PSYCHOLOGY

Introduction

I

Classification of the sciences:
complete and incomplete sciences

1. The human mind, by its acts, knows but does not constitute an entity; moreover, it knows the entity only in the part and from the point of view to which it limits its glance, or attention. Consequently it even divides what in the entity is undivided. The laws of attention, therefore, sever and limit the ens that is its object, but do not sever and limit the ens in itself. If the ens were to lose its unity, it would no longer be. These limited objects of attention, which are also called mental entia, are indeed portions of the object of a science, but are not its complete object. The object of a science must therefore be an ens, intelligible(1) in its unity. One of the greatest founts of error is to be sought in the division of the sciences according to mental entia (2) without regard to the unity of entia in themselves. This gives flesh to abstractions, by positing division in the nature of things which of themselves are undivided, and thereby creating a great number of chimeras. Every time a mental being is taken for a complete being, the mind has fabricated a chimera.

2. Complete sciences must therefore be distinguished from incomplete. The former have as their object an entire ens considered in its species, and are divided in the same way as entia themselves; the latter have as their objects particular ways of viewing a being, that is, various mental entia.

3. The great synthesisation of knowledge, for which so many have thirsted without finding a way of satisfying their desire, pertains to the first division of the sciences. The second division lays claim to analysis which, by detailing human knowledge, throws such great light on it. But analysis easily becomes dangerous. Clever people who follow this way exclusively neglect synthesis, and thus dismember and deprive of life the living body formed by all that is knowable. Their imagination then leads them to see perfect bodies in the dead members, which in their view become objects of a perfect science. In fact, it is a terminally sick, cadaveric science.

4. This is the fault not of analysis, but of its abuse, just as it is the abuse of synthesis which induces the obscurity and frequent confusion of ideas to be found in the works of philosophers who are either ignorant of the analytical method or, in their systematic opposition to it, speak in such a complicated, all-embracing fashion that their words are like hard ground unbroken by plough or harrow.(3)

5. All danger in the classification of sciences will be avoided, therefore, if incomplete sciences are consistently regarded for what they are, branches only of complete sciences. In this case, a person dealing with an incomplete science will not claim to be developing one that is complete, but will work at some particular part without taking his eye off the entire body of the science.(4)

II
Unity of the science dealing with the human being - subsidiary sciences

6. Man is one. Consequently, the science that deals with man is also one. But man has been split up by abstraction, and many sciences have been constituted to deal with such divisions. No damage would have resulted if scholars had recognised these sciences as incomplete and kept before their eyes the unity of man. Provided, that is, someone had then come along to regroup the parts and indicate human unity by offering a theory proper to the complete science about man. I cannot see that this has happened yet, at least not amongst modern authors.

7. Physiologists(5) and psychologists have cut man in two without mercy, although both sides think they possess the whole man. Often, the physiologists have made him a brute; the psychologists an angel. I want to reunite our poor, miserably divided man.

8. I have nothing to say about students of anatomy, which is not even an incomplete science about man. A cadaver is not part of man. Anatomy belongs to an altogether different group of sciences and can only aspire to be subsidiary to sciences which have man for their object.

9. The history of mankind is not properly speaking science. It is history. Nevertheless, it adds a great number of precious facts to the theory of human nature. It, too, belongs to sciences subsidiary to the science about man.

III
Anthropology - Psychology

10. What is the most suitable name for the science about man? I have already called it anthropology, a word justified by its etymology. But in this case, what kind of science is psychology?

From the etymological point of view, the word indicates the science of the soul (* , soul). The soul, however, is not the whole of man if by man we understand human nature, or if we consider the soul divided from the body. In this case, psychology is an incomplete science in the sense I have explained (cf. 2, 7-9). Thus I have sometimes stated that psychology has to be a part of anthropology, just as the soul is part of the human being.

Nevertheless, if we consider the soul united with the body, in all its relationships with the body, and take the word 'man' to mean the human subject, we can say that the soul is the whole man because it is the subject. We can certainly say in every sense that the whole man is contained in the soul united with the body. Extension(6) falls within human feeling (if feeling pertains to the soul) as its term and matter, so that it is impossible to speak fully of the soul as the principle of feeling without speaking about man as a whole. That which is entirely outside the soul is outside the human being; the body pertains to the human being only in so far as it is in the soul.(7) The distinction between psychology and anthropology seems, therefore, to lack scientific utility and I have no hesitation in assigning the same place to both in the tree of philosophical sciences. I consider them as two names for the same science about the human being rather than as different sciences.

11. This treatise entitled Psychology will, therefore, be simply a continuation of the Anthropology which I have already published, but in which I deliberately left many gaps in my desire to deal solely with the anthropological or psychological information which seemed necessary as an aid to the moral sciences.

IV
Ideology and psychology -
they provide the rudimentsof everything that can be known

12. But what is the relationship between psychology and ideology? The rudiments of all human cognitions are feeling and intuited being. By first rudiments I mean all that is found in any cognition, through the attention of the mind, to be of such a character that it cannot be deducted by way of reasoning from preceding information, but is given directly by nature.

