i

ANDRÉ MUNIER
Professor at the Major Seminary of Nancy

A MANUAL
OF
PHILOSOPHY
FIRST VOLUME

I. Cosmology
II. Philosophical Psychology

Translated by

THOMAS W. CONNOLLY, C.M., Ph.D.

DESCLEE COMPANY
NEW YORK — TOURNAI — PARIS — ROME
1964

NIHIL OBSTAT
Francis J. Breidenbach, Ph. D.

Censor Deputatus

IMPRIMATUR
Francis Cardinal Spellman
ARCHBISHOP OF NEW YORK

October 16, 1963

The nihil obstat and imprimatur arc official declarrtions that a book
or pamphlet is free of doctrinal or moral error. No implication is
contained theiren that those who have granted the nihil obstat and
imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions or statements expressed.
Library of Compress Catalog Card Number : 64-12767

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

*
Print
in Btlcium

TABLE OF CONTENTS
A LETTER - PREFACE.............................................................................. XIII
translator’s PREFACE.................................................................... XXIII

I.

COSMOLOGY

INTRODUCTION....................................................................................

3

BOOK ONE

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER
Chapter I.

THE ATTRIBUTES OF BODIES

First Question :

extension

A. The Notion of Extension................................... 11
B. Reality............................................................................ 13
C. Continuity.................................................................. 16
D. Potential Multiplicity............................................. 19
E. Indefinite Divisibility................................................... 20
F. Necessary Limitation................................................... 23
The Essence of Extension......................................... 25
Second Question :
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.
H.

corporeal quality

The Notion of Corporeal Quality............................... 26
Reality............................................................................ 28
Heterogeneity............................................................. 36
Simplicity....................................................................... 43
Intensity....................................................................... 45
Union with Extension.............................................. 49
Distinction between Quality and Extension . . 50
The Measure of Qualities.............................................. 51
Definition of Corporeal Quality............................... 52

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Third Question : change
A. The Notion of Change.............................................. 53
B. Reality : Zeno............................................................. 56
Substantial Change.................................... 50
Objections................................................... 56
C. Continuity.................................................................. 70
D. Qualitative and Simple Character............................... 73
E. “ Actus entis in potentia proutin potentia
. .
75
F. Reality of Potency........................................................ 79
G. The Being Moved and the Moving Being Are
Composites of Potency and Act.......................... 80
The Problems Posed................................................... 81
Chapter II. NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE
EXISTENCE OF BODIES
Fourth Question : corporeal substance
A. The Notion of Substance.............................................. 82
B. The Reality of Substance......................................... 86
C. Geometric and Atomistic Mechanism .... 89
Evaluation............................................................. 93
D. Dynamism : Leibniz, Bergson.................................... 96
Evaluation............................................................. 99
E. Hylomorphism : Matter and Form.........................102
Proofs......................................................................103
F. Properties of Matter and Form.............................. 112
G. The Role of Matter and Form :
The Problem of Individuation............................. 114
H. pThe Oneness of the Substantial Form .... 121

Fifth Question :

the causes of bodies

A. The Notion of Cause..................................................125
B. The Existence of Material Causes............................. 128

TABLE OF CONTENTS

VII

C. The Intrinsic Causes of Bodies................................... 131
D. The Extrinsic Causes of Bodies..............................134
The Problem which Remains................................... 137
BOOK TWO

LIVING THINGS : ORGANIC LIFE
Sixth Question : the nature of a living thing
A. The Notion of Life....................................................... 141
B. Immanence, the Proper Characteristic of Life . . 146
C. The Irreducibility of Life to Matter.........................150
D. Soul, the Substantial Form of a Living Thing . 155
E. Biological Finality.......................................................158

Seventh Question : the origin of a living thing
A. The Fact : Neither Spontaneous Generation nor
Evolution.................................................................164
B. The Possibility of One or the Other :
The Scientific Question........................................ 166
C. The Philosophical Question........................................ 168
book three

THE WORLD
Eight Question : characteristics of the world
A. The Notion of the World........................................175
B. The World as Space.................................................. 179
C. The World as Time.................................................. 186
The World as History.................................................. 190
D. The Universe : Its Unity............................................. 194
E. The World : Its Perfection and Contingency . . 196
Ninth Question, the cause of the world
A. The Notion of Creation : Proofs and Objections .
B. The Problem of the Eternity of the World :
Can the Eternity of the World Be Proven? . .

201

205

VIII

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Can a Beginning of the World Be Proven
Metaphysically?............................................. 210
Scientifically?
................................................. 214
BOOK FOUR

NATURE
Tenth
A.
B.
C.

Question : characteristics of nature
The Notion of Nature.................................................. 223
Determinism in Nature............................................ 225
The Contingency of Nature’s Laws :
Hypothetical Necessity, Indeterminism . . . 226
D. Finalism Is the Order of Nature............................. 234
E. Chance : Existence, Nature, Explanation . . . 238
F. Biological Evolution : the Fact, the Explanation . 244

Eleventh Question : the cause of nature
A. The Notion of Liberty.............................................252
B. The Free Act of the Creator, as Cause of Nature. 253
C. The Beauty of the World....................................... 256
D. The End of the World............................................ 258
APPENDIX

I.

The Marxist World:
A. Dialectical Method........................................269
B. Materialistic Doctrine................................... 270
C. Matter............................................................ 272
D. Marxist Conception ofLife.......................... 274
E. Discussion.......................................................276

II. The Existentialist World:
A. Phenomenological Method..............................279
B. Being-in-Itself................................................. 280
C. The World...................................................... 282
D. Observations................................................. 286

IX

TABLE OF CONTENTS

H.

PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY

INTRODUCTION........................................................................................ 295

BOOK ONE

THE NATURE OF MAN
Chapter I.

PSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENA

First Question :

the proper characteristics of psy­

chological PHENOMENA

A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.

The Problem and the Method...................................305
Psychological Phenomena Are Movements . . . 308
They Are Qualitative (materialistic position) . . 312
They Are Linked to Corporeal Movements . . . 317
They Are Immanent................................................. 320
Yet They Are Correlative to Objects........................ 322

Second Question :

psychological phenomena

differ

AMONG THEMSELVES

A. The Problem; Bergson.............................................325
B. Individual Difference ; the Time of Consciousness 32g
C. Specific Difference : “ Actus specificantur per
objecta.”........................................................... 330
D. Knowing and Loving............................................. -333
The Object of Knowing................................... 33G
The Object of Acting............................................ 34o
The Object of Enjoying........................................344
The Vital Unity of These Distinct Acts . . . 343
E. Sensing and Thinking :
Their Actual Distinction.............................. e 3^0
The Sensible........................................................357

TABLE OF CONTENTS

X

The Intelligible :
Adequately (Being).........................................361
Properly Human (the Universal Seen in the
Sensible)........................................................... 365
F. Matter and Spirit in Man......................................... 374

Chapter II.
POWERS

ACTUATION OF THE OPERATIVE

Third Question :

how

the

ego

causes

its

own

BECOMING

A. The Problem and Its Diverse Solutions . . . . 379
B. The Ego Is Passive Even in Its Activity; " tabula
rasa ”...................................................................... 383
C. Actuation in Knowledge :
The Impressed Species :
Notion ; Necessary Existence..........................389
The Intelligible Species :
The Search for Its Cause...............................391
Personal Agent Intellect.................................. 396
The Expressed Species :
Notion ; Necessity except in Sensation . . 401
D. Actuation in Desire or Appetite :
The Sensory Appetite.............................................405
The Rational Appetite or Will : Object and
Operation........................................................ 409
Conditions of Liberty.............................................412
E. Distinctions between Operative Powers, Real but
Relative................................................................ 417
Chapter III. SUBSTANTIAL UNITY OF MAN
Fourth Question : what man is
A. The Problem of the Substance of the Ego :
Phenomenalism ........................................... 421
Criticism.................................................................424
Consciousness............................................................427

TABLE OF CONTENTS

XI

The Substance of Man Is a Nature, a Person . . 429
This Substance Is a Composite of Matter and
Intellectual Soul ; Human Hylomorphism . . 434
D. The Soul Is the Cause of Corporeal Organization;
Scot us..................................................................... 439
E. The Spirituality of the Human Soul........................ 444
F. The Human Soul Is a True Substantial Form;
the Role It Plays : Its Simplicity, Oneness,
Individuality, and Its Presence in Relation to
Its Body and Other Bodies...................................447

B.
C.

BOOK TWO

THE ORIGIN OF MAN
Fifth Question : the cause of man
A. Two Problems: the Individual, the Species;
Scientific Insights................................................. 457
B. The Causes of Man as an Individual........................ 460
C. The Cause of the Soul :
Not Preexistence................................................. 462
Nor Transmission by Parents............................. 464
Created by God ; Moment of Creation .... 465
D. Evolution, as Cause of Human Species?
. . . 468
BOOK THREE

THE DESTINY OF MAN
Sixth Question : man’s final end
A. The Problem : Consciousness and Metaphysics . 479
B. Personal Possession................................................. 483
of God Known and Loved.................................. 484
of Man’s Own Unity Freely Realized .... 485
C. Immortality Is Demanded to Give a Meaning
to Death................................................................ 490
A Natural Property of the Soul............................. 496

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

D. Everlasting Life Is Man’s by a Natural Exigency 496
E. Resurrection of the Body Is Indispensable . . . 503
Its Cause? Resurrected Man? The Individu­
ality of Body?................................................. 505
appendix: two atheistic humanisms

I. Marxism:
A. Marxian Psychology................................................. 515
B. Alienated Man........................................................... 516
C. Liberated Man : the Three Stages of His Liber­
ation ..................................................................... 523
D. Discussion.................................................................527
II. The Existentialism of Sartre :
A. NothingnessHaunts Being......................................... 534
B. Being-for-Itself : Its Value, Its Time, Its Knowl­
edge
..................................................................... 537
C. Being-for-Others :the Look,the Body, Society . 542
D. Having, Doing andBeing : Liberty, Its Funda­
mental Project...................................................... 546
E. Summary of Sartre’sHumanism............................... 553
F. Observations................................................................ 554
BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................................................................... 56&

A LETTER - PREFACE

Dear Father Munier :
After finishing the reading of your manual of philosophy
I cannot help but be filled with feelings of regret and envy.
Of regret, when I think of the time — years ago — when
I preceded you in the chair of philosophy at the Diocesan
Seminary of Nancy at Bosservillc. If I only had your manual
then ! But no, in the manuals which were available to a novice
philosopher at the time, I straggled with formulas, which were
either excessively simple, or practially unintelligible to the
student. It seems to me that if your forthright and profound
expositions were at hand, I could have much more easily opened
up the minds of my pupils to the mysteries of philosophy.
Of envy — yes, in retrospect I envy your pupils for having
such a master to give them his thoughts in these pages, wherein
clarity and profundity go together. Fortunate pupils ! Do they
know all they owe you for an intellectual formation which will
bring so much benefit to their theological knowledge? I am
not sure that they do ; but my duty is to tell them.
Shall I speak first of the doctrine which is at the base of
your teaching? It gives one an impression of security. Here is
an authentic Thomism, that is to say, a traditional Thomism,
but re-thought in relation to modem philosophy. It abandons
nothing of its essential positions, but illumines them with the
advance of science and contemporary thought. It is a Thomism
which is definitely not a mere accomodation to the taste of the
times, as are some “ concordist ” types of neo-Thomism, yet it
makes no pleas for the old or the outmoded. The secret of this
security is that you have deliberately penetrated the Thomist
philosophy “ from within ” instead of expounding it " from
outside, ” as a mere linking of already fashioned formulas.
We find ourselves before a system of thought, master of itself,
which dominates the different branches of philosophy.

XIV

A LETTER - PREFACE

Everything is considered through its inner nature. It is properly
speaking a philosophy wherein the light of Thomistic principles
is cast progressively on all the problems treated.
I deliberately say : progressively. For from cosmology
to theodicy and ontology, there is a definite march of thought,
wherein from truths already acquired each step leads to a new
truth. Must we speak of a philosophical synthesis? Yes, if
by it we mean that, through a detailed and correct analysis,
you arrive at a well-balanced, rational construction which
satisfies the mind. This is certainly your aim. For you it is
not enough simply to gather together the principle Thomistic
theses in an artificial whole. You are concerned with unity,
and you wish to show there is a continuity of thought
from one treatise to another. The same principles are found
throughout. Solutions of problems are mentioned, compared
with each other, coordinated, and finally composed into an
organic whole.
This impression of security and this effort at unity come
principally from your method. It seems to me that it is inspired
by three major concerns.
Foreseeing the difficulties which young minds experience
with abstract truths, you take care to go from the known to the
unknown. You begin with immediate experience, with the data
of common sense, with elementary observations which every
man makes in the course of daily life. Then you make precise
statements in the light of scientific results furnished us today.
Nothing is better suited to accustom the modern mind, eager
for facts and concrete experience, to elevate itself little by
little to more subtle considerations. It is thus that, transcending
the sensible world, you arrive at the intellectual.
The progress of pure thought must take into consideration
the often divergent paths which the philosophers of all times
have taken. That is why you follow patiently, one by one, the
avenues which they have opened before you, but if they lead
to an impasse, you close them. You do not study other philo­
sophies for themselves, as a historian; you show the point
at which they insert themselves; you discuss them briefly with

A LETTER - PREFACE

XV

firmness and accuracy; and you bring the mind back to the
exact starting point from which it must begin its journey to
avoid the pitfalls of bias. This is not to say you discount the
good and the new which the human mind has been able to
produce since the time of St. Thomas. Certainly not 1 On the
contrary, you are only too happy to underline whatever is
valuable in the other different philosophies. In other words,
you try to incorporate into the -philosophia perennis all that has
enriched thought throughout the course of time.
Finally, your method is characterized by that sense of
analysis, which, after having posed a problem, systematically
studies it in all its aspects, with a “ professional conscience. ”
Certain people may find the latter too meticulous, but its
demands cannot be ignored if you are to remain faithful to the
exigencies of thought. Analysis does not mean here a dispersion
of the mind in all possible directions. There is no fecund analysis,
except that which is directed toward synthesis. The whole art
of the scientist and of the philosopher is to conduct his research
in such a way that an objective study of the facts is broken
down into the elements of a coherent synthesis. One senses
at each moment that this effort is the driving force behind your
demonstrations. The theses with which you begin your chapters
are not a priori scaffoldings, which must be explained in a
deductive manner. They are rather an anticipatory résumé,
which serve as a guide in the rational search for a solution to
the stated problem.

This research may seem dry to superficial minds. Yet
whatever dryness is there, it is tempered by the elegant sobriety
of your style. Without wishing to involve myself in a literary
criticism, permit me to compliment you on your unequivocal
style. Exactness of form, preciseness of expression, clarity of
exposition, firmness of development; here are qualities to which
we cannot be insensible. Whether we will or no, we must
follow you. And we do follow you. Scarcely have we interiorly
formulated an objection, when, seeming to sense it, you surprise
us by foreseeing our criticism and answering it with an
imperturbable serenity. How have you managed, in such
N.Y. 17. — 2

XVI

A LETTER - PREFACE

difficult matters, to give the impression of ease with which you
move among these thorny problems? At certain times you
address your reader directly, and if I dare say so, even take
his part in order to convince him. A tiny sally of humor here
or there, a picturesque detail, relax the mind. These are brief
respites in the middle of a rough climb. This gives your book
a human touch, which from the first evokes the good will of
the reader.
Shall I point out the views in your work which seem to me
most felicitous? That would perhaps be too long a task.
However, here are some reflections which arose in the course
of my reading.
1. cosmology reveals an author whose philosophical
formation is paralleled by a scientific one. We feel that you
are familiar with the laboratory, and through certain precise
statements in biology, we recognize the disciple of Professor
Cuénot. This has enabled you to leap over certain objections
which have been put out of circulation by the progress of science.
It has also permitted you to show how hylomorphism, far from
being opposed to scientific data, can be included in the ideas
to which a man of science is able to subscribe without disavowing
his scientific position.
By pointing up the originality of life, you have proven the
irreducibility of life to matter in a positive manner, for which
1 congratulate you. As you happily stated : " A living thing
is an individual endowed with immanent finality. That which
distinguishes it from the non-living is neither individuality
nor a finality in general, but the immanence of that finality,
which directs its action to the transformation of the individual. ”
I expected a lengthier development on the problem of
evolution, but undoubtedly it seemed to you that here was a case
of a scientific hypothesis, whose value was to be verified rather
by the scientist than by the philosopher, who had nothing to
criticize, if the work of Providence linking cause to effect was
safeguarded. You have, however, taken up the question of the
origin of man in philosophical psychology. Your very objective
analysis of transformism leads you to affirm : “ The only sufficient

A LETTER - PREFACE

XVII

cause of such an evolution can be God alone, the free author
of nature and the creator of the human soul. ”
2. You begin philosophical psychology, as one
would expect, by the study of psychological phenomena. Your
development supposes a knowledge of the facts themselves as
they are presented by scientific or experimental psychology.
Thus, you are no longer concerned with describing facts, but
with explaining them. You analyze psychological becoming
with virtuosity; and in encountering Bergson, you concede to
him what is valuable in his acute observations on the flow of
duration. Yet in doing this, you insist on the proper character
of psychological phenomena, as to their individual and specific
distinction in the unity of the " ego. ” The unity of the “ ego ”
is not therefore an absolute unity; it is a unity in the movement
of phenomena, the unity of their succession, their continuity
and their direction.
I assure you that I was especially interested in your
explanation of the process of knowledge in which you unravel
this mysterious mechanism in the clearest manner possible,
from the species impressa — to use the scholastic terminology —
through the intervention of the agent intellect, to the species
expressa, or idea.
As to the destiny of man, you have evidenced a healthy
optimism, which gives confidence to the man who recognizes
his dignity as a person en route to his final end, which is union
with God by a perfect affective and contemplative knowledge.
The way is open to what Revelation will offer as a means of
leading man to happiness in the intuitive vision of God. This
hope is much more comforting than the philosophy of Sartre,
which drives man to assert the absurdity of his own existence,
the impossibility of freely justifying his liberty, and the
impossibility of reaching God.

3. Undoubtedly, the part of this manual which will be most
appreciated by professors of philosophy will be theodicy,
or Natural Theology. It is developed with perfect clarity,
according to a classic plan. We can only admire the rigor
with which the arguments are presented, a rigor which even

XVIII

A LETTER - PREFACE

risks being a bit stifling for beginners in philosophy, pressed as
they are on every side by the logic of your reasoning. Through
your analysis of the transcendental value of causality, you have
refuted, one by one, with unflagging patience, all possible
objections against the knowability of God. As for the “ five
ways ” which, according to the Thomistic dialectic, lead to God,
they are carefully “ husked ” so that they are exactly understood
before being justified. You were right to insist on human values
as the starting point for a rational justification of the existence
of God, for these values are more than ever the order of the
day, and modem minds grasp them spontaneously. The danger
lies in building a sentimental argument on this starting point.
You have, however, avoided this by giving your demonstrations
a form precise enough to remove the confusing characteristics
over which these kinds of proof often stumble.
The dispassionate yet very clear expositions which you have
made on the controversies in which theologians have involved
themselves on many questions (divine concursus, predestination,
the relation between human liberty and divine knowledge),
will be useful to future theologians as a help in approaching
discussions wherein they would risk being led astray. The
light thus thrown on the field of moral science and theology
gives your theodicy a savor of the practical. One has the
feeling that such a sure, well balanced doctrine, can have excellent
results in a man’s spiritual life.

You have courageously attacked the problems of the
where the minds of philosophers
so often founder. Beginning with the fundamental problem,
you have sidestepped skepticism and idealism by stating as a
fact that there is in us a power of intuition capable of grasping
the very being of things. Then you endeavor to discover the
different kinds of intuition realized in us, by noting the decisive
value of the principal modes of knowledge placed at our disposal.
This laborious inquiry is directed with care. It is not lost in
details, once the foundations of knowledge are laid. We would
have liked a little more development on the first principles
of knowledge and induction, but undoubtedly you decided that

4.

critique of knowledge,

A LETTER - PREFACE

XIX

the notions oí identity, unity and causality are better treated
in ontology, and that the study of induction belongs rather
to the methodology of the sciences.
5. Certain people will be astonished that your ontology
is presented at the end of the manual. You have justified
yourself in explaining why. Reflecting on it I can only say
that your decision is a God-send. In any case, the students
will be happy about it. Placed at the beginning of metaphysics,
ontology disheartens them. Placed at the end, they will
understand the meaning and the import of it. Having, I dare
say, " manipulated ” the ideas of being, unity, causality and
finality in regard to real and concrete beings all along their
philosophical formation, they will be ready to understand them
in that degree of abstraction which ontology demands. They
will even take a liking to this study, which will come to them
as a synthesis, wherein the applications drawn from psychology,
cosmology and natural theology will have their rational
justification. Having climbed the principal stages of the
hierarchy of being, one can succeed, as you say, “ in interesting
young minds in metaphysical notions and principles, and in
making students understand them, precisely because of their
role in unraveling the problems of the world, man and God. ”
We are not saying that your manual is perfect. Can a
manual be perfect? Objections will be made and undoubtedly
you will be able to answer them.
a. It may be said for example : “ This manual is too long,
too complicated for neophytes in philosophy. ” And with their
expressive mimicry, and with an apprehensive look, the students
will begin to weigh the book in their hands. There are two
possible conceptions of a manual : the manual which the professor
summarizes, and the manual which the professor develops.
You have chosen the former. That is your right. You have
seen that in attempting to summarize arguments or discussions,
one runs the risk of mutilating them and of taking away from
them all scientific precision. Passing out the truth in tablet
form is most often adulterating it. It is my opinion that you
have done a great service to students whose written notes are

XX

A LETTER - PREFACE

generally confusing because of their inexactitude, and a greater
service to professors to whom you offer serious matter for
reflection.

b. Perhaps certain people will object : " Some chapters
are arduous and too difficult for students. ’’ I agree that
philosophy is difficult. And what is anyone able to do about
that? A philosophical work cannot be read like a magazine
or a detective story. It is the function of the professor to help
the student by familiarizing him with philosophical notions.
If the manual is sufficient, of what use is the professor?
c. Others will reproach you with not having written your
manual in Latin which is the language of the Church. Evidently
you have given the matter considerable thought. But your
thirty years of teaching have undoubtedly convinced you, that
philosophy is difficult enough for the average student without
adding the difficulty of Latin. You could have, as many authors
have done, presented the exposition of the proofs in Latin, and
explanations in the vernacular. You have preferred to reserve
the Latin for texts cited from St. Thomas. It was perhaps the
best way to make the nuances of your thought attainable to the
students for whom Latin remains very much a mystery.
However, it would seem commendable for a professor to furnish
the student with a résumé in Latin, or ask him to make one
himself after the explanation in class.

d. But I am coming to a criticism which seems much more
serious to me. I heard of a professor who had a copy of your
course in mimeographed notes, who seemed to think that you
explained Thomism as a closed system, sufficient in itself,
making it difficult to see how it developed, how it was shaped
by previous philosophies, or how it was able to serve as a basis
for further progress. Briefly, your conception of philosophy
appeared to him a little static. A number of philosophers
prefer a more historical conception, in which we see the problems
appear in their proper times, and in which the solutions are
revealed by successive approximations and oppositions. I am
convinced that this historical conception of philosophy, which

A LETTER - PREFACE

XXI

is not to be confounded with a history of philosophical systems,
has a certain advantage in bringing out what St. Thomas
borrowed from the ancients, what was original with him, and
what he left succeeding ages to discover. But is this method
appropriate to a manual? I doubt it. If one has no fixed point
of reference to which to attach oneself, I fear that in following
the movement of history, one drifts with the current not knowing
where one is going.
e. I will not quibble with you over certain details upon
which you have taken a stand, concerning which your readers
will not always have the same certitude. I would have liked
to have seen you give a greater part of your work to the
explanation of certain philosophical tendencies, whose influence
is being felt by modem youth. I am thinking of the personalism
of E. Mounier, or the philosophical thought of Gabriel Marcel.
You might answer me that a manual is not meant to be an
up-to-the-minute book, and one is not able to parade in it all
of the current philosophical “ stars. ” I agree. But since you
have felt it necessary to make a copious analysis of Marxism
and existentialism (or rather Sartreanism), would there not
be a way to allude to other systems of thought which the students
may perhaps have already encountered in life? You will
without doubt answer that you seek to form rather than inform,
and that, facing a choice, you would prefer to give information
largely on what is most important in contemporary thought,
and on what is most lasting and most dangerous in its aggres­
siveness, rather than criticize those systems, which, despite
their numerous deficiencies, are not hostile to Christian
philosophy.
As it is, your manual certainly merits the widest appreciation
by professors and students. I wish it every success. It will
contribute to the solid formation of minds in the traditional
philosophy of the Church. In the name of your future disciples,
I thank you.
Will this preface be like many other prefaces — not read?
Perhaps. But the reader who will have the patience to glance
through it will know that in studying your book he will be

XXII

A LETTER - PREFACE

assured of finding an intellectual enrichment, and an experience
well worth the effort, namely, " the joy of knowing. ”
Dear Father Munier, be assured of my affectionate devotion
in our Lord.

t Louis-Marie de Bazelaire
Archbishop of Chambéry
Chambéry, June 14, 1956

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

Although the merit of philosophical manuals, especially those
in the vernacular, may be highly debatable these days,
nevertheless the translation of Father Munier’s manual of
philosophy was undertaken with the profound conviction that
it might well serve as a model to teachers of contemporary
Thomism in this country. The translator has long felt that
many of our English text books in philosophy present Thomism
as a whole sufficient unto itself without adequate consideration
of its confrontation to and by contemporary philosophy. It is
the particular merit of this manual that it presents Thomistic
principles in a context which shows acute awareness of the
exigencies of contemporary thought. Although this book was
written primarily for seminarians, it is hoped that it will be
found useful in the regular collegiate undergraduate courses in
philosophy as well.
I must acknowledge my debt of gratitude to Dr. Roland
Houde, without whose encouragement I would not have
undertaken this task. For their help and advice in the
preparation of this translation I thank my confreres, Rev.
Thomas V. Cahill, C.M., S.T.D., and Rev. George C. Tolman,
C.M., S.T.D. I am grateful also for the technical assistance of
Miss Jessie Grecnsley and Mrs. Virginia Bogrcn.
T.W.C., C.M.

I

COSMOLOGY

INTRODUCTION
1. Notions. Cosmology is the metaphysical1 study of the
world or of the corporeal universe. This world is first known
empirically. It is then studied methodically by the experimental
sciences. Physics, chemistry, cosmography, astronomy and
geology have for their object the material universe; biology
botany, zoology and paleontology have for their object the
world of living things. Their task is to discover the laws of
phenomena and to explain them by deducing them from spatial
and temporal dimensions (structures and movements); this
process is already very much advanced in regard to matter, but
it has scarcely been broached and is perhaps impossible in regard
to life.
The sciences, however, do not settle all cosmic problems.
Even if we were to suppose that science had exhausted all of
its problems, two problems, both of them philosophical, would
remain. The first would be an epistemological one : what is the
validity of science? At what level does it grasp the real?
Specifically, how is it able to guarantee an agreement between
the things it studies and the fundamental notions which it
implies? What reality is designated by the concept of mass,
that of pressure, that of law? There are other grave critical
problems related to this epistemological one, such as the moral
* This study has as its " material ” object the extended, moving
and sensible world. Its " formal ” object is the world’s manner of reflecting
existence, or how the world is understood as it is brought under the
absolute principles which arc true for all being, in a word, its ultraexperimental or metaphysical character. Thus, cosmology considers
mobile being under its ontological aspect. Its " physical ” object, although
experimental, is considered by an attention, which concerns itself with
an aspect of the world which is completely metaphysical. See Jacques
Maritain, The Philosophy of Nature (New York : Philosophical Library,
1951). pp. 118-156; Désiré Nys, Cosmologie (Louvain : Institut Supérieur
de Philosophic, 1903). Vol. I, pp. 26-40.

4

COSMOLOGY

and aesthetic value of science, its civilizing value and its human
value. The second problem, which is ours, is metaphysical:
what is the world in so far as it is being, and what are the causes
of its being? Science sees only phenomena in the world, and
it has studied only their spatial and temporal determinations.
Cosmology sees in the world a plurality of existences, separated
into specifically distinct essences, and an incessant becoming
linking an existence which disappears to another which begins.
What it is interested in is the existence of the world and its
causes.
This specifically metaphysical interest makes of
cosmology a " science ” 8 specifically metaphysical.
2. Distinct from the experimental sciences, because it
directs its attention towards the existence of material being and
not toward its spatial-temporal dimensions, cosmology is also dis­
tinct from other metaphysical disciplines : front psychology, because
it does not concern itself with a microcosm which forms conscious
realities; from ontology, which sees the world under the aspect
of being in general, whereas cosmology considers the world under
its distinctive characteristics which are strictly corporeal; and
finally, from theodicy, which treats of God as the of its object
study, while this science attains Him only under the aspect of
the First Cause of this corporeal world which is its only object.
Cosmology and psychology taken together constitute the
philosophy of nature.
3. The method of cosmology is the metaphysical method.
It is first of all,as every other method,scientific,seeking that which
is stable in the midst of the transitory characteristics of things, a
process of the mind going from the accidental to the essential.
But it is above all a passage, rationally necessary, from the
experimental (phenomena), to the extra-experimental or intel­
ligible reality, without which this datum would be incom* A science in the sense oí Aristotle and the Scholastics, " Certa rei
notitia per causas " (a certain knowledge oí a thing through its causes),
cosmology is not a science in the common usage of that term, nor is it a
résumé of the sciences of nature, nor even a philosophy of the sciences.
Since the time of Kant and Comte, common usage has seen in the word
science a knowledge of phenomenal laws and not a search for their
ontological causes.

INTRODUCTION

5

prehensible (This datum, on the one hand, exists. On the other
hand, it does not have of itself what is necessary for existence}.
The starting point of such a method, in the facts properlystated and analyzed to this end, is the intellectual understanding
of an aspect of being which manifests a certain insufficiency
for being. It has as its driving force the principle of sufficient
reason : " No being exists which is insufficient for being ” or,
*’ Every being has sufficient reason for being. ” Finally, the
end of the research is an affirmation which bears on the make-up
of the being studied, on its productive cause, on the orientation
of its activity and passivity, in a word, on everything which
assures to the being concerned that sufficient reason of which
it seemed deprived in our initial analysis.8
Thus the analysis of change led Parmenides to state that
becoming was unintelligible; but Aristotle, convinced that
movement had its reasons, came to this conclusion : the mobile
object is constituted in such a way that it is able to be other
than it is; it is therefore composed of matter and form. Thus a
body is defined as being by nature a composed substance;
it is also characterized as caused, as subject to laws.
4. The human importance of cosmology is measured : (1) by
its dignity among the sciences : the scope of its object (the whole
universe), and above all the direction which its attention takes
toward the intimate core of things (their essence), establish it
as the queen of the experimental sciences; (2) by its services:
for the scientist it removes the limits which his own method
imposes upon him, and opens up perspectives beyond science ; 4
for the psychologist it furnishes the frame of reference wherein
human thought can be inserted through the hylomorphic theory,
wherein an intelligent soul finds a place already prepared for it ;
for the theologian it opens a way which leads to God, Creator
and Regulator;8 finally, for the believer who hopes to understand.
» Sec Louis De Raeymaekkr, Philosophy of Being (Saint-Louis :
B. Herder, 1954), pp. 75-78; Charles A. Hart, Thomishc Metaphysics r
An Inquiry into the Acts of Existing (New York : Prentice-Hall, 1958).
♦ Sec J. Marttain, The Philosophy of Nature, pp. 122-123.
•Sec J. Maritain, ibid., pp. 129-130.

6

COSMOLOGY

it formulates an analysis of extension, of place, of natural
laws, etc., with which the mystery of the Eucharist, the reality
and the nature of miracles, etc., have evident relations.

5. Let us divide our study according to the exigencies of
the method of discovery. Going from the simple to the complex,
let us first study individuals which form this world, reserving
a special part for life because of its originality; then let us
examine the two aspects of the universe, which language, the
expression of common experience, distinguishes.

Book One :

Bodies in General or Matter.

Book Two :

Corporeal Living Things or Life.

Book Three :

The World.

Book Four :

Nature.

BOOK ONE

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

N-Y. 17. — 3

The world is formed of bodies. Empirically, a body is an object
possessing volume which we perceive and mark off by reason
of tactile and visual sensations. Scientifically, a body is a
spatial dimension, able to be conceived through relations to
certain other bodies, and indicated through the medium of
instruments which amplify and make precise the import of our
senses. There are other things which science regards as bodies
which are not in accord with the aforementioned description,
such as subatomic particles, the atom itself and light particles.
The philosopher ought to have a notion of body flexible
enough for it to be applied, if necessary, to objects as far removed
from sensation as the proton and the electron. However, it
should be precise enough to permit him to grasp in his study,
without any possible confusion, all of corporeal reality, and it
alone. Now, the language of the scientist, conforming to the
language of the “ average man, ” designates as bodies those
realities which have as their constant attributes extension,
qualitative determination and movement. It is this with which
the scientist is concerned. We must search for that which in
tiself is the reality which possesses these attributes and which
is called a body.
Wc must first analyze these corporeal attributes (Chapter I).
Then only will we be able to define the essence of a body and
determine its cause (Chapter II). This method is imposed on us
by the very nature of our mind. It proceeds by abstraction,
which can attain the essence of a thing only by reflecting on the
multiple aspects furnished us about the object through the
analysis of sensory data. To reach the essence is to know the
intimate core wherein these multiple aspects arc unified.

CHAPTER I

THE ATTRIBUTES OF BODIES

First Question : What is extension or corporeal quantity?
First Thesis :

Corporeal quantity is :
1. essentially continuous ;
2. múltiplo, with a potential' multitude of parts ;
3. essentially divisible into infinity ;
4. finite with real limits.

A. Notion
1. Empirically, extension is a sensory datum common to
all tactile and visual sensations.
2. Scientifically, in Euclidian geometry at least, abstract
space, homogeneous and infinite according to three dimensions,
represents a notion separated from all the determinations in
which common sense is especially interested : it is the stuff
of all lines (one dimension), of all surfaces (two dimensions),
of all solids (three dimensions); it is furthermore the bearer of
all possible movements. Its principal property is divisibility
which gives it its aptitude to be measured, that is, to be related
to one of its parts taken as a unit and expressed by a number. ‘
From this point of view, a body is a section of space limited by
surfaces, limited by lines which, in tum, are limited by points.
• Numerus est multitudo mensurata per unum.
<1- 7. a. 4.

St. Tb., !• pars,

12

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

This notion of quantity develops in two opposing senses.
The sciences of nature, which are interested in discovering the
structures of bodies, use this scientific idea of extension, but
they make it concrete by determining it in a qualitative way.
Thus an electric field is an extension endowed with certain
properties of attraction and repulsion. However, mathematics,
the science of measures in general, through an increasing
abstraction gives the notion of extension a wider sense. Here it
becomes synonymous with the measurable. Thus, space, so
generalized, now becomes a magnitude having n dimensions,
implying n independent variables. Now it so happens that
the physicist uses the language of mathematics and employs
its method when he speaks of the quantity of heat, of
electricity... Let us leave these notions for a while, the one
which mixes quantity with extension, the other which deprives
extension of its corporeal mark, the exteriority of parts. Let us
analyze the notion of extension in its purity.
3. Philosophically, corporeal quantity is that which gives
to bodies parts which are simultaneously external to each other.
It is distinct from temporal duration, whose parts are successive,
and from number, which is a measure whose parts or units coexist
in a whole, but are not distinct by a relationship of exteriority.
Corporeal quantity is conceived, as is duration, under
two forms : continuous, if the parts are not distinct one from
the other by limits which are proper to each one of them, but
held together by a limit common to all of them; discontinuous,
if each of the parts possesses its proper limits. So parts are
either contiguous, if their surface limits touch each other at
some point, or distant, if they do not. Thus for the eye, the
page from a notebook is continuous, and two pages placed
together are contiguous. The parts of a continuum become
contiguous and even distant because of division.1 Analogically,
* Division can be achieved by a real separation (i). or as simply
thought, and in this case it can be done in a completely precise way (2)
or in a more or less indetermined way (3). Examples : I distinguish
the top of this tree from its base (3) ; I think of the right side and the left
side of tills rectangle (2), I mark them oil with a pencil (2) or I separate
them effectively (1).

WHAT IS EXTENSION OR CORPOREAL QUANTITY?

13

undivided numerical unity is said to be continuous, and number
is a total of discontinuous units in relation one to the other.
We must seek which of these three forms is fundamental
in order to define extension in its essence. However, we must
first be sure that what we see in it is a reality and not a simple
concept.
B. The reality of corporeal quantity has not been doubted
by common sense nor by the scientists. It has been doubted
only by the philosophers.

1.

Why have they denied it?

a. Following in the footsteps of Descartes, Berkeley first
denied the objective reality of sensible qualities. Then he
observed that extension is not known to exist unless through
the medium of those qualities : colors, pressures... ; it therefore
seemed logical to him to deny the objective existence of extension,
which Descartes had held although denying sensible qualities.

b. The idealists admit no other reality than thought and
the thinker, under the pretext that all is absolutely thinkable :
extension then is nothing more than the object of thought.
They find another proof in the power which my thought has
of constructing extension at will through arbitrary postulates :
thus human reason is able to renounce the Euclidean postulates
and imagine non-Euclidean geometries at less than three or
more than three dimensions.
c. Kant, with more restraint, hesitates to affirm the
value of sensible knowledge. According to him, space is " the
form ” of every sensation related to the external world of
phenomena, since I am not able to sense anything outside of
me except the extended, the spatial. However, we can not
conclude from this that the world is extended, for if we are
not able to sense in any other fashion, this comes from our
nature as a sentient being, and not from any characteristic
of the world. This “ form ” of space is “ a priori, ” that is,
not formed either by experience or by any real data.

14

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

d. Finally, according to Kant, to affirm the reality of
extension involves an insoluble antinomy, and we are forced
by necessity to admit two contradictory conclusions at the
same time, one in which extension is formed from simple parts
(actually, if it was formed of composed parts, it would suffice
to suppress the composition in order to suppress the parts
themselves), and the other, that extension is formed of parts
which are always composed (actually, the parts of extension
are always divisible). (Cf. E).
2. The examination of these reasons belongs to episte­
mology; it establishes the answer thus :
ad a. Sensible qualities are not purely subjective. On the
contrary, they furnish us with the intuition of an objective
existence and with the intuition of the concrete relations of
succession, simultaneity and, especially, exteriority.
ad b. The principle of the integral immanence of the
object in relation to the subject, which is the base of idealism,
is manifestly false. Experience resists intelligence, and intelli­
gence knows no way of totally grasping it. On the other hand,
although mathematics may attest to the powerful constructive
force of the mind, nevertheless its principles cannot depart
from the data perceived intuitively in experience, e.g., notions
of a line, of a point, of a plane, of an angle, of extension, of
division....
Thus the common notion of extension is only the abstract
intellectual expression of a reality grasped by a sensible intuition.
Mathematical space itself is a concept drawn from experience.
If it is constructed in some way by the mind, it is with the aid
of materials whose origin is sensible.
ad c. Kant has shown himself a little bit too timid.
Guarantees for the reality of sensible data, and particularly
of extension, are not wanting (Ci. 3, positive reasons). In me
sensation is not the pure reflection of things, nor is it simply
a creation achieved by my sensible powers. It is an alliance,
a union between me and things.
ad d. The Kantian antinomy is not compelling. Its first
alternative is false : it supposes that one affirms not only the

WHAT IS EXTENSION OR CORPOREAL QUANTITY?

15

reality of extension, but, also, as did Descartes, its character
of substance. It is very true that a substance can only be
simple or composed of simple principles, for substance must
possess existence of itself, it must in a way be absolute, having
a value in and for itself. Extension, however, always composed
and always divisible, as the second part of the antinomy affirms,
is in no way substance. It remains, whether as simple “ a priori
form, ” or as given in experience, a " phenomenal ’’ reality,
completely relative to substance, existing in it as an attribute,
preparing it for all kinds of relations with other substances.
Let us not be led by this antinomy to doubt the reality of
extension, but let us be on our guard against Cartesian mechanism
which has elevated extension to the dignity of a substance.
To suppress all composition in extension is equivalent
to suppressing extension itself, since extension is essentially
composed. The first part of the Kantian antinomy is therefore
a complete sophism.
3. The positive proofs of the reality of extension can be drawn :
a. From the psychological analysis of sensation. It obliges
us to recognize extension as an intuitive datum of tactile and
visual sensations. All efforts to construct the notion of extension
from purely qualitative and subjective data have failed.3 They
will always do so, because the idea of “ outside of ” is a simple
relation which cannot be constructed from materials of another
nature. Such an idea can be drawn only from an intuition.
On the other hand, if extension were non-objective, one would
have to explain the illusion which makes us apply it to objects
in order to " externalize ” and localize them. Now no bridge
will ever permit us to pass from a psychological impression,
which is supposed to be purely qualitative, to the extension of a
corporeal ego, and then to the extension of an exterior world. *
b. From the evaluation of the experimental sciences.
These sciences, although they arc not the only ones, nor the
* This is a reference to many of the empiricist psychologists of th©
i8th and 19th centuries who denied that extension was a primary datum.
Baudin, Psychologic, p. 195.
♦ Baudin's criticism of this position, Psychologic (Paris. 1919), pp. 2S8 if.

16

BODIES IN GENERAL I MATTER

most profound, give us a true knowledge of reality. Their
practical success is a sufficient guarantee of their correspondence
with the real. But they' essentially suppose the reality of
extension, of distance, of volume, etc. The reality of extension
is a condition of the truth of the sciences : the sciences are true,
therefore extension is real.
c. From the biological value of knowledge. Our knowledge
of the world is made up of quantitative data. All the objects
of our perceptions are made up of the very stuff which is
extension. If extension is not a reality, our vision of the world
is basically nothing more than an illusion. But this is impossible,
for our knowledge realizes a sufficient adaptation to preserve
and develop our bodily life in that vital milieu which constitutes
the world. But what is a knowledge adapted to its object and
adapting its movement to it, unless it is a true knowledge?
It is therefore true that the world wherein I move and am
moved about is an extended world. Extension is therefore
a corporeal reality.

C. The continuity of extension (first part of the thesis).
Empirically, every body appears as a continuum to us;
it is even this extended continuity which makes us recognize
an individual object as a whole perception. To be specific, the
consciousness which I have of my body is basically the kinesthetic
sensation of spatial continuity; organic life in general demands
the intimate linking of cells and tissues : a member separated
from a body ceases to live.
Science, however, furnishes us another picture of bodies
wherein distinct or separated elements are clearly manifest.
Seemingly the progress of science is based on an endless division
of extension. The waters of the ocean, which for the senses
is a completely continuous volume, were, in the chemistry
of the 18th century’, a simple juxtaposition of substances. Then
it was peopled with molecules ; then the molecules were discovered
to be formed of atoms. The work of Pasteur (right and left
bodies) obliged him to assign a definite place to each atom in
the interior of the molecule. Finally, at the end of the

THE CONTINUITY OF EXTENSION

17

19th century, and the beginning of the 20th, the structure
of the atom was delivered to us through the studies of radio­
activity. Today, the scientist, who believes his eyes, always
sees the ocean as a perfectly continuous extension. If he believes
his science, he admits only the existence of electrons of an
unimaginable diameter (less than

separated one from the

other by distances, which, relative to the diameter, are
comparable to the distances which separate the planets from
each other and the sun. •
Must we renounce the testimony of the senses to save
science? There are those who think so and therefore profess
idealism. Nothing, however, constrains us to do so. Actually,
science does not suppress all continuity. It recognizes in the
electron a certain volume, and it does not reduce it to an
unextended point except by a simplifying mathematical fiction.
On the other hand, the distances between the electronic layers
which encircle a positive nucleus are very real and perfectly
continuous (it has been shown that several energetic levels
exist in these layers belonging to K, L, M and N respectively,
with the sole exception of K).8 The same is true of the intervals
which determine the position of atoms in a molecule. Briefly,
science obliges us to correct the testimony of our senses, not to
deny it. However, it suggests this question to the philosophers :
“ Will the progress of science ever arrive at the day when it will
be forced to renounce continuity and still keep extension? ”
Philosophical analysis leaves no doubt about the answer
to this question. Extension is essentially continuous. Actually,
extension formed by distant parts A, B, C, D... needs contiguous
• According to J. J. Thomson, the possible diameter of an electron
is a quantity between a hundred-millionth and a billionth of a micron.
Its " classic radius ” is equal to 2.82 . xo-‘*
* cm. Atoms have diameters
of around io-* cm.
* The electronic layers are designated as K, L, M, N, O, P, Q. K is
the closest to the nucleus, and supposedly the most difficult to separate
from nucleus. Lt carries at the most two electrons. L can carry up to 18.
N up to 32. O, P. Q, appear only with a smaller number of particles,
O has 18, P, 13. and Q one or two in radioactive bodies. Grison,
Témoignage de V Univers, p. 158.

18

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

parts. It cannot exist without embracing with its parts the
intervals which separate them : AB, AC, AD .. .BC, BD .. .CD,
the latter being as real as the former. The extension formed
by parts which are distant is therefore a total of parts which
are really contiguous, in which only certain ones are considered
as positive or full, and the others as empty, or simply pure
distance. ’ But the contiguity, indispensable for an extension
made up of distant parts, is itself based upon the interior
continuity of its constitutive parts. Actually, contiguous parts
are exterior one to the other, and although they be as small
as can be imagined, yet they must be said to have their own
proper extension. They are, therefore, not reduced to a point
or to a surface contact, for, at this point on this surface, they
merge into one another. Moreover, it is impossible that surfaces
without thickness could be added together to form a third
dimension and a volume. The same is true of juxtaposed lines
which would never form the slightest linear segment. It is
therefore necessary that the contiguous parts of an extension
should be in themselves continuous.

From our analysis, we sec that the continuity of parts
in extension is the very condition of its existence. We need
not fear then, that the progress of the sciences will ever reduce
extension to a mere sum of points. In this hypothesis, continuity
cannot fail to be found under the form of a distance between
these points. If the dimensions of the electron are sometimes
neglected today, we are not held to limit its electrical properties
to any mobile position in space. It is admitted that these
properties exercise their influence in extension even to the
nucleus of the atom (the negative charge of electrons is equal
to the positive charge of the nucleus and neutralizes it in a
non ionized atom). And it is equally admitted that these
influences go beyond the limits of an ionized atom.
’ The void of physicists is never an absolute void. An absolute void
would be the absence of all experimental reality. If sound docs not
transmit itself in a void, light and electro-magnetic actions, in a general
way, do so very well. This " void, " however, is always populated, if not
with atoms, at least with particles and the waves associated with these
particles.

extension’s potential multiplicity

19

We should not be astonished at the opposition which exists
between sensible and scientific experience. We arc not so
astonished when we speak of the form of the earth, of its
movement, of the vastness of the sun... The senses know
in their manner, the sciences in another. The senses have
limits which the sciences often go beyond. I am wrong if
I interpret sensible data badly, if I deny discontinuity when
my eye grasps only continuity. However, the value of sensation
need not be lessened because of the possibility of errors in
perception, since science has taught me to avoid them. Sensation
grasps the continuity of extension. Science teaches me that
the demarcation of the parts of extension is not that which
my eyes lead me to affirm, that this demarcation cannot be seen
or touched, but must be found through the long detours which
it has taken the intelligence of man centuries to discover.
Finally, philosophical reason sees that without continuity of
parts, extension would never be extended. It recognizes im­
plicitly then :

D. The potential multiplicity of extension, its divisibility
(second part).
There are forms of extension which possess an actual
multiplicity of parts. They are those derived forms whose
parts are cither distant or contiguous. ’ Each part is enclosed
by the limits which are proper to it. It perfectly fits the definition
of a part, completely determined, “ actual ” in the Aristotelian
sense of the word.
Continuous extension, on the contrary, is “ actually ”
undivided and one. It conceals, however, a multiplicity that
is as essential as its unity. Extension is an exteriority of parts
in which one is in relation to the others. Where the unity
is absolute, nothing of a thing can in any sense be another
outside of it. The very understanding of extension is summed
up in “ one outside of another, ” which makes extension essentially
a duality. Moreover, one can divide the continuous, that is to
say, clearly mark the opposition of its parts by marking the
limits which will distinguish them individually and make
• Such arc : a pile of stones, a prairie, a forest.

20

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

them complete " actual ” parts. However, this division does
not create the reality of these parts. It only determines their
proper limits which they lack in a state of indivision. Continuous
extension is therefore multiple, but it is a multiplicity which
is as yet undetermined, “ potential. " Undivided or continuous,
it is divisible, because its parts, as real as they are, are only
potential to being actually individualized.
As all extension is fundamentally continuous, all extension
is also essentially divisible, and its potential multiplicity can
become actual through division, which assigns to each part
its proper limit.
But the divisibility of extension poses a complex question :
Can one realize or at least conceive of this divisibility to the
point wherein division will no longer be possible?

E. No. The divisibility of the continuum is indefinite.
This answer of Aristotle, which opposes that of the Eleatics
and especially that of Zeno and that of the Pythagoreans, to
whom Plato remained faithful on this point, marks an historic
date and a conquest in philosophy. It is actually intimately
connected with the hylomorphic doctrine.
Zeno thinks of extension as having a limited divisibility.
One must, according to him, come to a moment when division
will arrive at indivisible parts; but, if this were true, then
extension would be a total of unextended parts, which is absurd.
In affirming the ultimate indivisibility of the continuum, Zeno
prefers to say that the sensible experience of division is mistaken,
rather than to pose a contradiction in intelligence.
The Pythagoreans admit the hypothesis rejected by Zeno :
volumes arc formed bj' surfaces, surfaces by lines, and lines
by points. They mask the absurdity of this hypothesis by
thinking of the continuous as having a divisibility which is
strictly infinite, that is, imagining a continuum which is made
up of an actual infinity of parts. They are mistaken in imagining
that a multitude of parts, because they would be infinite, would
be able to furnish a whole of another nature than the parts.
An infinity oi points would never make anything except an
infinity of negations of extension. If they touch each other,

THE INDEFINITE DIVISIBILITY OF MATTER

21

they are still only a point; if they are separated, there will
certainly be an extension, a line for example, which they will
define, but this extension will not be given by the points. It will
exist before them as the very condition of the distance between
them.
Aristotle recognized in extension an inexhaustible divisibility,
unlimited, indefinite, “ infinite ” in the sense that division is
never able to be pushed to the point where it will be absolutely
impossible. This is to admit, with Zeno, and with reason, that
extension cannot be a total of unextended parts. It likewise
affirms, against Zeno, that the parts of a divided continuum,
no matter how unimaginably small, are still divisible, and this
by their very nature.
Metaphysical proof. Every continuum is essentially divisible,
being essentially composed of undivided parts (cf. D). But
every part of a continuum, no matter how tiny it may be, is
continuous. Every part of a continuum is therefore divisible.
In order that division would ultimately become impossible,
it would be necessary that the parts to which it was ultimately
reduced would be unextended, and that these unextended parts
would have to explain an extended whole, but to admit this
would be to resurrect the error of the Pythagoreans. An extended
continuum is therefore indefinitely divisible.
Euclidean geometry offers
a clear demonstration of
this assertion. The segment
A’C’ is indefinitely divisible
by a secant common to two
parallel lines AB, CD, pass­
ing through A’ and C’,
when it turns around the
point C in such a way as
to cut A’C’. Actually the secant will never be confused with
the line CD, for then it would become parallel with the other
straight line AB, which by hypothesis it cuts. It will therefore
cut the segment A’C' indefinitely in the degree and measure
that its intersection with AB is extended away from the point A’.

22

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

The demonstration can easily be continued for surface and
volume. It will suffice to imagine that A'C’ is a straight line
common to two planes which touch each other at the surface
or interior of a solid. One can draw planes perpendicular to the
straight lines AB and CD, passing C and every point where
the secant cuts A'C
*.
These planes will divide solids into an
endless series of slices.

Objections. 1. It can be objected that this demonstration
rests on the supposition of a spatial “ infinity. ” If we can
indefinitely divide A'C
*
it is precisely because we suppose AB
to be indefinite. Whether or not spatial infinity is or is not
a characteristic of bodies, all that is required for this reasoning
is that it be thinkable. Actually we will prove that real space
is finite both in theory and fact. However, if it is necessary
that real space have limits, it is not necessary at all that it have
precisely such and such determined limits. Therefore it is
possible for space, by its nature, to be extended beyond the
actual limits. The infinity of space is nothing more than the
possibility of its extending beyond the given limits. It is,
therefore, perfectly legitimate in reasoning on the nature of
extension, but not on its conditions of fact, to admit this
possibility which is essential to it.

2. It can be further objected, this time against the thesis
itself, that infinite divisibility implies the existence of an infinite
number of parts existing at the very core of a finite continuum,
which is a contradiction on two counts : a number is always
finite, because it is a measure; and an infinite number can never
equal a finite reality. These reasons are absolutely correct,
but an infinite number of parts is not necessary at all for
a justification of the indefinite divisibility of the continuum.
The parts of a continuum are not determined, nor do they form
a number unless by reason of a previous division which marks
them out. Now division always produces a finite number
of parts. The indefinite divisibility of extension thus corresponds
to the indefinite possibility of increasing a given finite number.
Far from demanding, as a consequence, the possibility of a
properly infinite number, it absolutely excludes this. Let us

NECESSARY LIMITS OF EXTENSION

23

remark here that mathematical infinity is simply a type of
indefinitencss. It is only relatively definite, it is any dimension
which can be considered as going beyond the limits given.

3. Finally, it can be objected that corporeal extension
can not be divided beyond a certain limit, yesterday the atom,
today the sub-atomic particles. This objection obviously shows
that we know of no force capable of dividing an electron, but
even if it could be proven that such a force does not exist,
it would not shake our thesis concerning the absolute possibility
of division. The divisibility of which we speak expresses the
continuous nature of the tiniest particles of extension, and
not the power or the impotcncy of causes outside that value.
Extension offers an inexhaustible field for division, but it is
indifferent to the fact of division itself, which in no way alters
its nature.

F. The limitation of extension is, however, a physical fact,
and a metaphysical necessity.
Physically, all corporeal extension is enclosed by surfaces
which determine it and give it a *' figure. ’’ Empirically we
distinguish bodies by their contours and we recognize them
by their forms. The physicist, the naturalist, or the chemist,
only make this natural method more precise when they apply
themselves to the recognition of the structure of light, of an
organism, or of a molecule. Actually, structure is the assembly
plan of parts found in a whole, a system of relations in distance,
which situate these parts, limit them and determine them.
These relations and these limits cannot fail to be finite. But
scientific statement does not suffice here. It lacks necessity
and universality.

A metaphysical analysis makes this necessity apparent.’
• See Summa Thtol., I* pars, q. 7, a. 3. This demonstration supposes
extension to be either recognized as an accident of substance, or determined
in a geometric form. However, we can get the same conclusion in another
way. Extension is necessarily finite. Extension cannot really exist
unless it is determined, since it can be thought only as it is determined.
Hence it happens that there is no science oí extension, unless it is
a determined or figured extension.
N.Y. 17. — 4

24

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

Extension demands limits “ per se, ” that is by virtue of its
very nature. Extension is divisible, and only the finite is
divisible. It is therefore necessary that extension should have
actual limits. Let us imagine a quantity which by hypothesis
would be infinite (without any limit). Let us suppose this
extension to be divided into two parts. We must then admit
one of the following three conclusions : these two parts are
both finite, or both infinite, or one finite and the other infinite;
now each one of these three consequences is impossible to
thought. This implies then, that the hypothesis of an infinite
extension is impossible. The first consequence is impossible
because two finite parts cannot be added to each other to form
an infinite whole; the second is also impossible, for division
introduces limits in the whole which it divides, and demands
that the divided parts be finite. The third, finally, must be
impossible for the same reason : the supposed infinite part
would nevertheless have a limit which would oppose it to the
other part which is supposed finite. Thus extension is necessarily
finite. Its finite character is inscribed in its essential divisibility.
Psychological reflection confirms this analysis. I am an
extension limited by the surface of my body, and I am an
individual distinct from the rest of the universe. Does the
non-ego form one single individual? Then its extension is
finite. Actually, my proper extension is distinct extension,
but if the extension of the non-ego were infinite, then mine
would be made a part of it (for one cannot add to the infinite),
and I would be confused with the unique whole. Shall we
suppose that the non-ego is made up of a number of material
individuals? Then each individual possesses its own extension
and therefore its quantitative limits.
Limits arc therefore necessary to corporeal extension.
They arc possible under the form of surfaces, of lines, of points;
they are extension itself, denied in one or in several of its
dimensions; they are therefore real, but they are not parts
of extension. Considered by the mind apart from the continuum
which they determine, they are as such pure objects of thought
(“ entes rationis ”), not being able to exist as such.

THE ESSENCE OF EXTENSION

25

An objection is presented here from a geometrical point
of view. The geometrician is able to conceive an infinite
extension, that is, a straight line or plane. It is, therefore,
not contradictory that extension lacks limits. The answer
is easy. To conceive an infinite extension is to conceive that
it can be extended beyond the given limits, and this always
and necessarily; it is to think of extension without attributing
to it precise limits, or to refuse to hold it to certain determined
limits. But this is not to say that extension is realizable or
even thinkable without any limit. We will draw from this
objection only this conclusion : it is not contradictory to think
of extension without thinking of its limits, and thus a fortiori
without thinking of perfectly determined limits; in other words,
the determination of limits is not a consequence of the nature
of extension. This nature certainly demands limits, it is not
able to furnish them. As it is indifferent to division, it is also
indifferent to increase. Therefore, the objection obliges us to
pose this question : How does extension receive its determined
limits? The following chapter will allow us to give the answer.
It will concern itself with the quality which penetrates extension,
and especially with figure.
Conclusions. The essence of corporeal quantity can be
defined as the internal extension of parts, that is to say, the
mutual exteriority of parts from within their common limit.
This definition can only be a description, if it is true that
extension is a simple, intuitive datum. The role of this definition
is to highlight the fundamental attribute of corporeal quantity,
and for the moment it fulfills that role. Actually, all the
attributes of extension necessarily flow from and suppose the
mutual exteriority of its parts.
One has the right, undoubtedly, to define extension in
another way, but on condition of placing one’s self at another
point of view than that of its nature. Thus, for the
mathematician, it is the measurable;10 for the physicist, it will
‘• It: is just as natural to symbolize variations of correlative
dimensions by curves (geometrical extension). In a uniformly varied
movement, the parabola thus symbolizes the variation of the space
covered in function of time.

BODIES IN’ GENERAL : MATTER

26

be the impenetrable :11 so each defines extension according
to the property which concerns his science. Corporeal extension
verifies these diverse aspects. The one essence which they
reveal is that in order that reality be measurable or impenetrable,
it is necessary that it be made up of parts exterior one to the
other.12 The particular definitions of extension, therefore,
demonstrate the exactness of our definition.

Second Question : What is corporeal quality?
Second Thesis

: Corporeal qualities are :
1. discontinuous, heterogenous and con­
trary;
2. simple and indivisible ;
3. endowed with intensity;
4. determinative of corporeal quantity ;
5. distinct from extension.

A. Notion

1. Empirically, quality very often refers to certain values :
practical utility (goods of a fine quality), beauty (of a work of
art), morality (of an association, of certain reading), knowledge
(intelligence is a quality superior to memory). Properly and origi­
nally, it designates that attribute of corporeal objects which
makes them perceptible to our senses. The “ qualities of bodies ”
are the specific objects of our external sensations, such as colors,
pressures, odors and tastes.
2. Science first attempted to know bodies qualitatively.”
It considered them as composites of four elements (Empedocles,
5 B.C.) in which each was defined by its proper qualities : earth is
“ Particles, atoms and molecules arc impenetrable in varying
degrees (which is supposed by their impacts and the movements which
result from them) ; fields, however, are essentially penetrable.
“ Every effective measure is reducible to a measure of length.
” See A. H. Armstrong, Introduction to Ancien/ Philosophy (West­
minster : Newman, 1949). pp. 1-8. Also A. Van Melskn, Philosophy of
Nature (Duquesne Press), pp. 48-51.

WHAT IS CORPOREAL QUALITY?

27

an clement which is dry and cold ; water is an element which is
humid and cold; air is an clement which is humid and warm;
and fire an element which is dry and warm. Only tactile qualities
are utilized ; the others, especially visual qualities, thought to be
less fundamental, arc left in shadow. The Renaissance, through
its mathematical development, prepared the revolution which
Descartes realized by the intuition of his genius. Science then
turned itself away from the qualitative in bodies because it saw
no practical inventive knowledge resulting from the study of
these qualities. It wished to measure bodies in order to
understand the laws governing them, and thus hoped to be able
to deduce these laws and understand phenomena by identifying
them among themselves (E. Meyerson). It applies itself so
rigorously to this method that it is often paralleled with a
mechanistic metaphysics, particularly that of Descartes, which
states that qualities are purely subjective and that the only
objective reality is extension endowed with movement. The
problem, therefore, is to show that bodies which in appearance
are colored, sonorous, having odor, warm, etc., are determined
figures of extension, agitated by certain movements. Science
had already partly resolved this problem, but now it applies
itself to the completion of this solution by showing that the
discoveries of the past were not the last word on the nature of
qualities. The scientist can now say : color is a vibration of
electricized particles emitted from atoms, heat is an agitation
of molecules. He docs not say that color and heat are only
that — and so he continues his inquiry. He now finds qualities
which are not able to be reduced to extension, such as hardness,
which he tests but does not measure.14 Science continues to
reduce qualities to extension and movement, but only by substi­
tuting for sensible data determinations of size, of situation, of
direction and of speed, which arc so many new qualities, since
they are expressions of numerical relations.
3. Philosophically, quality must be extended to every
determination which confers on bodies other attributes than
14 This testing is done, however, according to several processes, which
do not assign a constant order to bodies which arc of unequal hardness.

28

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

those which are proper to extension. Thus we are able, in taking
stock of the evolution of the sciences, to discern three classes
of corporeal qualities. (1) Figure, which confers on extension
precise limits and therefore gives an external and internal form.
(2) Forces, which cause corporeal changes. These forces are
physical (heat, electricity), chemical (valence, affinity),
mechanical (attraction, repulsion, mass), and they constitute
the diverse forms of energy, whether kinetic (that of a body in
movement), or potential (that of a body in repose). In supposing
that the total quantity of energy is constant (the principle of the
conservation of energy), science establishes the laws of equiva­
lence (the mechanical equivalent of heat, for example), and
shows us how to understand through these laws the transfor­
mations of diverse forms of energy. (3) Sensible qualities, which
manifest to our senses the existence of bodies and reveal certain
relationships existing among bodies.
B. The reality of corporeal qualities is admitted by both
the average man and by the scientist, but the former thinks
primarily of sensible qualities, and the latter of forms of energy.

1. The reality of sensible qualities is denied by certain
philosophers :
a) because sensible qualities are only psychological modi­
fications. In the judgment of Descartes and of Malebranche
the errors of the senses are sufficient proof that these qualities
do not belong to corporeal reality.
b) because sensible qualities are unthinkable. I cannot
have a clear and distinct idea of them, and so they are able
to exist only in my imagination (Descartes).
c) because bodies arc purely passive. They do not possess
any active forces. Thus Malebranche denies to them any causal
function and reserves causality only to God.
Upon such reasons these philosophers have built their
mechanism (Descartes and Malebranche in the 17thcentury), their
occasionalism (Malebranche), and their idealism (Leibniz in the
17th, Berkeley in the 18th, and Brunschvicg in the 20th century).

WHAT IS CORPOREAL QUALITY?

29

2. The weakness of these reasons is already a proof of the
reality of these qualities.
Ad a) Sensations are, certainly, psychological modifica­
tions. But they are also essentially relative to an object which
they attain by an intuitive knowledge. ’* The errors do not come
from sensation, but from its interpretation by the imagination,
by the memory, by reflection, briefly, by reason of the judgment
which appreciates the phenomena. In any case the errors cannot
be imputed to the senses. Since sensations are not pure psycho­
logical modifications, they are then concrete intuitions. The
objects of sensible qualities are something different from
constructions of the mind. They are real data which are grasped
in an intuition.
Ad b) It is true that I am not able to give to each sensible
quality a definition which expresses its nature, but I have an
idea of it which permits me to distinguish kinds and degrees,
and which is sufficient for the starting point of physics. (This
against Hamelin, who has attempted to show the mental origin
of qualities). *• Moreover, the criterion of reality invoked by
Descartes is very incomplete. There is a reality which the clear
and distinct idea alone knows through itself, namely, the reality
of essences and the relationships between these essences. It is
the reality which mathematics studies. There is also a reality
which man docs not know by a clear and distinct idea, namely
the reality of existence, which is attested by a concrete intuition.
The clear and distinct idea never suffices for knowing the
existence of any being or of any fact. For example, the ego
is real, but it is not so because Decartes can give a mathematical
definition of it in which he recognizes the real. Ultimately the
ego is real because one has an experience of it.
Ad c) The notion of cause does not have the absolute
rigidity which Malebranche gives to it. For him, to cause is**•
“F. van Stkknbkrchkn, Epistemology, pp. 113-128, trans, into
English by Flynn.
*• O. Hamelin, Essai sur les Éléments Principaux de la Représentation
(Paris : Alcan, 1907), p. 134. He accepts the Cartesian principle It is only
in making ourselves see that quality belongs to thought, that we are able
to experience the reality of it. ” (p. 146)

30

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

to produce something with full independence. Such a notion
evidently is not verified except in God. But this absolute notion
is drawn from a relative notion based on our internal and external
experience, the experience of an ego, which is at the same time
dependent on sense objects and yet holds them under a certain
dependence which is spiritual (voluntary) and mechanical
(muscular). There exists between me and bodies a dependent
causality. This is an intuitive datum and it is in this that I find
the materials of my idea of an independent cause manifestly
constructed. Undoubtedly, bodies are not the first source of
their activity, but they are holders of it whether natural (specific
forces, e.g., affinity, mass), or accidental (transitory forces, e.g.,
local movement). In both cases they are apt for causing change
about them. The}' are active.
3. The -positive proofs of the reality of qualities ought to be
distinguished according to the groups of qualities. Let us
consider :
a.

Figure

1) The condition of the existence of extension is as real as
extension itself. Actually extension exists only as it is deter­
mined by limits (Th. 1,4), which are in a definite relation among
themselves. Now figure is only a relation of limits among
themselves. Figure being a real relation between real extensions,
it cannot lack reality.

2) Object of all the sciences of nature, it is as real as these
sciences are true.
a) The biological sciences rest on the study of form
(morphology) and of organization : their descriptions are
concerned with forms; their classifications put them in order;
their laws suppose them in explaining progressive construction
(ontogenesis), modified under the influences of environment
(adaptation), either through the course of the ages (evolution)
or through reproduction (theory of heredity).

b) The sciences of matter uncover definite structures
hidden to the senses : those of a crystal, of a molecule, of an atom.

WHAT IS CORPOREAL QUALITY?

31

of a nucleus, those of light, and of electricity. Others give
precisions in regard to the structures of the earth, of the stars
and of nebulae. To know scientifically means, first of all, to be
able to know a structure. Thus to deny the reality of figure
is to deny the truth of science.

b.

Forces,

or energy

are measured by science and they give some grasp of the
reality of the world. Their reality is as necessary to the truth of
the sciences as the reality of structures, and that reality is certain.

Objections :
1) It may be objected that bodies are defined by their
inertia. The fundamental principle in every study of matter
is this : no body will change its state of movement or repose by
itself. Is this to say then that science docs not recognize in
bodies any power of action? Not at all I It simply states that
any change of a body is not to be explained by the simple
existence of this body. It demands that there should be factually
the influence of another body.17 The inertia of bodies is,
therefore, the absence of the activity of a body on itself, yet it
is also, reciprocally, the possible action of one body on another.
But science enables us to go further. It obliges us, first of
all, to see in inertia something other than an indifference to
movement. The force necessary to displace 1 cubic cm. of lead
is different from the force necessary to displace, in the same
conditions, 1 cubic cm. of cork. The inertia of lead is, therefore,
different from that of cork, and the inertia is therefore a kind
of anti-force, a force of reaction. Thus to affirm the existence
of inertia is also to affirm the existence of force. Moreover,
science very explicitly recognizes in inertia a determined quali­
tative character. It measures it and calls this quantity mass.
” This principle is basically no more than the principle of identity,
applied to the domain of movement. Supposing a particular body in
a given state of movement or repose, it would be contradictory for me
to suppose that same body as having simultaneously another state of
movement or repose.

32

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

By reason of mass it measures force, which is at the same time
a function of mass and acceleration, m X a. If science admits
the reality of mass and acceleration, it admits by the very same
fact the reality of force.

2) It will be objected, however, that the sciences speak
of force in a sense which is not that of everyday language, and
therefore is no longer qualitative. Force, for the average man,
is that which he experiences in his feeling of willing, and in his
sensation of muscular effort. It is a productive cause in his
thoughts and in his sensible changes. Its qualitative character
is evident. On the contrary, for the scientist, force is a dimension,
a quantity, which is measured in relation to other quantities,
and particularly in regard to displacement in space. It is only
a movement in extension and therefore no longer possesses
anything of the qualitative.
It is true that the scientific method abstracts from every
psychological quality, and uses the term force in a sense which
is no longer directly qualitative. But the philosopher has the
duty not to neglect anything of the real. To say that the whole
reality of force is reducible to that which the physicist measures
is not to speak as a scientist. It is to give a metaphysical
interpretation of science which is called mechanism, and this
is an erroneous interpretation. On the contrary, we must insist
that, if the mathematical method permits science to grasp an
aspect of the real, to know its relations of measure, it ignores
other aspects, which arc imposed on the attention of the
philosopher, viz., the active character of forces and their
qualitative character.18

a) The active relations of causality between bodies cannot
lack reality, if their movements are real and if their immediate
cause is found in bodies surrounding the mobile object. Now the
11 This is true of scientific formulas. The scientist docs not ignore
the causal nature of forces. For him, measure is only a method. His aim
is to explain changes by linking them to their causcs.’but he is not satisfied
with the explanation, until the dimension of the effects is equal to the
dimension of the causes. Thus a rationalized causality is disguised under
the formulas of measure. See M. Gillet, La Philosophis de M. Msyerson.

WHAT IS CORPOREAL QUALITY?

33

Third Thesis will show that the first and second conditions are
both realized, for the movement of a mobile object depends
evidently on those bodies which are in relation with it, e.g.,
mass, speed and direction of the movement-cause which has
released the movement-effect.
b) Moreover, the relations of measure to which science
reduces forces are qualitative and real, for in the real these
measures demand certain determinations upon some object which
is determined. No measure of bodies will therefore be possible,
unless these bodies are determined in their extension, that is
to say, endowed with qualities. As a matter of fact :
(1) Movements are differentiated by their speed, their
organization (periodic or not, uniform or not, accelerated or
retarded), their direction and the mass of the mobile object.

(2) On the other hand, the forms of energy are really
diverse and are only unified in the abstract because of their
equivalency in regard to measures. This equivalence, so striking
in its mathematical aspect, should not make us forget those
differences which the diverse co-efficients of formulas of equi­
valency indicate in their way,1B nor on the other hand, the real
contingent nature of the measures of these forces. Energy is
thus recognized as qualitatively diverse.
Even the scientist does not confuse the mathematical study
of possible movements with the study of movements realized
in nature : stars, planets, animals and plants, molecules, atoms
and sub-atomic particles. If we compare the domain of possible
movements with the domain of real or natural movements, the
second appears as a determined portion of the first. The
movements of the first group and those of the second will
undoubtedly be expressed by identical mathematical formulas,
but the scientist knows well that he should distinguish the second
by a proper quality. He knows them to be real, natural, and
it is precisely because of this that he feels the need of consulting
the subject, the nature itself, by the indispensable methods of
observation.
*• One small calory — 4.1S5 joules = 4.185 x iof ergs.

34

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

To deny the reality of corporeal qualities will, therefore,
be to deny the distinction between mathematics and the sciences
of nature, and to confuse their two methods which are so diverse
at times that they seem to be opposed.
Conclusions : The scientist affirms what he knows, namely,
that there are forces in the sense of relationships of measure,
and we ought to accept this, but he has no right to deny what
he ignores by his method. There are also relationships of
causality which are at the base of these forces and which are
active. Finally, there are even qualitative determinations in
these forces, affecting extension and local movement, and
specifying these forces. This is what is revealed through philo­
sophical analysis. As to the fact that science is interested only
in relations of measure, we can still say that its mathematical
and experimental method proves nothing against the existence
of active forces. It teaches us that the scientific concept of force
is distinct from the empirical and philosophical ones, but in no
way does it prove that the latter are without real value.
c. Sensible qualities
manifest their reality if we reflect on the methods which
have led us to affirm the reality of extension. Sensible qualities
are real :

1) They are intuitive data, because they are the proper
objects of sensations. On the other hand, their simplicity is a
proof that they have not been constructed. One born blind
cannot acquire the sensible notion of color, although he can
acquire the scientific notion as a determined kind of vibration.
It may be objected that the scientific notion is the only
true one, that color is notliing more than movement in extension.
This would be to forget that color would still be a quality, since
it is still a form of energy; it would also be to forget that the
scientist has not the right to deny what his method only
authorizes him to put aside.,0
*• See above b, and de Tonquedec, Critique de la Connaissance
(Paris : Bcauchesnes, 1929), ch. 3.

WHAT IS CORPOREAL QUALITY?

35

One can also object because of the errors of the senses.
How can an intuition be false? Let us answer that intuition
is always true. If I see a quality, that quality exists, but the
attribution of qualities to objects, that is to say, their interpre­
tation and their predication of certain precise objects, is no
longer an intuition.
2) They arc the condition of the truth of the experimental
sciences. The experimental sciences know extension, but as
it is qualified by sensible qualities. Undoubtedly, the sciences
have gone beyond the point of view of sensible qualities in their
research, but their starting point is in these same qualities, and
the reason for tliis is not to deny their existence, but rather
to explain them. Suppress all qualities, and of what will the
sciences treat? The value of the conquests of science, moreover,
is subordinate to the value of their starting point, for this starting
point remains the necessary means of controlling hypotheses by
which they wish to explain things. The experimenter can
complicate his apparatuses. He will never read their indices,
unless colors have for him the value of a reality. In tliis way
the task of the sciences is in vain if sensible qualities are only
an illusion.
3) They are the condition of the biological value of our
knowledge of the world. Tliis knowledge would be altogether
false, if sensible quality were only a psychological impression,
for it is exactly the qualities attributed to the objects of our
perceptions which regulate the usage which we make of them.
The very different values which objects have for us can be in
part subjective, but they cannot be completely so.
4) They are necessary for the existence of sensations and
for their specific character. Actually sensation is something
which is given to me as real, whereas the products of my imagi­
nation do not have this real quality, and this is precisely because
the object of sensation is imposed as being independent of me.
This is quite different in regard to the object of the imagination.
On the other hand, the nerves have a specific energy, but there
must exist excitants specific enough to make them function,
Sec Foulquié, Psychologie, pp. 254-255.

36

BODIES IN GENERAL I MATTER

and thus the specific character of sensible qualities as well as
the existence of sensations lead us to the reality of their excitants.
N.B. — We are here treating of sensible qualities and not
of sensed qualities. This distinction eliminates very many
objections. The sensible quality must exist in another way than
in the active sensation. On the contrary, the sensed quality
exists only by virtue of sensation.
C. The heterogeneity of qualities is their most outstanding
characteristic. (First part of the thesis).
1. Empirically, they form distinct kinds (they are hetero­
geneous). Color is not sound. We do not pass from one to the
other except by a leap, by a complete suppression of a specifying
characteristic, and by the replacing of it with another (they are
discontinuous). Color is a " visible ” quality, sound is an
" audible ” quality, incapable of becoming visible little by little.
Finally, they can be distinguished to the point of mutually
excluding each other from a given object (they are contrary).
A paper which is red is not able to be green at the same time,
a mobile object cannot at the same time be going from A to B,
and from B to A.

2. Contemporary science seems to deny this heterogeneity.
(1) The unity of physical forces is expressed in two ways : (a) all
forces are only movements, some molecular (matter), others
undulator}' (rays); (b) all forces are only forms of an energy
whose sum remains constant. (2) The unity of matter is a
definitive conquest. The specific qualities of " simple ” bodies
(elements) are reduced to unity, since they arc all constructed
with the aid of identical elements, sub-atomic particles which
are able to enter into transformations from one element to
another, for example, hydrogen from carbon, from sodium, and
from aluminum. (3) Energy and matter, through a new progress,
are unified in the Einstein theory (1911) completing that of
Lorentz (1895). As does matter, so energy possesses inertia,
and matter is formed of electrical energy. Thus radium loses
its mass and transforms it into energy. This is done in such
a way that what is left is not mass on the one side and energy

CORPOREAL QUALITY IS HETEROGENEOUS

37

on the other, it is the total mass plus energy. “ The equation
of Einstein, E = me’, expresses the equivalency of mass, m,
and of energy, E, having as a factor the square of the velocity
of light, c. ” ” (4) Finally, the quantum theory of Planck, and
the wave mechanics of Louis de Broglie show the analogy, if not
the unity, of rays (the waves are formed of particles or quanta
of energy) and matter (the electrons in the atom are associated
with material waves). This theoretical unification is of a kind
that any physical reality, whatever it may be, is constructed
with the aid of elements which are always the same, of extended
particles and waves. It is a unique structure, at the same time
corpuscular and undulatory, continuous and discontinuous.

What must we think of these affirmations? In looking for
resemblances which are not apparent, science is certainly within
its scope. However, to affirm these resemblances, is not to deny
the differences. The same genus is able to contain many species.
Moreover, the resemblance stated by science is of the mathe­
matical order, and in no way prohibits dissimilarities in other
orders. Insofar as the realities are measurable, they verify the
same general theorems, and are subject to the same common
laws. But what remains here in each which is specific and
individual? Even in the mathematical order itself, there are
shown to be specific differences recognized by science, e.g., the
yellow ray of sodium has specific numbers, expressing its wave
length in frequency . . . Hydrogen has only’ one peripheral
electron, while helium has two. Moreover, in progressing, science
has not only marked the more and more general resemblances,
it has concerned itself at the same time with expressing diffe­
rences, which are subordinated, and this concern has led to the
discovery of discontinuities hidden up to this time. Thus one
can imagine the ability to pass from the color red to orange in
an almost insensible transition, but physics has discovered in the
spectroscope perfectly' distinct rays constituting irreducible kinds.
Finally, if the ultimate constituents of matter arc particles of
electricity, we must recognize in them at least two kinds, the
“ Hausmann-Slack. Physics, 4th ed. (Princeton : Van Nostrand.
1957). PP- 761-763.

38

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

positron and the negaton. We must furthermore admit a
third element, whether proton or neutron, which makes the
two electricities dissymmetrical,” whether by reason of structures
and properties, or simply by properties. It is at least of such
a kind that the science of today has given up the thought of
unifying matter and energy completely. " The discovery of the
neutronM seems incompatible with the original and purely
electrical conception of matter . . . One must now consider
these two entities as distinct ...” (L. de Broglie,
R. de M. et de M, 1936, p. 185).

In the measure that science deciphers the intimate structure
of atoms, it has not ceased to increase the number of elementary
particles, and it characterizes these particles by three differen­
tiating qualities :

The electrical charge : positive, negative or null;
Mass: light, medium, very heavy;
Spin: this is a property responsible for the rotation of a
particle in one direction or in another, analogous to the differen­
tiating character of two tops spinning in contrary directions. ”
13 The dissymetrieal quality of two electricities consists in this,
that negative particles (negatons) have a very small mass, while the
positive particles (protons) have a mass which is 1.836 times greater.
M The neutron is a particle with a mass which is approximately that
of a proton, yet it has no electrical charge. Its mass, then, can not have
an electrical origin.
14 One can find a complete description of the fundamental particles
in Sourcebook on Atomic Energy by S. Glasstonk (Princeton :
Van Nostrand, 1958), pp. 23-62.
Beginning with mass and taking as a unit the mass of an electron,
we can make the following distinctions :
Mass = i : the negaton. bearer of a negative electrical charge (it
constitutes cathodal rays and the beta rays of radium) ;
the positron, bearer of a positive electrical charge.
Mass
220-1000 : ntesons or mesotons, divided into several kinds :
Mu. Pi, Tau, are different by their mass, which equals
respectively 200, 300, 500, each carrying a unitary electrical
charge which may be positive or negative.
Mass — 1S36 : the proton or (Il has a positive unitary charge;
the neutron or ,n without any charge.
The particles which principally constitute the atom arc : protons

CORPOREAL QUALITY IS HETEROGENEOUS

39

To sum up, science states a generic unity for all measurable
physical reality. It is not able to deny specific differences, and at
most, it is able to ignore many of them. However, it expresses
many of them in its own way, but in mathematical language,
since specific differences cannot be translated except by different
numbers.
3. Let us philosophize now. A complete philosophy would
suppose a complete classification of corporeal qualities which
assigned to each its proper place. It will suffice to state that
at the interior of the same group we find the irreducibility of
one quality to another. We have not actually had to
demonstrate that each of the qualities discerned by the senses
and by science is a kind apart, but we have attempted to prove
that there are irreducible kinds of qualities. The privileged case
is that of the contrariety of qualities which make them incom­
patible simultaneous determinations oí one and the same
extension. Now we find this opposition :
a) Among

figures

:

1. Crystalline structures10 are very clearly contrary in
regard to the kinds of geometric solids which they realize. Their
seven fundamental types also serve to characterize chemical kinds.

2. Atomic structures are still more specific. The same
atom is not able to carry two different numbers. H is designated
by 1, He 2, C C, 0 8, Cl 17, Ur 92. Chemistry classifies the
kinds of atoms according to this number, called the atomic
and neutrons in the nucleus, which arc considered in this way as nucleons,
whereas the negatons in the crown are properly called electrons.
The positron is very evanescent. Its average life is less than
a millionth of a second.
The photon or light particle manifests neither mass nor charge, but
is produced by the disappearance (" annihilation ") of a pair of electrons,
one positive, the other negative, and it disappears by the " creation ”
of a new pair of electrons. See Sourcebook of Atomic Energy, pp. 46-48,
about the anti-proton.
*• See McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, Vol. 3,
pp. 580-608 (Crystals); also M. J. Buerger, Elementary Crystallography
(New York : Wiley, 1956), and F. C. Phillips, Introduction to Crystal­
lography, 2nd. ed. (New York : Wiley, 1956).

