"(4) Much less does it perceive the parts of the body separated from the whole; it perceives the whole in its perfect simplicity and harmonic unity.

"(5) It perceives nothing extra-subjective, such as forms, sizes, limits.

"(6) Of the perception, such as it is at first, we have consciousness, because consciousness springs from reflection upon what goes on within us, and this perception is anterior to all reflection" (Psychology, vol. i. § 267).

How the intellective and sensitive principles

are one.

142.

How the intellective and sensitive principles can be one it will be impossible to conceive, so long as we set out by gratuitously assuming that they are originally distinct, and then, going on to suppose that the sensitive principle, indivisible from its term, is given to the intellective principle to perceive, finally ask, What will then happen? We must reply that the intellective principle will never be able to perceive the sensitive, except by uniting itself intimately with it, that is, perceiving all it feels, since the very nature of the sensitive principle is wholly due to what it feels. Thus the two principles become one, without destroying each other's activity. Two principles, indeed, cannot be terms of each other, unless the one, that is, the perceiving term, acquire the activity of the perceived; for perception is a physical nexus, and one activity cannot have a physical nexus with another that is a principle, without uniting to itself that activity and that principle. Indeed, a term is separated from its principle solely by difference of nature, that is, because the term is extended and

the principle simple-because the term is object and the principle subject; but, if the nature of the two is the same, and both are subjective principles, the only conceivable way in which physical union could take place between them would be that the percipient principle should receive and appropriate the activity of the sentient principle perceived by it. It does not follow from this that the two activities are confounded in a third, but only that, though remaining distinct, they acquire a single principle, which is their common starting-point. And yet this common starting-point does not prevent the one from being subordinate to the other.

143.

death?

If the sensitive activity be separated from the What is intellective percipient principle, as happens when its term, the body, is disorganized and leaves its sensitive principle without the organized term which is proper to it, it vanishes, and the individual dies.

In answer to the old and momentous question, What is death? Rosmini replies thus: "Common sense replies. that death consists in the separation of the soul from the body, and the reply is most just; but in what does this separation consist? Having seen wherein the union of the soul with the body consists, we are able likewise to understand their disunion. Knowing the knot which forms human life, we know how it is untied and how life ceases. The knot of the intellective soul with the body was shown by us to consist in a natural and immanent

intellective perception of the fundamental feeling, and, hence, of the body. When this primitive perception of the fundamental feeling ceases, the human soul is loosed from the body, the human body is dead, the human being is dissolved" (Psychology, vol. i. § 670). Of course, the dissolution of the body, that is, of the sensible term of the soul, does not involve the dissolution of the soul itself. Besides the body, the sentient soul has another and higher term, viz., universal being, which, from its very nature, cannot separate itself from anything to which it has once been attached as form. Hence the sentient subject, which has once had the intuition of being, once risen to intelligence, can never lose it. "By this progress, the sentient principle acquired a new term to its activity, a term superior to, and independent of, the body, a term which essentially is, which is ideality itself. But the nature of any active principle is determined by the nature of its term. Hence the sensitive principle, by acquiring this new term, changed its nature and put on one infinitely more noble, attained a perfect and divine form. . . . It is an ontological law that every being, through that virtue whereby it is, tends to preserve and perfect itself, and, therefore, no being has any virtue directed to its self-destruction. . . . . . . If, therefore, no being, no nature, destroys itself, all destruction of beings comes from without, from some foreign activity. Again, every complete being is a simple principle, having a natural and immanent term. If the principle has its term, it is; if its term is taken from it, it ceases, because the natural and immanent term is the condition of the first act, whereby, according to the known law, the principle is. This principle, deprived of all its terms, remains a mere abstraction, a mere capacity, a being similar to the first matter [porn λn] of the ancients, which was supposed to be void of all form. . . . The destruction of a contingent being, therefore, takes place only through the destruction. of the term in which its first act terminates. Now, what

* Porphyry says, " Ψυχὴ καταδεῖται πρὸς τὸ σῶμα τῇ ἐπιστροφῇ τῇ πρὸς τὰ πάθη τὰ ἀπ' αὐτοῦ· καὶ λύεται δὲ πάλιν διὰ τῆς ἀπ' αὐτοῦ ἀπαθείας” (Sentent., vii.).

is the term of the being man? We have seen that he has two terms, the body and universal being. . . . The body of man, the one of these terms, is a complex of elements, organized in the most perfect specific manner, and thus individuated. Now, the forces of nature may dissolve this organization, and thereby destroy the animal feeling that is proper to man. But on universal being all the forces of nature exert themselves in vain, since it is impassible, immutable, eternal, and not subject to the activity of any (limited) being. Hence, that virtue whereby man intuites. universal being cannot perish. But this virtue, this first act, is the intellective soul, which, therefore, cannot cease to exist in its own proper individuality. . . . The intellective soul of man, therefore, originally sprang from the womb of the sensitive soul and was a virtue of it; but this virtue became the principal act and acquired immortality, as soon as it rose to universal being, because this is altogether imperishable, unmodifiable, and eternal" (Psychology, vol. i. §§ 676-680).

144.

office of

logy, to

and

the soul.

Psychology, after thus treating of the essence Second of the soul and the constitution of man, passes Psychoon to speak of the career and development of deduce this essence itself, which distributes its activity classify the among the various powers and operations which faculties of it displays. Coming to this subject, it proceeds to perform two operations, the one analytic and the other synthetic. In the former, it deduces the faculties of the soul from its essence, and distinguishes them, first from that essence, and then from each other, following them carefully into all their ramifications, which, like the branches of a tree, become more numerous the further they are from the stem; after which, it enumerates and

defines them systematically. In the latter, it codifies the laws or constant modes of operation of said faculties.

“We have seen that all the powers of the animal, all its activities, proceed from a first act of the sentient principle, in which that principle co-operates in producing the fundamental feeling. If, now, we apply a similar reflection to the intelligent principle, we shall find that all its powers, all the activities of man, in so far as he is a being endowed with intelligence, have their source in that first act, wherein the human spirit intuites being, and thus, along with and through being, co-operates in positing his own intelligence.

"Indeed, in regard to the order of mental operations, an accurate analysis of our thoughts brings us to this result, that any thought or mental operation, whereby we acquire a new cognition, is always reducible to the determination and limitation of a cognition previously possessed, to a learning explicitly of what was before known implicitly; so that an implicit cognition, from which all other cognitions evolve themselves as from a germ, necessarily precedes these. All other cognitions are but a limitation of this first one, a continuation, a greater actuation, of it. The spirit, by the same activity whereby it intuites universal being, likewise intuites every particular being, because everything is already contained in universal being. Nothing further is required than that this being should show itself more and more to him who looks at it. Thus, he who goes to the theatre sees with the same act with which he looks at the stage all that appears on the stage. The scene on which everything appears to our spirit is universal being, into which we naturally and immovably gaze. Our eye, therefore, is always in tension, always strained to see what appears on the scene; it cannot close, it cannot wink. In this way, by that same act whereby the spirit intuites universal being, is explained every intellective activity of the mind" (Anthropology, §§ 508, 509).

"The human spirit naturally intuites ideal being.