13. Feeling and idea are data given directly by nature.
The feeling given in human nature is neither deducted nor deducible through reasoning from any preceding cognition. In fact, it is not even cognition but becomes the matter of cognition when the understanding turns to it, grasps it with its intellective act and thus renders it its object.
The idea, that is, being in so far as it is the object of mental intuition, is also given to man by nature because it cannot be deduced by any reasoning, nor by any abstraction. It is presupposed by every reasoning and every act of abstraction.

Feeling has a subjective nature; intuited being, which is essentially object, cannot be given, except as object, to any subject. Otherwise it would cease to be what it is; it would no longer be intuited being because being given to a subject (for example, to the human subject) as object is equivalent to being intuited. Such intuition creates intelligence which is simply the intuition of being, the union of object with subject - a union in which object necessarily remains distinct from subject.(8) It follows that being, which is essentially object [App., no. 1], is the form of every intelligence, the first cognition, the formal part of cognition.

This is why we said that everything humanly knowable starts from two postulates:
1.'being is known';
2. 'experience of the feeling about which one reasons is a datum'.(9)

14. It also follows that everything known or able to be known by man is divided into two parts: 1. that which is given to human beings by nature; 2. that which we can draw out and deduce with reasoning from what is given to us by nature.

15. The reasoning which we employ cannot in fact be applied to anything totally outside ourselves, but only to that which is within us. And, as we said, there is nothing in us except through reasoning or through nature. It remains, therefore, that reasoning draws its final consequences only from what is given to us by nature. But nothing is given to human beings by nature except feeling and the intuition of being. All cognitions are only the development of these two principles, which themselves are the materials making up the edifice of what is knowable. What is not contained in these principles cannot be developed from them. They contain in germ all human cognitions without exception and indistinctly. Reasoning distinguishes them, seemingly creating them before the eyes of the mind. Being, therefore, as object of the mind, and feeling are the two rudiments (cf. 12) of all human cognitions without exception.

16. Ideology deals with being as the object of the mind; psychology deals with the soul, the principle of human feeling. These two sciences, therefore, provide the rudiments of all other sciences which finally are resolved into them. When we ask of man: 'What is the source of your affirmation about this or that, how do you come to know it?', he will be able to reply: 'I affirm it, I know it, because I have deduced it by reasoning from something else.' If we insist: 'How do you know this something else?', he can still say: 'By reasoning from something else again,' and so on. Finally, however, he will be forced to come to the primal data of nature, that is, the ultimately known thing to which he will appeal. This is necessarily either being intuited by the mind, or feeling. Having reached these extremes, no more deduction is possible. When asked: 'What is the source of your knowledge of being?' or 'What is the source of your feeling?', human beings can only reply: 'I intuit being; I do not deduce it. I feel; feeling is not the consequence of any reasoning, nor indeed of any cognition.'

17. It is in these final two rudiments of all human information, therefore, that we have to seek the justification and certainty of what we know. If these primal data are certain, other information found in them through reasoning is also certain because the very principles of reasoning are contained in the idea. We have shown the certainty of all the rest of what is humanly knowable from the certainty of its two unshakeable foundations. We have shown that in them no error is possible; that man, relative to them, is infallible because they do not depend on his will, but on his nature.(10)

18. - If what you say is true, we would know nothing of the real things that do not fall under our senses. Real things are not comprised in being intuited by the mind nor, according to your supposition, are they found in feeling - .

We have to distinguish the essence(11) of real things from their reality. As far as their essence is concerned, all real things, even those which do not fall under the senses, agree in entity. If they were not entia in one way or another, if they possessed no entity, they would be nothing; they would be neither things nor real things. But we know through nature what being is, and from being we attain some information about the essence of all things, precisely because the essence of being is to some degree and in some way common to all things. But we certainly cannot know anything in reality, that is, we cannot affirm that a thing subsists, unless we have some indication pointing to this. For example, the testimony of a person who has seen or heard some subsistent thing. The testimony can only be communicated to human beings by way of a feeling such as a word or, if we want to appeal to a miracle, through an interior revelation from God which again is reduced to a feeling. But leaving aside interior revelation (to which however the same reasoning could be applied), and confining ourselves to the example of the word by which someone attests to us the existence of an ens that does not fall under our senses, I grant, of course, that the sensation of the voice I hear is in no way a feeling of the real thing whose subsistence is made known to me. Nevertheless, it is a feeling which assures us that the person speaking knows that the thing exists. In turn, the knowledge that we have of the person's truthfulness provides sure proof that what he says is true, and that the thing he affirms does indeed subsist. Our knowledge itself of his truthfulness depends on other feelings, that is, on our sense experience which is either direct or mediated through other signs and indications. We have to conclude, therefore, that we can indeed know the subsistence of an ens that does not fall under our senses, but that we cannot know it without some feeling which serves as an indication and proof of its subsistence.

