difficult to form a correct concept of pure space, because, in order to do so, we must abstract from all bodies and movements; we must think neither of limits nor of determinate places; we must forget our own bodies. The phenomenon of space which remains after this will appear to many a zero; but this is not really the case, because a subtraction does not leave a difference equal to zero, unless that which is subtracted is equal to that from which it is subtracted. Here, however, we have only subtracted bodies from the phenomenon and from total apprehension: hence there is left the remainder, space. At the same time, this phenomenon of residual space does not lend itself to the imagination, which deals only with bodies, nor to measurement, because all measure is posterior to it; nevertheless, it is something which, when compared to space measured and distinguished by means of bodies, seems a potential space. What renders it difficult to see that space is not something separate from its principle, but merely a natural appurtenance of it, merely its complement, is this: that our minds have a tendency to think the space which already clothes the foreign reality, internal or external, whereas, as we have said, we must look away from this reality, and conceive space pure. It is only then that we see it to be in itself nothing external, and to be most closely united to the principle which feels it. Furthermore, we must reflect that we, men, are not the principle of space, but are rational principles; whence it is no wonder that space appears to us as something different from us. Even the abstract animal is not the principle of space; but this principle exists in it. as the genus in the species; whence even the animal itself, in so far as it is species and individual, must feel in space something given to it, as a generic nature, and not something which itself produces, as the animating principle of its body.

"We therefore distinguish three things: (1) An end of activity, the quiescent term.

(2) A final activity, the term which draws life from the activity of the principle.

(3) A foreign term, which can never be a quiescent term, but must always be an active one.

"Hence the space, which is conceived as the end of the activity of the sensitive principle, when this, having reached its extreme, comes to rest, and which, for this reason, is the proper term of that principle, being distinguished from it only by hypothetical abstraction, could never form the foreign real term of a principle of another nature, for the simple reason that it has no activity, other than that of its principle in which it terminates. On the contrary, the final activity, besides being the proper term of its own principle, can become the foreign term of a principle of another nature, because it has activity and reality and abstraction from the principle from whose act it proceeds. For this reason it can connect itself with the reality of another principle and communicate to it part of its power. Not every proper term, therefore, can become the foreign term of another principle, but only that which is a final activity, and not simply an end of activity. The latter, when separated from its principle, alone offers to the mind a negative and relative concept.

"The sensitive principle, therefore, is primarily constituted a subject-being by its entitative force, terminating in pure space, which is, accordingly, its primitive form. But the sensitive principle, in this form, is a real indeterminate. By this is not meant something in itself indeterminate, for nothing real can exist indeterminate, but a relative indeterminate, that is, indeterminate compared with other reals, such as, in the present case, the principles that animate matter. The real indeterminate, however, is merely a real genus, which in itself does not lack indetermination, but which exists identical, with other differences, in other reals. To this principle, so constituted, is united a second ulterior term-corporeal matter, which is what specifies it as an animating principle. Now, the foreign reality, uniting itself to the principle of space as its term, has to render it its term by feeling it, for the reason that the sensitive principle can have no term but the felt; whence the first felt thing which it produces in this term is space itself. Indeed, having space as the end of its activity and as its primitive form, it can feel nothing which is not in space.

The circumstance, therefore, that the foreign reality which becomes the term of the sensitive principle is extended, is due to sentimentation, that is, to the act of the principle of space, in which space it is obliged to feel all that it does feel, space being the end of its activity. This first corporeal term is what constitutes the body of the animate. That this body occupies a greater or less space, depends upon the number of its atoms; but the measure of the atom certainly is, and must be, dependent on the inner laws to which the activity of the sensitive principle of space is subject, in relation to the quantity of reality in the atom itself. To this relation between what we shall call the intensive quantity of the corporeal reality and the comparative quantity of extension with which the sensitive principle clothes it, is to be referred the origin of the first corporeal extension. But hence we gather that the absolute extension of a body is not cognizable, and, indeed, does not exist at all. The extension that exists is the relative extension of bodies and atoms to each other, the relation between the extension of body (relative extension) and the extension of pure space (absolute extension) being incommensurable. And there is lacking not only the maximum measure applicable to limited extension, but also the minimum measure, because there is no absolute minimum of extension that can serve to measure the extension of bodies themselves.