N.Y. 17 — 5

40

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

number. It admits, however, that the total mass of the atom
is able to vary by one or several units because of the addition
to protons of a certain number of neutrons. The same chemical
kind, uranium, for example, embraces several different kinds,
called " isotopes, ’’ of atomic masses as distinct as the
numbers 233, 235, 238, 239. Hydrogen embraces three of
masses 1, 2, and 3.
3. As to biological structures, they are evidently contrarj'
one to the other. The eye of a vertebrate has not the structure
of the ear, nor does the muscular cell have the structure of an
epithelial cell. The organisms are so specified by their morpho­
logy that we can classify them according to it.
b) Among

forces :

1. Mass, which is translated as density, is a specific charac­
teristic of the atom. It corresponds to the total number of
nuclear particles which form its nucleus, e.g., Ur = 234.
Atoms differ from one another by one or several units of mass.
A continuous increase of mass does not seem to exist. The
fractional numbers designating mass do not indicate a possible
mounting continuity between the elements, but they are an
indication that the measures have a relation to mixtures of
different atoms which are very similar because of their chemical
properties (isotopes). Thus Cl (= 35,5) is a mixture of three
kinds of atoms having as their specific mass, 35, 37, and 39. ”
2. Valence is not considered as a characteristic of certain
kinds of atoms but of all atoms in general, and the qualities of
this phenomenon, from the point of view of chemical combi­
nations, are clearly contrary. Certain atoms have an inert
valence, and they do not enter into combinations (helium,
neon, for example). The others have valences between one
and five; that is, they are each able to combine with one,
two, three four or five atoms of hydrogen. Valences are
,T Fractional numbers can also signify a loss of mass as well as the
fusion of nucleons : this mass is therefore transformed into " binding ”
energy. For a more detailed exposition of this, see W. Heisenberg,
Nuclear Physics, ch. 4 and ch. 5.

CORPOREAL QUALITY IS HETEROGENEOUS

41

attached to structures. They express the number of electrons
which are able to be given or received by a certain atom. The
peripheral electrons are spread in layers around the nucleus.
Each layer is “ saturated ” by a determined number of electrons.
From the interior to the exterior, they arc encased in various
layers in the following manner, K (2 el.), L (8 el.), M (18 el.) etc.
The outermost layer is the only one which concerns the chemical
phenomenon of valence. If it is saturated, it gives the atom
a null valence. If it is nonsaturated, it gives two complimentary
valences, one corresponding to the number of electrons in this
layer, another to the number of electrons needed to saturate it.
The way in which valence is expressed is by whole numbers and
divides atoms into specifically distinct groups. Thus O has a
valence of 2, the outermost layer L having only six electrons,
while 8 are necessary to saturate it. II has a valence of 1, the
outermost layer K possessing only a single electron, and able
to number only 2 in it as a total. The mutual affinity of II and
of O will give a composite of 2 atoms of H and 1 atom of O,
thus H - O - H = water.
3. Electricity is characterized by the contrariety of its two
signs. It is either positive or negative, and because of the
contrariety of its movements, it attracts or repulses. These
electrical forces are therefore specifically distinct.
4. Light, in the physical sense, is formed of a mixture of
simple radiations which have a definitive wave length. These
wave lengths are opposed enough to be used in the recognition
of kinds of atoms through the medium of a spectroscope.
Everything which the astronomer knows of the physical and
chemical constitution of the sun, of nebulae, and of stars, rests
on the specific character of light emitted by atoms. The wave
length of x-rays is utilized in the same fashion for the same end :
proof of its specific character.

c) Among the sensible

qualities

:

We need not insist on their manifest contrariety. It strikes
us in tactile qualities : the smooth and the rough, the soft and
the hard, the cold and the warm. In the gustative qualities, we

42

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

remark the bland and the salted, the sweet and the bitter. We
may also remark in the olfactory qualities, which are very
subjective, that they are very much opposed from an affective
point of view : aromatic and fetid odors, each odor possessing
above all the character of being distinguished from every other.
Sounds are opposed to each other as high or low, and as arranged
in notes. Colors are grouped in complimentary couples, wherein
the contraries are cancelled out as colors, and become a lumi­
nosity more or less gray.
We find the scientific guarantees for this contrariety in the
sense perceptions of sounds and colors in the definition of wave
lengths having specifically characteristic periods. Other sensible
qualities have not been translated into mathematical language.
For the physicist, cold is something totally different from the
common-sense perception of it. It is a state of molecular repose,
but this offers no explanation as to why it should be grasped by
the thermal sense. Must we conclude that the contrariety
manifested here is completely subjective? The proof of this
subjectivity must be held as being insufficient. The reality
which warms me, may well be more complex than the molecular
movement grasped in it by the physicist. No “ scientific ”
guarantee need be demanded, for a metaphysical necessity will
allow us to venture the following : that which makes me sense
something as contrary to another sensible datum must necessarily
possess in itself the reason for this opposite appearance under
which it is manifest to me.

Conclusion : We remark in every genus of quality a
plurality of species. They have this in common, that they
determine extension, but each in its own way. Figure gives
precise limits, force gives activity, the sensible qualities which
modify our senses make us know intuitively. Without a doubt,
figures and forces contribute to modifying our senses, but must
we go so far as to say that the reality of sensible qualities is
reduced to structure and forces? Those who say this are
incapable of proving it, so that we must maintain, at least
provisionally, that sensible qualities are a kind distinct from
those of figure and corporeal forces.

CORPOREAL QUALITY IS SIMPLE

43

D. The simplicity of qualities can be deduced from their
specific character, but let us rather say that this will be easy
to show, if we state precisely the type of simplicity of which we
wish to speak.

There is a notional simplicity. A simple idea is a notion
which is not composed of several notions. Such is the notion
of quality in general. One cannot truly define it. However,
since there are numerous kinds of qualities, and since a specific
notion is formed from a genus and a difference, particular
qualities are not simple notions but complex ones.

But is the reality of qualities simple? This question still
needs to be made more precise, for real simplicities are as varied
as the kinds of composition to which they are opposed.
Absolute simplicity is accorded to God alone. The simplicity
of the soul is no more than relative. It is simple, as a part, but
in relation to the whole which it informs it is not simple. To
assert the simplicity of a quality is not to deny that it is united
to another quality or is diffused in a determined extension.
The simplicity of which we wish to speak is precisely that which
fails to appear in extension. It is the absence of extended parts
in a composition which should form a larger extension. To say
that quality is simple is to say that “ per se ”28 it is not extended,
that it remains that which it is without becoming more or less,
no matter what the extension may be in which it is supposed
to be realized. " The simple, ” says Hamelin {The Principle
Elements of Representation, second ed., p. 151), “ as characteristic
of quality is this, that in having a nature as complicated as one
wishes (notional composition), it remains indifferent to spatial
and temporal composition. ” He adds : " Place a pause on a
note and this will not change it insofar as it is a note. A cubic
inch of yellow is neither more nor less yellow than a cubic foot
of the same color and the same shade. ”
” Per se = by reason of what it is; per accidens, on the contrary,
designates a predicate which agrees with a subject by reason of its actual
relation with other things. The two expressions, taken absolutely, may
be rendered : necessarily, and in a contingent way.

44

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

Actually, it is easy to observe this simplicity in each kind
of quality.
1. Figure is the same whether we increase it or decrease it.
The relations of limits between themselves are not changed when
one increases or diminishes surface or volume. The figure on a
photograph is not changed when it is enlarged. Two similar
triangles are only one kind of figure, although the marked
surfaces are more or less extended. The structure of a micro­
scopic crystal of NaCl is the same as that of a crystal of NaCl
having a hundred or a thousand times more volume.
2. Forces. A vibration keeps its wave length whether it
fades away after only a few centimeters of distance, or whether
it is extended over several kilometers. The mass of an atom
remains unchanged whether it is isolated or whether it is united
to other atoms which are either similar or different.
3. Sensible qualities arc also indifferent to variations of
extension. Ten gallons of water are not of a higher temperature
than a single drop of this volume.
Moreover, by right, simplicity is a necessary property of
quality. Actually, it is the composition of continuous parts
which makes extension indeterminate by nature, indefinitely
multiple and divisible. Now quality is in itself determined,
being a determination of extension. It is therefore not able
to be composed of continuous parts, and must be indifferent to
every variation of extension. Spatial composition produces indé­
termination. The qualitative determination is therefore simple.
It should be clear from this that quality is indivisible. It is
either all that it is, or it is nothing. Division, the operation which
assigns limits to parts, is only possible on a reality composed
of parts. Thus by drawing a shade half way down over the
surface of a window, I do not cut the light of the sun in half.
The objection can be raised that we do measure quality, and that
measure supposes division. It is true that measure supposes
division, *• yet, on the other hand, we cannot divide a quality.
” Actually, the measure is the relation of a whole to one of its parts
taken as a unit. It supposes the whole to bo divisible into completely
equal unit parts (equivalent), which form a whole by simple addition.

CORPOREAL QUALITY HAS INTENSITY

45

Therefore we must find a way to measure it indirectly by dividing
something other than it. We will see how, further on (see H).
One can still object that we are concerned with the more or less
of qualities, and because of this, they possess a kind of quantity
which implies a certain multiplicity, if not of parts, at least of
degrees, and makes quality divisible under another heading.
We agree that there is a problem here. Let us face it.
E. Intensity is actually an empirical character of qualities.
It is that dimension proper to quality which makes it capable
of increase and decrease without changing its kind. It is
expressed by the comparatives, more, less, as much; and the
superlatives, very, most : the sun is more luminous than a
bulb; the snow is as cold as ice; the sound of a fife is very
sharp.
Intensity remains scientifically a property of forces. Here
the degrees of quality are appreciated with the exactness of
numbers, for example, when we state that gravity varies in the
inverse proportion of the square of the distance of the body from
the center of attraction, or the mass of a molecule of 0 is 16 times
greater than that of H, and half of that of S.
A philosophical analysis of intensity has been made by
Bergson from the psychological point of view.10 For him,
to perceive a state of consciousness as more or less intense is
either " to evaluate the dimension of its cause by a certain
quality in the effect, ” or to perceive confusedly a plurality of
varying psychic states which are different and simultaneous.
In the first case, two luminous sensations are equal in intensity,
because the impressions received are equal, despite the difference
of the excitants, e.g., a candle light striking my eye from a
distance of one meter, and then four candles striking my eye
from a distance of two meters. In the second case, a pain is
judged more intense because it is composed of a greater number
of sensations corresponding to a greater number of contracted
muscles. However, this is not our problem. We are here
*♦ H. Bergson. Time & Free Will, An Essay on the Immediate Data
of Consciousness, trans, into English by F. L. Pogson (New York :
Macmillan. 1913). ch. 1.

46

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

concerned with the intensity of corporeal qualities and not with
states of consciousness.
What is necessary that quality possess a proper dimension
other than that of extension? It will be necessary and sufficient
that: (1) it will be realized according to multiple degrees;
(2) it will remain homogeneous in all its degrees; (3) its degrees
will not be simultaneous juxtaposable parts, but the complete
quality such as it is at a given moment.

The first condition is verified :
1. Figure taken abstractly is certainly not subject to
intensity. Either it is, or it is not. This is true of geometrical
figures : a triangle is not more or less triangular. This is also
true of atomic structures, and of molecular and biological ones.
This may be the structure of the cockroach, the other that of
the herring, but the figure taken in the concrete in a real body,
is only more or less perfectly realized. *l
Thus the structure of an organism is the result of a deve­
lopment which realizes that structure more and more. It is
perfect only at the term of an evolution. The structure of
disturbed crystal tends to restore itself; that of a molecule is
more or less stable, more or less near its state of equilibrium,
e.g., H,0 is stable, H,Oa is very unstable. The structure of an
atom is cither more or less closed or open, e.g., He is closed,
H is monovalent, C tetravalent. This structure is more or less
solid or weak; the weakness of the atomic structure is measured
by its radioactive period. An element which has a structure•*
•* Sec Summa Theol.,
q. 51, a. I. St. Thomas makes
a distinction between the dimension proper to quality (in this sense,
we speak of structures which are more or less complex) and the dimension
of its realization in a subject (a vegetable has a specific structure which
is realized in varying degrees). According to him, there is a first classifi­
cation of these realities, which arises from the fact that they are defined
by a relation to a term towards which they arc oriented : thus a movement,
more or less intense, keeps its specific character provided it remains
directed towards the same term. The other domain of intensity, that ot
the participation of a form in a subject, is extended so far that it embraces
even substantial forms as they correspond to the dispositions of matter.

CORPOREAL QUALITY HAS INTENSITY

47

weaker than its period, has a short life span. There is an extreme
variation in these periods going from fractions of a second to
billions of years, for example, uranium. ”

2. Force. Here intensity is measured by certain effects
of force. Thus one distinguishes the intensity of heat or electri­
city from their quantity. One evaluates the intensity in degrees
of temperature or in amperes, and the quantity in calories or
in coulombs. The definitions of intensity are furnished by the
scientist in each one of these cases, and refer always to measures
and to instruments. They are, therefore, variable, according
to the progress of the laws and theories of science. Thus caloric
intensity was first defined by the dilation of bodies (mercury,
alcohol, air), and then by the deviation of a needle on a galva­
nometer. In any case, this conclusion is imposed : every force
presents an intensity having multiple degrees.
3. By sensible qualities. Degrees are so well known that
we need not tarry here. A color is more or less saturated, sound
is more or less strong, a dish of food more or less seasoned.
The second condition is more difficult to verify. (Qualities
will remain homogeneous in all their degrees). We think that
a quality does not change kind while changing degree.
La 3 remains La 3 even when it has become very feeble. But is
it not our mind which, by abstraction, has established an illusory
homogeneity between these totally diverse realities? We must
recognize that diverse degrees of quality do not have the same
individual reality. They are contrary to one another, and the
higher degree excludes the lower. However, they preserve the
same specific nature, revealed, no doubt, by the abstraction of the
mind, but not created by it. The specific unity of the degrees
allows us to recognize its reality in the movement which links the
two degrees. Thus the biological form defined by the relationships
of organs is made more precise with the development of the living
tiling, which arrives at a certain peak and then falls back again.
“ The period for an element is the time at the end of which half
of the nuclei present at the beginning have disintegrated. At the end of
a time equal to io times the period, there remains only one active nucleus
for every thousand present at the beginning.

48

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

Thus force defined by its direction is incorporated into a movement
endowed with varying accelerations (gravity is greater at the
pole than at the equator ; a stone thrown into the air slows down
as it ascends, and then falls back going faster and faster as it
descends). Color defined by a wave length and a frequency,
possesses a brightness which is diminished bit by bit in the degree
and measure that it is propagated. The same is true of sound.
In all these cases, the homogeneity of the qualitative degrees
is shown as real through the reality of movement, which gathers
them together in the unity of its succession. Thus the specific
homogeneity of a quality remains intact in all its degrees, not
only as far as the mind is concerned, but also in reality itself.
Couldn’t this be a pure sensory appearance, a simple psycho­
logical impression of unity among qualitative degrees which are
different? No. It is necessary to admit a real reason for this
diversity as well as for this unity, and the reason can only be a
diversity of degrees taking place in the same kind of quality.
The homogeneity thus assured to the degrees of sensible qualities
cannot fail to be true “ a fortiori ” about the degrees in forces
and in structures, which are objects of scientific experience free
from the illusions of empiricism.
In this affirmation of the variable intensity of the same
quality, we see joined here, in order to explore the real, both the
intelligence which distinguishes the homogeneous, the identical,
and concrete experience which perceives diversity, succession,
and which also gives an opportunity for reason to grasp the order
from within that succession, the orientation of change towards
a maximum.
The third condition is sufficiently established by examples
already analyzed. (Degrees will not be simultaneous juxta­
posable parts, but the complete quality such as it is at a given
moment). The degrees of intensity are not juxtaposed. They
exclude one another, as successive moments are excluded in
movement. Each realized quality, identical to its intensity of
the moment, is not juxtaposed to the intensity of the preceding
moment nor added another quality; it becomes simply a higher
degree when its intensity increases. It changes degrees without

UNION OF QUALITY AND QUANTITY

49

changing kind, and it changes according to its nature which is
simplicity and not juxtaposition of parts.
We can see that the intensity of a quality finds its real
meaning in a qualitative change. Its problem then, is transposed
into that of movement. From now on we will see that to measure
an intensity is to measure a movement, and that the dimension
of quality is nothing other than the dimension of a movement
which corresponds to it. Thus the two preceding objections (D)
receive their first answer. ”

F. The union of quality with extension allows us to give
a further precision to this answer. Corporeal quality is actually
and essentially a determination of extension. The general
reason for this is that a body is first of all extended, and an
unextended reality has nothing to do with the corporeal.
Therefore quality is an attribute of a body only on condition
that it determines its extension. In more detail : (1) figure is
a system of relations of measure which link the diverse parts
of an extension with its limits; (2) corporeal force can be defined
only by relation to an acceleration, it supposes local movement
and extension; (3) as regards sensible qualities, either they are
given as qualities of an extension (as is the case with colors and
tactile qualities), or they are linked with the extension of the
organs which perceive them (as is the case in sounds, tastes and
odors) : our ears vibrate, our tongues taste a savory surface,
and our nasal mucous comes in contact with an odorous surface.
Quality determines extension therefore to be more or less
large. By it extension possesses a new dimension. Thus the
quantity of heat in a gallon of boiling water is four times greater
than that in a quart. The quantity of electricity in two identical
batteries is double that of each battery. The quantity of light
received by a plant is proportionate to the surface of its leaves.
This new dimension of quality is added to its intensity, and
makes quality measurable under a new title without, however,
identifying it with extension in its basic nature.
** See Summa Thcol., I-II®, q. 52, a. x and 2. St. Thomas shows
that intensity does not increase by addition nor diminish by subtraction,
but by more or less perfect participation.

50

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

G. The distinction between quality and extension is
imposed upon us for a number of reasons, and we are obliged
now to refute the system called mechanism.
It was mechanism which was among the first to recognize
this opposition. It denied the reality of qualities and affirmed
that of extension.
In vindicating the reality of qualities, we are, however,
urged by mechanism to reduce this reality to that of extension
and movement. Moreover, in its thought, mechanism treats
movement as something purely geometric, in no way qualitative,
and reduces it to a mathematical formula. We shall criticize
it on this last point (Cf. Third Question, second part). It will
be sufficient here to indicate the opposition which makes quality
irreducibly distinct from extension.
1. First of all, extension is formed of multiple parts;
quality is simple and indivisible. Extension is indeterminate
and does not constitute kinds by itself; quality is determination,
and is diversified in a multitude of kinds.

2. Moreover, extension and quality vary independently
of one another.
a) Equal volumes have different weights. The same
number of atoms corresponds to different properties, as has been
shown in the cases of polymerism and isomerism : thus if one
warms iodine vapor, the molecules first formed of 8 atoms
simplify themselves and by stages, Io, I4, It, one arrives at Ix,
in such a way that the volume formed of 24 atoms of iodine
is able to correspond to 5 different molecular structures. Thus
all the isomères arc formed of the same atoms and yet they
possess properties that are specifically different, e.g., ethyl
alcohol and ether-oxide methylate.
b) Inversely, unequal volumes can possess the same
quality. An organism, which grows, increases its extension, and
is able to keep the same structure, such as cyrstals do, e.g.,
marine salt. Whether the crystals arc small or large, they
possess the same cubic form and the same physical and chemical
qualities. It is rather useless to continue with examples of this

THE MEASURE OF QUALITIES

51

reciprocal independence in regard to sensible qualities. Empiri­
cally the distinction of qualities from extension is incontestably
evident.

H. The measure of qualities (supplementary question)
nevertheless remains possible : (1) by reason of movement which
links a quality or an intensity to another; (2) because of the
presence of quality in a limited extension.

Actually every measure is reducible to a measure of length.
Therefore quality, in order to be measurable, ought to modify
extension in such a way that the parts of extension directly
measured will have some equivalence in relation to this
quality.
This condition is best realized when it is a question of the
" quantity ” of quality, e.g., heat. The unit or calory is arbi­
trarily defined, without doubt, but the numbers here express real
relations, and they are proportionate to the numbers of molecules
possessing the same degree of heat. The measure bears directly
on extension, and it is the measure of an extension endowed
with a determined degree of the quality under consideration,
not the measure of the quality itself. We should understand
that, although it does not measure the intensity, it certainly
indicates it in an exact manner.
The intensity of a quality is measurable in its increasing
and decreasing movements, provided it is linked with a certain
displacement in space. Thus temperature is measured by reason
of the dilation and contaction of mercury, which involves its
“ rising ” and “ falling. ” These words have a direct reference
to the thermometer. Directly it is length which is appraised
in this measure, and beyond the actual displacement of mercury,
the validity of this measure must appeal to the principle of
sufficient reason to establish its balance for the variation of the
caloric intensity. •* Strictly speaking, intensity is not measured.
A double intensity is not the total of two equal intensities.
“ The dimension of an effect which is directly measurable
is an indirect measure of the dimension of its cause.

52

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

It is not formed of parts which can be added together. Moreover,
successive degrees of intensity arc not identical among themselvesand cannot be taken as equivalents. A warmth of 10° is another
thing than 50°.33 Briefly, intensity is not measurable. The laws
of the measurable, that is, the equivalency of parts and their
capability of being added, do not involve intensity.

Thus those varying kinds of instruments which have for
a suffix “ meter, ” serve us by indicating equal intensities and
by measuring either an extension determined by the intensity
itself, or the displacements in extension which are linked causally
to the variation of intensity. “ To measure ” a quality is,
therefore, either to measure the extension it determines (its
quantity), or to measure the displacement in extension which
corresponds with it (its intensity). It is never to measure quality
itself.
It is interesting to remark here that extension is not measur­
able by itself alone. It is qualified extension (limited extension)
which is measurable. These measures reveal the twofold
character of bodies, quantitative and qualitative, at the same
time. The mathematical physical sciences thus bear witness to
our philosophical inquiry.

Conclusions. Corporeal quality can be defined as :
the determination of extension. We can actually deduce from
this characteristic the other attributes of quality : to determine,
it ought to constitute a multitude of distinct kinds; being
determined, it cannot consequently change without ceasing to be,
and is, therefore, simple, indivisible; but extension, indifferent
to its determinations, can pass from one to another, and this
passage from one degree to another in the same quality confers
on each degree a certain intensity. Thus heterogeneity, simpli­
city, and intensity distributed in degrees, are the consequences
of the determined and determining character of quality. The
three groups of qualities realize this in their own way : figure
determines the extension of the body considered in itself; forces
•• The chemical and especially the biological effects of these temper­
atures show that they are not concretely equivalent.

WHAT IS CORPOREAL CHANGE?

53

determine it in relation to other bodies under the aspect of
movement ; sensible qualities in relation to the sensory knowledge
of man.
But the study of quality is still incomplete, since movement,
because of its complexity, merits a study by itself. In this study
extension and quality will be found again, but the phenomenon
embraces new and original relations, and has a very revealing
role to play in the knowing of a corporeal substance.

Third Question : What is corporeal change?
Third Thesis

: Corporeal movement is :
1. continuous and infinitely divisible;
2. qualitative and simple;
3. and well described as : the act of a
being in potency, as it is in potency.

A. Notion

1. Common sense sees in change a datum common to all
sensations, both internal and external. This datum is that
of diversity in succession, that of newness. The same sense,
perceiving in successive movements, perceives differently. What
gives a body another sensible quality — that is change :
“ Id quo corpus fit aliter dispositum ac erat ” (that by which
a body is disposed to be other than it was). Three kinds of
change are discernible : (1) local movement or transfer : I go
to New York; (2) qualitative variations: the sky darkens, water
freezes ; here we must add growth : the wheat ripens, the vine
flourishes; (3) substantial change: coal is turned into cinders,
the tree dies. In all these cases movement is, at the same
time, a succession of states, an opposition between these states,
and a dependence of these states on one another.
2. Science uses the abstract notion of local movement.
It studies it in itself, and we have the science of kinematics,
or as it is linked to force, we have dynamics. It applies its

54

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

abstract knowledge of movement to experimental studies and
thus we have physics, chemistry, biology and astronomy.30
Movement or quantity of movement is equal to the mass
times the velocity : m X v ; v is expressed by the quotient of
the displacement by the time : v = d¡t. In the mathematical
sense, movement is not a succession, nor an opposition of states,
nor a dependence linking them. It is a measure, a given
dimension. The application of this notion to a physical reality
can only measure it. Directly, this measure reveals nothing
of the nature of movement. Bergson has even denied its useful­
ness, because it reveals movement only indirectly. This
anti-mechanistic reaction seems excessive because scientific
knowledge of movement is useful to us, and therefore it is not
able to be completely false. Keeping in mind his critique,
let us take care not to limit ourselves to the teachings of science,
if we wish to penetrate the profound meaning of movement,
but on the other hand, let us be careful that we interpret these
notions correctly. We can mark here that, according to scientific
analysis, movement supposes three conditions : continuity of
a certain space covered by successive duration, which two
conditions are implied in the notion of speed (v = d/t), as well
as a dependence on that qualitative element which is symbolized
in the notion, mass.

3. Let us analyze these notions philosophically, and we
shall discover in all movement an aspect that is both empirical
and scientific.
a. Two positive terms which limit it : one, the starting
point, “ terminus a quo, ” the other, the finishing point,
“ terminus ad quem. ’’ ”
“For the physicist, differing rays are movements formingascalc,
whose degrees are determined by a wave length : cosmic rays (wave
length iA°), gamma (tA*>) x (iA°), ultra violet (O.'jx or i.ooo A°), luminous
000
1,
too
io
(from 0.4 (X to 0.8 ;x), infra-red up to 300 jx); then, the Hertzian waves
from 500 (X to 2 km; finally, the undulations of low frequency, up to
7,000 km.
*’ The traditional expressions " starting point ” and " finishing
point ” are apt to be very misleading in their English usage. They seem

WHAT IS CORPOREAL CHANGE?

55

b. A relation of contrariety between these two terms :
one is positive and implies the privation of the other, as well
as the possibility of this other.
c. A relation of succession : one is anterior, the other is
posterior; movement is thus oriented, and, in the concrete,
irreversible.
d. A relation of reciprocal dependence : the terminus a quo
tends to the terminus ad quern, and the latter comes from the
former.38 This passage is completely essential to movement.

e. A permanent subject, the mobile, which, passing from
one state to another, becomes. This movement is the becoming
of a stable subject (e), which passes (d) from one state to
another (a), which states are contrary (b) and are realized
successively (c).

It is the nature of the terms which determines the different
kinds of movements (or changes, since these two words are
actually synonymous). (1) Local movement (transfer) is the
passage from one place to another. (2) The variation of volume
is the passage from a greater extension to a lesser one or vice
versa. (3) Qualitative change is the passage from one quality
to another which is contrary to it. This is called alteration.
to refer necessarily to a local movement, interposed between two immobile
positions. This appearance is completely erroneous. There arc other
changes than those of displacement. There arc also other motions,
whose beginning or end wc do not know, such as those of the planets and
the stars and those of electrons in an atom. Finally, in the displacements,
which begin and finish, such as those found in the movements of projectiles,
vehicles and animals, the terms of the change are not points in space
(the " here ’’ and the " there ”) indicating the extremities of the covered
trajectory. They are qualifications of the mobile, localized here and
localized there.
** We willingly admit that a previous state explains the following
one. that water warming at 2o° prepares, leads to and also explains
a further temperature of 2i°, yet what wc fail to remark here is. that
these 2o° arc attained only in a process of warming which tends to a
beyond, towards 21®. Without this reference to 21®. it is evident that
at 2o® the water is no longer in action to be warmed, that change no longer
exists. We must say that the future of change is more its cause than
is its past : a partial translation of the axiom " Finis est omnium causarum
causa. ”

N.Y. 17 — 6

56

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

The passage from one degree of intensity to another in the
same quality is called “ intensio, ” and the passage which leads
to the loss of a quality is designated as “ remissio. ”
(4) Generation and corruption, which arc correlative, arc the
passage from one substance to another, wherein one individual
existence becomes another individual existence, whether of the
same specific nature, as in the generation of a living thing, or not
of the same specific nature, as is the case in atomic disintegration,
and in the formation of chemical compounds.

B. The reality of movement is admitted by common sense,
which distinguishes many kinds of it, yet, at the same time,
common sense recognizes, side by side with movement, things
which are stable. It ignores that which is of no interest to
the conduct of human affairs. Science, however, indicates
movement in those realities which appear to common sense
as the most immobile : the atom is made up of electrons in
constant and extremely rapid motion; the universe is made up
of nebulae in constant motion. Science, in its analysis, tends
to reduce all motion to local motions, and in every change
seeks to analyze it under the aspect of local motion. Thus
physics reduces the phenomena of dilation and contraction
to local movement. However, the biological sciences will not
go all the way with physics, and they point out the originality
of the phenomena of growth : the living thing grows not only
in increasing its volume, but in the differentiating and gradual
realizing of its own structure; the movement of quantitative
increase here is paralleled by a qualitative modification which
leads the structure to its completion. Here local movement
is only the condition of differentiation ; it is not identical with it.
Chemistry places a new obstacle to complete mechanism by
its distinction between chemical mixtures and chemical
compounds. The clearest sense of this distinction is to place
mixtures in the category of local movements without any true
alterations, and compounds among alterations which have
sometimes been called substantial changes. As for biology,
every reproduction, every death appears as a profound change
which might be characterized as substantial.

WHAT IS CORPOREAL CHANGE?

57

Philosophers are far from being so affirmative.

1. The reasons for denying the reality, whether of change
in general, , or of a particular kind of change, arc varied : here
arc some of the principal ones.

a. For Parmenides, all movement is impossible. Being
is necessarily unique. A second being distinct from a first
would have to possess some character which the first lacked,
but a being is not able to be limited by a lack of being, i.e., by
nothing; being can only be being, without limitation, without
possible distinction, without the possibility of an anti-being.
The absolute uniqueness of being entails absolute immobility,
since change always supposes a diversity of qualities and
succession.

b. Local movement
1) is impossible according to Zeno, who bases this
contention on four well-known arguments :
a) The dichotomy. A mobile object must cover an infinite
number of intervals to arrive at the term of its movement,
but it could never reach the term of its movement without at
least covering half the distance, but then how would one cover
half the distance with an infinite number of intervals?
b) Achilles would never be able to catch the tortoise,
who is a step ahead, for while Achilles was advancing one step,
the tortoise would still be advancing, and an infinity of points
would still separate them.
c) An arrow flying towards its target would be in movement
and at rest at the same time, for at each moment of its flight,
it would be at one point of its trajectory, and therefore immobile.
d) The race course demonstrates that, if we admit the
movement of two runners starting from two opposite points,
running equal distances with the same speed towards a line
which separates them in the middle of the course, we must
also admit that each, at the same time, has covered the distance
which separated him from the line in the middle of the course,
as, well as that which separated him from his competitor, which

58

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

is double the first distance. In a second form, the argument
attempts to prove that with the hypothesis of movement,
two moments would be equal to three. The two runners run
the course from opposite directions in such a way that they
leave and arrive together, which determines two moments,
yet they passed each other, and this determines a third moment.

2) Kant suspects local movement. The perception of it
is dependent on space and lime, but time is for internal sensations
what space is for external sensations, an a priori form of sensory
knowledge. We can be aware of phenomena only by placing
them in an order wherein some are anterior to others and some
posterior to others. We can not know whether the thing-in-itself
is mobile or not. The main reason for this assertion is that the
notion of time which is the foundation of universal and necessary
mathematical judgments ought to have a necessary and universal
value, but this is impossible, unless it is independent of
experience, an “ a priori ” furnished by the subject knowing.
c. For the phenomenalists, substantial changes no more
exist than do substances; only phenomena exist, whether they
be psychological or mechanical. If they reduce all reality to
psychological phenomena, they are also idealists, as is the case
with Hamelin. For him change is purely phenomenal in this
sense, that it is ideas which change in our consciousness, and
evolve from contrary to contrary to constitute the total object
of our knowledge.
2. The examination of these reasons brings up ontology,
in a and c, as well as critique, in b. 2).
Ad a. Perfect being is necessarily unique. There can be
only one Perfect. However, experience shows us the existence
of a plurality of beings. These beings must be said to be imperfect
because they arc beings with limitations, and we must make
an effort to understand this in ontology.
Admitting a lack of perfection in beings there is room for
a hierarchy of beings, and, moreover, there arises the possibility
of a new being coming from an anterior being which is in another
degree of being. It was with the doctrine of " potency, ”

WHAT IS CORPOREAL CHANGE?

59

incomplete being, that Aristotle was able to give a rational
explanation of the existence of movement; and it is by the
doctrine on the analogy of the degrees of being that the
Scholastics show the possibility of becoming.
Ad b. 1) a) and b). Zeno supposes in his first two arguments
that movement is divided in some way. The answer is easy :
real movement is not divided. Bergson has fashioned an
imaginary answer for Achilles : " I achieve a series of indivisible
acts. The course I run is a series of these acts. Inasmuch as
the series includes steps, you are able to distinguish parts in it.
But you do not have the right to break up this series into units
supposed by some other laws than the laws of movement, nor
even to suppose that it is articulated in some other manner.
To proceed, as Zeno does, is to suppose that the race can be
arbitrarily broken down into the parts of a space covered —
which is ultimately to confuse movement with immobility. ’’
(La Pensée et le Mouvant, p. 182). We can add that it is to
confuse abstract possibility with concrete reality.
Ad b. 1) c). The arrow is not at rest except at the extreme
points of its movement. It does not tarry at any of the points
of its trajectory, it only passes them. We can even safely say
that there is no definite point in its trajectory. To determine
points, to mark out possible or real stops for movement is to
destroy actual movement by substituting for it a plurality
of other possible movements covering the same extension.
Here, again, movement is confused with the space covered,
the possible with the actual.
Ad b. 1) d). The argument drawn from the race course
develops as if the second runner were at the same time mobile
(arriving at the line) and immobile (thought of as still at the
starting point); or as if the movement had not, bit by bit,
reduced his distance from the first by half the original distance.
The second form of this argument supposes that there arc
indivisible units of time and space. This Pythagorean hypothesis
is not true. The point of this argument is to show, and this
is undoubtedly Zeno’s intention, that the moment is no more
part of duration than a point is part of a line : it is its limit.

60

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

Ad b. 2). The notion of time is not any more " a priori ”
than any other universal idea. It is formed by a mind which
abstracts, which cannot construct except by means of abstraction.
It is originally grasped in the data of differentiating sense
powers as a relation of successive diversity. The universal
and necessarj' character of mathematical judgments is derived
precisely from abstraction, and their applicability to things
arises from the concrete presence of the abstract in the very
heart of things.
Ad c. Psychological phenomena alone exist : this is the
pure postulate upon which idealism rests — a postulate of pure
immanence. It consists essentially in a perversion of the
notion of truth, wherein, instead of being an agreement of the
mind with its real object, it becomes the agreement of thought
with itself. It is impossible that only phenomena should exist,
because there must necessarily be unified centers, as well as
permanent and productive centers for the phenomena; in a word,
there must be substances. It is substance which allows itself
to be known in phenomena, as the “ ego ” allows itself to be
grasped in successive psychological states.
If there are
substances, then substantial changes are possible.

3.

The positive proofs for the reality of movement

a. are easy as far as changes of place, extension and quality
are concerned. The same arguments which prove the reality
of extension and qualities, also prove the reality of local
movement and alteration.
1) Movement contains intuitive data. Becoming, is a
relation wherein there is a passage from one thing to another
(diversity) according to a before and after (succession).
Moreover, diversity and succession are simple as well as intuitive
data. Yet “ becoming ” is not constructed from their union ;
it supposes them and adds to them a new and simple relation
which is properly “ change. ”

2) Science reduces a host of qualities to local movement,
yet the reality of the defined movements so necessary to its
truth, rests on the same evidence as the reality of qualities.

WHAT IS CORPOREAL CHANGE?

61

3) Our adaptation to the world is achieved primarily
through our movements, whether faced by immobile or mobile
objects. The same is true of animals whether they are the
hunters or the hunted.
b. To show the existence of substantial changes, however,
a special analysis is required. (1) The necessary and sufficient
condition of a substantial change in the corporeal world is that
an extended reality loses its existence in acquiring another.
(2) But how does one state the distinction between individual
existences? Existence is revealed by action, and action by the
change produced. Existences are shown to be individually
distinct, where the changes of which they are the first source
exact distinct causes. Now the distinction of causes can be purely
individual or individual and specific at the same time. The
purely individual distinction is drawn most often because of a
separation of quantitative limits and a certain independence
in changes, e.g., two crystals of sea salt, a cat and a kitten.
The specific distinction is drawn from a heterogeneity of
permanent qualities which are called properties : Cl is distinct
from Na, the dog from the serpent. (3) Thus we state that
there is a plurality of kinds among bodies, each defined by a
grouping of stable characteristics, and that each kind is realized
in a multitude of bodies individually distinct. (4) But this
plurality is only the condition of a substantial change : it makes
it possible, it permits us to pose such change as a question.
How shall we present this question of substantial change,
whether it be a passage from one individual existence to another,
or from one specific nature to another? Let us make the following
distinctions :
1) In the domain of life, there is no doubt that an individual
is born, another dies. Birth is not a creation : the materials
preexist, but endowed with another type of existence. For
example, two gametes have first been cells animated by the life
of the parents : ” an egg is formed, and here we have a new
’• Our reference, here, is to the progressive formation of a grain
of pollen (especially in the reproductive nucleus) starting with the mother
cells of the anther, and that of the oosphère starting with that cell of
the nuccllus, which will become the mother cell of the embryonic sac.

62

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

existence which is manifested by a series of actions oriented
to a new end.40 Death is not an annihilation. The once-living
materials remain, but devoid of the powers proper to living
things, and devoid of the existence proper to living things.
2) In the domain of biophysics, wherein the exchanges
between life and matter are operating, there is no doubt either.
Vital assimilation gives life to alimentary materials,41 while
disassimilation deprives living elements of their vital states.
We must remark here that all “ simple ” bodies are thus able
to be subordinated to life and later find again their independent
existence. In a word, they have a nature which will allow
substantial change.
3) In the domain of chemistry, the existence of substantial
change is more difficult to explain fully. Three general cases
appear clear :
First case: the formation of molecules from differing
molecules.
a) Each kind of molecule is distinct from all other kinds
by reason of stable properties which are opposed to the properties
of other kinds of molecules. Their best known physical properties
arc : molecular formula and mass, boiling point and temperature
of fusion, heat and electrical conductibility, system of crys­
tallization, solubility in water or other solvents, their light
and X-ray spectra. Their principal chemical properties are :
acid, base or salt (Ph), affinity and diverse molecular function.
When, therefore, in a given content of matter in which
certain kinds of molecules exist, a new kind or several new kinds
«• We are thinking, here, oí that prodigious activity of the egg which
constructs an embryo from a grain of pollen and endows it with reserves
at the expense of the mother plant, an activity so distinct from the life
of seed-bearers, that life is broken even to the point of dying, as in annual
and biennial plants.
41 Certainly this is not a case of simple digestion. This is a case
of the fabrication of certain chemical composites of a very specific nature,
which are very often structured among themselves in an equally specific
way : for example, specific albumens, and especially chromosomic genes,
chromosomes, nuclei and cells.

WHAT IS CORPOREAL CHANCE?

63

arise with the disappearance of the others, we must recognize
a change in individual existence, and where there is a difference
of kind, there can no longer be a question of individual
identity.
b) The manner in which a molecule is formed, forces us to
see in it something other than a mere aggregate, a mixture,
or a simple addition of components. The precise laws of chemical
combinations show the molecule as a whole, made up of elements
in necessary quantities, as illustrated by the law of definite
proportions in weight and volume, and the law of multiple
proportions (Proust, Gay-Lussac, Dalton). In a chemical
mixture, however, the relation between the weights of the
bodies in the mixture is indefinitely variable.
Again, combination demands a clearly determined trans­
formation of energy. This transformation is either exothermic
or endothermic, and the decomposition of the same molecule
is accompanied by an equal transformation in the opposite
direction. This is not the case with mixtures.
c) The way in which a molecule acts shows real unity,
since it functions as a single being. Thus osmotic pressure is
measured in relation to molecular concentrations on one side
or the other of a semi-permeable membrane. The pressure
of a gas, at a given temperature, depends only on the number
of molecules of gas present in a given volume. At the same
temperature and under the same pressure, the number of
molecules present in equal volumes of gas is the same, no matter
what type of gas it may be (at 0° C. and a pressure of 76 cm. of
mercury, a gram molecule of gas occupies 22.4 liters and contains
6.02 x 10a molecules — the law of Avogadro).
The experiments of J. Perrin leave no doubt about the
individual reality of the molecule from the scientific point of
view. The unity of comportment or of action seems to indicate
the unity of substantial existence.
Second case : The formation of atoms from other atoms
or from simple particles appears more clearly as a case cf
substantial change.

64

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

a) Radioactive elements, divided into 4 large families,
disintegrate spontaneously (naturally, without any human
intervention). For example, an atom of radium with a mass
226 emits :
(1) an Alpha particle, which is a nucleus of Helium (= one
Helion) with a mass 4, and a positive charge of 2; (2) a Beta
ray formed of negations; (3) a Gamma ray, similar to X-rays
and composed of photons; leaving an atom of Radon with
a mass 222 (nucleus) and a charge of 86.42

b) Artificial disintegration can be achieved with stable
atoms (not radioactive). The process consists in hurling
projectiles with tremendous energy against the nuclei of atoms
in order to split the nuclei into their component parts. These
projectiles are deutrons or neutrons from hydrogen nuclei,
helium nuclei, neutrons, Gamma rays, and Beta electrons.
Radioactive elements furnish us with them, and electric
apparatuses accelerate them (cyclotrons).13
We can in a way construct and study numerous radioactive
elements, which nature does not construct, or only constructs
in infinitely small proportions, e.g., certain radioactive particles,
and isotopes of ordinary elements (iodine, phosphorus, carbon,
hydrogen, etc.).
c) The formation of atoms from lighter nuclei is made
possible by the same process. In 1919, Rutherford bombarding
nitrogen with Alpha particles obtained oxygen and an emission
of protons :

14/ N+ÍHe=
17
O+ÍH
¿
OI
In 1934, Joliot-Curie, employing the same process
(bombarding nitrogen with Alpha rays), obtained fluorine and
neutrons (their discovery) :

^+>=8^+^"
** See Sourcebook on Atomic Energy, pp. 133-137.
See ibid., pp. 293-312.

—

WHAT IS CORPOREAL CHANGE?

65

According to Bethe, this reaction is analagous to that which
originates solar light and heat : 4 nuclei of hydrogen are fused
and transformed into one nucleus of helium, through catalytic
action of carbon ejecting two positrons. The hydrogen bomb
imitates this action. In both cases, the energy used to project
these particles against each other is heat, with a temperature
of over 10 million degrees. *
44

How can we doubt that we have here a substantial change?
When a reality changes its specific properties, how can it keep
the same individual existence?

Third case: subatomic particles themselves seem very
much to come into and go out of existence. The scientist
says : they are created, they are annihilated. These terms
must be taken in a relative sense. “ Created ” means that they
do not preexist under a form in which our actual experience
can grasp them; "annihilated” means they no longer exist
with the determined characteristics which are given in actual
experience.
“ There were no electrons in nuclei, as we formerly believed, "
writes L. de Broglie, " and the positive and negative electrons
emitted by nuclei of natural or artificial radioactive bodies
(negative and positive Beta rays) arc created when one of the
nucleons in the nucleus changes its state. ” 44

“ A free neutron is radioactive. It will disintegrate
spontaneously into a proton, an electron, and a neutrino... :
its average life is about twenty minutes. ”

As to Gamma photons emitted in nuclear reactions, “ we
frequently observe that they disappear in giving birth to pairs
of positive and negative electrons. ” (This is the creation of
pairs or materialization). " The inverse phenomena of the
disappearance of a pair with the formation of photons is called
44 See Jacob Sacks, The Atom al Work (New York : Ronald, 1956),
PP- 85-87.
44 Translation into English of quotation taken from Science et Vie,
n- 396, p. 140.

66

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

annihilation. ” These terms come from the appearance of a
mass equal to 2, and from its disappearance, a photon having
a mass that is almost nil.
The scientist, then, in the course of his experience, secs
these particles born, which he calls elementary : (1) positive
and negative electrons, photons; (2) protons and neutrons.
In the first case it is mass which is transformed into energy or
vice versa. In the second case, it is the electric charge which
is disassociated from the mass : a proton becomes a neutron
and emits a positron, or a neutron becomes a proton in emitting
a negatron.

Here we are forced to recognize a substantial change, and
we are in some way guided towards that mysterious reality
called by Aristotle prime matter, by virtue of that undetermined
something which is neither mass, since it can only be energy
(in the photon), nor energy, since it can only be mass (in the
neutron), and which, nevertheless, is so real that it is that
which remains basically through the most radical changes in
nature.

The first two cases, however, are open to an objection. Here
it is. In the formation of molecules or of atoms, we do not
observe a profound newness. The constitutive particles, atoms
in the first case, subatomic particles in the second, exist in
advance with their properties (mass, electrical charge, structure).
The energy itself which binds them together preexists : neither
molecular combination nor disintegration creates one parcel
of it. The only new thing is the assembly of parts. And what
more is this assembly than the result of local movement?
Moereover, in a world dominated by the principle of the
conservation of mass and energy, what can be substantially new?
It is true that the general quantitative expression of pheno­
mena can tell us nothing about substantial change, because
the latter is situated in the individual, and is appreciated only
“ Further English translations from L'Age Atomique, pp. 34-36.
and Lumière et Vic, Sept., 1954. p. 29.

WHAT IS CORPOREAL CHANGE?

67

in a qualitative manner. From a general and quantitative aspect,
my birth and death change nothing in the total of mass and
cosmic energy.
Let us proceed then to the individual. A molecule (such
as OH,), an atom (such as Radon) did not exist earlier. Now,
here they are. Are they the results of a local movement?
Certainly: H and O are bound together now; Ra has lost
4 nucleons. The death of this frog which 1 have just decapitated
is the result of local movement, but this does not prevent the
presence of a substantial change. This is a question of our
appreciation of the results of a local movement. Now here
in a composite there are : a) non additive properties, which are
discontinuous in relation to the components; b) a necessary unity
in the composite in which the individuality of the components
is effaced.
a) Non-addilive properties are discontinuous. A molecule
is not an aggregate in which its properties are merely the sum
total of the properties of its components, e.g., H and 0. Certain
properties called additive, such as mass, are pretty nearly the
sum total of the properties of the components. But the majority
of properties in a molecule indicate a discontinuity between
it and its components : thus an ordinary molecule of hydrogen,
formed from 2 atoms (H,), has a specific heat of 4.8 calorics,
whereas separately, each atom has a specific heat of 8 calorics.
The same is true of atoms in relation to their constituent
particles. With the exception of mass, which here again is an
additive property, almost all the properties oppose the atom
to the properties of its component particles. Its unity, so
strong that for a century we believed it absolute, is opposed
to the complexity of its components. Its electrical neutrality
is opposed to the charge which characterizes its protons and
negatrons; its definite and more or less stable structure, to the
possible scattering of its particles. It has its own volume,
its own proper light and X-ray spectrum, its own specific chemical
activity, none of which is found in its isolated particles.

b) Necessary unity. Molecules compared to their com­
ponent atoms, atoms compared to their component particles.

68

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

possess an independent behavior and action which is opposed
to being subordinated to that of their components. Scientific
language insists on recognizing what persists in change, rather
than indicating what is different in these movements. However :
It points out the subordinated state of an electron
integrated in an atom.
(a) The electron depends on the nucleus (Rutherford),
contrary to the traveling electron in form of a
cathode ray;
(b) In order to spread its energy (light or X-rays),
it depends on its level of energy within the atom
(Bohr);”
(c) It depends on other electrons in the same level :
“ Two electrons occupying the same level of space
are never found in the same state ” (exclusion
principle of Pauli). “ When one electron is in a
certain state of movement, no other particle
belonging to the same system can be found in the
same state. ” 48
(2) According to combinatory laws and those of nuclear
reaction, the molecule and the atom undoubtedly appear as
complex realities, and the different regions of their proper
extension are shown as endowed with diverse properties.
However, molecules and atoms also manifest themselves
especially as determined structures, whose parts are distributed
as to number, mass and activity, by necessary relations, and
united, moreover, through tremendous amounts of energy
(measured by the heat in the formation of a molecule, and the
loss of mass in the nucleons forming a nucleus).

(1)

Conclusions. Without prejudging the intimate nature
of substantial change, we have limited the problem to that of
a change in which one same extension exists successively with
two different individual existences, or even in two different
See Sourcebook of Atomic Energy, cd. by S. Glasstonc, pp. 93-10S.
« Ibid., pp. 108-113.

WHAT IS CORPOREAL CHANGE?

69

kinds of existence. We draw the conclusion that substantial
change is real, not only among living things, but even among
minerals as well. Otherwise the passage which goes on
incessantly between these two groups would be unintelligible,
if mineral elements were not able to change their individual
existences. On the other hand, it permits us to conceive
positively in what specific change ought to consist. When a
living acid is produced by the digestion and assimilated by
a living cell, it is not annihilated, nor does it continue to exist
as heretofore.
Experiment shows that it certainly keeps many of its
properties and is still able to be represented as before by the
same molecular formula, yet it loses its molecular, mineral
existence, and acquires a very different individual existence,
an existence which is a life, the life of this individual who has
just assimilated it. The same is true for atoms of C, of O, of H,
and of N, although in certain ways they keep their properties
when they become living things.

There is no need for postulating a specific mutation in the
mineral world, i.e., the absolute disappearance of former specific
characteristics. What specific substantial change demands is
the appearance of specific characteristics which are really
new.

It appears, then, that substantial change ought to be
affirmed : (1) in a passage from living to non-living, whether
absolute (birth and death) or relative (assimilation, disassim­
ilation); (2) in the three domains of the mineral world: molecules
(chemical reactions), atoms (nuclear reactions), and subatomic
particles (" creation ” and “ annihilation, ” loss and acquisition
of electric charge by nucleons).
Are the formation of crystals and those of colloids substantial
changes? It seems very doubtful. In regard to this subject,
see : Thonnard, Précis de Philosophie, p. 137 ; C. Boyer, Cursus
Philosophiae, Vol. I, p. 496; and Maquart, Elementa Philosophiae
Vol. II¿ p. 120. They all answer affirmatively in regard to
crystals.

70

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

Here we can pose the question of the atom ionized by the
gain or loss of an electron. The change is of so little importance
that we can compare it with a slight organic lesion; nothing
indicates the loss of substantial individuality.
Thus, an electron changes substantially, when, after being
free, it becomes a constituitivc part of an atom even though
it conserves its electric charge; the same is true of the atom
which gains or loses a nucleon, or enters into new combinations
with others; the molecule, when it is polymerized, when it is
combined, when finally it becomes living through assimilation;
protoplasm, when it dies; the cell, when, isolated from the mother
cel), it leads an independent life.

C. The most fundamental characteristic of corporeal
change is continuity. However, this continuity cannot be
verified in all the senses of continuity, and therefore the original
statement cannot be taken in an unqualified sense. Taken by
themselves, qualitative changes, and especially substantial
changes, are not continuous : substantial change must even
be said to be essentially discontinuous. Yet we must say that
the continuity of corporeal change has some universal meaning.
(1) All corporeal change is linked to local movement, and (2) local
movement is essentially continuous. Let us proceed to the
demonstration of this.

1. Local movement is continuous, that is, formed of parts
which do not have their proper limits; it follows then that it is
divisible.
a. Actually, it is the passage from one place to another,
the covering of a certain distance, and thus by essence it is
relative to extension. Movement divides extension; it marks
those limits which constitute its starting point, terminal point,
and the limits which it traces with its trajectory. On the other
hand, between those limits which are at the same time its own
as well as that of the extension covered, movement has a
dimension of its own, which corresponds with spatial dimension,
except that it is realized successively rather than given all at
once. The parts of extension demand correlative parts in

CORPOREAL CHANGE AND CONTINUITY

71

movement. If they are continuous, then those of movement
are also. Moreover, every division of movement determines
a corresponding division in extension ; if the parts of movement
were not continuous among themselves, neither would those
of extension be. But it is impossible that extension exist without
any continuity. It is necessary, then, that movement should
be a continuous dimension.
Undoubtedly, many movements can be made to follow
each other either immediately or separated by intervals of
immobility, as extended dimension can be made up of contiguous
or distant parts. But even as there is no contiguity or distance
without continuity, so there is no succession of movement,
whether immediate or interrupted, without indivision in the
simplest displacement. Bergson has strongly accented this
indivision, this “ necessity to link the diverse, ” as Hamelin
describes it (Essai, p. 121). So strongly does Bergson insist
on this theme, that he almost denies

b. the divisibility of local movement. " We will represent
all movement and all change to ourselves as absolutely
indivisible, ” writes Bergson (La Pensée et le Mouvant, p. 179).
We can understand this formula if we place ourselves at the
most concrete point of view, that of individual motion : every
division destroys the notion of individual. But movement
implies also a reality which can be expressed abstractly. Thus :
1) Science truly knows the world of movement, although
it grasps local movement only under its universal aspects.
It grasps movement only by measuring it; by measuring, it
divides it; it divides, only in dividing the distance covered.
The division of movement is possible because of the division
of its trajectory, and its divisibility is as indefinite as that of
extension.
2) Philosophy also studies movement and its general
characteristics. The “ passage from one place to another ” is
realized successively in a distance or space between two termini.
In this space, which is indefinitely divisible, one can determine
an indefinite multitude of positions, each of which is able to
N.Y. 17 — 7

72

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

be a starting point or a terminal point for a mobile object.
Thus a movement, limited by two extremes, can be broken
into as many movements as one wishes, each of which will remain
continuous in itself and hence further divisible. The indefinite
divisibility of local movement is a consequence of its continuity.
Local movement is a successive continuum.
Objections :
a) Bergson may object here that only the trajectory is
continuous and divisible, movement itself is simple. Divide
the trajectory. Movement is not divided. It is suppressed and
replaced by others which cover, at the most, the same extension.
We could demonstrate, however, with the same kind of reasoning,
that a straight line or a trajectory could not be divided into
segments. To divide is always to destroy unity and substitute
plurality for it. We can not divide anything into segments
except on the condition of considering its individuality only as
an abstract dimension. In the same way, then, every movement
undoubtedly possesses an individuality which is not divisible.
However, its continuity, its unity is that of a successive dimension
realized in parts outside of parts in a distance covered ; for every
real and possible division of the trajectory, there corresponds
a real or possible division of movement. The indefinite divisi­
bility of the trajectory has for a consequence the indefinite
divisibility of movement.
b) But the objection persists : only the trajectory is
divisible, because its parts are simultaneous, immobile; but since
movement is entirely successive, it can not be divided. We may
answer that it is not the simultaneity of parts, but their
exteriority which make the trajectory divisible. Movement
then can be divided despite its successive character; precisely
because it is a passage, it is relative to all the parts contained
in the trajectory, and, because of that, it is a whole made of
continuous parts one anterior to another, yet divisible by
reason of instants that are intermediar}' to beginning and ending
instants. Bergson has fortunately accented the unity of move­
ment, but he transformed this unity of fact into an absolute.
That was an error.

MOVEMENT IS QUALITATIVE AND SIMPLE

2.

73

AU corporeal change implies local movement.

a. Qualitative change reveals itself to science as based
upon local movement. 1. Structures change only by a correlative
displacement of the limits of a body. 2. Forces are linked to
local movement, and their variation cannot be produced without
a variation in displacement. This can be summed up in the
formula : F = ma, since the acceleration a supposes local
movement and the other notion, mass, has no meaning except
in relation to displacement. 3. The sensible qualities of excitants
only affect the senses through the medium of an extensional
contact of the object with the organs, and are transmitted only
by a material influx running the length of the conducting fibers
from peripheral organ to the cerebral center. Many other
qualities suppose physical vibrations : colors, sounds, thermal
qualities.
■ b. As to substantial changes, they are certainly in
themselves indivisible and instantaneous, since there is no
possible middle ground for an individual between being and
non-being. But they are realized as terms of a qualitative
alteration, and they must be considered as real movements
breaking the continuity of local movements. Thus the atom
disintegrates under the impact of particles endowed with
tremendous speed ; water decomposes if warmed to a temperature
around 1500° C.; life ceases because of certain humoral
modifications.
Thus all corporeal changes are based on local movement
and possess a fundamental continuity which makes them in
some way divisible. Thus a doctor may arrest a fatal disease,
but this does not mean that the passage from life to death is
divisible, but the movement which leads to this instan­
taneous term is continuous and may be arrested before it
is attained.

D. The qualitative nature of movement and its simplicity
were restored by Bergson, Leibniz and the dynamists generally.
It cannot be said that this qualitative nature was misunderstood
either by Aristotle or the Scholastics.

74

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

1.

That there is quality

a. m alteration and in substantial change is beyond doubt.
A change whether of quality or of substantial determination
is evidenti}' qualitative.

b.

In local movement, quality is less apparent. It is found :

1) in the fleeting localization of the mobile in its act of
being displaced. This determination is a superficial characteristic
and carries with it no internal modification of the mobile object.
It expresses only a spatial relation between the mobile and
other bodies. Yet this relation is real, since it has for its
foundation the relationships of contact and distance between
the moving body and neighboring bodies. By the variation
of these relationships, in which its movement consists, the
mobile is modified in its possibility of acting and receiving
influences. Localization is certainly a reality, and it is a
determined, quantitative reality. Kinematics considers only
successive localizations in movement, and though this point
of view is as abstract as can be, it remains real, and even in this
degree of abstraction, movement remains determined, qualitative.

2) in force, in that which triggers the movement, and in
that other force which is interior to the mobile itself, which
belongs to it by reason of its movement, and which is dependent
on its own mass. We must actually admit that a body in
movement possesses a determination in itself which it does not
possess in a state of repose. This determination is expressed
in the mechanical concept of kinetic energy (1/2 mv’).
3) finally, in the passage, which is the essence of movement.
Only the abstract notion of this passage is undetermined.
In its concrete reality it is always determined by its terms.
The concrete reality of movement is that of an active tendency,
of an orientation unfolding in a definite way towards a definite
end. Moreover, the measure of movement is possible only if
extension receives from movement those determinations upon
which the notions of direction, vector, speed, acceleration and
succession arc based. From all these points of view the
“ passage ” is determined and reveals its qualitative character.

THE DEFINITION OF CHANGE

75

2. The simplicity of movement is a consequence of this
characteristic.
a. Every quality is actually simple.
b. The possible parts of movement are based on a single
actual whole through a link proper to movement which is the
passage itself, that is, movement in its purest originality. This
link would not be able to unify if it were not simple.
c. Finally we must bear in mind the individual reality
of movement. “ Undoubtedly, while we are moving our hand
from A to B, we may say to ourselves that we can stop it at
any intermediary point, but this would no longer be the same
movement. There is no longer a unique movement from A
to B; there would be, by hypothesis, two movements, one
terminating at the interval and another beginning there. If we
allow our movement from A to B to remain what it is, we are
aware of its indivision and the impossibility of its being divided”
(La Pensée et le Mouvant, p. 179). Here on the plane of concrete,
individual movement, Bergson is triumphant : every division
of movement changes its individual reality; to divide it is to
destroy it. Indivisible in its individuality, movement is therefore
simple.

Objection. Nothing would be served by recalling to us that
movement is measured and therefore divided, because one
can not conclude from this that movement lacks simplicity.
That which is qualitative in movement is simple, and especially
its concrete unfolding in a moving individuality, which quickly
vanishes never to return. But nothing prohibits us from
considering it in an abstract way, although it is always real,
nor from seeing in it the correlative of extension which it covers,
or which it determines, which extension remains a successive
divisible and continuous dimension.

E. The definition of change has to unite its two apparently
contradictory aspects : continuity and indeterminate divisibility,
on the one hand, and indivisible determinations on the other.
The Elcatic criticism aided Aristotle in forming a description
of movement which the modems themselves recognize as being

76

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

very precise. Hamelin writes : “ Change is certainly thé progres­
sive and continuous passage which he described. ”49 It is
“ the act of a being in potency insofar as it is in potency. ”
In this brief definition we find the following elements :
(1) a perfection, the structure of which is already realized, e.g.,
the root of a plant; (2) a lack, the structure which must yet
be realized ; (3) a real aptitude for acquiring the structure which
is lacking.

Aristotle designates these three components by three terms :
ACT, PRIVATION, POTENCY.®0

Thus act embraces every determination, every real quality,
every -positive perfection. This term, therefore, designates more
than psychological acts or external action.
A being in act is that which possesses a determination.
potency embraces every real aptitude for an act, i.e.,
for a determination. It is not being, but the capability of being.
A being in potency is one which lacks a particular act, i.e.,
a particular determination, which it is capable of possessing.
Here we see how privation and potency are united.

In a change, then, such as the growing of a plant, there is
supposed : (1) an act already present ; (2) an act not yet present
(privation) yet really possible (potency). Change is itself an
act, a perfection : the passage from a state wherein there is
privation-potency to a state of act, relative to the act which is
absent. It is thus the act of a being in potency, precisely as it
is in potency.
1. Every corporeal change is act. It is a reality qualitatively
defined (cf. demonstration in numbers 2 and 4).
2. It is the act of " a being, ” that is, of a subject, of a
mobile. Movement is realized in a body, it qualifies an extension,
and this is sufficiently attested to by science. Every corporeal
*• Translated quotation from Hamelin, Système d'Aristote.
*° Aristotle's Physics, Bk. Ill, ch. I (Basic Works of Aristotle, edited
by Richard P. McKeon [New York : Random, 1941])-

THE DEFINITION OF CHANGE

77

change involves local movement, and this latter is essentially
the determination of one extension in relation to all other
extensions, or to some other extension in particular. This is
tantamount to saying that movement absolutely demands a
subject. In no way can two contrary and successive terms be
sufficient to constitute movement. To understand movement
we must pose a special relation between those terms, " fieri, ”
the becoming, which is precisely what movement is in its essence.
What is it that becomes? It is not the anterior determination,
the “ terminus a quo, ” which becomes a later determination,
the “ terminus ad quern. ” Light does not become darkness,
whiteness does not become obscurity; a determination can only
be or not be; being simple, it ceases to be from the time one
wishes to modify it. It is, therefore, impossible that there
should be a real becoming, if successive determinations exist
without a common support, without a subject. Becoming is
real and is therefore the becoming of a subject.
objection : It is useless at this point to bring forward
Bergson's analyses, the results of which are formulated in this
statement : “ Change has no need of a support. There are
movements, but there is no inert, invariable object which is
moved; movement does not imply a mobile.”11 These affir­
mations are directed against the Cartesian idea, that, under
successive determinations, and absolutely indifferent to them,
there is a perfectly immobile substance. The analysis of
movement forces us to affirm that there is something more than
successive determinations, namely a principle of continuity,
a link which binds the anterior to the posterior, the past to the
present, which projects the present into the future, which gives
unity and interdependence to all moments of the same
movement. Now it is precisely this affirmation upon which
Bergson bases his analyses. He directs his criticism against
mechanismM and its conception of a purely passive and•*
•* La Pensif et le Mouvant, p. 185
M For Descartes, extension is the theater oí movement. Extension
does not contribute to it. Movement is foreign, indifferent to extension
and does not truly change it.

78

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

unchangeable mobile. The support which we demand for
movement is not unchangeable under successive determinations ;
it is changed by them, it collaborates in their reality, in their
succession, and exists necessarily only under these conditions.
As for the analyses of Bergson, they show us directly,
that external perception and consciousness are often mistaken
in judging certain objects to be immobile, when a less subjective
method can demonstrate them to be moving. “ This seeming
movement of a thing is really nothing more than a movement
of movements. ” (ibid., p. 187). These aforementioned analyses
invite us not to let ourselves be deceived by formalism into
separating the mobile from movement. However, nothing
in them can prohibit our distinguishing the mobile from
movement, nor from pointing out that the reality of the mobile
is evidently more than the movements and successive
determinations of its movement.
3. Actually, this mobile is not complete being, but a being
" in -potency, ” in the technical sense of being " in a certain
way an indetermined determinable. ” (1) A moved being,
as long as its movement endures, does not possess all its
determinations; (2) it is capable of receiving them; (3) its
movement is communicated to it successively. The accuracy
of this description is easily verified : (1) one determination
at least is lacking to a being in movement, namely, that which
it will have; moreover, in continuous movement, the mobile
lacks the determination of all the subsequent and successive
parts of its change; (2) its movement is precisely the gradual
realization of its absent determinations; (3) finally, movement
implies an orientation, a direction; it is an advance towards
a definite term, towards an " act. ” The perfectibility which
is supposed in movement is not any term, but relative to this
term, to this precise act.53
“ " In potency ” does not have here the meaning of a " power of
action, ” as in the expression, " io horsepower. ” or the *' power of a
tyrant. ” " In potency ” can be understood as *' potential, ” but on
condition that we do not place under this term the idea of a " capability
of action, ” as one might speak of " potential ’* energy.

IS POTENCY REAL?

79

4. Finally, this being (mobile) must be considered as
a being in potency, in order to be thought of as in movement.
Movement essentially implies a lack of perfection, the unfinished,
the indetermined. It is only a passage to its " terminus ad
quern. ’’
conclusion : Corporeal movement is a determination
of extension : it is act. But there is something unique in this
determination, it is successive. Each degree remains relatively
indetermined and determinable since it leads to the next degree.
It is act, but the act of a being in potency.

F. The reality of potency is a conclusion drawn from the
reality and nature of movement. Movement exists only in
a being having potency : it is the actuation of a potency, that is,
an advance towards an act which is correlative to the potency
specified by this act. To deny the reality of potency is to deny
the existence of change. But how can we conceive this potency?
Only as a relation to act. M

1. In the first sense potency is a privation of act, and is
synonymous with that which is possible, since an absolute
privation of act would be equivalent to nothing. Thus the state
of potency is indétermination, the privation of any specific act.

2. In the second sense it is a real possibility of act. A being
in potency is a being which is in some way determinable.
Potency is not completely identified with logical possibility and
especially in this second sense, where we are concerned with
more than the absence of contradiction. Here potency is
a reality, oriented towards a precise determination, a definite
receptivity, as opposed to a general one, a possibility anchored
in the very heart of the real. A blind man does not have the
power of seeing; even in darkness, a man with sight has that
power. Water, which is a liquid at normal pressure, cannot
remain so beyond 100° C. while oil and lead can. Sound
cannot propagate itself in a void and light can.
M Potentia dicitur " ad actum.

80

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

3. Potency is a tendency to act, not in the psychological
sense, but in the sense of an ontological necessity. It is essentially
correlative to act, and it is through the act towards which it is
oriented, that it is specified and knowable.

G. A moved being is therefore a real being composed of act
and potency. It is such because its movement is at the same
time act and potency.
a mobile being, even in the state of repose, before all
movement, is already a real composite of act and potency.
Because it exists it already possesses certain determinations,
certain acts. But since it is mobile, it possesses also this
determinable indetermination because of an act still absent,
hence the justification of the technical name of potency.

At the end of this inquiry on the corporeal attributes, we
can sum up the following conclusions :
1. These attributes are real. Extension, qualities, and
movement are imposed on us : they are the intuitive data of our
sensations. Their reality is the condition of the truth of sciences
which concern themselves with the corporeal world, and also
the condition for the biological validity of our empirical
knowledge.
2. Bodies in general and each body in particular possess
two irreducible properties, extension and qualitative determina­
tion. Moreover, each body being subject to change is made
up of two real principles, potency and act.
These statements must seem strange to the reflective mind.
a. Each body is endowed with unity. It is an individual,
and we say that it is irreducibly double, made up of extension
and quality.
b. Each body exists, and yet we say it changes even in
its individual existence. If it is able not to exist, how explain
that it exists; if it exists, how explain that it can no longer
M Potentia specificatur per actum.

A MOVED BEING : A COMPOSED BEING

81

exist? One can understand how that which is, may be, and
how that which is not, may not be; but how understand that
which is, may no longer be, and that which is not, may one
day be?
Thus two questions must be posed :
1) What constitutes the individual unity of each body?
What is its nature?
2) How is substantial change 'Possible? What are its
causes? The nature of bodies undoubtedly make this change
possible, but what makes it an actuality?
Certain philosophers would like simply to dismiss these
problems. Some of them suppress these questions : either they
deny the reality of extension, of qualities and of movements
(various shades of absolute idealism), or they deny the existence
of substantial change, and at the same time, the irreducibility
of quality and quantity, such as the mechanists, who reduce
quality to quantity, and the dynamists, who are forced to
construct quantity out of quality.
Others declare these questions to be insoluble. Thus Kant
refuses to accept any " theoretical ” or demonstrable knowledge
of the substance of things.
As for us, wc must accept these problems as inescapable.
We must attempt to resolve them " theoretically, ” as this is
the only way to show that the problems are soluble.

CHAPTER II

NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE EXISTENCE
OF BODIES

Fourth Question : What is corporeal substance?
Fourth Thesis

: Corporeal substance is
1. not extension in local movement, against
the mechanists,

2. nor an unextended force, against the
dynamists,
3. but an essence composed of potency
and act, that is prime matter and
substantial form.
A.

Notion

1. According to common sense understanding, substance
designates the most important, the most characteristic element
of things. The expression " in substance ’’ refers briefly to the
essential. Often it means the most hidden part of things or
the most durable part of things, e.g., my substance remains
identical in all the stages of my life. In other words, it is
substance that we think of in relation to even' permanent object
of perception. Each thing is then a substance; it is substance
we think of in the substantive use of words and principally what
we understand by a subject in propositions. In every judgment
the subject is conceived in the manner of a substance.

WHAT IS CORPOREAL SUBSTANCE?

83

At this stage of knowledge substance is defined :
a. as an individual endowed with a real existence (or itself.
The object perceived is substance in this sense : individual,
because it is given in a spatio-temporal experience; endowed
with real existence, because it is imposed on my sensation
and acts on my senses; existing for itself, because it remains
active, independent of my perception, and constitutes an
indefinite possibility of sensation, c.g., this tree.
b. as a universal endowed with a specific nature. The
subject is substantive; it places before the mind in its specific
characteristics what is placed before the senses in its individual
characteristics, e.g., a tree.
c. in both cases, as an absolute reality, determinable by
attributes completely relative to it. Thus, water, which has
just been boiled, grows cold again; water, no matter where,
is liquid. In the first case, the object is perceived for itself
as an independent whole; in the second, the subject of judgment
is posed before the mind for itself; it is not related to another
idea, since there is something in it which is opposed to the
attribute.

2. Science constantly uses this notion of substance,
although the mathematical method tends to eliminate it. Even
chemistry continues to use the word in its abstract sense. For
it, substance is a chemically pure body, defined by specific
properties, which arc stable and belong to a number of bodies
of the same kind, and which characterize these bodies to the
exclusion of every other kind. Biology studies concrete substance,
but designates it by other terms : an individual, a living thing,
a vegetable, an animal. Its recognition of substance, however,
is no different than above, a group of specific characteristics.
3. But it is the business of the philosopher to give a precision
to this notion, which all, whether learned or unlearned, without
any special analysis, can use regularly in their thought. The
Thomistic definition of substance is : essentia cui debetur
esse in se et non in alio (an essence to whom existence is
owed in itself and not in another). Thus it is an essence whose

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proper mode of existence is to exist in itself (to subsist), i.e., for
itself, and not simply as a determination of something else.6,;
On the other hand an essence whose proper mode of existence
is to exist in another, i.e., as a determination of a thing other
than itself, is an accident Substance belongs to itself, an
accident belongs to the substance ; substance exists in an absolute
manner, while an accident exists in a way that is completely
relative to the substance. Common examples suffice to illustrate
this definition : water is successively cold and hot; Socrates
is sitting, then standing, he walks, now he stops. Water and
Socrates are substances; cold, heat, attitude, movement, and
the rest are accidents.
The analysis of this notion reveals two equally positive
aspects :

a. Existence for itself. It belongs to an individual and
to it alone. The universal is not able to exist for itself. If it
did, it would be individual for that very reason : Aristotle has
established this against Plato.47 Nor can an accident exist
for itself without ceasing to be an accident, for it exists only
as a determination of some subject already existing. Hence
we must distinguish the notion of substance and logical essence.a*
Essence can be the essence of substance or of an accident;
it is always, logically speaking, universal; substance, on the
contrary, is opposed to accident and it is individual.
b. An essence capable of existing for itself, i.e., whose
characteristics arc absolute. It is an essence which can not
determine another, whereas the essence which can and must
determine another is an accident. This is an individual essence.
The universal belongs to the individual and not to itself. It
must be remarked, however, that I do not know what individ­
ualizes essence, and that I am forced to consider individual
66 See L. De Raeymaeker, Philosophy of Being, pp. 173-X77.
« Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Bk. I, ch. 9, 990^23 to 991a, S.
M Essence, in the absolute sense : something which is or is able to be
or at least which can be thought. The essence of a being : that which this
being is, that which defines it. Thus the logical essence = definition.

WHAT IS CORPOREAL SUBSTANCE?

85

essence under universal characteristics. *’ But the “ direct
universal ” does not represent, at least to my intelligence,
the real individual, the real substance. When, for example,
I assert : " Man is at the same time corporeal and spiritual, "
I am not thinking primarily of the species as such, but of each
individual who realizes this notion. “ Man ” refers to a substance,
despite its common " vestment. ” Thus the conclusion is borne
in on me that I think of a substantial essence only under specific
characteristics belonging to all the individuals of the same
group and to each one of them. Because of this we see that
a specific distinction is one of the two ways of distinguishing
substances.
The knowability of substance. From this anatysis the
following result emerges : if substance by itself constitutes
all of reality, then it is incapable of communicating knowledge
of itself, for substance is that which exists for itself. It can,
however, reveal itself if it is the cause of determinations relative
to itself, i.e., accidents, which, since they do not exist for
themselves, are able in some way to exist for me as well as for
substance. •’

How can I, then, be sure that there are corporeal substances?
By examining whether phenomena (the objects of experience)
oblige me to see an absolute in them, and certainly distinct
from them, but involved with them because of their real
character. I would say that a substance is present where**
** Thus " this man ’’ designates an individual to me, but it makes
me know him only through a characteristic which belongs to many others
as well as him, a universal character. It is “ man. ”
M The " direct universal ” designates the comprehension of the
universal idea, i.e., its meaning (as it is able to be attributed to different
individuals taken one by one).
“ Kant seems to have envisaged substance in this way, when he
used the term, " thing-in-itself. " To say that the " thing-in-itself ” is
unknowable for me is a truism of the most banal sort. Vet there still
remains the question of knowing whether such " things-in-themselves, ”
exist walled up in their substantial isolation. Could there not be a
tiling which, while being truly in itself, could also be linked completely
to a world of other things in themselves? Experience makes the question
uneecssary, even as it answers the monistic legislating of Parmenides
on the absolute unity of being.

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multiple phenomena possess a real unity, where successive or
changing phenomena reflect a permanent and durable source,
and finally where phenomena of the same kind demand a specific
internal cause. I would further make a distinction between
two planes of reality at the heart of the phenomena which
appear : the plane of substance, which is fundamental and
absolute ; and the plane of accidents, which is built on the first
and completely relative to it. The first plane is endowed with
a higher reality by its unity, stability, and activity.
B. The reality of corporeal substances can now be affirmed.
The certitude of this affirmation is one of empirical knowledge,
as well as a constant implication in the branches of scientific
knowledge.62 But it needs to be a controlled philosophical
certitude, for if corporeal substance is a myth, the metaphysical
study of bodies is finished; but if it is a reality, we must further
determine what it is.
The phenomenalism of Hume (18th century), and of the
Positivists (Auguste Comte, Taine in the 19th Century) admits
only the reality of phenomena. They assert that the notions
of substance and of cause are simply psychological illusions,
and the problems to which they give rise are pseudo-problems.
Reality, they say, must be verified, being by definition the
object of experience ; consequently only phenomena arc real. “
The critique of Kant, on the other hand, makes substance
an " a priori ” category of the understanding, without any
objective value for the thing-in-itself.61
To show that the notions of substance and of cause express
the real is a problem for the critique of knowledge (examination
of first principles), and for ontology (the study of being and
its causes). It will suffice here to indicate that the demands
of Hume are manifestly excessive. All that is necessary to
** Science supposes the concept of thing, namely, substance. Sec
A. G. van Melsen, Philosophy of Nature (Pittsburgh : Duquesne U. P.),
p. 9.
<’ Charles A. Hart, Thotnistic Metaphysics, pp. 195-196: De Raeymaeker, Philosophy of Being, pp. 1S9-190.
M See Charles A. Hart, Thomistic Metaphysics, pp. 197-198-

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recognize the reality of substance is to establish the permanent
existence of an unchangeable reality in experience. " If an
impression, ’’ says Hume, *' gives rise to the idea of a me
(substance), it ought to continue as invariably the same
throughout the whole course of my life, since it is thus that
the me (substance) is supposed to exist. ” We agree that
to think of a substance as a pure thing in itself, is ultimately
to be led to the denial of its reality. This is a misconception
of substance, for substance is deeply involved in a host of
qualities and changes. The main task is to find in experience
the intuitive data which constitute the essence of these notions.
Let us limit our efforts to the recognition of the reality
of corporeal substance; this will be a beginning and first stage
to the solution of the problem of critique. We will admit the
reality of phenomena, which only the skeptics will doubt.
Moreover, it will be sufficient for us, that among phenomena,
the reality of extension, qualities and change be accepted.
1. Let us first consider phenomena in their concrete reality.
Substance is found in them, and analysis will discover it there
as the source of their unity, their duration and activity.
a. Phenomena have unity despite their obvious multiplicity.
The actual indivision of the durations, and of the successive
positions of a movement, the compénétration of the most varied
qualities in the very heart of the same extension; the continuity
which intimately welds the parts of a volume from within to
a common surface, despite the exteriority of these parts; and the
complete union which fuses durations, positions, movements,
qualities, extension and figures in the individual objects of
empirical perception (things) and in the objects of science as
well (molecules, atoms, electrons), lend force to our original
assertion on unity.

b. They have a permanence, a stability in their successive
unfolding, a permanence of individuality throughout local
changes and qualitative alterations, a permanence of specific
characteristics in the middle of transitory phenomena. The
study of change shows us the necessity of admitting a stable
subject underlying successive determinations.
N.Y. 17 — 8

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c. They have an activity at the very source of their passivity,
an activity which links antecedents to consequents, an activity
which links specific characteristics to their center of unity and
permanence, which is, at the same time, their center of
production, their cause.
Corporeal phenomena have, therefore, a twofold reality :
the most apparent is that of their multiplicity, their mobility,
their passivity; the more profound is that of their unity, their
stability, their activity. They show themselves, therefore,
as individuals, as substances, manifested through their determi­
nations, their accidents. Corporeal substance is as real as
phenomena, as a matter of fact even more real.
2. Meta-physical analysis reinforces that of experience.
Phenomena are real. Therefore each of them is either accident,
or at the same time substance and accident, or pure substance,
because a reality can be only completely relative, or completely
absolute, or absolute and relative at the same time. Now we
must reject the first hypothesis and conclude to the existence
of a corporeal substance, because a relative without someabsolute is a contradiction in terms. An accident, being by defi­
nition a determination of a substance, cannot be the only reality.
We may say positively : the real is necessarily based on
some absolute essence, and there is a real, which is most certainly
phenomena. There is also an absolute essence, a substance,
which is the foundation of their passing reality. The principle
invoked here is nothing more than the very light by which the
mind knows anything, it is the principle of sufficient reason :
a relative essence can not be the total explanation of itself.
It is of its nature to have a reference to determine it. It must
ultimately be explained by an absolute.
3. What are the corporeal substances? Common sense is
deceived sometimes in distinguishing them : it judges bread,
wine, milk, the earth to be substances. The scientists, however,
see in these things mixtures of numerous substances, many
of which are specifically different. The chemist does not deny
the existence of substance, but situates it at a level where
common sense does not dream of looking for it, since he has

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89

a notion of substance very far removed from the utilitarian
notions of everyday life : he will admit, for example, that
there are as many individuals in bodies as there are molecules,
e.g., in water, alcohol, butter, calcium, silicon. In view of these
structures within substances we will give a certain preference
to scientific judgments, since they exemplify more concern for
objectivity than the judgments of common sense. We must
therefore indicate the following as so many individuals substan­
tially distinct : (1) independent!}' living things; (2) perhaps
separated crystals; (3) free molecules; (4) uncombincd atoms:
(5) positive or negative electrons and neutrons existing in a state
free from any atom. In many other cases, it is difficult to
recognize a distinct individuality and consequently difficult
to single out a substance apart from the others. Such arc the
cases wherein our evaluation of the unity and permanence of
structures does not reveal whether or not the unity or permanence
is superficial or radical. Is a colloid micella more than an
aggregate of molecules? Is a -pebble one substance? Is a colony
of hydrae a single differentiated organism or an association of
distinct individuals? The philosopher can only wait for further
precisions from science in order to give an answer. However,
he has no need of these precisions in order to affirm, on the one
hand the necessity, and on the other, the real existence of
corporeal substance, or that a problem is suggested at the levels
mentioned above.

Here is a corporeal individual and it makes little difference
whether it is an atom or a molecule. It is specifically distinct
from a host of other things which arc different species; it is
numerically distinct from a multitude of other individuals of the
same species; it is really identical with itself, yet always different
from what it was and what it will be.

Three major systems offer the principal philosophical
solutions : mechanism, dynamism and hylomorphism.

C Mechanism makes the substance of bodies consist in
extension as diversified by local movement. This conception is
quite different in Cartesianism and atomism.