19. - I will not ask you how these indications or signs of things can be given, because I know what you will say. You will tell me that these things are connected with one another, and that we already understand in being itself the connections between things. This knowledge, which is natural to us because we draw it from being, is the means through which we integrate our cognitions by adding, as a necessary condition to what we know, that which we do not yet know.(12) I grant you all this; I grant that you have explained the way in which a person can use something known or some sensation as a sign and indication leading him to something else. Moreover, even if I did not understand the explanation you have given, I could not deny the fact; I could not deny that we do indeed use signs and indications and thus come to know that some entities subsist which are not revealed by our senses. However, I have another objection. A sign, a feelable indication, tells me that an ens subsists, but it does not tell me what it is. Nevertheless, I know, even about entia which have never fallen under my senses, what they are. Sometimes I know them as well and better than things I have seen and felt for myself. For example, I have never been to Constantinople, but I have heard about it and read so much about it that I know it better than Rome, which I have experienced through my senses, although only in passing. There must be, therefore, outside the senses some other way of knowing the objects of human cognitions. It is impossible that everything be reduced to those two rudiments, that which is sensible and the being known to us by nature, which you have established - .

It was precisely to help you with this difficulty that I distinguished from the beginning between knowing the essence of something and knowing its subsistence or reality. Now, you grant me that in order to know subsistence (I cannot induce it unless it is known to me through nature, or by that which is known to me through nature), I need a feeling, or at least a sensible sign indicating it to me. This sign, in so far as it is sensible, is given by nature, not by reasoning. Your difficulty, therefore, is concerned with the essence of the thing. So: distinguish between things similar to others which have fallen under our senses, such as Constantinople in your example, and things which have never fallen under our internal or external sense, such as colours for a person born blind. If we are dealing with things similar to those which have fallen under our senses, we know their essence by applying to them the knowledge of things we have perceived at other times. In this case, we are dependent upon the feeling given to us by nature. In fact, you have seen other cities and everything contained in a city so that, when someone tells you about a city you have not seen, your imagination uses this information to fill out the subsistence of, say, Constantinople. You mentally construct Constantinople, guided by the accounts given by travellers, through the species of cities you have already perceived with your senses, or in the model provided by your imagination. Surely it is the case that you are seeking the materials for your knowledge of Constantinople from feeling?

If, on the other hand, we are dealing with the kinds of things that have never fallen under our feeling, as in the case of colours relative to a person born blind, my answer is the same as before: 'You can have no cognition of the essence of the thing whose subsistence is attested except that drawn by your thought from the common entity known to you by nature, and from the subsistence indicated by some witness, and from the relationships between subsistence, entity and other beings known through feeling, whether these relationships are provided for you by witnesses or discovered by reflection.' This is the sum total of cognition which is possible for you.

20. Note, however, that this cognition is not as impoverished as it appears. The testimony given to you relative to that thing is capable of letting you know 1. its subsistence; 2. the determination, limitation and other ontological relationships it has with being and other known things, such as the relationship of cause, etc. and finally, 3. that which it is not.

21. Referring the various real things we have perceived with our understanding to being, intuited by the mind, we easily come to know the following.

1. There are some equal, indispensable properties to be found in entia which do not fall within our feeling and whose subsistence is known only through testimony. Their indispensable necessity is made known to us through information which comes to us naturally through ens. Granted that we know what ens means, we immediately understand that the things testified to us could not have been and would not be entia, unless they possessed those properties. These properties, common to entia known to us through feeling and common to entia attested to us, constitute the foundation of analogy. We know things we have not perceived, therefore, by their analogy with those we have perceived.

2. Some properties present in entia perceived by us through feeling must be absolutely excluded from entia we have not perceived. This provides, through exclusion, some kind of negative cognition.

3. If we add to these two ways the other two, that is, subsistence known through attestation and through ontological relationships attested to us, we can conclude:

We compose for ourselves the essence, knowable to us, of entia which do not fall within our feeling and to which nothing similar has occurred in our experience a) through the sensible witness given by other people which indicates subsistence or even shows us certain ontological relationships with entia known to us through feeling, certain analogies and certain negations; b) through ontological relationships with the same entia (relationships found by ourselves by means of reflection); c) through analogies with the same entia (analogies found by ourselves); d) through exclusion, again found by ourselves through reflection.

22. As an example of cognition that our feeling cannot reach, let us take the teaching about God, which we can have through reason.

We know of God's subsistence by means of ontological relationships with that which we know through feeling. These are relationships with the world. We realise that the world must have a cause because it is, and would not be if it had no cause. Being known to us through nature tells us all this; it is to being that we refer the world given us by feeling.(13)

In the same way, infinity, necessity, simplicity and so on are ontological relationships pertaining to the cause of the world. The cause of the world subsists, but it could not subsist without these determinations. Therefore it has them. We know that it could not subsist, that is, could not in these circumstances be ens, precisely because we know what ens is and hence what is needed for it to be ens, and to be this kind of ens.

