134.

and in

The sensitive principle or soul, in so far as it Sensitivity is passive, is said to be endowed with the faculty stinct. of feeling or with sensitivity; in so far as it is active, it is said to be endowed with instinct.

135.

pro- Instinct,

sensual

But and vital.

Origin of

it a medicine.

The first act of instinct is that which duces feeling, and is called vital instinct. every feeling roused in the soul produces in new activity, and this second activity which succeeds the feelings is called sensual instinct. With these three principles-first, the vital instinct; second, the sensitivity; and, third, the sensual instinct-we explain in a wonderful way the physiological, pathological, and therapeutical phenomena of the animal, and here the science of medicine finds its place.

"The spirit, devoid of ideas and furnished with only sensations, may, by itself, in virtue of instinct, attach itself to one or another sensation, in order the better to enjoy the pleasure of it. This is not, properly speaking, reflection, but a reinforcement of attention, and an attention not of the understanding, but of the sense. Indeed, instead of attention, we might more correctly call it an application of the instinctive force of the animal, naturally called forth and held by the pleasant sensation to itself" (New Essay, vol. ii. § 449).

It appears, from § 135, that the sensitive principle has one passivity, viz., sensitivity, and two activities or instincts, the vital and the sensual, or, as we might perhaps

better term it, the orectic. Enough has already been said about the sensitivity. It remains to consider the two activities of the sensitive principle. Of these the first is the vital instinct, or that instinct which co-operates with the sensible in the production of feeling; the second is that which operates in accordance with feeling already produced. "These are the two original and universal forces, from which proceed all the special active faculties and all the operations of the animal” (Anthropology, § 369).

As to the vital instinct, its point of departure is “that act in which the sentient principle co-operates in the production of the fundamental feeling" (Ibid., § 371). This act is the production of life, which Rosmini defines as "the incessant production of all those extra-subjective phenomena which precede, accompany, and follow parallel with the corporeal and material feeling" (Ibid., § 267). It is curious to compare this definition, which was written before 1846, with those more recent ones advanced by the most eminent biologists. The older one of Bichat, "La vie est l'ensemble des fonctions qui résistent à la mort," hardly deserves attention, as it is no definition at all, signifying merely, Life is resistance to death. As well might one define being as resistance to nought. Herbert Spencer (Principles of Biology, vol. i. ch. iv.) defines life "as the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations." Bastian (The Beginnings of Life, vol. i. p. 71) enlarges this definition into "Life is the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external co-existences and sequences." It will be seen at a glance that, between these definitions and that given by Rosmini, there is only this difference, that the last is by far the most philosophical and best expressed. But to return to the vital instinct. According to Rosmini, it exists prior to the body, and is, indeed, the force through which the body is built up. "The co-operation of the soul in the production of animal feeling consists in an act anterior to that of the body, which act has the double effect of rendering the body active and itself passive to it. . . . The body cannot excite the feeling of the soul,

unless the soul itself, operating on the organized body, renders it capable of operating upon the soul itself, in that manner which is necessary in order to give birth to the feeling of excitation, which is the proper feeling of the animal. Thus action produces passion, and passion produces action-an incessant action and reaction, observable not in this case only, but in all nature. . . . Prior to the feeling of excitation, which requires some stimulus to move the sensitive body, whose corporeal soul it afterwards is, I hold that there is a feeling of the continuous, and the principle of this feeling, being stimulated, becomes capable of animating, when excited, the body organized and properly disposed" (Anthropology, §§ 382, 383).

In regard to the sensual instinct, Rosmini says, "The term of the fundamental feeling is modified, not only by the soul, but also by material forces. Hence the modifications of the fundamental feeling are the various acquired sensations. Experience shows that, given feeling and the special sensations, there is manifested a new activity of the soul, that which we call sensual instinct. In fact, what teaches the child to seek the light with its eyes but this instinct? Who teaches it to seek nourishment . . . from the breast of its mother or nurse? Who directs all its movements and the few actions of its infantile life? It is always this instinct which attracts it to agreeable feelings and withholds it from disagreeable ones. . . . Now, it is easy to see that this second activity of the soul is a kind of continuation of the first. Sensual instinct is a continuation of vital instinct. The vital instinct posits the first, the fundamental, feeling; the sensual instinct seeks other feelings. It is always to feeling that the activity of the soul tends. . . . Thus the primordial virtue of the soul is reduced to a unity. All its acts are virtually contained in that act whereby it first feels. Through this act it becomes, so to speak, a bent bow. Its virtue is ready. All that is required is the removal of impediments. Then it discharges itself, manifesting movements in its effect. Hence the soul might very properly be defined as "an individual being that, feeling, acts" (Anthrop., §§ 385, 388). According to Rosmini,

the medicative forces of nature are due to the vital instinct, and the perturbing forces to the sensual or orectic (Anthrop., §§ 401, 414). The table on the preceding page will show the various functions of the vital and sensual instincts.

136.

and term

The union of the animal principle with its Principle corporeal term is so close that the one is incon- in the ceivable without the other, and therefore, although form a the one is not the other, but, on the contrary, single is being.

opposed to the other, the two form one being, one animated whole, and when we make the term a being apart or entirely separate, it is nothing more than a mere product of abstraction.

animal

137.

kinds of

the animal

sponding

to three conditions

Nevertheless, in the term of the animal, we Three must distinguish three things, which give occa- feeling in sion to three kinds of feeling: first, the corporeal continuous-the term of the feeling of the corporeally extended; second, the internal movement of the sens of atoms or molecules, or of parts of the corporeally extended-term of the feeling of excitation; and, third, the harmonious continuation of said movement-term of the organic feeling.

In regard to the Feeling of Continuity, Rosmini says, "If we imagine a single element of matter, extended and perfectly hard, as we suppose the first elements to be, then, even although such an element were to fall under our senses (which it certainly never could on account of its smallness), it would give no sign of life, because it would be unable to

sible term.