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BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER
EXPOSITION :

1. Cartesian mechanism is geometric, i.e., based on the
continuous extension of geometricians.
a. A body is only extension : “ The nature of matter or a
body, taken generally, does not at all consist in its being hard,
heavy, colored, or in being an object which touches our senses
in some specified way, but only in being substance having three
dimensions, length, width and depth. ” Through a body “ we
know clearly and distinctly that it has all that it needs to have
as a body, if it has extension in length, width and depth, from
which it follows... that its nature is simply this, an extended
substance " (II, 4).w
A body is space itself : “ The same extension... which
constitutes space constitutes bodies ” (II, 10).
There is no void, nor atoms : No void is possible, for there
is no “ space where there is no substance... because the extension
of space... is not different from the extension of a body. ”
Atoms arc not possible, i.e., " parts of bodies... which are
by their nature indivisible. ” For “ these parts, as small as
wc may imagine them, are nevertheless extended, and thus are
always able to be further divided... from which it follows that
they are divisible ” (II, 16 and 70).

Matter is infinite and identical : “ This world has no limits
at all... for the idea of extension which we conceive in relation
to every space is the true idea which wc ought to have of every
body ” (II, 21).
" There is then only one and the same matter in the whole
universe, and wc know it only in this, that it is extended, and
all the properties which we distinctly observe in it are reducible
to its divisibility and the movability of its parts ” (II, 23).

b. Only local movement is real : " Movement, (that is,
that which is made from one place to another, — for this is the
only type of movement one can conceive, and therefore it is•*
•* These numbers refer to Principia Philosophiae of Descartes.

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not necessary to suppose another type of movement in nature)
is not an action as wc have conceived it ” (II, 24), but “ the
movement itself, and not the force or the action which is the
cause of movement. ” “ It is a property, not the substance of the
mobile, in the same way that figure is a property of a figured
thing ” (II, 25).

“ This movement is nothing outside of the body moved...
in such a way that movement and rest arc only two different
modes of being in a thing ” (II, 27).
Its possibility in a space which is filled demands the existence
of vortices to explain movement (II, 33).
Its general cause evidently can only be God, “ who, by His
Almighty Power, has created matter with the movement and
repose of its parts, and who now conserves in the universe,
by His ordinary concursus, as much movement and repose as is
there by creation. ” God, being immutable in Himself and
constant in His action, “ incessantly conserves in this manner
an equal quantity of movement ” (II, 36).
As to the particular causes of such changes, those which
are corporeal are all embraced in this rule : ** If a body which is
moved encounters another, and has less force to continue its
movement in a straight line than this other has to resist it, it
loses its determination (its direction) without losing anything
of its movement : if it has more force than the object it
encounters, it moves this other body along with itself and loses
as much movement as it confers on the other ” (II, 40).
The conservation of the quantity of movement is affirmed.
But Descartes here appeals to two types of force : a motor one,
and one of resistance. His successors, especially Malebranchc,
will purify this mechanism; they will see, more clearly than
Descartes, that pure extension is completely passive, and they
will not recognize any other motor activity than that of God.

2. Atomistic mechanism, on the contrary, admits that
extension is made up of extended and indivisible atoms, in
movement through a void. Moreover, it claims a metaphysical
foundation for this, since the atoms as expression of substantial

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nature explain all the properties of bodies. Bodies are not,
therefore, subject to substantial change, since changes called
substantial arc those which rely only on the testimony of the
senses. This is the position of Democritus (470 B.C.), Epicurus
(341-270 B.C.); and Lucretius (99-55 B.C.) who exposes this
idea poetically in his De Derum Natura :
Inde aliae atque aliae simplices ex ordine partes
Agmine condenso naturam corporis explent ;
Quae quoniam per se nequeunt constare, ncccssc est
Haerere ut nequeant ulla ratione revelli.
(Lib. I, v. 599-602).
Democritus represents the most radical atomism; Epicurus
endows the atom with a proper movement perpendicular to the
direction of its fall; Lucretius attributes to it a specific figure.
The Arab theologians go back to Democritus in their attack
against the Aristotelians of Bagdad (Avicenna, 11th century)
and those of Cordova (Averroes, 12th century). The physics
of the Renaissance preferred Democritus to Aristotle. Descartes
gave to mechanism the wings of analytic geometry, but, despite
Descartes, the atomistic concepts triumphed in mechanism.
Atomism became less and less a metaphysical theory. The atom,
for Dalton (18th and 19th century), the father of chemistry,
is no longer any more than the smallest fraction of “ substance ”
capable of being combined or isolated during states of chemical
decomposition. This purely scientific atomism is indisputably
true : it docs not claim that atoms or sub-atomic particles are
the profound nature of bodies, but it asserts their existence
and studies their laws. There is, however, a metaphysical
atomism, which nourishes itself on scientific discoveries, and
marries itself willingly to a kind of dynamism, analogous to
Epicurean atomism. In this line, we can point out the following
forms of metaphysical mechanism :

a. Pure geometric mechanism (Descartes) or pure atomistic
mechanism (Haeckel; Father Secchi, S.J.). It admits no force;
movement is the only differentiation in extension, whether it is
continuous or discontinuous (Cf. Nys, Cosmology, p. 41).

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93

b. Mitigated mechanism. It admits that atoms are endowed
with forces, which arc purely mechanical, i.e., attraction and
repulsion.
c. Dynamic mechanism. It admits that atoms have other
specific forces, e.g., affinity.
EVALUATION

We must praise mechanism because : (1) it recognizes the
reality of extension and its fundamental role in our experience
of corporeal phenomena; (2) because it gave Descartes the idea
of applying the mathematical method to the study of these
phenomena, and liberated scientific effort from the shackles of
philosophy.

But it makes a metaphysical error by identifying extension
and corporeal substance. Actually :
1) Extension can not be the essential element of a thing.
The second of the Kantian antinomies employs in its " thesis ’’
a rational exigency clearly seen by Leibniz : “ Everything in the
world is made up of simple elements. ” This principle is true,
if it is applied to substance : there must be a simple in everything
under pain of absurdity; if nothing simple exists, then by
suppressing the union of parts, nothing could be said to exist,
and then how could anything be made up from them? But no
part of extension is simple and, on the other hand, the simple
cannot be explained by the composed : we must then have in
everything a principle of simplicity completely different from
extension.eo
2) Qualities are irreducible to extension. Substance ought
to be the source of its qualities, of the qualities more or less
proper to it. Now extension, by itself, passive and undetermined,
M The second principle of monadology is obviously opposed to
Descartes : " There must be simple substances, since composites exist,
for a composite is nothing other than a grouping or aggregate of simple
things. " Lachclicr comments on this : " That which constitutes the
reality of an aggregate are the elements which compose it and not the
relation of these elements among themselves. ” Here we have merely
the placing of parts outside of parts, which is completely extension.
Therefore, there is neither clement nor substance.

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BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

cannot determine itself nor qualify itself. We must look
elsewhere for a source of the differentiations found in extension.
We are told that it is local movement, originated by God, and
then transmitted from one part of extension to another. But
then one conceives extension and movement as two realities
so diverse that they can not be attributed to a unique internal
source, substance. One is forced then to root movement in
extension.

This is exactly what mitigated mechanism does, by endowing
extension with forces, through which it contributes to movement.
But this is only to be aware of the problem ! How conceive
this substance, which is on the one hand passive extension,
and on the other, an active force? This mechanism may perhaps
be a good description of the facts, but it has no metaphysical
value.
3) A substantial individuality finds no sufficient reason in
its extension. Extension is by its nature indefinitely divisible,
that is, by its essence it is not individually determined. In an
individual thing extension possesses actual limits, but these
limits are not able to be deduced from extension.
One can object that movement can divide extension by
individualizing its parts. Certainly. But is the individuality
conferred on these parts substantial? No. There would always
be, before as well as after division, only one infinite substance,
of which certain parts would be immovable, while the others
would be moved in different ways. Local movement is only
a mode of being; it can only modify accidentally, in a passing
way, a particular section of extension-substance.

There are those who have attempted to arrive at individuality
by attributing it to indivisible atoms. But then, they are faced
by the contradiction which Descartes denounced in the idea
of an atom; “an extension which would be indivisible." If
extension alone constitutes substance, we must recognize in it
an unlimited divisibility. But if one says that it is limited by
the indivisible atom, we must answer, limited by what or why?
And this extension would cease to be the substance itself.

MECHANISM

95

Why should an atom, which is extended and thus divisible by
a natural necessity, not be divisible in fact? In short, the atom
can only be the expression of a fact, and that is what it is in
modern chemistry; it is not an explanation, it is a problem.
4) The specific nature of corporeal substance can not any
more than individuality find its ultimate explanation in
extension. The specific character of things is expressed by
qualities, which mechanism has badly misunderstood (supra, 2).

But it should not be here simply a question of giving a
foundation for geometric qualities (structures) and for energy­
qualities (forces) ; it would be necessary to point out the substance
itself, as the foundation of determined groups of qualities, which
chemistry calls the properties of different pure bodies. It should
be necessary also to point out what makes these qualities endure
and docs not allow them to be separated, except to be
reconstructed, while they remain specifically identical throughout
the disordered movements in which the kinetic theory of gases
and the theory of solutions show them to be bound together.
The permanence of specific types — molecular and atomic
structures — is a problem which no system of mechanism
resolves.
Movement and extension can be involved in
any kind of material groupings and, as a matter of fact,
must be involved in them. But real nature offers us definite
groupings and even utilizes them to form elementary particles
which are already qualitatively specified : protons, neutrons,
negatrons; and a real extension furnishes them a field in
which their specific energies arc exercised (gravitational,
electrical and magnetic).
5) Consequently, substantial change is unthinkable in
any form of mechanism : no individual or specific newness is
possible where all is reduced to the indefinite of extension,
or to the indefinite relation between movement and extension.
If we think of things at the atomic level, we are forbidden
by mechanism to sec there any evidence of substantial change.
On the one hand, they are indivisible, and on the other, each
one keeps its individuality. They can only be united from

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BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

without to form completely accidental and transitory aggre­
gates.
The atoms of chemistry, however, have no other mission than
to describe the facts correctly; they can, they must l>e understood
(Cf. supra : substantial change) as indicating the existence of
specifically distinct substances, subject to change in their
fundamental make-up. They present us, in a scientific way,
with the problem which we have to resolve : What ought
substance to be, when it is shown in our experience under
varying characteristics which are very difficult to unite?

D. Dynamism offers us no more than mechanism in the
solution of our problem. Dynamism is sometimes spoken of in
connection with the Stoics, but their doctrine should be more
properly referred to as hylozoism. For them the whole universe
is a single living being whose soul is God. Sometimes dynamism
is connected with Aristotle because of that kind of tendency
or aspiration which he places in the heart of matter which he
calls “potency” (dynamis); this way of speaking is inexact,
for, with him, potency is above all receptive, passive. It is not
a force.

Dynamism is a system which describes corporeal substance
as an activity (a cause, a force), a life, or even a kind of
consciousness.
EXPOSITION

1. Leibniz (1645-1716), by his outright dynamism, was
in reaction against Cartesianism. For him : (1) extension is
only a phenomenon; (2) every composite must ultimately be
reduced to simple elements, and if simple, consequently
unextended. Thus substance is a unity, a “ monad. ” Each
monad, being at the same time distinct from the others and
simple, is internally dissimilar to all the others. The nature
of substance is activity, force, but since extension is not substance,
the activity of substance is purely immanent and consists of
perception and appetite. Finally, since a monad does not act

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on other things because this sort of action demands extension,
Leibniz is forced to explain the apparent activities and
receptivity to outside forces in monads by his theory of
" preestablished harmony, ” which God imposes on them in
creating them.
The activity of each monad is thus the source of its own
changes, analogous to the springs which move the hands of a
clock. This activity has a twofold aspect :

a. It is a force which produces changes. It resembles
desire ; it is a tendency to action which sets in motion and really
changes being (appetites).

b. It is also the reason of the succession of the order
which exists in successive changes. It is like a flan, a directing
idea. Thus it resembles internal perception which explains
the order and finality in movements.
Thus every monad or simple substance is like a person,
who has a “ within, ’’ and which realizes itself through its proper
changes by reason of knowledge and desire.
This resemblance to person varies infinitely from one monad
to another, and it is the degree of consciousness which
distinguishes one monad from another.
Corporeal monads exist in an infinite multitude in each
body (Leibniz here makes a kind of infinitesimal “ metaphysical ”
analysis), and are unified in each body by reason of their order,
one ruling the others.
This ruling, however, is not an action, but an order which
subordinates all to one in the plan of God. Actually, all monads
are united in a single general order, wherein each has its place,
harmonized by God, in relation to other monads. But in this
general order there are particular orders. Thus each body or
composed monad sees all its monads unified by one higher
monad, which is superior in relation to the others which make
up a composite thing.

To sum up, there is an immanent activity, analogous to that
of consciousness, in every monad ;

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BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

There is an order of monads in each body or composite
substance ;
There is a general order of all the substances in the whole
universe. This general order is a ^reestablished harmony set by
Divine Providence. Such are the principal characteristics of
Leibnizian dynamism. It joins to a penetrating view of the
" within ” of substances a most elevating vision of the finality
found in things themselves by virtue of Divine Providence.
Dynamism, however, quickly lost sight of this twofold
intuition, and it was as combined with mechanism that Wolff
(1679-1754) propagated it, substituting mechanical forces for
psychical activity. Boscovich in the 18th century, and Carbonelie
in the 19th, expose it simply at the level of phenomena. All that
is retained from Leibniz is the non-substantiality of extension.
They accept all the rest of mechanism, and tend to identify
matter with an energy which has no material support (energism).
2. It is Bergson, in his creative evolution, who seems to
have done the best job of resurrecting dynamism. He shows
a vital current in matter which is diminished to the point of
stopping, " a creative motion which destroys itself. ” “ Life is
movement; materiality is an inverse movement." For him,
as for Leibniz, the basic element of all reality is consciousness,
but a consciousness which is developing, and this is life. There
is also a consciousness which is regressing, and that is matter.
Allow consciousness to unfurl in creative invention, and you
have life. Make it stiffen in habit and you have matter. For
Leibniz, however, it is confused consciousness which characterizes
matter. For Bergson, on the other hand, it is a clear and distinct
idea, made up of habits which express matter — pure geometry.
For E. I.e Roy it is a bit of the same thing, matter is " a group
of dead habits. "
This twofold aspect in life, invention and habit, has its
source in a vital impulse (elan vital), the first form of existence
in the world, leading to “ the idea of a free and creative God,
Generator at the same time of matter and spirit. ” (Letter of
Bergson to Father de Tonquédec, cited in Jolivet’s Sur la
Philosophie Bergsonienne, p. 59.)

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EVALUATION

We must commend dynamism : (1) because it recognizes
the originality of force and quality in general in relation to
extension; and (2) the superiority of life over matter, which,
in the final analysis, arises because it comes from life, i.e., from
the Thought and Will of God; (3) because it affirms the
“ continuity ” of nature, •’ and particularly the similarity of
metaphysical structure between man and matter. These last
two merits are as much in an ontological order as they are in
a cosmological one, and are shared by both Leibniz and Bergson.
But dynamism is an error, because it makes corporeal
substance a force, whether immanent and of a conscious nature,
as in Bergson and Leibniz, or completely mechanical as in
Wolff and Boscovich.e8 Indeed :
a. Extension is as irreducible to force as force is to extension.
To reduce it to a psychological force is to deny its reality and
accept idealism.
To derive it from a mechanical force is to
either reduce force to its measure which is a straight line, i.e.,
extension, or to commit oneself to constructing the extended
from the unextended. The first hypothesis is equivalent to pure
mechanism; the second forgets the simplicity of a quality and
the mutual exteriority of the parts of extension.
Can one say that he accepts forces situated in centers which
are separated one from the other? This hypothesis is only
a scientific position, based on the given data of extension and
•’ Continuity can be understood in several way’s :
1) an absence of spatial distinction : thus space and time are continuous,
z) an absence of specific distinction : materialism asserts the continuity
of matter, life and spirit.
3) a generic resemblance despite a specific distinction : in this sense there
is a continuity between minerals, vegetables, animals and men.
4) a liicrarchy of species or of kinds whose degrees are very close and
progressive. Thus, we speak of a " continuous " scries of whole numbers;
and so we can speak of a hierarchical continuity of species, in which a
lower species of a genus, in a manner of speaking, touches a higher species
than the genus of that which is below it. " Natura superior in suo infimo
contingit naturam inferiorem in ejus supremo. *’ St. Thomas, S.C.G.,
II. ch. 91.
° See Maquart, Elementa Philosophiae, Vol. II, p. 27.

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force. This hypothesis, however, docs not even touch the
metaphysical problem, which is : How explain this compén­
étration of force and extension at the heart of the same
individual being, whether it be monad, a simple being, atom
or electron? How can these two realities be one substance?

b. Certainly, qualities are recognized by dynamism. Bui
what becomes of the corporeal character which they limit by
their presence in an extension determined by them? We can
describe these qualities in psychological terms, but we cannot
deny them real extensional character, as Leibniz did.
c. Individuality is safeguarded only by the monad or
simple being.69 Now the atom, the molecule, the plant, the
animal have their substantial individuality which can not
coexist with that of each constitutive monad. According to
dynamism, it is necessary that these bodies should be no more
than aggregates of individual beings, deprived of real unity.
At the most they are societies of individuals, endowed with a real
unity which is completely accidental, and which consists in the
simple cooperation of all in a common good.
Leibniz himself felt the necessity of uniting the monads
of one individual in a much more profound way, and admitted
a “ vinculum substantiae, ” very difficult to conceive, since the
monad remains very much a substance in itself.70
Moreover, that which distinguishes one monad from another
is indicated, but not explained. Each monad is " a living and
perpetual mirror of the universe ” (Monadology, 56) ; that which
distinguishes monads is the limited manner in which each
represents the whole universe (Monadology, 60). Certainly,
if the points of view on the universe are already supposed as
distinct, one can single out different individuals.

d. The specific nature of corporeal substances is also left
unexplained. First, in the dynamisms of Wolff and Boscovich,
the mechanical forces are the same in all monads and they
*• See Leibniz, Monadology pp. 8, 11. 12, 56. 60.
’• See De Raey.maeker, Philosophy of Being, pp. 186-189.

MECHANISM AND DYNAMISM

101

alone characterize them. Hence only one kind of substance
is possible. Leibniz has no better explanation for specific
kinds of substances with his reasoning on consciousness. All
monads are of the same family, all being endowed with perception
and appetite. They can differ only by degree, by reason of the
clarity of their knowledge and the intensity of their desire,
which after all is a simple accidental difference.
Thus the variety of kinds which science recognizes, which
at least has some basic accord with common sense, must be
asserted as being only apparent. But this appearance demands
an explanation ! Bergson has proposed one : intelligence judges
things according to their utility and not their truth. Can there
be a utility in distinguishing kinds in a world where kinds do
not exist? What adaptation to the world can wc make by a
knowledge which is completely apparent and not real?

e. Substantial change is possible (in appearance) since
composite substances are admitted. But this is, at best, only
a society of substances which are formed or transformed. This
still remains an accidental change to our way of thinking.
The only true substances are monads and they are substantially
stable.

this negative discussion, let us point out the
common errors of mechanism and dynamism :
to conclude

1) Each admits as real only one part of experience, whether
it be extension or force.

2) Each one eschews explaining the illusion by which we
hold the other part of experience to be real. Neither extension
nor quality can be constructed.

3) Both make substantial individuality unexplainable,
because it is, on the one hand, a determined unity and not
that of an indefinite divisibility, while on the other, it is the
unity of a composite and not that of a simple being.
4) Both make the specific distinction between bodies
illusory, and each explains all by one common stuff, either
extension or force.

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5) They deny, consequently, the existence of substantial
change, and drift towards an idealistic phenomenalism.
The fundamental error of both systems is to make substance
an essentially relative reality. The relativity of extension,
force, and movement is obvious : (1) extension, forces,
movements, are variable in the same individual ;71 (2) no one
of these properties can be the principle of the other,75 nor can
it be an absolute; (3) each, on the contrary, needs a principle
in the individual substance which it determines.

E. Hylomorphism, or the matter-form theory, avoids
these derived errors and their common source. The explanation
which it gives is undoubtedly incomplete (it does not pretend
to know in what the individuality proper to each corporeal
substance consists) ; but it is true, because it takes into account
all experience and remains open to further enrichments.
HISTORY

It was Aristotle who was the first to formulate it as an
explanation of substantial change. The peripatetic school
defended it until its end in 200 A.D. It was still known in the
fifth century, but only in a Neo-Plalonic transposition, which
made matter a divine thought. In the fifth century, Augustine
Christianized it by making it a creation of God (Confessions,
L. XII, Ch. 4 to 7); but among the Fathers of the Church in
general, it was confused with unformed matter which was
the initial state of the world according to Genesis. It was
through the Arabs (Avicenna in the 11th century, Averroes in
the 12th) that this Aristotelian theory was transmitted to the
West in the 13th century, when its principles were accepted
through the expositions given them by the age’s most illustrious
’* Think of a seed which germinate», grows and becomes a tree :
here wc have a substantial identity notwithstanding the considerable
changes which have taken place in volume, structure, activity, and
movements undergone or produced.
« Substance (a beinç which has existence in itself) expresses itself
in properties. It is the principle, the reason, the explanation of them.

HYLOMORPHISM

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teachers : Alexander of Hales, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas,
Bonaventure and Duns Scotus. The progress of physics starting
in the Renaissance and continuing through the following centuries
relegated it to obscurity. Beginning in the middle of the 19th
century, the Thomistic revival finally clarified the doctrine with
the distinction between a physical and a metaphysical
explanation. The former as a physical explanation of matter
has perished, but the latter must remain, according to the
words of Bergson, as “ the natural metaphysics of human
understanding. ” The majority of Catholic philosophers teach
it today, at least as a probable opinion, if not as a truth
demonstrated in every point. There are even scientists who
are not afraid to use it as a framework for the most general
biological facts (Rémy Collin), or who see in it a metaphysics
to which the study of thermodynamics naturally orients itself
(P. Duhem).
The Critical Essay on Hylomorphism, by Father Descoqs,
docs not envisage denying its truth, but attempts to establish
the theory on a much more stable scientific ground than that
of Aristotle. Aristotle built his theory on substantial change.
Father Descoqs challenges the validity of this proof in
establishing the purely potential character of prime matter, and
he proposes some arguments, which, according to his mind,
are more demonstrative.
Substantial change, nevertheless, furnished a first light.
It is a very real fact, it is an experimental fact. Why neglect it?
PROOFS

The first step is assured by the analysis of substantial change,
which leads to the demonstration of corporeal substance as a
composite of potency and act.
Substantial change actually exists in the world and is
possible in every kind of body. Now every change demands
a subject composed of potency and act in the same order wherein
the change is realized. Change is the act of a being in potency,
but this being is not only potency, for, since it exists, it is already
a being, a “ completed thing ” in some way, and because of this
N-Y. 17. — 9

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it is an act. Every mobile is therefore a composite of potency
and act. It is that in the same order in which it is capable of
changing. Change is cessation of one act and the beginning
of another, each of the same given kind which actually specify
the change. However, the mobile must be said to have a potency
proportioned to its successive acts. It is necessary, therefore,
that a being capable of changing substantially should be a
composite of potency and act, both being substantial principles.
Consequently, corporeal substance is an essence composed of act
and potency. This is the hylomorphic doctrine without any
of the precisions implied in the notion of prime matter.
Father Descoqs proposes an argument in the work cited
above (p. 25) and concludes with Suarez (Jesuit professor of the
16th century, at the Roman College) : “ If we are speaking...
of prime mailer as the first subject of mutations and forms, and
abstracting from the nature of this subject and from the nature
of this form which is received into it, the reality of prime matter
is certainly as evident as the reality of the transformations in
nature which abound in varying forms ” (Disput. Meiaphysicae,
Dist. 13, S. I).
Thus all the cases of substantial change analyzed previously
show an alliance of two realities in the one corporeal being :
a real potency and a real act, both together constituting a
corporeal individual ; a " power-to-be, " which is actualized in
one way and then in another. Two substances, one of which
has become the other, have the same “ power-to-be ” (potency),
a same matter determined successively by two different acts.
It may, perhaps, be objected that our conclusion is wider
than the experimental facts which serve us as a starting point.
Our affirmations concern all corporeal being. It is true that
we are not able to cite evidence of substantial changes in every
being, but this is not necessary. I have not yet experienced
my death, but I know myself to be legitimately mortal. To give
a foundation for our universal conclusion, it suffices that we
have grasped the possibility of substantial changes in all kinds
of individuals (cf. th. 3). Since every body can change
substantially, it is then, in its individual substance, composed

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105

of two principles, potency and act. But what is the degree of
indetermination in this potency? This is a question which wc
must examine. Aristotle gives it an outright solution when he
answers that it is complete indetermination, a pure potency,
which he calls prime matter.
A second step remains, then, to be covered, and that is the
affirmation with Aristotle that substantial potency is a pure
potency, a truly first matter, whose correlative act is a " substantial
form. ’’
1. The following notions will show us the objective to be
attained.
The notion of prime matter is described by Aristotle :
a. Negatively : as that which considered in itself is not
some thing, nor a quantity, nor any other thing by which being
is determined ;73 i.e., that which in itself is determined in no way.
b. Positively : " It is the first subject from which anything
becomes intrinsically and that which is last in any corruption,
i.e., the first subject of substantial generation and the last term
of corruption, or the permanent principle of substantial changes.
St. Thomas expresses its positive role thus : " Est susceptiva
et formarum et privationum ’’ (De spiritualibus Creaturis, a. 1),
i.e., it is the receptive reality of forms and their privations.
In every way it is by relation to the form, the term of the change,
that it is conceived.
The correlative notion of substantial form is described by
Aristotle : “ The first act by which prime matter is intrinsically
completed and determined to this or that kind of corporeal
substance. ”76
2. Useful precautions for those who wish to stay on the
right track.
” Materia prima est quae, secundum se considerata, neque est hoc
aliquid, neque quantum, neque aliud quid, quibus determinatur ens.
M Primum subjectum ex quo intrinseco fit hoc aliquid et in quod
ultimum abit, si corrumpitur.
n Actus primus quo materia prima intrinsecus completur et ad hanc
vel illam speciem substantiae corporeae determinatur.

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BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

a. Nature and art. Let us compare nature making a new
substance (the production of helium from hydrogen, as in the
sun, or with the aid of man in the laboratory, it makes little
difference), and man, the artisan, “ homo faber, ” making an
artificial object, e.g., a table.
In both cases it is not a question of creation, but of pure
transformation. Preexistent materials are simply transformed;
they acquire a “ form, ” i.e., determined characteristics. This
form did not exist before, but it was possible, really possible :
4 H was able to become 1 He, wood was able to become a table.
Yet the power of becoming, as it is manipulated by man
when he seeks to impose a new form on things, is already very
determined. The prime matter on which he exercises his
industry is not first except in relation to the form of the fabricated
object. Thus it happens that, what is matter at a particular
level (a plank), is already a fabricated object, i.e., matter and
form, at a previous level (that of a saw-mill, where the matter
is constituted by the trunks of trees); and what is “ informed ”
matter (matter with this particular form) at this particular level
(a table) is still matter in relation to a highci level of organization,
e.g., school furniture.

Aristotle thought that nature acted in a different way than
man in fashioning bodies from a matter which was truly an
absolute first, i.e., which in itself implied no determination,
no form which in itself was the result of a previous fabrication.
For example, he would have thought that nature would not
take as matter for helium, 4 nuclei of hydrogen as such, while
leaving them the properties they have in hydrogen, but rather
that it would divest them of their proper substantial form,
thus reducing them to an undetermined state, to endow them
instantaneously with a new substantial form, that of helium.

Why this rupture in the matter-form analogy? Because
man modifies only accidents; he confers only accidental forms
and determinations on previously existing materials. To natural
substances he adds only an arrangement, an order, which is
superficial to them, which corresponds only to man’s ideas

ANALOGOUS USE OF MATTER AND FORM

107

and interests. Nature, however, constructs true substances,
and that is why its matter must be absolutely first.

b. Matter and form, therefore, are terms which must
be taken in an analogous sense. This is not a case of visual
or tactile form, nor of a spatial structure. These are the signals
of bodies in relation to experience. They are in the phenomenal
order, and not the substantial order. But, since the sensible
form serves in the recognition of the object of perception,
we call that which serves to differentiate and specify substances
from “ their within, ” substantial form.
It is useless to rely on sensation for any evidence of prime
mailer. It is a substantial principle, i.e., knowable only through
intelligence. It is first in this sense, that it is not knowable
in itself, but only in relation to that which can determine it,
substantial form.
Must we think of it as first in relation to being, i.e., as
independent and uncaused? This is an altogether different
question. Being first in regard to that which determines it
(the form), it need not be necessarily first in relation to that
which would cause it (God). Aristotle did not foresee this
distinction. He supposed matter to have existed eternally
as uncaused being. Wc will take up this distinction when we
pose the question concerning the Cause of the world.
For the moment, let us look into the question of the matter
of corporeal substances to see whether it is truly first, i.e., pure
potency.
c. Having consulted science, wc see that there is no
answer to the above question there. The light wc seek cannot
come from mathematical principles, but only from the
metaphysical exigencies of the question.
Nevertheless, science indicates something akin to substantial
change even at the level of the simplest and most fundamental
determinations. Obviously prime matter can not be perceived
in a state of pure indétermination. But is it not revealed in
some way at that point where the most elementary characteristics
which exist, viz., mass and electrical charge, begin or cease

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to be? In the change of a proton into a neutron and vice versa,
we have a mass which is charged and discharged. The photon
is created by a pair of electrons, and a couple of electrons are
“ annihilated ” in becoming a photon. Here mass is transformed
integrally into an electric charge and vice versa.
Thus science recognizes that no experimental determinations
are riveted indissolubly to the infinitely variable base of the
corporeal world.
This pure power of becoming, this potency apt for being
every kind of corporeal determination, which is prime matter,
seems to be indicated in the very research of science.
Nevertheless let us proceed to the philosophical proof.

3. Proofs.
a. A little deeper look into substantial change will reveal
prime matter to us.
To what potency will it lead us? To a substantial potency,
to a potency to substance. It is that potency which in itself
is not substance.
If we were to suppose that this potency existed in such
a way that it had any kind of determination, as minimal as may
be imagined, then we would be in the realm of substance. What
would it lack for being substance, i.e., to exist with an existence
of its own? Nothing. It would be something substantial, and
something determined in the genus of substance.
It is, therefore, impossible that the power-to-be-substance
implies in itself any determination. It must therefore be a pure
power to exist, prime matter.
b. The arguments of Father Descoqs have a less immediate
evidence, although they are built on a very solid logic. They
rest on this fundamental principle which particularizes the
principle of sufficient reason : “ Every phenomenon indicates
a substance, and its nature reveals the nature of the substance. ”
Substance, actually, is the principle, the sufficient reason of
phenomena.- That which is is principle, the sufficient reason
of that which appears.

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109

A being can manifest itself in experience only according
to what it is. Whether its manifestation (a phenomenon)
be linked to it as something produced, or as something undergone
in any way, its " behavior, ” incompletely but faithfully and
necessarily, translates that which it is.

“ Operari sequitur esse " — " Operation follows existence. ”
" Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur ’’ — “ What­
ever is received is received according to . the manner of the
receiver. ’* •
Consequently, we must affirm of corporeal substance
whatever is necessary for it to show itself as it appears in our
experience.
Now wliat are its most general characteristics in experience?
1) Insofar as it is extended, a corporeal individual is at the
same time undivided and indefinitely divisible, i.e., it is one
in act and multiple in potency with an undetermined multiplicity
(Thesis I : first, second and third parts).
Now it is that essentially, for it is that, by reason of its
extension without which it would not be corporeal. Therefore,
it possesses in itself at the same time, the principle of this
determined unity, and the principle of this undetermined
multiplicity..
But that which is a principle of unity can not be at the
same time a principle of multiplicity. That which is a principle
of determination in relation to quantitative limits cannot
at the same time be a principle of indétermination in relation
to the same limits.
A corporeal individual is, therefore, made up of two
principles, one a principle of determined unity, the other
a principle of undetermined multiplicity.
The first is
determination, act; the other is indetermination, potency,
and pure indetermination, i.e., which contains in itself no reason
to be determined, and is not determined, except by a comple­
mentary determination (Essai critique, sur I’ll., pp. 232-268).
(n short, the indefinite divisibility of extension has its sufficient
reason in the substance of the body itself. This substance.

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BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

then, embraces a purely indetermined principle, capable of
receiving all the possible determinations of a body, which
is equivalent to saying that a body implies a prime matter,
a pure potency.

Despite appearance, we attain matter only as a principle
of movement. Dividing the continuum is a way of changing it.
Let us directly consider movement in its relation to substance.
2) Insofar as it is mobile, the corporeal individual is at
the same time active and passive, cause and subject of movement.
Its movement reveals in it this double aspect, for it is at the
same time subject (passivity) and cause of other movements
(activity).
Now a body is essentially mobile, because mobility is derived
from extension.
Therefore it has at the very core of its being the principle
of this activity, as well as that of this passivity. Whoever
doubts this, can recall that the activity of a body, which is
moved locally, depends on a specific constant at the interior
of the mobile, which is measured by mass, and that the activity
of qualities is a specific constant as well.
We must again recognize an essential composition of two
distinct but complementar}' principles in a corporeal substance ;
one, the sufficient reason of passivity, the other, the sufficient
reason of specific activity. The latter is specific determination ;
the former is indétermination, pure receptivity, pure capacity
to undergo change (P. Descoqs, Essai sur l'Hylèmorphisme,
pp. 26S-272).

3) Insofar as it is extended and qualitative, the corporeal
individual presents itself to experience as an indefinitely unde­
termined determinable and, at the same time, actually
determined in a specifically definite way (proper qualities),
or linked to specific determinations (accidental qualities). The
substantial principle which is the sufficient reason for extension
is not to be identified with the substantial principle of quality.
On the other hand, the principle of extension must realize the
receptivity of extension in relation to quality, and its pure

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111

receptivity. It can be only potency and pure potency. Thus
the principle of quality, the reason for its determined and
determining character with regard to extension, will be
determination correlative to the potency principle of extension,
i.e., prime act of prime matter, substantial form (P. Descoqs,
op. oil., pp. 272-280).
Thus in the three great aspects of our experience with
bodies, the same characteristics are found : an undetermined
indefinitely determinable, the undetermined aspect of extension,
indefinitely divisible, indefinitely mobile, indefinitely qualifiablc.
This extension is certainly not the substance, it is only
a phenomenon; but it reveals a substance and, in this substance,
a reality which makes itself known through the characteristics
of extension. Necessarily this reality-principle of extension
is pure potency, without determination or a proper act, purely
determinable. It is the prime matter described by Aristotle.

But it can be objected that, if matter is the principle of
extension, it could no longer be pure potency, since extension
is a determined kind of relation, the relation of exteriority.
This objection forgets that extension is a reality undetermined
in itself. Without any doubt, it is an “ exteriority, ’’ which
allows us thus to define matter in relation to a certain class
of forms, either purely corporeal or realized in extension. It
indicates that matter has a positive role in individuation,
and receives a form communicating something of itself to the
whole. However, the relation of exteriority, being undetermined
by reason of the nature of extension, can reveal, in the matter
which is its principle, only pure indetermination, relative only
to corporeal forms.
4. Other arguments have been proposed, but they are
debatable and, at this moment of our philosophical investigation,
not too clear.
a. The principle, “ Actus non limitatur nisi per potentiam, ”
“ Act is limited only by potency, ” can here give only probability.
It is very certain, taken in itself, for every limitation is a negation
of a beyond, which nevertheless remains possible in the positive

BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

112

reality considered. This reality, therefore, is a complex formed
of a positive perfection (" act ”), and of the privation of that
act (“ potency ”)• But we do not know, at the moment, the
nature of the reality to which we wish to apply this principle.
Consequently, the indubitable conclusion which follows, " Bodies
are composites of potency and act, ” remains imprecise. Is this
potency pure potency (prime matter), or is it something already
determined but further determinable? In short, it does not
seem that this principle can serve in the discovery of prime
matter. It can, however, help in understanding it, once it is
discovered, by including its existence in a much more universal
law of being. This principle has its proper place in ontology,
not in cosmology.
b. The necessity of a principle of substantial individuation,
as distinct from a principle of specification, does not lead us
any farther with certainty in the search for prime matter.
What is necessary to explain the realization of a specific type
in a number of individual examples? That there must be two
principles in being, the mind grasps at once. But that the
individuating principle ought not to be act in any sense, but
only pure potency, lacks evidence. One cannot know from
this whether prime matter exists, or whether it is the root
of extension, i.e., the fundamental condition of spatio-temporal
limits which arc directly individual.
F. The properties of matter and form can thus be
summed up :

1.

Common Properties

a.

Both are substantial principles, incomplete substances.

b. Each is simple in itself, not because of the whole,
but as a natural part of a single substance. They are in no
way parts which are outside of each other, for exteriority implies
multiplicity. They arc, on the contrary, intimately present
one to the other, radically in a single complete reality, which
is substance, and alone exists for itself. Neither one nor the

PROPERTIES OF MATTER - FORM

113

other is extended,74 nor endowed with forces, nor even endowed
with existence ; but each in its way is a -principle of a body,77
which alone exists for itself, which alone is extended and qualified.
Each tends to be completed by the other. Their nature demands
their union to the point that one cannot exist without
the other.

2.

Special Properties

Substantial form is the principle of all determinations,
beginning with the most fundamental ones, specific determina­
tions, and the richest ones, forces. There are as many kinds
of substantial forms as there are kinds of substances. From
antiquity, the study of living things recognizes a hierarchy
among forms, and contemporary science is forced to recognize
one even among mineral forms, c.g., the form of a neutron
is less rich than that of the atom, and that of the atom is less
rich than that of the molecule, etc.
Prime matter, on the contrary, is a principle of indétermina­
tion, of passivity, of movement, and particularly of extension.
It neither begins nor ceases to be (it is non-generable and
incorruptible) in substantial change; it is precisely by reason
of its permanence that substantial change is possible; it is,
in itself,78 identical in all bodies, being the principle of the
characteristics common to all matter, an aptitude to all changes
and to all determinations of a corporeal kind.
’•If matter and form are each without extension, how is it that
the substance, of which they are parts, can be extended? It must be
remembered that the union of the two substantial principles is not at all
the union of parts at the heart of extension. To indicate this difference,
we call these parts entitative or constitutive parts, as opposed to those
parts of extension which are called integral parts. The error, upon which
the objection is based, is that extension is taken as corporeal substance
itself, instead of the most generic accident of that substance.
” Matter and form are not " entia quae ” (beings which exist) but
" entia quibus ’’ (beings through which substance exists).
’• Only by itself, for wherever it exists, it is united to a substantial
form. It is, actually, always determined : l) by the form and its proper
qualities; 2) by the transitory characteristics which the influence of other
substances, whether near or far, produce in the substance itself.

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G. The role of matter and form is multiple.
investigate :

Let us

1. their mutual role. Matter and form complete
each other. Matter gives to form a determinability, and form
communicates to matter a specific determination. Matter
receives, the form is received. Matter concurs in the existence
of a form, and the latter, in a very different way, makes matter
exist. Matter and form cause each other reciprocally from within
substantial being. This reciprocal causality is in no way
contradictory, since the modes of their causality are different,
one as determining, the other as determined. ’•
2. their role in the constitution of substance.
Matter and form, by their union, wake a corporeal substance
exist by constituting it, i.e., in forming an essence apt to exist of
itself, apt to subsist.
The substantial composite is at the same time individual
and a member of a specific class. Its principles, its matter
and its form are as individual and specific as it is itself. But
in the composite, what is the principle of specification, the
source of the properties characterizing all the individuals of
the same species? What is the principle of individuation, the
sufficient reason which makes a corporeal being an undivided
whole in itself, distinct from every other of the same kind?
a. Without any doubt, the principle of specification is the
substantial form : to specify is above all to determine.
b. The principle of individuation in material substance,
according to the whole Thomist school, is prime matter, as it
is the principle of extension. St. Thomas constantly employs
the formula : ** Materia est principium individuationis for­
marum. ’’
Scotus and Suarez think otherwise. They hold that each
real entity, matter, form, and the composite, is individual
’» In a similar way, marble and a sculptural form arc mutually
existent. The marble is such an object only because of the form, and the
form is nothing real without its marble support.

ROLE OF MATTER - FORM

115

in itself, or better still, individual by that which is most actual
in itself, by the “ ultima realitas entis, ultima actualitas formae, ’’
as Scotus said, who baptized this formal actuality, " haccceitas. ”

Hamelin agrees with this doctrine of " individuation by
reason of the form, ” and finds the Thomistic teaching lacking
any solid reasons.
1) Let us try to sort oui several distinct problems which
are often mixed up in the discussion of this question to such
an extent, that it seems to cause, at least, a part of the obscurity
often associated with this problem.
a) What is individual in a substance? Strictly speaking,
everything : the matter, the form, the existence, and all of the
accidents, even though contingent, because they belong to this
substance in an incommunicable way.
Scotus and Suarez seemed to have wished to stress this
truth in their teaching.
b) What is the basis of individuation at the very heart
of species? The question has a threefold sense :
(1) logical. How do we form the idea oí the individual
beginning with the idea of a kind, or species?

(a) It is not by adding the idea of real existence to that
of abstract essence, since nothing abstract really exists as such.
Yet we arc able to conceive an individual of some species as
being possible, as well as being actual.
(b) But it is by adding an individuating notion to the
notion of species or kind, in the same way that we pass from
genus to species through a notion called specific difference.
Thus, as “ rational ” added to “ animal ” constitutes the species
man, in the same way the notion " this ” added to the notion
" man ’’ gives me the notion of “ this man here. " This
individuating notion is naturally a sensible sign whether general
(able to be used in a number of instances), as are the words,
“ this, ’’ " that, ” or whether concrete, and not able to be used
in a number of instances (the timbre of this voice, this carriage
of the head, this walk).

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BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

Thus, logical individuation is a process highly analogous to
the process of specification. It is done by the addition of
a form, i.e., by another notion enriching the meaning of the
specific notion, this latter being less determined, potential in
relation to the " form ” of individuation.
Scotus has seen the problem in this logical sense, adding
an individuating note to the notion of species, but he has taken
care not to add a second real or ontological form (as individuating
principle) to the substantial form. He sees there only the
ultimate reality of a form.

Hamelin has seen this problem only in the logical sense,
since, for him, it is identical with the ontological problem.
In his idealism, all reajity is thought. The order of thought,
and the order of reality, are one and the same.

(2) critical. How do we discern one individual from
another in the same species? We have recourse to individuating
signs, which serve us as reference points. These signs are almost
uniquely of a sensory nature, and arc summed up in a grouping
of sensible qualities characterizing an external contour and
a configuration within it. Briefly, it is these marked-off dimensions
of which the Thomist formula takes note.
Nevertheless, are not these dimensions variable in the same
individual? That is true; yet the indication of individual
presence remains possible, provided we grasp the quantitative
variations as linked in a continuous flow. Where we no longer
perceive this continuity, we do not recognize individual identity,
e.g., a child who has l>een lost for 30 years, or a sub-atomic
particle whose position is wiped out by a vast sound wave
in space.
The experimental problem of the recognition of the
individual is not directly our problem. But it is linked to ours
and guides us in our solution, because there must be a close
relationship between the internal factor, which constitutes an
individual as such, and the sign by which it is distinguished
from others.

THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUATION

117

(3) ontological. Here then is our problem. If the
substantial form is the explicative source of specific properties,
how is it that these properties are actually found in a number
of individuals?
Because of the form? No. The form makes the individuals
who possess it specifically similar, and it can not at the same
time make them individually dissimilar. It is that which unites
individuals, which identifies them; it cannot be that which
separates them and opposes them as individuals.
Because of matter? It must be, since matter and form are
the ultimate constituents of a material essence. Outside of this
essence there is nothing else in being except its act of existence
and its accidents. Now, existence adds to essence no new
characteristic, it supposes an essence that is individualized and
makes it exist; as to accidents, they suppose an essence
constituted in its individuality from whence they draw their
own individuality. Extension, nevertheless, beyond the individ­
uality which makes it the extension of this substance, possesses
in itself at least a potential individuality, since a part of extension
is necessarily opposed to the others and distinct from the others
by its very exteriority.
2) Let us make some further -precisions.
the principle of individuation?

How is matter

a) Taken in itself it is not. Being purely undetermined,
receptive and indifferent to any particular form, it has no power
of individuation. °* **
**Scc Summa Thcol., Ia pars, q. 75, a. 5: q. 85, a. 5; q. 86, a. 3.
St. Thomas makes the formula more precise, when he studies the
problem for itself. In the De Trinitate, q. 4, art. 2, he teaches that matter
as it is individuated is the support of dimensions, not however the definite
dimensions of size and figure (otherwise, an animal, in growing, would
change its individuality), but as the support of indefinite dimension.
‘‘ Materia efficitur haec et signata secundum quod est sub dimensionibus...
Et ex his dimensionibus interminatis efficitur haec materia signata et sic
individual formam. " Thomists. nevertheless, discuss the precise way
in which these indefinite dimensions arc attached to prime matter. See
C. Boyer, Cursus Philosophicus, I. p. 4S3, for one opinion, and Maquart,
Elementa Philosophiae, II, p. 56, for an opposite viewpoint.

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BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

b) But matter is the principle of extension. Now extension
exteriorizes that which it affects. It. therefore, confers on the
substance of which it is an attribute, i.e., on a substance which
has prime matter as a constitutive principle, the aptness for
realizing its specific characteristics (those of the substantial
form) through parts which are exterior one to the other, and
also mutually exclusive of one another. Thus we may say that
extension confers the aptness to be distinguished numerically
and actually, as soon as limits mark a border between this
and that.

Substantial source of a non-limited extension, “ signata
dimensionibus interminatis, ” prime matter gives to the
substantial form united to it, the power of being distinguished
according to the parts of extension. It is thus the fundamental
principle of individuation. However, in this state which is still
one of indetermination, it could not of itself produce individuation
concretely, or give to a form one individuality rather than
another.
c) In order that this effect be achieved, there must be
a cause which distinguishes this determined portion of extension
from the others, and thus designates a prime matter, completely
distinct, as source of this extension.
This cause must be a cause of local movement, since it
produces a real division of extension. It consequently gives
to concrete time an effective role in the realization of corporeal
individuals.
If we, with St. Thomas, see in “ materia signata dimen­
sionibus interminatis, ” i.e., matter as the general source of
extension, the principle of individuation, it must be in the
sense of a first principle, as the answer to this question : “ For
what reason is the individuation of a specific form possible? ”
To make the problem more precise : “ For what reason
is this specific form realized actually and precisely in this
individual? We, evidently, can give no answer, unless we have
recourse to the causes which make a new substance “ arise ”
from the “ corruption ” of others. Thus, there remains the

THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUATION

119

task of making the role of these causes in individuation precise,
by investigating how they actualize this aptitude for divisions
in prime matter as it is the principle of extension. This problem
is connected with that of the dispositions of matter and form
(see fifth question).
3) The role of matter in individuation.
a) Here we have a question of prime matter as it is
a principle of extension. Extension is the sufficient condition
for the distinction of individuals in the same species. Being
essentially an exteriority of parts, it allows the juxtaposition
of essences in space. Through it, every corporeal form is found
spatially situated and, because of the limits of extension, spatially
distinguished from every other, i.e., individualized. Prime
matter permits a form to be individually distinct from other
forms of the same kind, since it is the substantial principle
from which extension is derived. Matter, which is individual
by its relation to a marked portion of extension, individualizes
the form in receiving it.
b) However, we must conceive this individuation as
a restriction imposed on the form and not as an enrichment,
or an actuation which matter gives to the form. An objection
can arise from our way of thinking about the relation of the
species to the individual. Isn't the individual more determined
than the species? Isn't the individuating, determining? How
can matter, which is indétermination and potency, individuate?

These two answers are in order :
(1) Prime matter is indetermined taken only in itself.
Taken as it exists, it is always determined by a substantial
form and those determinations which flow from extension.
(2) We must especially point out that individual
“ determination ” is not an enrichment nor an actuation, which
the form receives. It is, on the contrary, a restriction,
a pauperization, a limitation of the specific properties of the
form.
Actually, an individual in a species, as it possesses the
determinations of its type, exercises them only in a limited
N.Y. 17. — 10

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region of space, and for a very short period of time. In other
places at other times, the species asserts itself, but in other
individuals. No man possesses in himself all ideas, aspirations,
merits, in a word, all the perfections which Man can possess.
In the same way, no animal, plant nor molecule possesses in
its individual being the full realization of the total perfections
of its species.
The individualized form is a form limited in its proper
perfection. It could not be distinguished from another form
in the same species except by a limitation in its specific
perfection.
c) The multiplication of the same specific form is understood
because of this limitation. Although the form is limited in the
individual to a certain region of extension, it can be realized
in many other regions as existing and acting there according
to its kind, but never according to all the power of its kind.
Thus prime matter, as principle of extension, permits
the substantial form, principle of specific properties, to be
realized in a limited way. Limiting the form in this sense, it
individualizes it, it multiplies it.
Hylomorphism makes the individuality and specific nature
of corporeal substance intelligible at the same time. Moreover,
its solution respects the irreducible character of both extension
and quality. It gives a foundation for their relativity in the
absolute substance. It thus avoids the reefs on which mechanism
and dynamism founder.
3.

THE

ROLE

OF MATTER AND

FORM

IN

RELATION

TO

is different depending on whether it is a case
of necessary accidents (properties) or of contingent accidents.
The molecular weight of water is a property; the temperature
20° C. is contingent to it (Joli vet, The Notion of Substance,
pp. 53-56).
accidents

a. Proper accidents find in substance : their underlying
subject (substance is apt for this " potential ” role because of
matter) ; their final cause (substance is active because of its form
and it is precisely for exercising activity that it has proper

IS SUBSTANTIAL FORM ONE?

121

accidents) ;81 their active cause (it is through the form that the
substance produces its properties;81 matter, however, intervenes
as a condition, since these properties demand an extension
for their realization).

b. Contingent accidents have their underlying subject in
substance (because of matter) and are already determined (because
of form). But they are realized through change and therefore
demand a cause distinct from substance as underlying subject.
Thus the displacement of a bowling ball is possible because
of the passivity which is due to the matter, it is realized in
function of specific mass which is due to the form, but under
the action of an external cause, e.g., the hand of the bowler.83
H. The oneness of the substantial form in one and the
same individual is a consequence of its fundamental role.84
The form is the first act of matter; its union with matter
constitutes an essence apt to exist in itself, an individual
substance. From the moment of this union, the essence is
complete, and it can receive nothing more as constitutive
principle. It is, therefore, contradictory to suppose that several***
“ Substance is perfect only as determined by its properties. In this
sense it is their end.
** This production is not achieved in the way of an action, but in
the way in which the essence of a triangle necessarily involves, as a
consequence, all the properties of a triangle. As soon as a substance
exists, its properties arc produced in it for the same reason that it is
produced.
“ See Summa Theol.. I* pars. q. 77, a. 6. " Subjectum (substance)
in quantum est in potentia, est susccptivum formae accidentalis; in
quantum autem est in actu, est ejus productivum. Et hoc dico de proprio
et per se accidente (necessary or proper accident). Nam respectu accidentis
extranei subjectum est susceptivum tantum; productivum vero talis
accidentis est agens extrinsecum. ’’ In regard to this, however, it would
be good to recall the principle. " Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis
recipitur, ’’ and think, for example, of a local movement which will be
received in function of the mass of the receiver.
*• See Summa Theel., Ia pars, q. 76, a. 4. sed contra. " Unius rei
est unum esse substantiale; sed forma substantialis dat esse substantiale;
ergo unius rei est una tantum forma substantialis. ” Substantial unity
comes from the substantial form. Where there is only one substance,
there is only one substantial form.

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BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

substantial forms determine the same matter at the same
time. If it is imagined that they all determine in the same
degree, they would constitute so many substantial individuals.
If they are said to be subordinated so that there is one which
determines the pure potency of matter, then another which
determines this first composite (this second matter), and so on,
until a final form in which the substance is completed, then this
is only an illusion. One conceives the first form as substantial
and all the others as accidental, since they can only be
determinations which are relative to an individual already
complete and capable of existing without any of them. Thus,
if I think of a molecule of HC1 formed of two atoms, H and Cl,
each keeping its own form, I consider the molecule only as an
aggregate and not as a single substance. St. Thomas expresses
himself very clearly on this subject : “ Through form which
is the act of matter, matter becomes a being in act and this
something : wherefore, that which happens over and above
this does not simply give existence to matter, but gives such
an existence in act as accidents do, as whiteness makes white
in act ’’ (De Ente et Essentia ; 1252). Consequently, in substantial
changes which make a molecule a composite of simple elements,
atoms lose their own substantial form and acquire the form
of the molecule which they constitute.

A question can now be posed : How do you explain the
permanence of atomic properties in the molecule? or in a more
general fashion, the permanency in the mixture of the properties
of the simple components? Certain atomic properties are
actually conserved in the molecule, c.g., atomic mass, spectrum
of emission. Moreover, the constancy with which analysis
refinds the atoms which have been combined in a chemical
synthesis can be understood, only if we admit a kind of
permanency to the elements which arc in the composite.
A first solution denies substantial change. Thus the
permanency of elementary properties need no longer be explained.
Yet it seems that this solution must explain how a simple
totalization of elements makes new properties appear which
experience obliges us to recognize in the compound. Now,

IS SUBSTANTIAL FORM ONE?

123

they are new, precisely because they arc not a simple total
of elementary properties. Thus : (1) an atom has constant
properties (weight, volume, electrical charge, light spectrum
and X-ray spectrum, chemical activity), which are not the
total of the properties of electrons, but an addition to this
total of a stable and specific structure. (2) The molecule, in the
same way, manifests its individual unity and its specific structure
by stable properties, which are irreducible to those of its
constitutive atoms. Molecular unity is implied by the law
linking pressure to volume with a temperature supposed constant
(pressure depends on the number of molecules present in this
volume), and by the laws of osmotic pressure (which is the
relation between a number of molecules dissolved in two equal
volumes situated on opposite sides of a porous division), etc.
The specific molecular character breaks out in a multiplicity
of properties (solubility, molecular heat) : thus, Ha has for
a molecular heat 4.8 cal., while two atoms H1 and H1 have
together a heat of 8 cal.; this situation is very clear in the case
of isomeres. (3) Crystals have properties which differ according
to their axes and faces. Their structure is specific and in no
way is it reduced to that of molecules or atoms. Wc must
then reject this first solution, and accept the fact of substantial
changes, and the problem as posed.

The second solution admits that the composite possesses
a substantial form which the elements do not possess. But here
the Scholastics are divided :
Some explain the permanency of elementary properties
by the permanency of the substantial forms of the elements,
and are content to superimpose on them the form of the
composite. This is the solution of Albert the Great and
St. Bonaventure in the 13th century, De Lugo in the 16th
and 17th, Pesch in the 19th century. But this opinion sees
no more in the composite than an accidental modification,
and it is truly no more than the first solution, or at most, an
implicit denial of the oneness of the substantial form in the
individual, which makes any affirmation of substantial unity
contradictory.

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BODIES IX GENERAL : MATTER

Others do not admit the actual permanence of the elements
and their forms, but only a virtual one. M According to them,
the substantial form of the composite possesses the properties
of its components and adds to them its own. It disposes the
matter in such a way, that, at its cessation, the elementary
forms with their properties will appear again. This solution,
which is metaphysically without reproach, can not be attacked
in the name of science. Science demands that the molecule
and the atom should not be homogeneous extensions, but
differentiated according to their components. However, it does
not exact the permanence of special substantial forms for each
part. Accidental determinations (structures, forces, movements)
are sufficient.
Thus the substantial form remains one in each individual.
Yet the form of the composite is related to the elementary
forms. It is " hierarchically ” superior to them, •• in this sense,
that its virtuality is potent enough to produce not only the
properties of the elements, but also those which are proper
to it. Thus the elementary properties are conserved, but they
are derived from a superior form and no longer from their
elementary forms, and they are spread unequally throughout
the parts of the molecule and differentiate these parts
° This keeps the essential of Aristotle’s and Aquinas's solution.
See Summa Theol., I pars. q. 76. a. 4, ad 4. Their solution is an outright
assertion of the homogeneity of the diverse regions of the mixed. Scientific
experiment teaches, on the contrary, in an incontestable way, the structural
heterogeneity of the molecule and of the atom itself. In regard to this,
see the diagrams of Laue, in Témoignage de l'Univers. of M. Grisox,
pp. 185 ft.
M The hierarchy of forms can be thought of in two ways, as being
cither actual or virtual. There is an actual hierarchy of forms if several
forms coexist in such a way that the existence and activity of one depends
on the existence and activity of another. Such a hierarchy — similar
to a causal or social subordination — or like to the relation of parts to the
whole — is realized between accidental forms. Thus in a living organism,
the function of the whole rules the particular functions of the differing
individual organs, and in a molecule, the molecular structure assembles
and uses the atomic structure. There is no difficulty in this actual
hierarchy between accidental forms, but the contrary is true in regard
to substantial forms. In regard to them, only a virtual hierarchy is
conceivable.

WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF CORPOREAL SUBSTANCE?

125

qualitatively. This qualitative heterogeneity is sufficient to
explain all the facts upon which some attempt to build
a demonstration of the actual permanence of elementary forms
(P. Descoqs, Essai sur íHylémorphisme, pp. 33-72). Therefore
no scientific objection can be made against this metaphysical
thesis on the oneness of the substantial form in every individual,
and as a consequence, no one can break the certitude that there
are substantial changes.
But a question still remains. Why are they such? What
is their cause?

Fifth Question : What is the cause of corporeal substance?
Fifth Thesis

: The corporeal cause of material substances

1. is constitutive :
a. a preexistent body, offering the matter,
which is apt,
b. a substantial form drawn from the
potency of matter;
2. is productive :
a. a body effecting local movement and
alteration,
b. an end determining activities of bodies
in a direction.

A. Notion
1. Common sense employs the word very little, but the
idea of cause is constantly in mind. Language is penetrated
with it. All the “ active ” verbs express the action of a subject­
cause, and the “ passive, ” the action of an object-cause, which
is designated by the preposition, by. In the experience of his
individual and social life, everyone is aware of influences which
arc exercised on him. Sensation acts on the current of
consciousness and modifies it; and through sensation, the same
may be said of customs, laws, institutions, opinions, counsels
and examples. However, a cause is revealed from within,

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BODIES IN GENERAL : MATTER

particularly in a voluntary decision. To execute a decision
is to act and to do, but it is especially to procure a result previously
conceived as an end. A cause is that which acts, but it is also
that for which action is done, that which makes an action tend
towards an end. This twofold notion of causality, efficient
and final, is applied without hesitation to all the real. The
course of phenomena is a criss-cross of causes and effects, because
it is movement. That which changes is explained only by its
connection with another thing which is its cause, and every
cause which produces something is like a consciousness which
intends the result produced.
2. Science first purifies causality from the empirical
anthropomorphism which sees a will behind every change.
Then it seeks a way to measure it, and from then on, ignores
the activity as such. A cause then becomes a relation of equality
between forms of energy. It becomes purely logical, simply
an antecedent which permits us to understand the consequence
(the effect), because we can deduce the consequent from it by
a mathematical deduction. The true name of cause in science
is " antecedent. ” Thus, the total amount of energy remains
constant under different forms, and the quantity of anterior
energy in change is the cause of the new forms manifested by it,
by reason of the equality of the new quantity with the old.87
3. The philosopher can not fail to observe that measure
and its correlative deductions are a very incomplete means
of knowledge. He will see in the scientific restrictions brought
to bear on the notion of cause, only a method. He will continue
to speak of an efficient and final cause. Moreover, he cannot
resign himself to a causality which is only a logical one.
Undoubtedly, this cause expresses in its final analysis, real
relations, for if the real can be understood by way of deduction,
it is because its elements, i.e., substantial individuals, are really
linked in a causal relation one with the other.
•’ This is the cause which is called “ rational. " i.e., capable of being
expressed in mathematical form. See La Philosophie de M. Meyerson,
by M. Gillet, pp. 24-48. This ideal, however, can not be realized in its
fullness, limited as it is by " irrational ” numbers. Sec ibid., pp. 59-66.

WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF CORPOREAL SUBSTANCE?

127

Consequently, a cause is, for him, “ That which makes
a thing to be, ” that upon which an existent depends, and thus,
that which makes a thing intelligible. Now, if we begin with
that experience of causality which is most familiar and best
known, that of manual and artistic fabrication, we will see that
four principal realities contribute to the making of an object.
A clay vase comes about through a matter, clay, to which a
determined form is given. It is made up of a fashioned clay,
and these two realities constitute the vase. But how and why
are they joined, since clay is separate from this particular form?
A potter has taken this clay, he has acted upon it, using
his hands and his instruments, and he has been careful to apply
his energy in a precise direction, which is present in him in the idea
of the form to be given to the clay, which in tum belongs to a more
general knowledge, that of the potter’s art. The potter could
propose to copy a model, but this model would be only a particular
form of the idea which directs his work.
Briefly then, in the produced being itself, two principles
contribute to making it what it is :
something determinable, something “ potential, ” a matter;
something determining, something “ actual, ” a form ;
and outside the produced being, two other principles, which
are not less necessary :
something active, yet still potential, an energy, an agent ;
something determining, directing, a final-idea to be obtained.
Therefore we must call that a cause, which makes a thing
to be :
(1) that which constitutes a being as an internal principle;
(2) that which produces a being as a principle distinct from it.
In each of these two orders, we arc led to distinguish between
a determinable principle and a determining one. Thus a being
depends on two intrinsic causes, potency and act, which may
be either prime matter and substantial form, or substance
(second matter) and accidental forms; and on two extrinsic
causes, the efficient cause, or agent, and the final cause, or
" directing idea. ”

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B. The reality of corporeal causality

1.

is denied in several ways :

a. Phenomenalism denies all causality. Cause is not
a phenomenon. 88 It is only an illusion due to the habit of
expecting phenomenon B, because it has already been perceived
as following phenomenon A, which is actually what is being
perceived.
b. The Kantian criticism has made of causality an
" a priori ” category, a mere subjective way of linking successive
phenomena in the understanding.
c. Cartesian mechanism denies all efficient and final
causality in the corporeal world. Descartes rejects every active
force. Spinoza ruins the very idea of final cause. For him,
final cause is a contradiction. The end of an action, according
to him, is the same as the effect. To make the effect a final
cause is equivalent to saying the effect is the cause of its own
proper cause. Moreover mathematics shows the illusory quality
of final causes, since they derive all from essences by the pure
mechanism of deduction.89 Malebranche reduces all created
causality to what he calls " occasional “ it is contradiction...
that bodies should be able to act on other bodies ” {Entretiens
sur la Métaphysique, VU, pp. 5-10). But “ God has established
a certain modality of occasional causes in relation to effects,
which He produces Himself. ” These causes “ determine the
efficaciousness of His Will, in consequence of general laws
which He lias ordained ” (ibid., 10).
2. The bases for these systems are very weak :
Ad a. The psychological experience of sensation suffices to
»» That is to say. an object of experience. Experience shows only
positions, successions and displacements. Now experience is the only
possible knowledge and nothing is unknowable. Those are the basic
principles of phenomenalism.
“See Spinoza. Ethics, Bk. I, the entire appendix. "All final
causes arc only fictions of the human mind.... (The theory of final
causes) considers... as an effect that which in reality is the cause, and
vice-versa. "

WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF CORPOREAL SUBSTANCE?

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show the intuitive origin and the real value of the notion of
cause. To sense a quality is to know its action on me, the
reality that is imposed on me.
Ad b. For the same reason as above, we must deny the
Kantian thesis, which relegates causality to an " a priori ”
category, i.e., independent of experience.
Ad c. Again psychological experience furnishes us with
a first response to the negation of the mechanists. Intuitive
data cannot fail to be real. Moreover, Descartes is mistaken :
movement is not only local movement, it is both qualitative
and active. As a mathematician who reduces everything to
necessary deduction, Spinoza ignored final cause. Actually
this ignoring leads to confusing its causality with the efficient
causality of the agent. Spinoza knew well that the realized
effect does not produce its cause. But in order that its cause
produce it, there must be some orientation towards it. Now the
final cause is precisely the reason of this orientation in the cause.
Wherefore, whoever has the idea of an efficient cause determined
to produce a definite result, has the idea of a final cause. Spinoza
did not see this. As useless as final causes may be to the
mathematician, there is still no legitimate basis to deny their
reality, any more than there is to deny the right of nonmathematical sciences to exist. The mathematical sciences
suppose neither final nor efficient causes, for they are interested
only in the essence. But the study of existence and action
cannot be reduced to essence, and it is precisely existence which
demands finality and efficiency.

Malebranche is mistaken on the origin of the notion of
cause. Our idea of an absolute cause is derived from an intuitive
idea of relative cause, of a caused cause. Before declaring God
a universal cause, we must find causes and effects in this world.
If we do not find a cause in the world, what reason have we for
looking for one elsewhere since wc lack the notion of cause?

3.

Positively :

a. The intuitive origin of the notion of cause guarantees
its reality. Causality is a simple relation and can be attained

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only by intuition. It is directly applied to two worlds and,
even with some preference, to the external world. The only
explanation of this instinctive application is the grasp of this
notion in the world wherein it is applied. Without any doubt,
my primitive experience bears on my body and those of others
simultaneously. That there should be some error in attributing
causality to a determined body can be readily understood,
but not so readily understood is the hypothesis of constant error,
which makes me project a completely internal experience of
causality into the world outside of me.
b. Science, certainly, concerns itself with logical causes
or reasons. But logical causality has no real truth, if it does
not express real causality. However, even science recognizes
real causes, as forming a part of the given world which it seeks
to understand. 11 has admirably transposed these real causalities
into logical relations and measures to a very high degree, yet
it finds everywhere real causalities, which cannot be so transposed
and which Meyerson called the “ irrationals ” : there is action
and movement ; there is irreversibility in energetic transforma­
tions (the law of entropy) ; excitants provoke sensation without
being equivalent to it. It may be objected that God can be
the only cause. This could be true, at least in regard to the
mineral world. God could be the only cause, but He is not.
The logical relations of mathematical causality link bodies to
other bodies, and not to God. It is not, as Malebranche thought,
a simple divine idea which provokes the displacement of ball B,
but rather the divine idea incorporated in ball A which has just
struck B. Without ball A, there is no movement of B.
Thus science would be entirely falsified in declaring the
causality between bodies as unreal, or even limiting it to that
area wherein it can be transcribed in equations of energy.
c. Our belief in the activity of bodies is evidently at the
basis of very many of our movements of adaptation in the world.
Activity is useful, and therefore it is right. There are cases
where it is false, as in magical and superstitious practices.
Yes, then it is useless and adapted to nothing. These cases
show that we can sometimes be mistaken in our judgments in

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causality. They also show that we are not always deceived,
and that corporeal causality is real.
What then is the role of bodies in the production of corporeal
substances?
C. The intrinsic causes of a corporeal individual which
begin to exist at the term of a change of substance are matter
and form. How do they cause? They cause the composite,
and by reason of that they cause each other, since neither exists
except as a constituent of this composite.

1. However, prime matter has a preponderant role to play
in relation to substantial generation, since it is the only
substantial subject which endures throughout the renewal of
individuals. It exists before the new individual. We can
conceive the total production of a body, i.e., its creation, but
we are, for the moment, concerned only with the transformation,
the production of a body as regards its substantial form.
The entire work of nature in bringing new individuals
into existence is only a work of transformation. Before these
new individuals existed, their matter did. The work of nature
endows this matter with a form which is new, whether that
be in its individuality alone, as among living things, or in their
specific characteristics, as in the case of minerals.
Does matter play its receptive role here in a completely
neutral way? Can it become, at this very moment, anything
at all, i.e., receive any kind of form? No, it can not. Experience
shows us the contrary. There is always a narrow and very
definite link between the determinations of matter anterior to
its transformation and the specific form brought into existence
by that transformation. Mixing hydrogen and chlorine will
only give the transformation HCI. The receptivity of prime
matter is, therefore, a receptivity already very specifically
determined. The word “ dispositions ” to a specific form may
be used here to refer to those determinations present in a material
thing at this very moment, which render it receptive to only
one kind of form. One can say that matter thus determined
exercises in relation to the form which comes into being.

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a dispositive causality, not in the sense that it gives itself these
dispositions, but rather, having received the action of outside
causes, it has, because of them, a potentiality oriented to one
definite kind of form.
In what do these specific conditions consist? Negatively,
in the absence of quantitative characteristics, which are indis­
pensably linked to the continuation in being of the substance
which is about to disappear. Positively, in the presence of
quantitative characteristics which are contrary to the above
and typically identical to the properties of the form which
is about to appear. The production of these dispositions involves
alteration in the substance which is about to cease. Thus it
is a progressive movement, since it directly modifies extension.
It endures until the realization of that “ ultima dispositio ’
ad formam, which is the form which involves the instantaneous
birth of the new substance.
Thus, the integrity of the external layer of electrons is
necessary for atomic individuality. A movement, produced
by a luminous vibration, brings II and Cl closer and closer
together until their external layers are in contact. Here we
have an alteration of atomic structures which is at the same
time the constitution of the typical structure of the molecule
HC1, wherein the individualities of H and Cl disappear to give
rise to that of HC1.
We must make a further precision. Up until now, wc have
discussed only the specific nature of the new form as it is attached
to the dispositive causality of matter. But there still remains
the question of how its individuality is attached to matter.
Matter, as endowed with undetermined extension, only makes
individuation possible. However, in every substantial mutation,
we have a matter endowed with a determined extension, which
receives from acting causes, at a precise marnent of time, the
" ultima dispositio " which coincides with the generation of a
new form. Thus this new form contracts, for the full time
of its duration, a completely concrete relation with this moment
of time and this portion of the world. It is, forever, the form
which begins here and now, united to this matter. The extension
of the composite can vary in volume, in structure, and in a

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133

thousand movements and qualities. Yet these changes will not
affect the individuality, as long as there is no mutation of the
specific nature, for substantial individuation is acquired only
once, and that is evidently at the moment when the substance
begins to be.
2. The substantial form is the cause of the new substance
once it is constituted in " facto esse ”; while in its formation,
in " fieri, ” the form is an effect, a term of change. It is the act
towards which the potency of matter tends, concretely oriented
by its dispositions. This relation has been expressed as " drawn
from the potency of matter ” (educta e potentia materiae),
at the time of a change.
This metaphor is detrimental, if it conjures up the image
of a matter which is like a closed chest filled with forms, liberating
them onty one by one and imprisoning the preceding at the
moment it liberates the following. It simply means : (1) that
the form exists at the term of the change; (2) that matter
contributes to its existence only as a receptive potency, as
determinable subject; (3) but also as an oriented receptivity,
by reason of disposition, towards a specific and individual
form; (4) that the " drawn ” form can exist only as dependent
on the matter. •°
Consequently the idea of forms already made, hidden in the
matter, which mutation, as if by a stroke of a magic wand,
makes appear and disappear, is false. Forms are in matter
only in potency, never in act, e.g., the form and structure of the
oak are in the acorn ; the knowledge of the adult is in the newlyborn ; the vase, the statue and the pipe are in the clay paste.
The observable laws of substantial change, which lead us to
recognize the role of material dispositions, indicate correlatively
that not all the forms arc in the same degree of potency in
concrete matter. Undoubtedly, they can all be actuated one
day or another in the course of the history of the world, but
then they are only in remote potency. Only those forms whose
•• The human soul verifies the first three characteristics but not
the fourth, because it is not only a substantial form, it is also spiritual.
Because of that it transcends the limited domain of corporeal beings.

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properties are akin to the actual dispositions of the matter are
in proximate potency.
D. Extrinsic causes are necessary to the production of the
corporeal individual. “ Quae, secundum se, diversa sunt non
faciunt unum nisi per aliquam causam adunantem ea. ” Matter
and form make only one substance in dependence on a cause
which unites them, and which offers for our consideration two
different aspects : action and determination.
1. An active or efficient cause is required as the cause of
change. This cause can be called a motor cause. The trans­
formation is a movement resulting from qualitative alterations
and displacements. Now change has no sufficient reason in
the mobile, and therefore it must be sought in something distinct
from it (" exterior, ” if you wish, but without any spatial sense).
Actually a mobile is a being in potency, passing to act. Now
nothing passes to act by the simple reason that it is in potency,
for nothing is determined because it is determinable, nor does
it become a possessor by the fact that it is not a possessor.
Therefore no mobile is changed by its nature alone. This must
happen by reason of a being distinct from it, a producer of its
movement, a cause, a motor cause.
But what is this motor cause? It is found in bodies them­
selves. The analysis of sensation, the truth of scientific laws, the
biological value of our knowledge of movements, show us this.
Bodies arc thus directly causes of change and indirectly
causes of existence. Are they adequate causes of existence?
Certainly not. They cause existence only as the term of a
change. They necessarily suppose a preexisting matter, prime
matter if they are substantial, second matter or substance if
they are accidental. In any case, bodies arc only causes of the
new " information ” of this matter. They do not make it exist,
they suppose its existence.
Will we find in the matter which persists throughout these
changes the adequate cause of existence? Not with any certainty
in matter taken in its aspect of pure potentiality. How about
matter as disposed by causes acting in the universe? This
question poses another : “ Is the universe the cause of its own

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135

existence, or has it been created? ” A study of the causes of
existence in the corporeal individual thus forces us to a
consideration of the world in its entirety, and so we must leave
until later the solution of the problem we have posed. (See
Books III and IV.) As far as individual bodies arc concerned,
they are only indirect causes of existence, as motor causes.

2. A finality can not fail to appear in their action, which,
in a strict sense, is “ motion. ”
a. The facts. Let us not seek, in the play of corporeal
causality, an intentional finality. Let us see whether it contains
a finality of destination. A destination in a cause would consist
in a precise and constant determination, existing before the
action and the change produced, characterizing the body in its
power of causing. Such a destination is observed in the
determined and constant course of phenomena, and in their
correlations which are expressed in scientific laws. The reason
of these constant and highly determined correlations is found
in bodies themselves, which are at the same time causes and
receivers of motion. In other words, there is in bodies a real
orientation to act in a determined and constant way, as well
as a real orientation to submit to received movements in a
constant and determined way. Briefly, a motor cause is not
the source of any movement whatsoever, but of a determined
movement. It is determined itself, and its determination to
move in such and such conditions, and in such and such a way,
is its end, in the objective sense of that word.
Thus, objective finality is not proven, it is observed. The
most positive science states this, in its way, by the formulation
of the scientific laws of phenomena. These laws are only the
expression of determinations and destinations inscribed in
corporeal changes.

b. The act of the agent. We come to the same conclusion
by reflecting on the efficient cause. The efficient cause is not
a simple fact. It is a necessity. There is no possibility, without
it, of understanding movement in general or any particular
movement. It is the reason that a mobile acquired this particular
N.Y. 17 —11

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determination. It possesses this determination and is in act
in regard to its subject.
But we can distinguish in experience itself two ways in
which a cause can be related to its efíect :
1) A univocal cause possesses a perfection specifically
identical to that which it introduces into the mobile : a warm
body warms water.
2) An analogous cause (sometimes called “ equivocal **
)
possesses a perfection superior to that which it produces :
the ideal of beauty, which animates an artist, passes into his
beautiful work ; the -plan of the architect passes into the materials
with which the house is built.
We must therefore conclude :
c. Form and end. " Agens agit simile sibi. ” The agent
possesses in itself that determination which the mobile does
not possess until the term of movement. That which will be the
form of the matter in the substance produced is already
present in act in the agent, but in another way. In the substance
produced it will be there as the term of a mobile potency; in the
agent it will be there in the form of motor activity, in the form
of a tendency to communicate itself to the effect, as term or end
of the communicating action. That which will be form at the
term of the change is necessarily end for the motor agent.
That which is produced is, thus, similar to that which produces.
Suppress the end in the agent, and by that you suppress the form
in the substance produced. Therefore, the latter would be,
if it could be at all, almost anything.
So we must affirm the existence of ends in nature. They
must be as truly in nature as arc substantial forms. It is
impossible to conceive th universe as a simple total of energies.
These energies arc always at the service of ends, because they
realize, through an indefinite number of changes, definite
substantial forms. The latter arc undoubtedly a partial but
very clear expression of natural ends.
b. Destination and intention. In what way does an end
exist in an agent? At the minimum, as a destination or an

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137

order. I think of the many actions of a spider spinning his web,
or of the prodigious muscular activity of the bee in the
construction of the honey comb, and a certain order strikes
my eye. There is in the agent that which produces this order
in the action. It is the end present in the agent; it is the unity
of the plan of these actions and their result, the destination
of the activity.
Outside of my consciousness, I do not perceive end in any
other way than I do within it. It is thus that I perceive it in
the production of substantial form.
In my consciousness an end appears to me much as it does
in the world I observe, e.g., my innate instincts and those
psychological structures which appear through no command
or wish of mine. But an end appears to me most often under
the form of an idea which I choose as an aim and which I call
intention. Intention makes me understand destination and the
order I place in my actions. It is the first and fullest way to
possess an end.
But this is surely not the way, i.e., the first and fullest,
that I find operative in all causes.
The problem of the existence of bodies remains to be solved
under two aspects. An individual body does not contain the
adequate cause of the production of another, nor does it furthermore
contain the adequate cause of its proper orientation to produce.
Does the world, considered as an ensemble of all bodies, constitute
the full source of existence and destination for all the individuals
it contains?
Before coming to grips with this problem, we must consider
corporeal life, which, at first look at least, seems to imply original
characteristics, surpassing the existence and activity of brute
matter. If we neglected this most complex and varied aspect
of the universe, we would certainly misconstrue its richness and
perhaps neglect data essential to the problem we are trying
to solve. Is organic life the answer to the problem of matter?
If it is not, then it adds its problem to that of matter and must
be taken into consideration even if it complicates the task of
the philosopher.

BOOK TWO

LIVING THINGS: ORGANIC LIFE

Is the uniqueness of life real? If it is, in what does it
consist? What is the cause of life?
Sixth Question : What is organic life?
Sixth Thesis :

A.

A living corporeal being is
1. an individual body, capable of immanent
operation ;
2. and therefore specifically different from a non­
living thing;
3. and therefore, an essence composed of
prime matter and a substantial form, which
is called a soul, and is endowed with a number
of operative powers.

Notion

1. Empirically, life is a characteristic common to plant,
animal and man. To think, to will, to feel, to be happy, to
suffer, is to live. These are elements of human life. To romp,
to flee from a predator, or to stalk the prey is also to live. These
are elements of animal life. To grow, to bud, to flower, to
fructify, is to live, and these are elements of vegetable life.
It is difficult to sec, at first sight, what among these things
that are called life are analogous. We can, however, here note
these common traits : one negative, the irreducibility of life to
mineral matter, which the fact of death imposes on us ; and the
other positive, the finality of life. A living thing seeks to
preserve itself, to grow, to protect itself and to perpetuate
itself by engendering others of its own kind.
2. The biological sciences have for a long time resisted
the mechanical method, which Descartes wished to impose on

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all matter whether living or not. They arc, however, now
submitting themselves more and more to this single method.
Most biologists are persuaded that the physiological facts are
determined in a completely mechanical way by their antecedents,
and reveal no more real finality than the physico-chemical facts,
among which they seek to classify their observations. Thus,
science refuses to concern itself with those two traits, which,
according to common sense, seem to characterize life — its
irreducibility to matter and its utilitarian finality.

Actually science has sought incessantly to bring life and
matter closer and closer together, even to the point of confusing
them. The evidence of this basic relation is pointed out in the
following :
a. There is a mechanical explanation of biological facts,
which is continually progressing and which shows all organic
life as a more or less complex machine. Thus all common vital
functions (nutrition, differentiation, adaptation, reproduction)
are movements subject to physical and chemical laws, laws
which are purely mechanical. Thus the laws of energy are
observed in vital combinations. The quantity of energy in a
system (living thing and environment) remains constant; life
neither creates nor destroys a parcel of energy, and the
equivalencies remain the same : 1 gram of albuminous oxyde,
whether outside a living organism, or within the respiration
of a living organism, always furnishes 4.83 calories. The laws
of osmosis regulate absorption; those of chemical synthesis,
assimilation and disassimilation, i.e., all of nutrition; those of
attraction govern the phenomena of cellular multiplication,
growth, and reproduction. Mathematical probability is applied
so well to the phenomena of heredity, that one can predict,
according to the Mendelian laws, the characteristics of the
descendants from the “ factors ” of the parents. What good
does it do, then, to invoke final causality? Such causality
offers nothing useful in the explanation of organic life.
b. There is something akin to the beginnings of life in
minerals. These minerals show phenomena very similar to some
which have been thought of as most characteristic of living

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143

things. Thus a mineral has both an internal organization and
an external form, as do living things. In the atom, the molecule,
the crystal, the structure is as specific as it is in a vegetable.
Nutrition and growth are also realized in crystals. The necessity
of a crystalline seed to activate the formation of a crystal in
super-cooled substances, as glycerine, is similar to the necessity
of an egg or of a spore in reproduction.1 There is an adaptation
of minerals to the conditions of their environment, such as
temperature, pressure and concentration. Fusion and vapo­
rization are modifications of form, similar to the variations of
external size, hairiness, and unnatural growth realized in plants
by reason of certain external influences. Even death is realized
among the minerals. Catalysts, for example, can be poisoned
and become inactive; thus, sulphur is a poison for iron, water
for uranium, which are catalysts in the formation of NHS;
likewise enzymes are killed by heat, although they are not
living. Common sense is, therefore, mistaken in imagining
an abyss between life and matter; this abyss docs not exist.
In a general way there are not two chemistries, one
" organic ” and reserved to living things, and another purely
mineral. Substances called " organic ” can be produced
by synthesis from simple bodies, as Berthelot has shown.
Excepting the most complex molecules constructed by life,
a great number have already been completely fabricated, such
as hormones, albumins and proteidos.