What kind of concept is the concept of an infinite ens? There is no doubt that it must have all degrees of being; it must not be dead, but have feeling and intelligence to the highest degree. But how do we know the essence of feeling and intelligence? We know it through experience of what happens in ourselves, through our own proper feeling. How then can we know the feeling and intelligence of God? Only through analogy between what must be present in him and the feeling and intelligence which are present in us.

Likewise we understand, through analogy between the supreme being and all entia seen in the light of being known to us through nature, that the supreme being cannot lack reality, ideality or morality.

But we understand (knowing being) that it would not be absolute being unless it were being itself in its three forms. Thus, the concept of infinite, absolute being - already illustrated by means of the analogies we have mentioned and referred to the idea of being we have through nature - is transformed for us into the very being which subsists undivided in the three forms. This seems to me to be the highest concept that human intelligence can make for itself about God without reference to revelation.

This is how the whole of natural theology is reduced finally to its first rudiments, that is, to being which is known through nature, and to feeling.

23. Ideology (and logic, its continuation) deals with being known through nature; psychology studies feeling. All sciences, therefore, have to come to these first two for their materials. Everything given by the other sciences as positive cognition, that is, as cognition of real entia, has to be reduced to ideology and psychology, the origin of all other sciences and the basis of their certainty. The teaching of other sciences is certain if it is reduced almost mathematically to other per se certain teachings which have no need of reasoned demonstration.

V
Psychology - Cosmology

24. One difficulty remains. It would seem that the science of the world is itself the product of perception and observation. This science itself seems to provide primal data and the rudiments of what is knowable.
This science of the world, or cosmology, is indubitably a science of perception and observation. Moreover, if by 'world' we understand the whole of creation, psychology itself becomes a material part of cosmology because human beings are ultimately members of the world.
But it is one thing to consider sciences according to the matter they contain, and another according to the source from which they derive.

If cosmology is considered from the point of view of the source from which human beings produce it, we can easily see that it arises from psychology itself precisely because cosmology is a science of perception and observation.
There is no doubt that it is man, the soul, who perceives the external things which make up the world.
There is a duality in the feeling which is the soul, that is, a subjective and an extrasubjective element which on reflection are changed into myself and not-myself. We distinguish these two elements in all perceptions of corporeal things. We feel and perceive these elements contemporaneously, and in mutual opposition, as mutual limits.

The feeling which is the soul, therefore, brings us to know the corporeal part of the universe which is perceived only as something heterogeneous falling within feeling. This explains (I repeat) why the body is in the soul, not the soul in the body.

25. If, however, the world is perceived in so far as it is received in feeling, our cognition of the world, although certain, is partly phenomenal, partly absolute. In other words, the corporeal world as we have it in perception is a composite both of elements that we ourselves posit and of elements which are given to us. Separating one group from the other is the work of reasoning through which alone we discover the extrasubjective part, independent of ourselves. Such is the positive cognition we can have of the essences of things.(14)

26. The world, however, consists of spirits as well as bodies. But even for spirits we have to turn to psychology because we cannot form any positive cognition of other spirits except by starting from the feeling of ourselves. Spirit is feeling. We begin, therefore, from the feeling of ourselves, and with this positive cognition conceive other feelings, other spirits. Only reasoning enables us to put them together in various ways.

Psychology, therefore, provides even cosmology with its primal rudiments. Cosmology comes to birth in the womb of psychology just as the world we know is in the womb of the soul.(15)

VI
The method to be used in psychological research

27. Knowing that psychology is the science that provides the real rudiment of human cognitions to all other sciences, just as ideology provides the ideal rudiment, we are in a position to deduce the method necessary to these primal sciences.

28. The method must be one of observation. It must bring facts to light with great precision, distinguish their parts, compare them and finally deduce conclusions from them. In all this, the eye of the mind must be continually fixed on facts in order to see clearly. During our observation, imagination must not be allowed to add, obscure or detract anything whatsoever. The aim is to attest to facts with the greatest fidelity, precision and sagacity, and to provide a description of them corresponding totally to the truth of what is before us.

What are we to make, therefore, of Christian Wolff's distinction of psychology into two sciences, empirical and rational, the former working through observation, the latter through reasoning?

VII
Christian Wolff's division of psychology into two sciences,

one called empirical,

the other rational psychology, is excluded

29. Wolff's division was embraced with admirable consent by Germany, and followed religiously by German philosophers. Nevertheless, it seems to me arbitrary and, moreover, suggested by erroneous opinions, especially about the nature of observation and reasoning.

