CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FOUR
Man (l): Body and Soul There are two possible extreme views of the psychophysical constitution of man. On the one hand it may be held that the 'real' man is the soul, or even simply the mind, which inhabits the body, the latter being regarded at best as an instrument of the soul and at worst as the soul's prisonhouse or mortal tomb. This view appears to have found expression in the so-called exoteric writings of Aristotle, of which only fragments have come down to us and which have been attributed by Werner Jaeger and other scholars to an early period in Aristotle's life when he was still strongly under the influence of Plato. Certain critics have maintained that there is no sufficient evidence for attributing these
'exoteric writings' to a youthful and transitory phase in the philosopher's intellectual development; but it would be out of place to embark on this controversial question here.
It is sufficient to point out that in writings published at some period during his lifetime Aristotle expounded an even sharper dualism than that which had been taught by Plato. Plotinus too, the Neoplatonist, placed all the emphasis on the human soul. As he believed, like Plato, in the soul's, or at least in the mind's, pre-existence and in reincarnation, the logical consequence of his position was that the soul can be united successively with different bodies and that it is therefore an independent thing or substance in its own right. The same view is, of course, implied by those eastern philosophies and religions which maintain the doctrine of reincarnation. In Christian thought the idea of the soul's pre-existence does not appear, except in the case of a few early thinkers like Origen who had been much influenced by Neo-platonism. But a quasi-Platonic view of the relation between soul and body is implied, for example, by St Augustine's description of man as 'a rational soul
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using a mortal and earthly body' (De moribus eccl., i, 27, 52) or as 'a certain substance participating in reason and fitted for ruling a body' (De quantitate animae, 13,21). And a similar view of the relation of soul to body finds popular expression in a great deal of Christian ascetic literature.
In post-Renaissance philosophy this dualism appears in the philosophy of Descartes, as customarily interpreted at least.
On the other hand attempts have been made to do away with this dualism, notably by a reduction in some sense of the soul to the body.
In Greek philosophy we find, for example, the view of the atomists, followed by the Epicureans, that the soul, like the body, is composed of atoms, even if of somewhat 'superior' atoms. In later thought the monistic account of the relation of soul to body ranges from the materialism expressed by some of the writers of the Enlightenment, particularly by some French writers, to the much more sophisticated epiphenomenalism of more recent times. The epiphenomenalists do not deny the reality of mind, nor do they describe psychic activities as material processes in any ordinary sense : they maintain rather that when the organism has reached a certain stage of development mind supervenes. And though they may regard thinking, for example, as in some sense a function of material processes they do not state that it is nothing but a material process. However, mind, even though a reality, depends in such a way on the body that there is no question of its existing apart from the body.
One may note that neither extreme view is put forward without some empirical grounds which appear to support it.
Plato, for example, argued that the soul cannot be a mere 'harmony' of the body, on the ground that it can rule the body. And he and other philosophers have argued that the mind's activities transcend the capacities of matter.
Selfconsciousness, too, which enables us to distinguish between 'me' and 'my body' has been invoked as evidence in favour of dualism. On the other hand the dependence of psychic activities on the body is also an evident fact. Not only do
AQUINAS we depend on sense-perception for the acquirement of knowledge, but a certain correlation can also be traced between psychic processes and physical conditions, as in the case, for example, of memory.
Physical disturbances can produce psychic disorders, and some psychic disorders at least can be ameliorated by physical treatment or operation. One can say in general that those philosophers who have concentrated their attention on the higher psychic activities and on man's religious and moral like have inclined to some form of dualism, while those who have paid special attention to the dependence of psychic processes on physical conditions have inclined to a monistic interpretation of the relation of soul to body. Both extreme dualism and outspoken monism may go beyond the empirical data; but there is certainly something to be said in favour of either position.
This suggests that the truth is to be found in a middle position, in doing justice to all the empirical data and in avoiding a one-sided concentration on this set of data to the exclusion of that. And in point of fact we find Aquinas proposing such a middle position. He will not allow that the soul is an independent complete substance which could just as well inhabit this body as that, and he speaks of the soul in Aristotelian terminology as the 'form* (Aristotle's entelecheia) of the body. On the other hand he maintains that the soul does not depend on the body for its existence and that it survives the death of the body. We may therefore be tempted to say that Aquinas' middle position amounts to an attempt to combine the Aristotelian psychology with the demands of Christian theology. But though there is truth in this statement it stands in need of qualification. For in utilizing Aristotelianism Aquinas at the same time developed it, and his theory of the soul is not exactly the same as the theory expounded in Aristotle's Be anima. In his endeavour to show that Aristotelianism was not irreconcilable with Christianity, or at least that Aristotle's principles did not necessarily lead to conclusions which were incompatible with Christian theology, Aquinas rather played down the differences between his own psychology and that of the
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1 He was the reverse of the type of writer who is always careful to lay claim to originality of thought.
But the differences are there none the less, and an attentive historic Aristotle. reading of the De anima on the one hand and of Aquinas' own philosophy of the soul on the other quickly reveals them.
Like Aristotle, Aquinas uses the word 'soul' in a wide sense. Soul is 'the first principle of life in living things about us' (S.T., la, 7c, 1). If we understand the word in this broad sense, it obviously follows that all living things have 'souls'.
This would seem ridiculous, of course, if we took the word 'soul' in the sense in which it is usually taken today; but Aquinas' anima is equivalent to Aristotle's psyche. It is the principle or component factor of a living thing which first makes it a living thing and which lies behind, as it were, all that thing's vital activities. A plant is capable of nourishing itself and of reproduction. Neither activity is itself a soul, but it is the 'vegetative soul' or vital principle in the plant which makes these activities possible. The range of activities of a living thing reveals the kind of soul which is present in it. Animals are capable not only of nourishing themselves and of reproduction, as plants are, but also of sensation and of other activities of which plants are not capable. To animals, then, we must attribute 'sensitive souls', and not simply 'vegetative souls'. Again, human beings are capable of other activities, such as thinking and choosing freely, of which animals are not capable. We must therefore attribute to them a higher kind of soul, namely 'rational soul'. We have therefore a hierarchy of souls or vital principles. This does not mean that an animal possesses a vegetative and a sensitive soul or that a human being possesses three souls.
An animal possesses only one soul, a sensitive soul, and a human being possesses only one soul, a rational soul. But in 1. When I speak of the 'historic' Aristotle in this connexion, I refer to the actual doctrine, though this is by no means always clear or perhaps even consistent, of the De anima.
I do not intend by using this phrase to commit myself to the view that Aristotle was personally responsible for the whole of the De anima.
AQUINAS virtue of its sensitive soul the animal can exercise not only the vital activities which are found in plants but also an additional range of activities; and it is therefore superior to the vegetative soul. Similarly, in virtue of his one rational soul the human being can exercise not only the vital activities of plants and of animals but also a still higher range of vital activities, namely those which are linked with the possession of mind.
Still keeping to this wide sense of the word 'soul', one can go on to note that for Aquinas the soul in each case stands to the body as form to matter. The human soul is therefore the form of the human body. Something has been said earlier about the form-matter or 'hylomorphic' theory; but it may be as well to explain here that to call the soul the 'form' of the body is for Aquinas to say that the soul is what makes the body a human body and that soul and body are together one substance. The human being is not composed of two substances, soul and body; it is one substance, in which two component factors can be distinguished. When we feel, it is the whole man who feels, neither the soul alone nor the body alone. Similarly, when we understand something we could not do so without the soul, but it is the man who understands. Aquinas does not mean that soul and body are not distinguishable realities; he calls them 'incomplete substances'; but together they form one substance, the human being, to which all human activities are properly ascribed. The body without the soul is not strictly a body at all; it is an aggregate of bodies, as is speedily manifested by the disintegration that sets in after death. And though the human soul survives death, it is not strictly speaking a human person when it is in a state of separation from the body. For the word 'person' signifies a complete substance of rational nature.
Holding this view of man's psycho-physical unity, Aquinas naturally rejects the theory which he ascribes to Plato. 'Some have said that no intellectual substance can be the form of the body. But because the nature of man seemed to contradict this position, since man seems to be composed
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of an intellectual soul and of a body, they thought out certain ways by which they could preserve (the unity of) human nature. Plato, therefore, and his followers held that the intellectual soul is not united to the body as form to matter, but only as mover to thing moved, saying that the soul is present in the body as a sailor in a ship.
. But this theory does not seem to fit the facts. For according to it man would not be one thing simply. ... He would be one thing only "accidentally" (per accidens). ... To avoid this conclusion Plato held that the human being is not a thing composed of soul and body, but that he is the soul itself, using a body, just as Peter is not a thing composed of a man and his clothing, but a man using clothing. But this can be shown to be impossible. For animals and men are sensible and natural things; and this would not be the case if the body and its parts did not belong to the essence of man and animal.