It would seem best, then, to define life as a physico-chemical
phenomenon which is extremely complex, and matter as a
phenomenon of the same nature, but relatively much simpler.
c. There arc intermediaries between minerals and living
things.*
*

1) from the point of view of specific size, we find living
viruses, e.g., the poliomyélite, which is less than a hundred
‘ A small crystal will grow it it is placed in a solution of the same
substance or in an " isomorphic ” one.
* See L. L. Woodruff and G. A. Baïtskix, Foundations of Biology,
6th cd. (New York : Macmillan, 1947), pp. 394-396.

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millionth of a millimeter, and we know of non-living molecules
which are of a slightly larger size. Here we have a reciprocal
overlapping in both domains.

2) from the point of view of -properties. We find beings
which are chemical because of their molecular simplicity and
their aptness to crystallize, and at the same time biological by
their power of multiplying and growing through the assimilation
of different substances, e.g., the crystallizable mosaic tobacco
virus.3

Genes out of which chromosomes are formed are relatively
simple grains of proteins (chemical aspect), nevertheless, they
contain in germ the hereditary properties of a living thing
(biological aspect).
d. The self-regulating machines of cybernetics realize effects
which are similar to those produced by living beings, even those
which are highly advanced in organization.4

Every living thing must realize an equilibrium between
its numerous functions, and between those functions and the
conditions of its environment (adaptation). This equilibrium
is necessary for the realization of a definite program, but variable
between the fixed limits of a specific minimum and a maximum.
Now, the electric turtle imitates tropisms and elementary
reflexes; the electronic computer succeeds in mathematical
operations much more quickly and accurately than man. The
homeostat of Ashby, in which there are some 400,000 possible
combinations which it can attempt, appears to find the
conditions of its cqulibrium, and to realize them with a sure
stroke.s
All these similarities which experience suggests and imposes
between living and non-living things, constitute a powerful
temptation to declare them identical. This temptation is so
’ Chemical synthesis has succeeded in making this virus. See Science
ct Vie (January 1956). P- 86.
4 W. Ross Ashby, Design for a Brain, 2nd cd. (New York : Wiley
& Sons, i960), pp. 1-12.
* J bid., PP- 58-70-

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145

much more powerful because the scientist seeks a maximum
unification of data, and does not understand unless he has
succeeded. It is still more dangerous, if the scientist attempts
metaphysics without perhaps knowing it, and doubles as a
scientist and philosopher, while accepting scientific method as
the only legitimate knowledge, which will unveil all mysteries
and decipher all the enigmas of the sphinx which is
nature.
3. The philosopher will have no great difficulty in placing
the problem in focus. He admits all that the scientist has
observed, which indicates a close relationship between the
metaphysical structures of the living and non-living. Yet he
must quickly point out that the scientist ignores, by his method,
that which makes life specifically different from non-life, as is
evident in this remark of Claude Bernard : “ Life is nothing
more than a word which denotes ignorance. When we qualify
a phenomenon as vital, this is equivalent to saying that it is a
phenomenon whose proximate cause and conditions we do not
know” (Inir. à la Méthode Expérimentale). But Bernard sees
in this only a methodological position. If science is defined as
knowledge of a phenomenon through its antecedents, then that
which is not explained by these conditions is not “ scientific, ”
and it is to be ignored. A question still remains to be discussed :
Is life explainable by its antecedents alone? If the answer
is yes, then one day science will explain it entirely by mechanical
reasons. If the answer is no, then there will always remain
something in life which is inaccessible to mechanistic science,
and which we must, like it or not, recognize as irreducible to the
physico-chemical.

To pose this question, we must indicate the limits of life.
It is a question of that which is common to all living things.
But in order to describe it, we must take into consideration
scientific experience. It first distinguishes between psychological
and physiological life. Then it recognizes in physiological life
an ensemble of functions common to all living things, despite
their different manners of realization. A corporeal living thing,
such as we envisage it, is a body which nourishes itself, grows,

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LIVING THINGS : ORGANIC LIFE

adapts itself and reproduces itself. • This definition embraces
man, animal and vegetable, but it extends only to the vegetative
functions in all living bodies.

B. The originality of life thus understood consists in an
immanence of operations. The vital phenomena common to all
Jiving things actually suppose actions of which the living thing
is at the same time the cause and the term. They are spontaneous,
and they change the living thing. A living thing is then capable
of changing itself, " ens capax se movendi, ” capable of immanent
operation, i.e., of modifying the operator itself.
Proof. 1. First, the living thing is a cause of the phenomena
of vegetative life. Undoubtedly, it is not the unique cause of
them, and its spontaneity is not absolute. It has need of food,
and more generally, of its environment. The growth of a plant
is conditioned by the quantity and intensity of warmth, by the
physical and chemical nature of the soil, by humidity, light....
But the living thing is the cause, and the most necessary cause,
of its proper life.

To nourish itself is to fabricate a specific albumin through
a chemical activity oriented specifically in that direction, and
to incorporate it into its cytoplasm, nucleus, and cell walls.7
To grow is to proceed by multiplication and specific differentiation
towards a cellular form, towards a structure, each of which is a
* Each one of these functions implies multiple components. Thus
nutrition, which is basically assimilation, embraces other elementary
functions, such as digestion, circulation, and especially breathing. Would
one of these functions be sufficient to characterize a thing as living?
Certainly not. Even breathing, although very fundamental, is not
sufficient : for example, crystallized hemoglobin incorporates and gives
off oxygen or carbonic gas.
Some think that the tobacco Mosaic virus is not alive, because
it does not breathe although it assimilates.
’ It is remarkable that organic chemical function always tends to
differentiation. It mixes the stable with the unstable, the highly complex
with the simple. The functions of inorganic chemistry tend to level off.
obeying the principle of Carnot, breaking down the complex, reducing
the differentiated to the homogeneous and the unstable to the stable.
The inorganic tends to the simplest and lowest level, whereas life operates
in a counter ditection, like an indefatigable Sisyphus.

IS LIFE ORIGINAL?

147

distinct reality, revealing a power of specific evolution in a
living thing which no external condition supplies. To reproduce
is to differentiate certain cells8 and render them apt for
transmitting the same specific life by communicating to them
a kind of specific potentiality, which the development of the
egg or of the spore will bring to full light. This very special
determination of certain physico-chemical groups, the chromo­
somes, is the most stable factor in a living thing, to the point
that any modifications acquired by the individual, e.g., habits,
do not seem to be able to be transmitted by heredity (L. CuÉNOT,
La genèse des especes animales, pp. 224-270). To adapt itself
is to modify its nutrition and growth in a way that makes the
best of the conditions in the environment. Adaptation supposes
very evidently the action of the environment on the living thing.
Nevertheless we must recognize in the living thing itself an
indispensable cause of adaptation, for the same external causes
produce different effects according to the species which undergo
them ;0 thus external causes arc not the adequate explanation
of adaptation. Briefly then, the general phenomena of the
vegetative life are not explained without a spontaneity proper
to the living thing, which is undoubtedly influenced by excitations
coming from the environment, yet reacts to these in a
specific way.

2. A living thing is also the immediate term of vegetative
change. Without any doubt, a growing root can crack a rock,
and forests can create a special soil. In general, life modifies
its environment, and the evidence is rather obvious. However,
the immediate term of life is not these modifications of
environment. What is immediately, always and necessarily
changed by vital phenomena is the living thing itself.
In nutrition, this is quite clear. The living being constructs
and rejuvenates its cellular matter. In growth and differentiation,
“ The causal role of external influences in reproduction takes many
forms (we can here think of pollenating insects), but the essential cause
of it remains the generator.
• A particular race may be immune to a particular virus, while
another race is killed by it, and still another adapts itself to it and acquires
immunity.

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LIVING THINGS : ORGANIC LIFE

it is still very clear. A vegetable increases the volume of its
roots and its absorbent surfaces in the soil. In general, a living
thing builds its specific structure little by little, realizing it
according to a plan which is most obvious to the experimenter.
Adaptation is still clearly immanent. It is realized by the
exercise of vital activities. What is modified is the play of life
itself, making it, for example, easier and more fruitful. The
phenomena of generation manifest immanence less clearly.
They evidently tend to the constitution of a new individual.
Here the living thing is not closed in on itself; it tends to give
of itself, and even to devote itself in many cases. Thus generation
is often accompanied by the death of the individual parent
(annual and biennial plants and many animals). One gets the
impression in these cases that the most precious thing is not the
existence of the individual, but the preservation of the hereditary
type represented by the individual. We will discover immanence
under the form of biological interest in the species. The species
never works more clearly for itself than in the phenomena of
generation. In every hypothesis, generation is realized by the
individual, and generation modifies the individual first of all by
cellular and humoral transformations.10 Generative phenomena
arc therefore immanent, even if their utility goes beyond the
individual.
Consequences. The immanence of these operations allows
us to understand some of the experimental characteristics of life
and to find in them a kind of supplementary verification.
Since life is immanent, it demands for its exercise a
complexity, an organization. It would be contradictory for a
simple being to be cause and effect at the same time. That which
is causing in a living being must be really distinct from that
,0 The reproductive function consists essentially in the formation
of gametes and spores, and not in the appearance of a new living thing.
There arc particles of pollen and there arc spores which actually never
reproduce. .. nevertheless they have generating power. They have
acquired it, and this acquisition lies in the formation of pollen and spores,
which is nothing more than a cellular modification in certain regions
of the generating organism. Often this first immanent effect is followed
by no other (this other [generation] is a transitive effect).

IS LIFE ORIGINAL?

149

which is caused, yet it is necessary that both be one and the same
substantial individual. Thus the necessity of organization in
a living thing I Whoever speaks of organization speaks of a
qualitative difference of parts belonging to one and the same
being. Organization permits the individual to act on others
through one of its “ organs ” (or differentiated parts), and thus
to modify itself.
Since life is an immanent activity, it is able to enrich itself
or diminish itself by its own proper play. A living thing keeps
its act as something acquired. It is capable of habit, which
either heightens its life (as an acquired immunity) or lessens it
(as in anaphylaxis).
Life then has duration; its past is not absent from its
present. It is continued in it.
Immanence supposes and demonstrates the individuality
of a living thing. That which endures has a substantial base.
The living thing shows its individuality in an activity which
directly profits only itself. Biologically speaking, life is egoistic.
The facts of generation reveal this as being more of an egoism
of the species than of the individual, and perhaps the consider­
ation of the universe will show us, beyond this, a " cosmic
egoism ” dominating all others, and leading us to God, “ the
Common Good ” of the universe. However, these vaster
egoisms do not exclude individual egoism. They suppose it.
Life enriches the universe, only because it adds to mineral
existence an individual interest, and if the species progresses,
it is only in individuals and because of them.
Life is, therefore, a basically individual characteristic.
The individual is revealed by the immanent finality of its
operations. Its vital acts are first of all for itself. Here finality
consists in a destination. All vital movements have for their
sole, immediate and necessary result the change of the individual
itself, which produces them by its own spontaneity. This
finality is not always utilitarian. Its term is not always the
greatest good, nor even the good of the individual. It can
happen and it does, that, through the transitions of the individual,
by its wearing out, by its death, the good of the species is restored

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LIVING THINGS : ORGANIC LIFE

because of the individuals engendrad. Now, if the evolution
of species is admitted, there can be, through this chronological
succession, a conservation of and a variety in the living world
(of the biosphere). Whether useful or not, vital finality is,
in any case, the determination of vital facts to modify the living
thing itself, a finality immanent to the individual itself.

C. The irreducibility of life to physico-chemical phenomena
is drawn from its characteristics. Atoms, molecules and crystals
have no immanent activity. They gain nothing in exercising
their properties. The movements which they are subject to,
leave no trace in them. Take a block of steel and heat it to a
molten state, then cool it, and it will be found to be identical
to its former state, not having acquired the least facility to be
more readily warmed than it had before. Physico-chemical
phenomena do not have true duration since their changes are
reversible. A living thing, on the contrary, finds all the past
written into it, and it is never such that it could be what it is,
if it had lived otherwise. A mineral has no history, but a
vegetable has one. A mineral is incapable of habits, but a
vegetable acquires them in adapting itself. Briefly, the action
of a mineral is completel}' “ transitive. ” It changes only the
individual which is distinct from the agent. The activity of a
living thing is immanent. It changes itself in the exercise of its
own vital powers.
This is not to deny a relationship between the living world
and the mineral one. The living world and the mineral world
are both subject to external influences. They possess common
properties and obey certain identical laws, and arc, in a word,
of the same genus. This relationship permits us to understand
the incessant passages from matter to life and the contrary
phenomena of disassimilation and death. It permits a legitimate
basis for a mechanical explanation of life, since living matter
is subject to the laws of all matter. But the living thing contains
in itself a specific orientation, which can not be expressed by
mechanical laws, and which is also factual. Life is then
something other than a physico-chemical phenomenon. Living
bodies are a family specifically different from minerals.

LIFE AND MATTER, THE SAME?

151

1. But one can object that the mechanical explanation
of life given by science has been highly successful. This
explanation clarifies only the general functioning of material
organs, but halts before the threshold of life itself. Thus it
marks the conservation of energy in the exchanges between the
living thing and its environment. Yet it states — without
explaining why — that life differentiates energy into a thousand
completely improbable forms. E. Guye has calculated the
probability of the mechanically spontaneous formation of a
single molecule composed of two kinds of atoms, having a
molecular mass of 20,000 and supposedly dyssymmetrical.
He has found it to be equal to 2 X 10-”1, i.e., to 2 divided by
a number formed by 1, followed by 321 zeros. Now the simplest
cells contain not binary but quarternary molecules in the
hundreds of millions and in a superior mass, 34,500 (the mass
of pure albumin). All of which diminishes the above probability
to unimaginable proportions and reduces it scientifically to
nothing.11
While the inorganic tends toward a total symmetry, toward
a complete leveling of energy (as the law of Carnot-Clausius
and the calculations of Boltzmann have shown), the organic,
ever since it began, perhaps a billion years ago, has not ceased to
manifest itself as more and more dissymmetrical, differentiating
itself into always new species. ”

2. It can be further objected that the resemblance of certain
mineral facts to the most characteristic vital facts, shows a
possible reducibility. No one denies this resemblance, but it is
accompanied by this difference, that the vegetable realizes these
phenomena at the same time from within and by itself, whereas
at least one of these two conditions is lacking in the mineral.
Thus the mineral docs not organize itself ; it is already organized.
An elementary crystal does not grow. It attracts other crystals
similar to itself, which remain individually distinct. Thus is
explained the usefulness of a crystalline germ. It sets up the
’• See Lkcomte du Noüy, Human Destiny (New York : Longmans,
1947), Bk. I, ch. 3. pp. 33-39.
** Ibid., Bk. I, ch. 4, pp. 40-52.

N.Y. 17 — 12

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LIVING THINGS : ORGANIC LIFE

attraction, but there is nothing here which resembles the
germination of a spore, much less the formation of the spore
itself. Minerals do not adapt themselves: their gaseous, liquid
or solid state is imposed on them by external conditions and
consists in varied groupings of individually distinct molecules
(except in cases of polymerism). On the contrary, vital
adaptation is realized in the individual itself, and it modifies
its own characteristics by virtue of its own spontaneity. Death
is an idea which can be used literally only in regard to the
cessation of vital activity. It can not strictly be used in regard
to the cessation of all activity. Death is irreversible. On the
contrary, a catalyst can be regenerated by a proper purification.
3. A further objection seeking to establish the reducibility
of life to matter will stress the existence of intermediaries between
living and non-living things. The argument drawn from size
can be neglected, for life belongs to quality, not to quantity.
As to the biological properties of certain individualities
(crystallizable virus, chromosomic genes), they certainly indicate
the presence of an aptitude for life. As for the rest, an aptitude
of this kind can be found only in the process of vital assimilation,
wherein molecules of food become living, after they have lost
their individuality in the individuality oí the living thing.
But this is not the only elementary function by which we
can scientifically recognize life. It is done rather through an
ensemble of functions. One can imagine a chemical molecule
capable of multiplying itself at the expense of an environment
which would not be too dissimilar to it. This phenomenon
would resemble vital assimilation in about the same way that
the growth of a crystal does in a solution which is of an identical
nature.
What exactly happens when tobacco is invaded by mosaic
virus? Scientists discuss this. Docs the vims breathe? Is it
truly alive? No. But is there present at least that fundamental
property of life, assimilation? Probably yes, but this remains
doubtful. Its “ multiplication ” could be only a chain molecular
reaction, made possible by the chemical functioning of its host. ’*
“ L. L. Woodruff, Foundations of Biology, p. 395.

LIFE AND MATTER, THE SAME?

153

At any rate, the virus cannot live except as a parasite, and
therefore cannot be a bridge between non-organized matter
and life. At most, it is nothing more than a degraded form of
life, the witness of a long biological history.
4. There are some who sec in self-regulating machines
a reason for reducing all living matter to mechanics. Don’t
they imitate living things in the way they seek and realize an
equilibrium, despite the variations of their external and internal
environment?

Yes, they imitate vital activity. But what can be concluded
from that? (1) That man is able to construct machines which
imitate nature. (2) That there must be in nature and in its
Cause the equivalent of that aim which man has before him in
constructing the machine, a kind of active idea which endows
a living thing with a defined program and the means apt to
realize it. (3) Briefly, there is in the living thing as in the
machine, an incarnated finality as well as a differentiation
of energy.
Moreover, the imitation of vital activity is imperfect.
Actually :
a. As supple as the machine may be, it never builds
itself up. The living thing itself constructs its organs. This,
according to the theory of evolution, is what each species has
done; this is what every individual has done from its beginning
as a microscopic cell. It has multiplied its first material, then
differentiated its tissues, assembled them into organs, and
grouped these into apparatuses. This prodigious work of
construction, according to an invariable plan, unfolds from
a gamete whether considered before or after fecundation.

b. The machine offers science the service of helping analyze
the work of life. Doing this, it always simplifies, since ■vital
function is infinitely more complex than that of a machine,
and this is true as the biological organization becomes greater.
c. The machine is only an accidental whole, the unity of
whose parts is confined to a structure destined for some function.
A living thing, on the contrary, is an essential whole, an “ unum

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LIVING THINGS : ORGANIC LIFE

per se, ” one substance, whose organs are not the pieces of a
machine because they have life only by the unity of their
existence.

The " survival ” of tissues or of separated organs, and even
their specific development, can be achieved. Is this an exception
to the hegemony of the whole over the parts? No. “ This
shows that the rupture of continuity between a group of cells
and the rest of the organism does not necessarily involve death,
but that it can, on the contrary, actuate the potentialities
which, existing before the separation, were held in a state of
subordination to the whole. The influence of isolation may be
clarified by the following : the egg of a triton (water salamander)
arrived at stage 16, can furnish 16 separate embryos, through
the separation of 16 blastomeres from the egg. Each blastomere
is called “ totipotent. ” If the blastomeres were left united,
they would have formed only one embryo. Totipotence ceases
more or less early according to the species involved, sometimes
at stage 2. What is true here for the whole, is true also for the
organs or groups of organs. Certain groups of cells contain
in potency a whole organ, but they can be substituted for each
other in its construction. This rule in the formation of cells,
showing their subordination to the whole, is one of the clearest
manifestations of the substantial unity of a living thing. It would
be useless to explain that nothing analogous to this is encountered
in a machine.14
Let us leave it to science to point out all of the resemblances
between matter and life. Despite all that, science has absolutely
no right to deny the proper character of life. It has, at most,
by reason of its method, the right to ignore it. It ignores the
individuality oí life, when it reduces the living thing, through
its analysis, to molecules, and then to atomic and sub-atomic
particlcs, or when it compares a living body to an aggregate of
molecules. It ignores the finality of life, when it sees in it only
a purely mechanical linking of events, and its immanence, when
“ See Science et Vie (February 1955), p. 45.
’• Sec L. L. Woodruff, Foundation
*
of Biology, pp. 403-467.

SOUL AS SUBSTANTIAL FORM

155

it thinks only of events without situating them in the individual
which makes an original unity of them. Science ignores all this
when it searches for a mechanical explanation of life. Yet it
finds all this again when it returns to the living thing itself.
The more it pushes the mechanical analysis of it, the more it
finds life dominating the physico-chemical, and the more it
finds life related to the psychism of the idea directing action.

A living thing is an individual endowed with immanent
finality. That which distinguishes it from the non-living is
neither its individuality, nor finality in general, but the imma­
nence of that finality which directs its action to the trans­
formation of the individual.

D. The substantial nature of a living thing is, therefore,
specifically distinct from, and generically similar to, that of a
mineral.
1. Matter and form. It is by a substantial principle, and
not an accidental determination, that a thing is living. But the
form is a principle of specific determinations in bodies. Therefore
it is by its substantial form that a body is living.

2. The soul. For a good reason a special name is reserved
for that form which is the principle of life. It is a “ soul. ’’
We can define it with Aristotle as “ actus primus corporis
PHYSICI

ORGANICI,

POTENTIA

VITAM

HABENTIS. ”

It ¡S the

substantial form, " actus primus, ” and there you have
it placed in its genus; it collaborates with prime matter and
constitutes with it a body, “ corporis. ” It exists only in natural
bodies, “ physici. ” Aristotle does not think that life can be
produced artificially, but in any case, it is never encountered
except in natural bodies. The living body is an organized body,
" organici, ” i.e., differentiated. The smallest protista (unicel­
lular vegetables and animals) show an organization which is
amazing in its complexity. This body, finally, possesses through
a soul the power to act vitally, " potentia vitam habentis ” :
“ vita ” here designates not the existence of the living thing
but vital phenomena, life as lived, “ life in second act. "

15G

LIVING THINGS ! ORGANIC LIFE

3. The hierarchy of forms. It almost goes without saying
that souls, vital substantial forms, are superior to mineral
forms. Souls themselves are hierarchized : some are vegetative,
others sensitive, and finally some are rational. This hierarchy
is not that of a plurality of forms coexisting in the same individual
(See p. 121 ff.). That which is expressed by the idea of hierarchy
is the inequality of the virtual richness of forms, their properties.
In this sense, the form of the molecule is superior to each of the
forms of the atoms making it up, as well as superior to all of
them taken together, for it is the principle of the permanent
atomic properties as well as of those which are strictly
molecular (see p. 123). Again, the form of a very complex mole­
cule, such as the albumin of the vegetable, is superior to the
forms of simpler molecules which chemical analysis produces.
" A fortiori, " the substantial form of a living thing is always
superior to the forms of different molecules whose presence is
able to be detected in this living thing by virtue of their
properties. It is by virtue of this living substantial form that
all the properties of inferior forms exist, and it is from it that
all the parts of an individual living thing receive a common
immanent orientation. Here then is the sense in which a vital
form is hierarchically superior to mineral forms. It possesses
their powers virtually, as it possesses its own property. It
utilizes their powers for itself to the point that it cannot exercise
its own except it exercises theirs. Thus assimilation is possible
only by reason of the physical and chemical properties of
minerals. In the same sense, the forms or souls of vegetables
are inferior to those of animals.’ Sensation is possible only in
an organism which is already differentiated and constructed
through nutrition. That is why the soul informing matter has
the same properties that were previously the functions of the
substantial forms of molecules, which are now assimilated into
a vital organism. This is why the animal soul fundamentally
endows matter not only with sensibility and motor-activity,
which are proper to it, but also with the nutritive, the differen­
tiating and reproductive powers which are characteristic of the
vegetative soul, as well as the physico-chemical properties,
which are indispensable to the exercise of these powers.

SOUL AS SUBSTANTIAL FORM

157

The virtual hierarchy of forms is the cansequence of the
oneness of the form in the individual, for it is a single form which
must be the principle of all substantial determinations. Yet,
how can we conceive the multiple virtualities of this single form?

4. The operative powers. St. Thomas, in line with Aristotle,
conceives the soul or the form as a principle of many “ operative
powers ” which orient it towards acts of a determined kind.
These are “ potencies, " i.e., realities, which arc in some way
still undetermined. (1) They are identical, whatever may be
the intensity or numerical diversity of their actions; (2) they
exist even when they do not act; (3) to come into play, they
need an excitation or a “ motion. ” They' are “ operative ”
because they are oriented not only to receiving a motion, but to
acting, to operating, once they have received it.
The vegetative soul possesses three powers : the nutritive
power, the power of growth and the generative power. There
must be distinct principles, different orientations, in vital
spontaneity, since it is a source of varied actions : “ powers
(potentiae) are specified by their acts. ” For example, the soul
as principle of nutrition can not be totally identical to the soul
as principle of differentiation, for different effects are not
explained in the same way. But the soul is in itself simple
and one in each individual. Therefore, it must be diversified
in its relative determinations. It must be endowed with multiple
activities, in order sometimes to act, sometimes not to act, or
to act here according to such an orientation, and there according
to another.
Must we insist on the real plurality of powers in the soul?
The principle, " Powers arc specified by their acts, ” is
incontestable. But do we have distinct kinds of acts? This
does not at all seem doubtful. Nutrition, or better, assimilation,
pertains to the chemical constitution of cytoplasmic and nuclear
molecules; growth pertains to the acquisition and maintenance
of the specific structure of cells, organs and the entire organism;
reproduction, beyond the cellular differentiation of gametes,
pertains to the transfer of a specific life to another individual.
It seems that a fourth power ought to be joined to the above

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LIVING THINGS : ORGANIC LIFE

ones, at least in the cases of Metaphyta and Metazoa, and that
is a differentiating power pertaining to the progressive acqui­
sition of characteristics proper to different kinds of tissues and
organs, which is something quite different from specific growth.
The powers are not only distinct from one another, but they
are also distinct from the soul itself. The reason for this is
that accidents are distinct from substance, determinations are
distinct from the determinable, and multiplicity from unity.
Now the powers are oriented to action, and the soul to basic
existence. The powers determine the soul, and make it apt
for its functions in organized matter. These powers are multiple,
and the soul is one.
We must take care, however, not to imagine nor conceive
this distinction as being one between two substances or two
things. There is only one thing, the living body. Its soul, its
powers are not things, but principles of a thing — one being
substantial and the others accidental. To speak of powers
of the soul is to express the riches which it possesses as the
first principle of life, and to say that it is the source of a multitude
of operations, which it makes possible through the various
orientations of its spontaneity. In this multiplicity of powers,
there yet remains unity. Powers actually flow from the soul
in a certain order, an order of causality and finality. The
nutritive power, for example, is demanded as a condition for
the function of the power of growth, and the power of growth
is seen as a necessary condition for the power of differentiation,
and, finally, the power of generation supposes all the others
(Cf. Summa Theol., Ia Pars, q. 77, a. 1-7). The powers themselves
are possible only by reason of physico-chemical forces. This
order of " emanation ” allows us to understand why a single
soul may be equivalent to all the inferior forms and go beyond
them in virtuality.

E. Some differing conceptions in regard to life
1. On the subject of the finality which characterizes it.
Of what kind of finality are we speaking?

LIFE AND FINALITY

159

a. Can an external finality describe life? Instinctively
man makes himself the center and the end of the entire universe.
Mineral matter seems to him as made to prepare for and to
maintain organic life, and this latter to prepare for the arrival
of humanity, and then to nourish and serve the physical life
of man.

Organic life serves man’s intellectual education, by showing
him, sometimes in striking relief, the directing Idea which
guides it, and the Power which produces and sustains it.
No one doubts that man requires organic life and a material
universe. But if this finality appears as the only reason for
matter and life in general, it does not seem to explain the host
of species whose use to man is at least problematical, if not
absolutely deniable, e.g., nebulae that must forever remain
unknowable, or parasites which cause epidemics. Moreover,
the definition of life by a finality external to the species
themselves does not indicate the difference which situates
life well above matter, no matter how indispensable the external
finality of things may be to man. If man knew no other species
than his own, which he considered the very epitome of organic
life, he, nevertheless, could not make a logical conclusion that
this was so.
In every way, then, it seems that life must be defined by its
immanent function in relation to matter, and as a search for
individual utility.

b. A conscious finality of its aim and the means thereto
seems to be affirmed sometimes, as in Souvenirs Entomologiques
of Fabre, and in Physique et Métaphysique de la Vie, by Professor
Remy Collin.
Their anthropomorphical formulae must not be taken
literally. They are useful in clearly evoking the role of finality,
which, of course, is in no way perceptible except to man. These
formulae have thus an analogical sense : every living being
possesses in itself the equivalent of what in us is the idea chosen
to be put into execution. It is, especially in ontogenesis, an
“ idea which is realized. ’’ But to make these men say that

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LIVING THINGS : ORGANIC LIFE

all living things think their ends, choose the means thereto,
and execute them, is an error.
c. Internal finality can be thought oí as a simple relation
of utility.
It consists in the usefulness of each organ to the whole,
and of the whole to the organs. Such is the position of Kant :
“ An organized production in nature is that in which all is
reciprocally means and end. ” Such is also the thought of
the biologist, who, as preoccupied as he may be with mcclianistic
explanations, conceives a living thing as formed of organs
useful for the life of the whole, and the whole as necessary
for the life of each organ.
This definition is certainly objective, but : (a) Kant reduced
it to the role of a provisory method, the unique definitive method
being that of mechanical causality; (b) finality is limited to
utility, with the presumption that the vital whole is useful.
The facts which lead the individual towards death, are they
never of a vital origin? The excessive development of
hypertrophic ’• organs, e.g., the antlers of a deer, a peacock’s
tail, arc these useful to the individual? What is served by the
coloration and form of flowers or a butterfly’s wings?

The biologist, whose vocabulary is very finalist, speaks
of rudimentary organs 17 as organs which are more and more
deprived of utility by their state of atrophy. His conviction
that an organ must have a certain utility is one of the reasons
upon which the theory of evolution is based. Thus an organ,
which is useless to this particular species, was useful in the past
to the ancestral species, and an organ scarcely apparent now
in this species will be useful in the future of this species, and the
future is in a sense " prefigured " by its budding appearance.
Must we conclude from this that every organ, every detail
of structure, has some utility? No, we can only conclude that
’• Hypertrophy is the development of an organ to such a point that
it becomes useless or even harmful.
n In man, we can point to the appendix and the muscle attached
to the external ear.

LIFE AND FINALITY

161

the hypothesis of utility is a stimulant to biological research.
It therefore is involved only in the method of the science. Here
is the thought of Kant : internal finality does not so much
express the proper characteristic of living things as our human
way of studying them.

It remains true, however, that individual utility can exist
only in living things, and, in this sense, it authentically
characterizes life, but this is because life shows the existence
of immanent operations, of an internal finality whether utilitarian
or not.

d. Finality without purpose, such is, for Bergson, the
typical characteristic of life.18
According to him, vital finality does not consist in the
" realization of a program spelled out in advance ” for each
and for all, such as Leibniz imagined to be in monads. Nor does
it consist in the “ joining of all of the parts for the greatest
good of the whole in which there seems to be some intelligenct
organization in view of that preconceived end. ” In both of
these cases nothing would be truly new. Now, “ a free act is
incommensurate with the idea... such is evident from the
nature of our internal evolution. Undoubtedly, this is also true
in the evolution of life. ” The essential of vital finality would,
therefore, be the indetermination according to which the future
is contained in the present. “ We would like to assign a purpose
to life, in the human sense of that word, but it is in vain. To
speak of a purpose is to think of a preexisting model which
has only to be realized.... A plan is a term assigned to a work;
it closes the future whose form it designs. Yet the opposite
is true, for the gates of the future remain wide open before the
evolution of life" (Creative Evolution). Life is like the
imagination, which invents in such a way that the present does
not contain in a definite way the realization which it initiates.
11 H. Bergson, Creative Evolution, Eng. trans. H. Mitchell (New York :
Henry Holt, 1911), pp. 251-271, 272-314. See also J. Maritain, Bergsonian
Philosophy, Eng. trans. Andison (New York : Philosophical Library, 1955),
pp. 74-84. See also M. Grison, Problèmes d'origine (Paris : Letouzey
et Ané, 1954), pp. 161-165.

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LIVING THINGS : ORGANIC LIFE

Certain facts show this inventive character of vital finality
better : (a) those wherein " life fabricates identical apparatuses
in different ways, ” e.g., the eye of the mollusk and that of
a vertebrate; (b) heteroblastic phenomena, wherein an organ
is repaired with the aid of tissues differing from those which
served in its formation (the case of the crystalline lens of a triton,
which has an exodermic origin, being repaired by the tissue
of the iris, which has a mesodermic origin); (c) the facts of
orthogenesis, that is, continued progressive differentiation within
one species throughout the course of evolution, e.g., the ancestors
of the horse.

This conception takes care to point out the opposition
between matter and life. However : (a) it is too narrow, for
life does not always invent. It conserves as well. Must we
declare the factors governing species to be pure mechanism,
and limit life to the evolution of the species? (b) It falsifies the
notion of finality by confusing it with that of indétermination.
It is true that indetermination is the condition of the exercise
of choice in human liberty, but it docs not constitute finality,
for finality is not able to be free. When it is, it supposes always
a cause which is oriented, a determination, which liberty is held
to complete in the same line. If life invents, it is because it
carries within it a need, a tendency, in a word, an already
determined finality, (c) This “ indetermination ” does not by
itself distinguish life from matter. The Brownian movement
of a molecule or of an electron is as indetermined as the thrust
of evolution in a given species. Moreover, it is impossible to
say if the indétermination is real, or is just an instance of our
ignorance of individual cases, or an insufficiency of knowledge
to predict an historical fact.
Thus Bcrgsonian finality describes well enough the
contingent, groping character oí evolutionary movement, whose
present state never allows us to foretell with certitude the
following state, although it is carried towards it effectively.
This description expresses the weakness of our intellectual
penetration rather than the internal nature of vital evolution.
Moreover, it concerns itself more with the development of the

NOTIONS ON METAPHYSICAL NATURE OF LIFE

163

“ biosphere ” (the ensemble of living things distributed in time
and space), than it does with the individual life of each of them.
It attaches itself to a quasi-metaphysical source, " l’élan vital ’’
(vital impulse).

2.

On the metaphysical nature of life

a. The animism of Stahl (18th century) endows the living
thing with a thinking soul which conceives and realizes purposes.
Remy Collin accepts this opinion when, after having defined
sensation as " obscure and unconscious knowledge... of a
specific form and its material conditions, ” {Physique et
Métaphysique de la Vie, Second Part, ch. 3), he identifies sensation
with soul and states : “ The psychism which the organized matter
of a living thing has as its condition, is at the same time the
necessary condition of all living material organization ” (p. 95).
Bergson, also, makes his “ vital impulse " a principle of all
organisms, and places that principle in the psychological order.

b. Vitalism contents itself with a vital principle which,
without being psychological, is, nevertheless, distinct from
physico-chemical forces, and because it is a force superior to
mechanical energy, it is completely “ sui generis, ” and produces
organization. This was the thinking of the school of Montpellier
in the 18th century, following Barthez. In the 19th century,
this line of thought was followed by a number of German
biologists, Driesch in particular, as well as by F. Houssay, for
whom life restored the energy which is constantly being
diminished in the physical world.
c. The organicism of Bichat finds its source of vital facts
in the organism. Life is nothing more than the result of the
properties of tissues and of organs, which are irreducible to
mechanical forces.

d. The materialism of Haeckel sees in organic life, as in
consciousness, only a mechanics of atoms, and by an odd twist
makes them the property of all matter.
to conclude : Aristotelian hylomorphism is an original
animism, for it places no consciousness, no knowledge in the

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LIVING THINGS : ORGANIC LIFE

vegetative soul. It makes of it only a source of operative powers
with a multiple and regulated finality. This finality is not a
finality of intention associated with free will. It is destination.
This destination (purpose) it not necessarily oriented to the
utility of the individual, nor to that of the species, nor to that
of the universe. It remains an immanent finality. The purpose
of the vital operation is to change the living thing itself which
operates.

Seventh Question : What is the cause of a living thing?
Seventh Thesis :

The cause of a corporeal living thing is a
living thing of the same species.

A. The fact. There is no spontaneous generation, nor is
there any equivocal generation.
1. Common sense, science and philosophy up until the
19th century admitted the existence of spontaneous generation
in this sense that living things began to be without parents
from a matter without life. Putrefying meat seemed to change
into maggots and flies. The presence of worms in the liver, the
muscles and the brain, was still explained in the 17th century
by a decomposition of these organs (equivocal generation).
St. Thomas distinguished between the higher animals, which
could be bom only of other animals of the same kind, and other
lesser animals, which could be engendered from putrefying
organic matter or rise spontaneously from inorganic matter
{Summa Theol., Ia Pars, q. 71, ad lum and q. 72, ad 5”“).
Every philosophical effort was bent to assign a cause to these
generations. For St. Thomas, it was the power of a celestial
body, the sun, for example, which replaced the normal generating
power.

2. A more attentive scientific study destroyed this legend.
It discovered a living generator in every case where a superficial

WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF A LIVING THING?

165

look saw only organic decomposition or inorganic matter.
For example, Van Bénéden (19th century) discovered the
cysticercus of parasitical worms. Spallanzani observed the
latent life of numerous little organisms which were able to
subsist through very unfavorable conditions. However, in 1858,
Pouchct believed he had demonstrated that infusoria were
spontaneously generated in a liquid previously sterilized by
boiling. Pasteur demolished his conclusions by well constructed
experiments.10 Since then, this fact, that every living thing
comes from another living thing, has not been doubted by any
scientist. It has even been put more precisely : Every living
thing is bom of a living thing of the same species, if species is
defined biologically by hereditary' characteristics.
Such are the known facts. We do not know of a single
instance of spontaneous generation. We do not know of a single
instance of generation where the generator and the generated
were of different species.
Arc there unknown facts? The scientist cannot say
anything about them, since he does not know them. Pasteur,
himself, says of his experiments : “ I do not pretend to have
established that spontaneous generation never existed. In
subjects of this order, we can not prove the negative. ” 20
As for the generation of a being of another species than
that of the generators, the majority of scientists hold this to be
real, since the theory of biological evolution, generally admitted,
must postulate this as its indispensable base. If the hereditary
patrimony is strictly immutable, then the idea that actual
species come from different ancestral species cannot be accepted.
’•Sec M. Grison, Problèmes d’origine, pp. 83-00.
,0 " I do not pretend to have established that spontaneous generation
never existed. In subjects of this kind one can not prove the negative.
However, I claim to have demonstrated with rigor that all the experiments
wherein there is supposed to have been evidence of spontaneous generation
in the lowest forms of life, where the debate is now centered, are cases
where the observer has been the victim of illusions or the cause oí error
which he has not seen or could not avoid ” (translation of Pasteur's
letter to Pouchct, Œuvres, Vol. II, p. 629.) — See René ValleryRadot, Life of Pasteur, (Garden City Pbg. Co., 1924)- PP- 109-in.

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LIVING THINGS : ORGANIC LIFE

B. The scientific question therefore remains open.

1. As to spontaneous generation, we must say that it has
not been held since Pasteur, nor spontaneously realized in nature,
nor realized by the ingenuity of experimentation.
Scientific effort has been brought to bear in two directions
which could affect this problem :
a. Research has conducted investigations on the most
rudimentary forms of life. The simplest forms among complete
living things are the tiny bacteria called rickettsiae, which are
of a size smaller than one-thousandth of a millimeter, and,
among the parasites, bacteriophages and viruses which are in the
neighborhood of a hundred-thousandth of a millimeter.
b. There has also been a great deal of research in the
physico-chemical conditions which make elementary vitalization
possible. These conditions are : (a) the formation of “ organic ”
composites which in some cases lead us ultimately to chlorophyll,
and in other cases to the amino acids; (b) the organization into
cellular structure of the materials which are indispensable
whether to a protein molecule (where the amino acids are a base),
or to the initial functioning of vegetative life (where chlorophyll
is required as a base).
In regard to the first point, the distance between living and
non-living things has diminished to the point that we do not
know how to classify crystallizable viruses.
In regard to the second point, we can conceive how the
facts could have been connected by virtue of scientific hypotheses,
but we have no way of getting back through paleontological
evidence to the moment when life began on earth. On the other
hand, we have not advanced the chemical process so far that
we are able to fabricate a specific kind of protein, nor have we
produced anything that would make us think of the structure
of a cell.
Even the possibility of spontaneous generation remains
scientifically doubtful. As to its probability, considering only
the chance of mechanical encounters, we would say that it is

WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF A LIVING THING?

167

practically nil. " The unique law of chance consists simply
in this : extremely improbable phenomena have never been
produced or... have never been observed by any human
being. ” u Now, according to Guye, an organic type molecule
— not yet organized — and even very simplified, has for its
probability of becoming organized the figure 2 x IO-811, and its
fortuitous realization would demand IO3*3 billion years. Now the
earth has been in existence only about two billion years and life
around one billion years. ” To write, as does Dauvillier : “ It is
only by the greatest chance that life began on earth, ” “ is
simply to affirm this extraordinary improbability, and at the
same time the actual appearance of life. Now, if this is meant
to be an explanation, it certainly would be an outrageous
absurdity.

2. Xs to the transformation of species through geneological
descent, only one directly experimental fact approaches this :
" mutation. ”
Among the slight variants which characterize individuals
of the same species, certain ones are not hereditary. They are
“ summations, ” i.e., characteristics acquired in a general way,
under the influence of environment. Others are capable of being
transmitted. These are " mutations, ” which have been studied
especially by De Vries, and then by Morgan in his work on fruit
flies. These variants concern the following details : color,
hairiness, form and size of such and such organ. They seem
to be produced spontaneously and suddenly by chance.
Biologists have succeeded in increasing their frequency by
submitting the reproductive cells to various agents (X-rays,
radioactive elements, temperature, ruptures, and poisons such
as colchicine). These mutations evidently indicate a slightly
variable reproductive power in a living thing. They constitute,
whether directly or by crossing of mutants, varieties, races and
” Trans, from Le Jett, la Chance, le Hasard of E. Borel, p. 98.
“ Lecomte du NoOy, Human Destiny, pp. 26-37, 55-69.
88 This quotation is a translation taken from Dauvillier's Genèse,
Nature et Évolution des Planètes, pp. 340-341.
N.Y. 17. — 13

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LIVING THINGS : ORGANIC LIFE

sub-species, but we have not observed any of them which has
produced a truly new species. **
There has been no direct experience of an evolution which
passes from one species to another. Then do we have the right
to assert it, based on a projection of the evidence of mutation
which we have? For the few biologists who think so, “ the
reasons are especially of a logical nature : since these mutations
are the only variations known, they are necessarily those which
differentiate the diverse specific unities. ” Could there not be
variations which are unknown to us?
At any rate, even if we project the evidence beyond its
immediate limits, we can base the transformation of species
on another ground, that of geology. Paleontology actually
shows that vegetative species and animal species appeared
successively in an order of increasing differentiation. Now
biology can explain the succession of living things only by
generation. Therefore, it will admit, by reason of the paleonto­
logical facts, a modification of the specific patrimony in hereditary
transmission, and it will affirm evolution beyond specific limits
as a fact, whether one holds mutation responsible for this fact
or not.

Thus science holds spontaneous generation of life as possible,
but highly improbable. It holds mutation within a species as
a fact, and evolution from one species to another as highly
probable.

C. The philosophical problem here is essentially : Are
spontaneous generation and a transforming evolution of species
thinkable without violating rational principles?

An affirmative answer to this question seems to be indicated,
since scientists, philosophers, as well as common sense, accepted
these ideas as possible explanations up until the end of the
19th century. A contradiction is not so easily implanted in the
human reason.
“ See L. L. Woodruff, Fundamentals of Biology, pp. 474, 5°3‘5o8,
589-598.

WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF A LIVING THING?

169

However, let us be more precise.
1. Spontaneous generation. A strictly spontaneous gener­
ation is absurd. To affirm it is to say that non-organized matter
is a sufficient cause in itself of the differentiation in organic
composites, and of their vitalization. It is to say that the cause
is less than the effect. Such is, it seems, the contention of
materialism, which thinks the play of chance in the mechanical
movements of atoms is a suflicient explanation for the appearance
of life.
However, the idea of spontaneous generation does not
necessarily have this exclusive meaning. It can also refer to a
possibility that there exists in being profound causes, by which,
one day, non-living beings become living, without their
vitalization depending on preexistent organic beings, but rather
as an effect of cosmic causalities.
No argument has ever demonstrated the impossibility of
these hypotheses.
a. It might be objected : A cause cannot be inferior to
the effect, and therefore a cause of life cannot lack life itself.
Undoubtedly, the adequate cause cannot be inferior to its effect,
but a partial cause can be. Therefore, it is not permissible
to conclude that the corporeal cause of a living being is living
itself. Wc must say that the adequate cause of a living thing
is living, whether it be a corporeal life, or one which is supracorporeal. It suffices that God be living in order to explain
corporeal life. Yet tliis does not suppress the role of bodies
in the production of life. If we take a look at the mineral world,
we sec superior forms, those of composites, produced by inferior
forms, those of simple elements, by reason of the physical
influence of the cosmic environment.
b. One can further insist : Evidently God suffices to cause
life, but then we would no longer be speaking of generation,
but of creation. This is erroneous. If the physico-chemical
causality of a body is used, if the preexistent matter is only
transformed, we are speaking of generation and not creation,
and this generation would have to be called experimentally
spontaneous.

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LIVING THINGS : ORGANIC LIFE

Tims there is no contradiction in the idea of spontaneous
generation. We could even go further and say it is likely by
reason of the metaphysical constitution of corporeal substances.
Indeed :
1) Living things and non-living are made of the same
prime matter, which is potency in relation to all corporeal forms,
whether living or not.
2) Souls, with the exception of the rational soul, begin
and cease to be in the same manner as do other corporeal forms.
They are drawn from the potency of matter and return to it.
3) Bodies are causes of life as well as of existence, but
only in an indirect way. They directly cause only the passage
or the movement towards life or existence. They cause being
only as auxiliaries of the First Cause. If their activity is always
at the service of a Higher Activity, why prohibit them from
serving in the production of life?
4) But is their activity oriented toward the production
of life ? This is the one question left. Now it can not be answered
save by experience, since natural ends must be observed.

2. Evolution of Species. We can imagine the evolution
of biological species from less differentiated species in two ways :
a. either we judge these original species the sufficient
cause of the differentiation, even though they are less rich than
the subsequent forms. This hypothesis is metaphysically
unacceptabe, because it makes an inferior perfection the
sufficient reason for a superior effect.
b. or we judge that primitive species employ a matter
disposed proximately to the acquisition of richer hereditary
characteristics. We can admit that the factors of this acquisition
can be found at the same time in the species themselves and in
cosmic causes in general. Finally, we recognize that the
orientation of these causes towards this particular efficaciousness
is the work of a Providence, indicated at least under the
characteristics of that enigmatic Anti-Chance of which Eddington
speaks. This hypothesis is fully acceptable. It safeguards the
rational principles linking cause and effect. But is it true?

WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF A LIVING THING?

171

Again, it is for the scientist to pose the question. Nature does
not realize all thinkable hypotheses. Only experience can give
the answer.
The scientist is far from having exhausted the study of the
activity of bodies. He has scarcety peeked into the mechanism
of generation. To be particular, what is the necessity of
fecundation, when we can point out cases of asexual generation,
e.g., by spores, and especially cases of parthenogenesis, where
a non-fccundatcd ovum nevertheless develops? What is the
fixity of a species, when we observe “ mutations, ” which are
hereditary modifications of a specific type, constituting races,
varieties, and even " little species " within the big ones. Is there
not in the living thing a latent orientation through the process
of generation to find the new? We have artificially provoked
mutations through physical agents, e.g., radioactive bodies.
Do these agents do anything except manifest this orientation?
Then “ equivocal ” generation could be a natural possibility.
Therefore, the question is not closed. When G. Bonnier
wrote : “ It is no more difficult to create an elephant than to
create a tiny portion of living matter” (Le Monde Végétal,
p. 384), he expressed a conviction, but he gave no proof. The
scientist can conclude : There is not today any spontaneous
generation nor evolution of species. There are only mutations,
constituting sub-species. But no one can conclude from this
either the absolute impossibility of spontaneous generation,
or the simple certitude that it never existed, even in those epochs
where cosmic conditions were considerably different from present
conditions.
Let us, then, conclude. Actually, to our knowledge, no
living thing comes into being without coming from a living
organism of the same kind.
Let us take care, however, not to transform this fact into
a metaphysical necessity, or label as absurd its negation, or
esteem the research tending to verify the hypothesis of
spontaneous generation as a dream.
Let us also take care not to treat the idea of evolution of
species as irrational, and let us leave to the scientist full liberty
to take this as an hypothesis for his work.

BOOK THREE

THE WORLD

We have studied the corporeal universe in its living and
mineral elements. Now we will consider it as it is in itself.

The universe appears as a whole. Wc call it the world.
It also appears as a mobility, prodigiously varied and ordered,
which we call nature.
What are the characteristics of the world?
of nature?

What are those

What are their causes?

Eighth Question : What is the corporeal world?
Eighth Thesis :

The corporeal world is

1. a tridimensional [mite space;
2. mutable, marked by temporal duration
specified by evolution ;

3. a universal composite ;
4. relatively perfect, but contingent.

A. Notion. The idea of the world designates bodies
taken in their totality. It supposes that bodies are linked by
certain relations. Coexisting, they are localized in distances
from one another. Simultaneous or successive, they arc
temporally situated at the same moment, or in anterior or
posterior moments. By the intersecting of these relations,
bodies form a natural unity, a universe, held together by a
permanency which reveals a certain equilibrium, a certain
perfection.

176

THE WORLD

1. The average man knows something of this world because
he must adapt himself to it. He enjoys it, and he suffers from it.
He acknowledges that he is a part of it, but he is aware that
he does not grasp it in its totality.
2. The scientist, through astronomy, one of the oldest
sciences, today knows the stellar world with relatively great
accuracy, because of powerful telescopes, spectroscopes,
photography, electronic discoveries, and through the develop­
ment of mechanics and mathematical inventiveness.1 Never­
theless, for the moment, he has attained only that part of the
universe which lies within approximately 2 billion light years
of the earth.
a. The universe. The universe is made up of galaxies,
which appear in the form of spiral8 nebulae, similar to the
Milky Way, of which our solar system is a part.3 One galaxy
may number about one hundred billion stars, i.e., suns or solar
systems. More than a million galaxies have been marked by
present telescopes.4 A. S. Eddington calculates that the
number of galaxies in the universe number around one hundred
billion {The Expanding Universe, p. 4). Within the system
of galaxies, they draw away from each other in proportion to
their distances, with an average speed of 528 kilometers per
second, times the Megaparsec of the distance (Megaparsec =
3.26 million light years).4 The total mass • of the universe is
* Lumière et Vie (Sept. 1954), pp. 9-20.
* Or elliptical.
■ A small number, around 3 per cent of the total, have an irregular
form.
4 The telescope on Mt. Palomar can reach more than 600 million
of them.
* The total volume of the universe is dilating like a giant soap bubble.
4 For certain astronomers (Hoyle, Bondi, Gold), the total mass
of the universe would bo modified in a way that the average density is
kept constant. To compensate for the effect of rarefaction caused by
expansion, there would bo a continual appearing of matter (“ creation ”)
because of 500 atoms of hydrogen by Km** per year, which would result
in around 50,000 stars per second. Sec G. Gamow, Creation of the Universe
(New York : Viking, 1961), p. 32.

WHAT IS THE CORPOREAL WORLD?

177

around 2.4 x IO56 grams, or about 10
** times the mass of the sun.
Before expansion the radius of the universe was 1,068 million
light years. The principal fact upon which this theory of an
expanding universe is built is the spectral analysis of the light
from spiral nebulae. When their rays move over to red, we
have an indication that the source of light is drawing away
relatively from the observer. ’ If this interpretation is true,
the total volume of the universe is varying in a function of time.
The universe must therefore be defined mathematically not as
a space, but as space-time, the time determining the space.
The German physicist, Einstein, has been led by this to modify
the universal formula for gravity. He supposes, over and above
the Newtonian force of attraction, a force of repulsion,
proportionate to a “ cosmic constant, ” which is relative to the
distance between the masses, so that the greater the distance,
the more repulsion prevails over attraction. This new formula
allowed Professor Weyl to apply the same laws in gravitational
and electro-magnetic fields throughout the universe, and also
in the field of sub-atomic particles (A. S. Eddington, p. 28).
The results confirm the theory of expansion upon which these
laws are built.
b. The stars. Astral masses are physically different from
each other. Their physical states range from extremely rarefied
gases (1 atom of hydrogen to a liter) to a completely solid state.
The first exists in the nebulous gases, and the latter in the moon.
Chemically, the stars, through their light, do not reveal any
elements which have not been discovered on earth. Biologically,
certain solar planets seem to possess the environmental conditions
required for organic life, such as water, warmth, light and
atmosphere, e.g., Mars and Venus. It is likely that similar
conditions can be found on other solar planets. It is possible
that life could exist where these conditions exist. We could
’ This is the Doppler-Fizeau effect which has been completely verified
in relation to all bodies in the solar system. The relative withdrawing
of a luminous source from an observer increases the period of emission,
whereas the approach of this source diminishes the period. Seo McGraw­
Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, Vol. 4, pp. 264-265; also
J. C. Duncan, Astronomy (New York : Harper, 1955), p. 167.

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THE WORLD

even suppose that intelligent beings inhabit these planets.
Yet these are only hypotheses without any proof, such as the
hypothesis of an even number of stars.8
c. The history of the universe. The universe has a history,
a cosmogony. Eddington (p. 56), for example, imagines its
origins in the following words : “ .. .the primordial state of
things which I picture is an even distribution of protons and
electrons, extremely diffuse and filling all (spherical) space,
remaining nearly balanced for an exceedingly long time until
its inherent instability prevails.... There is no hurry for
anything to begin to happen. But at last small irregular
tendencies begin to accumulate and evolution gets under way.
The first stage is the formation of condensations which ultimately
become the galaxies; this, as we have seen, started off an
expansion which then automatically increased in speed until it is
now manifested to us in the recession of the spiral nebulae.
As the matter drew closer together in the condensations, the
various evolutionary processes followed — the evolution of
stars, the evolution of the more complex elements, the evolution
of planets and life. ” What was there before this state of
equilibrium (the state of Einstein)? Eddington (p. 62) is
inclined to think there was nothing, i.e., nothing thinkable in a
scientific line. The Abbé Lemaître, however, offers an hypothesis
— the primitive atom — which accounts for the state of Einstein.
For perhaps 10 billion years, all the matter which today
constitutes the universe was concentrated in one single atom,
whose tremendous radioactivity caused it to explode. Its debris
was scattered through space at tremendous speeds, and then
progressively, the parts began to slow down to the point that
we have the state of Einstein, which Eddington supposes as
initial. One of the proofs upon which this theory leans is the
existence of heavy radioactive atoms whose existence seemingly
cannot be explained by the actual state of nature. Another is
• A plurality of inhabited worlds is quite unlikely. As for the planets.
Mercury and Mars lack water, Venus lacks oxygen, while Jupiter, Saturn,
Uranus and Neptune lack heat. If life exists on Mars, it is completely
different from what we call life. See Harold S. Jones, Life on Other Worlds
(New York : New Am. Lib.).

SPACE

179

found in the existence of cosmic rays, which are witnesses to
a far-ofi and mighty radioactivity. *
Such is the most comprehensive theory which has yet been
formulated on the origin of the universe. It does not say from
whence the primitive atom came. It does not say, because
science knows nothing about it, for it can explain phenomena
only by other phenomena.

The hypothesis of Laplace, which concerned a universe
only in relation to the solar system, has been abandoned today.
The only thing which remains is the fundamental idea, which secs
a normal phenomenon in the formation of planets around a star.
It has been replaced by that of Weizsâcker, who makes the
planets originate out of contacts made in the vortices of matter. ’•

Today it is no longer a question of the genesis of the solar
system, but that of the galaxies which form the Universe.
3. The philosopher cannot rest here. The metaphysical
method obliges him to affirm that the world has a total
explanation, either in itself, or outside of itself. The character­
istics of the corporeal world will show him that there is a certain
insufficiency within the world to explain itself totally, and that
it can only be explained by a Cause which goes beyond it.
Let us study these characteristics.
B. The world is space.
1. It is real space, i.e., an extension formed by all
existing bodies, whether juxtaposed or distant, or a system of
real relations of contiguity and distance.
It is not absolute space, a merely possible space, i.e., extension
in its pure essence, as is the extension of Euclidian geometry.11*•
» See G. Gamow, Creation of the Universe, pp. 25-29.
*• J. H. Jeans, Universe Around Us, 4th cd. (New York : Cambridge
U. P. 1944). ch. 6, pp. 305-331.
*» This space is homogeneous, infinite, necessary and indifferent
to the presence of bodies and their movement. It is constituted by the

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THE WORLD

The world realizes this " universal, ” as the totality of living
men realize human nature. According to our astronomers, it
realizes the notion of space in a variable manner, as the number
of men varying from one epoch to another, realize the notion
of man. It is not, " a fortiori, ” imaginary space, i.e., an immense
receptacle in which bodies are lodged and within which they
can move themselves about. “ Kant has made this notion
of space the basis of his critique. He does not recognize any
other concept of space, and he identifies this space with
mathematical space. However, he does not see in space a
" thing-in-itself, ’’ but an" a priori ” form of external sensibility.
Popular language is on his side when it situates the world in
such an imaginary space. For very many, creation is the
introducing of a world into a preexisting empty space, which
is ready to receive it. To speak of space in this reference is
improper. ” We should rather speak of place, for it is place
which is the container of bodies. Aristotle defined it as :
" TERMINUS

CONTINENTIS

IMMOBILIS

PRIMUS, ’’

i.e.,

" the

innermost immobile boundary of that which immediately
surrounds that body. ” 14
Ordinarily we arc content to think of localization in an
notion of extension, unmixed with any other. In itself, it is the object
of an idea, a work of reason (ens rationis).
However, it is an idea whose comprehension is grasped intuitively
in sensible data, especially in visual and tactile data, and because of that,
the idea has a real foundation (ens rationis re fundatum). Because of its
meaning, it is realizable, but only as concretely differentiated and no
longer homogeneous.
» This image is formed by the mind by projecting the movement
of a body, or better still, of our body, indefinitely, as escaping the real
world and moving about in an uninhabited space. This indefinite
movement is imaginable only by virtue of the idea of space.
» To say that the world is localized in space is basically an attempt
to put it in a place. This attempt is vain, since to localize is to determine
the position of a body in relation to other bodies. To say that space
is the totality of all places would be to suppose that it is the total place
of the world. This is still erroneous, since real places must add up to
a real total, whereas the space in which the world would be situated
is only imagination.
• 14 See Aristotle's Physics, IV, 4, 2i2*-2o. See also A. G. Van Mslsen.
Philosophy of Nature, pp. 163-165.

PLACE

181

imprecise way, e.g., I am living in Chicago. But there is a
precise localization for each body at each moment, and science
has been able to calculate it with a great deal of finesse, e.g.,
through its studies in luminous vibrations, cosmic rays, X-rays
and the angular displacement of the stars. What then is the
precise meaning of place?

Aristotle describes it as a kind of film without thickness
enveloping the localized body, yet as being part of the bodies
which touch it. In a word, this is the surface itself by which
bodies touch the limit of other bodies. “ Place ” exactly
circumscribes the localized body. Localization is thus a relation
based on the contact between the surface of the localized body
and the surface of the localizing bodies.

This enveloping surface is thought of as immobile, because
it is in relation to it, as a point of reference, that movement
is appreciated. It is also thought of as immutable, or as abstract
in relation to the bodies which really furnish it. Bodies change
nature, arc displaced; but it makes no difference, since they are
replaced by others which offer, or can offer, exactly the same
enveloping surface. Thus it is a touching surface which alone
constitutes place or local point of reference.
Aristotle wished to go further. He sought to localize the
localizing bodies. Degree by degree he arrived at a general
localizer, the “ first heaven, ” enveloping the rest of the world,
within which all the parts were situated. Under this form
he affirmed an absolute system of real movements.
Contemporary science has a different conception of place.
It localizes in relation to a three-sided point of reference,
constituted by three planes, two of which are perpendicular
to each other. Each point of space is localized by its distance
in these three planes.
The apex of this three-sided point of reference may be
situated at the center of the earth, or of the sun, or of the atom.
Does this mean that science rejects an absolute localizer and
denies its existence? No. One can, for example, find such an
absolute localizer in the center of the primitive atom of Lemaître.

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THE WORLD

In comparing the two notions of place, we can see that
they are not opposed to each other. That of Aristotle is more
concrete and qualitative, whereas that of the scientist is very
abstract, much more simple and more useful for measuring.
The first is richer in reality, and what the second loses in
immediate reality, it gains in precision. Thus, when science
reduces a localized body to a single point, which confounds
localization with its center of gravity, and movement to a linear
trajectory without height or breadth, there is only a seeming
inferiority in the scientist’s notion of place, because he can still
come back and consider the volume and external form of the
displaced body. This he actually does, for example, in the
studies on wind resistance to airplane and automobile bodies.
The scientist then becomes Aristotelian — without knowing it —
by returning to a notion of concrete place.
place, taken in itself, is, in both conceptions, an " cns
rationis, ” but it expresses real relations, which really modify
the interaction of bodies.

Now, ts the world in space, or more exactly, is it in a place?
To understand the question is to have the answer. The world
is the totality of bodies, and is therefore not something contained
in a body which envelops it. The world is not here, nor there,
nor anywhere. Imagination will protest : space is linked to the
conditions of sensation even though it be constructed with a
view to the idea. To uphold the idea of a possible absolute
space, it has no other choice than to construct a space which
is independent of the world and greater than it. It places the
world in this space, but it is a completely imaginary localization
without any reality.
We must say the same thing of the question : Does the ivorld
move from otic place to another? How can that which is not
anywhere move from one place to another? The idea of general
expansion is completely otherwise; here we are dealing with real
distances, those between the galaxies, which are increasing.
The world is real space.

It is not in space.

PLACE AND SPACE

183

2.
It is a space in three dimensions, i.e., involving
three dimensions or extensive measures, which vary independ­
ently : length, breadth and depth.
This truth was not challenged before the 19th century.
Then, different " metageometries ” were constructed, supposing
" space “ to have more or less than three dimensions. Classic
geometry had rested on the Euclidian postulates. Lobalchewsky,
seeking to demonstrate the absurdity of other than the classical
postulates (1829), found that one could, on the contrary, draw'
from a contradictory postulate, such as the possibility of an
infinity of parallels, an infinity of theorems of which none would
contradict the initial postulate. Thus he constructed a geometry
in only two dimensions. Riemann did the same beginning with
the postulate that one could not draw a line parallel to any given
straight line. Thus were constituted the pure geometries,
having n dimensions.
The 20th century saw these geometries become the instru­
ments of physical theory and astronomy. Einstein affirms the
relativity of time and space. Minkowski imagines, in order
to represent the relations between them, a space-time, i.e.,
a continuum having four dimensions. This space-time is the
world for the contemporary scientist, a space having four
dimensions, time being the fourth.
The terms which these geometries use, space, dimension,
line, do not have exactly the same sense w'hich Euclid gave to
them. They have a wider sense. The extension of meaning
began with the symbolic expression of geometric dimensions
in the language of algebraic functions. Thus a polynomc to the
second power, ax2 -f- bx + c = 0, is represented by a parabolic
curve. Now, this polynome can also express the law of uniformly
varied movement and thus translate an aspect of the physical
world, such as the fall of a projectile. Space and its three
dimensions still signify measures which are properly extensive,
but now they also symbolize a temporal measure w’hich is linked
to space (movement), but which no longer means coexistence
of parts outside of parts which is extension. Thus, space
designates a system formed of four measures, independently
N-Y. 17. —14

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THE WORLD

variable of one another. They are called " dimensions ” or
" perpendiculars ” to one another, to show that each can vary
without a variation in the others. Why limit a system to four
dimensions? In pure mathematics, there is no reason to do so.
One can group together as many different dimensions as one
wants to. In physics, can we be sure that all real measures are
reducible to the three dimensions of extension? Is there not,
at least, an advantage in symbolizing as so many distinct
variables (dimensions) those characteristics, which — in the
present state of science — are shown to be irreducible? Could
this not be done in regard to volume (and its three dimensions),
time, mass, electric charge, etc? There are those who have
said that real space has more than three dimensions.18 However,
this does not contradict the statement that space has only three
dimensions, because the word “ dimensions ” does not have the
same sense in the context of this discussion.

A little attention will be sufficient for us to dispel the
equivocation. The term “ dimension ” no longer designates the
extension of simultaneously existing parts, but in general any
continuous measurable. Thus the scientist who speaks of four
dimensions does not contradict the philosopher who admits only
three. The scientist wishes to point out that time is a variable
upon which the three others depend. Yet he admits : " Although
the variables of space can vary indifferently in one direction
or another, time flows on always in the same direction. "
(L. de Broglie, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1933,
p. 271). In other words, it is not an extended measurable, nor
a dimension in the proper sense of the word.

(a) Space can not have less than three dimensions. Actually
a line and a surface arc real only as limits to volume. There
are no real dimensions unless there arc three, (b) Space cannot
have more than three dimensions, because all the possibilities of
’* See E. Whittaker, Space and Spirit (London and New York :
T. Nelson, 1946). p. 104, " A system of physics has been proposed by the
late Sir Arthur Eddington in which (time-space principles are relegated
to a lower level) this principle is carried out by introducing sixteen symbolic
coefficients which express the dimensions of the universe. ”

FINITE SPACE

185

dividing extension and of measuring it as it is extended are
defined by three lines perpendicular among themselves (system
of reference). Therefore, there is no measurable which varies
spatially which is independent of three dimensions. As to the
postulate of Euclid, one can deny it, but only on the condition
of abstracting from the extensional character of variables.
So the postulate remains indubitably true if we apply it to
extended variables in the Euclidian sense, i.e., as they are
extended. Real space is therefore an extension in three
dimensions.
3. The world is a finite space. Modern science admits
this and an easy analysis proves it. This is not a case of possible
space, which is " infinite ” in the sense that every abstract
notion is indifferent to number. Nor is it a case of imaginary
space, which is “ infinite ” in the sense that the imagination
creates it at will, beyond any assigned limit, and can prolong
all kinds of movements indefinitely. We are treating here of
real space, and that is finite. This results from these three
propositions : (1) The extension of each body is finite. (2) The
actual multitude of bodies is finite. (3) The distances between
bodies are also finite.
The first proposition is demonstrated in the first thesis.
Furthermore, the individuality of each body demands that it
have its proper limits.
The second proposition is a metaphysical necessity. An
actually given multitude is composed of a total of units charac­
terized by the simultaneity of their existence. It is impossible
that a total of units form anything other than a number, and
every number, being a measure, is finite.
The third proposition is drawn from the existence of local
movement. An infinite distance could not actually be covered,
M See Summa Theol., Io pars, q. 7. a. 4. St. Thomas asserts that
an infinite multitude is possible in potency. Such are the parts of the
continuous, but he further asserts that such an infinite multitude of
parts in act is impossible. Actually, he says that a multitude in act
is of a determined kind. Now the determination of a multitude is a
number, and when we speak of number, wc speak of measure and limit.

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THE WORLD

but distances between bodies are covered, at least by light.
They are, therefore, finite. n
.
It does not follow that the dimensions of the universe are
unchangeable. Astronomy asserts that space is at the same
time finite, and that its dimensions vary every moment. Increase
belongs only to the finite.
Consequently : a. The world is not infinite in the way that
geometrical space is, nor is it the filled space of Descartes, nor
the empty space of Gassendi, nor is it identified with the
immensity of God, as Kenton thought.17
18

b. The world is not simply an idea. Kant was mistaken
in drawing this conclusion from the third antinomy, as he was
mistaken when he made space an “ a priori ” intuition (First
Thesis, p. 11).
C. The world is changing.
1. This is so :
a. In its parts. Actually every body is subject to local
movement, qualitative alteration and substantial change. Each
bodj? encloses within its essence a principle of most profound
change. Each body exists between two relative nothings,
wherein its matter alone persists. The heavenly bodies
themselves actually Lack that " incorruptibility, ’’ which the
constancy of the stars suggested to Aristotle and the Scholastics.
They arc formed of the same elements as the earth.18
17 Is it possible that a nebula and the earth would draw apart from
each other with a speed greater than light? If this were possible, it
would seem that we could conclude that the world would no longer be
finite, since there would be an insurmountable distance between two
of its components. Response : If this were possible, the nebula in question
would no longer be a part of our world and our world would remain
finite. Science says this when it poses the admissible limit of speed in
physics as the speed of light.
‘•See J. A. McWilliams, Cosmology (New York : Macmillan, 1928),
ch. X. pp. 9Ô-103.
‘•The spectroscope has put an end to the illusion of the ancients.
It has even led to the discovery of elements in the stars, which were
not discovered in the earth until later, e.g., helium, which was first
perceived in the sun.

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TIME

; b. As a whole, the world is changing. If it is true that
its volume is expanding, it is changing in its extension. It is
certainly doing so in its qualitative state, because (1) energy is
diminishing, transforming itself more and more into heat and
tending to spread itself uniformly in all bodies. (2) Life began
in the world, and it has changed through the course of the ages
by putting on varied forms, and by incorporating itself into
a host of various individuals, and even perhaps, by migrating
from one planet to another.20 It will continue to change, and
will one day cease to exist on earth. (3) The movements of
stars have required and will require variations. Their physical
and chemical state is in perpetual evolution. Perhaps cosmic
rays have their origin in the formation of heavy radioactive
atoms by means of condensation in the nebulae. In any case,
the inverse phenomenon, atomic disintegration, is a universal
fact.

2. Because it is changing, the world is
is its proper form of duration.

temporal.

Time

a. Different durations. To have duration is to continue
to be, to exist after having existed. We can conceive three
modes of duration. The first would be that which changes in
no way, which keeps its existence in an absolute identity.
This would be eternity, which Boethius defines as " inter­
minabilis VITAE TOTA SIMUL ET PERFECTA POSSESSIO, ” and

which natural theology shows us to be the duration proper
to God. The second would be to keep a substantial existence,
changed through successive enrichments, which are all qualitative
and discontinuous. This is “ aevum " or aeviternity, which,
for‘the Scholastics, characterizes pure spirit. The third consists
in changing in a continuous way, while remaining in duration.
This is time.

b. The world-time. It is evident that the duration of the
world is temporal, because all the bodies which make it up are
** A very unlikely hypothesis : beyond the layer of ozone in the
heights of the atmosphere, solar ultraviolet rays are the merciless
executioners of all that lives.

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THE WORLD

locally mobile, and local movement is essentially continuous
(see p. 47). In its duration, the world is a system of movements
from those of electrons to those of the galaxies, which unfold
simultaneously and successively, and which make up a very
complex history. The world is real time, but it is not possible or
absolute time, which is an abstract and mathematical notion,
applicable “ indefinitely ” to all times, and no more expressive
of this world than any other. » Neither is it imaginary time,
the representation of an empty flowing, which was filled with
events when the world began to be, and which will continue
to cut out a dry bed, even when the flood of events has ceased
to run there. Real time is no more than an ensemble of the
durations of all corporeal movements, a concrete and partial
realization of abstract time.
c.

The nature of time.

1)

Its abstract nature was defined by Aristotle as

“ NUMERUS MOTUS SECUNDUM PRIUS ET POSTERIUS ” (ArithmOS

kinèseos kata to proteron kai ùsteron, Physics, Bk. 4, 11), i.e.,
the measure (the determined dimension) which movement
possesses, insofar as it is successive.
Time is actually inseparable from movement. In order to
perceive time, one must perceive change. Yet it is not movement
itself, for it is common to all movements, and it is neither rapid
nor slow as all movement is. It is, therefore, only a property of
movement. Time supposes the succession and continuity of
movement, and it expresses the parts of it in a relationship
of before and after, disregarding movement under its aspect
’* Ixit us here think oí a time which refers neither to the stars,
nor to clocks, of a time which we use, for example, in studying the positions
of a mobile under the influence of a uniformly varied movement
*
(ax
4- bx 4- c — o), or the propagation of a periodic movement (V = N).
This time is only a continuous, infinite and homogeneous flowing, because,
through abstraction, it is stripped of every characteristic which is foreign
to itself. It is because of this that it is mentally applicable to all kinds
of movement. However, its real application demands that we select
a real movement, which will act as a gauge to the other movements :
apparent movements of the sun, of the moon, the flowing of sand, the
vibration of a tuning fork, and today even the vibration of a particular
atom.

TIME

189

oí qualitative and quantitative diversity, whence its aptitude
to designate any movement, and even the duration of the
immobile and identical. ” Finally, time is short or it is long.
It is a determined dimension and it is numerable. It is succession
insofar as it measurable. In this it is real, ” because succession
is measurable. Actually the movement in which it is realized
has a beginning and an end. Again, between these limits, the
succession is continuous and therefore divisible, by reason of the
continuity of local movement. Thus real time is the proper
dimension of continuous succession. It is its number, its
measure.
Objection. Bergson denies that real time is a dimension. This
is true only of mathematical time, which is only a form of space
and homogeneous like it. Bergson insists that real duration
is purely qualitative and heterogeneous, and that it is our
imagination which transposes this qualitative heterogeneity
into a quantitative symbol, a line, within which we tic events
end to end. {Essai sur les Données Imm. de la Conse., pp. 74-90).
Evaluation, a) Bergson is right to distinguish two kinds of time.
There is an abstract time and a concrete time, time thought and
time lived, the time of local movement, and the time of
qualitative change, especially the time of the facts of
" How can the duration of an immobile be designated by time?
That depends. The Absolute Immobile, God, simply cannot be designated
by time, even though we may express His duration in terms of our own.
To say that He was yesterday and will be tomorrow is not at all to know
divine duration, for time is foreign to God's essence. An immobile,
which is designated by time, is necessarily and exclusively corporeal
being, which, although in repose, can be displaced or changed in
a continuous way. To measure its repose is to measure the displacements
which arc really possible to it.
“ Time, taken in itself, or as an effective measure of movement,
is the work of the mind, an " ens rationis. ” It is, therefore, either an
abstraction ** ut sic ” (taken as it is in itself), or a numbering, which is
an operation of the mind adding up parts which never exist as a whole
in nature. In this sense, time is in the soul. It is thus, that St. Augustine
and St. Thomas, in line with Aristotle, think of it. " Si non cssct anima,
non cssct tempus” (Physics, II, I, 17). However, time is real, as a
dimension of movement which is linked to its successive continuity.
" Numerus " therefore means " a numbered number, ’’ i.e., a measurable
dimension.

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THE WORLD

consciousness, the awareness of one's self and the objects of
memory.
b) But why deny all mutual relationship in differing
concrete durations? Why reject the abstract homogeneity which
the mathematical idea of time supposes in them? All changes
are similar to one another by their succession, wherein one
determination leads to another. Local change, in its relation
to extension, possesses continuity in its succession, and com­
municates it to the qualitative motions which always involve
local movement in a corporeal change. Thus, every corporeal
change involves continuous succession, a successive dimension.
Abstraction only takes notice of this homogeneity, it does not
create it. Certainly real duration is qualitative, as is all
movement, but it is also a dimension, and this allows
mathematical physics, in speaking of duration, the right to
speak of it in purely quantitative terms.
c) Moreover, Bergson has linked the duration of material
things too closely to psychological duration. Granted that he
has done an excellent job in pointing up what science forgets —
the individual character of duration in the animal, plant and
molecule. Let us grant that we compare the duration of things
with duration as experienced in human consciousness. Never­
theless, when one describes duration in exclusively psychological
terms, is he not as guilty of an inverse confusion as those who
seek to give time only a mathematical sense? Actually,
psychological duration, by reason of memory, implies in the
present act of consciousness the survival of the past as well
as the anticipated life of the future. Moreover, changes in the
intellectual, artistic and especially the moral life, bring up a
duration other than time, because these changes are immaterial,
instantaneous in themselves, and are acquired forever. In human
duration, the “ aevitemity ” of a spiritual being is mingled with
the time of a corporeal being.
2) How can we concretely characterize the world-time,
real time?
a) With what are we concerned? The world-time is the
successive dimension of events which have led to the existence

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191

of actual events and of future events which will result from
these. Its present is not isolated from its past. As a limit of
the past it is always moving forward. Without a doubt, only
the sliding by of this ungraspable moment is the object of
experience, but it is not the whole reality of time. The greatest
riches of time are its past and its future, each real in a differing
fashion. One is the root of the present, the other its fruit.
Each moment is the seed of the following.

b) Is it a cycle of events which are repeated indefinitely?
The revolutions of the moon, of the sun, of the stars, the
periodical return of the seasons, the rhythm of human gener­
ations, the alternation between the rise and fall of nations,
as well as of individuals, have always inclined man to think so.
Even the form of human thought adds a pressing invitation
to this. Can not the universal idea be realized a second and a
third time, just as well as the first time? That which is done
one time, does it become impossible to do again?
Actually all Greek philosophy is penetrated with the idea
of a return of the world to positions which were occupied before.
Plato’s myths of immortality are only the application of this
general view of the world to man. Immortality is principally
the reincarnation of metempsychosis. The Stoics held that
the world came about through the development of a seed,
a “ seminal source, ” which furnishes the individual seminal
sources of each living thing. Through certain processes of
development the cosmos arrives at a degree of perfection.
However, this perfection is shattered in the production of new
seed, which, after a general conflagration destroying the old
world, will become the source of the development of a new world.
Thus the cosmic cycle imprisons time.24
Actually, up until the 19th century', philosophy retained
much the same vision of the world. However, the JudaeoChristian revelation showed a world in constant growth towards
an eventual spiritual flowering. Fallen man, now redeemed.
“ See F. M. Cornford, Plato's Cosmology, translation of Timaeus
with commentary (New York : Bobbs-Mcrrill, 1957), p. 103.

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THE WORLD

must mount towards God, taking with him the world, his
kingdom. The history of the Redemption appears irreversible,
and the real time of the world, its real duration, appears as
a becoming, a marching forward without return to an eternal
perfection (or an irreparable ruin). If these dogmas transformed
man’s time for the philosophers, yet they did not modify the
philosopher’s conception of the world’s time. The fulfillment
of the temporal destiny of the world (the " end of the world ”)
remained an object to be contemplated by faith.
It is through science that man has actually come to the
idea of a real and irreversible time for the world itself.

c) Evolution of species is concretely, for contemporary
science, the notion of a world-time. Cosmic history, as a whole,
appears as the gradual acquisition of stmetures and interactions
which become more and more differentiated, and more and
more varied. “

One single initial atom (Lemaître’s theory)
produces, by successive explosions, that which
remains with us as radioactive bodies, a
fantastic amount of elemental particles, which
constitute, at a given moment, the universe of Einstein.
1st Stage
From one
to many.

2nd Stage
From chaos
to stars.

Condensations set in, which become nebulae,
then stars, then planetary systems, young
and hot stars and planets, then adult,
then cold.

3rd Stage
Some particles combine into light atoms, light
From particles atoms into heavier atoms (H into He, for
io molecules, example) ; the atoms combine into molecules,
beginning with the lightest and forming heavier
and heavier ones until they approach those giant molecules
necessary for life.
” See Harold $. Jones, Worlds Without End (London: Hodder
& Stoughton, 193S); A. Ancel, Métaphysique Générale, pp. 685-6S6;
M. Grison, Témoignage de 1‘Univers, pp. 55-110.

THE WORLD AS HISTORY

193

4th Stage
One day, bacterial life and green life begin
brom molecules from very heavy molecules (with a base of
to bacteria.
carbon and nitrogen), formed under exceptional
cosmic conditions, which, undoubtedly, will
never be found again on the earth or elsewhere.

5th Stage
A multitude of steps constitute this stage,
From bacteria attested to by geology. First of all the
to the vegetative chlorophyllian thallophytes (algae), then the
kingdom. archaic mosses, then the fems, then the
gymnospermae and the cone-bearers, and finally
the angiospermae.
It begins after the opening of the 5th stage
and exists together with it. Its beginnings
have left no evidence in the geological layers :
Protozoa, sponges and medusae. Trilobites
are quite visible in the Silurian layer. Then
begin the fishes, first the cartilaginous and then the bony. Then
came the amphibians, followed by reptiles, then mammals,
and finally birds.
6th Stage
From bacteria
to the animal
kingdom.

7th Stage
Man.

Only in the Quaternary period docs man
appear.20

All of these stages are not known with the same certitude.
The last three are inscribed in an undeniable way in the geological
layers of the earth. The preceding four are an hypothetical
order of events, based on actual astronomical observations
and on the study of the terrestrial globe. This latter reveals
that life has not always existed on earth, that it began after
a purely mineral period, under conditions making the implan­
tation of life possible. Thus we have the foundation for the
4th stage. The first three are only the result of an interpretation
of phenomena observed in the sun (cycle of Bèthe), in the novae
and nebulae. The information read by the astronomers of
today concerns facts whose spatial origin is hundreds of millions
of years old.
** Sec Lecomte de Noüy, Human Destiny, ch. 5, 6, 7 and 8.

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THE WORLD

These stages are not exclusively successive. They are
successive, inasmuch as each stage began after another, but
certain ones often coexist with one another. Thus vegetative
and animal evolution have gone on together during the greatest
part of geological time.
Mark well that the evolution of specifically different things
is a simple description of the becoming of the world, of its real
time. It is not in the least degree a causal explanation of the
world, and it is quite another thing than evolution by descent.
It only dates the appearance of diverse biological forms and those
of stellar and atomic structures.
The remarkable trait which characterizes the time of the
world is that it is a movement from a less differentiated state
to a more differentiated one, an evolution of species.27

To sum up, science finds again, but in its manner, i.e.,
without any reference to a First Cause, God, the description
of the first chapter of Genesis, and what St. Thomas calls “ the
differentiating of things ” {Summa Th., I, 47; " De Distinctione
Rerum "). While science thinks of this differentiation as being
done over the course of history, St. Thomas thinks of it in terms
of the Bible, and describes it as realized in its original causes.
Science’s view is centered on man and his time, and is not
interested in the world except as it is related to man.
In both cases, the specification of things docs not disrupt
their unity. Bodies constitute a universe, despite their many
varying stages and degrees.

D.

The world is a universe, i.e., a natural unity.

1. This unity is tliat of relations among all bodies. These
relations exist. The extension of Ixxlics localizes them in
relations of contiguity and distance. Their mutability involves
them in a kind of cosmic dance, where they succeed each other
in the same places, or in new existences. Their activity and
” We do not wish to deny that there exists another aspect of time ;
uniformity and regression. See question 9. See also Julian Huxley,
Evolution. the Modern Synthesis (New York : Harper, 1942), p. 42.