30. Observation, it would seem, could be totally divided from reasoning and considered as a truly separate way of knowing. Reasoning would be another way, without need of observation.
Moreover, a different degree of certainty was predicated about these two separate and independent ways of knowing. Observation, it was claimed, induced full, undeniable certainty. This was not the case with reasoning. Wolff himself noted that he had separated empirical from rational psychology in order to base moral and political truths on the former which, as containing teaching demonstrated through experience, is non-controversial.(16)

31. Both of these are sensistic errors and their prolonged presence in German philosophy shows the defect of this philosophy. It has a highly speculative, abstract (or rather mysterious) appearance, but its hidden depths contain corrosive sensism.(17)
In fact, only sensists are able to believe that observation can cause us to know truth by way of sensation without the use of reason, or (and this is worse) that the truths coming to us from this kind of observation are alone secure and non-controversial.

32. Nevertheless, it is a fact that no observation or experience of any sort exists unmixed with rational activity, although this is sometimes difficult to notice. Condillac himself was already aware that our sensations are mixed with inadverted judgments - this is the most beautiful thing he said. From Condillac to Lord Brougham's recent work on natural theology,(18) philosophers have become ever more aware of the multiplicity of judgments and reasoning which, mingling with our sensations, provides us with such knowledge of many truths (knowledge that we then erroneously attribute to sensations alone). Sensism would have fallen of itself if, continuing on this path, philosophers had adverted to and noted carefully all the hurried, almost furtive judgments accompanying feelings. I have tried to do this myself; the result has been the kind of certainty unavailable to merely sensible observation. In other words, sensations, devoid of an act of understanding to accompany them, offer us no knowledge of any kind. They are facts which terminate within themselves, of which we are unaware. Consciousness of sensation itself requires 1. that we turn our intellective attention to what passes in our feeling, and 2. a consequent affirmation through which we say to ourselves, 'Now I am experiencing some passion, some feeling.' This is clearly a judgment, but so spontaneous and so continuous with feeling that it escapes our attention. What we have at heart is not to gain knowledge of this judgment, but through it to know the feeling of which we have become conscious. This judgment, intimately united to feeling, constitutes intellective perception of sensation,(19) that is, knowledge.

What is the justification for the interior word that we speak to ourselves on the occasion of sensations when we say: 'I undergo something'? What demonstrates the certainty of this statement? I have no doubt, of course, that our persuasion of certainty about the word is natural, and that most people find this sufficient to exclude doubt about it. But if we want a demonstration that the persuasion does not deceive us, we have to analyse it to see how it is formed and what supports it. This analysis leads us to being, which we intuit through nature, where every reasoning becomes evident. Once our possession of ens has been verified in our cognition - in other words 'we know that what we are affirming, is' - we can no longer doubt whether 'what we affirm is'. It is true, therefore, because 'being true' simply means 'being that which we affirm'.(20)

33. From this we can conclude that the certainty and demonstration of our sensible observations lies only in the force of the secret reasoning that we always carry out on them. Thus, in all sciences alike it is necessary to recur to the authority of reason, that is, of the idea of being, the final seat of evidence where we ascertain truths of both observation and of induction and consequence. The act of reasoning is in every case the organ with which we fashion sciences. We can never do without it.

No specific difference of method is present, therefore, between empirical and rational psychology. The difference is solely one of degree. What we have to demonstrate in empirical psychology is the fruit of shorter reasoning; what we have to demonstrate in rational psychology is again the fruit of reasoning, but of prolonged reasoning which allows deduction of new truths from preceding truths. This difference of degree does not give rise to two sciences, just as Euclid's division of his geometry into different books does not give rise to different geometries. His books are certainly not different sciences, but degrees of the same science.

VIII
The synthesism inherent to method and distribution in the philosophical sciences

34. From this truth (that reason is always the organ with which we compose the sciences both of observation and of induction(21)), we want to draw an important consequence destined to clarify the method to be followed in the explanation and distribution of the philosophical sciences.

Merely to feel is not to observe. Observation implies an act of the mind that makes a feeling its object and concludes in a judgment. This act of the mind, either a judgment or an act of reasoning, is in the last analysis the application of ideal being to the feeling on which the mind fixes its attention. Every reasoning, therefore, necessarily includes two elements: 1. ideal being; and 2. the feeling to which ideal being is applied. The information obtained by way of reasoning about one of these two things cannot be had without information about the other. The two pieces of information are therefore posited in us contemporaneously. This is what I call synthesism.

35. Indeed, this twofold information that we want to gain for ourselves by reasoning (which alone gives rise within us to consciousness and the development of the sciences) must have from the beginning three objects: 1. our bodily feelings or their bodily terms; 2. ourselves, that is, our interior feelings; 3. the idea of being. If the first two are the objects of reasoning, it is clear that reasoning is made up contemporaneously of feelings and the idea of being (feelings cannot be the objects of thought without the idea of being). If, however, we suppose that the object of reasoning is the idea of being alone, either the supposition is understood strictly in which case it is absurd, or it is not understood strictly and a feeling enters to make reasoning possible.