(C.G., 2, 6j). And Aquinas goes on to argue that sensation is an act of the whole psycho-physical organism, not of the soul alone, using a body. Thus he rejects any theory according to which the soul is in the body as a pilot in a ship, and he refuses to admit that the analogy of an agent employing an extrinsic instrument like an axe provides an accurate picture of the relation of soul to body.
Furthermore, Aquinas applied to the soul his general theory of matter as the principle of individuation within the species. He did not think that the soul exists as a kind of universal before union with the body : it does not exist at all before union with the body. Nor did he mean that the human soul depends for its existence on the body. For he held that each human soul is created by God. But he did believe that a human soul depends on the body for the acquisition of its particular natural characteristics. Indeed, this follows from his theory, which has been mentioned earlier, that the mind is originally like a wax tablet capable of receiving impressions but not yet possessing them. 'According to the order of nature the intellectual soul occupies the lowest position among intellectual substances. For it has no naturally inborn knowledge of truth, as the angels have,
AQUINAS but it has to piece together its knowledge from material things perceived by the senses.
. Therefore the intellectual soul had to have not only the power of understanding but also the power of sensing. But sensation does not take place without a corporeal instrument (organ). The intellectual soul had therefore to be united to a body which could be an appropriate organ of sense. Now, all the other senses are based on touch.
. Among the animals man has the most highly-developed sense of touch; and among human beings themselves those who possess the most delicate sense of touch have the finer minds. A sign of this is that we see superiority of understanding going with refinement of body'
(ST., la, 76, £). Whether all this is true or not is another matter; but in any case it is clear that Aquinas was strongly influenced by Aristotle's pronouncements in the De anima concerning the dependence of psychical activities on physiological conditions. But it is not only in his commentary on the De anima that Aquinas says that people with a good sense of touch have clearer minds and that rough-skinned and coarse-textured persons are mentally inept
: he makes similar remarks in the Summa theologica, as in the passage which has just been cited. Similarly, he asserts that 'a man is made apt of understanding by the good disposition of the interior powers (of the organism), in the production of which the good dispositions of the body has a part to play'
(ST., la, Ilae, 50, 4, ad 3).
In the commentary on the De anima he shows that while he follows Aristotle in thinking the purely physical (of- 'behaviouristic') definition of anger as 'inflammation of the blood round the heart' to be insufficient he also follows him in thinking that the physical aspect should not be neglected. Much of what Aquinas has to say on these matters may be crude, but it clearly suggests that he would not have been astonished or dismayed at modern research into the close association between psychical and physical factors. Modern discoveries would simply appear to him as so many additional empirical confirmations of his general position.
Given this view of the psycho-physical unity of man, it is
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understandable that Aquinas did not favour theories according to which the soul is united to the body as a punishment for sin or that it would be far better off if it had no body at all. The human soul has the power of sensing, but it cannot exercise this power without the body.
It also possesses the power of understanding; but it has no stock of innate ideas, and it depends for the acquisition of knowledge on senseexperience. 'And thus it is clear that it is for the good of the soul to be united with a body' (S.T., la, 89, 1). Again, 'Origen thought, like Plato, that the human soul is a complete substance, and that the body is united to it accidentally. But since this is false, as has been shown above, it is not to the detriment of the soul that it is united to a body, but for the perfection of its nature' (Quaestio disputata de anima,
2, ad 14).
* It might well appear that the preceding account of the soul's relation to the body does not favour the view, also held by Aquinas, that the human soul is separable from the body, in the sense that it survives death and is naturally immortal But his insistence on the dependence of psychical on physical conditions and activities represents only one aspect of Aquinas' theory of the soul-body relationship, and it is necessary to say something of the other aspect as well.
Aquinas believed that there are distinct faculties. A dog, for instance, possesses exterior faculties or powers, like sight and hearing, and interior faculties, like sensitive memory. All of these, however, belong to the level of sensitive life, and they depend for their existence on that of the organism. To call them distinct faculties does not mean, of course, that they are independent of the sensitive soul or vital principle of the animal: on the contrary, they are rooted in it and exist only when the sensitive soul exists.
But since the sense of sight, for example, has a different 'formal object', namely colour, from that of the sense of hearing, namely sound, the two senses must be distinguished from one another. Now, each of these faculties is seen to be intrinsically dependent on the body; there can be no
AQUINAS seeing, for instance, except in a metaphorical or analogical sense, apart from a bodily organ. And since activity follows, that is manifests, being (operatio sequitur esse), this dependence of sensitive activities and of the sense-faculties on the body shows that the sensitive soul or vital principle itself depends intrinsically on the body, in the sense that it cannot exist apart from the body. In the human being, however, we find activities which, considered in themselves, transcend the power of matter. For example, the mind or intellect can conceive and know other than purely material things, and this shows that it is not itself material.
'If the intellect were corporeal, its activity would not reach beyond the order of bodies. So it would understand only bodies. But this is patently false. For we understand many things which are not bodies. Therefore the intellect is not corporeal' (C.G., 2,
49). We should not be able to pursue pure logic or mathematics or work out an abstract theory of physical science, were the mind corporeal. Still less should we be able even to raise the problem of God, let alone develop a metaphysical theology. Again, self-consciousness is a sign of the immaterial character of the human mind (ibid.). And the same can be said of free choice. All these activities manifest the immateriality or spirituality of the mind, and so of the human soul, the nature of which is made clear by its higher activities (again operatio sequitur esse).
It is worth noting that though Aquinas argues from acts or activities to faculties and from faculties to the soul which possesses these faculties, the theory of really distinct faculties is not essential to the line of argument, in the sense that the same line of argument could not be pursued, were the theory of really distinct faculties called in question or rejected. For the line of argument is from the character of what can be observed in introspection and known by analogy to the character of that which cannot be observed in itself. If some of the activities or operations of the human soul transcend the power of matter, then the soul itself, which manifests its character in these activities, must itself transcend matter.
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It is also to be noted that Aquinas is not concerned here with proving the existence of a soul in man, in the wide sense of a vital principle or principle of vital activities and functions; he is concerned with the character of that principle. That there is a soul in man, he believed to be evident from the fact, known to everybody and constantly expressed in or implied by ordinary language, that man is a living thing. Moreover, the unity of man and the oneness of the human soul is recognized, implicitly at least, by everybody. For while everyone speaks of 'my idea' or 'my conviction* and uses such phrases as 'I choose' or 'I decided', everyone also recognizes as his own, as belonging to himself, activities like eating or sleeping, seeing or hearing, remembering or imagining.
Aquinas believed in distinct faculties, but he had no use for the suggestion that there are distinct souls in man, corresponding to the different levels of vital activity. Acceptance of this suggestion would make nonsense of the common experience of human beings, which finds constant expression in ordinary language. Moreover, even those activities which we share with non-human beings take on special characteristics when they are found in man.
'Sensitive life (literally, the operations of the sensitive soul) is much higher in man than it is in brutes, as is clear in the case of touch and in that of the interior senses' (De potentia,
3, 11, ad 1 ). And this too is evidence for there being only one soul in man.
At the same time, even though the presence of a soul in man is sufficiently evident, the character of this soul is not immediately evident. Aquinas was quite well aware that it is possible to admit the presence of a soul in some sense and yet to maintain that the soul is a function of matter, in the sense that it depends intrinsically on the body. And so he was convinced that its spiritual or immaterial character has to be proved. No doubt he thought that its character is implicitly known by all, in the sense ' lat reflection on the data of consciousness leads to the conclusion that it is immaterial. The 'discovery' of the spiritual character of the soul is not like the discovery of a hitherto unknown island
AQUINAS which an explorer may suddenly come across in his travels.
But the soul is not perfectly self-luminous. What I am conscious of is my acts as mine; I do not observe my soul apart from its acts. Nor am I immediately conscious of a faculty like the mind, if it is considered apart from concrete mental activities. By introspection I am aware of myself thinking, for example, as I am aware of my acts of choice; but I do not immediately observe my mind apart from its operations or my will apart from all acts of choosing.
Aquinas therefore argues from the immediately 'observable' to the character of the soul. On the other hand, this is not for him an inference from the known to the completely unknown, from the manifest to the completely hidden. For, as we have seen, his fundamental position is that all are conscious of their activities and operations as theirs; and the data of consciousness contain implicitly an awareness of the soul's character, though systematic reflection is needed to render this implicit awareness explicit. We can speak, if we like, of Aquinas' process of reflection as 'analysis'
: it was certainly not for him 'speculation', if by this term is meant a wild leap into the realm of the completely unknown.
