Andrew Halliday Douglas

“ It is to be particularly remarked that while allowing that the body is necessary to the human mind as its organ, he keeps himself as far as ever from a materialistic view of mind. He will not allow that thought is derivable from matter, or that a physical explanation can be given of the fact of intelligence in man. Body may be mind's organ; a condition it may be of the existence of the human soul as such; but matter can never be the subjectum of mind 1 . ”

“ Man is the microcosm 1 . The various grades of existence are reflected, are repeated, in man. He participates in immaterial intelligence. He partakes also of corporeal existence. Avoiding the fiction of separate souls, Pomponazzi lays it down that the human soul is vegetative, is sensitive, is intellectual 2 . Thus is man the microcosm, embodying the grades of existence. The powers lower than the intellectual are themselves graduated 3 . For example, the vis cogitativa, among the vires sensitivae, stands next to the intellect 4 , as human intellect itself stands next to the superior Powers 5 . ”

“ It was his belief in the transcendent worth of reason which led him to lay such stress on the irrational elements in human life and the limitations of intelligence in man. He was compelled to bring this side of the case into clear relief, in order to set man, as he believed, in his true position. Possessing such a power of thought, Pomponazzi seems to have reasoned, man must possess it subject to qualifications in its degree and hindrances to its full exercise, if he is to remain in that " middle place " which it is his nature to occupy. ”

“ In so far as the body of man is the organ of his intellect and that is as far as the objects of his thought are concerned it is, in the opinion of Pomponazzi, the whole body that is so. There is, he says, no specific organ for thought as such: for if the action of thought were tied to a particular physical instrumentality, or the data of thought received only through a particular avenue, thought would lose its comprehensive power, its neutrality and universality 2 . ”

“ And this disadvantageous comparison of human thought with the supposed ideal of reason is summed up in words like these: "If it be said that we have spoken much ill of the human intellect since we assert it to be scarcely the shadow of intellect, it is because it truly is a shadow in comparison with the Intelligences... .It is not truly called intellectual but only rational: for intellect grasps all things in a simple intuition; reasoning by means of discursive thought, synthesis, and a process in time, all of which are evidences of its imperfection and materiality ”

“ The human intelligence, according to Aristotle's doctrine of know ledge, derived all the contents of its thought, all its " representative ideas," from the bodily senses, through the presentations of imagination also, as was held, a bodily power: therefore it depended on the body objective. But the ground of the being (subjectuvi) of human intelligence was, according to Pomponazzi, simply intelligence as such: intelligence, not body, was the subjectum of human thought -per cssentitwi suain. ”

“ We find accordingly in Pomponazzi a curious balancing of the higher against the lower attributes of human nature, and comparison of the spiritual with the sensual aspects of human life, in order to discover which bulks more largely or outweighs the other in the scale. He indulges in such considerations as that the transcendent and immaterial powers in man are few intellect and will ”

“ Only the difference between them and the human soul was that the act of intelligence in them did not depend in any way upon the physical spheres to which they were related only as the motor is to that which is moved; knowledge in them was a direct intuition and contemplation of abstract and immaterial objects; whereas the soul of man is dependent for the exercise of intelligence upon matter tanqnam de objecto, and the sensitive soul, or the soul of the lower animal, resides in matter tanquam de subjecto as well 2 . ”

“ Pomponazzi in a striking passage of the Commentary on the De Animal endeavours at once to shew that Averroism had not been so unreasonable upon the point as was supposed and to develop his own conception of the soul of man as a unity. He recalls on the one hand Averroes doctrine that the intellectual soul makes man what he is (an illustration of the fact that in Averroes dualism had over-reached itself and was felt by Pomponazzi to have done so) ”

“ Comparing again the various races of men, we find that the savage outnumber the civilised, and that many of those which are described as civilised are so only in comparison with others utterly barbarous. ”

“ Mind and Body in Man.
It has been found that, for Pomponazzi, the "intellectual soul " of man possesses " intelligence " in the full sense of the term, which to him means something essentially immaterial in its nature. On the other hand Pomponazzi recognises the embodiment of the human soul, as a fact, and as, indeed, a necessary condition of its existence ”

“ But subjectum thus, in its first meaning, belonged to ra (frvo-ei.
The content (or, as we should say, the " subject ") of thought was called objectum, as that which is set before the mind. (" Quatenus objicitur intellectui " Descartes. Cf. Pomponazzi, Comm. de Anima, f. 26 v.: " Objectum alicujus potentiae semper precedit operationem illius potentiae "; and the schoolmen passim. See also Prantl, Gescli. d. Logik, III. 208.) And any matter of knowledge was said to be objectum as present to a knowing mind, and to be "objectively" as it might appear to the mind. ”

“ It is because he holds this view of thought that he is exempted from the necessity of establishing specific activities of thought in man that should be independent of the bodily frame. On the contrary, the human mind thought as in man is in all its operations conjoined to the body ”

“ The power of thought was an element in the soul and life of
servetur. Cum namque intelligence in supremo cognitionis cardine collocentur, neque materia, neque ejus conditionibus, aliqua ex parte, in earum cognitione indigent; quandoquidem materia est cognitionis impeditiva. Quo fit si maxime cognoscentes sint, maxime sint liberatae a materia, veluti egregie dixit Averroes in commento tertii De Anima: quare in intelligendo neque indigeant corpore ut subjecto neque ut objecto. ”