I say that it is absurd to suppose some reasoning through the idea of being alone without the addition of some sensible element because the person who says something about this idea either predicates something about it, or predicates something about his intuition of it. He could, for example, affirm that he has this intuition. If he predicates something about the intuition of the idea, the feeling of himself becomes an element of his judgment or of his reasoning. He cannot say: 'I have the intuition of being', unless he knows the self (the 'I' ) that he nominates — this self is a substantial feeling, a complex of feelings elaborated, as it were, by the understanding itself. If, however, he speaks not of the intuition, but of being as intuited, he can say nothing without first comparing it with subsistent things and, from this comparison, inducing that it is different from them. He may perhaps invent the word 'ideal' to mark this diversity. All this, however, supposes some information about feelings. He cannot say 'intuited being is ideal' prior to such a comparison. The word 'ideal' achieves nothing except the exclusion of the reality of substances or efficient causes. Nor can he even say to himself: 'Being is'. This is not an interior word but a linguistic phrase without meaning which adds nothing to being. Language can of course construct judgments if it discovers an apparent predicate; the mind cannot.

Synthesism, therefore, is inherent in every reasoning.

36. I conclude that the two elements of reasoning which synthesise, that is, which adhere inseparably to one another, cannot constitute two entirely and exactly separate sciences. Each must be constructed along with the other; each must explain the other; each must be understood by the same act of the spirit.

37. As we said, the sciences that deal with the first two elements of reasoning are ideology and psychology. Each needs the other. Theory about idea (which is reflective teaching dependent on reasoning) cannot be understood without theory about soul informed by idea. Equally, theory about soul is unknown until it is joined and illuminated by the theory about idea. This explains why I include in ideology a great number of things pertaining to psychology, and why I shall have to make continual use of ideological information in psychology.

38. Quite a number of doubts and questions arise here. If one of these two things cannot be understood without the other, which will come first? Can they be called simultaneous? If the truth of both has to be demonstrated, which is to be proved first? How can the truth of one be shown if the truth of the other, which has to be brought into the reasoning, has not been demonstrated?

I do not want to hide the importance of these problems nor the difficulty of answering them adequately. The reader knows, however, that I regard every serious and apparently insoluble difficulty as an advance in science because it contains a precious secret. And this seems to me to be the case with these questions. My answer, therefore, runs as follows.
There are certainly some things of which we have to say that one cannot be understood without the other. All relative concepts, such as that of cause and effect, are an example. They are understood contemporaneously with a single act of understanding. However, they seem to separate and divide when verbalised because of the imperfection of the words used to indicate them. Nevertheless, the understanding itself supplies for the verbal defect by conceiving the thing as a whole, as soon as a word is used to indicate it. Thus, if we use the single word effect or the single word cause, the understanding immediately conceives what is expressed. Because the understanding cannot conceive effect without cause, or cause without effect, one of these words is sufficient to draw attention to both concepts (although not equal attention) which, bound together by nature, are a single thing, a sole relationship, for the mind.

39. The following principle has to be established if we wish to show the certainty of correlative teachings and the way of demonstrating them: 'Certainty arises from the same source as knowledge.' To know, and to know the truth is the same thing. The person who does not know the truth, does not know.(22)

40. It follows, when dealing with correlative teachings known simultaneously by the same act of the intellect because they provide the mind with a single complex concept, that it is impossible for one to be proved or ascertained before the other. They receive their certainty together from the light of truth common to them both.

41. This reply is valid for concepts and their correlative teachings. However, the case is slightly different when the synthesis takes place not between two concepts or cognitions, but between the form and matter of the same cognition. One example of this is found in intellective perception where a feeling is united with being intuited by the mind, and a single judgment is pronounced: 'An ens subsists.' In this perception, being is known to the mind beforehand; it is per se cognition, essential cognition, and has no need of feeling to be such. Feeling, however, or rather the real ens characterised by feeling, becomes known through being which provides both information about ens and the source of our certainty and proof in its regard. The proof can be set out in this way: consciousness attests that a feeling is present. But could not consciousness deceive us? Let us see. What is the meaning of 'consciousness attests the presence of a feeling'? It means that we know, that we affirm the presence of a feeling. But this affirmation: 'There IS a feeling' is reduced to affirming the identity between being and feeling. Saying this means simply that feeling is not nothing; the opposite of being is nothing. If we apply the two concepts of nothing and feeling to the words, the concepts are clearly contrary to one another, just as they are identical if joined to the words being and feeling (except that the former, containing more than the latter, is restricted by the affirmation to feeling and thus identified with it). If we do not attach the concepts to these two words, thought is eliminated. If thought is eliminated, even error is impossible. There can be no mistake in the proposition 'Identity is present (in the way explained) between feeling and being', or its equivalent 'There is a feeling'.

This demonstration is founded entirely on information about being: the soul, intuiting being, sees that everything is identified with being from which it acquires the truth and certainty of being itself.