The question arises, however, whether Aquinas is not involved in holding simultaneously two incompatible positions. For on the one hand he holds, as we have seen earlier, that all human natural knowledge depends on sense-experience, while on the other hand he maintains that man's highest psychical activities are intrinsically independent of the body. And it may be asked whether he does not say at the same time that the human soul is dependent on and independent of the body.
Aquinas' position is this. The human soul is able to exercise some activities which transcend the power of matter, and this shows that the soul itself is not material. And that which is not material does not depend intrinsically on the body for its existence. At the same time the soul is naturally the form of the human body, and it is natural for it to gain its knowledge in dependence on sense-experience. (Indeed, strictly speaking it does not gain knowledge
: it is the man,
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composed of soul and body, who gains knowledge.) While united with the body it has no other natural means of gaining knowledge than in dependence on sense-experience. But this does not mean that its higher activities are absolutely incapable of being exercised in independence of the body.
After death, when it is separated from the body, it cannot exercise its sensitive powers, but it can know itself and spiritual objects. Even in this state of separation, however, the soul is naturally the form of the body, and it follows that the state of separation is not its natural state. It is what
Aquinas calls praeter naturam (beyond nature); and he draws the conclusion that the soul in this condition of separation from the body is not strictly a human person.
For the word 'person' means the full human being, body and soul. Aquinas was convinced both that the human soul depends in this life on sense-experience for all its natural knowledge and that its highest activities transcend the capacity of matter. In other words, the highest activities of the soul, and so the soul itself, are intrinsically independent of the body, in the sense that they can be exercised in the state of separation from the body; but at the same time they are extrinsically dependent on the body, in the sense that while the soul is united with the body it is dependent for its natural knowledge on sense-experience.
This does not mean, as we have seen when treating of the knowledge of God, that man is incapable of knowing anything but corporeal things.
It means rather that senseexperience forms the starting-point for all his knowledge, and that in this life he cannot know anything, even what is divinely revealed, without the use of images. This dependence of the mind on images is, however, extrinsic rather than intrinsic. In this life we cannot know anything without the use of images; but when the soul is separated from the body its mental activity does not depend on the senses and the imagination. We should not conclude, however, that the state of separation is better than the state of union, absolutely speaking at least. From the theological point of view one can say that the soul of the man who has achieved i67
AQUINAS salvation by dying in a state of grace is better off after death than it was when exposed to the moral perils of this life; but, absolutely speaking, it is better for the soul to be united to the body than not to be united to it, since it is naturally the form of the body. This line of thought tends to suggest that the resurrection of the body is to be expected; and Aquinas was prepared to admit this. 'It is therefore contrary to the nature of the soul to be without the body. But nothing which is contrary to nature can be perpetual. Hence the soul will not for ever be without the body. Therefore since the soul remains for ever, it should be united again with the body, and this is what is meant by rising (from the dead). The immortality of souls seems then to demand the future resurrection of bodies' (C.G., 4, 79). But he showed, by a preceding paragraph, that this argument did not amount to a proof of the resurrection of bodies, if it was taken by itself, without, that is to say, the resurrection of Christ and the Christian revelation. However, the point which I have been trying to make is that Aquinas would answer the accusation of holding two incompatible positions about the dependence of man's higher activities on the body by making a distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic dependence.
As Aquinas insisted that there is only one soul in man and that the whole soul survives death (which means precisely the separation of the soul from the body), his position was not the same as that of Aristotle. It is true that for Aristotle there is only one soul (psyche) in man, which is the entelechy or form of the body; but this psyche does not include the immortal intellect (nous) or mind.
Aristotle does indeed sometimes speak as though the immortal mind were a separable part of the soul; but his general position is made fairly clear in the De anima. The human psyche is the principle of biological, sensitive and certain mental functions, and it is the form of the body; but precisely because it is the form of the body it cannot exist in separation from the body.
To say of something that it is the form of the human body is, for Aristotle, to say that it is inseparable from that body. And
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he draws the conclusion that if anything in man is immortal, it is not the form of the body. There is indeed an immortal intellect; but immortality did not mean for Aristotle what it meant for Aquinas. For the latter the human soul is created by God as the form of the body when the body comes into being as a human body in the natural way, and it survives death. Immortality therefore means persistence in existence after the dissolution of the composite being. For Aristotle, however, the immortal mind is eternal, existing before as after its presence in the body. And he therefore speaks of it as coming 'from outside'. Hence it cannot be considered as a part of the soul. Aristotle, it is true, stresses the difficulty of the whole matter and avoids dogmatism; but it is clear that he made, or at least was inclined to make, a sharp distinction between the human psyche and the immortal mind.
When therefore Aquinas propounded the view that the whole soul of man survives death, though it cannot exercise all its potentialities in separation from the body, he was saying that it is possible for something to be the form of the body and yet to survive death, that is, the dissolution of the composite being. And this was not the position of Aristotle, even though Aquinas does not himself make this point very clear. Hence it is not true to say that he slavishly reproduced
Aristotle's theories, however much he may have been influenced by them.
If the word 'form' in the context meant 'shape' or 'figure', it would obviously be absurd to say at one and the same time that the human soul is the form of the body and that it survives bodily death. But although it is clear from what has been already said that Aquinas is not using the word in this sense, it may none the less appear that he is trying to have things both ways. On the one hand he asserts not only that the human soul is the form of the body in the sense that it makes the body a living body, capable of exercising sensitive activities, but also that to 'inform' the i.
I am aware, of course, that the interpretation of Aristotle which I have given above is not universally accepted. But it seems to me to be the correct one. though I cannot argue the matter here.
AQUINAS body is natural to the soul. On the other hand he asserts that the human soul is naturally immortal. And the combination of these two assertions may appear to be an attempt to have the best of two worlds, so to speak; to combine the 'Platonic' doctrine of immortality with an Aristotelian view of the relation of soul to body. This criticism is understandable. But Aquinas' contention is that among forms which inform bodies the human soul alone is a spiritual principle.
He admits that it follows from the doctrine that the soul is naturally the form of the body that in its state of separation between death and the resurrection it is not in its natural condition and that it is not strictly a human person, since the word 'person' signifies the whole complete substance, the unity of soul and body. But he contends that the human soul is in spiritual form, which, as spiritual, cannot be affected by the disintegration of the body. To assert that the soul is naturally the form of the body is not to assert that it cannot exist in separation from the body; it is, however, to assert that when it is separated from the body it is not in its natural condition and retains a natural orientation towards informing the body.
It is clear, therefore, that the crucial point in Aquinas' argument in favour of immortality is his argument in favour of the incorporeality or spirituality of the soul. For if it is spiritual in the sense that its existence is not tied to the existence of the bodily organism or to any corporeal organ, its persistence after death seems to follow. And when William of Ockham denied that the presence in man of an immaterial or spiritual form can be proved by philosophic reflection, he naturally went on to deny that the immortality of the soul can be proved. (According to Ockham, the truth of both propositions is known by revelation, not by philosophical reasoning.) Aquinas' argument in favour of the human soul's spiritual character is based, as we have seen, on the contention that man exercises psychical activities which are not intrinsically dependent on a corporeal organ. He then argues that this fact shows that the 'form' which exercises these activities is
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itself spiritual. His position would not involve him in denying that intellectual activity has a physical aspect, in the sense that it is accompanied, for instance, by movements in the brain.
It would, however, commit him to denying not only that intellectual activity can be identified with movements of the brain but also that it is intrinsically dependent on these movements, in the sense that there cannot be intellectual activity of any kind without them. In other words, he is committed to denying not only the outdated form of materialism which is represented by Hobbes' idea that thought is a motion in the head or by Cabanis' dictum that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile, but also the doctrine of epiphenomenalism according to which the mind, though not a corporeal thing, supervenes when the brain has reached a certain degree of development in the evolutionary process and cannot exist apart from it. He is also committed, of course, to denying the validity of the analysis according to which the word 'mind' is no more than a collective name for psychical events. But by denying the truth of such views Aquinas would deny the truth of interpretations of the empirical data, not the empirical data themselves. For example, it is doubtless true that intellectual activities are found only when a corporeal organ has attained a certain stage of development. But to say that mind is a kind of epiphenomenon or efflorescence of the brain is to enunciate a theory about the facts, an interpretation of the facts, the meaning of which is by no means altogether clear and which is in any case open to dispute. Again, the statement that 'mind' is no more than a collective term for psychical events expresses a theory or interpretation, the validity of which is open to question. True, Aquinas' account of the nature of the soul also involves interpretation and theory; for on his own admission we have no direct intuition of the soul as a spiritual 'substance'. But my point is simply that his interpretation cannot be ruled out simply because it is an interpretation. The question is which is the most adequate interpretation.
I do not for a moment suggest that what Aquinas says on the subject of the human soul is all
AQUINAS that needs to be said. Apart from any other consideration, he was primarily a theologian, not a philosopher or a psychologist. But one might perhaps ask oneself whether our ability to form any theory about the soul really fits in with a phenomenalistic analysis of man's psychical life.
