Andrew Halliday Douglas

“ Secondly we see here a real attempt to relate man to nature and especially to forms of life below him in the scale of being, and thus witness an early beginning of the comparative and historical method through which alone a science of human nature is possible, and by which an intelligible account of man and of reason is substituted for dogmatic conceptions alike of body and of soul. ”

“ I do not enter upon the discussion of the value of such an ideal of thought implying as it does that things considered as in space and time are not considered truly, and by a logical fiction distinguishing the universal from the particular as a real object of thought But it is evident that such an ideal has little bearing on the actual process of human knowledge, and involves the condemnation of all that presents itself as truth to the human mind. Pomponazzi has at least the credit of perceiving this clearly ”

“ We have also to note on the other hand the contrast which Pomponazzi drew, and which was never absent from his mind, between the mode of intelligence observed in man and that which was supposed to characterise a superior order of thinking beings. The human mind was constantly regarded by him in the light of a comparison with those Intelligences which filled so large a place in the world of mediaeval thought, and which, although they were by no means a primary interest to Pomponazzi, yet occupied always the background of his theory. ”

“ While holding thus that intelligence, as human, derives all knowledge and all the materials for general conceptions from the data of sense through imagination, he does not consider that an intelligence so placed is either incapable of abstract thought, or itself material.
In the first place he does not allow that the capacity for abstract thought implies absolute immateriality, or that the sort of " dependence " on the body in which he defines the soul of man to stand is inconsistent with its possession of the power of thought 1 . ”

“ The language which Pomponazzi uses in constantly speaking of the subjectum of human thought shews the influence of Averroist discussions upon his mind. The question of the nature of human thought, as it presented itself to him, was the question of what should be considered to be the subjectum or metaphysical substrate of intelligence in man; and his characteristic position was that, while the human mind depends on matter and on a corporeal instrument for the objects of its thought, it does not depend on matter subjective. ”

“ Pomponazzi, meanwhile, following Aristotle, also attributed thought in that true and immaterial sense to the individual soul of man.
The mind of man, while in a sense it is in body, is not so in a physical sense. To deny that mind subsists physically in matter (de subjecto) does not necessarily mean to separate mind from matter. Mind would be said to be independent of matter (intellectum non indigere corpore ut subjecto) , if it were not " in matter" at all: it is so, however, also if it be not in matter in a physical or quantitative sense. ”

“ Wherefore the intellect can have itself as its object, can reason, and have universal conceptions, which faculties that use material organs and are extended cannot do. All this arises from the essential nature of intellect, since in so far as it is intellect it does not depend on matter or on quantity, because if the human intellect is said to depend on it, this is true in so far as it is conjoined with sense, so that it is an accident to it qua intellect to depend on matter and quantity. ”

“ Intelligence is, in its nature, independent of matter. Its independence, according to Pomponazzi, is perfectly realised only in the higher Intelligences. But in the case of human intelligence also the independence of thought is to be maintained quatenus ad subjectum; or, as he also expresses it, human intelligence is independent of matter qua intellectus, though not qua humanus*. Thought in man has the quality of thought as such, and stands above the category of quantity and physical categories generally. ”

“ He does not hesitate to draw the inference of the soul's mortality so far that is as reason and philosophy carry him, and with all due reserve. Since the soul is "partly" material, and at the same time is one and indivisible, its perishability is for Pomponazzi an inevitable inference. ”

“ For the human mind, Pomponazzi uniformly maintains, general conceptions are formed by an induction from particulars and the universal considered as realised in particulars. And thus cognition through sense, and the embodiment of intelligence, are not only consistent with the fact of human intelligence, but are inseparable characteristics of thought as it exists in man 2 . ”

“ Pomponazzi lessening the distance between man and the lower orders of being, and on the other hand emphasising the distinction between mind in man and a supposed absolute Intelligence. We have already seen that Pomponazzi laboured to trace analogies between thought and the lower powers of the soul. ”

“ But in so far as the human soul itself participates in immateriality, and is in the neighbourhood of immaterial beings and coterminous with them, it has intellect and will, which are faculties that do not imply extension. ”

“ While intelligence, he thus distinguishes, exists in man only as embodied, intelligence as such is by no means of the nature of body 2 .
The precise deductions thus drawn by Pomponazzi from the power of abstract thought as possessed by the mind of man are summarised in the following passage from the Apologia. After explaining the manner in which the human mind knows universals, he continues " Since our knowledge of the universal is as I have described, it is worth while to see how that can take place suitably to the nature of the soul. ”

“ Non esse in organo, sive subjective eo non indigere may, says Pomponazzi, have either of these meanings; and while he does not hold the existence of human intelligence apart from body, he yet is not shut up to its physical subsistence in body 1 . ”

“ So, too, in considering the second supposed note of immateriality, the mind's power of abstraction, and of forming general conceptions, he insists upon the distinction that general conceptions, as entertained by human intelligence, are mediated through a knowledge of particulars that is, ultimately through sense-perception. ”

“ But thought cannot be physical in its nature: the subjectum of intelligence cannot be the body or matter in any form 3 .
Accepting the antiquated form of expression, we may take this as an affirmation that thought is sni generis. And it is interesting to note that, instead of endeavouring to find specific operations of thought independent of a physical concomitant, Pomponazzi rests upon the distinction of the physical and the intellectual. He is not concerned with a question of fact, but with the nature of intelligence. ”

“ Subsequently however, and in his writings generally, he defined the human soul as both material and immaterial , although being one, and in one aspect material, it is therefore mortal, and its participation in immateriality does not guarantee its actual immortality 2 . ”

