animating principle clothes its felt terms appears as double; whence we have distinguished it as, on the one hand, internal and subjective, in which form it has relation to feelings, on the other as external and objective, in which form it has relation to reality considered in itself, and constitutes the external world. Moreover, this second space is always measured or measurable, whereas the first is in itself immeasurable, and receives measure only from the relation of identity which it has to the other. We have not, moreover, by nature, a feeling of measured space (and from measure it receives its externality to our body and that absolute mode in which it is considered, and which springs from the concept of reality considered solely in itself, as extraneous to the felt); but we acquire the feeling and the concept of measured space from sensible experience and from motion, as we have shown in the Ideology [§§ 872-873]. When, therefore, we clothe one of our own terms of feeling with external and measured space, then (1) We make use of a natural instinct, which induces us to clothe with extension all that we feel, because the principle of space is our generic nature. (2) The space which we thus employ, in so far as it is external, is acquired. (3) What guides us in applying this external measure of space to terms of feeling is habit and the similarity of cases. We learn from experience that such or such measure of external space corresponds to such or such term of feeling" (Theosophy, vol. iii. §§ 1449-1453). Connection of soul and body. The incompre. hensibility of this connection does not give us the 128. But here naturally arises the question: How can an extended sensum be presented to the soul, which is a simple principle? Before answering this question, we must observe that the two clauses which form the terms of the proposition, viz., that the soul is a simple principle, and that it has, as the term of its feeling, an extended, right to The problem of the connection between mind and body has occupied the attention of thinkers from the days of Demokritos, and perhaps earlier, to our own. A list of the chief opinions entertained on the subject before Aristotle's time will be found in that philosopher's work On the Soul, Book i. Perhaps the most considerable attempt made in ancient times to clear up the matter was that of Plotinus (Enn., i. 8; iv. 8, etc.). In modern times, the subject, though not dropped, has come to be included, along with the questions of free will, the origin of evil, and some others, in the list of insoluble problems, which only persons capable of attempting the quadrature of the circle will waste time on. Nevertheless, even those who most deprecate all attempts to fathom the nature of mind are obliged to admit that it is "one substance with two sets of properties, two sides, the physical and the mental-a double-faced unity," and that "the same being is, by alternate fits, object and subject, under extended and under unextended consciousness" (Alex. Bain, Body and Mind, pp. 138, 196). "As soon," says Rosmini, "as it is known that the soul is not extended, and that it is not a mathematical point, there is no difficulty in conceiving that it does not occupy any place, or have one position rather than another. Hence, in the different parts of the body, we may observe the traces of its action, the various effects of its operation; but itself we find in no part, either great or small, either in the whole body or in any point of it. The reason of this is, that its mode of being bears no comparison, proportion, or similitude to that of anything that is matter or a property of matter. It has with matter a relation of doubt the action, of passion . . . and, strictly speaking, a relation of feeling and nothing more (Anthropology, § 103; cf. New Essay, vol. ii. §§ 721, 988 sq.). At present, the philosophy or science of unextended existence is so little developed, and, indeed, so little considered, that such doctrines as the above seem to hang in the air and make no impression. So much do we require space in order fully to grasp the nature of an idea or principle, that we are inclined to believe the truth of such idea or principle to depend upon space. We are never entirely sure of the truth of any intellectual entity. until, in imagination at least, we have projected it, in some form or another, upon space and made a figurate concept of it, and we are, therefore, always somewhat sceptical and a little contemptuous in regard to entities which, like the soul, refuse to be, in any way, so projected. But the soul has to be accepted as a fact, and part of that fact is its non-extension, coupled with a relation of energy to the extended. Porphyry, who lived in an age when the science of the unextended was not in such a backward state as it is now, wrote: "Things essentially incorporeal are not locally present in things corporeal they are present in them by an act of volition, tending toward them in the way wherein it is their nature to tend. Though not present in them locally, they are present in them by relation." The sen tient principle feels its own body with a passivity mingled with much activity. 129. Let us now take up the question of how the term of the unextended soul can be extended, and, leaving space out of view for the present, let us consider only bodies. It is plain that the fact to be explained is still twofold, inasmuch as we feel two kinds of bodies widely distinct from * “Τὰ καθ ̓ ἑαυτὰ ἀσώματα, οὐ τοπικῶς παρόντα τοῖς σώμασι, πάρεστιν αὐτοῖς ὅταν βούληται, πρὸς αὐτὰ ῥέψαντα ᾖ καὶ πέφυκε ῥέπειν. ἀλλὰ τοπικῶς αὐτοῖς οὐ παρόντα, Tĥ оXéσEι TάρEσTI abтoîs" (Sententiæ, iii.; cf. iv-vii.). each other. In the first place, we feel the body which we call our own and which accompanies the soul into whatever portion of space it transports itself; in the second, we feel bodies different from our own, and feel them, too, as foreign to us: we feel them because they abruptly modify our own bodies, which alone are continually felt. If, then, we could explain how the soul continually feels its own body, we should have no difficulty in explaining how it feels the external bodies which modify this same body of its own. Indeed, we must observe how the sensitive principle feels its own body. It feels it, not through simple passivity, but through a passivity mixed with a great deal of action. This is clear from the fact that feeling is not only an act of the sentient principle and a continuous act in respect to its own body, but is, moreover, an act so potent, that by means of it the sentient principle—that is, the soul-continually modifies and disposes its own body, and produces many movements and changes in it. Meanwhile, the body, as something inert, submits to this action of the sentient principle, in which consists the intimate union of said principle with the body. tient prinWhen we admit this, we can easily understand a foreign how, if there takes place in a body, under the the body control of the soul, a change independent of that its power soul, and even opposed to its continuous action, comes a it should feel a resistance, a violence; in other words, a foreign body. The sen ciple feels body, if in subject to there change independent of and opposed to it. There would be no difficulty in understanding how the soul should feel external bodies, if we could under stand how, being a simple principle, it can have an ex tended term. 130. From this fact we may deduce an ontological principle, which is, that a sentient principle, besides its own spontaneous feeling, also feels and receives into itself, without losing any of its own simplicity, a foreign force opposed to its instinctive and spontaneous action, and even aids it. When we have explained how the soul feels within itself something foreign to it-that is to say, an activity which resists or even stimulates its own-then there is no difficulty in explaining the secondary qualities of external bodies, colours, tastes, odours, etc. Since all these belong to the soul's own body, as the term of its feeling, the only difficulty remaining is that of the extension of bodies; that is, the question which we first proposed: How can the soul, being a simple principle, have extension as its term? All philosophers are agreed that the substance of the soul, however we may conceive it, must be simple and unchangeable, a something that remains identical in the midst of all change (see Herbert Spencer, Psychology, vol. i. pt. ii. cap. i. § 59). Even those who consider the soul to be merely, as Spencer puts it, "a circumscribed aggregate of activities," see that "the cohesion of these activities, one with another, throughout the aggregate, compels the postulation of a something of which they are the activities" (ut sup., § 63). In other words, Spencer admits Rosmini's principle of substance or cause, as essential to the conception of activity. |