In Aquinas' treatment of immortality we do not find the impassioned accents of a Miguel de Unamuno. It gives the impression of being extremely academic and dry. Even when he is speaking of the desire for everlasting life there are no emotional overtones : at least they are far from obvious.
But this objectivity of treatment is characteristic of Aquinas' philosophical and theological writings: indeed, it is characteristic of a large number of medieval thinkers. And this is perhaps one of the features of their writing which makes their works appear to some readers to be extremely remote from human life and existence. This impression of remoteness and aloofness from concern for human existence and destiny can, of course, be sometimes misleading; and the present instance is doubtless a case in point. For discussion of the question whether death completely terminates human existence or not is a discussion which, by definition, concerns human existence, in however dry and objective a manner it may be conducted. Moreover, one must bear in mind the fact that Aquinas was always concerned with truth, and he thought that knowledge of truth is better obtained by dispassionate consideration of evidence and arguments than by appeals to the heart or to the emotions.
In addition we have to recall to mind the fact that Aquinas lived in a milieu which was very different from our own.
For he lived in a society which, though certainly not Christian in the sense that all lived up to the demands of the Christian life, was Christian in the sense that the doctrines of Christianity were commonly accepted.
I do not mean to imply that all the inhabitants of Christian Europe were firm believers. But it is obvious that Christianity was commonly accepted; and this means that people already believed in
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immortality. They did not, for the most part, look to philosophers to provide them with reasons for believing what they already accepted as revealed doctrine. It is also as well to remember that Aquinas, as a Christian theologian, was not primarily interested in the question of mere survival after death. For him, as for any orthodox Christian, the purpose of human existence is the supernatural vision of God, which cannot be achieved by philosophic reflection or by any merely human effort, and eternal life in the full sense involves the integration of the whole human personality and its elevation to a higher plane. Obviously, there could not be any eternal life if the human being were completely destroyed at death, and Aquinas paid attention to philosophic reasons for saying that the human soul survives death. But the mere survival of a disembodied soul is not at all the same thing as eternal life in the full Christian sense.
And as it is by revelation and not by philosophic reflection that the Christian knows of man's supernatural destiny, it is easy to understand that Aquinas did not write with poetic enthusiasm about the subject of mere survival, considered in abstraction from Christian revelation.
In his eyes the important question for any man would be whether he was prepared to fulfil his supernatural destiny by cooperating with divine grace, not simply whether he was going to survive or not as a kind of disembodied mind.
Aquinas argues from the spirituality of the soul to its incorruptibility. A human being is capable of knowing all bodies. But if the mind were corporeal it would have to be a particular kind of body. And in this case it would not know or be capable of knowing other kinds of bodies. A human being would be in the position of a sick man to whom all things taste bitter. Just as the eye sees colours and cannot hear sounds, so the mind would be confined to the knowledge of the type of body corresponding to itself.
'It is clear that a man can know by his mind the natures of all bodies.
But a cognitive principle must have in its own nature nothing of the nature of its objects. Otherwise that which was naturally present in it would prevent the knowledge of
AQUINAS other things. Thus we see that the tongue of a sick man which is infected by a choleric and bitter humour cannot perceive anything sweet; but all things seem bitter to it.
Therefore if the intellectual principle had in it the nature of any body, it could not know all bodies. It is thus impossible that the intellectual principle should be a body'
(ST., la, 7$, 2). Nor can we suppose that the actual organ of cognition is corporeal, for a similar reason. If water is poured into a coloured vase and we look at the water through the glass, it appears to be of the same colour as the glass (ibid.). If the mind knew by means of a purely corporeal organ, this organ would be a particular kind of body, and this would prevent the knowledge of other kinds of corporeal things. The intellectual soul of man must therefore be incorporeal. But in this case it must also be incorruptible. It makes no sense to speak of an immaterial principle or form becoming worn out, as it were, and as falling to pieces or disintegrating.
Nor, if it is not intrinsically dependent on the body, can it cease to exist when the body disintegrates. The human soul, in fine, can be corrupted neither per se, by reason of some factor inherent in itself, nor per accidens, by reason of the disintegration of the body (ST., la, 75, 6).
The human soul is thus 'naturally' immortal, not in the sense that it is impossible for God to annihilate it but in the sense that, unless God withdraws His conserving activity, an event which there is no reason for expecting, it continues to exist without any miracle being required. Some later medieval philosophers, such as Duns Scotus, maintained the view that even if we grant that some of man's activities transcend the power of a material agent it does not necessarily follow that the human soul survives the dissolution of the composite being. Aquinas' line of reasoning amounts, according to them, only to a probable argument, and not to a strict proof.
But it is clear, I think, that Aquinas himself considered that it could be strictly proved that the human soul is spiritual in character and that it therefore persists after bodily death.
In this case the validity of the argument would be independent of previous acceptance of God's existence.
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Perhaps the same can hardly be said of the argument which follows. 'And a sign of this (that the soul is incorruptible) can be gathered from the fact that each thing naturally desires existence in its own way. Now, in things which are capable of knowing desire follows knowledge.
The senses do not know existence except here and now. But the intellect apprehends existence absolutely and without temporal limit. Therefore every thing which possesses intellect naturally desires" to exist for ever. And a natural desire cannot be in vain. Therefore every intellectual substance is incorruptible' (S.T., \a, y£, 6). In the Summa contra
Gentiles the argument is expressed in this way.
'It is impossible that a natural desire should be in vain. But man naturally desires to remain in perpetuity. This is clear from the fact that it is existence which is desired by all things.
Moreover, man apprehends existence intellectually, not simply existence her and now, as the brutes may be said to apprehend it, but existence as such. Man therefore attains perpetual existence in his soul, by which he apprehends existence as such and without temporal limit' (C.G., 2, 79).
On the level of purely sensitive life existence is apprehended only 'here and now*, not in abstraction from particular circumstances, and death is shunned here and now, instinctively. But man conceives and desires perpetual existence.
And since this desire is the form which a natural desire takes in an intellectual being, it must be fulfilled.
In this argument, which incidentally was a traditional one, Aquinas is obviously not talking simply of an instinctive impulse to conserve life by shunning or shrinking back from what is felt as threatening security and life.
If he were, the argument would prove too much, namely that animals are immortal. He is talking of a conscious desire for immortality, a desire which presupposes the idea of existence in perpetuity. This desire is natural in the sense that it is the form taken in an intellectual being by the impulse towards the conservation of life which is naturally implanted in living things. But can we conclude from a 'natural desire* to its fulfilment unless we presuppose the existence of a creator
*7S
AQUINAS who, having implanted these natural desires, sees to it that they are not frustrated ? Perhaps Aquinas thought that we could. But in this case must it not first be shown that the human soul is capable of surviving death ? This at least was
Duns Scotus' comment. However, in the Summa theologica Aquinas simply gives this argument as a 'sign' of the incorruptibility of the human soul. And this may imply that man's power of conceiving continued existence after death and his desire for it help to show the spiritual character of the soul and so to confirm the argument on which Aquinas lays most emphasis. He was accustomed, when trying to prove a point, to give various lines of argument, without at the same time providing any very clear indication whether he regarded a particular argument as a strict proof or as a probable or a persuasive argument. Hence it is difficult to know what precise weight he attached to the argument to immortality from the 'natural desire' for it.
It is clear, however, that he regarded as fundamental the argument based on an examination of the soul's nature in the light of its higher activities. He was not the man to base an affirmation of human immortality simply on 'intimations of immortality' or to say with Schiller that 'what the inner
1 though he may very well have regarded the desire for immortality voice says does not deceive the soul which hopes', as a sign of the spiritual character of the soul. If this is what he meant it is a pity that he did not say so more clearly. An argument which proceeds simply from a desire to its fulfilment does not seem convincing to me, even if the desire is said to be 'natural'.
When Aquinas talks about immortality, he is talking, of course, about personal immortality. The Islamic philosopher, Averroes, had interpreted the rather obscure statements about immortality in the third book of Aristotle's De anima as meaning that there is one immortal intellect which enters into temporary union with, or performs a function in, individual men. There is therefore no personal i. Und was die innere Stimme spricht, Das tauscht die hoffende Seele nicht. i76
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immortality. We could not say that John and Peter, considered as individuals, are in any way immortal; for the immortal, or more properly eternal, intellect which functions both in John and in Peter during their lives is not peculiar to John or Peter. When this active intellectual principle is functioning in John and working, as it were, on John's capacity for receiving ideas, a kind of personal intellect is produced, which belongs to John. But in so far as this personal intellect or mind survives death it is only as a moment in the one active intellectual principle. We might speak, then, of the human race being in some sense immortal and of individuals as sharing in some sense in an impersonal immortality; but there would be no question of John or of Peter surviving death as recognizable individuals.
