Andrew Halliday Douglas

“ St Thomas is contending that the act of intelligence is not the act of the composite being man, but the act of the soul of the soul, that is, in its separation as intellectiva from the body; and he says: "Thought is said to be the act of the composite being, not per se but per accidens, namely, in so far as its object, which is an image, is in an organ of the body, not because the act is performed by means of an organ of the body [66] ."
Now in the first place we shall find Pomponazzi agreeing with St Thomas that intelligence, as such, is somehow independent of matter. ”

“ This analysis of human thought and human nature, which not only erects the thinking principle in man into a separate entity, but absolutely distinguishes it from the individual soul in which it is manifested, and of whose phenomena it was originally intended as the explanation, might well seem the very extravagance of metaphysical abstraction. ”

“ The abstract distinction made by Aristotle between potential and actual intelligence, although expressly said by him to be a distinction within the soul of man, was used by Alexander to express a metaphysical distinction between the human soul and the Divine Intelligence. He conceived of the process of thought, and supposed Aristotle to have conceived of it, as the action of Divine Intelligence operating in the non- rational human soul. Consequently there was in man as man only a disposition for, or capability of, intelligence ”

“ The extreme absurdity of this conclusion was disguised by the Averroist from himself through the attribution to the natural soul of man of various mental powers to which a "rational" character was not allowed imagination, memory, vis cogitativa of all, in a word, that came short of the power of forming a pure abstract notion. Such was the psychology of the schools. But it is to be remembered that when intellectus was denied to the soul as such, the soul was understood to be deprived of everything that characteristically distinguishes man from the brutes. ”

“ On the other hand, St Thomas and Pomponazzi agree in accepting the Aristotelian doctrine that the objects of human knowledge are derived from sense through the medium of imagination. On every page of Pomponazzi we shall read "intellectum humanum dependere a corpore tanquam de objecto," "intelligere non esse sine phantasia." ”

“ We have also seen the attempts that were made, even after the true Aristotelian doctrine of soul and body had begun to be known, to combine with it the notion of the independent and substantial soul. The soul, it was said, while the form of body, has also a mode of being, and specific activities, apart from body; the body again, while informed by the soul, has also its own "lower form" as well, and consequent separate existence. ”

“ We have just seen how St Thomas, by changing the venue of the discussion, and assuming the empirical and psychological point of view, swept away the speculative structure of Averroism.
The Dominicans of the thirteenth century followed Aristotle in considering the whole being of man as a unity. Corpus animatum was to them one concrete being, in which form and matter were mutually correlative. Analysing, with Aristotle, the human soul they found it to be at once "vegetative," "sensitive," and "intellectual " ”

“ The metaphysical dualism of the Arabians was further super seded by a positive analysis of the various phases of human experience and a discovery of rational elements throughout it. Instead of abruptly distinguishing thought from sense-presenta tion, Albert and St Thomas traced the action of intelligence through all the activities of the mind in graduated stages which to them, characteristically, were stages of more and more complete abstraction. ”

“ But intelligence is that which makes man what he is an intelligent soul; therefore the Averroist doctrine of the unity of intellectual powers leads to the intolerable extreme of identifying all mankind and contradicting the multiplicity of human personalities [45] . ”

“ He assumes an antagonism between matter and thought. Man's soul could not possess the power of thought if it were the form of body [61] . Therefore it must be a self-subsistent, "separate" spiritual being.
Now in all this there is a fundamental departure from Aristotle, who had made no such assumption as is here contained; and there is also an abandonment of Aristotle's empirical method of enquiry about the soul [62] . It was Pomponazzi, taking up again in earnest Aristotle's thought of anima intellectiva as still forma corporis, who first called St Thomas's conclusions in question. ”

“ Neither, in like manner, on the theory of "union" with intelligence, is intelligence attributable to the individual whose sense-experiences are the contents of thought [39] ; yet actually the thought in question is that man's thought. Once more, to say that the sense-experiences of a certain man are apprehended in thought, is not to say that that man thinks. A wall is seen, but it does not see; the animal possessing the power of vision sees the wall. ”

“ We know no other soul, he says in effect, than that which we know as embodied and, while embodied, as possessed of thought. We know no other human intelligence than that which depends de objecto on the data and the avenues of sense. ”