THE WORLD, A UNIVERSE?

195

their passivity create among them relations of causality and
of utility, which in a word may be called dependence. Thus
all things are drawn to each other and all things are repelled.
General influences serve particular bodies (heat in chemical
combinations, for example, light in growth of plants); certain
bodies serve others (as the mineral serves the vegetative, and
the vegetative the animal and vice versa). There is in all bodies
a sort of blind aspiration to the good of the whole, which makes
the world a kind of “ society, ” a whole whose parts are inter­
dependent, a universe. Its unity is not simply a mental view
point. Neither the scientist nor the philosopher has created it.
They have discovered it. Therefore, the unity of the universe
is real.

2. It is, however, the unity of a composite. Many have
seen the unity of the universe so well, that they have lost sight
of those equally evident signs of its substantial multiplicity.
It is, thus, that the universe forms only one substance, for :

a. The Hylozoists : its movement, its order, demand a soul,
intellectual, according to the Platonists, and divine, according
to the Stoics.
b. The Pantheists : the world is the manifestation of two
divine attributes, thought and extension, whose multiple souls
and bodies arc only so many modes of one existence, as Spinoza
thought.
c. The evolutionary Monists : matter is the unique reality
evolving from inorganic to organic and differentiating itself
more and more, as Haeckel thought.
These absolute forms which would gather man into this
substantial unity are, at first sight, false. Consciousness will
always proclaim its individuality, and morality will never be
satisfied with an annihilation of personality. Men are substances
distinct from the rest of the universe. Even if we limit these
theories to inferior living things and to minerals, because they
are not contradictory at this level, we must say that they are,
at most, theories which are seemingly opposed to our experience
of the world. The study of substantial change has led us to

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uphold the plurality of individual substances. The universe
is therefore composed of distinct substances, and its unity
is only accidental. We must search for the cause of this order
elsewhere than in a world soul, and find it in a provident and
directive Intelligence.

Are there not many universes!
1) To speak of distinct universes is to suppose that there
are corporeal ensembles having no relation or influence on one
another, with neither mutual attraction nor repulsion, from
which no light is transmitted.
To pose this question is to point up our ignorance. If such
universes existed outside our own, our experience and our
science would not be able to attain them even by hypothesis,
for we can not grasp the existence of anything, unless we receive
some influence from it, which would have to be at least indirect.
However, this is no proof that such universes do not exist.
To prove this we would have to demonstrate that all which
is, is knowable by man and has man for its center, and this
seems like trying to prove from blindness that light docs not exist.
2) However, we can say, in quite a different sense, that
there is only one universe, i.e., one uniquely realized plan.
Natural theology will offer us the opportunity to demonstrate
that everything which exists has for its cause, one Creator,
who is perfectly intelligent and wise (S. Th., Ia pars, q. 47, a. 3).
scholium.

E. The perfection of the world is very great, but not the
greatest possible.

1. This is a question which has been debated since the
beginnings of philosophical thought under the form of the
question : " Is the world good or evil? ” The religio-philosophical
systems of the Chinese and the Hindus understood it in an
anthropocentric and moral way : What is the world worth to
man? What conduct in it will be the best for man? The same
questions were the concern of the German pessimists Schopen­
hauer and Hartmann. These questions have their importance,
but they bring up moral philosophy. Thus, they can be clarified

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197

only by the study of the nature of man and his link with the
world, by the study of God, the Author of man and the universe,
as well as by the study of the world in its proper perfection.
The latter is properly our cosmological question. To be
perfect can not mean here usefulness for man, nor usefulness
in any sense at all. The value of the useful is deferred to the
question of the value of an end. Now, the final and only decisive
end of the world cannot yet be determined.
a. To be perfect is simply to be. The measure of perfection
is the degree of being. The perfection is greater in the degree
that there is more existing quantity and quality. Thus the
multiplicity of species, of individuals, the harmony in diversity,
and the intensity of qualities are marks of perfection. Now,
the universe harbors a fantastic number of distinct individuals
and kinds. It realizes them in a process of constant renewal,
in the circular movement of stars, and in substantial generations.
Its actual riches arc only momentary, heir of the prodigious
developments of past ages and generator of an unfathomable
future.

b. The richest aspect of the perfection of the universe is
found in the order of finality which unifies its vast domains.
This order adds to the reality of individuals and elementary
groups the reality of a common good, produced, maintained
and utilized by them. Many of these mechanisms have a finality
which has been observed, and they have been shown to preserve
each other by reciprocal action.18
Thus life can exist only if it is protected against ultra-violet
rays of at least 2,600 A° by ozone. Now oxygen, O3, is
transformed into ozone, O’, by the action of U. V. rays; thus
the more active the U. V. rays are, the more O3 they form.
The protective cover of life is therefore constructed by the very
influences which tend to destroy it.
The same is true in the balanced production of CO1 and O2,
the former being indispensable to vegetative life, and the latter
“ See Dr. E. Huant, Biologic el Cybernétique, Cahiers Laënnec, ch. 2.

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necessary for all life; thus a balance between respiration and
chlorophyllian assimilation assures the maintenance of life.
Again, a necessary equilibrium is realized between autotrophes (fabricating alimentation) and heterotrophes (users of
prefabricated alimentation).

c. Another aspect of the perfection of the universe is seen
in the extraordinary development of the sciences of the universe.
That which science attains is the being, the intelligibility, the
perfection of the universe. Now, despite the many centuries
of study, and despite so many happy discoveries, the universe
still goes beyond the reach of experimental science. The true
scientist knows that the universe is infinitely richer than what
he knows of it. “ The universe, with its astonishingly vast
and profound organization, " led Hamelin to conclude that
" only God could carry ” this prodigious burden.3#
We can conclude that the universe taken in itself is very
perfect. Some aspects of its perfection are the immense
multiplicity of its individuals and kinds, the seeming conspiracy
of its living creatures to establish an equilibrium favorable
to all life, and the unfathomable depths of intelligibility which
it offers to the human mind.
Must we then say that this perfection is absolute?
Absolute optimism is actually a temptation. This was the
position of Plato, the Stoics and the Neo-Platonists, for whom
the faults of the universe were only appearances. In the
17th century, this was the position of Spinoza, Malcbranche
and especially Leibniz, its most complete representative. Among
them all, the basic reason of their optimism lies with the Divine
Causality which produces the world. According to Leibniz,
the only sufficient reason that God could have had for creating
this world is that this world is the best possible world. From
this we must conclude that the apparent imperfections of the
world serve its total perfection, as shadows serve the beauty
of a painting.
** O. Hamelin, Essai sur les Eléments Principaux de la Représentation,
P- 494-

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The optimism of St. Thomas (S. Th., Ia pars, q. 25, a. 6)
is not absolute. God could not have been more perfect in the
realization of His work, but the world could have been more
perfect, because the perfection of the universe is limited, and
therefore something which can always be increased. The world
could be richer, actually, if its extension were doubled or tripled,
if its present still contained the riches of its past, e.g., extinct
living species, or if it contained now what it will have. As long
as we suppose it spatial and distinct from God, no universe
can be the best possible, for, being finite, it must necessarily
lack some perfections. Our universe, which is spatial and
temporal, is tremendously perfect, but it is not the most perfect
possible.30

2. It is also contingent, and this is its most intimate
imperfection, which marks it in the very heart of its being.

a. That which is not able not to be, is said to be necessary,
while that which is able not to be, is said to be contingent.
That which is able not to be is understood in two senses :
(1) in a metaphysical sense : that which does not have
existence of itself, and, therefore, can, without contradiction,
be thought of as non-existent ; (2) in an experimental sense :
that which having come into existence can also pass out of
existence. " Quod possibile est esse et non esse ’’ according
to the words of St. Thomas (S. Th., Ia pars, q. 2, a. 3). The
clearest sign of contingency is the absence of existence which
preceded or which can follow a given existence.
M Nevertheless, there is a sense in which the perfection of the universe
is absolute and unsurpassable, but it is by virtue of a purely supernatural
gift through which it becomes God's partner. It is man who is actually
called by the divine liberality to this Absolute End, which is the Vision
of the essence of God. This is made possible through the unsurpassable
perfection of the Incarnate Word who is our Redeemer. Through man,
the material universe participates in this elevation.
This was also the perspective of Leibniz, but he did not separate
it from abstract principle. God. who is all wise, can choose only the
best. This too strict union between Wisdom and the best evidently
destroys the supernatural character of the perfection of the world, and
at least compromises the free nature of divine choice.

N.Y. 17. — 15

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Now, every corporeal individual is contingent, for it carries
within it the -principle of its destruction, prime matter. Therefore,
the universe as a whole is also contingent. In order to contest
this conclusion, one would have to prove that the universe
possesses a richer substantial reality than that of the bodies
which constitute it. Now, the universe adds to bodies only
accidental relations. It is the result of multiple individual
existences, and its existence depends on theirs. It is " a fortiori ”
contingent, since they are.
It can be objected : that prime matter is not contingent, for
it cannot cease to be in substantial change. Common to all
bodies, it is the veritable stuff of the universe, which is no more
contingent than prime matter is, for they both subsist through
all changes. Let us point out first of all that the universe
subsists no more than prime matter does. Now prime matter
cannot exist through itself. It is, because of the existence
of the composite of which it is a part. It is that which is the
most contingent and the very root of contingency in the
individual. In its concrete reality, it changes existence in
every substantial change. It is that which, unceasingly, can
be what it is not, and no longer be what it is. Its whole
" necessity ” is reduced to its need of a form and its aptitude
to lose it. This necessary property is completely opposed to
the necessity of existence which excludes all need and all
non-realized possibility.
b. There are other signs of contingency as well. The finite
is contingent, and the same is true of the changing, the composed,
the relative. The necessary in existence is of itself Infinite,
Unchangeable, Simple and Absolute, as natural theology will
demonstrate when it treats of the attributes of God. Now the
world is finite, changing, composed and relative. Therefore,
it is contingent ; it is, and yet it is able not to be.

Consequences. 1) every contingent being is a caused
The world, therefore, has a cause distinct from it. The
contingent does not have of itself the sufficiency to exist.. It
exists only because there is a cause which gives it existence.
being.

WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF THE CORPOREAL WORLD?

201

2) The universe, not being the adequate cause of its own
existence, can much less be the cause of the existence of the
corporeal beings which begin within it. The problem posed by
substantial change is now amplified. A gnat is born : the entire
universe does not suffice to engender it. There is an ultra-cosmic
Cause in action. What is the nature of its causality?

Ninth Question : What is the cause of the corporeal world?

Ninth Thesis :

1. The efficient cause of the corporeal world
is creative.
2. Whether the world was created from eternity
or in time can not be known by reason.

A. The creation of the corporeal world is a rational truth,
even though it did not come into the history of philosophical
thought independently of Judaeo-Christian revelation (cf. Etienne
Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy). Aristotle did not
deny creation, nor does his theory of eternal matter implicitly
deny it. He is simply unaware of it.

1. Notion, a. Origin. Experience offers no example of
creation. Experience testifies to beginnings that are always
relative, never absolute. Everything which is made before
my eyes is made from something which preexists. Everything
which begins is the term of a previous becoming. It is a new
arrangement of something that was around before. At the
level of experience from which it draws its positive content,
the verb " create " designates an activity which produces
something new, seemingly much more independent of the old,
and having a richer fecundity, e.g., the creation of a work of art,
procreation.

b. Negative sense. Catholic theology has taken this word
to designate an action which produces something with no
dependence on preexistent materials. This is clearly indicated

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in the formula " creare ex nihilo, ” ” create from nothing,
e., to produce without using materials. Now every ordinary
i.
production is a transformation which begins with a positive
term, a quo, ex quo, but creation has no positive starting point,
as is clearly indicated in the formula : creare est producere
substantiam ex nihilo sui (in this it is similar to every action)
et subjecti « (this is proper to it).
c. Positive sense. Hence, what creation produces is not
the union of a particular form and an existent matter, not
a becoming, but the very being in all that it is. Thus we
have these traditional definitions : " productio rei secundum
totam substantiam”; “productio entis in quantum ens”;
“ productio totalis rei. ” The notion of creation, therefore,
does not of itself imply any relationship to time or change.
Defined by an immediate relation to existence, creation coexists
with the created being.
2. Proofs, a. By exclusion. Three general hypotheses
can be invoked as explanatory of the world : (1) the world is not
caused; (2) it is caused, but is not distinguished from its cause,
for it is an emanation or evolution which remains the same
nature as its source; (3) it is caused and is distinct from its cause.
It is totally produced, and therefore a creation.
The first hypothesis is false, because it can be substantiated
only by one or the other of the following reasons. Either the
world is necessary, despite the signs of contingency it shows,
or it is contingent (that is, able not to be), but is still the sufficient
reason for its own existence.
Is it possible that the universe is not contingent? No.
To deny its contingency would be equivalent to denying the
« “ Ex" actually indicates the matter, the materials from which
a thing is made. However, we must be careful not to give it the sense
of a chronological or causal origin, " beginning with " or “ an effect
of an absolute nothing. ” In this sense, from nothing, nothing can be
made. If there was a moment when nothing existed, nothing would
ever be. God exists necessarily, and since He exists, there never was
nothingness.
»" Ex nihilo sui, " that is, beginning with its non-existence; " Ex
nihilo subjecti, ’’ i.e., without even beginning with a " subject ” which
would be transformable and would be the matter of the change.

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203

value of our knowledge of the world. For science, as well as
for common sense, individuals and phenomena are each explained
by their relations to the whole universe; and, corrclatively, the
universe is built up, is involved, and is transformed by its
dependence on all these beings and phenomena which, in their
relation to the universe, arc as members of an organism.
Can we then say that what is contingent can be the sufficient
reason of its own existence? Again, we must say that this is
impossible. Neither is the universe the sufficient explanation
of its own existence, since it is but the unification of its parts,
nor are the parts the sufficient explanation of their existence,
since they exist and function in dependence on the whole.
Science 33 itself recognizes this. It explains the universe by
the atom, and the atom by the universe. Neither one nor the
other, nor the relation between them, suffices for science, for
it supposes them as existent data.
The second hypothesis admits a God, but identifies Him
with the world. This position is false because it is pantheistic,
and we would be forced to accept the following alternatives,
both of which result in contradiction. Either the world is
necessary, as God must be, and we must declare all the
marks of its contingency (extension, qualitative multiplicity,
movement) as illusory, or it is God, necessary by definition,
who will be contingent, as the world really is.
There remains the third hypothesis, which alone is possible,
and which alone is true. The Cause of the world is necessary
in its existence, and the world is contingent. The world and
its Cause are irrcducibly distinct. There is, therefore, nothing
of the world which is not caused; the world is caused totally,
that is, created.
b. Positively. All the elements of the world and the
entire universe are contingent in their existence. Now everything
“ Sec Eddington, Expanding Universe (New York : Cambridge U- P.,
*933). ch. 4, The Universe and the Atom : “ Thus we are not dealing with
an isolated problem but with a theory which determines at the same
time two oí the leading constants in physics, viz. the cosmical constant
and through it the recession oí the nebulae, and the mass-ratio of the
proton and the electron. “ p. 95.

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which is contingent is caused. The world is, therefore, totally
caused, in its existence as a whole and in the existence of each
of its parts. In other words, it is created. Its Cause is creative. ••
3. Objections, a. Nothing is created and nothing is lost.
When one affirms creation, does he not suppress the very possi­
bility of science, by denying its fundamental principle?
The formula expresses experience, and it expresses only
that which is within humanly observable limits. Moreover,
it does it from a mathematical point of view, and signifies
that phenomena can be put into equations. It says nothing
of concrete determinations, yet it does not deny that these
concrete determinations arc born and die in the specifying
evolution of the universe. Moreover, it does not prohibit
intelligence and organic life from being inventive. Fashioned
for the study of a given physical world, it is simply the postulate
of the conservation of mass and energy. It can have no wider
value than this. By it, the universe is supposed as a closed
system, and it no longer applies with certitude wherever human
liberty is introduced (Cf. Baudin, Psychologic, pp. 611-612).
It does not at all apply itself to the relation between the universe
and its Cause. Because of the given essential contingency
of this universe, because of its insufficiency for existence in and
by itself, because of its need of a cause distinct from itself,
from all points of view the universe can not be a closed system.

b. It is impossible to make something ont of nothing.
If nothing is taken in an imaginative sense as some kind
of matter, then it is impossible. In the sense that the Necessary
Being causes the contingent without the use of materials, but
produces it in its totality, we see no impossibility or contradiction,
because it is necessary. Let us only state that creation is not
a clear idea because of the image, which is always used to
illustrate it (human making). An image, as such, can only
fail us on this point. Here we are confronted with the notion
of cause in its ultimate perfection, and this idea implies
* M. Grisox, Témoignage de ¡'Univers, pp. 17-22, 51-53, 260-271.

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a negation, which at the same time distinguishes it from all
other causality, and makes the idea more obscure than other
types of causality.

c. These two objections embrace all the others. Whether
they be of an experimental nature, as the first, or of a notional
character, as the second, the objections show in creation an
action whose nature is impenetrable to us, but they are not
able to reveal a contradiction there. To be aware that our
science is limited is certainly not fully satisfying, but at least
it helps us know what it is to realize the aim assigned by Socrates
to philosophy. Moreover, every action is impenetrable at least
in its relation to creative action. To affirm creation is to situate
the mystery in a Being, who, by nature, must be mysterious
for man ; a Being who draws man away from this world which,
considered in itself, is so close to man despite its immensity,
and so inferior to man, despite its riches. “ If the entire universe
should crumble, man would still be more noble than that which
would kill him, because man knows that he dies, and that the
universe has an advantage over him. The universe knows
nothing. " (Pascal, Pensées : Editions Souriau, 34). If a world
which is inferior to man remains an enigma to him, how then
do wc find it so difficult to admit that a Cause immensely superior
to him should be mysterious?
B. The eternity of the world is not excluded by the fact
that it is created. Such is the thought of St. Thomas as it is
clearly expressed in the Summa (S. Th., Ia pars, q. 40, a. 1 and 2).

1. The question of the beginning or of the "eternity”
of the world is very different, actually, from that of its creation.
The former is a question of cosmic duration. Was there a first
moment in that duration, of such a nature that in going back
into the past we would find a term beyond which we could
not go, a term where the world began? Or can we go back
into the past indefinitely without ever coming to a first instant
as a limit? Now the question of creation concerns itself with
the world’s dependence for complete existence upon a Cause
distinct from it, which is demonstrable by reason. The question

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about a beginning cannot be demonstrated. It is impossible
for reason to demonstrate whether the world began, created
in Unie, or was created from all eternity.

2. The interest of this question is first of all cosmological.
Is time finite or not? It is also theological, because the study
of it enables us to be precise about the notion of creation.
Moreover, its solution decides the value of an argument which
is often presented as a proof for the existence of God. It is said
that the world began, therefore there must be a God to originate
it. But how do we know that it began? Certainly Genesis
tells us that it did, but what good is this as a proof for God’s
existence when we must already admit His existence as the
author of Revelation? Thus this argument has no rational
value, unless reason can prove the world began.

3. Can we prove its eternity? There are those, such as
Averroes, who have thought that they could (Cf. Etienne
Gilson, Thomism). This point of view rests on the idea of the
Cause of the world.
a. Whenever one postulates the existence of a sufficient
cause, the effect must parallel the existence of the cause. Now
God, the sufficient Cause of the world, has always existed.
The world, therefore, is eternal with Him. One could understand
that the world might not be eternal, if God, in order to create it,
had to acquire progressively sufficient energy, or suppress
obstacles hindering His action, or wait for an occasion favorable
to His designs. God, however, has had in Himself alone, from
all eternity, all that is sufficient to create the world. The
world therefore is eternal. (Sec Summa Contra Gentiles, Bk.
II, ch. 32.)
This argument would be compelling, if God did not freely
cause the world. But, since God is free to cause it, the duration
of the world must be such as He has chosen it to be, whether
finite or unlimited. Actually, a free agent conforms his work
to his design rather than to his proper nature. God could well
have willed that the world should not be eternal, even though
He is eternal (cf. S.C.G., Bk. II, ch. 35).

Ahi ETERNAL WORLD?

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b. The argument presses on : Agreed, God freely causes
the world, but surely he has not passed from potency to act
in order to cause it, His action being identical to His existence.
Therefore, God has always been the Cause of the world, and the
world has a duration without a beginning.
We must repeat the first answer and add this precision
to it. God has decided from eternity to cause the world, but
only with this result, that the world will exist as God has from
all eternity decided it will exist.
c. But the precise point is that God has no reason to limit
the duration of the world, for He has no other reason for creating
except to communicate something of His perfections to other
beings, and to manifest Himself to intelligent beings. Now
this reason is valid, not only from an original moment of time,
but always and eternally. Therefore, God must have willed
to create the world without a beginning (cf. S.C.G., Bk. II, ch. 32).
Undoubtedly, God always knew this reason which moved
Him to create. He was in accord with it and willed from eternity
to create. But if He willed that His work begin, He would
not realize the chosen end any less than if He had willed that
His work exist without beginning. In the two hypotheses.
He communicates and manifests His perfections. He is, there­
fore, equally free before each alternative. Perhaps He even
may have a reason inclining Him to prefer a world with
a beginning. Would not such a world manifest more clearly
to man and every intelligent creature the supreme liberty of
God, the gratuity of His creation, and the absolute independence
of the Creator? (Cf. S.C.G., Bk. II, ch. 35.)
Thus none of the proofs drawn from the nature of God
as Cause demonstrates the eternity of the world.

d. There were others, drawn from the world, which were
presented by Averroës. However, these were based on a world
conceived according to the physics of Aristotle, which scientific
progress has refuted. Averroës drew another from the eternity
of movement, which science could accept. Every movement,
according to him, comes from another movement, and therefore

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it is impossible that movement should have begun. The formula
for the principle of causality, according to Kant, is quite similar :
" Every phenomenon is conditioned
it postulates a pheno­
menon as the condition of every phenomenon. Phenomena
being always temporal, this formula returns to the Averroistic
postulate of the eternity of movement.

Kant, however, refuted in advance whatever conclusions
we might wish to draw from this principle about the reality
of things. Phenomenon, for him, is the appearance of things,
and it is not a thing. The principle, according to him, asserts
the possibility which the human mind possesses of forming
chains of phenomena indefinitely. In this sense the principle
is true, for it expresses the indefinite in our idea of time.
However, he does not affirm that this infinity is real. The
Averroistic formula is realistic, but it does not justify its
fundamental principle of the real. Without a doubt, experience
docs not show us any movement that is not the result of another
movement. This is a sufficient basis for the phcnomenalist
principle of Kant, but not for the real necessity which Averroës
gives to his. There must be cause for all movement. This is
what is necessary. But must this cause be a movement itself?
Aristotle saw very well that the adequate cause of movement
must be an immobile being, pure act. Consequently, there
is no necessity that a movement come from another movement.
The eternity of movement could only be a fact, but a fact which
would forever remain experimentally unverifiable as well as
undemonstrable.
e. Nevertheless, time seems unable to begin or to finish.
Is each of its moments any more than a link between a duration
which precedes it and another which follows it? If so, then
a first moment is contradictory, because it has no duration
before it.
Or better still, if time began, we must say that nothing
existed before this first moment, and there was consequently
a succession from nothingness to the existence of the world;
but this succession would already be time, and time would
have existed before time began. Thus time could not begin;

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209

as it is only the duration of movement, and movement supposes
a mobile, the existence of a perpetual mobile world must be
affirmed.
The first form of this argument supposes the problem already
solved. It supposes that every moment is an intermediary,
and that none is able to be first (without an anterior duration).
Now many changes begin under our very eyes. They have
a first moment. Why then cannot the succession of cosmic
changes have a first moment ?
Under its second form, the argument delightfully mixes
imaginary time with real time, but this little play is all
imagination. There is not a real succession, nor a true time,
between non-being and being. True time is a dimension of
real succession which is change. Now from a pure non-being
to a created being, there is no change, because there is no enduring
subject which becomes (a pure non-being is nothing, and nothing
does not become) (cf. S.C.G., Bk. II, ch. 36).
f. The production of the world demands an eternal subject
(which does not begin at all). Aristotle postulated a prime matter
which was ungenerable and preexisted all changes. Likewise,
Democritus postulated eternal as well as indestructible atoms.
The same is true for the modem materialists, for a host of
idealists and pantheists, who hold that the universe always
existed necessarily, and it is because of this character that
experiment and science are possible.34 The argument in general
is this : In order to explain the transformations of which the
world is the theater or the totality, there must be something
transformable which existed before all transformation, i.e., which
did not come from a previous transformation. In order that
something begin, there must necessarily first be something
which is able to begin. Now, this power of beginning cannot
itself have begun, since it makes all beginning possible. Thus,
according to Aristotle, the “ subjectum potentia ens, ” the
subject capable of existing, prime matter, always existed.35
35 See R. Jolivkt, l.e problème de Dieu, p. 21, which describes the
position held by L. Brunschvicg. Sec also I. M. Bochexski, Contemporary
European Philosophy (Berkeley : U. of Calif., 1957), PP- 82-88.

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This argument is demonstrative only on condition that we
wish to explain simple transformations, whether they are
particular productions of nature or of art — which after all —
is what common experience and science seek to do. If, however,
we wish to explain the whole of the universe, and think of its
production in existence, its creation, we must recognize the
inanity of the above argument. Actually, to create is not to
transform. Creation does not suppose an existing “ creatable, ”
but rather the absence of any “ subject to be made such and
such a thing. ” The only thing creation supposes is a GodCreator, the total Cause of all being (cf. S.C.G., Bk. II,
ch. 37).

Thus, there is no argument which conclusively proves the
eternity of the world.

4. Can we prove that it had a beginning? The Augustinians,
St. Bonaventure among others, in their reaction against the
Averroists, have, in a metaphysical way, attempted to prove
that it had a beginning. Many recent apologists, moreover,
believe that they have found physical proofs that the world
had a beginning. St. Thomas set himself to show the impotence
of reason in this matter. For him, the beginning of the world
is, in the strict sense, an article of faith. All we have to do
is simply examine the alleged reasons in favor of a beginning
to become aware of their insufficiency.
a. the metaphysical reasons are drawn :

1)

From a creative cause.

a) A cause is anterior to its effect, since a cause makes
existence. Now God alone first exists, and afterwards, God and
the world.
A temporal cause is anterior to its effect : without a doubt.

Is this true of a cause which does not act successively, whose
action is identical with its existence? No, it is not temporally
anterior to its effect. If it is called anterior, it is not in a proper

DOES THE WORLD BEGIN?

211

sense, but in the sense that the cause dominates the effect.
To dominate does not imply previous existence.38

b) In creating, God makes the world exist after nothingness.
Thus there is a first moment, which follows after nothingness.
It is true that God makes the world exist without using
anything.
But is nothingness something which precedes the world?
No. The image of nothingness, that of imaginary time, carries
the whole weight of the argument. No real moment can result
from the completely imaginary succession of being after
nothingness. Nothingness is the complete absence of existence,
therefore it cannot really precede existence. Even in the
hypothesis of a world which begins, nothingness does not become
the world. If the world began, its first moment is the beginning
of the first movement. The beginning of this first movement
is the ultimate term of anteriority in time, but it is not at the
same time the ultimate posterior term of nothingness. Although
all other moments are the fusion of a real before and after,
each one completing something of a previous movement and
beginning something of the following movement, the first instant
of a beginning world can be only a pure “ before. ”

c) God created after having thought and willed the world.
The real duration of God is anterior to that of the world. There
is a moment in the duration of God which is the first instant
of the world.
The principle invoked is false. There is no succession
in God. His duration is immutable and indivisible. For Him,
to think, to will, to create, is simply to exist.37 This erroneous
manner of thinking is attributable to Averroës, who saw too
much similarity between the intellectual actions of man and God.
•• The force of this argument is completely psychological. It is
based on our experience of causality. Every cause-object in our experience
is temporal. It acts only in becoming or in making something become.
*’ The argument draws its cogency from the experience of human
will, which decides only after deliberation, and then only is there execution.
The Divine Will, on the contrary, is devoid of all becoming and succession.

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THE WORLD

d) Only God is eternal. Therefore the world, which is
distinct from God, is not eternal, and so it began.
God alone is eternal in the precise sense of immutability
in duration. But God is not eternal in the sense of unlimited
succession, since there is nothing successive in Him. It is
obvious that the world is eternal only in the sense of an absence
of limit in successive duration.
2) The characteristics of the world, especially its succession
in duration, furnish new arguments to the Augustinians.

a) The number of past days of an eternal world would
be infinite, but every number is finite, therefore the world began.
Yes, an infinite number is a contradiction, but the past
days of an eternal world would not at all form a number. Their
multiplicity would be innumerable, with no capability of being
totalized. That’s all.
b) But all multiplicity is numerable, and therefore the
argument must stand. ”

Every actual multiplicity, given as a whole, is numerable
but is a successive multitude? It never exists as a whole, and
its elements or parts never coexist. The fundamental principle
must be demonstrated. No one has done it.
c) At least, an eternal world would never arrive at the
present day, unless it had passed through an infinite series
of past days. Now an infinite series can not be covered, therefore
the present day would never arrive.
Actually, only an interval defined by two finite terms
can be covered. However, the hypothesis, which this objection
envisages, is not that of a world without a beginning. It is that
of a world, which, at the same time, has no beginning and has
a first term of duration, anterior to every other, from which
it must pass to the present day. Now this double hypothesis
is contradictory. Suppose the world to be eternal, i.e., that
it does not have a first term in its duration. Then it is sheer
’• See Summa Theol., Ia pars, q. 7, a. 4.

DOES TUE WORLD BEGIN?

213

imagination to speak of a passage from this first term to the
present day. We must say, on the contrary, that whatever
be the day or the term assigned in the past, its distance to the
present day is finite, and that the world existed before that,
and that we arc always able to go back farther. Where is the
absurdity in this? It has vanished with the imagination which
alone created it.
d) An eternal world would be an infinite scries of causes
producing its present state. Now an infinite series of causes
producing a given effect is inadmissible.
This is certainly true if this series of causes is esteemed
the adequate cause of this present effect. Yet there is no reason
to say this infinite series of causes is inadmissible, if it is only the
partial cause subordinated to a Creator. One can call the
adequate cause “ The First Cause. ’’ By this we wish to say an
Uncaused Cause, and not a Cause preceding all others in a
successive temporal series. We must relate the world to an
Uncaused Cause, but this does not imply that this Cause precedes
as a first term all intra-cosmic causes and makes them begin.
It implies only that these causes are completely caused, that
they are useful to an effect only in the measure that the Uncaused
Cause wills to use them as intermediaries to produce it. To be
more specific : the linking of individuals of the same species
is purely accidental in regard to the last one produced. The
cat which brings forth its kittens is as complete and incomplete
a metaphysical explanation as the entire sequence of anterior
generations, even if they be prolonged indefinitely into the past.
Succession and multiplicity of causes and effects make only
an accidental difference in causality.,0 Granted that causes
linked accidentally to their effects form a series whether finite
or infinite in time, does this change their causality? Infinity
does not make causality impossible, nor, as such, does it make
causality necessary or sufficient. The infinite duration of a series
of insufficient causes is therefore not inadmissible. It would
be so, only if the scries were given as a sufficient cause without
** She engenders kittens because she is a cat. and not because she
has a more or less lengthy genealogical ascendcncc.

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THE WORLD

a Creative Cause. The Creative Cause leaves the series
insufficient, but makes it possible by subordination to His
creative power.
b. the physical REASONS in favor of a beginning of the
world are reducible to the universal law of aging which rules
the universe.
EXPOSITION

This law can be seen :
1) in the second law of thermodynamics, called the law of
entropy. " In the universe, entropy increases. ” In every
transformation, a fraction of energy escapes in heat. Now heat
cannot be integrally turned into another form of energy.
Consequently, in the degree that time is prolonged, the fraction
of energy in the universe, transformed into heat, increases.
Supposing then, that time is without a beginning; all energy
would by now have become heat. Now this docs not correspond
with the facts. Time, therefore, has had a beginning.
2)

In the current astronomical theories.

a) The theory of expansion beginning with the atom of
Lemaître, or the state of Einstein.
If the universe always existed, expansion would have
separated the nebulae one from the other a long time ago at
speeds higher than the speed of light. In a universe dilated
to infinity, we would not be able to perceive any galaxy. We
would be in an empty universe, in a universe such as Sitter
has described.
We can, moreover, go back to the state of Einstein, or
to the primitive atom, and appreciate through calculation
the duration which has flowed by since then. We find that the
world is between 10 and 100 billion years old.40
b) The methods for determining the age of the world,
although they are varied, give results which are in accord.
E. Whittaker, Space and Spirit, p. 112.

DOES THE WORLD BEGIN?

215

Some of these methods are based on the energy of stars
engendering and dissipating heat; on the history of groups
of stars, such as the masses in the Pleiades, which are necessarily
in a state of dispersion ; and on the study of double stars. “ These
diverse methods of estimation converge toward the conclusion
tliat there was an epoch in the past, between 10 and 100 billion
years ago, when the cosmos, if it existed, existed under a form
totally different from that which we know now, and this
represents the ultimate limit of science. " 41
c) The current Russian cosmogony lengthens considerably
the duration of the world.42
The study of variable and ex-plosive stars allowed Kukarkin
and Parenago to state their famous law : “ The intensity of the
explosions is directly proportionate to the interval of time
which separates them. ” This law shows secondarily that the
explosion in all these stars results from the same phenomenon.
Calculation and observation have extended the law to certain
novae, whose brilliance flares out bruskly from 2 to 13 magnitudes
to return slowly to its ordinary dimension. These explosions
hurl out a part of the matter of the star, as the sun attempts
to do without succeeding when it hurls its protuberances around
900,000 kilometers from its surface. The matter ejected from
these explosive stars serves in the construction of new stars,
after condensation or capture by already existing masses.
Briefly, the same matter serves to constitute successively the
different stars, and the duration of the world is, by reason of this
process, considerably prolonged.

Can this duration be infinite? Vorontzov says : “ No. ”
He writes : " This phenomenon of creation and dissipation is not
a cycle, but a spiral. The universe is not reborn under the same
form at the end of a certain time... It changes. The stars
which are formed have less hydrogen in proportion to those
which were formed long ago. ” Like the sun, they transform
41 Ibid., pp. 1x3-114.
41 See McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology, Vol. 4,
PP- 330'33»; Vol. 6, pp. 135 ff.
N-Y. 17. — 16

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THE WORLD

their hydrogen more and more into helium (the cycle of Bèthe),
into heat and light. 43
The Russians have not completed this reasoning. Can we
imagine that the process of explosion and creation of new stars
has always been going on, if we admit a progressive wearing down
of the explosive?
EVALUATION

Ad 1) The “ value of entropy, ” 44 writes a scientist, " is verydebatable and very much debated, for the very simple reason
that we have established its properties for only our little part
of the universe, our galaxy, or perhaps only' for the solar system
of which we are a part. Moreover, we are well aware that
extrapolations are not always possible in physics. One has the
right to ask if thermodymamics, such as it has been established
in our limited frame of reference, is applicable to other
universes. ”
Let us comment on this briefly, a) Scientific laws and
forecasts concerning the universe are involved with so much
ignorance that they can not be a basis for certitude. Unperceived
or ignored causes, which arc relatively too small for the short
duration of our observations (30 to 40 centuries at the most),
can produce, in much longer durations, effects which compensate
for those we observe and reverse our predictions.

b) This line of reasoning, however, completely lacks any
probative force, because hypotheses other than this one are
possible, namely, the hy^pothesis of a regularity of phenomena
in an invariable direction.

(1) In an eternal world, the law of decay can begin to
play a role, as in the hypothesis of Eddington (The Expanding
Universe, p. 58).
18 Translation from Science et Avenir, February. 1955.
M This is a translated quotation taken from M. Blondel’s La
Pensée, I, p. 287, which reproaches a criticism made by P. Duhcm in his
La Théorie Physique.

DOES THE WORLD BEGIN?

217

(2) The law of the evolution of the world can be as periodic
as particular laws. Thus Lemaitre imagines that the stage of
equilibrium preceding expansion is followed by a stage of
explosion succeeding a maximum concentration. One can
suppose an alternation between a stage wherein the world
wears down its energy, and a stage wherein it builds up
its energy, much like a pendulum which swings up and then
falls back.
(3) Finally, decay can be prolonged indefinitely, by slowing
down the process more and more, without ever coming to a
complete loss of energy. Subtract one half of twenty, and then
half of the rest, and the operation is possible indefinitely, because
something always remains. Energy could tend asymptomatically
to its complete transformation into heat, i.e., without ever
arriving at that stage.
Ad 2) As to the theories, they are current, i.e., transitory,
and others will undoubtedly succeed them.
Furthermore, do these scientific theories assert an absolute
beginning for the world? In no way. They are a possible
explanation of the origin of owr world, at a time, writes Whittaker,
“ when the cosmos, if it existed, existed under a totally different
form from that which we know. " The hypothesis of another
world, as the origin of ours, is not excluded by science. It could
not be. What method could be used to do it?

These theories are not the only current ones. The hypothesis
of Hoyle, Bondi and Gold, for example, which is largely
mathematical, admits a universe which is incessantly rejuvenated
by a deposit of new atoms. They say that nothing can verify it,
but is there any fact that will show it false? Does it lack all
rational possibility?
To sum up, the science of today does not think that a
beginning of the world is inconceivable, but it thinks of a
completely relative beginning of our observable part of the
universe. Consequently :

a) it does not prove that the universe had a first moment.

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THE WORLD

b) it seems to believe that creation is reduced to a completely
relative beginning of that with which it is concerned. In this
context, then, God is no longer known or knowable as God, but
only as " He who has produced the present world from an
anterior one, ’’ not as Creator, but as Cosmic Transformer.

Conclusion. None of the reasons alleged in favor of the
beginning of the world or against it have the power of a
demonstration. St. Thomas refutes in advance all those which
might be invented. One can not, according to him, demonstrate
this beginning except from the nature of the world or its Creating
Cause.44
Now, if we begin with the nature of the world, we must
remember that every nature, as thought, makes abstraction
of existence, and therefore of real time which is the duration
of existence. No nature can demand its not having existence
always. If this is impossible, then it is impossible to deduce
from the idea of the world that it must have begun.

If we begin with the notion of God, we can go no further
toward a conclusion in this matter. God freely causes the
existence of the world. The world exists if and when God
wills it. But how can wc know what God wills? The natural
way is to observe the effect of His will, but who is able to assist
at creation? Another way is open. God can reveal His will
to us, but then creation in time is an article of faith.
This discussion is only apparently sterile. St. Thomas
indicates wherein the profit lies. We will not seek to demonstrate
the beginning of the world rationally. This could only expose
our faith to the disdain of the incredulous, who would think
that it is based on proofs as weak as these are. Our attention
should be centered on the essential, namely, the creative act.
It will show us a universe, which, at each moment, depends
on the Divine Will which is Love. Here we are already
confronted with a religious vision, instead of perhaps limiting
** Summa TJieol., Ia pars, q. 46, a. 2.

DOES THE WORLD BEGIN?

219

ourselves to imagining this initial moment shooting forth from
a “ time ” which up to now was void. This is no more than a
puerile game.
There remains for our consideration the universe as an
ordered whole, according to the most profound order, that of
causality. This causality seems to be necessary and not free.
The universe as a system of necessary causalities, is nature.
What is it?

How does one explain it?

BOOK FOUR

NATURE

Tenth Question : What is corporeal nature?
Tenth Thesis :

1. Corporeal nature is determined.
2. Natural laws are hypothetically necessary.
3. The order of nature is one not only of agents,
but of ends.

A. Notion
1. Empirically, nature is opposed to art and to will. It is
also opposed to constraint (violence or force). It is that which
is not invented, which is not free, that which is facile and
spontaneous.

Etymology agrees with the usage of it to signify that which
is innate in existence, that which is there from birth, that which
always remains. The immutable, the determined, the constant
in an individual, there is its nature !
The notion is extended to embrace all beings. The whole
universe is, therefore, thought of as a single nature, made up of
all individual natures, the source of their behavior as a whole,
the source of their order. Common sense offers no more light
on nature and its limits than it does on the limits of the world.
Each person fashions this concept of nature in his own way,
according to his tastes, experiences or profession. Nature is
not identical for the poet and the laborer, for the Christian and
the pagan, for the classicist and the romanticist.
2. The scientific ideas of determinism, of laws, of evolution,
of chance are predicated of nature and viewed as an ensemble
of changes. The determinism of nature is the regular sequence

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NATURE

and the invariable conditioning of phenomena. The laws are
propositions expressing the constant relations of phenomena.
Evolution is the modification of natural types over a course
of time. Chance is the irregular as it appears in a sequence of
phenomena. These last two notions seem contrary to that
of nature which signifies constancy and regularity, but at least
they are relative to the question of nature.

3.

Scholastic philosophy defines the nature of a being as :

PRIMUM ET PERMANENS PRINCIPIUM PASSIONIS ET ACTIONIS
alicui enti intrinsecum. This is substance insofar as it is
an active and passive principle. In a general way, nature is
identified with essence, nevertheless it must be distinguished
from essence, since it signifies a being in its movement, in
its active and passive behavior, especially in relation to other
beings. Essence is a principle of being, nature is a principle of
change.
Nature, as a whole, will be a system of all bodies, considered
from the point of view of their mutual causal influences. This
will be the universe conceived as the teeming source of events.

4. Catholic theology extends this concept in making it more
abstract. The term nature designates not only all existent
corporeal beings, not only all finite beings, even those which
are spiritual, but also every created or creatable being, and the
ensemble of all created and creatable beings, as well as everything
which is related to them by title of a constitutive element or real
exigency.1 The supernatural is defined correlatively, as that
which is not really demanded by any given nature or by the
totality of natures. A miracle, for example, will be an event,
a phenomenon, whose origin must definitely be attributed to
divine liberty, and not demanded by nature.
* An organism’s parts arc natural to it as either being constitutive
or integral. Cosmic conditions are necessary for the functioning of the
organism. Thus, if light exists, or if there is an elastic medium capable
of sonorous vibration, there seems to be an exigency that an animal
with either eyes or ears or both exists. The Beatific Vision is supernatural
in the sense that it can not be demanded, even by human or angelic
intelligence.

DETERMINISM IN NATURE

Our question is purely a cosmological one.
corporeal nature as a whole, and of this alone.

225

It treats of

B. Corporeal nature is determined. It has a single constant
and habitual way of behaving. In other words, there is a
determinism in natural phenomena.
1. We have already established this determinism meta­
physically, by linking phenomena to stable principles which
arc the reason of their specific constancy. These principles are
substances endowed with forces and specific properties. At the
bottom of determinism arc substantial forms. By reason of its
form, each body possesses a specifically determined aptitude
to act and to receive, and this is a nature. A nature, subject
to a given influence in given conditions, undergoes a determined
movement. Placed in relation with another nature, in given
conditions, it produces a determined action. To base the
determinism of phenomena on specific essences is to show that
determinism is possible, and it justifies common sense and
science which suppose that it is real.

2. Our daily lives constantly verify this determinism in
nature. Our bodily gestures which adapt our movement to the
conditions of our environment, are in harmony with this
environment. Now, whether these gestures be habitual or
consciously thought out, they correspond to the conviction that a
natural determinism exists, e.g., the gesture of drinking water
does not produce an indeterminate result, but precisely the one
we arc accustomed to. Therefore, this conviction which places
us in harmony with our real surroundings is itself in harmony
with the real and is, therefore, true.

3. Science is true only under the same condition. The
laws, coming from the real, return to the real by experimental
verification and industrial application. Now these laws are
determined formulae. One phenomenon is, therefore, not
produced without another. A determined link really joins them.
4. The very possibility of our true knowledge of the world
proves the existence of determinism. We can know only the

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NATURE

determined. But we can know the relations which unite the
diverse elements of the world in their movement and in their
causality. Actually, to know is to judge, to attribute, to
determine a subject; but to determine a subject by thought,
when it is not determined in reality, is not to know, it is to be
mistaken. Thus no study aiming at the truth of phenomena
could even begin, if their relations were not in themselves
determined.
Questions. What is the rigor of this determinism, that of
fact or necessity? (second part). What is its form, causal or
final? (third part). What is its scope, limited by chance, or
absolutely universal? (first scholium). What is its relation
to time; does it escape it, or does it change in the course of the
centuries? (second scholium). Finally, what is the sufficient
reason for its existence ; is it sufficient in itself, or does it demand
a cause? (Eleventh Question).

C. The laws of nature are not natural determinism. They
are formulas which express the manifestation of it in the course
of nature. A law of nature is a proposition stating a constant
relation between phenomena. It allows us to predict, through
deduction, the existence of a consequent following the known
existence of an antecedent, or to deny the existence of the
antecedent, beginning with the known absence of the consequent.
The phenomena linked by the law are phenomena-types, defined
abstractly, capable of existing identically (specifically) in an
indefinite number of cases. The law is, therefore, not the cause
of phenomena. It is a human manner, i.e., a universal way,
of knowing them. To human intelligence, which analyzes
experience and then reconstructs it, the law shows the facts
as linked among themselves in a necessary and determined way.
Phenomena form scries, wherein one term is the cause or condition
of the following one. Elementary scries form complex ones.
Thus the life of an animal is a very complex series, which supposes
simpler series of a physico-chemical, physiological and psycho­
logical nature. In a complex series, the elementary series
condition one another, as the phenomena differ in each. In their

HYPOTHETICAL NECESSITY

227

turn, the very complex series which individuals are condition each
other, and, in a similar way, the whole universe is a real unity
consisting of the mutual conditioning of all phenomena. This
active interlacing of phenomena is comparable to a river whose
waters are constantly swirling about at the same time that they
are flowing onward to the sea. Such is the course of nature.

Thus the course of nature is experimental data which laws
analyze and make us understand through their reconstruction
of phenomena. If the laws state the course of nature under the
form of necessary relations, that course can not fail to be
necessary, at least in the measure wherein it is expressable
by laws.
HYPOTHETICAL NECESSITY

1. Science shows the real necessity, but not the absolute
necessity of the laws which express the course of nature. The
regularity of this course is remarkable. However, its constancy
is realized, not in permanence, but in succession. It is either
a periodic or non-periodic recurrence of the same facts. This
recurrence, however, is not absolute. The law which expresses
it, even when formulated categorically, is always conditional.
Thus, when I say : Every body falls in a void with the same
speed, I do not assert that all bodies arc falling and that they
are situated in a void. I assert that the speed of a fall is the
same for all, but I do not make this assertion, unless I suppose
two conditions to be verified : (a) that the bodies of which I
speak are actually falling; (b) that they are situated in a void.
The constancy of determinism is, therefore, one of the
conditioning of phenomena among themselves. Its abstract
formulation may be expressed as follows : Given sufficient
conditions, the conditioned will result from them. This formula
is absolutely necessary, but the laws of nature say what these
conditions arc, and what the conditioned is, and they assert
that these conditions are actually realized. They are of a kind
which necessarily conclude to the existence of the conditioned,
when they suppose these conditions to be realized.

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NATURE

a. They are, therefore, logically necessary,*
* but with a
necessity which is subordinated to the affirmation of a condition,
i.e., hypothetical.
b. They are also really necessary, for without this, they
would only be theorems, or possible laws; but these are real
and natural laws.3 To give a foundation for a hypothetical
logical necessity, it will suffice that there exists a real
subordinated necessity, hypothetical in itself. What the truth
of the sciences permits us to state is simply the hypothetical
necessity of natural laws, not their absolute necessity.
Can we say that a law becomes absolute when we succeed
in deducing it from a more general law or theory? As a matter
of fact, a mathematical truth is absolute ; it suffers no exception,
nor does it allow any doubt. Does not that which confers this
characteristic on it, lie in the fact that it is deduced from
principles, as a conclusion is drawn from premises in a syllogism ?
If, therefore, the laws of nature not only are formulated
mathematically, but also are concluded as theorems, which are
deduced from principles which are in this case theories, must
we not recognize these laws as absolutely necessary? Take, for
example, the general law : S = NX, " the speed of the propagation
of a wave is equal to the product of the frequency N times the
length of the wave X. " Doesn’t this make the laws for the
propagation of sound, of light, of Hertzian waves, etc., absolutely
necessary?
This objection rests on a confusion between mathematical
knowledge and a knowledge of nature. Actually :
1) A law of nature, even under the form of a most general
theory, e.g., that of Einstein (E = me
*),
remains contingent in
* In other words, for him who knows them, the known antecedent
necessarily involves the affirmation oí the consequent, its certain
prediction. However, if the antecedent is not known, or if it is known
as not existing, no prediction about the consequent is possible. The
law means that an affirmation (the prediction of the consequent) is imposed
on the condition that the antecedent exists and is known as such.
* The logical link between phenomena permits true knowledge.
Thus it is that the link which is thought of as necessary among them
really exists.

HYPOTHETICAL NECESSITY

229

itself, because it states a relationship as really existing. The
formula E = me’ actually does not state a simple conclusion
of mechanics, resulting from the combination of definite
dimensions : Energy E, Mass m, square of the speed of 300,000
Kms a second c*.
Such a conclusion would be absolutely
necessary, as is the case of every theorem.

However, Einstein’s statement is not necessary, for it is
that of an existing fact. The proof that it speaks of the
" existent ” is that we verify it by looking at what we know of the
" existent ” (already known laws), and by skillfully interrogating
the existent in its own language, that of facts (such an interview
is called experimentation or observation).
The same is true of the equation S — NX. When it treats
of a movement thought of as periodic, it is an absolutely necessary
truth. Yet when it states a relation between real phenomena,
it contains an implicit affirmation which gives it the meaning
of natural law : “ Periodic movements exist, ” and by this very
fact they are situated among contingent truths.
Thus, theoretical formulae have two senses, one ideal and
purely essential, the other real, and at the same time essential
and existential. In the first sense, these formulae — by right
at least — are absolutely necessary, but they are not laws of
nature. In the second sense, they are contingent, and they are
therefore laws of nature. They state with a high degree of
accuracy the existence of a necessary relation, but they state
it as existing in a contingent way. They say what the laws say
directly from what they have read in experience, only in a more
abstract style.

2) Let us look now at the laws which are deduced
mathematically from theory. They can not be more necessary
than the theory itself, for a conclusion can not be wider than its
premises in extension, certitude or necessity.
These laws appear contingent for yet another reason.
Actually, to deduce them, one must add to the theory a second
particularizing premise, which is indispensable for arriving at
such and such a law. However, this minor premise in the

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NATURE

deduction : (a) is not drawn from the theory; (b) nor is it added
to it, except by reason of an intellectual activity which is not
forced in any way to these considerations. Thus this minor
premise is doubly contingent. In order to apply the formula
S = NX either to light or to sound, I must know in some other
way (and this "other way” is always experience... and
contingent) that light and sound contain a periodic movement;
and I must think of joining these two knowledges, the theory
and the experience of the fact. It is a case here of one of those
more or less abstract passages which Boutroux has shown cannot
be made by virtue of any necessity, but only by a contingent
synthesis (Sec De la Contingence des Lois de la Nature).
Thus, “an actually given being... is not a necessary'
consequent following from the possible. It is a contingent
realization of it” {op. cit., p. 19). Likewise, the differentiation
of being into kinds, and kinds into material species, of matter
into chemical ty'pes and living things, is made only by adding
a specifying notion to a notion which is more abstract. The
specifying notion is not contained in the first notion, but is
joined to it in a contingent way. The deduction of a law does
not suppress the hypothetical character of its necessity. It rather
places it clearly in evidence.
No matter how mathematical a physical science may be in
appearance or method, it never formulates anything but
hypothetically necessary laws about nature, i.e., a determinism
in the conditioning of facts. Can a science go further and deny
the very determinism of the facts?
PHYSICAL INDETERMINISM

Actually, the reflection on contemporary science, of some
of the most illustrious scientists of the day, Heisenberg (1927),
Dirac, Eddington, Bohr, has led them to suppose that elementary
phenomena arc not completely determined by their conditions.
They see in their laws, and consequently in all laws, only the
laws of statistics, whose necessity is no greater than that supposed
in the calculation of probabilities. On the contrary, Lorentz,
Einstein and Planck hold that the tiniest facts are completely

PHYSICAL INDETERMINISM

231

determined in themselves, and only the inadequacy of our
means of observation prohibits us from measuring their constant
relations.

L. de Broglie 4 writes : “ The new mechanics... no longer
constantly attributes a position and a speed to particles in the
atomic scale, and it renounces the imposition of a rigorous
determinism in the succession of their observable manifesta­
tions. ” He states : " the almost unanimous accord of a new
generation of physicists... on the interpretation of BohrHeisenberg indicates that they find this theory to be the only
one compatible with the known facts. ”

However, let us point out that " for the physicist,
determinism exists when the knowledge of a certain number
of facts observed currently or in the past, joined together with
the knowledge of certain laws of nature, allows him to predict
accurately the appearance of such and such a phenomenon in
the future. This definition of determinism, as the accurate
prediction of phenomena, seems to be the only one which a
physicist can accept, since it is the only one that is really
verifiable. ” Now there are numerous cases today, where “ the
prediction of phenomena has been considerably diminished in
accuracy, if not completely lost. ” Prediction still remains in
regard to statistical phenomena, but not in regard to elementary
phenomena. Thus, when a crystal diffuses electrons which are
hurled towards a fluorescent screen, if the electrons are produced
in a small number, we can not predict at what points they will
strike the screen. If they arc produced in great numbers, we can
predict exactly the figures which they will make on the screen.
Thus, prediction takes place, determinism exists, only for
groups, not for the individual facts. This is consequently the
latest great step in physics, the discovery by Planck of the
quantum of action.
« These translated quotations are found in French in L. de Broglie,
Continu et Discontinu, pp. 58 if. ; Sec Einstein, Philosopher &• Scientist,
cd. by Arthur Schilpp. and Evolution of Physics by Einstein and Infeld
for insight into the contributions of Einstein and Planck.

N.Y. 17 — 17

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NATURE

We cannot record " the constancy of numerous elementary
particles, ’’ which " can appear and disappear, ” nor can we
indicate simultaneously the position and speed of electrons,
“ which can manifest their presence in the entire extension of an
atom. ” •
Moreover, we can scarcely hope to possess at some time
in the future the means of investigation which might allow us to
find again, at this level, accurate prediction — determinism.
For we can grasp the real only through means of space and time,
and it is precisely the dynamic linking of facts in space and time
which forces Heisenberg to formulate the " principle of indéter­
mination ” : every precision which belongs to one measure
involves a lack of precision in another which is as indispensable
as the first, and must be bound together with it to get a close
look at the real. •
However, an “ undetermined " fact in the physical sense
looked at philosophically, is not a fact without a cause. On the
contrary it has a proportionate cause, i.e., a cause predetermined
to produce it. This cause, however, is not knowable in physical
experimentation.7
To conclude: Science in the atomic age docs not recognize
the right to assert that a rigorous determinism links all
phenomena, that a knowledge of the antecedents of a phenomenon
suffice to predict it. It does not hold that the laws of nature
are as necessary as mathematical theorems, nor that they are
absolutely necessary. Science refuses to take part in the
discussion of the following question : “ Are there really unde­
termined facts which constitute an exception to determinism? ”
If the scientists give an answer to this question, it is one of
personal preference, and not one indicated by their science.
This shows, at least, that a purely hypothetical necessity in
natural laws does not appear contradictory to them, and therefore
the way remains open in this direction.
• See Ernst Casstrer, Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern
Physics, Eng. trans. O. T. Bcnfey (New Haven : Yale U. P., 1956), pp. 109-115.
• Ibid., pp. 115-138.
’See Van Mf.lsen, Philosophy of Nature, pp. 227-233; Thonnard,
Prlcis de Philosophic (Toumai-Paris : Desclée & Cie, 1950), pp. 402-404.

HOW NECESSARY AND CONTINGENT?

233

NECESSITY IN CONTINGENCY

2. Analysis can proceed further through metaphysical prin­
ciples and conclusions which have already been established. Phe­
nomenal relations convey through experience the real relations
of causes and effects, of " agents ” and " patients ” : contact,
distance, equality, etc.; similarity or qualitative opposition... ;
movements. There is a necessity in these relations, because
there are corporeal species, which are characterized by constant
and necessary ways of acting and receiving. There are, however,
also contingent conditions, required to " effect ” these relations.
They are the conditions upon which depend : (1) either the
realization of these species in more or less numerous individuals,
situated originally in places and definite time, but contingent in
relation to the species ; (2) or the actualization of the individual
powers and receptivities which are also contingent in relation
to their existence. These conditions are, in particular, motor
causes present in the world. There is especially one common
condition which makes all natural laws contingent, and that is
the contingency of the existence of all corporeal beings. A law
is only a possibility, if bodies do not exist. Now the existence
of bodies is contingent. The law, then, is natural only in a
contingent way. It is necessary only from a given point of view.
What is this point of view?

It is by reason of its universality that the law is necessary.
However, its verification in an individual case, taken as such,
is contingent. It is necessary only because the individual
realizes a specific type, and more generally, because it exists
in specifically defined conditions. It is its universality which
makes the law necessary and indefinitely applicable.
We can translate this into terms of potency and act.
A natural law affirms the real existence of a nature, i.e., a potency
in relation to a given function which is its act.
It is
understandable then that it signifies at the same time :
a. a necessity : because potency is linked to its act
necessarily. It is by relation to it that it is defined, and every
definition is necessarily true of that which it defines.

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NATURE

b. a contingency : because the potency would not be real
unless there were real passages from this potency to act; but
such a passage is always contingent in relation to the potency
(it is never made by reason of the potency alone : omne quod
movetur ab alio movetur). Since the natural law always
indirectly implies this passage, it is because of this that it is
marked with contingency in its very necessity. Necessity is
expressed in the general pronouncement of the law. Contingency
is especially found in the application of the law to particular
facts, which are understood by reason of the law.

Thus the law of nature is always only hypothetically
necessary. The system of all the laws and the course of nature
expressed through it could not be otherwise. A phenomenal
series which is conditioned could form only a system of
conditioned necessities. Nature, which is a determined system
of causes and corporeal effects, is, therefore, as contingent as
the world, the totality of corporeal beings, and clamors for a
cause as imperiously as does the world (Eleventh Question).

D. The order of nature is at the same time causal and
final. It is a chain of efficient causes and a hierarchy of ends.
The idea of order as used here, is an idea of regularity, of
determinism in the relationships of phenomena and of beings.
Everyone agrees in seeing in nature a chain of causes and effects,
but many refuse to see there any finality.

This was the attitude of Democritus, for whem atoms
were the efficient causes of all things. He sees them as operating
by a completely mechanical, undirected necessity, with no
concern for end or chance, which is conceived as the suppression
of an end. Paganism had scarcely the power to elevate itself
above such a conception, when it made even the gods subject
to an inexorable destiny. The great Socratics attempted bravely
to give a precise role.to mind, which Anaxagoras had affirmed
as the effective source of order. But their God remains little
capable of penetrating a matter which he has not created, or of
making his ideas succeed. However, they are the first who
give finality its rightful place in philosophy. For Plato, bodies

ORDER IN NATURE

235

participate in Ideas and The Good. For Aristotle, physical
natures tend to activate themselves by their basic “ appetite, "
described as a “ love ’’ for Pure Act. This is the End, which
is the only first cause of their movement.
Christian philosophy will attach all nature to that foresight
and that free will of God which is called Providence. In
St. Augustine, the Platonic Ideas become the exemplary Ideas
which God regards in Himself in order to create beings on their
pattern. They also become the seed-ideas (rationes seminales)
which the history of the universe will bring to flower in species
and successive states, and which arc the divine program as it is
realized step by step. In St. Thomas, the Aristotelian substantial
forms become the incarnation of ends or Divine Intentions
in matter.K
The decline of finality was produced in two areas which
were for a long time united. The sciences of nature, because
of the mathematical method, and later because of positivism,
wanted no other explanation than a mechanical one. Philosophy,
which turned to deism or even to pantheism, left nature to evolve
without direction, moved by an absolutely rigid determinism.
This double attitude shows up in Spinoza, who excludes all
finality from “ natured ” nature, because he must make room
for liberty in “ naturizing ” nature.
Nevertheless, there is a finality in nature.

1. There is a finality in nature, for the external cause of a
corporeal substance is not only a body endowed with activity,
but also an orientation to produce a determined effect (See
pp. 135-137). For example, the succession of substantial
generations, which is a part of the natural order, is at the same
time a causal series and a system of objective ends. The role
of an end is at the same time to orient the cause and to determine
♦ E. Gilson. The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy (New York : Scribner,
ch. 7, pp. 148-167, shows very clearly what an upheaval in the
philosophical conception of finality came about through the idea of
creation.
See also Ch. Boyer, Essais sur la Doctrine de St. Augustin, ch. 4.
a very precise study of " seminal potencies ” in Augustinian cosmology'.

236

NATURE

the effect. Thus a living thing is oriented when it differentiates
its reproductive cells, which have a specific potential and a
determined orientation.

2. But the problem here ts greater. We are treating of the
whole of nature, of all its movements, and of all its activities.
Is the general order of nature a pure mechanism, a fatal chain
of antecedents and consequents? Or must we, in order to
express the truth, recognize in it the direction of a finality,
a kind of tendency, similar to the power of choosing?
The answer in favor of the second hypothesis is true,
because :
a. Change demands a cause as a sufficient reason, and this
not only in regard to getting a change going, but in regard to
every real determination that appears in the course of that
change. Now a cause which is conceived as efficient is abstract
and lacks its most concrete characteristics. An efficient cause,
by itself, is a cause which is incompletely determined, and thus
imperfectly proportioned to its effect. In reality, nevertheless,
it suffices, and therefore really embraces a determination which
does not reveal to the mind its efficient character, i.e., an
orientation to produce not only some change, but this change
which is completely determined. To admit this is to admit
that there is in a cause a determination which is not of the
efficient order, but which directs and orients efficiency towards
its entirely determined effect. It is to admit the presence of an
end in the cause, which will be realized in the effect.
The more manifestly change is oriented, so much more
clearly does it demand an end which orients it. Thus the history
of the universe, which contemporary science offers as probable
at some stages, and certain at others, appears to be guided in a
constant direction, that of differentiation. Why, at each stage,
is there progress rather than a stop or regress? Mechanical
inertia, " the tendency of movement to conserve itself in an
invariable manner, *’ is evidently impotent to explain
differentiation.
Let us suppose that nature is without direction. Would
it not attempt all the combinations which are mechanically

FINALITY IN NATURE

237

possible? But what is the probability that a more differentiated
state would be achieved by this play of chance? We might
answer this question in the form of a comparison. The owner
of a house destroyed in a bombardment calls for new squadrons
of bombardiers to reconstruct his home from the ruins. Since
his house is one of the possible combinations of the existing
materials, is there any chance of its being restored by successive
explosions, and some additional chance that it will stay that
way despite successive bombardments? In a like manner, in a
movement presumed to be without finality, nothing definite
or stable could exist. The universe, however, has a history.
It has passed through stages which have endured. Its movement
has, therefore, a finality. •
b. The contingency of natural laws leads us to a similar
conclusion.
1) Among the laws, the most fundamental are the
definitions and the classifications, which express real specific
structures. Now an infinity of species is simply possible. Real
species are contingent facts. They are real not by reason of
their constitutive parts and their proper activities, but by
reason of a determination which has placed them in existence
through a kind of selection. Therefore, nature, as a system
of species, contains a finality.
2) Other laws express the relationships between diverse
activities. Are the conditions of these relations necessarily
realized? In no way ! A determination over and above their
nature must be added in order that they be actualized, an
orientation which makes them coexist, in a word, a finality.
Thus, the affinity of Cl and of H is not sufficiently determined
by their chemical species. It exists also by reason of certain
conditions of localization, of simultaneity, concentration,
warmth, light, etc. Now each of these conditions is realized by
its own proper causes. Its meeting with each of the others and
• In the simple sense of " directed by an end " (under any form
whatsoever, whether as thought or not, whether utilitarian or not),
end is here that which predetermines a particular result (finality of
destination).

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NATURE

with all at the same time is possible, but it is not made necessary,
nor even effective by its own realization. (It is not because
Cl and H occupy the same place that they are there at the same
moment, etc.). Moreover, in order that the law of affinity
be a real natural law, it is necessary that the conditions for the
combination HC1 be realized, and even that their union be
repeated. There must, therefore, be a link existing between
the causes realizing these conditions, making them work in
unison, despite their mutual independence from the point of
view of efficiency, a link which is precisely the means of realizing
a common end, i.e., a link of orientation, of a finality which
envelops and directs them.
In other words, the diverse as such does not explain unity.
Diverse motor causes (which are causally independent) regularly
combine to present a single effect, e.g., the combination HC1.
Therefore, they are not simply diverse. They have a unity
which is not in this order of efficiency where they are diverse,
but in an order which determines them, in a word, a unity of
direction, an end.
The order of nature is, therefore, not only a mechanism
of causes causing one another. It is especially a system of ends
in which each end unifies certain particular actions and forms,
and which taken together unify the system itself, which we
call nature.

E. Docs chance exist, or is determinism an absolute
universal law which applies to the most individual facts, with
no exception ?
Very many profess an absolute determinism. Goblot
says : (1) " The order of nature is constant, and its laws suffer
no exception. (2) The order of nature is universal, and there
are no facts or details concerning these facts which are not
regulated by laws. Constant and universal, the laws of nature
arc completely deterministic. ” A. Cuvillier states : " Either
determinism is universal, or it does not exist at all. ” This last
assertion, nevertheless, is a hypothesis, “ a postulate, ” “ a
calculated risk, " which humanity " cannot fail to run without

WHAT IS CHANCE?

239

renouncing its power over nature and its understanding of the
universe. ’’ However, is this power unlimited, or this under­
standing perfect? A negative answer leaves the question of
chance open.

1. Chatice is at least an appearance. Fortuitous events,
writes the mathematician Emile Borel, are those which depend
" on causes which are too complex for us to know and study
completely. ” Here, chance means an unknown cause, an
unexplained fad. Science is not resigned to ignore it completely.
It subjects these phenomena with unknown causes to the calcula­
tion of probabilities, and applies to them the laws of statistics,
which will allow a prediction concerning a certain number of
facts taken together at one time. Thus, we can have an
approximation of how many individuals will be bom in the
United States this year.
Chance has even taken a preponderant place in experimental
science today. In days gone by chance was taken as being
somewhat exceptional, but it is the order of the day now,
especially when treating of the phenomena of elementary
particles. “ All physical phenomena arc... dominated by the
fundamental law of chance. ” “ This unique law of chance
simply consists in this : extremely improbable phenomena arc
never produced. “ 10 This universal role of chance in physics
is summed up in Heisenberg’s principle of indétermination.
In biology, the Mendelian laws on hybrids, the chromosome
factors in heredity, biological measures, constantly conform to
predictions based on the calculus of probabilities, and thus show
the enormous role of chance in nature. Wc can make further
precisions on that role by distinguishing :
a. The macroscopic domain, where deterministic prediction
is possible.
b. The microscopic and ultra-microscopic domain, wherein
wc must rely only on statistical prediction.
10 The two statements quoted are translations of E. Borel’s Le Jeu.
la Chance, ch. 5. Le Hasard et la Science, p. 16S and p. 98. See also
E. Schrodinger, Science and Humanism (New York : Cambridge U. P.,
1951), ch. 2, pp. 39-51.

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NATURE

Thus we can predict an eclipse of the moon, but we cannot
predict the time when a certain atom of radium will explode.
We can only calculate the probability of its explosion in the
next hour. We are held to the same type of calculation as to
predicting the manifestation of an electron at some point of the
wave with which it is associated.11
Consequently, there is no doubt that chance manifests
itself everywhere in science, and it is an appearance founded
in nature.

2. Is chance something real? In other words, arc there
unexplainable facts? Let us make a distinction. Absolutely
unexplainable facts? Certainly not. The principle of sufficient
reason cannot be placed in doubt. A completely unexplainable
fact would be without a sufficient reason. Relatively unexplain­
able facts?, i.e., facts lacking a -particular kind of explanation?
Let us answer this by being as precise as possible : (a) A fact
can not lack its constitutive reasons; (b) anymore than it can
lack all productive cause, and all finality, since it is, and since
it is such, and not another.

But nothing prohibits it from lacking this particular
productive cause, or this particular determined finality, which
could have been its sufficient reason as well as the cause which
it actually has. A fact, then, will be produced by chance, if it
is produced as a result, without the causes seeming to have in
themselves a determined orientation to produce it as it is.
3. A more exact notion of chance demands a more precise
view of finality, the absence of which seems to characterize the
fortuitous event.
This absent finality is not any finality at all. It is the
finality which we expected, that which gives us the why of the fact.
We can verify this by distinguishing two domains of chance :
man and humanity on the one hand, and nature on the other.11
“ Sec Van Melskn, Philosophy of Nature, pp. 233-241.
” See Hamelin, Essai sur les Éléments Principaux de la Repré­
sentation, 2nd. cd., pp. 322-330.

WHAT IS CHANCE?

241

a. Human events contain the element of chance in the
measure in which we suppose them to be guided by an intention,
by a desire, or at least an interest. An event happens by chance
when, being able to be guided by a human intention which
would explain it, it occurs without this intention, or even
contrary to it.
Thus, Peter finds a treasure while digging the foundations
of a house. Paul is killed because, in leaping from a plane, his
parachute failed to open. This particular shell failed to fire.
An intention was lacking in the event which would have explained
it, or an intention was inefficacious in an event which it should
have regulated (the parachute, the shell).
For an absent human intention, we sometimes substitute
a super-human one, which is either benevolent or malevolent.
We speak of good fortune, of luck, of ill luck, of " bad luck, ”
of " fate. ”
b. Natural events are fortuitous in the measure that they
are unforeseeable in their individuality, or unknowable by a
definite combination of laws. Such are the elementary facts
which science predicts only statistically, as individually
endowed with a definite probability.
Thus, a second generation of rats, which follows a crossing
of white with gray, furnishes as an average 25 % white,
*25 % pure gray and 50 % mixed gray. Now, the reason that
a particular individual will be pure white is due to a fortuitous
meeting of chromosomes at the time of the fecundation of the
first generation female. Likewise, it happens by chance that
the second generation contains about 25 % pure whites, which
percentage has been predicted statistically.
We expect nature to proceed according to rule. We
understand an event when a law shows it to be necessary.
That which explains it to us is the predetermination of its causes,
its natural destination. However, we perceive this destination
only at the level of the universal, of the specific, of that which
is repeated. That which is strictly individual remains obscure
for us and escapes precise prediction. Face to face with an
individual event, we wait for the universal to explain it for us.

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NATURE

We find the universal, and, first, we feel that the event is
explained, but then there is a silence about that which is strictly
individual. Natural finality docs not cross the threshold of the
individual. Our meeting with the the individual, as individual,
is made without natural finality, and is therefore fortuitous.

For example, I understand the fecundation of this ovule
of the dog rose by the germination of a grain of pollen of the
same species. I understand because I recognize in the ovule,
as in the pollen, a predetermination, a specific finality. However,
when I think of the individuality of each of these two organisms,
and give them a number, as might be done to players on a field,
then I can not see why pollen 1834 happened to be joined to
ovule XIX, and I understand even less why anthcrozoid B rather
than A has fused with the oosphere. *’ I know well that there arc­
mechanical causes, forming an unbroken chain, which have
led P 1834 into contact with Ov. XIX, and B into contact with
the oosphere. These are results, whose causes, even if known
in detail, would leave me unsatisfied, for what is still lacking
is the precise finality which destined P 1834 to come in contact
with Ov. XIX, a destination capable of being expressed in the
fashion of a law; in short, an idea, an end, being realized
throughout the course of a causal series.
Thus in the different chances, a finality which wc expect
to encounter at their source is lacking, whether it be a finality
of intention, or a finality of natural destination. It is always
at the level of the individual that chance shows itself. Its place
in human activity is limited only by intention or the idea,
which effectively regulates a concrete event, whereas its place
in the activity of nature is limited only by natural destination
or the specifying directive idea (which is synonymous with
substantial form). This is simply to state that in this case
the strictly individual is normally fortuitous, being irreducible
to species.
'* At the moment of fecundation, the reproductive nucleus is divided,
within the pollen tube, into two antherozoids, of which one is fused
with the oosphere and the other with the secondary nucleus oí
the embryonic «ac.

WHAT IS CHANCE?

243

4. Notable definitions of chance. Commenting on Aristotle’s
reflections on chance,14 Hamelin sums up his doctrine in this
fashion : “ A fortuitous event is that which is not really taken
as an end by any efficient cause; something which is produced
because it is a mechanical dependence of the end pursued by
the efficient cause; and something which, in itself, could be
pursued as an end. If we designate chance as the cause of
a fortuitous event it can only be in the sense of an absence
of all teleological activity. ” Thus, chance, according to Aristotle,
is only a mechanical effect having the appearance of
intentionality.16

Cournot, in a famous definition, insists on the mechanical
aspect of chance. “ The events brought on by the meeting
of other events, which belong to a series which are independent
of each other are what wc call fortuitous events or the result
of chance. ” He does not clarify this " independence ” of the
series, which is the very heart of his definition. It is perhaps
because it is difficult to speak of the " independence ” of causal
series without referring to ends. Let us at least attempt a
distinction here, which may clarify the point wc wish to make.
These scries arc independent, since the causes do not have
as their destination, their end, the single result to which they
lead. These series are, nevertheless, dependent one upon the
other, since the causes are linked in a system which has produced
this single end. Thus the pollen and the ovule of the same
species form a system in view of the reproduction of the plant;
but pollen 1834 and ovule XIX, insofar as they are individuals,
escape the grasp of the idea of the end. Their meeting is by
chance.14
’* See Aristotle’s Physics, Text and Commentary, edited by
W. D. ROSS (Oxford, 1936), pp. 353-355 and PP- 5I4-5»9.
16 See Physics of Aristotle, Bk. II, ch. 6, 197b, 1-35.
14 " A phenomenon resulting from the cooperation of several causes,
which arc really independent, will be a fortuitous event, if no principle
intervenes which unites the independent causes among themselves.
Now this principle, not being able to belong to the order of causality,
since causes linked to one cause .. .are not really independent causes,
can only be an end. “ Translation of quotation from Essai sur les Éléments
Principaux de la Représentation, by Hamelin, p. 32S.

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NATURE

5. The existence of chance is, therefore, verified and already
partially understood. Chance is real, but it refers to human
knowledge. It is an aspect of events which human intelligence
cannot grasp, inasmuch as these events have no sufficient
reason to explain them. To affirm the real existence of chance
is to affirm a limit to the intellectual penetration of the human
mind, and correlatively, a limit to the intelligibility of the real.
In the direction of things, the clearness of form, idea, and end,
is obscured by spatio-temporal conditions in which the indivi­
duality of matter is presented to us. In the direction of man,
his intellectual power is measured by a dependence on the
sensible, and fringed with indetermination because of the
mind’s necessity of grasping being in the universal. For these
two reasons, which are in reality one, finality is, for us,
indiscernible at the individual level, except under the form
of a personal intention.
Chance is, therefore, a fact which implies a causal
explanation, and even an incomplete finality, but not a final
explanation. It is a result, but not an end. It is a mechanism
which lacks a certain finality. It is definitely based on the
indetermination of space and time, i.e., on their indefinite
divisibility, which makes possible an infinity of encounters
between causes and between moments of their actions, and
which, on the other hand, does not demand any single encounter
to be preferred above all others. It is chance that the rain
begins to fall exactly at the moment a raven croaks.
Chance and determinism thus express two authentic aspects
of nature, the individual and the universal. Determinism and
natural law's represent only a fraction of the real, and to attain
the other part, science can only have recourse to the calculation
of probabilities.
F. The evolution of determinism at first appears less real
than chance, and the invariability of laws more absolute than
their universality. Moreover, there seems to be a contradiction
in a determinism which is not a fixity.
1. An evolution in determinism is not contradictory. To
suppose that absolutely necessary laws evolve is certainly

EVOLUTION AND DETERMINISM

21 5

contradictory. However, there is nothing surprising in the
assertion that hypothetically necessary laws evolve. Actually,
their necessity hinges on the existence of certain conditions.
If the conditions can change, the relations which express these
laws can also change.

2. An evolution of natural laws, in a chronological sense,
is certain. Here we place ourselves at the point of view of the
history of the universe. To speak of evolution is to accept the
fact that different laws have prevailed successively in the
course of the universe’s duration. Cosmogony admits the
successive appearance of laws by affirming a multiplicity of
cosmic stages. The laws of sidereal rotations came after the
laws of electronic attraction and repulsion. The laws of life
came after the laws of mineral matter. Different laws began
successively in the course of the ages. Paleontology, particularly,
teaches that living species began to exist on earth at different
geological periods. The laws of biological structures show an
evolution which, in general,17 is a progressive differentiation.
3. Is evolution through descendent# also a fact? Evolution,
in this sense, means not only succession, but the genealogical
dependence of successive biological types in relation to a primitive
undifferentiated biological type.
Evolution on a small scale is that which produces varieties
and sub-species, and which is capable of being directly observed.
This is called mutation.
Generalized evolution is held by the majority18 of biologists
as an historical fact : “ That which constitutes the true a -posteriori
17 It also implies regressions (parasitical species, for example) and
stagnations (there are “ panchrone ’’ species, which have passed through
all the geological ages without variation).
‘•Nevertheless, there are still biologists today, who take into
consideration the enormous extrapolation which such a transformism
supposes. See Revue des Deux Mondes. Sept. 15, 1953, the article of
Dr. Vernet, and an article in the same revue for July 1, 1954. by Charles
Richet. Since 1929, Louis Viallcton’s book has been a protest against
what he calls “the transformist illusion," and gives importance in the
evolutionary process only to the secondary diversification of formal
types. Sec also L. Vialleton, L'Origine des Êtres Vivants.

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NATURE

proof of generalized transformism is the rigorous concordance
which exists between the epoch at which a group appears,
and the place which its organization assigns to it ” (L. Cuenot,
La Genèse des Espèces Animales, 3rd ed., p. 75). The historical
documents used are fossils, which paleontology studies and dates.
It gives particular attention to what it calls orthogenesis,
i.e., successions of types which vary in a definite direction,
which is said to be progressive if the biological type becomes
more complicated, and regressive if it becomes simpler. The
classic example is the series of forms which leads up to the
horse by the increase in size, in the length of the teeth and the
middle toe, as well as by the reduction or loss of other toes. ’*
The historic proof is completed by embryology, which establishes
a parallelism between the successive historical forms of life
and the successive stages in embryonic development. Studies
in comparative anatomy and biological chemistry point up the
more or less close relationship existing between specific types,
and invite us to explain it through the unity of a common
ancestral stock (cf. Cuénot, ibid., Part II).
In this domain the final word belongs to the biologists.
From a philosopher’s point of view, these remarks must be made :
a. The fad of a chronological evolution producing diverse
species at the precise moment which their degree of differen­
tiation assigns to them is not and can not be directly observed
in fossils. As a matter of fact, in the oldest sedimentar}' layer
of the earth, the pre-Cambrian, we find algae and invertebrates
(crustaceans and mollusks), types of living things which are
already very’ differentiated, if we compare them with what
must have been the first type of living thing. There is no direct
way, however, to observe simpler forms of life. From the
Devonian period, vascular cryptogams and gymnosperms arc
present without a trace of them being present in the fossils
of the preceding ages. The same is true of fish and the first
’•M. Grison in his Problèmes ¿'Origine, pp. 115-147, explains the
principal scientific evidences employed to substantiate transformism.
especially those found among the oviparous gastcrcpods called paludinc.
the equidac, and proboscidians. Read Species Revalued by Desmond
MURRAY, O. P. (London : Blackfriars Publications, 1955), ch. 4, pp. 35 fi.

EVOLUTION AND DETERMINISM

247

amphibians. It is impossible to observe the progressive arrival
of biological forms according to the order of their increasing
difierentiation, unless wc begin with vegetal and animal types,
which are already differentiated. Moreover, there is even an
absence of documents on the links which bind mammals and
birds to any ancestors who might have been contemporaries
with the reptiles of the Secondary Age.
The observable paleontological scries is orthogenesis. It is
situated always within a definite type, and shows variations
within that type, which are often " extra-specific. ” In these
conditions, to assert a generalized progressive and specifying
evolution as a fact is to go considerably beyond the evidence.
The theory of evolution must be accepted for what it is, a
plausible, a possible explanation of the history of life.10
b. To assert that the successive forms are the generators
one of the other, is to come dangerously close to the fallacy of
" post hoc, propter hoc, ” by giving a causal explanation to
a phenomenon simply because it precedes another phenomenon.
That there must be cause for the appearance of these living
phenomena is evident. That the cause of a particular form
is a less differentiated form which engendered it is less evident.
To bolster the evidence, we must be able to grasp how the
parent species manages to engender a species more differentiated
than itself. We must furnish the factors at play in the
transformation of species.

4. Admitting evolution as a fact, docs it have a scientific
explanation, is it subject to laws, is it deterministic? The
biologists think so, and they arc right. Orthogenesis manifests
a determinism as clearly as the facts of heredity.
Still we must be more precise about the nature of this
determinism. Is it simply a mechanism of causes and effects,
constructing species as pure results? Is it a determining influence,
s* A view somewhat similar to this one of R. Collin in his Panorama
de la Biologie, p. i8i. is expressed by G. Barry O'Toole in his Case against
Evolution (New York : Macmillan. 1928). Read Ch. 3 of this book, “Fossil
Pedigrees, ” and especially pp. 126-127.
N.Y. 17 — 18

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NATURE

a kind of moving and directing idea which guides biological
transformations?

a. There are a great many who think that the causal
determinism in evolution is absolutely universal, i.e., that nature
contains within itself all the causes required to constitute an
evolving mechanism. Causes form a mechanism on condition
that their series be continuous, and that the antecedent is always
the sufficient explanation of the consequent which follows.
In order that evolution have a mechanical explanation, these
two conditions must be verified. If the series is not continuous,
or if one of the terms is not the sufficient explanation of that
which follows, a mechanical explanation of the process can
only be partial. We must, then, either : (a) admit successive
evolutions separated by the interventions of an ultra-cosmic
cause, by" creations ” (the word is used widely here, as designat­
ing a divine efficiency modifying already existent species),
or (b), look for an addition to this partial mechanistic explanation
in a finality, and in a Liberty choosing a system of specific ends
to be realized biologically.
Now, no one has proven the impossibility of a mechanical
explanation of evolution. We prove only that an efficient
mechanism can not be an adequate explanation, and that here,
as in the case of the mineral world, an Uncaused Cause, a Creator,
is necessary for the foundation of the mechanism. But neither
has anyone proven the existence of such a mechanism. It can
be proven only by explaining this mechanical chaining of
biological events, and showing that its elements are real. In this
field, science is still almost completely ignorant.21

1) Lamarckism (Lamarck, 1744-1829) asserts that life
evolves because : (a) a living thing reacts to variations in its
environment, (b) it thus adapts its own body; the use of an organ
increases this organ, while its non-use destroys it, (c) and finally,
because the individual’s acquired characteristics are hereditary.
“ For an explanation of the theories of evolution, read " Theories
of Evolution ” by C. H. Waddington in A Century of Darwin, ed. by
S. A. Barnett (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard, 195S), pp. 1-18.