This strange theory was expounded in Aquinas' time by a group of lecturers in the faculty of arts at the university of Paris. They did not maintain that the theory was in fact true; but they maintained at any rate that it represented the teaching of Aristotle and that it followed from his principles. This was held for a time by Siger of Brabant (c.
1235-c.
85), though he later changed his views. The expounders of this theory, when charged by theologians with defending an unorthodox opinion, replied, therefore, that they were speaking as historians, as exegetes of Aristotle, and that they were not affirming the theory to be true. It appears, however, that some of them, in their devotion to Aristotle, maintained that it would have been true had God not managed matters otherwise.
In other words, philosophic reflection alone, represented by Aristotle, leads to the conclusion that there is only one immortal intellect; but revelation assures us that what the philosopher, left to himself, would expect to be the case is not in fact the case.
Aquinas attacked this group on two counts. In the first place he maintained that the theory of one immortal intellect in all men did not follow from Aristotle's principles and that it was wrongly ascribed to him by exegetes who misinterpreted the text. Into this purely historical question it is
AQUINAS unnecessary to enter. In the second place he maintained that the theory is in itself ridiculous and unsupported by any evidence. And in maintaining this view he was at one with many other theologian-philosophers with whom he did not see eye to eye on some other matters. He argued, for example, that on the theory of one intellect in all men it is quite impossible to explain the different ideas and intellectual lives of different human beings.
It might be possible to explain the presence of different images in different peoplebut it would not be possible to explain the presence of different concepts and convictions.
'If there were one intellect in all men, the different images in different men would not be capable of producing the different intellectual operations of this and that man, as Averroes pretends that they could.
It remains, therefore, that it is altogether impossible and inappropriate to postulate one intellect in all men' (ST., la, 76, 2). In the De unitate intellectus contra Averoistas he argues at length that the theory of Averroes makes nonsense of all statements in which we say 'he thinks .
.' or 'I think .
.'. Yet the propriety of this way of speaking is confirmed by all the available data. Similarly, if the theory of Averroes were true, it would be nonsensical to attribute moral responsibility for voluntary actions either to ourselves or to other individuals. Yet we do attribute moral responsibility, and we know that we are justified in principle in doing so. Aquinas evidently felt strongly about the theory which he was opposing, for he ends the De unitate intellectus, after observing that in writing against it he has had recourse to rational argument rather than to appeals to authority, by challenging the unconvinced to stop muttering in corners with lads who have no judgement in such matters and to publish their replies, so that the question can be properly debated.
Aquinas' general theory that our natural knowledge is gained in dependence on sense-experience has already been stated. But something more must be said about his analysis
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of the process by which we come to know, even if it is not possible to pursue the analysis into all its details.
The first stage in the acquisition of knowledge is senseperception. Our organs of sense are affected by external objects, and we receive sense-impressions. The eye, for example, sees colours or colour-patches; but it would not do so unless it were affected by its object acting on it through a medium. It receives an impression, therefore, and undergoes a physical alteration. The process of sensation cannot, however, be reduced to a mere physical change. 'If physiological change sufficed for sensation, all natural bodies would have sensations when they underwent change'
(ST., la, 78, 3).
Sensation is a psycho-physical process in which a sensible 'form' is received.
If we consider the level of the individual external senses in itself, it is true to say that there are only discrete senseimpressions. The sense of sight, says Aquinas, is able to distinguish one colour from another (the impression of green is different from the impression of blue); but the sense of sight is quite unable to compare and distinguish colours from sounds, since it does not hear.
It is obvious, however, that even animals synthesize their sense-impressions. The dog perceives a man and achieves a synthesis of the different sense-impressions of sight, hearing, smell and touch.
It is therefore clear that even at the level of purely sensitive life there takes place a synthesis of the data of the different external senses. Aquinas therefore postulates interior 'senses' by means of which this synthesis is achieved. The word 'sense' may seem peculiar, because we are accustomed to use the word only in reference to what Aquinas calls the five external senses; but by using the word he intends to indicate that the power or faculty of which he speaks belongs to the level of sensitive life and is found in animals as well as in human beings.
The function of distinguishing and collating the data of the various external senses is performed by the general sense
(sensus communis). We must also postulate an imaginative power which conserves the forms received by the senses.
AQUINAS Again, the animal is able to apprehend, for example, that something is useful to it. A dog apprehends that a particular man is friendly or unfriendly. We shall thus have to postulate a power or disposition to apprehend these facts (the vis aestimativa) and a power of conserving such apprehensions
(the vis memorativa).
In postulating all these powers or faculties Aquinas relied very largely on Aristotle, and we may well ask in what precise sense, if any, we are justified in speaking of different 'faculties' or 'interior senses'. But the point to which I wish to draw attention is Aquinas' insistence on the work of synthesis that goes on in cognition. The synthesis of which I have been speaking takes place at the level of sensitive life, and it must not be taken to mean a conscious, deliberate synthesis; but that a synthesis does take place is a fact which scarcely admits of doubt.
Although, however, the synthesis which takes place on the sensitive level is in some sense common to animals and to men, this does not mean that sensitive cognition is identical in both.
I have already quoted a passage from the De potentia (3, 11, ad 1), where Aquinas says that sensitive life, though generically the same in animals as in men, is not specifically the same, since it is 'much higher' in the latter,
'as is clear in the case of touch and in the case of the interior senses'. Thus according to Aquinas what corresponds in human beings to the vis aestimativa in animals deserves a special name, since more than instinct is involved; and he 1 He was aware that in human percalls it the vis cogitativa. ception sense and reason are both involved. But it does not follow that an attempt to abstract or isolate what belongs to the level of sense-life from what belongs to the level of reason is misguided or useless.
For Aquinas an explanation is needed of the transition from sensitive to rational or intellectual cognition. The 1. This power belongs to the level of sensitive life in man. and 'the physicians assign to it a definite organ, namely the middle part of the head' (ST., la, 78, 4). But it lies, as it were, on the confines of reason, and Aquinas also calls it 'particular reason'
{ibid.), since it does not conceive universals, as reason proper does.
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senses apprehend particular objects, and images, even if confused, are particular. The mind, however, has universal concepts; it apprehends in abstraction the forms of things.
We therefore have on the one hand sensitive apprehension of the particular and on the other intellectual cognition of the universal. This does not mean that universals as such have any extra-mental existence. There are, for example, only particular human beings; there is no such thing as an existent universal man, nor can there be. But individual human beings possess, Aquinas was convinced, specifically similar essences, and this similarity of essence is the objective foundation of the universal concept of man, which enables us to predicate the same term of individual human beings, saying, for example, that John is a man and that Peter is also a man. But even when we suppose this view of universals, namely that universals as such exist in the mind and not extra-mentally , the problem still remains, how is the universal concept formed? What is the process by which the universal concept is formed ? It cannot be explained as a purely passive process, passive, that is to say, on the mind's part. For the mind, being immaterial, cannot be directly affected by a material thing or by the image. It is necessary to postulate an activity on the mind's part, in order to explain how the universal concept is formed from the material provided by sense-experience. In other words, on the rational level there takes place a further stage of the process of synthesis involved in human cognition, and an analysis of this further stage is required.
Aquinas employs the Aristotelian distinction between the active and passive intellects, two distinct functions of the mind. According to him the active intellect 'illumines' the image of the object apprehended by the senses; that is to say, it actively reveals the formal and potentially universal element which is implicitly contained in the image.
It then abstracts this potentially universal element and produces in the passive intellect what Aquinas calls the species impressa.
The passive intellect reacts to this determination by the active intellect, and the result is the species expressa, the
AQUINAS universal concept in the full sense. This language is certainly unfamiliar and therefore difficult to follow; but what Aquinas has in mind is more or less this. The human intellect has no store of innate ideas : it is in potentiality to possessing ideas or concepts. Considered in this light, the intellect is passive. And its concepts must be derived in some way from the data provided by the senses, exterior and interior.
But the senses provide particular impressions of particular objects, together with the images to which these impressions give rise, whereas concepts are universal in character. We must suppose, then, that the intellect as active picks out, as it were, the potentially universal element in the image, the synthesized reproduction in the imagination of the data of the different senses. Thus the intellect as active abstracts the universal essence of man from a particular image, leaving out the particularizing notes which confine the image to being the image of this or that particular man, and impresses it on the intellect as passive. And so the universal concept is born.
In the process of synthesis and abstraction there is therefore continuity, from the primary sense-impressions up to the universal concept. The mediating point between the data of sense and the universal concept is for Aquinas the image.
