THE ACTING INTELLECT OF THE ARISTOTELIANS.
45. I shall now briefly explain the scholastic theory of the manner in
which the understanding knows material things. This explanation will
show how much reason we had to assert that this doctrine of the schools
can be ridiculed only when not understood, and that, whatever its
foundation, it cannot be denied to possess an ideological importance.
46. The schoolmen began with this principle of Aristotle, _nihil est in
intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu_; "There is nothing in the
understanding which has not previously been in the senses." Conformably
to this principle they maintained that before the soul received
impressions from the senses, the understanding was like a clean table
upon which nothing had been written: _sicut tabula rasa in qua nihil
est scriptum_. According to this doctrine all our knowledge flows from
the senses; and at first sight the system of the schools might seem to
be very similar to, if not identical with, that of Condillac. Both seek
the origin of our cognitions in sensation; both teach that there is no
idea in our understanding prior to sensation. But the two systems are,
notwithstanding these apparent similarities, very different, and even
diametrically opposed.
47. The fundamental principle of Condillac's theory is, that sensation
is the sole operation of the mind; and that whatever exists in our
mind is nothing more than the sensation transformed in various ways.
Prior to sensible impressions, this philosopher admits no faculty;
the development of sensation is all that fecundates the soul, not by
exciting its faculties, but by generating them. The school of the
Aristotelians took, indeed, sensations for the starting-point, but did
not consider them as producing intelligence; on the contrary, they were
very careful to mark the limits of the sensitive faculties, and of the
understanding in which they recognized a peculiar and innate activity
altogether superior to the faculties of the sensible order. We have
only to open any one of the innumerable works of this school, to meet
on every page such words as _intellectual force_, _light of reason_,
_participation in the divine light_, and others in the same style, in
which a primary activity of our mind, not communicated by sensations,
but prior to them all, is expressly recognized. The acting intellect,
_intellectus agens_, which figures so much in this ideological system,
was a standing condemnation of the system of transformed sensation
advocated by Condillac.
48. The Aristotelians, governed by their favorite idea of explaining
every thing by matter and form, modified the meaning of these words
according to the exigencies of the objects to which they applied them,
and considered the faculties of the soul as a class of forces incapable
of acting unless united to a form which brought them into action.
Thus they explained sensations by species, or forms, which placed the
sensitive power in act. The imagination was a force which, although it
sometimes rose above the external senses, contained nothing but species
of the sensible order, subject also to the necessary conditions of this
faculty. These species were the forms which placed the imaginative
force in act, and without which it could not exercise its functions.
The Aristotelians, after having thus explained the phenomena of the
external senses, and of the imagination, undertook to explain those
of the intellectual order; and in this they displayed their genius by
inventing an auxiliary which they named the _acting intellect_. The
necessity of making two principles in seeming contradiction accord, was
the reason of this invention.
On the one hand the Aristotelians held that our cognitions all flowed
from the senses; and on the other they asserted that there was an
essential and intrinsic difference between feeling and understanding.
Having drawn this dividing line, the sensitive and intellectual orders
were separated; but as it was on the other side requisite to establish
some communication between these two orders, it was necessary for them,
if they wished to save the principle, that all our ideas come from the
senses, to discover some point where the two channels might unite.
The cognition of material things could not be denied to the pure
understanding; but as this was not an innate cognition and could not
be acquired by it, they were under the necessity of establishing
some communication by means of which the understanding might
comprehend objects without soiling its purity by sensible species. The
imagination contained them, already purified from the grossness of the
external senses; in it they existed more aerial, purer, and less remote
from immateriality; but they were still at an immense distance from the
intellectual order, and had themselves to support the burden of those
material conditions which never allowed them to attain the altitude
necessary to be put in communication with the pure understanding. In
order to know, the understanding requires forms to unite themselves to
it intimately; and although it be true that it discerned them far down
in the lower regions of the sensitive faculties, yet it could descend
to them without compromising its dignity, and denying its own nature.
In this conflict they required a mediator; it was the acting intellect.
We will now proceed to explain the attributes of this faculty.
49. The sensible species contained in the imagination, the true picture
of the external world, were not of themselves intelligible, because
enveloped, not with matter properly so called, but with material
forms, to which the intellectual act could only indirectly refer. If
they could have discovered a faculty capable of rendering intelligible
what is not intelligible, this difficult problem would have been
satisfactorily solved; as in this case the mysterious transformer by
applying its activity to the sensible species, would elevate them from
the category of imaginary species, _phantasmata_, to that of pure ideas
or sensible species, and thus make them serve the intellectual act.
This faculty is the acting intellect; a real magician which possesses
the wonderful secret of stripping sensible species of their material
conditions, of smoothing every roughness which prevents them from
coming in contact with the pure understanding, and transforms the gross
food of the sensitive faculties into the purest ambrosia, fit to be
served at the repast of spirits.
50. This invention merits to be called ingenious rather than
extravagant, poetical rather than ridiculous. But its most remarkable
feature is, that it involves a profound philosophical sense, as well
because it marks an ideological fact of the highest importance, as
because it indicates the true way of explaining the phenomena of
intelligence in their relations to the sensible world. This remarkable
fact is the difference, even with respect to material objects, between
sensible representations and pure ideas. The indication of the true
way consists in presenting the intellectual activity as operating upon
sensible species, and converting them into food for the mind.
Let us leave the poetical part to the explanation of the schools, and
see if what it involves be worth as much, to say the least, as what
Kant advanced when, combating sensism, he distinguished between the
pure understanding and sensible intuitions.