“ Thus the Intelligences, while all alike belonging to the superior order, were relatively subordinate to the Divine intelligence, besides having a gradation among themselves. Man, next, was essentially the possessor of diverse powers, graduated in excellence, and in their approximation to the immaterial and enduring. Among lower creatures finally we find Pomponazzi signalising those which are transitional and intermediate in their character, such as the sponge, which is intermediate between the plant and the animal, or the ape, which bridges the gulf between man and brute 2 ”

“ But secondly the human soul is bound to the body because the intellectual soul is one with the sensitive and vegetative soul. It is the same soul under different aspects. And since in its lower aspects it is obviously inseparable from body, the soul as a whole must be so also. Intelligence in man may still have its true snbjectnm, its subsistence, in intelligence itself, and not in anything material; the soul as sensitive and vegetative subsists in matter simply. ”

“ Although man, he says, be superior by the participation of intelligence to all other mortal creatures, he is yet possessed of the feeblest of bodies and exposed to innumerable infirmities. Or, glancing at man's social state, he instances the evils of tyrannical misgovernment, and declares it an open question whether the tyrant or those over whom he tyrannises have the more miserable lot 1 . ”

“ A sensitiva autem virtute differt intellectus humanus in dependendo a corpore, quia sensitiva subjective et objective dependet, humanus autem intellectus objective tantum. Et sic medio modo humanus intellectus inter materialia et immaterialia est actus corporis organici.
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might equally be regarded as " souls," though non uno modo, but aliter et aliter 1 .
Corresponding to the three sorts of souls there were three ways of knowledge. The Divine and superior Intelligences were supposed to apprehend universal truth by an immediate intuition 2 . ”

“ But if you compare human intellect with the rest of created and corruptible existences, it will obtain the highest rank of excellence 2 ."
To conclude, then, the human soul is participant in the Divine ”

“ Quare inter cognoscentia minime liberata est a materia: uncle et in sui cognitione dependent a corpore ut subjecto et objecto. Humana autem anima inter haec media existens, non tantum absolvitur a materia veluti intelligentia, neque tantum immergitur ut anima bestialis. Quare medio modo se habet in cognitione. ”

“ It will be generally agreed that, in rejecting the superhuman intellectual principle of Averroes, and what may fairly be called the extra- physical intellectual principle (anima intellectivd) of St Thomas, represented as a "separate form" or spiritual substance, Pomponazzi came nearer to the original doctrine of Aristotle than either of those thinkers. He attributed reason to the human soul as such, and to that soul as embodied, or in its observed character of forma corporis ”

“ Qua intellectus est non dependet a materia, neque a quantitate; quod si humanus intellectus ab ea dependet, hoc est ut sensui conjunctus est....Quoniam sensui conjunctus est, ex toto a materia et quantitate absolvi non potest, cum nun- quam cognoscat sine phantasmate, dicente Aristotele 3. ”

“ Nam intelligentiae qua intelligentiae non sunt animae, quia nullo modo ut sic dependent a corpore, sed qua movent corpora coelestia. At intellectus humanus in omni suo opere est actus corporis organici, cum semper dependeat a corpore tanquam objecto. Est et differentia inter intelligentiam et intellectum humanum in dependenrlo ab organo; quoniam humanus recipit et perficitur per objectum corporale, cum ab eo moveatur ”

“ Animus humanus etsi improprie dicatur immortalis, quia vere mortalis est, participat tamen de proprietatibus immortalitatis; cum universale cognoscat, tametsi ejusmodi cognitio valde tennis et obscura sit." Op. cit. xn. p. 90.
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man so high as to be almost supernatural. The possession of it almost raised man to an equality with God and the celestial Intelligences. In words, Pomponazzi constantly seems to labour to belittle man. But it is not a paradox to say that his sense of man's littleness was stimulated by his fundamental conviction of man's greatness. ”

“ In the same way, we cannot indeed say that Pomponazzi's
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distinction of intellect qua humanus and intellectus qua intellectus is a distinction between a psychological and a meta physical view of reason. A conscious and intentional distinction of that sort it certainly is not. Still we note with interest the words in which he develops the Aristotelian suggestion of a vov$ %&>pto-To?. On the one hand, intelligence as in man is in an indissoluble relationship with a material body ”

“ One refers to the absence of a metaphysical analysis of the nature of reason; the other to the lack of a psychological derivation of rational thought in man reason as a cosmological or ontological principle being introduced, it is
1 Cf. "Dicimus Aristotelem...voluisse ostendere gradum intellectivum in hominibus convenire cum separatis a materia, quantum ad aliquas conditiones; utpote quod non indiget materia vel organo ut subjecto " etc. (De Nutr. I. xxiii. f. 130 b.) "Quam- quam... corpus ponatur instrumentum intellectus quasi ut subjectum, non tamen vere est ut subjectum." ”

“ Universaliter enim corpora coelestia, homines, bestiae et plantae animata sunt, eorumque animae sub universali definitione animae continentur: verum non uno modo." Op. cit. x. p. 82.
2 "In quibus neque discursus, neque compositio, neque aliquis motus reperitur." Op. cit. IX. p. 52.
3 Cf. De Imm. IX. pp. 52, 53, where it is said that these powers of the soul, although bound up in matter (" indigent corpore et tanquam subjecto et tanquam objecto") are yet truly capable of knowledge (" spirit uales "; "quendam modum immaterialitatis induunt ") ”