And it is important to realize that when he talks about images in this connexion he is not speaking of arbitrarily constructed images like the image of a unicorn. In our senseexperience of, say, Peter, the eye sees colour-patches, the ear hears sounds, and so on. These sense-impressions are, however, synthesized in the form of the 'image'. And it is from this synthesis that the universal, 'man', is, according to Aquinas, abstracted. That which is primarily known by the mind is, however, the universal, that is the form, as apprehended in Peter. Peter is known as a man.
It is only secondarily that the mind apprehends the universal precisely as universal. That is to say, it is only secondarily that it apprehends the universal as predicable not only of Peter but also of James and John and every other individual human being.
To speak of 'abstraction' is not, therefore, for Aquinas to cut
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off the life of the intellect from that of the senses and to say that the mind knows only its own ideas. The universal concept is primarily the modification of the intellect by which a thing (Peter for example) is known according to its form or essence.
As we have seen earlier, Aquinas held that the mind is dependent on the image, not only in the formation of its ideas but also in their employment, in the sense that there is no thinking without the use of images or symbols. Since the mind is active and possesses the power of active reflection, it is not confined to the knowledge of material things; but at the same time it can know immaterial things only in so far as material things are related to them and reveal them.
Moreover, in thinking about immaterial things we cannot dispense with the use of images or symbols. We can recognize the inadequacy of the images based on sense-experience, but we cannot get rid of them. We cannot conceive immaterial things, even when their existence is known by revelation, except on an analogy with visible things, though we can attempt to purify our ideas of them. 'Images necessarily accompany our knowledge in this present life, however spiritual the knowledge may be: for even God is known by us through the images of His effects (in creatures)' (De malo, 16, 8, ad 3). Again, 'the image is a principle of our knowledge.
It is that from which our intellectual activity begins, not simply as a transitory stimulus, but as a permanent foundation of intellectual activity
And so when the imagination is impeded, so also is our theological knowledge' (In librum Boethii de Trinitate, 6, 2, ad 5).
A point to be noticed is that truth and falsity are predicated primarily neither of sense-impressions nor of concepts but of judgements. We can hardly speak of error in the case of a particular sense apprehending its own proper object, unless perhaps the organ is impaired; but inasmuch as Aquinas is prepared to speak of the senses 'judging', he is also prepared to speak of truth and falsity at the sense-level. We might say, for example, that an animal misjudged the distance, distance being only indirectly apprehended by the
AQUINAS senses. But though a 'judgement' of sense may be true or false, according as it corresponds or not with reality, its truth or falsity is not reflectively apprehended at the senselevel. Truth is primarily in the mind It is defined as conformity between the mind and the thing. Hence to know this conformity is to know truth. Sense, however, does not know truth as such. For although sight has the likeness of a visible thing it does not know the correspondence between the thing seen and its perception of it. The mind, however, can know its own conformity with an intelligible thing, not simply by apprehending its essence, but it makes a judgement about the thing It is then that it first knows and enunciates truth And so, strictly speaking, it is in the mind's judgements that truth is found and not in sensation, nor in the intellectual apprehension of an essence' (ST., la,
1 6, 2).
I may have a true perception of Peter as white; but it is not of this perception as such that truth is primarily predicated.
It is the judgement that Peter is white which is strictly speaking 'true'. Aquinas does, indeed, speak of things as 'true', as, being, for example, conformed to the mind of the Creator. But in the De veritate and elsewhere he carefully distinguishes the various senses in which he uses the word 'true' and states that truth is primarily found in the mind's act of judging.
Aquinas has been called an 'intellectualist'. But the question whether the name is appropriate or not obviously cannot be answered without a previous clarification of its meaning.
If by 'intellectualist' is meant someone who lays great emphasis on knowledge and on rational activity, there are certainly grounds for applying this name to Aquinas. After all, one would expect him as a university professor to emphasize rational reflection and to exalt knowledge.
In the Middle Ages there was a dispute concerning the faculties of the soul, the question being which was the 'noblest' faculty.
This is not a dispute in which any enthusiastic interest can be expected today; but it is worth remarking that Aquinas
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was convinced of the pre-eminent claims of the intellect.
For he maintained that whereas the will tends towards its object the intellect possesses it in cognition, and possession is better than tending towards.
In knowledge, he said, knower and known are one; that is, the knower becomes the known by mental or spiritual assimilation, without, however, ceasing to be himself. Natural knowledge is thus a faint anticipation of the vision of God in heaven, which is the final end of man.
But if by 'intellectualist' is meant a man who is blind to or who disparages aspects of human life other than the reflective activity of the intelligence, the name certainly cannot be applied to Aquinas. When he said that the final happiness of man consists primarily in the intellectual vision of God as He is in Himself, he did not mean to exclude love. Complete love was for him the fruit of complete knowledge.
And when he emphasized man's intellectual activity in this life, he certainly did not mean to disparage, nor was he blind to, other aspects of human activity.
If for no other reason, he could not do this either as a devout Christian or as a theologian. But also as psychologist and philosopher he was aware of the importance of the appetitive and voluntary aspects of human nature. And something must be said of his views on this subject.
In every thing there is an inclination or propensity to a particular form of behaviour. The word 'inclination' suggests a conscious tending towards an object; but Aquinas uses it in a very general sense which would cover, to use his example, the natural upward movement of fire. This natural and unconscious 'appetite' is determined by the form of the thing, and it is invariable.
In things which are capable of knowledge, however, we find an appetite which follows apprehension of an object as good or desirable. As present on the level of sensitive life this appetite is called the animal or sensitive appetite. When a dog sees its food, it is impelled towards it by its sensitive appetite, which Aquinas also calls
'sensuality'. But this last word must not be taken in the sense which it often bears today, as when we speak of a sensual
AQUINAS person. For Aquinas it means simply 'the appetite which follows sensitive apprehension'
(S.T., la, 81, i). To call it 'sensuality' is not to say that it is disordered. The sensitive appetite for food is not something disordered. On the contrary, it is natural and tends to the objective good of the thing which possesses it.
This sensitive appetite is found, of course, in man. But in man there is also a rational or intellectual appetite, by which he desires a good consciously apprehended by the reason and which is called 'will'. According to Aquinas, these two, the sensitive appetite and the will, are distinct powers. 'We must say that the intellectual appetite is a power distinct from the sensitive appetite
For objects apprehended by the intellect are different from those apprehended by sense' (ST., la, 80, 2).
Behind and in all choice Aquinas sees the desire or love of the good. 'The first movement of the will and of any appetitive power is love' (ST., la, 20,
1). And this inclination of the will towards the good is natural and necessary, in the sense that the will is set by its very nature towards the good and that this inclination is not subject to free choice. Different people may desire different things. 'Some men seek riches as the supreme good, others pleasure, others something else'
(ST., la, Ilae, 1, 7). But whatever they desire and seek, they desire and seek it under the guise of good, that is, as being good or at least as being thought of as good. Aquinas does not mean that all human beings necessarily seek and choose that which is objectively good for man from the moral point of view. But whatever a man seeks is sought as being good or as being thought of as good, that is, as meeting or fulfilling some need of human nature or as actualizing and perfecting some potentiality of human nature.
Another way of putting this is to say that all human beings desire and necessarily desire 'happiness'. But this statement lends itself to misunderstanding. According to Aquinas all human beings necessarily desire and seek what he calls beatitudo. And this term, which corresponds to some extent to Aristotle's eudaimonia, is traditionally translated by the
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word 'happiness'. One might use instead 'well-being' or perhaps 'blessedness' or 'beatitude'; but whatever term is used some explanation of its use is required. And perhaps the chief point to remember is that whereas the word 'happiness' is normally used only for a subjective state, the psychological condition of feeling happy, the word beatitudo has a much wider meaning for Aquinas. When used in an objective sense, it connotes that the possession of which actualizes a man's potentialities, thus rendering him satisfied or happy. When used in a subjective sense, it means fundamentally the activity of enjoying the possession of that which perfects a man's potentialities, though it can also mean the state of satisfaction or happiness which accompanies this activity. Or one can put the matter in this way.
Beatitudo in the objective sense connotes that good which, being possessed, perfects the potentialities of man as man.
Used in a subjective sense it connotes the activity of possessing this good and the satisfaction or happiness (in the ordinary sense) which accompanies this activity.
To say therefore that all men necessarily desire 'happiness'
(beatitudo) is to say that all men necessarily seek that which perfects and satisfies the needs of their nature or is thought of as doing so, and that all their particular choices are informed by this natural inclination of the will.
In every particular choice the object is chosen because it contributes to or is thought of as contributing to the attainment of the supreme good for man, the possession of which is happiness or beatitudo in the subjective sense.
Now, Aquinas had a quite definite idea of what constitutes the supreme good for man. And this idea was a Christian idea. The supreme good for man, objectively considered, is God : considered subjectively, it is the possession of God.