EVOLUTION AND DETERMINISM

219

However, " experiments... are clearly contrary to the
hypothesis of a more or less immediate patrimonial inscription
of acquired characteristics through the soma (i.e., the body,
exclusive of reproductive elements) ” (Cvénot, ibid., p. 269).
Lamarckism, then, is deprived of its real indispensable basis.
2) Darwinism (Darwin, 1809-1882) gives first place to
the struggle for survival as a factor in evolution, and he sees
this factor as achieving a natural selection among forms which
are slightly different in the same species. Death eliminates
the weaker biological specimens in the struggle for existence,
and so only the stronger and more differentiated forms perpetuate
themselves through the ages.
Experiment, however, shows that “ death is selective only
in a very small measure, " and “ selection, far from being
constructive of new species, plays the role of conserver in the
average type of biological species ” (CuÉNOT, ibid., p. 29 and 295).
Death does not choose, except by respecting among the individual
variations, those forms which are " preadapted ” to resist certain
harmful actions or modifications of the environment.
3) Thus, today, the most important factor in the evolu­
tionary process is considered to be preadaptation. m Wc
recognize the importance of mutations in the division of a species
into races or varieties,23 and that of the differential fecundity
in species according to their geographic locations and their
succession.
Yet, we arc still ignorant to a large degree about the causes
of these preadaptations, these mutations, these variants in the
“ It is not a question here of the acquiring of an organic or functional
adaptation, which would bring up the Lamarckian factors, but rather
of the innate presence, in particular individuals of a species, of character­
istics which would assure them of an advantage against harmful causes,
e.g., climatic conditions or actions of parasites. Thus an animal with
a dark pigment is " preadapted ” to the intense solar light, which would
burn an animal with a light pigment.
B " Mutationism rejects the explanations of orthogenesis proposed
by Lamarck and Darwin. It denies any hereditary nature to acquired
characteristics found in the group and denies any constructive role in
the process of natural selection. However, there is nothing plausible to
put in its place ” (translated quotation from A. Burloud's, De ¡a
Psychologie à la Philosophie, p. 102).

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NATURE

reproductive power. Is it in nature alone? Or is it at the same
time a combination of nature with something beyond? In
a word, is evolution, as a global fact, scientifically explainable,
e., as a causal determinism? The scientist believes it is. He
i.
does not prove it. As to the philosopher, even if he knows
that nothing has its adequate cause without God, he is not
forced by that to accept the occasionalism of Malebranche.
He recognizes in bodies a determined activity, and moreover,
he sees no contradiction in the idea of one species engendering
another (See Seventh Question).
Thus, it is impossible to say whether evolution is subject,
in its entirety, to the mechanical determinism of efficient
causes.84
b. In any case, there is a manifest finality in evolution.
It happens that the scientist himself recognizes the insufficiency
of causal determinism in explaining evolution. " That which
is especially lacking24 (in mechanistic causal explanations)
is the natural factor which explains that which is new, which
explains the directional and the intentional in the unfolding
of life.... This nature is neither logical nor economical....
What is difficult to understand in orthogenesis20 and in evolution
in general, is the direction which they appear to follow, that
M The Hologenesis of D. Rosa seems to many to be the most perfect
logical form of generalized transformism. This theory pictures the
primitive living thing as enclosing within itself the potential of all phylo­
genetic evolution, even as each individual egg contains within itself
the potential of ontogenetic evolution. The differentiation in species
would come about in a way similar to the differentiation of tissues and
organs beginning with the initial cell or egg. " This construction, as
expounded above, is largely in the speculative order. ” writes R. Collin.
in nis Panorama de la Biologie, p. i8i.
A fairly detailed explanation of this theory can be found in R. Collin,
Mesure de ¡’Homine, pp. 93-110 and in Découverte de la Vie by P. de SaintSeine, pp. 119-121.
,s ” The known factors of evolution take into consideration that
which is called micro-evolution, i.e.. the origin of variety and of the
transformation of the latter into a species ” (translation from L. Cuenot’s
La Genèse des espèces animales, p. 328).
*• Here, wc can think of the duration which spans the orthogenesis
of Equidae : some sixty million years. Could completely mechanical
chance maintain such a steadfast direction through a transformation
which takes on thousands of small acquisitions?

EVOLUTION AND DETERMINISM

251

kind of preordination which reveals itself from the beginning
of a series, and which leads to organs whose finality is as manifest
as the wings of a bird or a bat. ’’ (Cuénot, ibid., pp. 327-329.)
We must see a finality to the work of evolution. There
is in the series a number of independent causalities involved,
yet there is in the same series a unity whose action realizes the
diverse biological types.37 The unity of the type produced
would be contradictory without a certain unity in the causes.
Looked at from the view point of efficiency, the causes are
independent. The unity which they have is a common determi­
nation of their individual efficiencies. It is the unity of a plan,
of an order, of an end. This finality is all the more remarkable,
inasmuch as it adapts itself to, and even utilizes, chance :
thus, very often, death strikes the eggs and the young of species
by chance. The work of nature is constructed and is continued
in these undetermined conditions, and shows itself as being
superior to them, as a contingent determination, as a non­
necessary choice.
Evolution, if it is a natural fact, reveals with a greater
clarity than any other natural phenomenon the finalist and
mechanical nature of determinism. Its laws manifest their
contingency in a twofold way. These laws replace themselves
with the very biological types which condition them; and they
are constructed, even as the types themselves, depending on the
contingent modifications which prepare them. Evolution, more
than any other natural phenomenon, demands a cause. But
all of nature also demands a cause, since all its laws are
contingent. Could this cause be found elsewhere than in
Liberty? **
n We can make the following distinction : (i) Internal series (chemical
and physiological : irritability and mobility) forming, as a whole, the
evolutionary potential of a species. (2) An external scries, the differing
factors of environment (water, light, warmth, oxygen, and the conditions
of their variations) as well as the vegetal and animal species inhabiting
the same geographical area.
*• In us liberty creates the contingent and explains it. Would
nature, which is contingent in the very heart of its being despite its
apparent necessity, be explainable without a liberty which creates and
guides it?

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NATURE

Eleventh Question : What is the cause of nature?
Eleventh Thesis

: 1. The determining cause of nature is a
Creative Liberty.
2. Its end is the perfection of man and the
glory of God.

A. Notion
1. Liberty, in the empirical sense, is sometimes the power
of doing, and sometimes the power of choosing.39 It is always
a relative liberty, which finds a limit on this side of contradiction.
We have no experience of an absolute liberty, which would
be that of the Almighty, even though we might have the illusion
of it in the feeling of creative invention.
2. Scientific psychology backs up common sense, when,
through a delicate analysis, it establishes the existence of free
will. It goes farther when it places liberty in the power of
making a choice in intellectual conditions which explain the
possibility of liberty but in no way force consent.30

3. Metaphysical psychology sees in liberty the highest
degree of spontaneity. Spontaneity is a causal power which
is proper to a being. It manifests itself in the independence,
as minimal as it may be, of the action of an individual in relation
to its conditions. Liberty is the highest of spontaneities. It is,
actually, the independence of choice in regard to its nearest
conditions, which are intellectual motives.
St. Thomas has founded human liberty on the analysis
of the rational knowledge of the good, which is the condition
of willing. He would not have been content with the definition
of liberty which Leibniz was to form : spontancitas intelligcntis19
*
19 In the first sense, a horse is free when he has broken out of his
stall, a prisoner, when he is freed or escapes. In the second sense, the
internal choice is free and consequently the external act which it realizes.
=» Free will is not that which follows in a determined fashion from
the strongest intellectual motive — or from the best — nor is it that which
is indifferent to motives. It is free because of the simultaneous influence
of motives, which it experiences, and because of the domination which
it exercises over them.

DEMONSTRATION OF CREATIVE LIBERTY

253

(spontaneity of knowing). If the will can only follow wherever
the intellect recognizes the good, it is obviously not free. But
reason also grasps the good as partial and limited. Therefore
the will has something to follow, since it can not be indifferent
to the good which is its proper object, but there is nothing which
forces it to follow a limited good. It is free, then, to choose
this means, which, in advance, docs not satisfy it, since it does
not give the good as absolute, but a mixture of good which
carries with it an evil31 which repels it. Liberty, here, is
spontaneitas eligentis (the spontaneity of electing). Choice is an
original function, distinct from knowledge. Wherever knowledge
does not grasp the idea of a means as necessary to the idea
of an end, there is freedom to choose.
Nevertheless, human liberty is not complete independence.
Although man is free, he appreciates motives and is dependent
on his body. Moreover, it is through sensation that he acquired
the very foundation of his ideas, and it is through society that
he learned the values of numerous motives. Wherever knowledge
is dependent on objects which are distinct from the subject,
the liberty, conditioned by this knowledge, can not be completely
independent.
Nevertheless, there is a perfect liberty, an absolute
independence of will, in the Being who in thinking finds the full
content of thought in Himself, and chooses the realization
of His ideas, without this choice being the necessary result
of His nature or His thought. God has such a liberty. Theodicy
will study this aspect of God formally. Let us now try to grasp,
in nature, the incontestable traces of this sovereign liberty.

B.

Demonstration. Three steps lead us to this conclusion.

1. The cause of natural determinism is intelligent.
This determinism in nature is at the same time a finality as well
as a causality. Now intelligence alone is the adequate reason
of an end. We can, undoubtedly, imagine that the finality
" Evil ” is understood here in a psychological sense, as the lack
oí a possible good. Thus duty, which sometimes deprives us oí
a satisfaction, is perceived as a psychological " evil. ”

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NATURE

of the universe finds its immediate reason in an intelligent
reality, e.g., in the determined state of a previous universe,
or in a kind of blind destiny; but this reason would not be
sufficient, and we must come to an Intelligence which conceives
natural ends and implants within them corporeal activities.
Why? Because an end exists before its realization; it exists, in
its manner, before being incorporated either into a substantial
form united to prime matter, or into the ensemble of phenomenal
relations expressed by natural laws. Its préexistence is indicated
by the orientation of the efficient cause. This manner of existence
which is proper to it is immaterial and is related to the intentional
order.
Moreover, the finality of nature is what makes phenomena
intelligible. As a matter of fact, what does our mind uncover
in stating a law which enables it to understand phenomena,
unless it is something intellectual, something expressable in an
idea? There is, therefore, something in nature equivalent to
ideas incorporated into matter, ideas which are the structures
of things, and which are, at the moment when these structures
are formed, the guiding plans of constructive activities. Now,
how can ideas be in matter, unless they have their source in
a Mind which thinks them? Matter could well be modeled in
their image, but it could not confer these ideas unless it were
mind itself. Our intelligence docs not create natural laws,
nor the essences of things. It does not even know them, except
gropingly.
Idealism understands well that the object of intelligence
can be, after all, only a participation in Intelligence. In this
it is in accord with excmplarism which attaches all essences,
possible or real, to intelligible ideas, which since the time of
St. Augustine have been identified with Divine Intelligence.

2. Intelligence, which is the adequate source of deter­
minism, chooses determinism in nature freely, because it docs not
conceive any necessity for choosing this determinism.
a. Actually, intelligence is the sufficient reason of deter­
minism in nature. It receives nothing from nature, nor does
it have any need of it. Intelligence is independent of nature.

DEMONSTRATION OF CREATIVE LIBERTY

255

If intelligence were dominated by the necessity of this
determinism, it would be dependent on it, and therefore could
not be the adequate reason of the determinism itself.
b. This determinism of nature is, in itself, contingent. It is
one of those things which were possible and which remain so.
In the passage from the possible to the actual, intelligence
recognizes no necessity. To pass from possibility to actuality
supposes that a will which acts and realizes be linked to thought.
Must we say that the will chooses necessarily only the most
perfect, and that reason alone explains the why of such a choice
among all possible finalities? To do so would be to fall into the
illusion of a finite world being the most perfect possible.
Although the finality of determinism is certainly the highest
of the world’s perfections, nevertheless, in a finite world, that
degree of perfection can not fail to be finite itself, and conse­
quently no necessity exists for choosing this determinism of
preference over any other. If we were to suppose something
as perfect, or even more perfect than nature’s present
determinism, it would still be finite, and would never be imposed
on intelligence with necessity, i.e., as the only thing possible
for the judgment of reason.
c. Moreover, a determinism in nature supposes that certain
individual natures, as well as an ensemble of natures, are realized.
Now their existence depends on a Creative Cause, which can­
not fail to be completely free, because He causes an effect in all
that it is. Thus determinism is suspended from a Creative
Cause. Why?

3. The liberty on which determinism is based is the
Liberty of a creator.
a. As a matter of fact, to create is to produce existence
in all that it is. It is to make being in its nature, its activity,
its passivity, and consequently with its own proper determinism,
which is in accord with universal determinism.

The Creator, who is the adequate Cause of the universe,
is, by reason of that, the adequate Cause of its laws. It is.

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NATURE

therefore, His free choice which assigns to each nature its end
and to all nature its order.
b. However, we must be more precise. The finality of
nature is not added to a being from outside, as is the artificial
finality of a tool. It is the being itself in the specific direction
of its becoming. Consequently, to assign to each nature its end
is nothing more than to form a being with its specific properties.
To assign to the universe its order is nothing other than
to constitute an ensemble of natures linked by their active and
passive properties. Therefore, it is not a new choice which
endows the universe with its natural determinism. It can only
be the very choice which created the natures.
The liberty upon which determinism is based is, therefore,
definitively the free choice by which God created the world
such as He willed it to be.
The creative act is thus a free act, a gratuitous gift of God
to the universe. The liberty which rules over determinism
is totally independent of it, since it creates the very beings which
it orients to their ends. (Cf. Summa Theologica, I* pars, q. 14,
a. 8; q. 15; q. 19, a. 3 and 4.)
Thus we can conclude with Hamelin, " that God has made
Himself God, i.e., Creator, and that we must render thanks
for His having made Himself God. Undoubtedly, God must
exist as an Absolute Spirit, but He is not, nor can He be a
necessary being, unless the Absolute Spirit is absolute
Goodness. ”
C. The beauty of the world.32 " Through this doctrine
of divine liberty, ” writes Emile Boutroux, “ the contingency**
** " Beauty " ought to be taken in an analogical sense. The human
experience oí the beautiful has a double aspect, which is both sensible
and intelligible. The beautiful is " quod visum placet, " and it is also
" splendor veri. ” The beauty of the world remains a sensible beauty :
a flower, an insect, a human face, a starlit sky; but the beauty of the
world becomes more and more completely intelligible, in proportion
as it is extended to its entirety. Thus the beauty of the world is revealed
more to the scientist than to the ignorant. It appears truly only to the
religious man, who secs in it the reflection of the visage of God.

THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD

257

shown in the hierarchy of forms and of the general laws of the
world, is explained... The entire world seems... to be a rough
draft in imitation of the Divine Being, but in a symbolic
imitation, such as a finite essence would demand... The beings
in nature do not have as their unique end simply to subsist
throughout the obstacles which surround them, or to bend
to conditions outside themselves. They have an ideal to realize ;
and this ideal consists in bringing themselves closer to God,
to resemble Him, each in its own way. The ideal varies with
different beings, because each has a special nature and can
only imitate God in and through its proper nature... Because
there is for all beings of all degrees an ideal to be pursued,
there must exist in all a degree of spontaneity, a power
to change proportionate to the nature and the value of
this ideal...
Therefore, in every region of being, essences and laws have
two aspects.
In the physiological world, life is not reduced to an ensemble
of observable functions. It is basically an internal power,
which tends to realize in the bosom of each species not only
those forms which are most useful to the beings themselves,
but also the most beautiful which that species allows.

In the physical world, properties are veritable powers
for changing states, for combining and separating, tending to
realize not only the most stable forms, but also the most beautiful
which the nature of bodies can allow.
In the mechanical world, force is not only the expression
of the observable relations between movements; it is also an
effective power tending to realize the beautiful by translating
it into the language of extension, figure, symmetry and
movement.

It must be pointed out here that the principles of physiology,
of physics and of mathematics do not have an exclusively
material sense and an a posteriori origin. They have beyond
that an esthetic sense, and from this point of view, an a priori
•origin.

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NATURE

As for the idea of necessity, it will be, basically, a
translation... of the action exercised by the ideal on things,
the action of God on His creatures. ” 3*
Under the light of creative liberty, the world appears
as a work of art, a beauty, a cosmos according to the full power
of the Greek word; and God appears as an artist sovereignly
free in His ideal, Master of his materials, and as the infinitely
rich Splendor which is refracted in a thousand different rays
in the beauty of the world.
" Singula sunt pulchra secundum propriam rationem, id est
secundum propriam formam. Unde patet quod ex divina
pulchritudine esse omnium derivatur. ” — “ Quia enim Deus
propriam pulchritudinem habet, vult illam multiplicare sicut
possibile est, scilicet per communicationem suae similitudinis...
Omnia enim facta sunt ut divinam pulchritudinem qualiter­
cumque imitentur ” (St. Thomas, in Dc Divinis Nominibus,
ch. 4).
" ...let them know how much the Lord of them is more
beautiful than they ” (Wis 13, 3).
D. The end of the world. Can we be more precise and
say what the general finality is that God has given the world?
1. It is God Himself, without any doubt. Only the Absolute
Good could be the ultimate end, for no end is an end, unless
it is directed to the final end. No passage, no evolution can be
finished except in achieving the unsurpassable Good.
Likewise, every agent takes itself for the end of its work.
But the whole of nature is the work of God. Therefore, God
wishes it for Himself. M
2. How is this? A thing can be an end in two ways :
as a good which is lacking and needs to be produced, e.g., health,*
•*
” The above is a quotation taken from E. Boutroux’s, La
Contingence des Lois de la Nature, and put into English by the translator,
pp. 157-168.
•* Summa Contra Gentiles. Bk. Ill, ch. 17. There exists an English
translation of this work : On the Truth of the Catholic Church (Garden City,
N. Y. : Hanover House, 1955).

THE END OF THE WORLD

259

in the practice of medicine; as an existing good to be obtained,
e.g., nourishment for the hungry.3S
God did not have to be produced or perfected by the
evolution of the universe. He lacks no good. He is the Creator
of the good in the world. Can it be then that the world is
seeking to become divine?
Certainly not in the sense that it is able to make itself God.
But can it become similar to God, by acquiring some of the
perfection of God? Since it is an effect of God, it ought to
resemble its Cause.3t
Actually, the beings of nature resist destruction as much
as they can. This is an imitation of the imperishable being
of God. They change and acquire new determinations. This
is an unceasing march towards the infinite perfection of the
divine. They act and are the causes of all kinds of effects.
This is a relationship with creative causality, a relationship
which associates them with God in the realization of the end
which is proposed ; a relationship more apparent in living things
which give to their effects the power to cause life in their turn ;
a relationship which is higher and almost spiritual in the role
which nature exercises on human intelligence, to which it
presents the materialized reflection of the ideas of God.37

Since the divine perfection is infinite and perfectly simple,
while that of created being is limited, it is necessary that the
universe multiply its perfections, in order that it be, in its
totality, an image approaching the divine perfection.33 So it
is that we find this host of species among substances and, in each
species, this infinity of individuals; this indefinite aptitude for
new forms, which characterizes prime matter, whose appetite
for new forms can not be appeased, although momentarily
calmed by the form possessed; so it is, that we find every
substance receiving the accidental determinations coming to it
« S.C.G. Bk. Ill, ch. xS.
“S.C.G. Bk. Ill, ch. 19.
” S.C.G, Bk. Ill, ch. 21.
’•A. Ancel, Métaphysique Générale. pp. 720-723 and 728-731.

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NATURE

from cosmic causes; this aspect of mutual aid between substances,
so pronounced in the universe, which constantly seeks to establish
unity between species and individuals; so it is, finally, that
we see this history wherein the universe achieves differentiation,
order, riches, little by little, until such a time as man appears
to continue it and bring it to a spiritual and personal perfection
which is closer to that of God. ’•

3. Is it, then, through man that the universe attains
its end?

a. St. Thomas clearly teaches this. He exposes it from two
points of view :
1) Prime matter, first of all, is in potency to the form
of an element (which wc today call an elemental particle) ; thus
disposed, it is in potency to a mixed form (which we call atom,
then molecule, and then “ organic ” molecule) ; under a mixed
form, it is in potency to a vegetable soul; disposed by the latter,
it is in potency to a sensitive soul. Finally, disposed by a
sensitive soul, it is in potency to an intellective soul. This
potentiality is shown in the process of substantial change, and,
especially, in human generation.
Now, in a universe where beings are subject to generation
and corruption, we find no form more elevated towards which
matter is directed than “ humanized ” matter. " It is, therefore,
the human soul which is the highest degree of all cosmic
generation, it is that to which matter tends as its final form...
Man is thus the end of universal generation. ’’40

2) The conservation of things shows a similar order.
Beings which arc the materials for the construction of a superior
being also help in its preservation. Man makes use of all kinds
of beings, for nourishment, clothing, means of locomotion,
working instruments, etc. “ And above all this, the sensible
universe serves him in the realization of an always increasing
intellectual knowledge. ”
»»S.C.G, Bk. Ill, ch. 22.
* S.C.G, Bk. Ill, ch. 22.

THE END OF THE WORLD

261

b. This is true, but we arc hardly concerned here with any
more than the terrestrial world, the sun and the earth. What
use does man make of the rest — the vast invisible reaches
of the universe? The far-off galaxies arc neither materials
for his body nor aids in sustaining his life. This is true even
of the planets, which arc citizens, like the earth, of the solar city.41
Must we suppose that, scattered through the far-flung
archipelagos of our universe, there are other solar and planetary
systems inhabited by some kind of reasonable animal? Some
astronomers have fancied such an hypothesis, but there have
been few facts to give it much confirmation. Yet could we say
that it has any solid probability? 42
c. Our evaluation would be decisive if man were
constituted the absolute end of the universe, and especially
if he were considered under the title of chief member of the
universe. But if man is marching towards a future beyond
the universe, and this by reason of his knowledge and the free
orientation which it allows him, then two truths emerge, which
clarify the difficulty :
1) The whole universe, as vast as it is, serves man with
matter and light for his thought, and serves also as educator
and guide for his will. The far-off galaxies are, for him, witnesses
of the Almighty Power and Sovereign Liberty of the Creator.
2) The universe penetrates the thought of man via
sensation, and attains God and glorifies Him through man.
This will be more completely the case if man must attain
Beatitude not only in his spirit, but in his resurrected body
as well.
d. We can conclude : The universe would have no finality
without man. As a matter of fact, what good is a universe
teeming with almost unimaginable riches, if there is no being
able to know it, and through it, to know God, its Designer?
Undoubtedly, it would be known by God, but it would teach
“ A. Ancel, Métaphysique Générale, pp. 6S2-6S3.
“ Science et Vie (December, 1954), p. 526 and Revue des Deux Mondes
(January, 1955)-

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NATURE

Him nothing, would give Him nothing. Could pure spirits
know it, and because of it, praise God? No. Pure spirits
can receive nothing from a material universe, since they are
immaterial and have no senses with which to come in contact
with it. If they knew the universe, it would have to be through
a direct revelation from God. Thus it would seem useless for
the universe to exist if this were the situation. When we see
a face, we have nothing to learn from a mirror which reflects it.
The universe has no meaning, no end, unless there exists an
intelligent being who forms his thought through sensations.
It is certainly man who gives the universe a meaning, a finality.

4. Will the world, then, come to an end? Will it, one
day, cease to exist, leaving no traces? An affirmative answer
to this is likely, if we consider that man will not always inhabit
the earth, and that all organic life will disappear from the
universe. Thus it seems that the universe would have lost its
reason for being, and could only be annihilated. 43
However, this would be considering the universe only
under the aspect of a passing service to a humanity on the
march. Once arrived at this perfection, would humanity lose
interest in its birthplace, in its mother earth, in its teacher
and the vehicle of its ideas? Or, must we not, on the contrary,
conceive a universe perpetuated through matter which Iras
become stabilized, and which the resurrected bodies of men
will have as an object for their returned senses? This,
undoubtedly, is a secondary theme, but completely natural
for man's intellectual, esthetic and, especially, religious
contemplation.
Nevertheless, the world will have an end in a true sense.
The precise relation which links it with terrestrial man will
definitely cease. If it is, actually, for man, an aid, a light,
a guide, it is also an obstacle, peril, enigma and temptation.
But it is man, inasmuch as he is on his way towards his proper
end, who gives to the world this twofold value. Once man is
perfected, so will the world be; but since man will endure forever,
«* A. Ancel, Métaphysique Générale, pp. 728-731.

THE END OF THE WORLD

263

both body and soul, once he is perfected, then it will be necessary
that the world also endure forever; but perfected even as he,
with him and through him, for his happiness and, therefore,
for the glory of God.
CONCLUSION

We have sought to know the nature and cause of the
corporeal world.
No light has seemed superfluous among those which reason
has projected on these problems. The confused witnesses
of ordinary sense perception, once analyzed, have furnished us
with precious evidence. The lights of the positive sciences,
which are more precise than the former, but oriented by method
to other questions, have directly revealed nothing of what we
are looking for. Science seems intent on depriving us of empirical
data, by imposing other empirical data, which are different
and even contrary at first glance. However, if, like those first
data of experience, they issue from a reasonable source, then
they can only agree with them and be added to them definitively.
Once real data have been collected, they must be understood.
The reality of substance and of multiple phenomena which
modify it imposes hylomorphism. No violence is necessary
to explain organic life in the context of this doctrine. Living
or not, the corporeal individual is an essence composed of
prime matter and substantial form which is at the same time
specific and individual.
The existence of individuals which begin placed us before
a new mystery. Bodies are causes of passage to being, of
beginning. They are not at all causes of existence, or of all that
is in existence. They arc not even the cause of the determination
of their own activity, i.e., of their own natural finality.
Is the world, so imposing in its totality, going to furnish
the complete explanation of the existences contained in it?
Not at all ! It reveals its contingency and, therefore, its
insufficiency to explain the mechanism of efficient causes. It
exists only in dependence on a Creative Cause.
N.Y. 17. —19

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NATURE

Nature, in its turn, unveils the contingency of its
determinism, and, by that, its inability to establish the
orientation of its movements. It exists only in dependence
on an Intelligence which wills it in full liberty, and which reveals
the splendor of its beauty in the multiple facets of nature.
Therefore, the metaphysical study of the world can not be
completed in a consideration of the world. It must be continued
in the rational study of an intelligent and free Creator whose
existence, from now on, we will take as established.

Thus, cosmology leads us to theodicy.

APPENDIX

THE WORLD AS SEEN BY MARXISM
AND EXISTENTIALISM

Two contemporary positions offer us a vision of the world,
completely different from that which we have just expounded,
which has been largely extracted from scientific discoveries,
thanks to the intuitions of the Greeks, and Christian reflection.
To use these contemporary positions in the construction
of a system would be difficult. They are not made up of
theoretical theses, and are not especially concerned with
metaphysical problems. They are philosophies of action and
practical conduct. They have an aim, and they judge everything
according to that aim, combating as erroneous every judgment
which is opposed to theirs. In this, they are not very open
to a discussion which would seek to distinguish the true from
the false. One does not discuss an aim, one chooses it. Marxism
is one choice. Existentialism is another.

This choice, however, is also expressed in ideas. Even if
this choice is simply lived, it still shows directing ideas. There
is, therefore, at least an implicit and lived metaphysics found
among the Marxists and the disciples of Sartre.
To know is not useless. The knowledge of contraries is
science itself, says Aristotle. Truth stands out in bold relief
against a background of errors. In error, there is ordinarily
some truth, no matter how disfigured or contaminated. That
which resists error in error itself proves to be a truth which
is natural to human reason. To be acquainted with some of the
crossroads in this labyrinth of contemporary thought will be
useful for directing one’s own thought, and helpful in guiding
others.

I.

THE MARXIST WORLD

Karl Marx (1818-1883) and his friend Engels arc the
founders of Marxism. Its great authors, who, in their way, may
be likened to the “ Fathers of the Church, *’ are Lenin and
Stalin.

A. Dialectical materialism is the Marxist method set up
in opposition to metaphysics, and claiming to be simply the
reflection of the material world’s characteristics on the human
mind. Its four fundamental principles, according to Stalin,1
are the following :
1. Consider each phenomenon in its indissoluble link
with its conditions. "Nature... is a united and coherent
whole, wherein objects... depend on each other, and condition
each other reciprocally. ” A bsolute determinism.
2. Consider phenomena in their development, i.e., as
forming a history, wherein there is an unceasing cycle of birth,
development and death. Nature is an “ incessant development. ”
Universal evolutionistn.
3. Consider this development as leading to more and more
complex and differential qualitative states, by means of quanti­
tative changes.
Nature transforms quantitative growth,
necessarily and by leaps, into qualitative changes. Thus water
at 100° C. turns from liquid to steam. Evolutional progression.

4. Consider this progress as produced by contradictions,
which are inherent to objects through a struggle between contrary
1 Sec G. A. Wetter. Dialectical Materialism (New York : Praeger,
i960), ch. 3, pp. 311-333, a'so J- V. Stalix, Dialectical and Historical
Materialism (New York : Int. Pubs.. 1940), pp. 7-15.

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APPENDIX

tendencies. The objects and phenomena of nature " all have
a negative and a positive side, a past and a future. ” Synthesis
of contraries.
Only this fourth principle merits at most the title of dialectic.
It is borrowed from Hegel, but is used in a sense opposed to his
ideas.1 For Hegel, it is the idea which is differentiated, in
passing from one notion (thesis) to a contrary notion (antithesis)
in order to raise them all at once to a richer notion (synthesis),
and which, by this very fact, constitutes the becoming of nature
and human history. For Marx, on the other hand, nature
replaces Idea (God). It is nature which is differentiated, and
because this is so, it furnishes the human mind with its rule
of knowledge, and even the very condition of its existence.

B. Materialism is the philosophical doctrine of Marxism,
which is at the same time the heir of the ancient materialism
of the Epicureans (Lucretius), of the Encyclopedists (Diderot,
Helvetius), of the scientists of the 19th century (Haeckel,
Le Dantec), and yet in qualitative opposition to it by reason of
the suppleness of its new dialectical method.3
The ancient materialism was “ mechanistic, ” because the
mechanical sciences were the only ones which were sufficiently
developed. Hence its effort to reduce all change to local
movement, and its illusory conviction that nature always
repeats the same movements. Contemporary science has proven
just the opposite. There is a qualitative progress. There is
a real history.
However, the essential characteristics of materialism remain
in Marxism :

1. Matter and matter alone really exists. “ Space and time
are the fundamental forms of every existence. An existence
outside of time is as monstrous an absurdity as an existence
* See G. A. Wetter, o/>. cit., p. 358, and p. 365. See also
F. Grégoire, Hegel et Fuerbach, pp. 26-71.
• See G. Politzf.r, Principes Élémentaires de Philosophie, pp. 1x3-116;
C. Angrand, Cours de Philosophie, Intr., pp. 19-24. These two works
are destined for the formation of militant Communists.

THE WORLD AS SEEN BY MARXISM

271

outside of space. ” 4 This is the cardinal dogma and conclusion
of pure empiricism.
2. “ The independence of matter in relation to mind and the
dependence of thought in relation to matter ” 6 is the second
dogma inherited from the past, which is supposedly backed up
today by scientific experience :
a. In biology, we have evidence of “ a number of movements
which are accomplished in an entirely mechanical way, without
any kind of thoughts. ” 6 The behavior resulting from instinct
and habits is made up of simple determined reactions to excitants
in the environment.
b. Moreover, life and man are comparatively late-comers
to the cosmos. They are “ the product of a very long evolution. "
Intelligence is formed gradually, as living structure becomes more
and more differentiated.

3. " The impossibility of the creation of the world ” is a third
dogma, and hardly different from the preceding two. “ A God
would have to exist to create the world... there would have
to be a moment at which no moment could possibly exist. ”
Moreover, “ no one has ever had any experience with the mind
which is asserted to have created the atom and space, therefore,
it does not exist. ” 7
4. “The world and its laws arc perfectly knowable:
.. .there does not exist in the world a thing which is unknowable,
only things which are still unknown, which will be discovered
and known and employed through scientific means. ” 8 All this
is a denial of Kant’s position on “ thing-in-itsclf, " which he
sees as the unknowable heart of phenomena, and is an outright
proclamation of scientific dogma. Science and experience will
* F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, p. 62.
* J. V. Stalin, Dialectical and Historical .Materialism, pp. 15-16.
* In regard to reflexes, see L. L. Woodruff, Foundations of Biology,
P- 377. PP- 466-467. pp. 552-553’ Translated quotation from C. Angrand, Cours de Philosophie,
Intr., p. 24.
•J. V. Stalin, Dialectical and Historical .Materialism, p. 17.

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APPENDIX

put an end to all mysteries. No other knowledge than scientific
knowledge has any value.
Through this dogma, we can understand such formulas
as the following :
" The materialist philosopher, like our own Encyclopedists,
has the mission in every age to make known the results of
science to all... That is his task... he is a popularizer of the
sciences. ’’ " Materialism is nothing more than the scientific
explanation of the universe. ” “ Materialism is the scientific
conception of the world, ” and again, " We must choose between
God and science. " •
And still more specifically : " Marxism is a scientific
sociology, implying a history, an economic theory, and a scientific
politics, ’’ in a word, science as it is applied in the regulation
of human affairs.10
This reciprocity between science and materialism is professed
with the same bigoted intransigence by G. Tessier, when he says :
“ Science must be materialism. ” Those who are most tempted
to look for a finalist solution among the scientists are the
biologists. Now those who often “ try to keep themselves
neutral on this question, or attempt a type of agnosticism, drop
it as soon as they begin to work, and conduct themselves in their
experiments as honest materialists. ” 11
C. Consequently, matter, in the eyes of the Marxists, is
entirely explained or explainable by the different sciences,
and in particular, by the general evolution of the universe.
And every scientific truth is also interpreted as a confir­
mation of dialectical materialism.

1. The generalized relativity of Einstein shows each event
as dependent on all the regions of the universe. Thus a
* Translated quotations from G. Politzf.r, Principes Élémentaires
de Philosophie, pp. 21, 34 and 57.
••Sec G. A. Wetter, Dialectical Materialism, pp. 249-253.
11 Translated quotations from G. Tessier, Matérialisme Dialectique
et Biologie, p. 7. See also G. A. Wetter, op. cit., pp. 442-469.

THE WORLD AS SEEN BY MARXISM

273

justification of the first principle of the dialectic : “ Everything
acts on everything else. ”
2. The second principle of Carnot expresses the irrevers­
ibility of evolution (second principle of the dialectic) : “ Nature
always evolves towards the most probable states. Consequently,
nature is purely mechanical. It has a blindfold over its eyes
— in other words — God does not exist. ” 11
12
3. Quantity is changed into quality. A host of particular
facts testify to this. The last addition of weight to a mass
breaks the rope which supports the mass; every critical value
attained at the time of a qualitative change produces a new'
quality; the novae explode bruskly because their energy has
gone beyond a certain determined level.
Every biological evolution which terminates in human
thought is done by a similar passing over of a host of qualitative
thresholds : matter, life, sensation, thought.

4. The struggle between contradictions is inscribed in the
facts of equilibrium, from heavenly bodies, which are drawn
towards a center, whether of their galaxy or their planetary
system, and maintained at a certain distance by centrifugal
force; to atoms, whose negatrons are held to the nucleus by
electric attraction, yet kept away from it by reason of their
rapid rotation around it. It is again the same struggle which is
indicated in the facts of explosion, of materialization of energy,
or of the creation of energy by the loss of mass.
Thus “ nature operates dialectically and not metaphys­
ically. ” w
5. However, materialistic determinism admits a certain
difficulty in maintaining its position in the face of some of the
new conceptions in physics.
“ The recent quantum theory, which criticizes determinism,
has been the signal for an armed rising against materialism. ”
11 Translated quotations from Fr. Halbwachs, Matérialisme Dialec­
tique et Sciences Physico-Chimiques, pp. 4, 6, 10, 13, and 16-19. S°c also
G. A. Wetter, op. cit., pp. 416-424; pp. 436-442.
11 Translated quotation from Fr. Halbwachs, op. cit.. pp. 21-22.

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APPENDIX

In particular, the relations “ of non-certainty ” show that " the
particle possesses a certain margin of liberty within which it
escapes our vigilance." "With the wave theory... we are
content to learn what the chances are for finding a particle
at such and such a point, or for determining the probability
of its presence. " 14
Here is the answer : " We are completely indifferent to the
theoretical possibility of perfectly knowing the position of
particles. For us, the world is something other than the knowl­
edge of it. As a matter of fact, we believe in the nature of things,
and only one truth binds us, and that is, that things have a cause
and effectively obey laws... Lack of certainty on our part in
no way implies indétermination. " 14

Although it can not be said here that science imposes
determinism, nevertheless, we believe it, because it is " a charac­
teristic of matter, which is fundamental for the building of a
materialist conception of the world. "
On this point the Marxist must recognize that he is venturing
beyond the frontiers of science. He is in the domain of faith,
and it is in this domain that we find any profession of absolute
determinism.
D. Life will be explained in the same way by a twofold
plan of spontaneous generation and an evolution of species,
realized without any finality, through a blind determinism.
1. The criticism of finalism consists principally in this :
All progress in biological science lies in the discovery of a
deterministic explanation, which throws out the finalist theory,
and obliges it to fall back to another position.
Thus, biology has shown that every physiological function
is " accomplished by a succession of physico-chemical pheno“ Ibid., p. 19.
“ Ibid., p. 23.
»• Ibid., p. 22. See also in regard to matter above G. A. Writer,
op. cit., pp. 406-415.

THE WORLD AS SEEN BY MARXISM

275

mena. ” Thus species are formed mechanically, as is taught by
“ Darwinism... today more alive than ever. ” 17

2. The affirmation of determinism is posed as indispensable
to science.
" How would we be able to work at science, if we did not
believe in the reality of the material world, if we did not believe
that this world is intelligible, that it obeys knowable laws, if we
did not have the certitude that no supernatural legality is
superimposed on natural legality, that... no God could ever
falsify the laws of matter, nor impose His movement on it? ” 1S
Biology is invoked next to substantiate the four points of
the Marxist dialectic. Particularly : " the case of metamorphosis,
a violent crisis interspersing the development of many species,
shows very well the place which the logic of contradiction and
the principle of qualitative progress through leaps, ought to
hold in biology. ” Thus the tadpole is changed into a frog, as
soon as the concentration of thyroxin, which has been increasing
bit by bit, has reached a determined level.19

Briefly, life is completely explained as a necessary succession
of phases, which become qualitatively richer and richer, from
the first appearance of life to a highly complex molecule, or in
the progressive formation of the diverse species, or in the
development of an individual from an egg.
" With our evolutional conception of the universe, there is
absolutely no place for a creator or a law-giver, ” writes Engels.
When speaking of the “ Origin of Species, ” published by Darwin
in 1858, Marx, as well as Engels, had this to say : " It is this
book which holds the natural foundation of our theory. ”50
’’Translated quotations from G. Tessier, Matérialisme Dialectique
et Biologic, p. 4.
” Ibid., p. 7. The intelligibility of the world is here reduced to
determinism.
” Ibid.. p. 12. Sec in regard to the above quotations, G. A. Wetter,
op. cit., pp. 448-451.
M Translated quotations taken from Correspondance Marx-Engels
(Paris : Costes), VI, p. 117.

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APPENDIX

E. Discussion

1. Some truths which appear in the development of Marxian
materialism can be heartily accepted. No one has thought to
deny them with the exception of a few idealists.
a. Matter exists really distinct from the mind. This is
against Berkeley and the absolute idealists, Hegel, among
others.
b. An experience with matter is indispensable for anyone
who wishes to know nature. It furnishes man with a true
knowledge of the world, at least in part, which is transformed
into science. This is against the “ thing-in-itself, ” as proposed
by Kant.
c. Matter is a nature, i.e., it is transformed according to a
determined order, which makes it knowable for us and expressable
in scientific laws.
d. Nature, in general, is a movement, a union of contraries,
a progress wherein richer and richer qualities come into existence,
an irreversible concrete time constituting a history, and finally
an authentic determinism.
2. But, if Marxism, with reason, revindicates these truths
of common sense, against Hegel and other idealists, it does
wrong to monopolize them as its own private property, or as
its very own discovery, especially when it aligns them with
grave errors, of which the following seem to be the principal
ones.
a. Science is the complete knowledge of nature; therefore
every metaphysical question is useless, and every ultra-scientific
statement absurd. Nevertheless, this critical position contains
a twofold metaphysical affirmation :
1) Existence in nature is expressed completely in the
characteristics of space and time, in phenomena, wherein nothing
exists which is not spatial and temporal.
2) Experience, as man undergoes it, is sufficient to
constitute science, and man need not contribute anything to it
by a personal contribution, by a spiritual activity.

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277

As all scientism, Marxism can exclude metaphysics only by
professing two metaphysical dogmas. If these dogmas were
true, there might at least be room for discussion — but even
the existence of science condemns them.
There is no science at all, actually, unless it is universal.
A scientific law does not announce a single fact, whether past
or future. True, it makes individual facts understandable,
but only by arranging them in a class of facts. A law has neither
sense nor truth, unless the nature of which it speaks implies
a repetition of the same facts found in the definition, unless
there is something really existing in it which absolutely goes
beyond these present conditions of space and time.

But if the existence of a nature implies the universal, still
nature does not contain the universal as a particular piece of
space and time. Therefore, the human mind must give to the
universalizablc element in nature its proper universal character.
There must be an activity which is neither spatial nor temporal,
which goes beyond this point and this moment, in a word, an
activity which is altogether different from material activity.
b. Absolute determinism is no longer justified by science.
Science is content with a partial determinism. To affirm a
complete determinism is, again, to make an affirmation which
is no longer scientific but metaphysical, such as the statement :
" The whole of reality is knowable through the mediation of
laws. ” But if science can not of itself cither condemn or affirm
the hypothesis of absolute determinism, reflection on the
characteristics of a law forces us to recognize that the strictly
individual necessarily escapes law, and can not be predicted
except through statistics and the calculation of probabilities.

c. Finally, the description of facts is taken as an explanation.
To describe the evolution of an organism by pointing out the
more and more differentiated states, which it possesses one after
the other, is certainly to reveal something which is true. The
same is true of describing the history of the universe and the
history of biological species. In this description, more always
follows less, in this sense, that more always comes from less and

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APPENDIX

is explained by less. Thus it is that I understand this water is
boiling because I recall hearing it whistling earlier.
However, there is another kind of explanation. Let us
take electric current as an example. If the latter were cut off,
the fact that the water whistled in the kettle could not lead me
to the fact that it was boiling. And the current itself will not
be explained without a reference to the directing idea which
installed the turbines at the foot of a waterfall, and without
the other idea, which was my intention to be supplied with
boiling water.
Why then does Marxism hold that the description of
evolution and that of the laws of nature are a sufficient
explanation? To have recourse to a blind necessity, or to a
complete determinism, is simply to take the easiest way out,
as when one answers a child : " It’s so, because it’s so. ” So,
science is finally summed up in this single answer. Can that
satisfy the legitimate and even obligatory curiosity of man?
Moreover, does not the man who knows have the duty of
questioning himself about the use of the power which science
gives him? But according to whàt criterion will he judge such
a use to be good or bad? He must have some other knowledge
than science, a knowledge which supposedly satisfies his curiosity
about “ Why, ” " Value ” and " Finality. ’’ No, chronological
succession is not the only explanation of nature. This succession
has not, in itself, any meaning, and therefore it can not make
us understand anything. The knowledge of it, however, is
useful, because it makes us know what it is to understand, and
because it furnishes those who wish to understand with precious
indices.

II.

THE EXISTENTIALIST WORLD

Contemporary existentialism is no more a complete novelty
than is Marxism. It is, like the latter, a child of ancient atomism,
and, in the manner of Socrates, invites man to know himself.
It is “ a reaction by a philosophy of man against the excesses

THE WORLD AS SEEN BY EXISTENTIALISM

279

found in the philosophy of ideas, and in the philosophy of
things. ” *’
Curiously enough, contemporary existentialism, as well as
Marxism, took its rise in the reaction of the Dane
Kierkegaard, against the idealist determinism of Hegel. Marx,
however, contradicted Hegel by professing collectivism and a
materialistic determinism, while Kierkegaard remains an idealist,
in this sense that he believes in God, and protests against
determinism in the name of the personal liberty of man. French
existentialism, and by this we understand that of Jean-Paul
Sartre (for the Catholic, Gabriel Marcel, does not like to be
labelled as an existentialist), is a direct descendant of Heidegger,
who was himself a disciple of Husserl, and it is strictly atheistic,
as was the thought of Heidegger.
Essentially concerned with man, existentialism gives a
secondary place to the world, and considers it chiefly in its value
for man.

A. The method of Sartre is that of Husserl, but transformed
as to its implications.
Husserl (1859-1939) reflected deeply on the Cartesian
" cogito, ” but, along with Kant, he could see no more than
a phenomenal ego there, contrary to what Descartes himself
had seen, namely, ego-substance. Husserl’s “ phenomenological ’’
method consists in " describing phenomena such as they are
presented, and the ego to whom they are presented. ” ** It
demands “ the bracketing ” of every other certitude, except
that of phenomena, and simply consists in their analysis.
But every phenomenon is the consciousness of something.
The “ cogito ” is meaningless without a “ cogitatum. ”
Consciousness, wherein the ego is essentially “ intentional, ” is
directed towards some object. Here objects are reintroduced.
11 Translated quotation from E. Movnier, Introduction aux Existen­
tialismes. p. 8. See Kurt F. Reinhardt, The Existentialist lievolt (New
York : Ungar), pp. 1-24. An excellent background study.
“ Quotation is translation from R. Verneaux, Leçons sur TExisten­
tialisme, p. 45. See also James Collins, The Existentialists (Chicago :
Regncry), pp. 27-31.

N-Y. 17. — 20

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APPENDIX

but only as they are objects for me, or inasmuch as they are
phenomena. “ In perceiving them (things), I make them exist
(for me), and I perceive them such as they exist (for me). " M

Therefore, this method leads to an absolute evidence.
But it bears only on the pure ego and its pure objects, on “ the
pure flux of the lived, ” says Husserl. Philosophy ought to
limit itself to describing this situation. It should “ reveal ’’
the data. It neither poses problems nor solves them. Its
indefinite task is to explore that which is presented to
consciousness (objects) and the consciousness which observes
(the " intentions ’’ or aims, the attitudes of the ego before
objects). Only on this condition “ will philosophy have the
foundation of an exact science. ” “
Heidegger accepts the method, but gives it a realist
implication. He sees this method revealing consciousness as a
transcendental reality, and he so applies it in his work, Being
and Time.
Sartre, likewise, in his work Being and Nothingness, follows
the same basic method, as is indicated in the sub-title of liis
work, " An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. ” He would
like to realize the ambition of establishing a theory of being,
which he feels has not been done satisfactorily by Heidegger.

B. Being-in-itself is the expression, which, in Sartre,
designates the existent in its brute state, the datum such as it
appears before consciousness, the world as unconscious and
unformed.
1. Does this term contradict the explicit affirmation of the
method that “only phenomena exist?” No. It certainly
designates a reality, something which does not exist for me
only (i.e., when I know it or desire it). Nevertheless, it does
not signify a thing-in-itself, ” a substance. It designates a
phenomenon, or rather a series of phenomena, with nothing
*» Quotations arc translations from R. Vernkaux, op. tit., n. 50
See J. Collins, op. tit., pp. 42-45.
« R. Vbrneaux, op. cil., p. 46.

THE WORLD AS SEEN BY EXISTENTIALISM

281

hidden behind them, without anything potential in them;
yet, a series which in its multiple aspects goes beyond the
experience which I have of any one or ones among them.
To speak of the in-itself is to speak of the existent before
its appearance to the ego-subject, considered as confronting me,
as transcending me. I am aware of it, yes ; but I do not assimilate
it. Thus, there is a phenomenon, which exists not only insofar
as it appears, but which is the very foundation of its appear­
ance to me, in a word, a phenomenon with a transphenomenal
core.

2. The characteristics of the in-itself recall those of the
being of Parmenides24 (BN, Ixiv-lxix). It is that which is.
The principle of identity is valid for it, whereas it is not valid
for being-for-itself or consciousness (which is made from being
and from nothing).
It is, therefore, uncreated. Creation is impossible. For,
either created being would be immanent to God, and therefore
not in itself, but in God; or it would be outside of God, and
therefore in itself, and sufficient without God.
It is neither affirmable nor deniable, neither active nor
passive, neither conscious nor immanent to consciousness.
These notions suppose a consciousness which judges, or envisages
an end, or knows itself; but being-in-itself supposes only itself.
It is itself, nothing more and nothing less.
Therefore, it is opaque, massive, full, immobile, since it is
simply itself. It is not deduced or capable of explanation, since
ideas must be used in a deduction, and active beings must be
implied in explaining things by ends or aims. It is. Therefore
it is a pure fact, absurd, contingent, superfluous.

Such is his translation into ideas of the intuitive experience
of disgust which the brute existence of things arouses in us.
*» J. P. Sartre. Being and Nothingness, trans, by Hazel E. Barnes
(New York : Philosophical Library, 1956). It is this work that the
initials BN refer to with page numbers as found there.

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APPENDIX

3. Dcing-in-itselj exists also in man. It is facticity (that
which has the characteristic of a pure and simple fact). It is
encountered at four principal levels :

a. In my body, " a contingent form which the necessity of
my contingency takes ” (BN, 328).
*
**
b. In my past, insofar as it has been separated from the
region of my possibles. I can no longer change my past. " One, "
e., anyone, can write the history of it as of a thing, or define it.
i.
It has fallen back from the for-itself into the in-itself.
c. In my situation, opposed as it is to my liberty. My
situation limits my possibilities. My first situation is the very
fact of my liberty. I am condemned to be a free being.
d. In my death : it transforms my life into a thing. It is
outside of my possibilities, and even destroys all of them.
By his death man returns to the in-itself from whence he came,
without any possible explanation.

C. The world is not being-in-itself; it is being-in-itself
insofar as it is known or unveiled; it is the phenomenon of
being-in-itself.
" Human reality makes a world exist... I am the being
by which ' there is ’ being. ” (BN, 248, cf. 300-01). “ There is
being because the for-itself is such that it has being. The
characteristic of phenomenon comes to being through the
for-itself ” (BN, 619).
Merleau-Ponty makes the following comment : “ Scientific
views according to which I am a moment of the world arc always
naive and hypocritical, because they must suppose, without
mentioning it, this other view, that of consciousness, by which
the world is first disposed around me and begins to exist for
me. ” 28
* This translation docs not correspond with that of H. E. Barnes,
but is thought to be more exact.
** A translated quotation from M. Merleau-Ponty. Phénoménologie
de la Perception, p. ni.

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283

Nevertheless, things are not in consciousness. Consciousness
is transcended in attaining the world : “ All that is intention
in mv present consciousness is directed towards the outside ”
(BN, liii-liv).
1. THE FOR-ITSELF AND THE WORLD. How do being
and consciousness communicate? Such is the position of
the problem (BN, Ixvi). We must at the same time avoid
both realism and idealism. Sartre gives the following answer
(BN, 617-618) : “ The for-itself and the in-itself are reunited by
a synthesizing liaison which is no more than the for-itself....
The for-itself appears as a small denial of being which takes its
origin in the very bosom of being, and this denial of being is
sufficient to cause a total upheaval in being-in-itself. This
upheaval is the world ” (BN, 617-618).
“ Why does the for-itself take its rise from being? ”
(BN 619).... " Questions on the origin of being, or the origin
of the world, arc devoid of sense when they receive an answer
that poses as an ontological one, ” i.e., in the for-itself (for the
why supposes consciousness).
Metaphysics must decide which of these two solutions is
preferable: (1) phenomenon is unique, it is the world; it has
two aspects of being : the in-itself and the for-itself; (2) phenom­
enon is twofold : consciousness and being; a metaphysics of
nature could be attempted from the action which joins these
two planes. It is not " being and nothing ” which attempts
to solve the problem (see BN, 625).
2. " These ” or individualities.
" How can the rising of the for-itself to being, fashion a
whole and these.3 ” (BN, 181). There is a whole, because there
is a whole which I am not, from which 1 separate myself : " thus
knowledge is the world ” (BN, 182). And the being which I ain
not now, insofar as it appears against the totality of being, is
the this (BN, 182-183).
Thus the world vanishes as a totality into a simple collection
of " these ” : it is therefore space : " Space is neither the back­
ground nor the form, but an abstractive background, insofar as

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APPENDIX

it is always able to be separated into forms; it is neither
continuous, nor discontinuous, but a permanent passage from
continuous to discontinuous ” (BN, 184). As far as localization
is concerned, it is only a name : “ (Spatial) determination is a
nothing which belongs neither to a thing nor to consciousness
by any title of internal structure, whose only reality is to be
named " (BN, 186).
3. the cleavage (between this and that) “ comes from
being (curious... because we have said that it is full and
undifferentiated), but there is no cleavage nor separation except
by reason of the presence in all being of the for-itself’’....
“ Quantity... is pure exteriority. It depends in no way on the
adding of terms, and is only the affirmation of their
independence ” (BN, 190).
the categories “ only indicate the infinite diversity
of the ways in which the liberty of the for-itself can realize the
indifference of being ” (BN, 192).
Permanence, potentialities, probabilities, essences, arc so
many unveilings of being as thing, simply by the presence of the
for-itself.
" And the thing, insofar as it is itself, and at the same time
the indication of tasks to be accomplished... is an instrument
or utensil....” “The original relation of things among
themselves... is, therefore, the relation of being used." The
scientist tends to reduce it to completely external relations
(BN, 201).
4. the sense of the world : “ The totality of utensils
is the exact correlative of my possibilities. And since
I am my possibilities, the order of utensils in the world is an
image of my possibilities projected into the in-itself, that is,
a projection of what I am. But I can never decipher this image
of the world. I adapt myself to it in and through action ”
(BN, 200).
We " run after a possible which our very running makes
appear, which is nothing more than our running, and which
is thus defined as being beyond reach. We run towards ourselves.

THE WORLD AS SEEN BY EXISTENTIALISM

285

and we are, by this fact, a being which is not able to catch
itself. In one sense this course is meaningless, for its term is
never given... And in another sense we can not refuse it this
meaning which it rejects, since, despite all, the possible is the
sense of the for-itself ” (BN, 202).
5. the time of the world. “ A universal time comes
into the world by reason of the for-itself ” (BN, 201). How?
“ It is in time that my possibles appear at the horizon
of the world, which possibles make my world ” (BN, 105).
Time is not a Kantian a priori form. “ The ‘ this ’ is
unveiled in a temporal fashion not because it is refracted through
an a priori form, but because it is unveiled by an unveiling
whose very being is temporalization ” (BN, 205), i.e., by an act
of knowledge which is essentially temporal. In this sense, the
time of the for-itself is projected into the in-itself, and constitutes
the time of the world.

6. substantial changes. That which comes to be
in the appearance of this or in its disappearance is something
of which we are ignorant. We only know that something has
happened (BN, 206-207).
“ The quasi-before of an appearance, and the quasi-after
of a disappearance, can find no place in the fullness of being.
It is only... against the background of the world that a this
which was not..., can appear, through a for-itself.” How?
" We grasp the this, which has appeared as being already in the
world, as its own absence, insofar as we ourselves are present
to the world from which it is absent ” (BN, 207).
7. laws of nature : they too are dependent on my
liberty, which is thus chained to a determinism which it has
created.

" Between brute existente there can be no relation. It is
liberty which lays the basis of relations by grouping existente
into utensil-complexes, and it is liberty which projects the
reason of these relations, i.e., their end. It is precisely because
I project myself towards an end through a world of relations

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APPENDIX

that I meet sequences, linked series and complexes, and I must
determine myself to act according to these laws ” (BN, 551).
Thus the world appears to me, both in perception, and even
in science, in the measure that, tending towards ends, I endow
the in-itself with determined characteristics, which are cither
hostile or favorable to my project, beyond which my liberty
can not go.
D.

Observations

1. THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD, which is idealist
in its origin in the pure Cogito, and still idealist in its
term with Husserl, in the hands of Sartre is an attempt to
bypass both realism and idealism together, an attempt to reach
transphenomenal being. This, however, is impossible. Etienne
Gilson states with the authority of a historian : " We can begin
with Descartes, but we can finish only with Berkeley or Kant. ” 27
From a being given in a perception, one can draw only the
existence of the perceived, and never the existence of something
other than the perceiver.
Sartre discovers the /nw»sphenomenal, the /rawscendent,
i.e., the in-itself and the immanent, which is the pre-reflexive
cogito (the existing subject, before consciousness reflects on
itself); but what can he say of one or the other, except that
one is not the other, except that one is correlative to the other?
Where does he sec in this a progress beyond Kant? The in-itself
is unknowable, and consequently, so is the for-itself as an
existing thing. Doesn’t Sartre acknowledge this? " Actually,
the self can not be grasped as real existence... The self
represents... a way of not being its own coincidence”
(BN, 76-77).

Instead of a going beyond Kant, is this not rather a going
back to the phenomenalism of Hume? " Appearance docs not
refer to being as a Kantian phenomenon refers to a noumenon.
Since there is nothing hidden behind it, and since it refers only
” E. Gilson, Le Réalisme Méthodique, p. 5.

THE WORLD AS SEEN BY EXISTENTIALISM

287

to itself (and the total series of appearances), it cannot be
supported by a being other than itself ” (BN, 1-li). Isn’t this
the same as saying that the phenomenon, the appearance, is
being itself, and the only being? And when we say that an
appearance indicates only itself, how can we add “ and the
total scries of appearances ” without contradicting what was
just said? To avoid a contradiction, we must suppose an
internal unity of phenomena, which has traditionaliy been called
substance, essence or nature.
Sartre, then, does not seem to be able to escape from the
idealist phenomenalism, which he condemns, and it appears
that he is driven to say with it by his very method : “ Nothing
exists except conscious appearances. ”
Must we not, at least, expect omissions and negations in a
philosophy which makes the pretention of attaining being
through a method, which at the very least, makes abstraction
of it. It would be useful here to read the remark of Brunschvicg :
“ It is not certain, in any case, it is not demonstrable, that what
is neglected by the very nature of a method should actually
be negligible. ’’M

2. the BEING-IN-ITSELF of Sartre does not have the
characteristics of a veritable being.
“ A phenomenal existent can never be derived from another
existent, considered simply as existent, ” nor from a possible,
for “ the possible is a structure of the for-itself; .. .it belongs
to another region of being. Being-in-itself is neither possible,
nor impossible, it is ” (BN, Ixviii).
We may object to the above by posing two alternatives.
Either this statement means to say that in every consciousness,
in all knowledge, there is an existent thing whose mystery goes
beyond us and remains impenetrable for us, i.e., inexpressible
in attributes which are known to us. This is true, but by
speaking of it in the terms of the Sartrian in-itself, one utters
a paradox which creates a monumental error in the mind of the
‘•Translated quotation from L. Brunschvicg, Introduction à la
Philosophic de VEsprit.

288

APPENDIX

reader. By what right is being-in-itself constituted by these
negations, which can only designate it by what is inaccessible
for us? The for-itself is not the measure of being. Since it is,
the in-itself cannot fail to be its own essence, to have its sufficient
reason, its mode of activity; otherwise, it would be nothing at all.
Or the above statement of Sartre means to say that the
in-itself is a being constituted simply and purely by the aforesaid
characteristics. It is, in-itself, and excludes every other
qualification. Such a being is nothing more than an abstraction.
To call it the existent is to make it absurd and incomprehensible.
It lacks the stuff of being, because it is undetermined. It is
in-itself, but this self is not different from another individualized
being. It has the air of a Platonic idea fallen to the level of
unformed matter. It is said to be contingent, superfluous :
this is only too true. Therefore one suppresses it, instead of
investigating it completely. And if it is imposed as a datum
of consciousness, can conciousness dispense itself from holding
that it is thinkable, even while it is thinking about it? Whatever
consciousness applies itself to think about is to that degree
thinkable.
Actually Sartre is here reviving the argument of Parmenides,
when he treats the abstract idea of being as if it were an intuition
of the existent. He further aggravates the problem by excluding
the true Being, who is God, on behalf of a bastard being which
ought to be God, since it can not be created and suffices in itself,
yet which can not be God, since God is decreed impossible, and
the in-itself forbids all consciousness of self. Finally, the
in-itself appears as simply being matter, such as the materialist
dialectic of Marxism understands it — a place of hidden
contradictions and the foundation of consciousness. ’•
Moreover, Sartre opposes the in-itself and the for-itself to
the extent that he deems their fusion in an in-itself-for-itself
impossible, a fusion which would suppose an idea of God, a
fusion to which, according to Sartre, human liberty aspires.
** Gabriel Marcet, marks this latent materialism in Sartre in The
Philosophy of Existence, Eng. trans. Manya Harari (New York : Philosophi­
cal Library, X949), “ Essay on Existence and Human Freedom, ” p. 65.

THE WORLD AS SEEN BY EXISTENTIALISM

289

But on what grounds does he so oppose them? If the in-itself
is only an unknown for Sartre, how does he so clearly see in it
the impossibility of it being united to a for-itself? If the in-itself
is absurd, pure contingency, why refuse its being absurd in
another manner, i.e., having consciousness of itself? Could it
not be that the contingent fusion (in the Sartrean sense, i.e.,
independent of human liberty) of the contingent in-itself and of
contingent consciousness would be far less absurd than their
separation? The idea of God has never been the clearest in the
world; nevertheless, it clarifies that which without it would
be absurd.

As for the rest, the play of logic in Sartre’s demonstration
is an obvious sophism. The in-itself is treated as a mathematical
definition, although it must be taken to signify the fundamental
existent. A mathematical definition expresses the very essence
of its subject. A triangle is a triangle; it is nothing else, neither
red, nor sugared. By what right, then, does Sartre treat an
existent as if it were a pure essence closed in on itself. One of
the strongest assertions is that existence can not be reduced
to essence. This is a very basic truth, so why deny it? If the
in-itself is treated as an existent, one can not refuse its having
concrete attributes, nor can one reason from what the in-itself
is to the denial of the attributes of the for-itself. An existing
triangle can be red, cold, sugared, made out of paper or of
earth, the hat of a gendarme, or a pediment. Could not the
in-itself be also the for-itself, thinking, willing, acting, and
perhaps even creating? W. James ridiculed this in what he
called vicious intellectualism : to satisfy this tendency, the king
of England must be three persons : one governing the kingdom,
another loving his wife, and the third one looked at by the cat
of whom the proverb speaks : Even a cat may look at a king... .*°
3.

THE WORLD FOR ME

a. It is true that the existence of my liberty confers a
sense on the world, and even its meaning.
*Scc G. Picard, " L’Existentialisme de J. P. Sartre. ” in Mflanges
®
dr Science Religieuse (1946), p. 332.

290

APPENDIX

b. That the existence of my liberty gives to the world
its structure, the distinction between its individual beings, the
multiplicity of its kinds, the temporal succession of its changes,
and the determinism of its laws, is a paradox which offends
common sense, and is nothing more than a revival of idealistic
relativism. There is certainly an element of truth in these
ideas. If one wishes to say that my consciousness discovers
the world under such and such aspects by reason of varying
interests, varying human aims, and by that liberty which is
constitutive of human comportment, he is right. But discovering
is not creating. Docs the in-itself of the world have an internal
structure, a multiplicity, a course, a determinism? If so, why
seem to deny it? If not, no science is true, no truth about the
world is accessible to man.

c. What, then, is the reality of those characteristics under
which the world appears to me?

Are these characteristics those of the in-itself, only as they
are unveiled? Then I am cause only of the unveiling of the
world, and it is false to write : “ human reality makes the world
exist ” (BN, 248).
Are these characteristics only a projection of my aims on
the in-itself? Then, as R. Vemeaux judges it : “ Existentialism...
holds a position very similar to that of Kant. It professes...
a sort of masked idealism.... The two planes, ideal and real,
are heterogenous and without any possible communication. ” **
Arc these characteristics an ensemble of those of the in-itself
and those of my instinctive and free attention given to being?
Then they could be explained by an interdependence, a narrow
union between the for-itself and the in-itself, as expressed by
the Thomistic theory of abstraction. The universality of these
characteristics is the work of reason, but these characteristics
reflect a structure in things, which is capable of universalization,
because it concretizes a divine idea. Therefore the world is
truly that which we know about it ; but it does not exist in
*» R. Verneaüx, Leçons sur VExistentialisme, p. 183.
J. Collins, The Existentialists, p. 52.

See also

THE WORLD AS SEEN BY EXISTENTIALISM

291

the way that we think and speak about it. The world is also
that which we do not know but which, nevertheless, interests
us, without having to make of that knowledge a mere collection
of “ utensils. ” The taste for knowledge is not sated simply
by practical aims.

4. Finally, we can see in Being and Nothingness a de­
scription of certain attitudes of consciousness in relation to
being,92 which have no small merit in psychology.
The danger lies in taking these descriptions as solutions, as
we are invited to do in the problem as posed in Being and
Nothingness. The hasty reader is especially exposed to this
danger, and above all, in the literary works of Sartre.
The insufficiency of the phenomenological method to resolve
the problem of being seems, in any case, to be clearly enough
demonstrated by the trial which Sartre has attempted. He places
the absurd as his starting point, in the in-itself; he places it
again at the term, in the for-itself, which ends up being as
superfluous as the in-itself.
The existentialism of Sartre can thus be evaluated as a
demonstration “ per absurdum ” (as the logicians say) :

a. of the existence of God, which must necessarily be
admitted to assure the intelligibility of the world and the
soundness of reason ;
b. of a metaphysics of abstraction, which is necessary to
the truth of science.

” See John Wild, The Challenge of Existentialism (Bloomington:
Indiana U. P., 1955). PP- 236-240.

Il

PHILOSOPHICAL
PSYCHOLOGY

INTRODUCTION

A. The problem. Philosophical psychology is the metaphysical
study of living things and especially man.1
Empirically, man attaches the events, which he witnesses
within himself, to an internal principle of life, which he calls
his soul (psykhe); he judges other men to be as he is; he even
willingly concedes a kind of inferior soul to animals, especially
those whose fidelity he appreciates or whose enterprise he
admires.

The objective, universal and methodical curiosity of the
scientist is concerned with discerning and describing the phenom­
ena of life and with the discovery of its laws. In doing this,
he observes the similarities which unite all living things, as well
as the differences which separate and hierarchize them. Side
by side with disciplines dedicated to the study of the most
general characteristics of living things are biology, biochemistry,
genetics, and those which describe species : morphology and
physiology, wherein living things are classified. Systematic
psychology, which has as its task the study of the facts
of sensation, movement or action, emotion, and more generally,
the phenomena of consciousness, falls into various classifications.
This science is naturally divided into animal psychology and
human psychology. However, the first can utilize only the
1 The word
is used by Aristotle to designate a soul as the first
principle of life in organisms. His Ilepi vu/fc is the first treatise of
psychology. His point of view is both biological and philosophical, and
it covers every level of life from plant to man.
Among the modems, psychology is ordinarily limited to the study
of organisms which are endowed with consciousness. Limited to the
study of man by the Cartesians, psychology has since regained its right
to investigate animal life, which wc must recognize as being guided by
at least a rudimentary knowledge.
N.Y. 17. — 21

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PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY

objective method, the observation of behavior, whereas the
second rests largely on the subjective method, which involves
introspection. Both have the common ambition of explaining
vital phenomena by their laws, i.e., by the constant links among
themselves or with other phenomena.1*

But even if we were to suppose that the ambitions of both
these psychologies could be completely realized, another type
of curiosity would remain unsatisfied, namely a metaphysical
one. Phenomena appear to us as linked in another way than
by laws. They take place in animals and men, whose life they
constitute. They are linked to subjects, to substances. How are
psychological facts organized, not only for the consciousnesses
which experience them, but in their living reality? They are
real, but from what does their reality arise? They are changing,
and regularly enough to be able to be expressed in laws, yet
how are their mobility and stability to be reconciled? They are
multiple and successive in the same individual, yet how explain
the unity and identity which group them in so many distinct
individuals? In short, scientific curiosity is turned towards the
“ appearing, ” while metaphysical curiosity is turned towards
the “ being ” and towards the three principal questions relative
to the " being ” of living things : (a) What is a conscious being?
(b) What is its cause? (c) What is its destiny?
However, metaphysical psychology' is principally interested
in the stud}7 of man, which is evidenced by the methodic concern
it takes in building on man’s experience, although like all
sciences it must simplify' by categories. Actually, an animal,
as a conscious being, is knowable to us only' by its analogy
with man,’ and since man is an animal by his sensations, his
movements and emotions, to know him is to know animal life
* Science, in particular, is forced to explain psychological events
by physiological ones (nervous, muscular, and secreting'activities) or even
physical ones (such as excitants and sensory stimuli).
• An analogy which should neither be forced nor excluded.
Moreover, it has less force, the more the animal type is removed from
the human type. Man can conjecture up to a certain point on the soul
of a dog, a horse or a cat ... and more generally about mammals, but
what does he know about the passions of a starfish ?

INTRODUCTION

297

in the measure which is permitted us. The problem posed
in metaphysical psychology is threefold : (1) man’s nature.
(2) HIS ORIGIN.

(3) HIS DESTINY.

B. Distinct from empirical psychology by its theoretical
and objective aims, from scientific psychology by its orientation
towards being itself, metaphysical psychology is also distinct
from all other philosophical disciplines which pertain to man.
Actually, togic, ethics and esthetics study the interior acts of
man and their external results from the point of view of their
value, and not from the point of view of their proper reality.
They are critiques, not metaphysics.

C. Method. The method of such a psychology will, there­
fore, be essentially metaphysical.
Its starting point ought to embrace an immediate grasp
of real existence, i.e., an experience which bears on being.
Without such a grasp, reality could never be attained, since
reason can only explain what the initial datum contains in a
confused state. This grasp of existence, however, will be a
starting point, only if reason discovers in this existence a need
which provokes it to further research, i.e., an incomplete intelli­
gibility, which needs something else to explain it.4

The method will, therefore, consist in asserting those attri­
butes which arc drawn from an explicative principle, which
render it apt for explaining vital phenomena. That method is :
operatio sequitur esse, operation proceeds from the nature of
the existent.
Thus, wc begin with psychological phenomena, already
grasped by common sense and described by the ordinary words
of language. Then we observe the classifications and expla­
nations of the scientist. However, wc begin with these by
4 Thus the flight of time empties me of life, and assails my desire
for permanence by presenting to me the anticipated image of my death.
It makes me feel a void in my knowledge by showing me a present which
comes from a future which was not, and which falls back into a past
which no longer is.

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PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY

realizing from the lieginning that they are insufficient in being,
insofar as they are phenomena. The initial question then is this :
Is man only an illusory unity and actually a mere succession
of conscious states? If, on the contrary, there is a real link
between these states of his consciousness, what could this
identical and active unity be?

D. Solutions. From antiquity, common sense has fur­
nished a solution to this problem, which psychological science
obliges reason to pose, an answer so generally accepted that
even the pygmies admit it.6 Man is a composite of visible and
invisible, of body and soul, of matter and spirit.
1. this dualist solution has not been disdained
by the spiritualist philosophers, but they have been aware
of its difficulties and its limits. The principal obscurity in this
position is the nature of the union of body and soul.
a. Plato (428-347 B.C.) has compared this union to that
which exists between a rider and a horse. Following the same
tendency, Descartes (1596-1650) saw in man a purely thinking
soul, dwelling in a purely passive extension which was only
apt for receiving local movement from the outside. In such
a perspective, knowledge is, above all, a contemplation of ideas,
principally or totally innate.
b. Aristotle (384-321 B.C.) saw in the union of the body
and soul an instance of the union of prime matter and
substantial form. Following this direction, St. Thomas (12251274) set himself to safeguarding the spirituality of the human
soul and consequently its personal character, which confers
on the soul a value, which is not only that of a representative
of species, but of individuality as well. In such a conception,
intellectual knowledge is, above all, an active abstraction grasping
the universal in the sensible.
2. Other philosophers, recoiling before the difficulties
of a dualist approach, have adopted one of two montst
solutions.
* A. Le Roy, The Religion of the Primitives, Eng. trans. Newton
Thompson (New York : Macmillan, 1922), pp. 91-113.

INTRODUCTION

299

a. For materialism, the soul is of the same nature as the
body. This was the thought of Democritus (5th cent. B.C.),
who was followed by Epicurus (4th and 3rd cent. B.C.) and
Lucretius (1st cent. B.C.), who held that the soul is formed of
atoms. The same rejection of spirit is still found among the
Encyclopedists of the 18th century, La Mettrie, for whom man
is pure machine, and d’Holbach, for whom sensation is a product
of movements in the brain. A goodly number of German
biologists in the 19th centurj' held similar opinions : Vogt and
Büchnner stated that thought was constituted by certain
material movements or by a kind of cerebral secretion. It is
Le Dantec (1869-1917) who formulates the extreme of mate­
rialism, by endowing all matter with the property of thought,
consciousness being for him no more than an “ cpiphenomenon ”
of matter.
b. Idealism, on the other hand, absorbs matter into spirit.
The only reality is thought and its object, which is drawn from
thought and remains " immanent ” to it. Berkeley (18th cen­
tum)» Fichte, Schelling and Hegel (19th century), Lachelier
(19th century), Hamelin and Brunschvicg, whose theories are
different enough, remain the principal representatives of idealistic
monism.
3. Finally, rant and his school of criticism have
opposed a demurrer to our metaphysical problem. They
believe themselves to have demonstrated there can be no theo­
retical certitude about “ things-in-thcmselves. ”
They,
however, leave place for practical beliefs about the soul, its
immortality and its liberty, but refuse to recognize in them
the value of truths.

E. The importance of the metaphysical problem of man,
however, will oblige every man who thinks, to pose the problem
for himself, and to resolve it with the unflagging hope of finding
a true solution to it, even though it may be incomplete. Its
importance is linked to :
1. the situation of man in the hierarchy of beings:
a microcosm of the material world by his body, man is, by the

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PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY

knowledge which he has of it, the beginning of a spiritual world.
To know man is to know the two worlds at the point where
they flow together.
2. the relations which the psychological problem has to
other disciplines:
a. This problem of the nature and ends of man rises
spontaneously from the psychological law’s of association,
memory, will, the ego, and from the general law’ of reciprocal
conditioning pointed out in physiology and psychology. The
scientific -psychologist tends naturally to become a philosophical
psychologist.

b. The moralist needs to know' the nature and destiny of
man so that he can justify the natural moral law rationally, and
determine the principal exigencies of it.
c. The general critique of knowledge can be established
and based only on a metaphysical analysis of the real conditions
of knowledge.

d. Natural theology finds in man himself a privileged way
to God. It is not limited to seeing in man just a proof that
God exists, for it can go even further, and, through a remote
analogy with the human mind, it knows that which is the life
of the Divine Spirit.
e. Revealed theology, in order to express the profound
mysteries of the Trinity, of the Incarnation, of Grace, of the
Church,... of the Sacraments, of Heaven, Hell and Purga­
tory. .. ; in order to furnish some analogies of these mysteries;
in order to deepen its study by the light of reason, can not
dispense itself from exploring the metaphysical structure and
essential orientation of man.

BOOK ONE

THE NATURE OF MAN

Of what are we going to treat? Of man, i.e., of we, and of all
those who are able to think of themselves as me.
This " me, ’’ such as consciousness is aware of it, is the
starting point of metaphysical psychology, its experimentad
datum, which we will attempt to understand. This “ me ”
appears as a synthesis of events : (1) a synthesis relative to
an “ I, ” which is one, identical and active; (2) events stemming
from this “I” as acts which modify it by enriching it;
(3) acts which are multiple and relative to objects, as they tend
towards them and attain them in diverse ways.1
There are, therefore, three aspects, at least, which we
must study in order to determine the nature of the me :
1) the enduring unity of the " I ” in its change,
2) the internal activity, which produces psychological
becoming,
3) the individual multiplicity and the specific diversity of
psychological events.
The natural order of metaphysical research is to begin with
that which is clearest to experience and simplest in relation to
thought, and it finishes with that which was at the outset
most complex and most obscure : substance in its concrete
reality. We shall, therefore, study :
Chapter I. Psychological Phenomena : Their Distinction.
Chapter II. Operative Powers : Their Activation.
Chapter III. The Substantial Unity of Man : The Rational
Soul.

1 See E. Baudin, Psychologie, p. 17, and Chapter vui.

CHAPTER I

PSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENA :
THEIR DISTINCTION
First Question :
First Thesis :

are psychological phenomena?

Psychological phenomena are :
1. Motions
2. which in themselves are merely qualita­
tive,
3. but nevertheless united in a reciprocal
dependence to corporeal movements;
4. they are immanent acts,
5. and yet essentially relative to objects.

A. Notion and problem. The phenomena with which psychol­
ogy concerns itself arc those which experience attains originally
in consciousness. This mixed experience is outlined, in every
man, in a partial way. It is expressed in language, but in this
way it is mixed with experiences of another kind. I live,
I breathe, I sleep, I walk; I wish, I see, I understand, I think.
In this “ mine ” which I attribute to myself, all is not psycho­
logical. The psychological I attribute to myself as that which
makes me know myself. To live, to breathe, to sleep, to walk,
are not psychological facts. I can understand them as belonging
to some one other than myself, by my experience with the
external world. However, I predicate them of a subject which
lives them, and I speak of them with the very same formulas
that I would use if they were psychological.
Scientific research, therefore, had to specify the extension
of its object. It opposed the psychological to the physiological

306

THE NATURE OF MAN

and the physical, ** and it even further distinguished the psycho­
logical into conscious and subconscious. ’ Yet it also recognized
the close relations existing between these differing domains.
Psychological events are conditioned by physiological ones,
especially by events involving the nervous system, and even
those which pertain to the purely physical world. * As to
subconscious events, they are not of another nature than
conscious events, and normally they form together the course
of individual life.4
The first task of the philosopher is to inform himself about
the empirical and scientific data of psychology in as complete
a way as possible, to help him go beyond these data and grasp
the essence of the ego itself.
The empiricists believed that they had arrived at this goal,
when they had reached the maximum breaking down of phenom­
ena, after they had previously succeeded in isolating one
phenomenon from another. This analysis, they thought, ought
to furnish them with the elements of the ego, after which the ego
would be defined as a grouping of homogeneous states realized
according to certain laws. This was done in the same way
that a chemical substance is defined by its component atoms,
assembled according to numerical laws. Thus they have reduced
the ego to nothing more than a name, labeling multiple phenom­
ena which are added up to a fictitious whole. •
The rationalists are forced to maintain the unity of the
ego. They have affirmed its substantiality. Often, however,
they have pictured this ego in an impassible attitude, isolated
from its phenomena which flow around it and move incessantly
before its immobile gaze. The ego becomes an undetermined
receptacle for all phenomena, to the extent that there is in it
* Brett's History of Psychology, pp. 584-656.
* Ibid., pp. 684-688.
4 G. Klurertanz, S.J., The Philosophy of Human Nature (New
York : Appleton, 1953), pp. 21-29.
4 James F. Barrett, This Creature Man (Milwaukee : Bruce, 1937),
p. 62.
* See James E. Royce, S.J., Man and His Nature (New York :
McGraw-Hill, 196X), pp. 311-312.

WHAT ARE PSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENA?

307

a place " for all of humanity, or for God, or for existence in
general. " 7 Therefore, the ego no longer belongs to any person
in particular, it tends to engulf everything, as happens in the
doctrine of the pantheistic post-Kantians.
Bergson has attached these two extreme doctrines to a
similar conception, that of conceiving phenomena as parts of
the ego, distinct among themselves in the manner of extended
parts, the objects of external perception. He protested vigor­
ously against this breaking down of the ego into a multiplicity
of states, which were homogeneous among themselves, and each
living for itself. This method, according to him, shows a result
of the natural tendency to symbolize quality by quantity,
duration by space, and heterogeneity by homogeneity, and
consequently the natural tendency to conjuse the symbol with
the thing. Because of this likening of the ego to an indefinitely
divisible space, Bergson rejects the value of this method for
knowing the real nature of the ego, which, according to him,
is the proper task of the philosopher. At the most, this method
can furnish lifeless sketches, which are approximative and
highly incomplete despite their multiplicity. They can be
useful sketches for those who wish to speak of the ego, or to
act on it, but they are insufficient to reveal it. " Science substi­
tutes for the ego a series of elements which arc psychological
facts. ” 8 The philosopher ought to place himself at the very
heart of his object and attain it in an intuition, which is beyond
language and scientific formulas. " We use intuition, here, as
sympathy by which one transports oneself into the interior
of an object to identify oneself with that which is unique and
consequently unexpressable. ” • And further : " The simple
act, which gets analysis under way and which is concealed
behind analysis, emanates from a faculty completely other than
that of analysis. This will be, by very definition, intuition. ” 10
We can not fail to recognize the cogency of Bergson’s
criticisms. Nothing is more harmful in psychology than the
* Bergson, La Pensée el le Mouvant, p. 221.
* Ibid., p. 215.
* Ibid., p. 205.
1,1 Ibid., p. 253.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

forgetting of the experimental data grasped in the intuition of
consciousness. No danger is graver, here, than that of treating
a phenomenon, either as a small ego within a greater ego, or as
an integral ego by making it either a part or a whole. This
danger occurs because of our tendency to imagine everything
and to localize it, and thus to transform everything into
extension. Actually, phenomenon is the ego incompletely
grasped, already known but still unknown. The experimental
datum is that of an ego which is unique and multiple by reason
of the multiplicity of its revelations to consciousness. This
multiplicity, however, is completely other than that of number
or of extension. In extension, every unit is a part, the multi­
plicity is a mutual exteriority of units. The parts or units are
completely homogeneous one with the other and each of them
with the whole. The situation is completely different in the ego.
Undoubtedly there is a multiplicity of phenomena, but the
phenomena are not exterior one to the other, nor homogeneous
among themselves, nor consequently to the ego, which they
form, but which is not their total.
Keeping constantly before our eyes the relationof psycholog­
ical phenomena to a single ego, let us seek to discover and
express, despite the limitations of language, what they are.

