INTERMEDIATE REPRESENTATIONS BETWEEN SENSIBLE INTUITION AND THE
INTELLECTUAL ACT.
125. The question now occurs, whether the understanding, in order to
perceive the geometrical relations offered in sensible intuition,
does or does not need some intermediate representations which bring
it into contact with the sensible order?[10] Such a necessity would,
at first sight, seem to exist, since, as the understanding is a
non-sensible faculty, sensible elements cannot be its immediate object.
But on maturer examination, it seems more probable that there is no
necessity of any thing intermediate, except some sign to connect the
sensible elements, and to show the point where they must unite, and the
conditions to which they are subject. As this sign may, however, be a
word, or something else, susceptible of a sensible representation, its
mediation will not at all solve the difficulty; since the question will
always recur: How is the understanding placed in communication with the
sensible sign?
[10] See Chap. VI.
This difficulty arises from the faculty of the soul being considered,
not only as distinct, but also, as separate, and as exercising each one
of its faculties in its own peculiar and exclusive sphere, entirely
isolated from that of all others. This mode of considering the
faculties of the soul, though favorable to the classification of their
operations, does not accord with the teachings of experience.
It cannot be denied that we observe within ourselves, affections and
operations, very unlike each other, and arising from distinct objects,
and producing very different results. This has led to a distinction
of faculties, and in some degree, to a separation of their functions,
so as to prevent them from mixing together and being confounded. But
there can be no doubt that all the affections and operations of the
soul are, as consciousness reveals, bound to a common centre. Whatever
becomes of the distinction of the faculties among themselves, it is
very certain, as consciousness tells us, that it is one and the same
being that thinks, feels, desires, acts, or suffers: it is certain
that this same consciousness reveals to us the intimate communication
of all the operations of the soul. We instantaneously reflect upon the
impression received; we instantaneously experience an agreeable or
disagreeable sensation in consequence of a reflection which occurs to
us: we reflect upon the will; we seek or repudiate the object of our
thought; there is, so to speak, within us a boiling spring of phenomena
of different kinds, all interlinked, modified, produced, reproduced,
and mutually influenced by each other in their incessant communication.
We are conscious of all these; we encounter them all in one common
field, which is the subject that experiences them. What necessity,
then, is there to imagine intermediate beings in order to bring the
faculties of the soul into communication with each other? Why may it
not with its activity, called understanding, occupy itself immediately
with sensible representations and affections and with all that is in
its consciousness? Supposing this consciousness in its indivisible
unity to comprise all the variety of internal phenomena, it does not
therefore follow that the intellectual activity of the soul cannot be
referred to whatever it contains of active or receptive, without its
being necessary to imagine species to serve as courtiers between the
faculties, to announce to one what has taken place in the other.
126. The _acting intellect_ of the Aristotelians, admissible in sound
philosophy so far as it denotes an activity of the mind applied to
sensible representations, does not seem alike admissible, if it be
supposed to be the producer of new representations distinct from
the intellectual act itself. The understanding is all activity; the
receptivity of the soul has nothing to do with it, but to proportion
its materials; and the conceptions elaborated in presence of these
materials, seem to be nothing else than the exercise of this same
activity, subject on the one hand to the conditions required by the
thing understood, and subordinated on the other hand to the general
conditions of every intelligence.
127. I do not mean to say that the intellectual act does not refer
to any object. I replace the idea by other acts of the soul, or by
affections or representations of some kind or other, whether active
or passive. This being so, if I am asked, for example, what is the
immediate object of the intellectual act perceiving of determinate
sensible intuition, I reply that it is the intuition itself. If the
difficulty of explaining the union of such different things be urged,
I answer: first, that this union exists in the unity of consciousness,
as the internal sense attests: second, that the same difficulty
militates against those who pretend that the understanding elaborates
an intelligible species, which it takes from the sensible intuition;
and how, I may ask, does the understanding place itself in contact
with this intuition when it would elaborate its intelligible species.
If this immediate contact be impossible in the one case, it will be
equally so in the other; and if they concede it to be possible in their
own case, they cannot deny it to be possible in ours also.
When the understanding refers to no determinate intuition, but only
to sensible intuitions in general, its immediate object is their
possibility also in general, subject to the conditions of the object
considered in general, and to those of every intelligence; among which,
the principle of contradiction holds a primary place.