CHAPTER VII.
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.
CHAPTER VIII.
KANT AND THE ARISTOTELIANS
51. Lest I be accused of levity in comparing Kant's philosophy with that of the schools, in what relates to the distinction between the sensitive and intellectual faculties, I shall give a rapid examination of this philosopher's doctrine so far as the present matter is concerned.
Since the German philosopher is in the habit of expressing himself with great obscurity, and of using an obsolete language liable to different interpretations, I shall insert his own words, so that the reader may judge for himself, and rectify