But the same body cannot exist without some shape. Shape in general, therefore, enters into the nature of body without pertaining to its substance. Subject is the principle of the sentient substance. For a substance to be called subject, it is necessary for it 1. to be feeling; and 2. to be considered in so far as it is principle. This second characteristic distinguishes subject from sensitive nature, which also embraces what is felt, a necessary element for the existence of a substantial feeling. Subject, however, is only that which feels because only that which feels has the notion of principle.
Notes
(25) NE, vol. 2, 672-691.
(26) NE, vol. 2, 612-613.
(27) NE, vol. 2, 657-659.
(28) NE, vol. 2, 612-614.
(29) De Anim., bk. 3, tr. 20, 21.
(30) S.T., I, q. 43, art. 5, ad 2.
(31) It was published by Pez, Thesaurus novissimus Anecdotorum, vol. 1, p. 2, col. 147.
(32) NE, vol. 2, 540-542.