42. Truth, certainty, the evidence of the witness of consciousness, take their origin from being which informs them, and without which neither consciousness nor any intellective act would be possible. Just as the spirit sees being, so with the same glance it sees the identity of real things with being. This vision, when reflective and concerned with something united to ourselves, is called consciousness.(23)

43. We have to be careful here. The intuition of being is a fact (the fact of knowledge) posited by nature. This fact of knowledge needs no demonstration; demonstration means 'the reduction of what we believe we know to the fact of knowledge.' When what we believe we know is reduced to the fact of knowledge, we no longer believe we know, but know. Nevertheless, persons who have not yet thought about themselves do not know that this is the case. Ideology and logic show them that every demonstration is reduced to this.

But, it may be objected, ideology and its continuation, logic, cannot be expounded without introducing perceptions, the witness of consciousness, and so on. Isn't this begging the question?—Definitely not. All that these sciences do is simply direct the attention of the mind to the observation of perceptions, and so on. It is not at all necessary to employ some previously demonstrated truth to direct the attention. Any stimulus whatsoever can be suitable for this, even a blind stimulus, even an error. For example, if someone, by lying, causes me to look at an object, I see the object just as well as if I were drawn to look at it by a truth. Once the mind has observed perceptions without exiting from observation itself, perceptions are ascertained because they are nothing more than 'the identity, shown to the human being, between feeling and being.' Perception identified with the fact of knowledge is no longer a belief that we know, but knowledge itself.

44. Hence, despite the synthesism between certain ideological and psychological teachings, both are furnished with certainty and demonstrated most rigorously without begging any question.

IX
The division of psychology

45. As we come now to speak of psychology, we have to ask about its starting point and about its sphere. As we said, the attention of our understanding is fixed on the soul by new, particular feelings formed in the soul by its passage from not feeling to feeling, that is, from not having a given sensation to having it. These changes, which take place in the soul, attract its attention, causing it to turn in on itself. They produce consciousness which reveals to the philosopher teachings about the soul. Consciousness, therefore, is the proximate source of psychology.

46. But philosophers are not at all satisfied with the first testimonies of consciousness, from which they grasp what takes place in themselves. They want to go on to connect the feelings and operations of the soul and from them rise to know the soul itself, which is their subject and, in great part, their cause. Philosophers want to form for themselves the concept of soul which provides its knowable essence, and enables them to distinguish its nature. When they have succeeded in fixing the essence of the thing they are examining, they have found its ultimate, intrinsic reason and the principle of all the reasoning they can make about it. Philosophising means precisely this: finding the final reason in the genus of which one is speaking, that is, finding the principle of the discussion and, by means of it, ordering systematically the teachings which flow from and depend upon that principle.

47. Once the mind has risen to the essence of anything, it descends from it according to the course of operations proceeding from it. Philosophers, once they know the essence of the soul, and hence its substance, can mentally follow it in its development and note the laws which this substance follows in its operation and development.

48. Finally, having noted the modifications that arise in the soul as effects of its actions and passions, and either ameliorate or worsen it, the mind can study the stages by which the soul is degraded or ascends to the height of the perfection for which it is made. Philosophical meditation, following the soul itself in its journey to the twofold extremes of good and evil, comes to form the ideal of the soul(24) and to contemplate it in all its perfection, or at least to solve the problem about the indefinite perfection of the soul.

49. These considerations enable us to say that all the entire teaching making up psychology can fittingly be divided into three parts dealing with the nature, development and destinies of the soul. Here we find the principle, the means and the end of the human soul, and of humanity itself. This is the perfect schema of psychology. But because the destinies of the soul transcend in fact all limits of nature, I shall speak about them in the Supernatural Anthropology. My present work will be limited to the first two parts: the nature of the soul and its development.

Notes

(1) Entia are objects of science in so far as they are per se intelligible. Hence the distinction between science and history. Because intelligibility consists in universal being, science always considers entia in their essence, never in their blind reality. History, however, while presupposing ideal things in the mind, is content to affirm their subsistence while presupposing essence, and tells us only about real things. Theology alone considers its object as real because Almighty God is essentially real, and his very reality intelligible. All other contingent realities are not per se intelligible, but become so through universal being, or the idea, which does not enter as an element into the nature of contingent things but pertains to the divine nature. What, therefore, is the object of science? - Let me repeat: it is intelligible being. If we are dealing with contingent entia, science has as its object real species or genera (which are a kind of species themselves) because they render entia (not merely the abstract parts of entia) intelligible (cf. NE, vol. 2, 646-659). If we are dealing with necessary ens, the object of science is being itself in its essence. - Is ideology, therefore, not a science? It is, because it deals with the essence of being, and not with any part of its extremely simple essence. Nevertheless, it is necessarily an elementary science because in the order of nature the essence of being is communicated to us only as a universal means of knowledge.

(2)Mental being is not to be confused with ideal being. The former is the work of the mind in that the mind, with its limiting attention, puts arbitrary boundaries to being; but the latter, because the mind simply intuits being, is not the work of the mind. In a word, mental beings are ideal beings, divided and limited by the laws of attention.

(3)This is the immense defect of German philosophers; French philosophers tend to abuse analysis.