It is the possession of God, who is the supreme being and so the supreme good, which perfects man's potentialities in the highest possible way and which confers perfect happiness in the psychological sense. And inasmuch as all seek the good in the possession of which happiness lies, all can be said, in an interpretative sense, to seek God. But this does
AQUINAS not mean that every human being consciously seeks God, which would be patently untrue. If God as He is in Himself were revealed to us, it would be impossible for the will not to go out towards Him. But God is not so revealed to us.
Indeed, even though God is in fact the concrete supreme good, He can appear to a human being as 'evil', as, for example, the being whose law checks and restrains the expression of a man's impulses. We do not possess that vision of God which alone could exercise an inevitable attraction on the will. To us every concrete good, even God Himself, can be looked at under some aspect or other as being disadvantageous to us, as not being wholly good and desirable from every point of view. Hence in this life the will is not bound by necessity to choose any particular concrete good.
Physiological and psychological factors peculiar to oneself, the influence of environment and so on may incline one to desire some particular kind of good, to consider some particular kind of thing as desirable; but the will is not necessitated simply because it is the will to desire and seek a particular concrete good. To say therefore that the will is necessarily set towards the good and that all men necessarily seek happiness is to make a very general statement.
It is to say that whatever a man chooses he chooses as a good, real or apparent, and that all men seek the actualization of their potentialities and the fulfilment of their needs.
One or two comments on this theory of the fundamental dynamic inclination of the will may be appropriate here. In the first place the statement that all human beings necessarily seek happiness may not seem to fit the empirical facts.
When a man commits suicide, for example, is he seeking happiness? He may very well believe that death means the final and complete cessation of his existence as an individual human being. And if this is what he believes, it would surely be queer and paradoxical to say that he is seeking happiness when he commits suicide. Again, is it not a fact that some people leave the pursuit of happiness on one side, preferring, for example, the pursuit of fame or the pursuit of power?
Aquinas would answer, of course, that if a man commits
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suicide because, for example, his life is wretched or unhappy or because he is threatened with some public disgrace which he is not prepared to meet, he does not desire extinction as such but rather escape from present or threatening evils, this escape appearing to him under the guise of something good. Even if he thinks of extinction as something desirable, he pictures it to himself as having some desirable characteristic; as being, for instance, a state of complete and final rest and tranquillity. When one desires, one always desires something. As for the man who chooses the pursuit of power rather than the pursuit of happiness, his case really presents no difficulty.
It seems to do so only because the word 'happiness' is given a particular meaning, the enjoyment of sense-pleasure, for example, or the leading of a tranquil life undisturbed by ambition and the lust for power.
But the man who seeks power rather than sense-pleasure is also seeking happiness : he is seeking what appears to him as desirable and good, as actualizing his potentialities and fulfilling the needs of his nature.
But, it may be objected, if the theory that whatever the will chooses it chooses as being a good, real or apparent, and that all men seek happiness, is able to cover all possible empirical facts, this can only be because the terms 'good' and 'happiness' are given so wide a connotation that they are to all intents and purposes evacuated of meaning. If the person who states the theory is saying something to which nobody can really take exception, he cannot be uttering any more than a triviality. 'Good' in the general sense means for Aquinas being in its relation to will, that is, being considered as desirable or as capable of perfecting the agent.
And to say that all men desire the desirable or what appears to them as desirable does not tell us very much, though it is doubtless true.
This objection is perfectly understandable. But before I make some brief remarks on the subject I wish to explain what Aquinas does not mean by saying that whatever the will chooses, it chooses as being a good, real or apparent.
If this statement were understood as meaning that nobody
AQUINAS ever deliberately does what he believes to be morally wrong, we would hardly be inclined to call it a 'triviality' or a 'tautology'; but we would say that it is patently untrue. For it is clear not only that people do sometimes act in a way which they believe to be morally wrong but also that they do so deliberately and consciously. But Aquinas did not intend the statement to be understood in this sense. His contention was that though a man may know that some action is wrong and yet do it, what he wills is not the evil as such but something which appears to him as desirable, and so as good, even though he may be well aware that the attainment of the apparent good involves him in moral guilt. We have to distinguish between the objectively good and the 'apparently good'. The former is in the context that which perfects man considered as a totality, as a human person.
The good which is good merely 'apparently' is that which answers to some particular craving or desire in man but which does not perfect his nature considered as a totality.
For example, a person who sets off on the path of taking a dangerous habit-forming drug does not choose what is objectively good for him as a human being; but he would never take the drug at all unless he thought of the action of taking it as in some way satisfying, as being in some way good or desirable. He may believe that to take heroin is morally wrong and yet do it; but he would not start the habit (which he may afterwards, of course, be unable to break by himself) unless he thought of the action as 'perfecting' his nature in some way. Objectively it does not do so; and the man may know this. But the fact remains that the action is felt to answer some need. The man may know that it is only an apparent good; but if he chooses to do it he is choosing an object which appears to him as desirable, even though he may believe it to be morally wrong. 'Similarly, a fornicator seeks a pleasure which involves him in moral guilt' (S.T., \a,
19, 9). What the fornicator seeks, Aquinas contends, is a pleasure, something positive which answers to an instinctive craving. He may know that fornication is morally wrong and not objectively good, and in this case he is involved in
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moral guilt. But though he may know that the action is evil or morally bad, he does not choose the evil or badness as such. At least he does not choose it directly. What he chooses directly is a pleasure, though he can be said to choose evil indirectly, inasmuch as he chooses to do an action which is morally bad and which he may know to be morally bad.
It may seem that though Aquinas' account of human choice will cover the case of the fornicator who is primarily concerned with doing a pleasurable action even though he may believe it to be morally wrong, it will not cover those people who seem to make a kind of cult of evil.
It may be said, for example, that it will not cover cases of diabolism or the case of a person who appears to desire to sink himself into the depths of corruption for its own sake. But even in these cases Aquinas would insist that the primary and direct object of choice is something positive, not a privation (namely moral evil as such), though this may be chosen 'indirectly'. For instance, an apostate priest who celebrates the Black Mass may desire to commit sacrilege and blasphemy; he does what is wrong and what he knows to be wrong. Indeed, there would be little point in celebrating a secret blasphemous rite unless he believed that it was blasphemous and sacrilegious, in fact as well as in name. But what he primarily and directly chooses, Aquinas might say, is something positive which appears to him as desirable; the assertion, for example, of his complete independence over against God, the defiance of God. The privation of right order is, indeed, inseparable from this action; and the man may choose the action because it is evil. But what he directly chooses is the action itself. Yes, we may say, but it is possible for a man to go about looking for evil to do. This is at least a conceivable case. Aquinas would presumably reply that such a man does not directly choose evil as such, that is to say a privation, but that he seeks primarily the satisfaction of some rmpulse or drive, the psychological origins of which may be hidden from the man himself.
But though these considerations may serve to prevent one
AQUINAS from supposing that Aquinas was blind to the fact that people can do not only what is wrong but what they know to be wrong, they serve at the same time to make more acute the original objection against the statement that whatever the will chooses it chooses as being a good, real or 'apparent'. For it seems in the end to amount to the statement that we desire the desirable.
If Aquinas does not intend to say that we always choose to do morally good actions
(a statement which, as has been remarked, would be false), what else can he be saying than that when we choose we always choose, not a privation as such, but something positive, which appears to us as being in some way desirable?
And when the meaning of this statement is explained in such a way that it can be made to cover all the empirical facts about human choice, it turns out in the end to be tautological or, at best, a triviality.
But is Aquinas really saying quite so little as that we desire the desirable or that men seek what they seek ?
If we take the statement that whatever the will chooses it chooses sub specie boni in isolation, it does seem to me to lend itself to the accusation of being a triviality or a tautology. But if we look on the statement in the light of Aquinas' moral theory and as one of the foundations of this theory, it gains in significance. 'Good' in the context of human choice means the development or 'perfecting' of human nature, the actualization of man's potentialities as a human person, or that the possession of which actualizes these potentialities and perfects man's nature. And to say that the will always chooses sub specie boni, that it always chooses a good, real or apparent, is to draw attention to the fundamental drive behind all our conscious choices, the drive or impulse to selfdevelopment and self-perfection, to 'happiness'.
As this natural impulse does not depend on or necessarily carry with it an explicit conception of man's objective good in the concrete, it is possible to form a mistaken idea of it. Moreover, since this good does not in any case present itself to us in this life in such a clear light that it inevitably secures the adhesion of the will, it is also possible to know what it
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in fact is and yet to concentrate on the satisfaction of one particular impulse or tendency in a way which is incompatible with the attainment of the objective good for man.