“ His further examination of the words of Aristotle, he says, has convinced him that the potential intellect cannot be anything actual cannot be a substance with attributes, a thing in actuality, one particular "form among others." Munk is surely wrong in translating "l'intellect hylique, considere comme une substance recevant une faculte, ne saurait etre une chose en acte, etc." ”

“ The orthodox commentators might believe in a multiplicity of rational souls, holding as they did that a rational principle in each individual was the subject
40
of rational thought in him. To Alexander individual souls were many, but did not participate in true and eternal Reason. Averroes followed Alexander with respect to the soul; and his doctrine of conjunction implied no individual reason or individual immortality; for man as man, human intelligence as human intelligence, was no spiritual being ”

“ Now the first (α) is "form" in Aristotle's sense—in the sense in which "soul is the form of body." And St Thomas rightly says that forms in that sense "are not" ( "non sunt, sed eis aliquid est" ) ; for "form" without matter is an abstraction, and as an abstraction does not really exist. ”

“ It is not to be supposed however that the translation into Latin of the Aristotelian writings of the Arabians and of their versions of the master constituted a genuine introduction of the Western mind to the original philosophy of Aristotle. The Arabians had from the first, in their reading of Aristotle, been subject to strong influences proceeding from Alexandria, and had besides given to Alexandrian Peripateticism a further bent characteristic of themselves. ”

“ Therefore, he concludes, the individual soul, in this mere potentiality, possesses, in the way of intelligence, nothing; intelligence cannot be attributed to the soul in any sense, or to any part of it, as its subjectum. ”

“ This combination of the essentially Platonic doctrine of the separate soul, in the Neo-Platonic shape of a "spiritual substance," with the Aristotelian thought of the soul as form of body, is represented in St Thomas's conception of a "separable form" as applied to the intellectual soul of man [59] . ”

“ It is sufficient to say that in general they conceived Unio to be effected by the proper exercise of intelligence in man, and through study, education, and speculative science rather than through mystic ecstasy. ”

“ En general, toute cette psychologic qu Albert-le-Grand emprunte a Aristote, et surtout a ses commentateurs arabes, est beaucoup plus vicieuse dans la forme que pour le fond; elle a du moins le merite d indiquer une etude complete de l'homme, de l'observer dans son physique comme dans tous les autres rapports, non seulement comme un etre doue d intelligence et d activite, mais comme un etre qui croit, qui se nourrit, qui se meut et se rattache ainsi a la serie des etres qui lui sont inferieurs ”

“ Numquam enim de intellectu quaereremus, nisi intelligeremus, nee cum quaerimus de intellectu, de alio principio quaerimus, quam de eo quo nos intelligimus, unde et Aristoteles dicit, Dico autem intellectum quo intelligit anima. ”

“ Dabei soil aber die Vernunft in alien Seelen als dem Wesen und der Substanz nach eine betrachtet werden, die sich nicht in den Körpern spaltet, in derselben Weise, wie trotz der Individualisirung die Allseele in den vielen doch eine Substanz bildet, ahnlich wie die Wissenschaft trotz ihrer Spaltung in eine Vielheit von Satzen doch in jedem derselben als die eine und einheitliche vorhanden sein soil. ”

“ Renfermes, comme tous les peuples semitiques, dans le cercle etroit du lyrisme et du prophetisme, les habitants de la peninsule arabique n ont jamais eu la moindre idee de ce qui pent's appeler science ou rationalisme. ”

“ Sie soil als Form doch zugleich eine durch sich selbst bestehende und wirkende Substanz sein, um der hohern Stufe gemass, welche sie unter den Daseinsformen einnimmt, die Materie zu beherrschen und zu iibersteigen. ”

“ I. 3, f. 59 b: "Non dependere a materia tanquam de subjecto; immedia- tum enim subjectum intellectionis et volitionis sunt intellectus et voluntas, quae non sunt organicae." Or the same thought was turned to Pomponazzi's purpose in another form of expression: "Etsi (intellectus) est in quantitate, tamen quantitas non est principium illius operationis." De Imm. x. p. 78.↑ Jourdain, Recherches, p. 89.↑ Jourdain, op. cit. p. 92.↑ See Munk, Melanges, pp. 320-326.↑ St Thomas, Opera, 1593, Vol. ”