"The extension, therefore, which is felt in body through sensible touch, and which differentiates it from empty space, is the work of the sensitive principle having space for its essential term; it is the extended felt produced, in which extended felt is contained, as a substratum, a foreign reality. And this, indeed, is the origin of the concept of substratum, of which the ancients made so much use, extending it improperly to all substances, even spiritual ones. It is on account of this foreign reality contained in the term of our feeling, that the felt bodily term appears to us as double, that is, as subjective and as extra-subjective; and for the same reason that the same extension also presents itself as double-on the one hand, as subjective and belonging to the

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felt, something of ours, that is, of the sentient subject's; on the other, as extra-subjective and belonging to material body, something different from the sentient subject, from which we divide it by thetic abstraction, but which, in truth, does not present itself to us as existing, except as a foreign element existing inside feeling. Subjective extension is called internal, extra-subjective, external extension.

"Such is the origin of the wonderful phenomenon which is called external world—I mean the external world known and felt by ourselves. Indeed, if we were capable of removing from our minds the images of bodies, and retaining pure space alone, directing our attention only to it, we should readily convince ourselves that, in such a case, it would never enter our minds to say that space was something external rather than internal. This distinction would not exist for us. We should rather feel pure space united to us as our pure feeling, which constitutes us. No movement, nay, not even the possibility or impossibility of a movement, would enter our thoughts. But when we unite to space another term, viz., body, then new kinds of phenomena manifest themselves. On the one hand, this new reality given to the sensitive principle cannot be its term, unless this term renders it felt to itself; on the other, this term cannot render it totally felt to itself, because it is a foreign reality, which cannot totally belong to it. But the part felt and the part not felt are indivisible. The former comes from the sensible action which the sensitive principle itself performs upon the foreign reality; the latter, from the foreign principle to which said reality properly belongs, and which furnishes and, so to speak, yields it to the sensitive principle. The felt, therefore, contains a non-felt foreign element, and the sentient, not being able to feel it as a felt nature, nevertheless feels its existence as a refractory and opposing nature. Now, since the first law of the sentient is that it gives extension to what it feels, it clothes not only the felt, but also this diverse and refractory nature with the same extension. In this way, in so far as there exists a felt nature clothed with extension, the sentient recognizes the extension in its own proper feelings, that is, in the terms.

which it feels; but in so far as the same extension clothes that nature which it feels as refractory-contained in its term of feeling, but resisting sentimentation-in so far it has the feeling or perception of an external world; that is, a world different from its own feeling, not existing purely through the act of feeling, but existing in the felt through some other cause, different from that of the act of its own feeling.

"Thus is explained the reason why, on the one hand, it seems that the soul is in the body, and on the other that the body is in the soul. If we take the reality as felt, it can only be in the soul; but, if we consider the reality as something different from the feeling and impenetrable to it, it appears that this very reality as subject (and it is only a dialectical subject) receives the feeling, and, hence, the soul. It was this fact that induced Aristotle to say that the soul was an act of the body, as if the body were the subject of this act [see above, under § 124].

"In the same way is cleared up the great difficulty in which philosophers, especially modern ones, have involved themselves in order to discover the communication between the soul, which they considered as internal and having in it all feeling, and the external world, which they considered as a reality existing in itself and not felt. They did not observe that the non-felt external world, taken by itself, as outside the feeling, was a pure abstraction, and that the question must refer, not to this abstract entity, but to the true and real world. They did not observe that the true and real world, although, indeed, independent in its reality, which is foreign and refractory to the act of feeling, nevertheless exists nowhere but in the felt itself, as a content in a containing form, and that it is only because it is thus contained that we perceive it, as a refractory and opposing element, cognizing it thus and not otherwise. It is of this world contained in feeling that we have spoken; of no other could we speak, to no other even refer. . . .

"It is to be observed that the space with which the

* Cf. St. Thomas, Sum. Theol., i, q. 52, art. I : "Anima enim est in cor. pore ut continens et non ut contenta.'