Aquinas therefore sets out to determine what is the objective good for man, that is to say, what it is in the concrete. And this theme will be discussed in the next chapter, in connexion with his moral theory. In the meantime I suggest that the statement that whatever the will chooses it chooses sub specie boni, as being a good, real or apparent, gains in significance when looked at in the perspective of Aquinas' complete moral theory. As in some other cases, he starts from the admitted, the familiar, and in a sense the trivial, and proceeds to develop what seem to him to be its implications. This development helps to unfold the meaning of the original statements.
I suggest, therefore, that whether we agree or not with Aquinas' point of view he is in fact saying something more than he may appear to be saying if we take a particular statement in isolation from a theory which is at least partly designed to unfold its implications and develop its full meaning.
We have seen that according to Aquinas no concrete good, not even God, is presented to us in such a way in this life that the will is bound of necessity to choose it. Hence we can say that with regard to the choice of particular goods the will is free. But it does not follow from this that all the acts performed by a human being are free acts. The word
'free' is properly applied only to acts which proceed from the reason and the will, and these acts are called by Aquinas
'human acts' {actus humani). They may, of course, be purely interior, as when a man deliberately chooses to think of a mathematical problem. But there are also acts which proceed from a human being as their cause, though they are not deliberate acts. What we call reflex acts are of this kind.
They are called by Aquinas 'acts of a man' (actus hominis) to indicate that they are truly a man's acts but to distinguish them at the same time from 'human acts'. 'Those acts alone
AQUINAS are properly called "human" of which a man is master.
Now, a man is master of his acts through his reason and will.
Therefore free will is said to be a faculty of the will and the reason. Thus those acts are properly called "human" which proceed from deliberate choice'
(S.T., \a, Wae, i, i).
Scratching done without attention, says Aquinas, is not properly speaking a human act; that is to say, it lies outside the sphere of freedom. Aquinas is very far from maintaining that all a man's acts are free, and there may well be dispute about the propriety of calling this or that particular act 'free'. But he was convinced that all sane persons do at any rate sometimes choose and act freely. And we therefore have to consider what he meant by freedom and the sense in which he understood free will (Uberum arbitrium).
Aquinas' analysis of freedom is markedly intellectualist in character, in the sense that a strong emphasis is laid on the reason's function in free choice. Every act of free choice is preceded by a judgement of the reason, and Aquinas speaks of choice as being 'formally' an act of the reason. And if we assume his doctrine of distinct faculties, this at first sight appears to be a very queer statement. For in the facultylanguage it would seem that choice should be associated with the will rather than with the reason. Some explanation of Aquinas' meaning is therefore required. Failure to understand his use of technical terms leads naturally to misinterpretation of his doctrine.
The mind or reason can regard any particular good under different aspects or from different points of view. Take going for a walk, for example.
I can regard it as something good, as the fulfilment of a need for exercise, for instance, or as a pleasurable recreation on a sunny afternoon. Or I can regard it under another aspect as 'evil', as likely to be a hot and dusty business, for example, or as taking up time which should be spent on writing letters to catch the evening post.
I can regard it from this point of view or that as I like, and in this sense my judgements about it are free; but I am still thinking about going for a walk and looking at it from various angles; I have not yet, as we say, 'made up my mind'
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whether to go for a walk or not. But in the end I make a final judgement : for example, 'the letter really ought to be written now, and I ought not to shirk the job and go for a walk'. And in accordance with this judgement, let us suppose, I will or choose not to go for a walk. The act of choice is an act elicited by the will: in Aquinas' language it is 'materially* or 'substantially' an act of the will. But it is elicited under the command or judgement of reason, and is therefore said to be 'formally' an act of the reason.
'If anyone performs an act of courage for the love of God, the act is materially an act of courage, but formally an act of charity. Now, it is clear that reason precedes the will in some way Therefore, the act by which the will tends to something proposed as good by the reason is materially an act of the will, but formally an act of the reason
And so choice is substantially an act of the will and not of the reason; for choice is accomplished in a certain movement of the soul towards the good which is chosen. Hence it is clearly an act of the appetitive power' (ST., la, llae, 13,
1).
Free will (liberum arbitrium) is not a faculty distinct from the will.
'It is the will itself, though it designates the will, not absolutely, but in relation to that act which is called ' (De veritate, 24, 6). Aquinas does indeed say that liberum arbitrium is 'the power by which a man can judge
"choosing" freely' (De veritate, 24, 6), and this statement may seem to contradict the statement that the term designates the will.
For judging is naturally associated with the mind rather than with the will. Aquinas himself notes this objection and answers that 'although judgement belongs to the reason, yet freedom of judging belongs immediately to the will' (De veritate, 24, 6, ad 3). Choice is free in regard to particular goods, which we can look at from different points of view; but I should not look at a good from this point of view rather than from that unless I willed to do so. In free choice there is an interplay of reason and will, and that is why Aquinas says that in the definition of liberum arbitrium indirect allusion is made to both faculties (De veritate, 24, 6, ad 1). His intellectualism is shown in the statement that free-
AQUINAS dom is 'formally' in the intellect or reason; but this intelleo tualism is corrected or supplemented by the statement that freedom is 'materially' in the will. Free choice is an act of the will resulting from a judgement of reason.
Aquinas remarks that, if man were not free, 'counsels, exhortations, precepts, prohibitions, rewards and punishments would be pointless'
(S.T., la, 83, 1). He obviously thought that free choice implies the power to choose otherwise than one actually does choose.
If one freely chooses A rather than B, one might have chosen B : if one is offered a choice between tea and coffee, one might choose either or neither. As human beings act for the most part 'in character', according to disposition, habit and so on, many acts are, from a practical point of view, predictable. But we cannot predict infallibly all a person's acts; in the case of a fully free choice the agent might have chosen otherwise, even if it was highly probable that he would choose as he did. Are we to say, then, that for an infinite mind, God, all man's acts, including his free acts, are predictable? This is really a false problem in Aquinas' eyes. For the question implies that some events are future to God. 'Although contingent events take place successively, God does not come to know them successively, as we do, but simultaneously; for His knowledge is measured by eternity, and eternity being simultaneously entire, comprises all time. Therefore all things which take place in time are eternally present to God
. and are known by Him infallibly' (S.T., la, 14, 13). 'When I see Socrates sitting down, my knowledge is certain and infallible, but no necessity to sit is imposed on Socrates by this fact. So God knows with certainty and infallibility all those things as present which for us are past, present, or future. And yet no necessity is thereby imposed on contingent events' (De rationibus fidei ad Contorem antiochenum,
10).
It was maintained, then, by Aquinas that man is free in choosing this or that particular good. The choice of some particular goods may be necessary as a means to the acquisition of the final end, happiness; but even when we know
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theoretically that this is the case, it is not so evident to us that we are unable to regard them from another point of view or under another aspect. It may be objected, however, that our choice of this or that particular end, sense-pleasure for example, or power or knowledge, is determined by our character, which in turn is determined by physiological and psychological factors, by environment and upbringing.
It is useless, of course, to look to Aquinas for a discussion of the influence on human character and conduct of, say, the endocrine glands. We should be guilty of an obvious anachronism if we expected anything of the kind. But in view of the fact that Aquinas himself stressed the dependence of psychical characteristics on physiological conditions, we can justifiably expect some allusion at least to the bearing of this dependence on human choice. And in point of fact we find him saying that 'an end appears choiceworthy to a man in accordance with his physical make-up; for by a disposition of this kind a man is inclined towards choosing or rejecting something' (ST., la, 83, 1). The important word in the present context is 'inclined'. Aquinas immediately adds:
'But these inclinations are subject to the judgement of reason Therefore they do not destroy freedom of the will' And he says the same of acquired habits and passions.
In his view all these factors influence human conduct, but they do not, except in pathological cases, determine it. Of course, when he says that passions and acquired habits are subject to the judgement of reason, he does not mean that they can be shaken off at a moment's notice. A man who has acquired certain undesirable habits may require a long time to get rid of them. But it was not necessary for him*to acquire them, and when he has acquired them he can with perseverance get rid of them; unless, indeed, he is in an abnormal pathological condition.
The point of view of Aquinas on this matter represents, then, what we may call the point of view of common sense.
He was convinced that our ordinary way of speaking about ourselves and others implies the recognition of freedom as a fact, and he endeavoured to explain freedom of choice
AQUINAS with the aid of the categories of means and end. This does not mean, however, that Aquinas regarded free acts as entirely arbitrary and capricious, as 'causeless' events.
If by 'cause' is meant a determining factor free acts are, of course, 'causeless'. But every free act is done for an end, in accordance with a judgement of the reason; and it is thus an instance of final causality, and it is not purely capricious or gratuitous. As for Aquinas' theory of the relation between divine efficient causality and human free acts, its interpretation is a matter of controversy, and it would in any case take us further into the sphere of theology than
I care to go here.