B. They are movements. In other words, we experience
the ego only in experiencing its change, its becoming, its progress.
All that is the object of psychological experience (phenomenon) is
movement.
1. Let us start now with phenomena. Isn’t sensing, desiring,
wiling, a change? Isn’t it experiencing something new in
ourselves, something lived for the first time? You may ask,
how is seeing this desk at which I am writing, and where I have
worked for so many hours in the past, something new? I agree
that the desk is old, and the possibility of seeing it is old, but the
actual fact of seeing this desk now is a unique moment in my
life, which I have never experienced before and will never
experience again.
Without any doubt I have experienced other visual percep­
tions relative to this same desk, but they were other than my

PSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENA ARE MOVEMENTS

309

present perception. That these perceptions resemble each other,
I will agree; but that they are identical and absolutely
homogeneous, I deny. Past perceptions are no more than a
memory, to which my present perception can in no way be
reduced. Every phenomenon is therefore a unique moment in
a unique movement, that of the ego.
2. Let us, now, turn to the ego. Isn’t it the very contrary of
movement, since it is one, identical, active, whereas movement
is multiple, diverse, and the effect of an activity? We must now
become more precise.
a. Movement is multiple in this sense, that it connects the
“one” to the “other.” It is essentially a “ becoming
other, ” — “ fieri aliud ” — and, at every moment, it is such
that it can never coincide with absolute unity. It is, however,
a relative unity, a unity in which the heterogenous moments,
which make it up, have their foundation in a unity having no
definite limits which close these moments in on themselves. It
is the unity of their succession, of their continuity, of their
direction.
Now what is the unity of the ego? As it is grasped in
consciousness, it is relative to phenomena. It is impossible to
think of the ego not having a relation to them. The unity of
the ego is not, then, an absolute unity. It is the unity of the
movement of phenomena, the unity of their succession, their
continuity and their direction.
b. Is movement diverse? Yes it is, and diverse in several
ways : by the distinction of spatial positions, if it is displacement ;
by varying intensities and the heterogenous qualities of its
moments, if it is alteration — as is the case of consciousness.
However, this diversity should not make us forget the community
of existence of these different moments within an undivided
movement. It is one and the same movement which diversifies
itself in a certain manner. Abstract diversity is opposed to
identity. Yet the diversity of movement supposes its identity
throughout the duration of the movement. Suppress that
identity, and you no longer have movement, but only a confusion
of positions or of successive states.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

What exactly makes up the identity of the ego? The ego, as
it is related to phenomena, does not suppress their distinctness,
their heterogeneity. It even exacts it ! In order that this
identity exist, it must have diverse phenomena. The identity
of the ego, as revealed through introspection, is the individual
identity of a current of phenomena in all the qualitatively
distinct moments of its duration.
c. Is movement caused? Without any doubt it is, and
even in a very special way. In general, that which depends on
another thing for its existence is caused. Movement is caused in
its own way : each of its moments is caused by others, and each
moment causes another or several others — the sole exception
being the first and the last of these moments. All of its moments
are interdependent : the previous moment involves the existence
of the following one; at the same time, the previous moment
depends on the following, being constituted by its tendency
towards it, by its progress in that direction. In this sense,
movement is essentially caused, precisely because it is multiple
and diverse in its manner. There will assuredly be more to
examine as regards the question of whether or not we can find a
sufficient cause in the complexity of its moments. It will be
sufficient, for the time being, to note that movement is simul­
taneously caused and cause, that it causes itself.
What precisely is the activity of the ego as recognized in
consciousness? It is precisely the influence of past phenomena
exercised on present phenomena. It is the inclination to defer
the present to the future in the acts of attention and of desire,
and especially in decisions, which are the clearest examples of
the activity of the ego. Now, if this present is caused by the past,
and this other present is caused by the future, would they not
make the ego of the same order as the past and future which cause
them? On the contrary, these " presents " are the ego at its
fullest consciousness, in its most immediate reality. As a
matter of fact, it is the reality of the ego which reveals to me the
reality of the past ego and of the future ego. Thus, I am not
pure activity. I am also passivity and this even in regard to
myself. If it is of the essence of movement to be in some way

PSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENA ARE MOVEMENTS

311

the "cause ” of itself, nothing prohibits the ego from being a
movement. It is just that, since it is I who modify myself,
I who change myself, in a word, I who live.
This may appear outrageous, and you may say that it is
absurd to suppose that a being is modified by istelf, that it
gives to itself what it does not have.
Yes, it is absurd to think that a being should be what it is
not, but it is not absurd to think that it acquires what it does not
have. Is there no other way of acquiring except by receiving?
How about producing? I see no absurdity there. You may
press me further as to the reason of this producing, and you will
have a point, and I will search for that reason in its time and
place. But, let me here state as a fact : I am a becoming in
movement. Psychological phenomena are movements, or better
still, discernible moments of a unique movement which I call
" me. ”
This doctrine is not so new that it cannot be found in
St. Thomas. He affirms in the Summa Theologica,11 that the soul
knows itself not by grasping its proper essence in an intuition, but
by knowing its “ acts ”, i.e., the determinations which it gives
itself and which really modify it (this is the general role of
accidents in relation to substance). Thus experience reveals the
soul and man as incessantly modified by the play of psychological
spontaneities. As by a transcendent dissection going on in the
lived experience of the ego, reflection, and reflection alone, will
permit us to isolate the very substance of man, and, in that
notion, the soul itself.
Corollary. We must distrust the expression, states of
consciousness. At no moment is consciousness stationary. Even
when I think of the same thing, I think of it differently from
moment to moment. Attention does not endure except by
constantly renewing itself.
11 " Quia connaturale est intellectui nostro secundum statum
praesentis vitae, quod ad materialia et sensibilia respiciat.... consequens
est, ut sic seipsum intclligat intellectus noster, secundum quod fit actu
per species a sensibilibus abstractas... ; non ergo per essentiam suam,
sed per actum suum se cognoscit intellectus noster. ” S. Th., I» pars.,
q. 87, a. i.
N.Y. 17. — 22

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THE NATURE OF MAN

C. The qualitative nature of psychological movements has
been misunderstood from antiquity.
1.

MATERIALISTIC MECHANISM

a. Its thesis. Democritus and his disciples saw in psycho­
logical movements simple displacements and meetings of atoms.
Materialism reduced them to a fatal mechanism, whose only
originality was an extreme complexity. The ego is, therefore,
only a result, an “ epiphenomenon ”, i.e., a phenomenon which
is a pure effect of a series, and therefore has no influence on this
series or any other.
b. Its general reasons. The great argument is found in the
experience which everyone has of the dependence of the
“ moral ” on the “ physical. ” Science has only reinforced this
argument by its methodical and extensive observations. In
particular, it points out the influence exerted on the feelings by
internal secretions and by all the causes modifying the Ph
(acidity) of the blood. It stresses the influence of the state of the
nervous system on sensations, on memories and thoughts, by
accenting the conditions of nerve activity (the dimensions of the
cerebral cortex's surface, blood nourishment, toxins and poisons,
excitants, etc.). “

c. Its arguments 1) The materialist gains an easy triumph :
every psychological phenomenon depends on the movements of
extension, and, therefore, he says, it is only a composite of
these movements, quantitative and corporeal as they are, which
are its parts.

This reasoning is a pure sophism, which postulates what it
pretends to prove. Granted that psychological dependence on
the physiological is a fact (as well as the inverse dependence of
the physiological on the psychological, see D); but is there no
>» C. Angras», Cours de Philosophie, Introduction, p. 23, (Editions
Sociales) shows that Marxist materialism bases itself simply on the
essential materialism that is found in contemporary scientific
arguments.

MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION’S

313

other kind oí dependence except that of the whole on its parts?
The materialist forgets this preliminary question in his efforts to
achieve a “ coup d’état. “
2) Pose this question to him : he will answer that all reality
must be explained by numerical laws. He will say that you deny
to science the very means of existing, when you refuse to admit
its methods of measure as having any validity for psychological
facts. Admit then, he will say, that every fact is made up of
enumerable parts; otherwise, you destroy science.
This is a conception of science which was in vogue for some
fifty years, but it has gone out of date, and justly so. (1) It is
nothing more than an " a priori ” generalization of a method,
which, assuredly, has proven itself in the physical sciences, but
whose extension to the psychical world is completely arbitrary.
(2) Moreover, even in that which concerns bodies, this method of
measure has to bend itself, in order to be applicable to electronic
phenomena and to vital phenomena as well. In these domains,
measure does not express the laws of composition as they apply
to an individual, but the laws of statistics and probability only
as they apply to multitudes. (3) Very many see in number and
the relations of measure a completely symbolic knowledge of
things, which must be carefully guarded against, lest the symbol
become confused with the reality symbolized.
3) The materialist presses on : I know only extension and
its movements.... When I search the real for quality, I find
nothing there, except its quantitative characteristics. The
qualitative is unthinkable, and therefore not real. Psychological
phenomena are either quantitative, or they are not real.
The materialist deceives himself. Far from knowing
extension by itself, he can not sense it or think it, except by
reason of its determinations. Could he see a surface, if it were
not colored by the intervention of light? Would he be able to
measure it, if it were not presented to him with limits which his
notion of pure extension does not allow him? That which is
knowable is the determined, the qualitative. Undoubtedly the
most commonly known object in our experience is determined
extension, but since the reason of its knowability is its determined

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THE NATURE OF MAN

state and not its extensive character, we must conclude that
the purely qualitative is not unknowable for us. u

4) The materialist will, therefore, attempt to demonstrate
that psychological determinations are quantitative, for the same
reasons that mechanical, chemical and physiological deter­
minations are. These latter would be the lower degrees of the
universe which the ego would crown with a royal sterility. Here
are particles, in movement ; a certain grouping which they form
make up the atom. Complicate things with a grouping of atoms
and you have a molecule. Through the molecule you arrive at a
complex called protoplasm which constitutes the cell. In this,
you remark movements which you call irritability and reaction,
briefly, a miniature reflex, i.e., the feeblest of sensations releasing
the simplest of actions.... Are you in wonder before this
so-called originality of life? Then you are no more than an
admirer of your own ignorance.... There is no more in this
beginning of psychological life than the displacements of
electrons, molecules or atoms, and, moreover, the entire psycho­
logical life is of the same nature as this beginning. Intensify
reflexes and complicate them, and here you have sensation
properly speaking, then image, and finally associated images, i.e.,
ideas, judgments and reasoning. Empiricism actually shows
that all psychological life is nothing more than images. Since
the time of Democritus, science has shown that the image is
only a displacement of matter. Select whatever psychological
phenomenon you wish to discuss, and you will find that it is
definitely no more than a mechanical movement in a high
degree of complexity, produced by the organization of matter. u

d. Its extreme positions. Taine wrote : " It (the image) is
the sensation itself but consecutive or reviving; and from
u See E. Schrôdinger, Science and Humanism, p. 29 (Difficulties
about the continuous) and p. 53 (the old antidote for escaping the
difficulties of the continuous). This shows us how necessary an alliance
between the continuous and the discontinuous is, no matter how difficult
it is for our thought.
14 It is important, here, to make a distinction between a chronological
description and a causal explanation. Showing the progressive compli­
cation of an organized whole is certainly a partial explanation of it, for

CRITIQUE OF MATERIALISTIC POSITIONS

315

whatever point we consider it, we find it coincides with sensation”
(On Intelligence, Vol. I, p. 72). This is the very formula of
psycho-physiological parallelism, which, in teaching the
exact correspondence between phenomena in a psychological
series and phenomena in a physiological series, really
identifies the two series, and by this identification reduces
psychic life to pure mechanical displacement. The epiphe­
nomenalism of Maudsley and Le Dantec sees the psychological
aspect as being no more than a sterile shadow, which accompanies
the only reality there is, material reality. All matter thinks, but
in the way in which light produces shadows.15
2.

evaluation

a. This materialist construction is very appealing in its
simplicity and in its use of an abundance of scientific data upon
which it claims to base its pretentions. It beguiles the
imagination by its exclusive use of local movement, and even
seduces reason itself by the rigid order of its determinism.

b. Moreover, it makes use oi incontestable truths : (1) The
ego is grasped as a movement, and thus it is related to the
material universe, which in like manner is apprehended by
science as a movement. (2) The movement of consciousness is
generally conditioned by cosmic movement. (3) Psychological
movement is realized in an ego which is a corporeal being. It is,
therefore, a property of matter, in this sense, that it is never
experienced outside a corporeal being.
" a bird fashions its nest little by little, " and at this level the lesser
explains the greater. However, we must point out that this complication
demands an energy, and its progressive character exacts a directing
finality. Motion and direction are true causes, and as such, they cannot
be less than their effect.
u Marxist materialism seems to be retreating from these extreme
positions in that it recognizes the qualitative difference between
psychology' and physiology and even the superiority of the first over
the second. However, it remains completely materialist when it
maintains that thought is only an evolved product of matter, and
attempts to explain it by the properties of matter. See Cosmology, p. 270
and the Appendix to Psychology.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

c. Nevertheless, materialism falsifies experience to make
it serve its abstract classifications.,e
1) It neglects the reality of material qualities, since it recognizes
on!j' extension and pure displacement. Now, local movement
itself ceases to be a change as soon as one forgets its flowing
continuity and reduces it to successive spatial positions.
However, these positions can not be truly thought by those who
would like to deduce them from indefinite extension. The
succession of these positions demands a determining cause and
therefore a qualitative one. (See cosmology, Third Question)
2) It neglects the qualitative diversity of chemical structures,
and, what is even more apparent, the qualitative diversity
of biological structures, because it recognizes in them only
homogeneous numbers.

3) It does not recognize the natural destinations of the
causality at work in the universe, particularly that finality which
organic life incessantly reveals, and which constitutes its
originality : immanent finality and its frequent consequence,
utilitarian finality.

4) Finally, and as a consequence of the above, it does not
recognize the specific character of the psychological life. If
materialism did not suffer from a chronic blindness, it would
already have seen the qualitative in the double aspect of matter's
movement and finality. From that it would have been led to
conceive the proper character of the finality of the ego : the
movement of the ego is immaterial, its finality is immaterial
•• This critique is directly concerned with classical materialism,
which is completely mechanistic. This critique, however, must be
modified in order to be applied to dialectical materialism. Now, this
latter, in its formulas, admits qualitative differences, but it actually
eliminates them by giving no other reason for this progressive differen­
tiation, than the single and identical reality of matter. We arc forced
to say then, either the qualitative newness which appears at a given
moment in the evolution of matter is truly new, and therefore demands
another cause than matter, firstly for its existence (an efficient cause),
and, then, for its introduction into existence at this precise moment
(a cause of finalized becoming) ; or this newness is only a seeming one,
and then qualitative difference is misunderstood. Hence dialectical
materialism is only repeating the error of strict mechanism.

INTERDEPENDENCE OF VARIOUS MOVEMENTS

317

(immaterial is, here, taken in the sense of non-extended, purely
qualitative).
3. positive proof. To sense is something other than
an agitation of the nerves; to suffer, to will something other than
mere muscular contraction. What this phenomenon modifies is
not a given extension, e.g., of a neuron or muscle; it is an ego.
This ego is not in space, with parts outside of parts. It does not
gain weight nor increase its volume or its number. It is not
diminished by amputation of a member. But it can gain
sensations, emotions, thoughts, and a most assured will to live.
Thus the ego is a movement which has nothing to do with
displacement.
Consequently, psychological phenomena arc
immaterial, i.e., unextended, and purely qualitative.
4. objection. The materialist will object that psycho­
logical phenomena can be counted and even measured by reason
of their intensity. The psychological facts cannot be
“ measured ” or numbered, because of the nature of the
scientist’s method. This method, which is based on the real
presence of extension, can only attain intensities indirectly.
Sensation is measured only by reason of its physical conditions
(excitation and reaction), thought is numerable only by its
translation into words, the will only by its preliminaries, its
objects or its corporeal effects. This should suffice to show that
a psychological fact has nothing to do with an extended
dimension. Moreover, what is there in this method that would
lead me to a knowledge of the ego? Actually, I know nothing
more about the ego when I have used instruments or calculation
in regard to it I have only become more precise in what I think
of the relations of the ego to certain material conditions in which
it moves itself. What are these relations of the ego and its
material conditions?

D. The dependence is reciprocal between psychological and
corporeal movements.
1. The former condition Ike latter.
There is already a manifest dependence in the psychological
facts of automatism: an image goes before the movement

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THE NATURE OF MAN

represented, a perception gives rise to the action which is adapted
to it.17 There is even a more evident dependence when reflection
has preceded action, especially if reflection had to invent the
action by a work of creative imagination or free decision.18
In all these cases, material changes, e.g., artistic and
industrial inventions, deliberated ventures, etc., have preexisted
in psychic movements and have been realized only through the
orientation communicated to matter by the ego. The feeling of
responsibility is only the translation by consciousness of this
causal relation of the ego to its free works.

Epiphenomenalism has no other choice here but to deny the
directive value of the ego on matter, and, in order to explain the
illusion which it would have us admit, it makes an appeal to
ancestral habits transmitted through heredity. — But to do
this is to admit defeat : for habits must have begun, and, there­
fore, they must not have been in their inception illusory. If
there was a time in which the ego dominated matter, why can
it no longer do so today, since it has an invincible intuition of it?
— The reasons alleged arc no more than the postulates of a
materialistic determinism, postulates that show no necessity and
are contrary to the material facts themselves. Matter devoid of
quality and finality is completely unknown to us. Moreover,
finality does not have to change the quantity of matter in order
to dominate it. It will be sufficient if it directs its movement,
and this has a meaning, since the direction of a force is distinct
from its quantity.

2. The corporeal fads, in their turn, condition psychological
movements. I have already indicated the general marks of this
dependence, which materialism abuses. Let us be more precise
about this dependence. We will see it diminish by degrees, as we
observe the ego from sensation to free choice.
Sensation depends directly on physical movements, which
are the excitants, and on physiological movements, which are
18 G. Klubertanz, The Philosophy of Human Nature, pp. 293-294.
E. Baudin, Psychologie, pp. 562-567.
’• Janies E. Royce, S.J., Man and His Nature, pp. 242-251.

CRITIQUE OF PARALLELISM

319

modifications of the nervous system. Emotion, likewise, is
organic, and is accompanied by a host of internal sensations.
Arriving at the image, the dependence on external
movements is slight, and it seems sometimes almost nil. Cerebral
phenomena arc required, but experience does not know precisely
in what measure. It is certain that the current of images
depends on the activity of the nervous system, but it also
depends as well, on the complete ego, with its memories,
interests and wishes.
Thought is linked to images, to diagrams and to words. In
this it depends on the body. Yet it has its own dynamism and
its own original laws. It goes into act despite the resistance of
the body and in the direction selected by the will. That which
necessitates its activity is something other than matter. It is a
relation belonging to another order, the evidence of a truth. *•
Finally, the will applies its choice to physical actions and
material objects. It supposes a thought linked to images. In
these two ways its operation is conditioned by the body.
However, it is impossible to reduce tree choice to any of these
conditions, even to the thoughts upon which it is based and
which do not necessarily involve its action. Liberty is the
supreme independence of the ego. It is to liberty that the ego
owes its personal orientation. This liberty pervades the entire
ego with a special autonomy, so that even sensation is sometimes
refused to the excitants which solicit it : “ Visum fovendo
contegat. Ne vanitates hauriat.” w
The ego is, therefore, conditioned by matter, but it tran­
scends it even while depending on it, and the more personal it is,
the greater the transcendence.
Psycho-physiological parallelism contradicts this conclusion.
For it, material events and psychological events form two
series, which correspond with each other item by item. Thus it
rivets the ego to the body. If it is pantheistic, as is the case with
Spinoza, Bain and Huxley, it sees in these two series two*•
*• G. Kt.vbertanz, The Philosophy of Human Nature, pp. 188-189.
10 Quotation taken from the hymn at Prime in tho Breviary.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

manifestations of a unique reality. If it is materialistic, it
admits that matter alone is real, and declares that the psycho­
logical aspect of its movements is epiphenomenal.
a. This fundamental affirmation is, first of all, a gratuitous
hypothesis: to say that images and excitations of the nervous
system correspond with each other item by item is to lead us
to believe that one has “ resolved a colossal problem in histology
and cerebral physiology ” (P. Janet).
b. It is further a misunderstanding of the ego : to suppose
that phenomena can be distinguished in the ego in the same way
that neurons are in the brain, is to forget the qualitative and
mobile character of phenomena.
c. This hypothesis is contrary to the laws of thresholds:
sensation does not correspond with every excitation, nor with
every nervous impression. It demands a determined level of
frequency and intensity, etc.; moreover, the variation in
sensation is not produced in terms of every variation in the
excitant. The differential thresholds of Weber show the relative
independence of sensation. The acme of sensation indicates
the cessation of psychological variation without implying a
cessation to the increase of the excitant. (Experimental Psychol­
ogy, P. Siwck, S. J., pp. 103-106).
The materialist’s error, here, is that : (1) he forgets that the
dependence of the ego and of matter is reciprocal; (2) he conceives
dependence under the form of a mechanical causality, where the
antecedent is equal to the consequent, whereas matter and the
ego are not homogeneous; (3) he misconstrues the varieties of
this dependence and the suppleness of its bond; (4) he considers
the affirmation of this absolute dependence as a satisfactory
explanation of the ego, whereas the conditions of sensation are
radically incapable of revealing the nature of sensation to
anyone who has not already experienced it by living it.
What then does the lived experience of the ego reveal?

E. Psychological phenomena are immanent acts.
1. They modify' the very reality which produces them and
they remain inside that reality. They may, perhaps, have

PSYCHOLOGICAL ACTS ARE IMMANENT

321

repercussions on other realities in the “ external ” world, but
these are secondary and accessory consequences. The only
influence which these acts exercise necessarily is that of
modifying the ego. Two notions are basic to the notion of
immanence : spontaneity and inferiority.
a. Psychological phenomena are the moments of an
undivided movement from within that in which they are realized,
which produces them and which they produce. They are
immanent to the ego, as are all elementary events in regard to
movement which gathers them together in its undivided
duration.
b. More precisely, they are biological events, whose
immanence in the living is especially marked by the pursuit and
realization of individual interests. Attention, association, the
fixation of memories, emotion, decision, all are psychological
functions wherein immanence appears under the form of a
utilitarian finality, where the ego shows itself as the
creator of of its own good, as a “ cause of itself. ” This
latter expression must be understood in a completely relative
but real sense.
c. Psychological acts are primarily conscious acts or of
such a nature that they can be conscious. That is their
originality and the mark of their specific immanence. Undoubt­
edly, the vital activity of assimilation is immanent to a living
thing considered as extension; but the psychological facts of
sensation, of desire, are immanent to the ego considered as an
immaterial thing, as a subject knowing itself. In the degree and
in the measure that psychological phenomena unfold, they
modify the knowledge which I have of myself, and they unfold
precisely because of the knowledge I have already acquired of
myself. My consciousness is thus the source of my psychological
acts, and it finds itself directly and necessarily enriched by them :
the lived can never become the non-lived. The ego, as cause and
effect of psychological phenomena, shows these phenomena to be
immanent acts.

2. Is this immanence absolute?
manifests itself in degrees?

Is it not evident that it

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THE NATURE OF MAN

Idealism does not seem to consider a positive answer to this
last question, even in the form of hypothesis. It recognizes the
immanence of psychological acts, but it makes that immanence
absolute. For it, the ego does not have to draw its thoughts
from any other source than its own inexhaustible activity. It
does not depend on anything or anyone.
Psychological realism, on the contrary, sees the ego as
dependent and, consequently, recognizes in it only a relative
immanence. Actually, the ego depends on conditions foreign to
itself : its diverse phenomena are ranged in an increasing
gradation of independance, which is never a complete and
absolute independence, even in the most spiritual choices. In
this, psychological phenomena are not completely immanent,
because they are not completely spontaneous, but they always
have some reason or cause which is “ outside ’’ of the ego. They
are not completely immanent for yet another reason, and that
reason is completely a specifying one. Insofar as these
phenomena are conscious, they are essentially relative to
objects, to something other than the knowing ego (or the
subject).

F. The ego, in all its phenomena, actually reveals itself as
essentially relative to objects. The ego is not grasped except by
reason of its immaterial movement towards objects. It has no
conscious acts except by its orientation towards a “ beyond, ”
which is proper to it.

1. It is affectivity, and although affcctivity seems
to close the ego in on itself, nevertheless, affectivity can belong
only to an ego which turns toward objects.
a. The affective ego suffers and enjoys, but it neither
suffers nor enjoys except by reason of that which it knows or
desires. This is not a mere statement of fact, but one of
necessity.
b. The agreeable and the disagreeable suppose more
fundamental psychological states, without which these qualifi­
cations would qualify nothing. These states arc desires or

PSYCHOLOGICAL ACTS ARE RELATIVE

323

ideas, which are necessarily relative to something other than
the ego.
c. The necessary condition for the existence of affection is
an ego which knows itself. Affection is experienced only in a
conscious state. Now the consciousness of the ego is not a
primitive datum. It is acquired, it evolves from an ego, which,
in its first movement, is oriented towards something other than
itself, particularly towards the objects of external perception.
(E. Baudin, Ps., pp. 131-135) It has, moreover, as its foundation,
the act of memory, for recognition can not be a first phenomenon.
Therefore, affectivity cannot itself be the essence of the ego. The
movement of affectivity, which is a movement “ out, ” presup­
poses in the ego a movement in an opposing direction, a
“ reflection ” on the subject which is, in a way, the origin of
that first movement which is knowledge.

We can conclude that the affective ego bears in itself a
relation to objects.
2. desires often have definite objects. They are often
also vague, seeking some determination which might help them
along their way towards satisfaction. They always tend in
some direction, towards something other than self, even if this
would be towards an ego different from the present one, closer
to an " ideal ” ego. In any case, to desire supposes knowledge.
Desire does not precede knowledge, it follows it.
You may say that desire guides knowledge, and therefore
conditions it. — This is certainly true. However, it does not
guide knowledge unless it has first found its own direction in a
previous act of knowledge. We must concede the truth of the
adage : " Ignoti nulla cupido. ”

3. Therefore, knowing must be recognized as fundamental
to the ego. Without knowledge there are neither desires,
nor affections, nor personal actions. Now, to know is not an
empty movement, devoid of orientation, it is being in relation
to a known object: the known thing, by reason of this very'
relation, is opposed to the ego, it is an object in relation

324

to a subject.
aliud. ” n

THE NATURE OF MAN

" Cognoscere

est

fieri

aliud

in

quantum

The lived experience of the ego is, therefore, not that of an
ego closed in on itself. On the contrary, the ego is revealed to
itself only by reason of movements which bind it to objects,
movements which are in no way spatial, but completely
qualitative. Therefore, in order to know the ego, we will first
have to consider its immaterial relations with its objects, the
essential directions of its ads. What are they?

** The scholastic idea of the objectivity of consciousness has been
rediscovered in contemporary phenomenology. Husserl (1859-1938),
its founder, asserts the " intentionality ” of consciousness, which Sartre
renders in these words : " All consciousness is a consciousness of
something. ” {Heing and Nothing, p. bdi). Sartre goes further and
asks himself what reality to recognize in this something, the reality of
a pure object perceived, or that of an existence which is independent of
consciousness. Now, " the objective will never come out of the subjective,
nor the transcendent from the immanent, nor being from non-being "
(BN, Ixiii). Sartre reproaches Husserl, because after having defined
" consciousness as transcendence, ” he betrays his principle by making
*' the noema unreal, a correlate of the nocsis, a noema whose esse is
percipi ” pure and simple. See J. Wild, The Challenge of Existentialism.
pp. 188194: pp. 235-242.

HOW ARE PSYCHOLOGICAL ACTS TO BE DISTINGUISHED

325

Second Question : How are psychological acts to be distinguished
among themselves?
Second Thesis :

Psychological acts arc distinguished among
themselves :
1. individually by mutual temporal relations;

2.

specifically by reason of correlative objects.

3.

Therefore they differ by species :
a) Knowledge and appetency ;
b) Sensory acts whose proper object is

A PARTICULAR EXTENDED INDIVIDUAL,

and intellectual acts whose proper object is
THE

ESSENCE

ABSTRACTED

FROM

SENSIBLE

THINGS.

4. There are, therefore, sensory acts which
are intrinsically dependent on matter; intel­
lective acts, which are strictly immaterial or
spiritual.
A. The problem. For common sense, the distinction between
psychological acts does not present much of a problem. This
distinction is manifest in the variety of words which all languages
use for transmitting internal experience. You doubt the value
of this claim? Well, then, here is the proof! These words
demand a certain amount of precision for those who understand
them. There is, then, a specific experience which corresponds to
them. To see, to hear, to be sad, to wish, etc., are really distinct
acts. They are, above all, acts whose essential quality can be
found over and over again in recurrent experiences. Here,
definitely, we are face to face with a specifying distinction. "
There is another distinction, which is implied in the use of
" " Specific ” in the logical sense, is that which is able to be realized
in the same way in a number of individuals. A " specific ” distinction
is that which separates one essence from another one, the difference
between " that which is this ” and " that which is that. ”

32G

THE NATURE OF MAN

language, and that is a purely individuating one. Without such
a distinction it would be impossible to understand how a language
with psychological meaning could exist23 (how could wc distin­
guish one sadness from another in ourselves?).
However, a problem exists for the philosopher. Bergson, by
his intuitionism, resolves this problem with an answer which is
not in agreement with our thesis. According to him, psycho­
logical events are not really distinct. To think of them apart
from one another would be to cut up the ego into a completely
artificial and purely practical pattern, which is useful only to
him who wishes to speak of or describe them. The ego, on the
contrary, is a duration without any break, which is unceasingly
different in itself. In order to find the real ego, we must stop
formulating it in abstract concepts “ which we link together one
after the other in distinct states, like pearls in a necklace, which
need something to hold them together, a string which is neither
this pearl nor that one, nothing which resembles the pearls,
nothing that resembles what a necklace ought to be, a hollow
entity, a simple word. ’’ M Therefore the ego can be known
only by an intuition which immediately grasps “ the concrete
flowing of duration. ”
Bergson is right in this :

1. " The multiplicity of the states of consciousness, seen
in their original purity, shows no similarity with the distinct
multiplicity which forms a number. ” “ Number is formed by
homogeneous parts, one outside the other, and each closed in on
itself. Psychological acts form no such number.

2. ° As regards multiplicity, we must admit that there
are two kinds..., two conceptions of the difference between the
same and the other multiplicity, one qualitative, and the other
quantitative. Sometimes this multiplicity, this distinction, this
** E. Baudin, Psychologie, pp. 12-13.
M H. Bergson, La Pensée et le Mouvant, pp. 88 and 237.
M H. Bergson, Time and Free Will, An Essay on the Immediate
Data of Consciousness, Eng. trans. F. L. Pogson (New York : Macmillan,
1950). P- 121.

HOW ARE PSYCHOLOGICAL ACTS TO BE DISTINGUISHED

327

heterogeneity, contains number only potentially, and it is
simply a question of counting the multiple termini of vital acts,
but then we are thinking of the possibility of exteriorizing them
in spatial relations. Unfortunately we arc so used to clarifying
one sense of this word "multiplicity" by the other.... that
we experience great difficulty in keeping them apart, or in at
least expressing this distinction in language. ”
This danger is
only too real.

3. Concepts are imperfect. (1) Being abstract, they arc
incapable of expressing all of experience. He who has never
experienced joy, for example, can not, as the one who knows it
by experience, discover it by the formulation of an abstract
definition of it as " a feeling resulting from a good experienced
as present. ” In the same manner, a man born blind will not
know color, despite the descriptions of the physicist and the
psychologist. (2) A concept devoid of a sensory content, and
in no way intuitive, is incapable of representing that which is
individual. (3) An idea is formed habitually with the aid of
images. Hence the danger of considering our thought objects,
which are distinct concepts, as if they had distinct positions in
space.

Bergson, however, in his reaction against empiricism, seems
to misunderstand : ”
a. The distinction between psychological acts. This
distinction is, nevertheless, natural and objective, for the same
reason that the continuity of internal duration is. The distinction
between psychological acts is, as is the continuity of internal
duration, based on experience.*•
*• Ibid., pp. 122-123. It would be more correct here to oppose
numerical multiplicity (" predicamental number ”) to ontological
multiplicity (‘‘ transcendental number ’*). This twofold meaning is very
clear in phrases like the following : one foot and one foot make two feet;
Einstein and myself are two. Two. in the sense of an addition of two
homogeneous dimensions. Now wc can also use two in the sense of a
radical opposition, that of two beings without a common measure.
Psychological multiplicity is. above all, heterogeneity and distinction.
•’ E. Baudin, Psychologie, p. 14.
N.Y. 17. — 23

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THE NATURE OF MAN

b. The value of analysis compared to intuition. Analysis,
which is achieved through abstraction, clarifies and makes moreprecise the synthetic intuition of the ego. Some communication
about the ego is possible through language, which is the result
of analysis, and thus the ego is capable of being enriched by­
social influences. Without analysis, the initial confusion of our
intuition of the ego would remain the definitive state of our
knowledge.
c. The value of a differentiated psychological life. True
life should, far from being the least conscious, be the most
conscious. The most personal life, that of the free ego, is at the
same time the most conscious.
d. The value of abstract concepts. Imperfect though they
may be, they are nevertheless not unsuitable for representing
things. We are not obliged to stop at their content as at a
limit. On the contrary, by their content they help us to perfect
our knowledge, both by a periodic return to the original
intuition, already' better known because of them, and by
stimulating us to a vigorous research for those aspects of things
which are still unknown to us.
In order to know the ego with a clearer and richer intuition,
we must distinguish the diverse aspects of it, not for the purpose
of separating them, but rather for the purpose of understanding
their union better.
B. The individuality of psychological acts is nothing other
than their situation in the temporal unfolding of the ego. I hear
a melody, and then I hear it again. The two moments of my life
are distinct. Why? Is it not because each moment carries a
mark in duration which opposes them? One is past and the other
is present. They may resemble each other in a thousand ways,
but they remain irreducibly two, because of their heterogeneity
from the point of view of duration ; when the second will have
passed, it will still be other than the first, and will continue to be
distinct from it.
You may object that the acts arc individualized by the
objects to which they refer. My auditory attention would,
therefore, be multiplied, according to the melodies or the sonorous

HOW ARE PSYCHOLOGICAL ACTS TO BE DISTINGUISHED

329

objects which would interest it. ’• This viewpoint is not false,
for there must be objects, if there are acts tending toward them.
Yet this viewpoint lacks preciseness. The question here is not
one of knowing how to distinguish psychological acts from
outside through an objective chronometric indication, but
rather a question of knowing what individualizes the moments
of the ego from within itself. Without objects, undoubtedly,
the ego would cease to move itself or to be aware of itself, but,
when it moves itself, it is in sensing its own change that it is able
to distinguish the stages and acts of that change. It is even by
reason of its own duration that it first begins to appreciate the
duration of things.i0 It is because I am aware that my present
experience is distinct from a similar past one, that I think of
this as the objective repetition of the melody heard. The
objects of acts are only the general condition of the individ­
ualization of acts. To link the movement of the ego to that of
its objects by a kind of parallelism, would be to forget the
ego’s spontaneity. Before the tiniest flower that holds my gaze,
how many distinct acts are able to arise from within me !
You might say, with Bergson, that the ego certainly presents
a successive diversity, but in no way a fixed distinction between
states. To admit a fixed distinction between states would only
create an illusion that an ego which resists all division is actually
divided into two or three distinct acts of hearing.
This objection forgets that the ego is aware of itself naturally,
according to the law of the finite, *° which is tliat of every*••
Ie Systematic examples : (i) A specific distinction : I hear a knocking
on the door and I sec Mr. Durant come in; (2) A distinction based on
individual objects : seeing Mr. Durant come into the room, I also see
that he is followed by his son Hector; (3) A distinction based on
individual moments of time : engaging in conversation with Hector,
1 see Mr. Durant again, whom I had forgotten for a moment.
*• E. Baudin, Psychologie, pp. 210-214.
•• Perception analyzes the sensory field, by breaking it up into
areas. It also synthesizes by giving a structure to the sensory datum
according to certain *' forms, " whether by virtue of imagination or
intellect. At any rate, every perceived object is a determined finite
object.
Perception of external objects is halted by spatial limits. Con­
sciousness of internal states has temporal limits, pauses, beginnings,
or simple rhythmic variations in psychological movement.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

perception. True, the movement of the ego is not divided by
absolute stops which are followed by recommencements. Such a
division is not required in order that rhythms be distinguished.
It is sufficient, for example, that intense moments of consciousness
alternate with others, wherein the attention slackens, that one
function acts in relation to another, that a single psychological
quality appears and disappears. Thus, I can distinguish different
acts of attention — the different judgments I express in a
conversation, — last night's dream. There is no need to divide
the ego. It will be sufficient if it presents variations through
which my mind can recognize the universal in both the transient
present and the remembered past. The legitimacy of such an
abstraction cannot be denied.
The individuality of a psychological act is, therefore,
definable by reason of its temporal character. It is constituted
by its relations to anterior and posterior acts (of whatever nature
they may be), and to simultaneous acts (which are, in such a
case, necessarily of a kind different from its own).
To admit this individuality, is first to recognize, as does
Bergson, that the consciousness of the present is linked to the
memory of the past and to the imagination of the future. Yet
we must part company with him when he denies the right of
abstraction to distinguish the hidden rhythms in the movement of
consciousness.
C. The specific nature of psychological acts can be
recognized only by their relation to their " formal object. ”

The reason for this is that they are essentially relative to
their objects. They are conscious acts only by reason of the
knowledge (or desire) they give us concerning their objects; but it
is also by reason of their correlative objects that they unveil for
us something of their specific nature.
However, let us be careful not to consider these objects in
themselves, in their brute reality. “ Material objects " 31 (i.e.,
31 Do not confuse the different senses of the word " material " :
(i) as opposed to the immaterial, we have :
(a) material «• extended; in this sense, sensation is not material.

PSYCHOLOGICAL ACTS ARE SPECIFICALLY DIFFERENT

331

things as they arc) are not able to specify psychological acts, for
they are evidently something which the latter are not. It is
" formal objects ” which specify, i.e., objects such as they are
known, or, more generally, such as they are attained by the acts,
for it is this correlation alone which relates the act to the object.
Thus it is not “ this tree ” which specifies sight or desire, but
“ this tree insofar as it is colored, ” or " insofar as it gives
shade. ”
An object can, however, be attained by an act in a number
of its determinations, or “ forms, ” at the same time. Thus,
I see the color in this tree, its configuration, its position, the
swaying of its branches, its place in the countryside, etc. Now,
in a precise sense, the formal object, the object strictly correlative
with sight, is not the total of these determinations, but only that
form which is attained for itself (per se), and encountered as if
by the first thrust of the act (primo), and by reason of which the act
can attain other forms. In this case, that is color. Briefly,
then, a psychological act is specified by its formal object, by the
object which is attained " primo et per se. ”
You may object that, here, we are going around in a circle.
To define an act, I must have recourse to an object ; but in order
to know the object such as I attain it, I need to know the act.
This would be a glaring vicious circle if we were here speaking
of a conclusion, or if we were attempting to construct the nature
of the act from the formal object, and had to suppose that this
was the first and only thing known. On the contrary, I never
have to define cither the act or the object as if I did not know
them before, for I grasp them both in their very correlation,
through a simple reflection. Therefore, I do not have to deduce
the act from the formal object, nor the formal object from the
act. In the first instance I would be constructing an arbitrary
psychology, in the second I would have to know the ego in a
(b) material — essentially dependent on extension; in this sense,
sensation is material.
(2) as opposed to formal, we have :
(c) material — not yet determined but determinable. Formal =
determined and determining, completely char­
acterized.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

pure state. Very simply, then, I have to analyze my own
internal states by an attention which moves its light from the
object to the act, and, inversely, from the act to the object,
without ever being able to grasp cither one in a complete state
of isolation from its correlative. Thus, I learn to know the
relation which unites one to the other, and, consequently, the
nature of the act which produces this relation.

The natural method for distinguishing various kinds of acts
is through an analysis of consciousness and not through an a
priori deduction. It is a case of unraveling the data which are first
attained, '* primo et per se, ” in the multiple acts of consciousness.
This is difficult work, but not completely impossible, since it has
already begun. Common sense alone is sufficient for us to be
able to discern color from sound and taste. Scientific psychol­
ogy recognizes the originality of a sensed movement, of a lived
duration, of a perceived extension, the distinction of an object
thought and an object imagined. By differentiating functions,
science is, at the same time, differentiating formal objects.
Bergson would object here that this classification of objects
and acts is arbitrary and unsuited for giving us a knowledge of
the ego. Why declare color the formal object of sight, rather
than each of the colors with its nuances the formal object
of so many particular kinds of sight, or why not rather
declare quality in general the formal object of only one
kind of acts, the sensation-image? — Why? For practical
reasons, without a doubt ! Every classification is a work of
logic, an “ ens rationis, ” and, on the other hand, the psychol­
ogist finds it more convenient, if he can, to adapt his
classifications to the language and classification which the
language implies. But this is no reason to say that classification
becomes by this completely arbitrary and false, for it always
represents the real relations between acts and their proper
objects. Therefore, it remains capable of giving us a knowledge
of the ego. It is even a necessary method. We can not know
ourselves without the benefit of abstractions, nor can we abstract,
unless we set up general kinds and species, because that which
is capable of being generalized is nothing more than the abstract.

KNOWING AND LOVING, SPECIFICALLY DIFFERENT

333

Acts are, therefore, truly known by their relation to their
formal objects. The degree of abstraction in which we may
choose to consider these relations depends on us, but the process
of abstraction does not permit us to construct the relation to
their object. This is a simple case of observation.
Let us observe this relation of acts to formal objects, and
let us limit ourselves to the least debatable degrees of abstraction.
Let us first consider knowledge and appetition in general, and
then in the two orders of sensation and idea.

D. Knowing and loving are specifically different.
1.

THE FACT OF THE DISTINCTION

a. is recognized by common sense.
1) The symbols which designate them already indicate this.
The " heart ” often goes against the interests of the " head, ”
and sometimes vice versa. Knowledge is a “ light ” for man,
and love is likened to " warmth. ” These expressions seem to
indicate knowledge as an experience of repose, a state, while
loving seems to indicate a movement, a force.
2) The moral conscience is definitely in favor of the
distinction. “ Video meliora proboque; deteriora sequor. ” The
knowing of the good and the wishing of the evil combat each
other in temptation and remorse.
3) The values of the good and the true are clearly distinct.
“ It is not good to speak every truth. ” Now these two orders
of values are based on knowledge and love.
4) The dependence of desire on knowledge is a further proof
of their distinction. It seems that I can limit myself to knowing
without desiring, but I can not desire without knowing.
However, the separability indicated above is less real than it
appears, ” and in this alone we do not have a valid proof for our
position, unless knowing and loving arc, first, perfectly distinct
notions. Now it seems undeniable that the activities referred to
by these distinct notions are also distinct in reality, since our
M This is because of the antecedent influence of the will on some
of our judgments. See P. Foulquié, Psychologie, pp. 574-577.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

consciousness testifies that they vary in opposite directions.
“ Sensation (affective element) and perception (representative
element) are in an inverse ratio to one another. ” 33 Here,
common sense readily admits Hamilton’s law.

5) Catholic theology uses this empirical distinction. Thus,
the correlative opposition of knowing and loving expresses the
distinction of Persons in the Blessed Trinity. The Word is
generated by the Father, as a judgment expresses the knowledge
of the knower; and the Holy Spirit links the Father to the Son,
as the bonds of love bind him who loves to the object that he
loves. Further still, Faith is above all a knowledge, while Hope
and Charity are a love, and their separability clearly marks their
distinction.
b. However, this distinction is diminished in the eyes of
■psychologists.
They sec in a clearer fashion with their more “ objective ”
viewpoint, (more external), the similarity to physiological
conditions which these two kinds of phenomena have. Moreover,
by reason of a more analytic introspection, they are able to see
the identity of these conditions in their grasp of consciousness.
The tendency to identify the facts of knowledge with those of
affcctivity and action is manifested in two opposite directions.
1) Some reduce knowing to acting. Thus, for the Cartesians
and the pragmatists,34 sensation is simply the beginning of action,
an excitation which is received and sent back under the form of
movement. For Bergson, ideas share the lot of images and sen­
sations, and they play only a practical role, i.c., pragmatic action.
2) Others make feelings a kind of knowledge. The peripheral
theory of emotion (W. James, Lange) sees emotion as a sensory
awareness of corporeal modifications which pervade the whole
organism and which follow an excitation. The Stoics and the
Cartesians make pleasure and pain consist in free or necessary
judgments. «
" See Brett's History of Psychology, p. 477.
M E. Baudin, Psychologic, pp. 155-156.
M Ibid., pp. 506-510; 492-493.

KNOWING AND LOVING, SPECIFICALLY DIFFERENT

335

3) Still others, following the same tendency, reduce the
facts of activity and of inclination to a foreknowledge of the future.
It is this that Spencer and other partisans of psychological
determinism have done in the matter of free will.30
This assimilation of knowing into loving and vice versa,
which is contrary to the ordinary experience of consciousness, is
not proposed, however, as absolute. Thus, in the first case, there
remains a realm of pure knowledge, which, for Descartes, is that
which is derived from innate ideas, and, for Bergson, that which
is contained in intuition. In the two others, a certain difference,
remains implicit in the assimilated states. Thus, according to
William James,37 the situation is not having an emotion, but
'* being aware of a strong emotion, ” which is “ being aware of
its organic expression. ” Emotion is seen as being constituted
by physiological movements rather than by their sensation. In
Descartes (VI Meditation) the feelings of hunger and thirst, for
example, are not pure judgments coming from understanding
alone, but from “ certain confused ways of thinking which occur
because of and in dependence on the union of matter and spirit
which is a sort of mixture. ” — “ If this were not the case, then,
whenever my body would be injured, I would not be sorrowful
about it, since the ego would be only a thing which thinks, but
I would perceive this injury by understanding alone, as a pilot
perceives through his eyes if something breaks in his ship. ”
Thus, feeling supposes the body, i.e., a mechanical movement of
extension, and it supposes my body. Being the knowledge of a
subject as subject, feeling is distinct from knowledge properly
so-called, which grasps an object as object, i.e., as something
other than the subject.
For Leibniz, free will is not simply knowledge, but a
spontaneity proper to the intelligence, through which motives
are selected, with a view to the recognition of the best among*•
*• According to Baudin, all psychological determinists in the matter
of will arc concerned with prediction and make a fatal mistake of
imagining motives as physical forces, which, if they are equal, can
neutralize each other. Psychologie, pp. 601-605.
*’ W. James, Psychology (Briefer Course) (New York: Henry Holt,
x9-°)« p- 375 ».

33G

THE NATURE OF MAN

them. To admit an order proper to the Good is to distinguish it
from that of the True, and thus to distinguish activity from
knowledge.
Thus scientific research mitigates but does not suppress the
empirical distinction. What it very definitely shows is the vital
unity of these aspects of the ego. Active and affective love arc
not me except by the consciousness I have of them, or am able to
have of them. Therefore, they are penetrated with knowledge,
both sensible and intellectual, in varying degrees. Sensations,
images and judgments find their place here, but on the condition
of not being emptied of their specific object without which their
psychological originality would vanish. What, then, is the
object of this love, whether it be active or affective, and what are
its relations to the object of knowledge?

2. THE REASON FOR THE SPECIFIC DISTINCTION between
knowledge and desire can actually be found only in their
correlative object.
to know has for its object “ the other as other, modifying
by its own determinations the knowing subject which grasps it
{or sees it). ” Three aspects are, here, grouped together :
(1) the object — as such — is real, independent of the subject,
and imposed on him; (2) the object is intimately present to the
subject, not in a spatial manner, but by an immaterial
communication of its characteristics to the subject; (3) the
object is perceived, grasped, looked upon. To know is — or
better still, supposes — at the same time that there is : (1) a
relating of self to another, endowed with a kind of " personality ”
correlative to mine, in a word, to another which is a thing,
a being; (2) a being similar and — considering the knowing ego
only as it is in act — identical to the thing, but in a completely
immaterial way, which is called " intentional ”; (3) a seeing oí
the object immediately and intuitively. ’•

*• See J. Le Rohbllec, Problèmes Philosophiques, pp. 3-11, 19-24.
These three aspects have given rise to three theories of knowledge :
realism, idealism and intuitionism ; they justify them in the measure
that the three theories arc harmonized.

KNOWING AND LOVING, SPECIFICALLY DIFFERENT

337

The first of these aspects is best shown in the act of judgment.
Judgment implies a necessary relation to the truth, and it is
either true or false. It is always lived as if it were true. Truth
and falsity are in it, because the judgment asserts that it is true.
Now the " true ” implies a relation of thought to an object,
which is totally independent of it and completely other.
But, you may say, can I not construct an object, like a
triangle or a circle, and make a true or false judgment about it?
" A triangle is able to be inscribed within a circle; the length of
the radius varies within the same circumference. ” Where, then,
is the pretended independence of the object? — In the act
itself by which you know the object. If you predicate of a
circle, once constructed, what is proper to a spiral, you make an
error. The object condemns you. To construct an object and
to know it are very different things, even when the construction
is purely mental, and takes place by virtue of a genetic definition.
There is nothing that demonstrates better the value of this first
description than the impossibility of applying it to operations,
whether they are preliminaries to knowledge (the formation
of an idea), or derivations of knowledge (action, e.g., guided by
knowledge).
Moreover, truth is a characteristic proper to judgment.
Must one, then, deny that sensations and images belong within
the order of knowledge? By no means. They must, however,
be situated in a lower degree of knowledge, as being the
beginnings of judgment. They carry within them the seed of
truth or falsity. They are the matter of true or false judgments.
They have a content, which is already completely relative to an
object. Their inferiority flows from this, that they are not aware
of this relativity. In judging, on the contrary, one is aware of
this relation. 39

The second aspect of knowledge (to be similar and identical in
an completely immaterial way) is also best shown in the act of
” J. Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge, Eng. trans. G. B. Phelan
(New York : Scribner, 1959), pp. 87-89, and notes on pp. S3, 89, especially
the reference to De Veritale I, 9; J. de Tonquédec, La Critique de la
Connaissance (Paris : Beauchesne, 1929). PP- 232-239.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

judgment, which alone is capable of producing true knowledge.
To be true is to be in conformity with the reality judged. In a
descending degree, a perception, a memory, an image, a sensation
is true in the measure in which this equality between the knower
and the object is there realized, even though it may still be in an
unconscious manner. This defines the nature of truth for all.
" Veritas adaequatio intellectus et rei ” is the scholastic
expression of it, and here is that of Hamelin : “ Truth, in
whatever manner you define it, implies an agreement of the
subject with the object. ” The divergencies emerge later when
it is a question of defining just what the object of knowledge is.
We will reserve the full solution of this problem to the Critique
of Knowledge, and for the present simply hold on to this : that,
psychologically, to know is to be the object known, to be made
one with it. The attribute of a true judgment is that it is at the
same time an expression of the object known, and an ideal
content of the thought of the thinking subject.
The third aspect pointed, out is the most inexpressible of all, as
w'ell as the most purely experimental. There is in all knowledge
a vision, i.e., something intuitive, a relation which is completely
immediate to the object. Actually, intuition is the beginning
and the term of all knowledge.
How can we reason, i.e., pass from one idea to another, by
knowing the why of the passage, unless in going from one why to
another, we ultimately reach a why which is seen without a
demonstration? Undemonstrables which arc seen arc necessary'
for demonstration. Thus reasoning begins with an intuition,
that of first principles, and it terminates in another intuition,
that of a true conclusion, grasped as the " logical consequence ”
of the whole chain of ideas which established it.
We might, moreover, add : How can we fudge without
believing in the truth of the judgment, i.e., without having any
direct or indirect evidence.3
As for the simpler acts of knowledge, which have no
consciousness of the relation they bear to an object, they still
present this object in the most immediate way possible, although
they are ignorant of the duality of the ego and the actual object ;

KNOWING AND LOVING, SPECIFICALLY DIFFERENT

339

this duality is nevertheless inscribed on them. Images, sensations
arc simply the pure grasp of a certain object, as are the ideas,
which the Scholastics rightly call simple apprehensions. Great
credit is due to Bergson for directing attention to intuition as
being an essential characteristic of knowledge. His great
mistake was in not recognizing the value of the lesser intuitions,
those of sensations and ideas.
The three aspects of knowledge are, therefore, justified.
Can we not simplify them? It is sufficient to indicate that the first
two are not truly different. They express the ontological side
of knowledge. The third expresses its psychological and conscious
side, and it contains the two others. How do we grasp ourselves
as identical with the object (2nd aspect) despite its opposition
to us (1st aspect), i.e., with an identity which is other than
physical (intentional), unless in an intuition of the object (3rd
aspect) which is the basis of the judgment? " 2 + 5 = 7,"Iam
in agreement with an object which resists me at this moment,
which would condemn me if I thought that 2 4-5 =6, and
I know that I am in agreement, because of the vision of that
object posed in me by the constitutive ideas of my judgment.
Very many other notions of knowledge have been proposed.
For empiricism, knowledge is the passive reception of an object
by the subject. For idealism, knowledge is reproduction,
a representation, or even a total production (absolute
idealists) or a formal construction made through “ a
priori ” forms (Kant). — None of this is essential to
knowledge. All this can exist, but only as conditions in particular
cases. Thus sensation supposes a nervous and psychical recep­
tivity. Imagination and memory suppose a recall, a re-creation.
Every discovery supposes a kind of spontaneous production,
which is especially frequent in mathematics. Knowledge,
however, is something other than this. It is something which a
philosopher as profound as Hamelin was forced to admit, despite
his faith in idealism. He says, that under the theoretical aspect
of knowledge (which he opposes to its practical and affective
aspects), “the representation is... contemplative and not
active, it observes, it does not make. ” (Essai sur les Éléments
principaux de la Représentation, p. 376).

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THE NATURE OF MAN

We can conclude that the object of knowledge is the other as
other, identified " intentionally ” with the subject and contem­
plated by it.
loving has a very different object.
The object, here,
tends to become an alter ego, to the extent of being almost
indistinguishable from the ego. Instead of being identified
intentionally with the subject, the object draws the subject,
through the affection which it begets in him, to modify himself
physically, so that he might adapt himself to it. However,
much love is presented willingly as having some special insight
that the mind does not have, it is the blindfold with which
mythology endows it which here symbolizes truth.
The Scholastics, like Aristotle, limited themselves to
separating appetition from cognition, and to a very careful
delineation of the differing acts of appetition. Both empirical
and philosophical usage has accustomed us to speak of the two
distinct zones existing in the ancient notion ’* appetitus, ” one
of activity, the other of affectivity. W. James, for example,
thus differentiates *' instinct ” from “ emotion ” : “ In the
presence of any object, every animal can experience two reactions,
which arc psychologically distinct and determined, one of which
makes it feel, and that is emotion, and the other which makes it
act, and that is instinct. ” He observes, and rightly so, that it is
difficult to say if it acts, in a given case, by emotion or instinct.
" Every object which excites an instinct likewise excites an
emotion. There is only this unique difference..., an emotional
reaction is limited to the body in its expression, whereas the
instinctive reaction is further susceptible of placing the animal
in communication with the object which provoked it. "<0 The
term “ instinct, " as used here, lacks precision. It would be
better for us, in order not to leave the psychological domain, to
speak of love under its active and affective forms.

a. active love is in play in every action with a psycho­
logical inspiration, whether that action is free or not. This is
true in technical action, in esthetic creation and in moral life.
W. James, Psychology (Briefer Course), p. 371.

KNOWING AND LOVING, SPECIFICALLY DIFFERENT

341

To act is simply to pursue an end. To act psychologically is to
act with knowledge. Now, a known end is a good which we
desire and love. The “ reason why ” of any psychological act is,
therefore, always a love. 11 Reciprocally, love always implies an
inclination, i.e., a movement either pursuing a good, or flying
from an evil. This movement is, moreover, completely
qualitative. The physical displacements which take place in the
body are only consequences of this love and can even be lacking.
Love is more interior than any action it inspires.
What is the object of this active love? “ Materially ” it is
the same as the object of knowledge, but “ formally ” it is not
the other as other, it is the other as it can be good for me or
agreeable to me. *42 It is the other as capable of satisfying my
tendencies to act in a direction which I confer on myself, and
through that, on the object which I desire.
In technical activity and in esthetic activity, desire seems to
tend even to the transformation of the external object, which is
the " matter. ’’ Definitely it is the work of the instruments
which manifest the activity of the worker, the potter, the
artist. Nevertheless it is not the movement of the instruments
through muscular contractions which is the object of desire. This
object is beyond that, and lies in a certain result which is sought
for itself (in an end) and is already present in the desire and
defines its direction, mine. Thus the object of a technical or
esthetic desire is a thing, not to be taken as it is in itself to be
assimilated, nor to be contemplated, but to be transformed into
“ Summa Theologiae, I-II», q. 28, a. 6 : " Omno agens agit propter
finem aliquem...; finis autem est bonum desideratum et amatum
unicuique; unde manifestum est, quod omne agens, quodeumquo sit.
agit quamcumque actionem ex aliquo amore. ” This is a question of
love in a completely general sense, " prout comprehendit sub sc amorem
intellectualem, rationalem, animalem, naturalem “ (ad xum), in the sense
of the operation of a tendency, " appetition, ” a spontaneity in
action.
42 Summa Theologiae, I» pars, q. So, a. X, ad xu“ : "Id quod
apprehenditur et appetitur est idem subjecto, sed differt ratione : appre­
henditur enim ut est sensibile vel intclligibilc; appetitur vero ut est
conveniens aut bonum; diversitas autem rationum in objectis requiritur
ad diversitatem potentiarum, non autem materialis diversitas. "

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THE NATURE OF MAN

that which makes it coincide with the idea which directs the
desire and which is the guiding point, the terminus of this kind
of movement.

There is, however, an activity which, in itself, is not
concerned with external matter : moral activity. It must have as
its inspiration the highest degree of active love, since it is, in
itself, more purely psychological. Has the love which animates
moral life an object which can be described in the same terms as
that which inspires technicians and the practitioners of the fine
arts? Does it have as its object something which is to be trans­
formed? It certainly has. An indefinite field of possibilities,
which is the very condition of choice, opens up before liberty to
an even greater degree than before technique and art. “ You
become what you will. ” Without active love, moral action
remains asleep. There are too many contrary directions for
moral activity to take, and it remains indetermined and even
non-existent without active love. Whether I be an honest man,
a pleasure-seeker, or a saint, must I not choose, lest I kill within
me that love of self which wishes to live. This choice of an ideal
has been the first transformation of this vital matter which is
my future ego. Each new free decision has oriented my future
in a more precise direction. Victories and defeats, virtues and
vices, have been building and will continue to be built in me.
Active love is no less transforming in morality than it is in the
arts. It is even more immediately transforming, for the
modifications which it brings, being purely psychological, are
realized without any delay.
Here, then, we have arrived at the first characteristic of the
object of active love. This object is real — having the reality of
the material, of artistic matter, of the free ego, — the activity
on this object is one of transformation in the direction which
love implies. Thus love tends, as does knowledge, to the union of
the subject and the object. But in an inverse fashion, knowing
respects the real integrity of the object and modifies the subject
only, whereas loving (in its active or effective sense) changes
the object in its very reality by bringing it into agreement with the
subject.

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343

A second characteristic can be derived naturally from the
first. Active love, being a movement, implies a need, a lack,
which is that of its term. The object of love is, thus, that which
satisfies a need, that which suppresses the search and gives to the
subject the richness, the perfection which it was lacking; in a
word, what is good, what is suitable to a being, what is in accord
with its tendencies. “ Bonum est quod omnia appetunt. ’’ “
We must, however, be more precise. (1) The “ suitable ” for
technical activity, is, above all, the result. “ A result, being
posed as an aim, the proper task of technical activity... is the
procuring of the result.... The result is so highly important in
technical activity, that it can be obtained indifferently through
the most indirect and bizarre means, provided these methods
correspond to the norms of utility. ” 41 (2) The " suitable ” for
esthetic activity consists, above all, in the means : " An activity is
esthetic because of the method it follows, because of the
concatenation of means through which it offers a spectacle, and
never because of the results which it obtains.... To take one
example out of thousands : in the field of literature, the inner
meaning, i.e., the thesis to be demonstrated, is without
importance from the point of view of art. It is only an excuse....
All that is important is the manner in which the literary activity
is used in the midst of the difficulties of demonstration, finding
its arguments without effort... and proving it without having
given the impression of a proof. ” 4$ (3) As to moral activity, the
good, here, is first of all the end or purpose, but the end with all
the organization of means which its realization supposes : " The
will implies an end, since to will is to will something. It also
implies means, for otherwise it would be no more than a vague
wish, perhaps a desire for the impossible.... The will is,
moreover, the living support of the end and the means, the
° Summa Theologiae, I* pars, q. 5, a. 1. “ Bonum ... aliquid est,
secundum quod est appetibile, ” is a definition which follows that of
Aristotle, *' Bonum est quod omnia appetunt, ’’ which is cited in the
Summa Thcol., I1 pars, q. 5, a. 2, ad 2um.
“ This is a translated quotation taken from Hamelin, Essai sur
les Eléments Principaux de la Représentation, pp. 444-445.
« Ibid., pp. 446-447.
N.Y. 17. — 24

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THE NATURE OF MAN

concrete thing, whose end and means arc only detached
moments. ” “
Consequently, it is love as the inspirer of moral action, the
love of the Good, which animates all human activity, since it has
for its object both means and end.
The object of active love possesses a third aspect, which is
that of finalizing determination. It is not a reality which can be
transformed in any direction, but it is to be transformed in a
definite direction, giving love its orientation.47 As a result of
this observation, we have a problem. Whence does love receive
its determined object ? (See Third Question). We could answer
with St. Augustine : it is the pleasure experienced or imagined
which orients the activity towards its definite object. “ Non
enim amatur nisi quod delectat” (Sermon 159). In another
place : “ Delectatio quasi pondus est animi ” (De Musica, VI)
approaches the " Pondus meum amor meus ” of the Confessions
(lib. XIII). This would be a subordination of active love, the
“ weight ” of the soul, to affective love which enjoys and
suffers. St. Thomas and Hamelin, following Aristotle, are in
agreement here in opposing the opinion of Augustine. They
hold that pleasure and sorrow do not exist without the activity
which engenders them, and they attach action, not to the
emotions, but to knowledge and to natural active tendencies.
The resolution of the problem posed forces us to look first
into the object of affectivity.
b. affective love is expressed in sensations of pleasure
and pain, in feelings of joy and sadness. Here is how
St. Thomas describes pleasure : " Est enim delectatio quies
appetitivae virtutis in aliquo bono amato et consequens aliquam
operationem ” (S. Th., I-IIao, 34, 1). Pleasure demands the
fulfillment of two conditions : “ conjunctio boni et perceptio
hujusmodi conjunctionis. ” The same is true of sorrow :
" conjunctio alicujus mali quod ea ratione est malum quia
<a This is a translated quotation taken fiom Hamklin, Essai sur
les Eléments Principaux de la Représentation.
*’ The object of active love can. therefore, be summed up, as thar
which is known as transformable, as corresponding to some need ot
aptitude and which, as such, directs the action.

AFFECTIVE LOVE

345

privat aliquo bono, ct perceptio hujusmodi conjunctionis ”
(S. Th., I-IIae, 35, 1). These two conditions imply a third,
namely, that the object of pleasure or of sorrow should be a good
or an evil for him who is united to the object. In another
place, 4S St. Thomas expresses what this " conjunctio boni ”
is in more psychological terms. It is an assent to an object. A
resting in it, a manner of making it one’s own within the self.
The object of affective love could be described, in the manner of
St. Thomas, as that which is suitable to the subject and is
intimately -present to it and both of these aspects arc simul­
taneously present to the subject.
Is not the good object, then, the direct cause of pleasure?
No, it is only indirect,49 and this for two reasons. First, there
must be an action which unites the subject to the good object.
Certain pleasures demand no other previous activity than that
of knowledge, e.g., the enjoyment of seeing a show, the happiness
that occurs on hearing some good news. Others demand actions
which bring the thing to the subject, adapting the object to its
ends, placing it at the service of the subject, e.g., as is the case in
the tasting of wine.
But a second condition is required. In order to make me
happy, it docs not suffice to have an action place me in possession
of a coveted end. That union of the good and the ego would be
completely objective. Pleasure arises in consciousness only at
the moment when I know this union by an original experience
Besides objective knowledge and appropriate action, pleasure
° Summa Theol., I-II», q. 33, a. 1, makes a distinction between the
aspect of knowledge and that of appetition in pleasure. As to the former :
" apprehendit se homo perfectionem quamdam adeptum, quae est spiri­
tualis magnitudo ” (man feels himself as having made an acquisition).
As to the latter : " {virtus appeti tiva) assentit rei delectabili, ct in ea
uuiescit. quodammodo se praebens ei ad eam interius capiendam : et sic
dilatatur affectus hominis per delectationem, quasi se tradens ad conti­
nendum interius rem delectantem. ” Man extends himself to receive
the delectable object, and enfolds it within himself, and is harmoniously
in accord with it in all repose.
«* Summa Theol., I-II», q. 32, a. I, ad rum : " Ipsa objecta opera­
tionum non sunt delectabilia, nisi in quantum conjunguntur nobis; vel
per cognitionem solam... vel quocumque alio modo simul cum
cognitione. ”

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THE NATURE OF MAN

demands an experimental knowledge of the union between the
good and the subject as such. It is, undoubtedly, this condition
which has given some likelihood to intellectualized theories of
pleasure and sorrow.
Hamelin recognized these two conditions. He says of
pleasure, that it is “ the appreciation by the subject itself, from
its own point of view as subject, of a state, in which it has
experienced the satisfaction of a tendency. ’* “ Once the
tendency is satisfied, this satisfaction affects the subject as it is
receptive and passive.... This reverberation, which is analogous
to sensation '* — but not identical with it — " is the feeling of
pleasure. "40 Moreover, a tendency can be satisfied through
anticipatory imagination as well as through a perception. Hence
there is pleasure in hoping.
If this analysis is correct, it is clear that affective love is
not the basis of activity, but flows from it. Actually, without a
satisfied tendency, without an action satisfying it, no pleasure is
conceivable. The formation of a habit happens to be an out­
standing example of what we have just said, and it shows that
pleasure begins only where activity is already present. An
action which is indifferent or even disagreeable at first, by being
repeated, strengthens and gives direction to a tendency, and
thus creates a need, a new source of pleasure or pain.41 Thus
we see explained what is variable in affectivity, and its
dependence on individual evolution and social conditions.
The analysis just attempted also shows affective love to be
an original psychological attitude, irreducible to active love, and
as specific as it is. Affection is another thing than the result or
the end pursued through action. If the object of action is the
end to be attained, the object of pleasure is the end attained.
Pleasure completes the act, but without being identical to it. It
is rather “ an effect of the act, a repercussion of the act on the
subject, astate derived from activity.... but passive in itself. ” “49
49 Translated quotation from Hamblin, Essai sur les Eléments
Principaux de la Peprésenlalion. pp. 477 and 475.
“ Ibid., p. 469.
“ Ibid., p. 474.

THE VITAL UNION OF KNOWING AND LOVING

347

St. Thomas thinks so too : “ Pleasure perfects operation, as an
end which is realized in superabundance. Operation constitutes
a first good, and another good is added to it, pleasure. This
good consists in the appeasement of desire, put at rest by the
good which is first realized. ” w “ In this way, action is the
productive cause of pleasure ” (ib. ad 2um).
The distinction between affectivity and action which is
claimed to be a modern one was, therefore, not unknown to the
Aristotelian Scholastics. They were careful not to transform
this distinction into a mortal separation. This supple manner of
distinction was also employed by them in distinguishing
knowledge from action, not for the purpose of placing one opposite
the other, but rather for the purpose of uniting them in one
single life. There remains for us the task of showing the vital
links between knowledge and the two forms of love.

3. the vital unity of knowing, acting and sensing has
not been destroyed by the preceding analyses. It is important
now to bring this unity to the fore, if only to recapture the
initial intuition of the ego. The ego is continuous knowing,
acting and loving. The role which analj-sis plays is that of
allowing us to grasp the order which synthesizes the ego’s
movement and presents it as a whole to the intuition.
knowledge is the necessary foundation of psycho­
logical life. Undoubtedly, knowledge supposes a tendency, i.e.,
an activity apt to be excited by sensible qualities, but this
tendency is “ unconscious. ” It is the " natural appetite ”
required for every change, the innate destination found in all
that becomes. It conditions psychological life, but remains
outside of it.

a. Here, then, the subject is enriched, through knowledge,
by the immaterial possession of the quality (" of the form ”)
“ Swnma Theol., I-II®, q. 33, a. 4 : “ Delectatio perficit operationem,
sicut quidam superveniens finis; inquantum scilicet super hoc bonum
quod est operatio supervenit aliud bonum quod est delectatio, quae
importat quietationem appetitus in bono praesupposito. ”
Ibid., ad 2U“ : " operatio causât delectationem sicut causa efficiens;
delectatio autem perficit operationem per modum finis. ”

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THE NATURE OF MAN

of another. Since this is so, the subject is enabled to act in a
new way, with a consciousness of its direction towards the object
known. All that the subject is, is apt for acting according to
the determinations which it possesses. The aptitude for action
in the knowing subject is therefore increased and made more
precise. This aptitude has taken as a form the consciousness
of the represented ends and means. The active tendency has
become, by reason of knowledge, a desire, a love. M

b. Moreover, the knowing ego, being a changing thing,
feels its riches escape it in proportion as it acquires them. Present
consciousness passes and becomes the past. The ego wishes —
and this because of its natural tendency to endure in being •— to
keep this fleeting object which has become itself. It will bring
it back by memory. But an activity must intervene, an activity
which sometimes is an effort to complete this poor mutilated
ego, by reconstituting its broken unity. This activity is a
requisite for the very awareness of the ego and the unity of
personality. In the mental illnesses which affect the ego, " that
personality or part of personality, which the subject wishes to be
one, constitutes the unity of consciousness. The rest remains
outside of this unity, because the subject wills to let it remain
outside that unity. ” “ Thus the innate tendency to be,
impregnated by the knowledge of a present which is vanishing,
engenders the action of memory, a mental synthesis wherein all
desires are nourished. The basis of love is to know a second
time.
There is, however, a difficulty which remains. To know is to
contemplate, to see. Is this not then a repose, an immobility,
whereas to act is at the same time to modify the object and be
modified in turn? How docs one unite these contraries? — We
M Summa Thcol., Ia pars, q. 8l, a. I, lays down the principle :
*' Quamlibet formam sequitur aliqua inclinatio. " It applies it to two
areas, that of non-conscious beings and that of conscious beings. The
latter, beyond their natural form, possess, through knowledge, the form
of the objects they know. Thus there are two different degrees of
inclination : natural appetite, and that appetite which follows intellectual
or sensible knowledge and is superior to natural appetite.
“ Translated quotation from Hamblin, Essai, p. 442.

THE VITAL UNION OF KNOWING AND LOVING

349

have only to recall that the ego is a movement and that movement
is precisely the union of contraries. The contrariety of knowing
and acting is, perhaps, that which is most useful to us in
distinguishing rhythms and acts in the ego. A complete rhythm —
which implies all that is essential in movement — is a movement
included between two relative rests (for in joining this movement
to other anterior and posterior rhythms, the entire intermediary
rhythm is movement and contains nothing of the purely
immobile). In psychological movement, action springs from
a first knowledge which is not yet animated with the action’s
dynamism (it is in a state of relative repose in respect to the
consequent action), and it will terminate in a second knowledge,
of an affective type, wherein movement makes place for repose
in the tendency (N.B., in the tendency, and not the whole ego).
The ego thus moves itself, from a knowledge wherein the object
is in relation to an unsatisfied tendency, to a knowledge which
experiences the satisfaction of possessing the object which action
has attained. If knowledge is static, it is not in its link with
action, but in its link with its object. Moreover, this static
characteristic simply expresses the immutable quality of truth.
It docs not imply the exclusion of discursive reason nor progress
in knowledge. On the contrary, and here again the unity of
life is rather obvious, since a simple reflection on acquired truths
will quickly show their imperfection, their lack of integral
adequacy to objects. From this there rises a new desire, a
scientific or philosophical activity, which has for its aim the
embracing of the object in its entirety, a desire which leads ulti­
mately to the desire for the Vision of God.
To sum up : active love has its origin in knowledge which
awakens in consciousness a natural tendency. Active love is
sustained by the unsatisfied state of this tendency, is exercised
in the construction of an object adapted to this tendency, and
finishes finally in affective love, wherein knowledge has the
essential role of appreciating the accord between the acquired
object and the need subjectively experienced.

But, insofar as the actual possession of the good remains
inferior to the tendencies, pleasure remains imperfect and

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THE NATURE OF MAN

reinforces desire, the motive of action. Thus affection, turning
the attention of the subject to act, makes the act more intense
and often more efficacious. »• This collaboration of affcctivity
with act is even a constant factor, as paradoxical as it seems
(pleasure supposes the possession of a good, action seeks a good
which is not possessed), but the paradox is explained if the
pleasure is imperfect. Often the good for which wc are searching
has a successive existence. •’ The pleasure which I experience
in the first verses of a poem makes me desire to read on. Thus
it is that we acquire little by little a good which is durable in
itself, as is the case with science and virtue. Finally, the memory
of a past pleasure can cause the desire to experience it again, if,
for example, the subject finds himself in a frame of mind similar
to that wherein he first experienced this pleasure. The picture
of a chicken is enough to make the digestive glands of a hungry
man begin to operate, but not those of a man who is full. In
the same way, affectivity which, of itself, supposes an acquired
state, remains linked, as does knowledge, to the dynamism of
action. (This observation has great significance for moral
philosophy.) ••
Psychological life, even in its diversity, shows itself to be
basically one. Let us continue to analyze this diversity by
approaching closer and closer to the " formalities ’’ of the object.
E. Sensory acts and intellective ones are specifically
distinct.
1.

THE FACT OF THE DISTINCTION I

a. is obvious to common sense. Man believes himself
superior to the animal; he classifies himself as a species apart.
»• Summa Theol., I-II
.
*
q. 33, a. 4. Pleasure perfects action in two
ways : (1) in the manner of an end. by adding a good to him who performs
the action; (2) "ex parte causae agentis.” but only indirectly "in
quantum scilicet agens, quia delectatur in su a actione, vehementius
attendit ad ipsam et diligentius eam operatur. ” Refer to the Moral of
Aristotle (bk. :o. ch. 5). according to which. " delectationes adaugent
proprias operationes ct impediunt extraneas. ’’
*’ Summa Theol., I-II
,
*
q. 33, a. 2.
•• James Royce, S. J., Afan and His Nature, pp. 162-163.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SENSING AND THINKING

351

Now it seems that it is thought which marks for him the line
of demarcation, since the animal does not think. On the other
hand, no one denies that sensation and memory exist in the
animal. If thought is a specific trait in man, if sensation belongs
to animals, common sense feels it must distinguish one specifically
from the other.

b. Descriptive psychology, by its analysis, transforms this
presumption into a proof.
1) It compares man with animal and observes in the first
the union of sensation and thought, while in the latter, it observes
sensation to the exclusion of thought.
a) The animal has a life which is purely corporeal. •’ That
which interests him, in his transitory associations (migrations of
fish, birds, etc.,), in his permanent associations (bees, ants, etc.),
in his kind (facts and instincts relative to reproduction), is solely
organic life. Man, on the contrary, has a life which infinitely
goes beyond the limits of matter. He has a conceptual language,
which he employs with the intention of signifying. He has
scientific ambitions, esthetic tastes, a moral and a religious life.
These forms of life suppose a type of knowledge which goes
beyond matter, a thought which is other than sensation.
b) Even in his corporeal life, man acts in a way that greatly
differs from that of an animal. w The latter resolves problems of
adaptation by reason of its instincts, by solutions which are all
the more rigid as his instincts are more perfect. Animals of the
same species all react in the same way in the same circumstances.
The rare differences in their behavior come from individual
conditions, which may be innate (mutations), acquired (training,
memory), or purely transitory (sickness, state of hunger or of
repletion); otherwise, their reactions are immutable in time.01
** J. Frôbes, Psychologia Speculativa (Freiburg i. Br. : Herder, 1927),
Tomus I, pp. 38-53.
«« Herman Reith, C. S. C., An Introduction to Philosophical Psychol­
ogy (Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice-Hall, 4th printing, 1959),
pp. 106-107.
“ Ibid., p. 107.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

On the contrary, man is endowed with an autonomous
junction of adaptation, which is aware of problems as problems,
views their solution as an end and pursues it by an indefinitely
varied choice of means. Nourishment, clothing, locomotion,
and instruments designed to procure these, are problems which
are solved in different ways by different individuals, or by one
man following his own whim, caprice or will. And — what is
not less remarkable — these solutions have been invented by a
work of intelligence, which is sometimes prodigious, and involves
the accumulated effort of past generations. Thus science has
completely changed the material organization of life in our
days. Liberty in the choice of solutions, and evident historical
progress in their discovery, are two characteristics proper to man
which markedly separate him from the animal in the corporeal
acts of life itself. We must, therefore, recognize a force in the
psychological life of man which is very different from that of
animal life, ruled as it is by sensation.
2) MAN AS HE IS IN HIMSELF ÍS also the object of
the study of psychology. The study of his functions obliges it
to condemn both empiricism and idealism. The first identifies
idea with image; the second sees in the image only a “ thought
which is more developed and more concrete, as opposed to a
thought which is more involved and more abstract. " •* For
one, everything is image; for the other, everything is thought.
Psychology, on the other hand, recognizes the originality of
thought in reference to image.
a) the idea is not a simple image (Berkeley), nor an
association of images ticketed with a single name (the
associat ion ism and nominalism of Taine), because :
(1) I can either limit myself to an image or know something
about this image; the idea is what 1 know about it. I see a new
object, and I ask myself : What is it? In posing this question to
myself, I am looking for an idea, the idea which will be my first
knowledge of this image.
(2) the idea and the image are independently variable,
° Quotation taken from Hamelin, Essai, p. 388.

THE IDEA AND THE IMAGE

353

(a) firstly, in quantity. To have a plurality of images is not
synonomous with having a plurality of ideas. The proof is to be
found in the facts of psychological development. Infancy is
rich in images yet poor in ideas. The ordinary development of a
human implies a progressive decrease in imagination and a
parallel increase in thought. Another proof can be found in the
effect of the movies, which is the method par excellence to
bombard our attention with images, but it is not necessarily the
method which provokes any thought. Thought and image
actually seem to vary in an inverse ratio.
(b) image and idea are completely disproportionate in quality
also ; " we think well beyond the range of an image ; against an
idea of one hundred thousand dollars, we have the image of four
or five cents. ” The researches of Alfred Binet and those of the
Wurzburg school have not demonstrated the existence of a
thought without an image, but at least they have solidly proven
the irreducibility of one to the other. «
In particular, the sensory quality proper to an image does
not at all involve the same quality in the idea of an identical
object. As a matter of fact, images which are qualitatively
different can easily condition ideas which are qualitatively
identical. Thus a man born blind can know a geometry linked
to images which are purely tactile, whereas one with sight has
the same geometry, which is nevertheless linked primarily to
visual images, which arc very different from tactile ones. Thus
the idea is indifferent to its imagery.

(c) finally, clarity and distinction can be absent from the
image and present in the highest degree in an idea, and the
inverse may be equally true. From this point of view compare
the image with the idea of a ten thousand sided figure.
(3) The object of an idea can be completely unimaginable.
Can we have an image of goodness, justice, science, God,
nothingness, etc? M
«• James Royce, S. J., Man and His Nature, pp. 98-100.
Ibid., pp. 93-94-

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THE NATURE OF MAN

b) judgment is not reducible to a pure association of
images.
(1) Firstly, images are associated without j’udgment....
Dreams and reveries are only associations, a succession of
images, spectacles for my internal senses. Where is there any
judgment, when I am limited to seeing one movement follow
another? Moreover, many questions which are asked realize
the association of what will be the subject and the predicate of
the answer. Though the answer be lacking at the moment of
the question, when it is given, it will be given in the form
of judgment. One can ask : Is the door open? This question
is association, but it is not judgment. To judge is to think
either yes or no.
(2) Juxtaposition is all there is to association. Those things
which are associated remain different. To judge, on the contrary,
is to identify two thoughts with one another. Such is the meaning
of yes or of a copula. On the other hand, no is not the absence
of yes. Its function is simply to reject the yes, and, therefore,
supposes an identity of two terms taken as an hypothesis. A
unification of states is operating in every judgment. Association
only multiplies them.
(3) Again, to judge is to predicate. Now a predicate is
always something other than an image. With what is an image
identical, unless with itself? If, therefore, to judge is to identify
the subject with the predicate, it must very well be because the
two terms are not opposed to each other as two images always
are. It must be that they can compenétrate each other. The
predicate-idea, because it is apt to be fused with the subject, is
therefore not an image. We shall see what confers this aptitude
on it, by pointing out its abstract and universal character
(Quidditas abstracta).
(4) To judge is to think truly or falsely. Now truth supposes
that the mind is not by its nature forced to represent an object
with a complete disregard for the object itself, but that the
mind knows the object by consciously affirming a relationship
of identity between this knowledge and its object. The
association of images pays no heed to truth. At the most, it

JUDGMENT, REASON AND IMAGES

355

has a grasp of the word truth, but it is ignorant of its
meaning. “

(5) The object of judgment can be completely unimaginable.
Thus “ Non-Euclidcan geometries are not absurd; God is the
Creator
these predicates are not merely words. They have a
sense, but they tell us nothing which is of a sensory nature.
c) “ A fortiori, ” reasoning is not to be reduced to a
more or less complicated scaffolding of associations. " A
fortiori, ” since he who reasons cannot do so without judging.
But especially because :
(1) Reasoning is to think by virtue of a logical determinism.
In order that the antecedent here involve the consequent, and
the premises the conclusion, it is absolutely necessary that this
antecedent should be known, and that the why of the passage to
the conclusion be revealed in that knowledge. The “ why "
which we oppose to an unlooked-for affirmation, and the
" because ” which answers it, are manifestations of that law.
There is nothing like this in association. In association, the
laws are very different, and they are reducible chiefly to the law
of contiguity, which is most fundamental and which in its essence
is no more than the law of habit.
(2) The grasping of this why, which is the very soul of
reasoning, is in no way sensory, imaginative or material. It is
essentially the identity of the conclusion with the premises. Now
this identification is completely immaterial, since it is a judgment
drawn from other judgments.
Thus psychological science gives a solid basis to and justifies
the common persuasion of mankind. In a word, psychological
science gives this common persuasion an objective certitude.
There is in man a psychological life that is richer than that of the
animal. An animal has images, but no thoughts at all. Man
has a thought which infinitely transcends his images. Thus man
is specified by his thought. He is an animal who thinks.
This is a specification which is derived from the irreducible
** Hubert Gruender, S. J., Experimental Psychology (Milwaukee :
Bruce, 1932). pp. 2S6-300, 245-252.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

distinction between images and intelligence.
distinction due to?