(4)I have indicated the dangers of the abuse of analysis, and the errors resulting from it, in several places. Cf. Anthropology as an Aid to Moral Science, 7; The Philosophy of Politics, vol. 2, Society and its Purpose, 830-838.

(5) Pathology, that is, the science of the sick human being is properly speaking only a continuation of physiology. It has already been shown that the laws governing illnesses proceed from the universal laws of life. These laws, given different conditions, produce different phenomena, that is, the phenomena of the healthy human being, and the phenomena of the sick human being.

(6)St. Thomas asserts that illud quod est totius compositi, est etiam ipsius animae [that which pertains to the whole of this composite being pertains also to the soul] (S.T., I, q. 56, art. 1, ad 5).

(7)Cf. NE, vol. 2, 983-1019.

(8) Cf. AMS, 812-831.

(9) AMS, Postulates, 10-20. These two postulates are not arbitrary, but necessary. In other words, they must be reasonably conceded or, as I would prefer to say, they are posited, conceded, to man of themselves. They in no way weaken human cognitions, as we have shown elsewhere.

(10) NE, vol. 3, 1245-1246.

(11) Essence is what is known in the idea (NE, vol. 2, 647).
Essence therefore pertains to being, while the word idea expresses a mode of being, that is, it indicates being in so far as it is intelligible (Rinnovamento etc., bk. 3, c. 3-51 [433 ss; 522]).

(12) NE, vol. 2, 558-575; vol. 3, 1044-1054.

(13) NE, vol. 3, 1264-1273.

(14) NE, vol. 3, 1210; vol. 2, 878-906.

(15) Preface to the Metaphysical Works, (28).

(16)'Practical philosophy is of the greatest importance. But matters of the greatest importance are not to be constructed on the basis of disputed principles. For this reason, we construct the truths of practical philosophy only on principles which are clearly established in empirical psychology' (Discursus prael. de philosophia in genere, §112). - But is it possible, I would ask, to establish ethics on a solid basis without presupposing a simple, immortal soul, or at least, if this is possible, to establish it while supposing the soul to be material and mortal? I believe it altogether impossible to demonstrate moral obligation while supposing the soul to be mortal. But, granted that moral obligation can be established prior to knowledge about the immortality of the soul, and without denying it, I think it obvious that morality itself leads us to conclude to the immortality of the soul as its consequence (this was the moral way of demonstrating immortality from Plato to Kant) and, as a result of this, to illustrate and develop ethics. Although ethics may, therefore, begin while prescinding from the immortality of the soul, it certainly cannot develop and reach perfection without the assistance of this truth. Wolff, however, demonstrates the simplicity and immortality of the soul in rational psychology, not in empirical psychology. It is, therefore, on rational, much more than on empirical psychology that ethics must be founded. This gives the lie to the reason he adduces for justifying his division of psychology into empirical and rational.

(17) Teodicea, 144-147.

(18)Translated into French under the title: Discours sur la Théologie Naturelle indiquant la nature de son évidence et les avantages de ses études par Henry Lord Brougham etc. traduit de l'anglais, sous les yeux de l'Auteur par S. C. Tarrer etc., II, Dumant, Bruxelles, 1836.

(19) Intellective perception of sensation is not the first perception. It is preceded in the logical order, and accompanied in the chronological order, by the intellective perception of real ens, to which the feelable quality pertains, as I have shown in NE.

(20) NE, vol. 3, 1062-1064.

(21) It will be objected that the intuition of being is a cognition which has no need of reasoning. This is true, but no science is formed by this alone. Every science is a witness to our consciousness. Even the intuition of being does not enter the field of science unless we carry out an intellective act by which we tell ourselves that we possess the intuition of being. But this is impossible unless we reflect upon what is present in our spirit; telling ourselves that such is the case already means that we pronounce some judgment. But we cannot demonstrate the certainty of this judgment without making a further reflection upon it, that is, an act of reasoning which takes the form: 'We intuit being. But being is that which is. Therefore we intuit that which is. But that which is, is the truth. Therefore we intuit the truth. Therefore the intuition of being cannot mislead us; being which we intuit cannot be an appearance. If it were, the appearance would be the truth, which is a contradiction.' We need some reasoning, therefore, to make the very intuition of being an object of science.

(22) Rinnovamento etc., bk. 1, c. 10 ss. - Note that even in errors there is always some part of truth. This explains why a person who errs seems to know, and indeed does know truly, but not in so far as he errs. If a person's mind were completely empty, he would not even be able to err. In a word, without truth there is no intellective act, either correct or incorrect, either leading to truth or leading to falsity.

(23) Cf. the definition of consciousness applied to moral matters in Conscience, 9-17.

(24) I call the complete species the archetype (NE, vol. 2, 648-652); the ideal is the state of maximum perfection attainable by an individual with its own activity. The archetype, therefore, is the perfection of something in its nature; the ideal is the perfection of something produced by its activity.