“ Towards the argument for the soul's absolute independence of matter derived from the capacity of self-knowledge, Pomponazzi adopts an exactly similar attitude. The human mind, he says, does not possess such a self-knowledge as he imagines to belong to superior intelligences and to be the ideal or perfect self-knowledge namely a direct or intuitive consciousness of self. Human self-consciousness, he remarks, is essentially mediated through some particular experience; self-knowledge
1 "Cum itaque nostra cognitio de universal! ”

“ Pomponazzi admits the force of all these considerations, but not, in its full scope, the inference that was drawn from them. Admitting that the human soul is possessed of intelligence, and of intelligence exercising these "higher" functions just specified, which belong to it as intelligence he yet could not forget that as a matter of fact human intelligence is known to us only as residing in the body ”

“ He also argues that the conjunction of intelligence with matter does not forbid its exercising this power of cognition, and that it is not necessary that soul should be absolutely independent of matter in order to apprehend matter 1 . ”

“ He found the characteristic quality of thought as such, and thus of human thought, to be the possibility of abstraction from all particulars, in independence of every limitation of hie et mine and with absolute transcendence of all material conditions. On the other hand, following Aristotle, he noticed the dependence of thought on its object, the acquisition of all knowledge through sense-experience, and the apprehension of the universal, by us, only in the particular instance 2 . ”

“ Thus his conclusion with regard to man is: " The human intellect cannot think unless a qualified and a quantified sensible object exist in matter, since it cannot operate unless it itself exists, and it itself cannot exist without an appropriate modifica tion (of body) : nevertheless it does not follow that it thinks by means of these modifications.... ”

“ Not to be in an organ or not to need it as a substrate of existence, means either not to be in body, or not to be in it in a quantitative way. Hence we say that intellect does not need body as a substrate, in its intellection of itself, not because intellection is in no sense in body... but that in so far as it is called intellection it is not in
1 " Quamquam...totum corpus ponatur instrumentum intellectus quasi ut subjectum, non tamen vere est ut subjectum, quoniam intelligere non recipitur in eo modo cor- porali." ”

“ Unde propositio assumpta, si referatur ad humanum intellectum, restringenda est quantum ad subjectum, et non quantum ad objectum. ...Exponi etiam potest, et melius, veluti dictum est, quod humanus intellectus nullius corporis est actus, qua scilicet intellectus est, licet non qua humanus." In another place (De Nutritione, I. xxiii. f. 130 b) he clearly states that the subjectum of thought as human is intelligence intelligence as timeless and unquantified; it is this, he says, which Aristotle had in view when he spoke of intelligence coming from without. ”

“ Ex his autem patere potest qualiter intellectus nullius corporis est actus. Illud enim universaliter verum est de quocunque intellectu, sed non eodem modo; quum et intellectus dicitur fere equivoce de diis et nobis; intellectus enim deorum, qui vere intellectus est, penitus nullius corporis actus est, quum in intelligendo non indiget corpore veluti subjecto vel veluti objecto. Quare simpliciter et vere illud dictum verificatur de diis, et de intellectu secundum se, quoniam in tellectus qua intellectus non indiget corpore. ”

“ Florentine {Pomponazzi, pp. 173 175) laboured to shew that Pomponazzi's standpoint changed with the advance of his thought, and that he moved gradually towards a professed materialism. Prof. Ferri has abundantly shewn that the facts do not bear out this theory. In the De Immortalitatt it is unflinchingly maintained that the soul is inseparable from the body; in the De Nutritione it is equally made plain that intelligence is to be considered as " immaterial " in its nature (" Intellectus qua intelligit est immaterialis ad modum expressum ") . ”

“ I. iii. f. 60 a.
110
that the soul is simpliciter mortalis et immortalis secundum quid (as against the opposite doctrine of simpliciter immortalis et mortalis secundum quid) , since the question of the soul's existence seems to admit only of the alternative answers Yes and No; and the phrase de immortalitate participat seems merely unintelligible. But we have to remember once more how the question of the immortality and the immateriality of the soul were for Pomponazzi bound together. De immaterialitate participat is what he means ”

“ Pomponazzi's view is that man's power of universal thought is in this respect deficient, and that human thought falls short of the ideal of thought as such 1 . Fiorentino considers that he was hampered by the Aristotelian doctrine of imagination, while denying himself the resources of the Nous by means of which Aristotle escaped into the region of absolute thought ”

“ But he does not take up a merely defensive attitude on this point, or rest satisfied with maintaining, negatively, that his view of the mind is consistent with the possibility of knowledge that knowledge is not impossible to an essentially embodied intelligence. He claims expressly that since human knowledge is by presentation of sensible objects, it is only as the mind is related to matter tanqnam de objecto that knowledge takes place at all 1 . ”

“ Revera intellectus humanus non potest intelligere nisi in materia sint quale et quantum sensibile, cum non possit operari nisi ipse sit, ipseque esse non potest nisi cum dispositione convenient!; non tamen sequitur quod per tales dispositiones intelligat, imo ut satis liquet non sequitur in sensu ”

“ Accordingly he defines intelligence in man by contrast with the supposed perfect Intelligences 1 .
The third consideration by which Pomponazzi's mind was governed was the idea of intelligence or thought as something sui generis. The relation of thought to its object in the act of
1 See Apol. I. iii. f. 59 a. Cf. f. 59 c: " Intellectum humanum...paululum plus ele- vari quam cogitativa, sic quod et universaliter cognoscit et syllogizat, non excedendo tamen limites materiae, quum semper a phantasmate dependet, cum continue et tempore. Nam rationalis dicitur, et non vere intelligens. ”