But what is this

To the diversity of the objects which are proper to sensation
and thought.
2.

THE REASON FOR THIS DISTINCTION

a. sensation is diversified in numerous kinds. Sensory
acts essentially imply knowledge. The Cartesians have
denied this, but that was because they were thinking of a perfect
knowledge, which knows itself as identical with the object and is
called judgment. Here, there is no judgment actually, but
nevertheless, there is knowledge, although it is ignorant of
itself. It is on this knowledge that sensory desires and
emotions are built. Thus a whole family of acts is constituted.
Its prototype species is sensation in the strict sense, for it is
that which furnishes all the others their general or “ material “
object. Its proj>er or “ formal ” object is closely linked to
theirs. St. Thomas has expressed their common traits, their
" family ” traits, by saying : The sensible object is the corporeal
individual, i.e., material or extended. Speaking of sight in
particular, he says : “ Visus nullo modo potest in abstractions
cognoscere id quod in concretione cognoscit; nullo enim modo
potest percipere naturam nisi ui hanc. ” He says of every
sensory function : “ Objectum cujuslibet sensitivae potentiae
est forma prout in materia corporali existit; et quia hujusmodi
materia est individuationis principium, ideo omnis potentia
sensitivae partis est cognoscitiva particularium tantum. ” ••
Images are no exception : “ ... a materia individuals quam
repraesentant phantasmata, " and again : “ Phantasmata, cum
sint similitudines individuorum.... ” Let us verify this affir­
mation of the functions of knowledge; it will be done by the very••
•• " Sight can in no way know abstractly that which it sees in the
concrete: in no way can it perceive nature except as this thing. ” Summa
Theologiae, I» pars. q. 12, a. 4. ad 3““. • " The object of any sensitive
power is the form as it exists in corporeal matter, and because matter
is the principle of individuation, every power in the sensitive part of
man knows only particular things. ” Summa Tkeol., I* pars., q. 85,
a. I, ad 3U“.

REASONS TO DISTINGUISH IMAGES FROM IDEAS

357

fact of desires and affections which find their object only by
reason of knowledge.
1) sensation, in the strict sense, makes us know qualities,
colors, sounds, etc., but in a way so
EXTENDED OBJECT intimately connected with extension
that only abstraction can separate
them. No color or luminosity is sensed except as “ informing "
a surface. An unextended point is visible only with and through
the surface which it breaks. The natural link of tactile qualities
to extension can not be denied, except by those entertaining
the prejudices of an anti-experimentalist empiricism. *7 As for
sounds, odors, and savors, they undoubtedly include a perception
of extension. In my primitive experience, there is no distinction
between extension which is external (that of bodies), and that
which is internal (that of my body). Extension is simultaneously
and indistinguishably mine and that of the non-ego, and this
must be said of visual and tactile extension as well. Primitive
experiences are each an ensemble of objective and subjective
extension operating in the organs. It is only little by little that I
begin to discern two zones in sensed extension ; then I attribute
colors, resistances, sounds, odors, and savors to exterior objects,
and I place them in relation to my organs, becoming aware of
them by the attention which I focus on their position in relation
to me. In doing this I have only discerned certain relations of
sensible qualities to my organs, and of these qualities among
themselves. I have not had to construct these relations first.
The most constant of these relations is assuredly that of extension
(or mutual exteriority). Thus no sensation unveils a sensible
quality to me without unveiling its relation to extension. Uncxtended sensation is found only in the writings of empiricists. No
human consciousness experiences it.
If we had to reason here, the conclusion would be the sameThe immediate excitant of every sensation, is actually a
♦’ Baudin, Psychologie, pp. 195-197. Baudin here refers to Berkeley,
Mill, Bain, Spencer. Wundt and Taine, who all held that the notion of
extension was not a primary datum of sensation, holding that our first
sensations are unextended and have no other characteristics than their
quality and intensity.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

movement or a state of extension. The nervous impression is
again a modification of extension, that of the peripheral organ,
the conducting nerve and the cerebral center. Isn't it natural
that an intuitive knowledge, which is thus conditioned, should
have for its essential object, extension itself!
The error of the empiricists is,
INDIVIDUAL OBJECT nevertheless, explainable, since they
have understood extension in an
abstract sense, that of the geometricians. On the contrary, the
sensed extension is complete!}' concrete and individual. The
individuality of which we are speaking — it goes without saying
— is not that of a substance, or that which characterizes " an
essence apt for existence by itself. ” It is that which is proper
to extension, that which comes from the limits of extension, i.e.,
the qualitative differences which isolate its parts, especially
in the independent displacement of certain of its parts. In a
word, individual extension is that which encloses a contour, a
line or a surface. Individuality here is only the position on this
or that side of a particular line or a particular surface.
To grasp the individuality of every sensible object, it
suffices to be aware that each quality sensed is directly
localized. This is sufficient, for to localize is to relate to spatial
limits, and, therefore, above all, to grasp limits in extension.
The empiricist will object : sensation in a pure state is
not localized. It becomes so by a mental elaboration. — This
is to forget to give materials to a builder so that he can make
something. I agree that a mental elaboration is necessary in
order to make precisions, to appreciate and to measure the local
relations of sensed qualities. I do not know by sensation alone
what distance separates this circular object which is called the
moon from a point called the North Star, or from this mass which
is my body. However, I sense that there is a distance, although I
perceive it mingled with a multitude of other distances, those of
all the differing qualities which constitute at this moment my
field of vision.
Here is a proof that sensation grasps the limits of extension.
Sensation is sufficient to enable me to know the movement of

REASONS TO DISTINGUISH IMAGES FROM IDEAS

359

qualities, whether it be their displacement or their alteration.
The first case is that of a variation in place (this accumulation
of motley spots, the cat, draws away from this growling mass,
the dog) ; the second is that of a succession of qualities having the
same localization (the dog first was growling, and now he begins
to bark). Thus there is a derived localization, i.e., secondary,
wherein the intelligence plays a role, which is sometimes a very
important one (e.g., astronomical measures). But there is a
primitive localization, indistinct, merely felt.
Thus, there is first a constant experience of sensation
which affirms it. Because the empiricist through abstraction
distorts the vital play of sensation, he no longer finds in it any
other object than pure quality. Lived sensation is always that
of a quality in some present extension.
An easy reflection will also confirm this. To sense
extension, is to be aware of parts outside of parts. Individu­
alizing localization demands no more than limits. Now these are
present in every sensation. Touch and taste have extremely
narrow limits. The senses of smell and hearing have coverings
enclosing their sensory field. Sight has its horizon and its
angle of vision, without even considering the variations between
its highest sensibility (the yellow spot) and its lowest sensibility
(the blind point), which establish limits even within the sensory
field. Besides these limits which are inherent in every sensation,
there arc limits constituted by the indefinite variations
attributable to individual organic conditions which affect
sensible qualities themselves.
We can conclude : the object of sensation is always concretely
or individually extended.
2) the imagination has the same object as sensation,
obtained as through a second drawing of sensed objects. It
reproduces sensations in less vivid forms which are often feeble
and fragmentary portions of former sensations. In dreams and
reveries, imagination is often creative, and assembles preexistent
materials in original sequences and new syntheses. But it
leaves them their individualized extension; in short, it only
modifies the limits and the juxtapositions of extension. As to
N.Y. 17 — 25

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THE NATURE OF MAN

the higher forms of scientific, moral and esthetic invention,
these are evidently not the work of imagination alone. They
arc animated by a life which is properly human and in no way
reductively animal. Hence, one cannot draw any objections
concerning the object of images from the creative forms of
human invention.
3) perception is essentiali}' a sensory nucleus, ordinarily
surrounded with a halo of images. Here, man, differing from
animals, incorporates abstract ideas into his field of sensory
awareness. Despite this, every perception has as its object an
individual extension, grasped by sensation The object perceived
is, first of all, an extension, and it would not be an “ object ’’ if
it were not finite and limited.
4) memories must be divided into two groups. To
recognize a particular system of philosophy' in the writing of a
journalist is a question of intellectual memory. However, we
also recognize recalled images and relived perceptions. This
is a question of sensible memory’. Its object is the same as that
of images and perceptions, at the same time individual and
extended.
5) animal evaluations, which the psychological
analysis of instinct reveals, do not go beyond the corporeal
individual. They are concerned with the physical acts of the
animal. They " judge ” *8 them in relation to objects which are
exclusively corporeal, ends or means of actions, whether sensed
or imagined. Thus the sight of a shoot of straw stirs a bird to
pick it up and the image of a future nest involves the placing
of the straw within the supports. Nothing is revealed in these
objects, except what is concrete and material.••
•• Animal instinct is governed in its operation on its environment.
But how? Two extreme tendencies approximate an answer. One
concerns actions directed by conscious thought of an end and free choice
of the means. The other concerns itself with the mechanical response
given to influences received through self-regulating machines. The truth
lies between these two extreme analyses of instinct. The animal action
is regulated not on things themselves, but objects, i.e., on the things
insofar as they arc known. This knowledge remains in the sensory
order, but involves a comparison between the object and the subject.

THE OBJECT OF THOUGHT

361

• corollary. All these types of knowledge condition
desires and affections. But love, in its two forms, can have no
other fundamental object than that of its correlative knowledge.
Thus love, whether active or affective, which originates with
sensitive knowledge, is always a sensory love itself. We can
remark that the activity, here, has only one form, which is
always of a technical kind. The technique of an animal is that
of instinct. There is neither art nor morality here, since nature
acts in him without any consciousness of a relation, completely
immaterial of means to an end.
. Sensitive life is therefore turned towards an individual object
which is extended. This explains the limited scope of instinct,
as well as its rigid determinism, which is similar to mechanism in
matter.
, b. thought has a much more ample object, which
explains the suppleness of human comportment in contrast to
the rigidity of animal instinct. Let us first delve into the
extent of this object, to what can thought apply itself, and in
what way does it do this?
1) ITS INTEGRAL OR ADEQUATE OBJECT, its generic Or
common object, is being in general, whether extended
or not, whether material, i.e., essentially dependent on matter,
or immaterial, i.e., not essentially dependent on matter, but
either accidentali}' or not at all; whether existent or possible, a
thing (tree, man) or a value (good, true, etc.).
a) Ever}' immaterial as well as material being is the object of
thought. In fact :
. (1) Wheresoever I have found the non-imaginable as object,
I have found the immaterial, for the extended and everything
both grasped as they arc in their concrete state, a " sensible judgment, ”
a judgment oí the senses, closely related to that which is harbored in
estimations on pleasure and pain.
Sec A. Valeñsin, Balthazar, pp. 64-74. “ Picture a sleep-walker :
he acts out what he is dreaming without knowing that he is doing so
and without even knowing that he is dreaming. .Such is the soul oí
brutes. ” (P. 70).
See J. Fkôues, Psychologies Speculativa, Tomus I, pp. 173-177:
J. Royce,-S; J., .Wan and His Nature, pp. 82-84: A. Thonnard, Priais
de Philosophie, pp. 967-974.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

which necessarily depends on it is the very object of the
imagination. Now, I have found that all forms of thought can
attain non-imaginable objects, whether they are beings, as God
and spirit (these two words have a meaning, a mental object), or
relations, or the nature of a thing, the cause of an existence, the
finality of an action, the truth of a judgment, or the goodness or
perfection of an act.
Now, I very often think of material objects in terms of the
above relations, but these relations are thought by me as having
no necessary link with extension, because I think of immaterial
objects in terms of these relations as well, e.g., the nature of the
soul, a creative cause, and moral perfection. Moreover, I conceive
certain of these relations as existing only between immaterial
things, for example, the truth of universal judgments, wherein
there is a question of the identification of the judgment with
its universal object (the judgment 2 4- 2 =4, is true by its
adequation with its completely abstract and immaterial object :
two added to two). Likewise, the moral goodness of a decision
results from the completely immaterial agreement between the
mental evaluation of a possible act and a moral ideal.

(2) But I also observe in myself a host of ideas whose object,
although it is material, may nevertheless essentially imply the
immaterial which I incorporate into it. With any idea which
designates a material reality, I can form an idea which is its con­
tradictory : red permits me to think of the non-red, the mobile
of the immobile. Now negation or contradiction have nothing to
do with extension, yet it is most often useful to be applied to
material determinations, and it opens up perspectives for the
mind, which are no longer limited to matter. The non-red, the
immobile, are not necessarily extended objects. It is certainly
true, that in order to arrive at these thoughts, I have followed a
way which began in extension, which is the proper object of
thought, but in thinking these things, I have broken the bonds
which would subject me to the using of extension.
” G. Kluuhrtanz, S. J., The Philosophy of Human Nature,
pp. 164-167.

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363

b) Moreover, all being is the object of intellectual
knowledge and is actually known through a relation to each
determined being, no matter which determination is being directly
considered. It is the act of judgment which guards and entrusts
this secret to us : it knows the totality of being in relation to any
determined attribute of being.

(1) All that the mind knows, it knows in relation to being.
Once the complex “ subject-predicate ” is formed, the judgment
avows : This ts or this is not. 70 Thus it shows that it has for its
object all that is thinkable, i.e., everything which is or can be. To
say " this is, " one must know being in general, i.e., all being.
It is not a question here of the copula, which is limited to
expressing this internal assertion, and which can be lacking, but
rather a question of the intimate thought of him who judges.
This thought always evaluates the " matter ” of a judgment
(subject-predicate) as true or false, as “ being ” or " not being. ”
(2) Beyond its aptitude for knowing being and judging all
being, the judgment, which affirms or denies, manifests itself
as already knowing all being. When judgment expresses itself
in a ” Yes ” or " No, ” there is always an affirmation or a denial.
When it thinks explicity of one attribute or another, it is always
all of being which is attained. Actually, to judge is to think
directly of a determined attribute, and indirectly of all that is
not this attribute. It is to think of all beings together : those
which the extension of the attribute embraces in a distinct way,
and those which it excludes in a confused way.
In a negative judgment, this is very clear : " an atom is not
visible, ” for example. Here I am directly thinking of the
attribute “ visible, ” but in denying it of the subject, I have a
confused notion of the entire group of things in which I implicitly
rank the atom. Thus, at one and the same time, I know all the
” In a judgment which is truly thought and therefore belief,
I experience what being is : my being which judges the being of that
which is judged and the being of their identity in an indissoluble oppo­
sition. Not only do I grasp the meaning of being (= a something, an
essence), but I claim to’ know that which being is in its totality, all of
existing reality, when I think, “ This IS. '*

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THE NATURE OF MAN

visible since I exclude the atom from it, and all the invisible of
which I know at least that it includes the atom. But all the
visible and all the invisible make up the whole of being, for the
principle of the excluded middle will not allow the hypothesis of
a being which could exist between the " Yes ” and “ No ” of
visibility. To deny, then, is to know all being in some fashion
(extensionally, at least).
The affirmative judgment, in its turn, at least implies a
negation. In this sense, the widely discussed formula of Spinoza
would be true : “ Every determination is a negation. ” The
judgment, “ The sun is shining " includes the judgment, “ there
is or there can be things which are not shining, ” and it expresses a
relation of these things to the sun : " The sun is not among
these things. ” Briefly, each one knows that in making an
affirmation he denies its contradictory. Thus each one has an
experience of the principle of non-contradiction in every
judgment, and even becomes violently aware of it when he
hears his opinion placed in doubt or denied. Therefore, to
affirm an attribute of a subject is to deny the contradictory
attribute of that same subject. It is to know these two attributes
at the same time, and by reason of this, to know all being, since
the " Yes ” and the “ No ” which are relative to the same
determination embrace the totality of being.
To judge, whether by an affirmation or a denial, is certainly
to have a knowledge of all of being, of being in general. One has
this knowledge by considering a part of being through the
positively affirmed attributes, and the other part through the
negation of the same characteristics.
Thus the totality of being is known in the simplest of
judgments. Certainly this knowledge is only an implied one,
and does not exist except in relation to a particular being.
Consequently, at the same time that the judgment unveils
the infinite extent of the intellectual vision of the " signification of
being, ” it poses a question which leads us to the proper object
of human judgment, and, through it, of human thought.
Actually, what are those positive characteristics, affirmed or
denied, wliich constitute our proper light on being, and arc the

THE OBJECT OF THOUGHT

365

indispensable object of every judicative function (evidently we
must have something to affirm or deny)? The proper object of
human thought can be formed only from characteristics which
are common to all the positive predicable characteristics.
2) the proper object, which may be called the specific
object, the first or the essential object of human thought, is
“ THE UNIVERSAL SEEN IN THE SENSIBLE, ” Í.C., Seen in an
individual extension.
The Scholastic formula, " Quidditas abstracta a rebus
sensibilibus, ” embraces these two aspects cited in our definition,
and even a third which will be studied further on (Third
Question). “ Quidditas " is the expression of the notion which
answers the question, “ Quid est?, ” and it is that which makes
this notion predicable, i.e., it is its non-individual meaning.
Thus : 1. quidditas designates a universal idea, applicable to
many; 2. a rebus sensibilibus, the link between this " universal ”
and sensible objects, a link by reason of which I am able to predicate
this universal of them, because I can observe this link and see
it; 3. abstracta indicates the nature of the operation which
allows me to grasp the universal in the sensible, to draw it out
from the sensible, as it were, to be considered in itself, and
finally to be put back through an attributive judgment. This
is abstraction. For the moment we will not concern ourselves
with the nature of this operation, but we shall simply consider
what will later show us the existence of such a process.
a) we have universal ideas. The universal idea
is that which has no strictly individual meaning, which contains
only those notes of comprehension which can be common to a
number of individuals and belong to each of those individuals in
an identical way. Do we have such ideas ? We most certainly do.
(1) Their universality is best shown in their use as predicates
in a judgment. Actually, the same predicate can be truly
affirmed of a number of individuals only if its comprehension
contains exclusively common characteristics (non-individual).
For the presence of one single individual characteristic among
its notes would prevent the predication of this idea to any
individual who would not be the unique individual possessor

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THE NATURE OF MAN

of this characteristic — since predicating consists in identifying
the predicate with the subject, and an individual or individual
characteristic cannot be identified with any other than itself.

Leaving aside for the moment the case of a perceptive
judgment, e. g., this is my hat, the predicate of a proper judgment
is applicable not only to one, but to a multitude of subjects taken
individually. This is true even when the judgment concerns
only one individual; and it is true “ a fortiori, ” when the subject
is any individual of a given species : “ this flower has a special
odor, " " the Labiatae have a special odor. ”
All attributes or predicates of this kind are, therefore,
universal ideas.
In brief, we judge. A proper judgment demands for its
predicate a universal idea. Therefore, we possess universal
ideas.
(2) The analysis of ideas taken in themselves shows that their
comprehension always embraces notes which are universal. The
ideas which are called general or strictly universal, e.g., man,
flower, triangle, embrace only such notes. The others — called
individual — e.g., Napoleon, me, are made up of universal
notes which arc grouped and ordinarily referred to a concrete
datum of sensation : the Emperor, the Corsican ; bom on...,
in the year..., died on..., in the year..., all are universal
notes — such a face, such a build, refer to individual sensorial
data. To sum up, no human idea can dispense itself in any way
from universality.

b) THE PROPER OR formal object of human thought is
because it is the proper object of judgment,
which is the only complete expression of thought.
the universal,

In fact, the predicate in the act of judgment, which is an
act proper to man alone, is essentially universal (see above).
There exists no exception, even in regard to perceptive
judgments. For judgment is human, different from the cognitive
acts of an animal, because that which is predicated is not a
simple image, but an individual idea implying always the
universal.

THE OBJECT OF THOUGHT

367

Now it is the predicate which manifests the formal object of
judgment and not the subject. The predicate is that which is
known about the subject, that which makes the subject known to
the mind. (It is true that the Scholastics call the logical subject
of a judgment the object, but that is in the sense of a “ material ’*
object, not a “ formal ” one.)
Therefore, the formal object of judgment, and consequently
of all human thought, is the universal. Judgment knows its
subject insofar as a universal idea is predicated of it.
corollary. The intellectual knowledge of the singular
is therefore always a derived knowledge, having as its basis
knowledge of the universal. Human intelligence, thus, does not
know the singular except by a kind of " reflection. ”

(1) Taken strictly, reflection is that which permits me to
know myself. To know myself, a previous step is required :
I know with a consciousness of knowing, i.e., I judge, I grasp a
universal present as a predicate in a subject. It is by a second
act that I know myself as judging, and thus it is that by reason of
a universal previously known, I know myself. 71
« We must make a distinction between knowing the nature of ego
in general and knowing my own proper ego. Only the second type of
knowledge is singular. Here St. Thomas is caught between two ideas,
that of Aristotle, whose formula is given in the Summa Theol., I* pars,
q. 87, a. i : " Unumquodque cognoscibile est secundum quod est in actu
et non secundum quod est in potentia, ut dicitur in IX Metaphysicae, ”
and that of St. Augustine, who is quoted in the first " Videtur ” of the
same article : " Mens scipsam novit per scipsam quoniam est incorporea
(De Trinitate, 1, IX, ch. 3). ” The very explicit opposition of these
two ideas is found in the De Veritate, q. 10, a. 8. St. Thomas accepts
both of them in pointing out that the soul, if it is potential in respect
to its psychological acts, it nevertheless is actual as form and spirit,
and, therefore, intelligible by itself. Nevertheless, it docs not for that
reason know itself, through itself, except in a confused manner, as a
learned man might know what he knows without explicitly thinking
about it, like a luminous background against which his successive
judgments stand out in relief. For a fuller treatment of this " habitual
knowledge. ” sec H. D. Gardeil. Psychologie, pp. 127-133; G. P1CARD,
La Saisie Immédiate de Dieu, pp. 12-18.
It seems that the actual knowledge of the ego supposes this
habitual knowledge, and that it manifests it to consciousness, because,
in a particular judgment, I do not grasp myself as " being this judgment ’’
in an isolated state. I also recognize myself as being something beyond

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THE NATURE OF MAN

(2) Again, wc may call that a reflection, in a broad sense,
which gives me the idea of this or that corporeal individual. The
idea of Napoleon the First supposes that numerous universal
ideas have already been acquired, but these are not enough.
This singular idea demands that I link this plurality of universal
ideas to a center of unity endowed with a spatio-temporal
existence; but such an existence is known only by a relation
to sensory experience. Therefore, in every idea of a corporeal
individual, I connect the universal with the singular, I pass
from the intelligible to the sensible by a kind of inversion of the
spontaneous movement of thought. 73

Scotus is opposed to this opinion of St. Thomas. The
Scotist doctrine holds for an immediate intellectual grasp of the
singular. In order to form a universal idea, according to Scotus,
I must first know that from which I derive this idea, and that
can only be the singular. — Moreover, experience shows us
this. If I see an animal from a distance, I know that there
is an individual object there, before I know that it is a cow or a
horse. 73
projecting this judgment, as an internal field in which it is exercised,
as a unity or a " totality " from which this judgment stands out.
That which is clearly distinguished by a progressive deciphering ought
to be experienced confusedly from the beginning : " Mens seipsam per
seipsam novit, quia tandem in suiipsius cognitionem pervenit, licet per
actum suum ” (S. Th., I» pars, q. 87, I, ad ru“). As to this act, it is
not known as first, but by reason of that which is grasped as being " in
rebus materialibus” (S. Th., I» pars, q. 87, a. 3, ad iu"). Manifestly,
St. Thomas subordinates Augustinian spiritualism to Aristotelian
hylomorphism. The soul is spirit, but it is first of all a substantial form
and secondarily it knows itself, its proper object being outside itself
" in rebus materialibus. ” The same doctrine is found in the S. C. G.,
!.. Ill, ch. 46.
” Sec Maquart, Elementa Philosophiae, II, pp. 403-408; Summa
Thecl., I» pars, q. 86, a. 1; De Veritate, q. 10, a. 5.
Nevertheless, the turning of the universal to the singular is the
general law of human thought. The latter perceives an idea only by
looking towards images " convertendo sc ad phantasmata ” (5. Th., I,
84, 7). Instead of turning to the very content of the idea (the universal),
the attention turns principally to its material support. This would then
be the singular which would be signified through the idea (as existing,
if the support is sensation; as possible, if the support is an image).
” Duns Scotus, Opus Oxon., I, d. 3, Q. 2, Nr. 24.

INTELLECTUAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE SINGULAR

369

These two reasons seem insufficient to establish what Scotus
intends them to do. As to the first : sensation or memory are
actuali}' sufficient to furnish me with single objects, wherein the
intellect can find the universal which interests it. Why then
should the intelligence be able to. find the universal only after
having known the singular in its very singularity? As to the
second reason we do not see experience as bolstering Scotus'
opinion, and we must say that it is the sensation in experience
which knows the individual existence of corporeal objects di­
rectly. Intellectual consciousness of the sensation thus furnishes
a knowledge of the existence of the individual object sensed, but
it does this indirectly. That which the intellect knows directly
from experience is that this object is one among others, either an
animal, or a certain kind of animal — something which is always
of a universal character.
The difference between Scotus and St. Thomas would seem
to be more verbal than real. Now, the assertion that the first
object of the human intellect is the singular is capable of being
understood in two ways. 1. “ First " can have a chronological
sense, and in this sense, it is a reference to the “ material ”
object. The formula would then mean : The realities which
I know before all others are individuals, whether corporeal or
not. 2. “ First ” can have an ontological sense, and thus will
refer to the object which is called “ formal ’’ or proper. The
formula then would express the following : The determinations
(forms) by which I know objects in themselves and through
which I know other things arc stricti}' individual deter­
minations.

St. Thomas would subscribe to the first sense of the formula,
and in this sense would be in agreement with Scotus :
" Materialiter loquendo, prius cognoscit (intellectus) particulare...
cognitione confusa. ” 74 However, St. Thomas rejects the
second sense. Scotus, on the contrary, makes the second sense
a natural consequence of the first, confusing material object
with the formal object by seeing both of them in every actual
Duns Scotus, Opus Oxon., I, d. 3, Q. 2, n. 24.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

singular existence. H St. Thomas, however, makes a distinction :
That which the intellect grasps first and directly, in the
ontological sense, is the universal, but it grasps it first in the
singular in a chronological sense. The first idea is universal;
but it is applied only to the singular, and, moreover, only to the
material singular.
In other words :
c) The universal grasped primitively in the sensible,
here is the proper object of the human intellect. 70 In fact :
(1) Thought, which grasps the universal, depends on physio­
logical conditions and, in particular, on the nerves. It is
interrupted by sleep or fainting, and hindered by diseases and
transitory poisonings of the nervous system. Now these con­
ditions are directly those of sensitive knowledge, sensation and
image. They are conditions of thought only indirectly, i.e., inso­
far as thought, the grasp of the universal depends in some way on
sensation or the image. One should not see here the direct con­
ditions of thought, unless he confuses thought with image. But
in what way does thought depend on image? In this, that it finds
its materials in the very object of sensation. In fact :
(2) Sensation is the indispensable purveyor of the comprehension
of the universal idea. The only mistake of empiricism, here, is to
make of a necessary condition a sufficient one, by reducing the
originality of an idea to nothing.
” Such at least has been the traditional interpretation. E. Gilson
thinks this interpretation to be faulty. He writes : " Scotus does not
agree with us ...in any way, for we accept no intellectual intuition
of singularity as such ” (p. 546), and he adds : “ The singularity of a
nature docs not move our intellect, it accompanies the nature which
moves the intellect through the image, and if we know, by undergoing
the movement of the image, that our knowledge is the intuition of an
existent, our intellect can only know the nature abstractly, without
grasping the hoc ut hoc " (p. 548). English translation of quotation
from Jean Duns Scot.
” Summa Thcol., 1“ pars, q. 85, a. 1. Here St. Thomas proceeds
in a deductive fashion, supposing that the hylomorphic structure of man
is already known. In articles 6, 7, 8 of the preceding question, he proceeds
inductively and historically, where the indispensable experimental
foundations arc revealed.

UNION OF SENSES AND MIND

371

(a) Those who have always lacked a type of sensation, e.g.,
those born blind, arc incapable of forming an idea of the
■corresponding sensible which they lack, as is the case of color in
those bom blind.
(b) In order to form the idea of a material reality, it is
natural for us to have recourse to sensation or images. A simple
drawing is often more useful than a long description. To evoke
the idea of a machine or an organism, nothing is better than a
look at its movement. In order to make us understand an
abstract idea, a concrete example, a story, a fable, and even
play have a major role in our understanding, even though they
are addressed directly to our imaginations.
(c) In order to form an idea of an immaterial object,
we must first have an idea of a sensible object. I have an idea
of myself and my psychological acts only by a reflection, which
has as its starting point the knowledge of sensible objects.
I have no idea of God, soul or spirit, except through relations
which I always remark in the sensible. The soul is the cause of
life, and I know this life through sensation, and it is again
through sensation that I have an experience with the relation
of causality; spirit is the living which docs not depend on
extension; God is The Being, The Living, The uncaused
spirit (now I do not know what it is to cause or to be caused,
unless I have experienced it in both sensation and consciousness).
Thus the primitive nucleus of the comprehension of
universal ideas is grasped in sensation. We may break down
the definition of any idea whatsoever, by the process of defining
all its parts, yet we must always arrive at some indefinable
datum, which is primitive, and which is furnished by sensible
intuition or that which supposes it (as is the case in the data of
consciousness). It is true that the intellect fashions syntheses,
but it needs materials, and it is in the sensible that it finds them.
(3) Judgment and reasoning, in their manner, manifest this
sensory starting point for thought. To what are they applied
in the first place, except to sensible things? The child is first
interested only in these things. They dominate empirical
thought, acquired through experience, which bears principally

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THE NATURE OF MAN

on the sensible, and is oriented towards action, which is exercised
on the sensible. Finally, sciences and philosophies themselves
find their initial object in sensible things, which is evident from
their history, as well as from the study of the fundamental
concepts which they employ. ”
CONCLUSIONS

(a) Thus the distinction between sensation and thought and
that between man and animal, is found to be justified. Sensation,
having as its object individual extension, is necessarily limited to
that which is individual, localized, and determined in concrete
extension. It engenders interests which are exclusively oriented
towards corporeal life, and it is the foundation of the narrow
mechanism of instinct. Thought, on the contrary, having as its
formal object the universal, is not restrained to any particular
kind of being, but can attain all being, whatever it may be.
Hence the infinite variety in free choice and in invention.
(b) Nevertheless, and because of its need of experience,
human thought attains being only in the measure and according
to the order which its natural starting point — the sensible
— imposes on it. It is possible that thought can be confronted
with mysteries which are naturally incomprehensible for it,
because of the lack of proportion between the sensible and
certain immaterial realities. Nevertheless, these mysteries are
thinkable if they arc supernaturally revealed to thought. It is
necessary that thought find obscurities even in the
knowledge of those immaterial realities which arc the closest to
experience, since it finds its proper object only in the sensible,
and does not go beyond that limit, except by way of negation and
” Translated quotation from L. de Broglie, Continu et Discontinu
en Physique Moderne (Paris, 1941) : " To sum up, we can think only with
the aid of images extracted from our sense intuition. ” Hence, despite
the truth of mathematical abstractions, wc arc forced to have recourse
to concrete representations, c.g., atomic models. Thus " it is possible
simultaneously to give their just due to the abstracts, which, in this
controversy (opposing the abstract to the concrete) are right, and to the
intuitives, without which progress would often have been difficult and
sometimes impossible. ** p. 10S.

UNION OF SENSES AND MIND

373

analogy. The sole exception to this is the case of the soul,
whose consciousness allows us to form a proper notion of it.

(c) Knowledge brings love, and furnishes love with its
object. A specific distinction between sensible and intellectual
knowledge therefore involves a specific distinction between
sensible and intellectual love. There are desires which are based
on sensation, images, etc., and there are those which are based on
universal ideas. Likewise, there arc sensible pleasures and
pains, and there are intellectual joys and sadnesses. Therefore,
there are two distinct affectivities and not one, as the peripheral
theory of emotion would have us believe (W. James, Lange). ’•
Common sense is right in not confusing the feelings of the most
faithful dog with those which an ideal places in the heart of a
man.
3. the vital union of sensation and thought, however,
furnishes some excuse for this empiricism.

This union is apparent, above all, in the intellect’s grasp of
the universal in the sensible, as well as in the natural tendency of
sensation to put thought into action. From this union in
knowledge there ought to result, both in action and in emotion, a
similar union between the sensible and the intellectual.
In this way, the ego is never pure sensation or pure thought,
but always sensing and thinking at the same time. And as it is
never pure knowing, it knows, it desires, it feels as a whole, and
this simultaneously in relation to the sensible and the
intelligible.
In considering the diverse qualities of the ego isolated from
one another, we do not wish to separate them, but rather hope
that we will better understand the ego’s moving complexity, and
be in a better position to discover its nature. Already an
’* See E. Baudin, pp. 506-510, Psychologie, where he appears to
identify all forms of sensibility. From even a purely descriptive point
of view, this would be inexact. " We cannot judge the representative
clement as being negligible, " writes Cuvillier (Psychologic, p. 258).
A fortiori, we cannot admit their identity in a metaphysical explanation.
The root of human affcctivity remains twofold, despite its functional
unity.

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important conclusion begins to appear : the ego is simultaneously
sensing and thinking, matter and spirit.
F. Matter and spirit arc actually the characteristics of
sensation and thought.
1. sensing is a material act, in the sense that it depends
intrinsically on matter, i.e., on extension, for sensation is
impossible without an object, and that object is essentially
material and extended. The essential dependence of the act
in relation to its object is the only way of recognizing that it is
correlative to it. Idealism attempts to assure us of this
correlation in another way, by making the object depend on the
subject. But this manner is unacceptable, because it misunder­
stands the “ otherness, ” the independence of the object in
relation to the subject, and, consequently, it falsifies the notions
of truth and knowledge.
2. thinking, on the contrary, is a strictly immaterial
or spiritual act, in the sense that it does not essentially depend on
extension.
a. the formal object, the universal, however, is
found only in the sensible. But this dependence is accidental or
extrinsic, not essential and intrinsic. This dependence concerns
the acquisition of an idea, not its object. Thought finds this
object in the sensible, but it is not the sensible itself, i.e., an
individual extension, it is the universal. Now, the universal is
thought without any necessary link with individual extension
(matter), and in precisely such a way that it does not contain in
it any individual note, insofar as it is what it is, universal. Thus
the universal is essentially immaterial.
An act is specified by its formal object. It depends
essentially on it, and on it alone, because its whole reality is in
relation to it. Thought is thus specified by the universal (in man,
be it understood), and is therefore as essentially immaterial as the
universal is.
b. the integral object of thought shows that its
dependence on matter is purely accidental or relative, and in no
way essential.

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375

Actually, a knowledge, which, by hypothesis, would be
essentially dependent on matter, could conceive no object which
would be strictly immaterial.
Now thought conceives through negation, objects from which
all materiality is excluded, c.g., God and pure spirits. Therefore,
it does not essentially depend on matter.
This argument takes a more general critical form and even a
greater force, when we consider the judgment, which is the
expression “ par excellence ” of thought. Every judgment
actually implies the knowledge of a relation which is completely
immaterial, the relation of truth.
The same argument takes a psychological form, when we turn
our attention to the fact that by consciousness man reflects on
his acts. Psychological acts are not extended even when their
object is. To be aware of an immanent act is thus the mark of a
power of knowledge which can attain the immaterial. This
argument can become particularized by considering moral and
esthetic consciousness. It is no longer the judgment as such, it is
its special object, c.g., the Good, the Beautiful, which testifies to
the immateriality of the act which appreciates it. Whoever makes
a judgment about religion, merit, justice, honor, ugliness,
harmony..., by the same token, asserts the existence of a mind
which is independent of matter and irreducible to extension and
its proper qualities. ”

C. THE DESIRE WHICH IS BASED ON THOUGHT escapes the
limits of matter and thus manifests the spirituality of the
thought which motivates it.
That desire which is necessarily linked to matter, c.g.,
instinct, on the one hand is interested only in concrete corporeal
’• Or we can, with Father Valensin, employ the apperception of time
and show that it is the act of a being, whose knowledge dominates
succession, whose duration escapes its flow. See Hallhazar, and
especially the dialogue on the soul of brutes.
Or wc might use the idea that man is made for his death, and see
there the mark of a spirit, in that it is a conceptualization of that
which is never experienced, of that which is beyond all possible experience
and against the experienced desire not to die.
N.Y. 17 — 26

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THE NATURE OF MAN

realities, and on the other hand is determined in its object, and
necessary in its performance.

There is, however, in man, a desire which stems from
thought. This kind of desire is undoubtedly applied to sensible
things, but, at the same time, it can not stop there, nor be
satisfied there, for it pursues an Ideal Good, which is Moral and
Beatifying, which is beyond sensible things. Moreover, this
desire can vary indefinitely in its application to objects and to
the means used to attain these objects, and thus it finds its
complete orientation by reason of a free decision.
The desire which is based upon thought is, therefore,
essentially independent of matter.

We must conclude that the thought upon which such a
desire is based is necessarily independent of matter. If not, the
effect would be contrary to its cause. Moreover, the study of
the relations between thought and love makes us understand that
the supreme independence of free desire and the spirituality of the
spontaneous movement of the will come from their formal object,
and by reason of that, from the nature of the knowledge which
furnishes it to them. If knowledge were riveted to matter, the
wings of desire would never be able to take us beyond it.
d. joy and sadness, in man, can be separated from
the material. As a matter of fact, they function precisely in the
measure in which they are penetrated with thought.

Ordinarily, joy and sadness are of an inspiration which is
simultaneously sensible and intellectual, and their spirituality
seems, at first, to be contestable. Who would deny that the
joy of a first cigarette would be especially spiritual, at the
memory of disagreeable sensations resented then (cf. the case
of St. Monica analyzed by St. Augustine)? •*

However, their spirituality breaks forth without any
possible protestation in the joy of the martyr going to his
•° See below : voluntary desire, the more or less determined states
of willing.
“ St. Augustine, Confessions, 1. IX, ch. 8.

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377

torment, the joy of St. Paul in persecution, the humblest and
perhaps most frequent joy, that of a good conscience existing
without any sensible recompense, the joy of the scientist in
discovery, the joy of knowing, and that joy which is not
experienced but hoped for, the joy of seeing God, which embraces
all the others.... All these spiritual joys arc the fruits of a
knowledge in which matter is able to intervene, but not as a
limit, nor as an unbreakable chain.
We could multiply particular points of view, but the central
point of view which contains all the others is that of the proper
object. The universal, insofar as it is able to be predicated by
the judgment, makes us know the truth. It makes it possible
for us to know all being, even though by negation. It is the
condition of our desiring and loving freely any one of the
indefinitely multiple means, each of which carries in itself
something of the good contained in the universal object of
willing. M
We must recognize Descartes’ error, when he said : " My
ego, i.e., my soul, ” as well as that of Gassendi who retorted :
“ My ego, i.e., my body. " I am body and soul, matter and
spirit.
The question of their union, by reason of which I am myself,
now confronts us. It can not be resolved if we forget that this
unity is the unity of a movement.
I must then study the metaphysical exigencies of psychological
movement. This means that I must search for the real indis­
pensable conditions of this movement and, particularly, for
those which place it in operation, and those which orient it at
every moment.
By this I hope to conceive the nature of this immanent
activity in a more precise fashion — this immanent activity
which is present to my consciousness as the source of my vital
animation.
“ Henry J. KOREN, Introduction to the Philosophy of Animate
Nature (St. Louis : B. Herder, X955), pp. 225-244.

CHAPTER II

THE OPERATIVE POWERS
THEIR ACTUATION

Third Question : How does the action of the ego produce psycho­
logical becoming ?
Third Thesis :

Psychological activity :

is not purely active, but passive as well ; since
it is also multiple and immanent, it must
therefore be divided into multiple " oper­
ative potencies or powers. ”
2. Cognoscitive powers :
a. are all determined by an impressed
species (species impressa) which comes
from the object ;
b. with the exception of sensory knowledge,
the act of cognoscitive powers is com­
pleted by an expressed species (species
expressa) which comes from the powers.
3. Appetitive powers are either sensible or
intellectual :
a. the sensible appetite is determined
necessarily by reason of an object known
to the senses as “ hoc mihi bonum
b. the intellectual appetite, i.e., will, is
determined necessarily through an object
known as the universal good (bonum
universale); freely through an object
known as a particular good (bonum
particulare).
4. Operative powers arc really distinct from
one another, but only relatively.
1.

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379

A. The problem of psychological becoming is not only a
facet of the general problem of becoming, which is a theoretical
problem as old as philosophy, but it is also a specifically human
problem, which creates a kind of anxiety in certain souls, because
its solution is of vital importance. This problem is linked to the
responsibility which each one feels for his own judgments and
decisions. It is also linked to the problem of truth and virtue,
the only values upon which human dignity can be based.
We can sum up the practical aspects of the problem in the
following questions : In what measure are my acts mine? In
what measure are they me, i.e., in what measure do I have a
personal existence? — How can I give these acts a maximum
reality? How can I be most fully me? How can my existence
find its full flowering, its beatitude?83 In order that critique and
moral philosophy be enabled to solve these problems, psychology,
in its theoretical way, must study becoming, as it is lived and
experienced in the inferiority of the ego.
the primary DIFFICULTY, here, is the inherent one of
the general problem of becoming. A being which becomes is,
at every moment, that which it was not; and having become
other, it is nevertheless the same being. Aristotle’s solution
to Parmenides’ problem consists in a twofold affirmation :
(1) In all becoming, there is not only being which is in
act, but being in potency, incomplete, imperfect being.
(2) But the imperfect, the potential, is not completed by itself.
In order that it be " actuated ” there must be a cause, i.e., a
perfect being, distinct from potency.
The specific difficulty with the problem of psychological
becoming seems to be insoluble by virtue of these general prin­
ciples. Actually : (1) the ego is not an ordinary becoming.
It is a becoming which is caused by itself. The facts of
« Marxism and existentialism pose and attempt to resolve these
practical problems. They pay particular attention to the individual
man confronting both the world and other men. Marxism tends to
bring the individual into a subservience to humanity, while existentialism
attempts an absolute liberation oí the individual, either through its
opposition to others (" Hell is other people, ” writes Sartre), or by an
openness to others (at least in the " Mitsein ’’ of Heidegger).

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invention, attention, and especially those of decision, show this
to be one of the clearest data of experience. The ego is the
active source of its own movement. (2) Moreover, psychological
events are due to a spontaneity, which is revealed in an analysis
of them. Sensations, which are the least free of psychological
events, can not be deduced from their physical or even their
physiological conditions through the equations of either energy
or mechanics. They manifesti}' are involved with an internal
source.84 Must we, then, renounce any explaining of the ego’s
becoming by a cause outside itself? If so, then Parmenides
would triumph. Temporal duration, like change, would be only
an illusion.
The difficulty becomes more acute, because this becoming is
By itself, it modifies the ego and nothing else.
It gives itself " more being " and not just “ other being. ’’ After
the consternation of " a being which is that which it was not, "
here is the shock of “ a being which is more than it is. ’’ We
are forced to speak of a being which is identical with non-being,
and of a less which is identical with more. Would it not be
better to deny the intellectual intuition which grasps the unity
of becoming in the ego, and, with Heraclitus, admit the pure
diversity of psychological phenomena? If we do, then, once
again, everything that would suppose a mental synthesis or psy­
chological organization, i.e., temporal duration, memory, the
person, science, morality, all would disappear. This would
be the case for even the present moment, the sole reality, since
it no longer would have any time to limit it.
immanent.

Certainly, for him who unifies these characteristics in
becoming, there is no contradiction, because they are not
predicated of the ego at the same time and in the same respect.
However true this may be, we are still dealing with an asser­
tion of becoming and not an explanation of it.
We have not yet presented the most difficult part of the
problem. Psychological becoming, as completely immanent as
it is, is nevertheless essentially relative to objects, to
M See above, D. First Thesis, Philosophical Psychology.

THE EGO AND ITS BECOMING

381

“ others, ” and identifies the ego with these objects in every act
of knowledge. The knowing ego, insofar as it is immanent, is
an absolute, and insofar as it is knowing, it is completely relative.
Insofar as it is that which judges, it is opposed to its object, and
insofar as it is the possessor of truth, it is identified with the
object.
All philosophies have attempted to explain this becoming
of the ego, and their multiple efforts clearly indicate the difficulty
inherent in the problem.
1. First of all, we can point out the tendency among some
philosophers to have a major preoccupation with giving psycho­
logical becoming a cause which explains its change and its
identity with objects. The ego is, for them, passive.
Sometimes it is the objects which leave their impressions on
it (Epicureanism, empiricism, materialism). M
Sometimes it is God who infuses into the mind innate ideas,
or at least first ideas (Descartes), or who illuminates it by making
it contemplate His own Ideas {vision in God of Malebranche),
through which the agreement between mind and things is assured,
since things are, even as the human mind itself, the effects of
God’s Thought. Spinoza takes this one step further, and the
ego becomes no more than one of the innumerable modes of
Divine Thought. Pure passivity finishes by destroying the
personality of the ego.
Sometimes it is society which “ rouses (in us) a whole world
of ideas and feelings which express it, but which, at the same
time, are an integral and immanent part of ourselves, ” which
produces the concept in us, and which invents and wills (Socio­
logical School; Dürkheim, Formes Élémentaires de la Vie
Religieuse, 1, 2, ch. vm). Here again the activity of personality
is replaced by a “ collective conscience. ”
2. Among other philosophies there is still another tendency
to safeguard the immanence of the ego and the idea of personality
M Marxism is to be found in this first tendency, because it makes
human evolution depend principally on material conditions, and especially
economical ones.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

at any cost. The ego is therefore active, the cause of its own
knowledge and destiny. The urgent problem here is making
the ego agree with its objects, and giving a solid basis for the
truth of judgment.
Kant believes himself to have resolved this problem by
attempting to show that it is the object which depends on the
ego and not the inverse. Reason constructs its objects, according
to “ a priori forms, ” which are natural to reason and as im­
mutable as it is. Truth, then, is the agreement of theorical reason
with itself. Likewise, the nature of the will lies in the categorical
imperative, which creates the moral goodness of particular acts
of will, on the sole condition that these have no other motive
than itself. The good, then, is the agreement of practical
reason with itself.
Idealism wants to go further. It would suppress the
“ a priori forms ” which limit the activity of the ego. Even first
principles are no longer immutable. Reason does not belong to
a nature nor is it a given activity, rather it is an activity which
is built up, an activity which evolves and progresses. The known
object is completely produced by the subject, which needs no
collaboration with " the thing-in-itself ” (Brunschvicg). In Kant,
the activity of the ego is partially necessitated; here, it is
completely free. In both cases, however, objects arc such as the
mind makes them to be, and all psychological dependence on the
physical or physiological must be or is actually denied.84
3. The Bergsonian tendency, when confronted with these
divergent explanations, is to reject the problem as badly posed.
Psychological becoming does not have to be explained. On the
contrary, it is that which explains all, mind, life and matter.
This becoming is certainly a mystery for intelligence, which
abstracts, analyzes and thinks in clear and distinct ideas, but
“ Here, the existentialism of J. P. Sartre goes in the same direction
as that of idealism. The religious man believes that God thinks the
essence of a man before creating him, whereas the existentialist holds
that in man, and in man alone, existence precedes essence... that man
must create his own essence, and this by Iris free choice. These ideas
are expressed by J. P. Sartre in his work. Existentialism, pp. 17-21,
Eng. trans. B. Frechtman (New York : Philosophical Library, 1947).

THE PASSIVITY OF THE EGO

385

this intelligence is not made for knowing, it is fit only for acting.
But for intuition, nothing is more lucid than becoming — it is
being itself. This vital becoming is essentiali}' invention,
unforsecable newness, free activity; but it is also “ like a wave
which mounts only to be held back by the descending movement
of matter. ” Simultaneously active and ■passive, simultaneously
both cause and effect, such is the Bergsonian ego.
Against this we have no brief, but even accepting this as
fact, wc must admit that the ego still poses the following problem,
which may be insoluble, but is nevertheless inescapable. In what
way is the ego active? In what way is it passive? How can
it be simultaneously one and the other? Let us put these
questions in another way. The activity of the ego is incessantly
oriented in new directions of sensation, thought, emotion, desire
and willing. In what way do these directions have the ego as
a cause? Moreover, in what way does it receive them, and from
whom or what ?
Let us first carefully observe the fact upon which the problem
is posed.

B.

The ego is passive as well as active.

1. Its activity does not have to be demonstrated : it is
evident. Epiphcnomenalism, having pushed the theoretical
errors of materialism to the extreme, has denied this. It has
denied the activity of the ego under the pretext that the ego can
not create energy. The activity which it denies to the ego, is,
therefore, an activity which is exercised on the body or material
objects outside the body. A few cpiphenomcnalists will accept
the activity of the ego on itself, which is precisely the activity
with which we arc concerned here, and this activity is undeniable.
An event experienced in consciousness can later elicit its recall
through memory. As Ribot says : " Memory becomes a new
factor in the psychic life of the individual. ”
Moreover, there is no aspect of the ego, wherein we do not
discover some spontaneity, which alone explains its originality
with regard to its material conditions. This spontaneity becomes
clearer as we move away from the zone of sensation and move

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inward to penetrate that which is the ultimate in inferiority,
free will.
2. We must, however, reject idealism as flatly as we do
empiricism, because it misconstrues the passivity which the ego
shows in its very activity. The following two points make very
little impression on the Idealistic School : first, the ego acquires
the acts by which it is determined and enriched little by little;
secondly, in order to confer these acts on itself, it needs to receive
in addition an influence which will complete it.
a. The ego is receptive and potential in relation to
its acts. It does not possess its acts from the beginning. None
of its acts is innate to it. In fact :
1) Every psychological act is a change of the ego. Now
every change brings with it something new, something acquired,
for the being which is changed. The innate, on the contrary,
is an initial state, antecedent to any change which may occur
or be considered in a particular being. Every psychological
act is, therefore, acquired by the ego. Not one such act is innate
to it. The fact that this act is also produced by the ego and,
in a way, immanent to it, can not destroy the necessary force
of our contention. Rather it will reinforce it, for that which
is produced is obviously something new, something acquired.
2) Must we, then, admit that the ego is, in its first moment,
a blank page, on which nothing is written, and extend the
image of “ tabula rasa ” used by Aristotle in speaking of intel­
ligence, to all psychological functions? Yes, but only in a
qualified sense.

Actually, this formula has a purely empirical sense not
intended by either Aristotle or St. Thomas. This empirical
sense would interpret the ego as non-existent at the beginning,
yet as gradually emerging through a construction achieved by
an absurd conglomeration of conscious states produced totally
by things. We must, on the contrary, suppose an existing ego
to pose the question : Is this ego, from the time that it exists,
the possessor of determined acts, or is it rather deprived of every
act and wholly in potency in regard to all the acts which are

THE PASSIVITY OF THE EGO

385

possible to it? The analogy of a wax tablet, whose smooth
surface is unmarked by a letter, signifies that the primitive state
of the ego is purely potential, and that it consists mainly of a
hierarchical grouping of tendencies or powers. In this sense the
formula is true.
The truth of the formula is revealed through the above
analysis, which is valid for every psychological act.
Although this formula cannot be verified directly by
experience, it can at least be shown to be true by a sort of
extrapolation of experience. The newly-born is actually ignorant
of everything. He needs to leam everything, even that he exists
and that he has a body. On the other hand, the adult is linked
to infancy by a continuous progress from that state, and can
increase his knowledge indefinitely. The state of knowing never
appears as being closed. It appears as a state of inexhaustible
riches, open to every kind of further development. Does this
not reveal the basically potential character of the state of
knowing, which always remains indefinitely supple and
constantly open?

This potentiality is seen particularly in the history of the
sciences and of philosophical systems. Postulates and theories
follow one another, not by successively putting the previous ones
out of existence, but by going beyond them. This is recognized
by all the partisans of human progress, in whatever field they
choose.
At the beginning, must not this potentiality be pure and
open, like an immense appetite which no object has yet satisfied?
The naive ignorance of an infant must give us the answer. At the
beginning, there is no innate knowledge, nor sensation, nor
memory (despite the teaching of Plato), and no ideas (despite
the teaching of Descartes). The only innate thing is an aptitude
to receive, an aptitude to know, a pure potency to the cognitive act.

That which is true of knowledge is " a fortiori ” true of
desires and affections, since neither are possible without previous
knowledge. The primitive state of the ego is, therefore, a state
of potency. For it, to live is to pass from potency to act.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

This last point is further verified in the very attitude of the
philosophers. Despite the notable divergencies of interpretation
found in their metaphysical formulas, all the philosophers are
in agreement on this point. If, for Plato, knowledge is the
remembering of ideas carried within the self, reminiscence is
nevertheless necessary to evoke the memory. If, for Descartes,
" there is nothing in our ideas which is not innate to the soul, ”
nevertheless, as he states, things give the mind “ the occasion
of forming these ideas at this moment rather than another, by
reason of a faculty which is innate. ” If, for Kant, the " a priori
forms ” are innate, they are neither sensations nor concepts.
They are only conditions, such as the natural directions of
faculties (either sensibility or understanding).

The following consequences flow from this purely potential
character of the primitive ego :
a) The ego can not innately know itself in its primitixe
state, since it is still undetermined. The ego will know itself
only by reflection on a becoming that has already been enriched
through its acts.87
b) The ego’s acts must first be concerned with things other
than itself. The Cartesian formula must be contradicted by
reason of this, and we must say : “ The soul is less easily known
than the body. ”88
c) Within the hierarchy of conscious beings which the
philosopher can conceive, he must situate human consciousness
at the lowest level. He finds it natural that suj>erhuman intel­
ligences could exist, who would know themselves directly,
because they would always be in act, and above all a Divine
Intelligence, in act in regard to the whole of being.
d) The human ego must be passive in a second sense, i.e.,
subject to influences outside itself, which are necessary for it
to pass from potency to act (sec par. b.).
” See Summa Thcol., I» pars, q. 87, a. I.
“ This formula is capable of a true sense : the nature of the soul is
more intelligible than that of the body. Its lack of precision is apparent
if wc give it this meaning : the existence of the soul is known before that
of the body.

THE PASSIVITY OF THE EGO

387

b. The ego is passive even in the production of its own
acts. In order to produce them, its activity needs to be
completed by determinations coming from outside itself, since
it is impossible that it should be the sufficient cause of its own
enrichment. To be precise :
It is impossible that a being in potency should be actuated
by itself alone, since the act, which explains what it is now,
could not intelligibly explain what it can become. This is the
sense of the Aristotelian principle : Omne quod movetur ab alio
movetur. This principle does not exclude the collaboration of the
mobile in its movement. It merely rejects the position that the
mobile is a sufficient cause for its own movement.
Now the ego is in potency in regard to all the acts it produces
(see a.).
Therefore, in order to produce them, the ego must receive
a complement, a determination, which places it in a position
to produce them.
This necessity of undergoing an influence in order to act
explains why physiological conditions are linked to all the
activities of the ego. This conditioning would be incompre­
hensible if the ego were completel}' active.

We must, however, distinguish two aspects in the activity
of the ego, since they can demand different explanations. Thus,
I sec this tree. Such an activity can be explained : (1) in its
existence as an act, as a particular form of becoming : to see is
not to hear, nor to deliberate; there is an explanation why sight
goes into operation rather than hearing, or rather than reflection
which is a prelude to decision. But (2) the reason why I see
this tree rather than the table in my room must also be explained.
In general, then, a movement is to be explained under two
aspects : (1) as a movement or passage from potency to act;
{2) as a very precise orientation to a particular terminus. In the
first case, we invoke an efficient cause, and in the second, a final
cause.
Thus the ego is passive in its operation for two reasons.
First, by reason of the exercise of its act, it requires a cause which

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THE NATURE OF MAN

places its potentiality in operation. Secondly, by reason of the
specification of its act, it requires a reason which directs its act
towards its object of the moment, which is only one of the objects
which are possible for it. Now (at least if pantheism is not
evident), the ego clearly possesses neither that cause nor that
reason in a determined and autonomous way. Otherwise, as
regards the exercise of its act, the ego would always be in act
and never in movement. As regards the specification of its act
of the moment, it could never stop joining itself to all the objects
capable of interesting it, and could not pass from one to the
other in an unceasing discourse. A psychology of the immutable
is possible, but it is that of God, not of man.

We must, therefore, recognize the passivity of the ego even
in its activity.
Its activity is thus an active potency or power. To indicate
that actions are immanent, we will use the word operations, in
order not to confuse them with transitive actions, whether of
a physical or chemical nature.
The activity of the ego is capable of diverse orientations,
and blossoms out in distinct kinds of operations. •• It has as
many kinds of operative powers as it has kinds of acts.

We must now take up our problem again.,0 How is psycho­
logical movement possible? Its possibility requires an active
ego. For the moment, the nature of this ego is taken for granted
as a starting point. It would not become if it were not, if it were
not a certain kind of being.
But what we know about the psychological nature of the
ego’s activity is not enough, because it is passive as well as active.
Whence come the influences which permit it to modify itself and
take a definite direction?
We must now examine knowing and loving separately in
relation to the above question, because what we have to say
about loving depends on what we have to say about knowing.
•» See above. Second Thesis, C, D. E and F.
* See above. Third Thesis, A.

THE KNOWING ACT OF THE EGO

389

C. Actuation in knowledge. Once a subject has succeeded
in attaining the knowledge oí something, it seems natural that
he preserve it and be able to use it as a definite acquisition,
whether for the purpose of action, or as a stepping stone to
further knowledge. We ought to limit our question to the basic
kinds of knowledge. What is it that puts them into operation
and directs them to definite objects?
1. An " impressed species ” is required in every kind of
knowledge.
By this technical name, “ species impressa, ” we mean a
determination received by the ego from the object, which makes the
ego like the object in some way (species-resemblance).
This species is not an experimental datum. It would be
useless to search for an image or an example. It would even
be dangerous to propose symbols for it, drawn from physical,
chemical or physiological actions. This is a question of knowl­
edge which is an order apart.
The best thing to suggest the possibility of a " species
impressa” is to consider the adage; "Quidquid recipitur ad
modum recipientis recipitur. ” Take for instance a colored
surface. Let its influence be exercised in a -physical environment,
e.g., the air; then in a chemical substance, e.g., H and Cl; then
in a green plant; then on a visual cell having a cone. The one
and same action of the color will be received in very different
ways by these " patients ”; the air will vibrate, II and Cl will
combine violently, chlorophyll will create starch, and the nerve
matter will be impressed in an altogether original way. Thus the
same object produces different modifications according to the
nature of the subjects which undergo its action. If a completely
qualitative ego, a being with the power of knowing, is subjected
to the influence of this object, is it any wonder, then, that the
object produces in it a completely qualitative state? Should it
come as a shock that this qualitative state, which comes from
the object and carries its mark, should be a resemblance of the
object in the subject? It is even natural that this resemblance
should be oriented precisely in the direction of knowledge, since
the subject is supposed to be apt for knowing Thus the

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THE NATURE OF MAN

“ impressed species ” is to be understood through an analogy
with the general laws of action.
For him who understands what is strictly original in
knowing, it is clear that neither a photographic image, nor a
retinal image is comparable to this completely immaterial
resemblance. This “ species ” is closely related to the truth
of judgment, and it approaches that “ adéquat io ” between
subject and object. However, it is inferior to this “ adequatio, ”
since it does not attain the threshold of consciousness. It is not
knowledge, it is only a condition thereof.
However, experience will show us what is revealed in the
existence of a “ species impressa. ”
AN IMPRESSED SPECIES IS REQUIRED.

In fact :

a. In order to know, the ego must be in some way like the
object. To become a knower supposes a becoming like the object.
However, this similarity is never material. The qualities of an
extended thing arc not present in the subject in the same manner
in which they exist in the thing, i.e., according to the exteriority
of parts in an extension. The question is how this similarity
with the object comes to the subject.
b. It can not come from the subject, because he has to
acquire it. The cause of this " impression " can be only the
object itself.
1) Only the object itself is exactly proportionate to such an
effect. Therefore, it alone can be the sufficient explanation.
Malebranchc and Leibniz, each in his own way, have
appealed to God’s influence to explain the competency of the
subject for knowing this or that object. God, however, as He is
in Himself, has no determined relation to this thing rather than
to another. God intervenes as an explanation of my knowledge
of an individual object, only if He Himself is in a precise relation
to it, i.e., insofar as He has a completely determined idea
of it. Here we find Augustinian exemplarism, a Christian
transposition of the ideas of Plato. However, whether we will
or not, we must recognize the causal role oj the object in relation
to the knowledge which I acquire of it. Malebranchc gives the

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391

object the role of an occasion, of which God takes advantage
to make me sec this object in His own ideas. As for Leibniz,
he invokes God as the author of a ^reestablished harmony, which
is set up, once and for all, between the states of the universe
(objects) and the states of each monad (knowing subjects).
Consequently, the object has a causal role in relation to the
knowledge I acquire of it, at least through the intervention of
a God who knows it and makes me know it.91
2) Moreover, experience can be understood only on the
supposition that there must be present an influence coming from
the object before there is any knowledge of it.
Sensation, certainly, demands a specific excitant. Each kind
of image presupposes a sensation of the same hind. Thus, the
image via sensations also demands a corresponding specific
excitant. Therefore, all sensible knowledge depends on objective
data. In order to sense, the ego needs to undergo the influence
of objects.
As to thought, it finds its original object only in the sensible.
Consequently, it also demands, as imperiously as the senses, that
the ego receive certain determinations from the object. The
need which thought has for sensation condemns all idealism and
innatism. However, we must recognize that this necessity poses
a problem.
the intelligible species ought to make the mind
similar to the universal, which is the proper object of thought.
It, therefore, ought to be produced by a universal object, and
because of that, it ought to be necessary (indifferent to becoming),
eternal (indifferent to time), immaterial (indifferent to space),
and infinite (indifferent to number). But such an object is a
world apart from the objects of experience, whose influence alone
M The Kantian hypothesis admits, on the contrary, that the object
has such characteristics, because the activity of the subject is directed
by its a priori forms. We can not evaluate this supposition here, but
will leave it to epistemology. The supposition does not correspond to
the idea of human knowlegde, as it is subject to an object and ruled
by it. The hypothesis is contrary’ to our experience of knowledge.
w See E. Baudin, Psychologic, pp. 353, 363-368 and 416-420.
N.Y. 17. — 27

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THE NATURE OF MAN

we undergo. All these objects are singular, contingent, temporal,
spatially localized, and finite.
Every philosophy has been aware of this problem, and
each has answered it according to its own metaphysical
tendency.
a) empiricism tends to materialism, since, according
to its teaching, there is no universal idea which is distinct from
image, and therefore needs no universal object to produce it.
Singular objects are sufficient. They impress the nervous organs,
and that is sensation. They leave their traces in the brain, and
that is the image. Certain impressions arc reinforced, others are
effaced in the course of successive experiences, and this is the
abstract image. The associationism of Hume and of John
Stuart Mill, the nominalism of Taine, the evolutionism of Spencer
only play variations on this theme. •• It is true that Spencer
recognizes in original ideas a kind of instinct, and thus a type
of innate activity from which flow later acquisitions of knowl­
edge. However, he remains faithful to empiricism by making
of these instincts habits, which have been acquired by the
species, and which arc ultimately explained by the action of the
environment on the subject. There is no universal idea, because
there is no universal object. Thus, can we sum up the doctrine
of empiricism.
We can easily sec that knowledge depends on its object,
and we can also clearly sec that thought finds its origin in the
sensible. •’ But empiricism ignores the distinction between the
intelligence and the senses. It forgets that the proper object
of the idea is the universal. It passes by the problem.
b) RATIONALISM, in all its forms, takes the problem
into consideration, and sees the idea as a result of spiritual
activity.
** Actually, this is a kind oí explanation and half-excuse for
empiricism which frequently identifies that which is sensed with that
which is thought. Empiricism mixes up sensation and thought, because
it gives its attention only to the that which, in the " material ” object, and
is very often forgetful of the varied psychological attitudes characteristic
of the ego's activity face to face with this object.

NATURE OF INTELLIGIBLE SPECIES

393

(1) In its historical beginnings, Platonism
is the formal antithesis of empiricism.
I know the universal, therefore universal
things exist, subsistent ideas, whose influence on the soul produces
science, and whose participation in sensible things produces
order and beauty.
The spirituality of knowledge is safeguarded, but at what
cost? (a) How can an existent reality be itself without being
individual? (b) The link between thought and the sensible is
very much diminished. Sensation is, for the soul, only the
occasion for the soul's recalling the ideas which it had contem­
plated before its union with the body. Far from furnishing the
materials of science, sensation is an obstacle to it. (c) The body
is, therefore, not destined for the good of the soul, and forms
with it only an accidental union, which union can be explained
only by the soul’s fall from a former higher state. Thus the unity
of the human person disappears.91
PARTICIPATION

(2) Augustinianism eliminates the first difficulty in Platonism.
According to
St. Augustine, the spiritual activity
which results in human thought is not that of subsistent ideas,
but that of God, the First Truth, whose Infinite Intelligence
forms the exemplary ideas of all beings. This activity of God
is creative in relation to things and illuminative in regard to
intellects.
St. Augustine, however, being more concerned with meta­
physics than with psychology, does not wholly accept the theory
which concerns the relation of the sensible with the intelligible,
and that of the body with the soul. Sensation is useful in those
sciences which concern human things, but it cannot give wisdom,
which has as its object " the eternal truths. ” This can be given
only by a divine illumination. In what way is sensation necessary
to thought, and the body to the soul? The problem, in
Augustine, is unsolved. ••
ILLUMINATION

M Summa Theol., I* pars., q. 84, a. 4.
F. J. Thonnakd, A. A., A Short History of Philosophy, Eng.
trans. E. Marian, C.P.P.S. (New York : Dcsclce, 1955), pp. 240-249.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

The Cartesians, faithful to the same tendency, are forced
to give an answer to this problem, but it is to the detriment of
sensation, and in such a way that the equilibrium, protected
by St. Augustine at the price of being inexact, is now definitely
upset.
With Descartes, thought is the fruit of first ideas, an innate
gift of God to the soul. With Malcbranche it is a vision of the
very ideas of God Himself. The mind receives from them its
content and not only its form of necessity. St. Thomas was able
to find a second way of interpreting St. Augustine : instead of
being the object known by' the soul, the divine ideas could be
the cause of the knowledge of this object. For St. Thomas, only
the elect know all things " in rationibus aeternis. ” In the
present state, the intelligence draws from God, the Uncreated
Light, only its visual power, and it is from things that it receives
its determination of knowing. ’® Thus does St. Thomas give
a precision to St. Augustine's doctrine by correcting his
Platonism through Aristotle.
The ontologism of Gioberti (19th century) was scarcely more
than a revival of that of Malebranche, an admission that a certain
immediate vision of God was natural to man. Rosmini (19th
century'), on the other hand, had some originality. According
to him, the soul, in an innate state, receives the intuition of the
idea of being from God. This notion contains no individual
determinations, and it is used, by rcasan of sensation which
opposes it, to form universal ideas.
The same tendency to link all spiritual knowledge imme­
diately to God is found in all these disciples of St. Augustine.
Thus it is God who appears as the author of our thought. The
person, at first disfigured by sensation which depends on the
body, finishes by being completely absorbed in God who alone
effects the knowledge of truth in the soul. Spinoza, in his
pantheism, which took its inspiration from Cartesianism, shows
one of the terms of this tendency, while Leibniz, ir his idealism,
shows us another.••
•• Summa Theol., I* pars., q. 85, a. 5.

NATURE OF INTELLIGIBLE SPECIES

395

What is lacking in these positions is the recognition of the
fundamental role of sensation in the acquisition of our most
spiritual ideas, and the failure to give man a spiritual activity
proper to himself, instead of one which is completely derived
from Divine Thought.

(3) Averroism, which introduced Aristotle
into the West in the 12th century, filled
as it was with Neo-Platonic interpreta­
tions, satisfied the first of these exigencies
(it recognizes the fundamental role of the
senses). Human thought comes about through abstraction made
from images. But, far from satisfying the second (a proper
spiritual activity for man), it destroys all personal spirituality.
According to its teaching, the agent intellect, which produces
the intelligible species in the passive intellect, can not be the
" form ” of a body, because it is purely spiritual. Consequently,
being separated from all matter, it can not be multiplied.87
Therefore, there is only one agent intellect for all men, and,
because of it, human nature is eternal.88
St. Thomas, in his controversy with the Latin Averroists
of the 13th century, invokes experience as giving the lie to their
theorizing : •’ (a) My thought is subject to my will, and therefore
I am the author of it. — (b) Men are not equal in knowledge,
even ” if they possess the same images, which argues to the fact
that their knowledge depends on a cause which is proper to each
of them. — (c) Thought is a specific characteristic of man, and
therefore it should be achieved in him and by him in his total
reality, which is both active and passive. — (d) We experience
within ourselves not only the appearance of ideas, but we also
experience ourselves as producing them. — (c) To conclude : I am
master of my actions. Moreover, myliberty is based on my thought.
By this it is clear that my thought is my own work. If my thought

ABSTRACTION :
the “ separated ”
agent intellect.

*’ Because prime matter is a principle of individuation.
♦« We can imagine it as a kind of Guardian Angel for all of humanity,
an angel with the charge of making each individual know the universal
which is potentially present in the images acquired by him.
” S.C.G, 1. II, ch. 76.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

is produced in me without me, my liberty vanishes, for that
which supports it is not mine.
(4) Kant also believed it impossible to
CONSTRUCTION
base the necessity of concepts and
judgments on the pure contingency of
of the “ formality ”
sensation.
For him, history had
of the object.
showed that the way, used to justify
science up until his time, was at an impasse. His revolution
consists in making objects depend on the mind in everything
which is “ formal, " i.e., knowable. There is a datum (something
given), but it is inactive, it does not really produce. It is the
mind or spirit which makes a sensible object of the datum, and
then fabricates a concept by an autonomous activity, which is
constrained to operate according to " a priori forms. ” Intel­
lectual activity is a constructor of all the necessary relations
which constitute objects.
His followets saw clearly that Kant’s doctrine had
... of the
made the datum completely useless. Actually it
whole object, had no role in knowledge. It neither caused
knowledge nor was it known in itself. Logically,
then, they suppressed the datum. They recognized only one
reality, the mind, which thinks and fashions its own objects.
Both mind and objects known are spirit. In post-Kantian
idealism (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel) the human mind is a God who
creates the world.
Experience will always protest that man, in thinking,
depends on things, on their similarities, and on their differences.
The very nature of truth demands that objects be radically other
than the mind which judges them. Wc must search for the cause
of intelligible species as being something other than an intellectual
activity which is independent of sensible things.
ABSTRACTION :
■personal agent
intellect.
(a)

EXISTENCE,

nation of the others.

(5) St. Thomas and the Scholastics in general
have situated it in an agent intellect,
which is proper to every human being.
This solution is found by the elimiIn order to conceive a universal, the intellect

THE NATURE OF INTELLIGIBLE SPECIES

397

needs to receive a universal intelligible species. The cause of
this species is not sensation or image only (thus empiricism is
false), but an activity which is properly spiritual.
This latter is not a universal thing, as Plato believed; it can
be only an active intelligence. But what kind of intelligence
is it, human or divine?
a. God cannot be the only author of these ideas. Thus
Cartesian innat ism, the ontologism of Malebranche and its
derivatives, the pantheism of Spinoza, and Leibnizian idealism,
are eliminated.
b. A " separated ” agent intellect would destroy the personal
character of thought and will : therefore Averroes is mistaken.
The same is true of traditionalism (De Bonald, La Mcnnais,
19th century) for which the origin of higher thought is language,
which is the social transmitter of a primitive truth revealed by
God to the human race. This criticism is again true of
sociologism (Durkheim, Lévy-Brühl) which makes society the
inspirer of thoughts and the generator of mental functions in the
individual.
c. An individual agent intellect, which is, therefore, noncollectivc, is required as cause of an intelligible species. However,
it cannot produce it without some dependence on the image.
Kant 100 and the idealists whom he inspired forget that the
universal is originally grasped in the sensible.
We must, therefore, recognize that human thought has its
source in a spiritual activity, which is innate to the mind of each
human being, and which uses images with a view to producing
an idea.
1W Kant himself asserts the concept is formed beginning with sensible
phenomena, through the medium of images or schemata (see Thonnard,
Short History of Philosophy, Nr. 401, 2 and Nr. 403), but he denies that
the content of the concept (its comprehension) is drawn from the datum
which is first sensed and then imagined. According to him. the sensible
phenomenon is already actually a " construction, ” whose " form ” comes
from the mind, and whose datum, the real, is not present in any
determined way. For Aristotle and the Scholastics, however, the sensible
is, above all, the real thing, acting in a determined way on the mind,
through the intermediary of '* phantasms, ” images or " schemata. ”

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THE NATURE OF MAN

(b) the role of the agent intellect is essentially that
of producing an intelligible species in the mind (more specifically
here, in the passive or possible intellect), by reason of which the
latter becomes similar to a determined universal object (e.g., the
“ sonorous, ’’ the " white ”) through forming a concept and
knowing it.101
This production of the species is not a creation; it is an
abstraction. The agent intellect draws it from sensible objects,
e., from images which are unceasingly present (the sound of
i.
a bell or an automobile...). These objects do not contain a
ready-made universal " in act, ” but they contain, in an indi­
vidual and concrete way, all the notes which the universal
signifies. The agent intellect, which is an innate tendency to
the universal, is interested only in those notes in the image
which arc capable of universalization. In using these to the
exclusion of others, it produces their resemblance in the passive
intellect — thus the intelligible species.
The agent intellect has sometimes been compared to X-rays
which reveal internal and hidden organs to the sight. The
comparison can illustrate the idea that the intelligible species is
produced by the real, even if under a higher light which shows
only a part of this real. However, this example is dangerous
in that it suggests a segmenting of the real. Remember that
a universal characteristic is not a piece or a part of a thing,
but an aspect of this whole thing. The abstraction which makes
us see the universal is, therefore, neither an extraction nor a
segment The universal species is not completely in the image, as
would be one of its parts. There is not in a clock, a car or a
watch... a part which is a sound and nothing but a sound.
Abstraction is a “ de-ittdividualizing “ of concrete characteristics
which are extended and individual in the image, whereas
The agent intellect and the possible intellect (potential) are
at least two distinct functions of human intelligence. According to
St. Thomas, they arc two really different qualities of the soul, two
operative powers. Their actual roles in respect to the intelligible species
arc opposed but complementary (the agent intellect is the cause of it,
whereas the possible intellect receives it). In relation to the species,
the first is in act, whereas the second is in potency. Therefore, we can­
not identify them.

THE NATURE OF INTELLIGIBLE SPECIES

399

extracting, cutting out would leave the cut-out part with
all its previous determinations and only make them more
explicit.
That which best exemplifies the role of the agent intellect
in experience is the fact of attention, which can be defined as
a determined orientation of knowledge towards a particular aspect
of objects and the ignoring of the other aspects. Thus the agent
intellect can be described as an innate attention, which the human
intelligence brings to bear on that which is capable of universal­
ization in the sensible, an attention which has the necessary
consequence of abstraction from the concretely spatio-temporal
aspect, the hic et nunc of the same sensible. The effect of such
attention is the passage from the individual known to the
universal conceived, and, therefore, to the necessary, the
immutable, the eternal.
By dc-individualizing, the agent intellect does not construct
a new object with the aid of completely new materials.
If this were so, no intellectual knowledge of sensible things
would be possible to us, because intelligence would be, in such
an hypothesis, completely different from the sensible. The
agent intellect is then limited to illuminating and making the
non-individual traits within the image capable of impressing
the passive intellect, which process implies an exclusion of
strictly individual characteristics. Thus the image truly
collaborates 101 in the production of an intelligible species and
it is capable of furnishing thought with its first content.
The image reflects in some way the light which the agent intellect
shines on it. However, this light is different from material lights,
because it does not bring along with it any new clement, which
lw St. Thomas sees the agent intellect as the principal cause of the
intelligible species, and the image as the instrumental cause oí it.
" In receptione qua intellectus possibilis species rerum accipit a phantas­
matibus, sc habent phantasmata ut agens instrumentale et secundarium,
intellectus vero agens ut agens principale et primum " (De Veritate, X, 6,
ad 7). Only that which the phantasm brings is capable of universalization.
It is the agent intellect which makes it universal. By reason of the
intelligible light which directs it. the spontaneous analysis of images
facilitates the separation of the universal from the phantasm.
See Maquart, Elementa Philosophiae, II, pp. 370-375.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

could alter the ” color ” belonging to the illuminated object.
This light simply makes knowable what was not, but could
become knowable. This light of the agent intellect makes
possible the impressing on the mind of a universal resemblance
of that which, in itself, is singular, but which, nevertheless,
conceals an aptitude for universality {sound, which is realized
equally in a clock, a car, or a watch...).
(c) conclusions. We can see the abyss which separates
the thought of St. Thomas from that of Kant. Undoubtedly,
for both, the universality and consequently the necessity
of concepts comes formally from the human mind. The
necessity of concepts is also the indispensable condition of
science and thought. However, for Kant, this universality
has no guaranteed foundation in things; it is created a priori.
For St. Thomas, it is " in potency ” in things; it is only actualized
by the agent intellect. For Kant, the entire content of
knowledge is a production of reason; for St. Thomas, it is, above
all, the things themselves.

St. Thomas, nevertheless, welds together the partial truths
contained in the other solutions. He recognizes, with empiricism,
the role of sensation in thought. With Plato and St. Augustine,
he recognizes the immediate dependence of the mind on truth,
and the mind’s participation in the ideas which God has of
things. With idealism, he recognizes a spiritual activity in the
mind, by which it thinks its ideas and freely directs its life.
However, he does not merely juxtapose these truths; he binds
them together. Two metaphysical links are here subordinated
one to the other. God, the supreme link, communicates His
thought to things and minds simultaneously. There is nothing
astonishing about the human intellect finding the intelligible in
things, since they are constructed on the plan of the Divine
Ideas. The soul, the link of the human being, and the form, the
link of corporeal beings, are bound together by knowledge in the
measure that they exclude matter which limits and opposes them.
Intelligence, which, of all knowledge, is that most intimate to us,
demands a " dematerialized ” and universalized object, and,
consequently, an agent intellect whose function will be to make

THE " EXPRESSED SPECIES ”

401

a purely intelligible form emerge from the image in which it is
" incarnated. ”
Thus is the problem, as we have posed it, resolved. The
agent intellect and the image are the sufficient causes for the
orientation of intelligence towards the universal, which has its
beginning in sensation. The agent intellect is always in act,
tending towards the intelligible in general. It lacks a determined
content. The image furnishes it.
Here, then, is the subject at that stage of knowing, which
may be called primordial, since it involves an intuitive grasp of
reality. Here, knowledge is dominated and directed by objects,
since liberty can choose them only by reason of a thought which
is already formed. It is the impressed species, produced by them
in the ego, which turns psychological attention towards them by
a kind of mental " ontotropism. ” 103
However, we now find ourselves confronted with a new
problem, if we take notice of the fact that the same object can
evoke differing directions in us. For example, I have heard
a melody; but I remember only a certain rhythm, and I think
only of the general meaning of melody. The single actual melody
is grasped in three different ways.
Whence comes this
diversity? It comes from an activity of the ego, which creates
the object.

2. An "expressed species” is used by me as a
means, as an instrument, to grasp an object, whenever I use my
imagination or think, when sensation does not demand this
intermediary which has an internal origin.
a. This term designates a “ resemblance of the object
(species) which the ego, determined by an impressed species,
produces from its innermost activity (expressa) and within
“» The biological fact of tropism (the geotropism of roots and
branches, the chimiotropism of male gametes, etc.) implies that living
things receive an influence from their environment, and their reaction
directs their growth and their displacement in a direction which is
generally useful to them. In a similar way, being, in the midst of which
the subject lives, influences it and creates an orientation which makes
it able to know it.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

which it grasps the object. ’’ The object known can infinitely
surpass this resemblance, but nevertheless, the object can be
known only by reason of this resemblance, and according
to its measure. This measure is first of all that of the
impressed species, then that of the ego's activity as it is
enriched by the determinations received from the species.
Thus the individual man, of whom I am thinking, is known
to me only according to the measure of the images and ideas
which I have formed of him, and this measure depends on the
“ impressions ” furnished by sensation, and on their spirituali­
zation by the agent intellect.
b. The existence of an expressed species is attested to by
experience. Everyone is conscious of his images and his ideas.
He also knows that he is the source of them, and, at times, the
free author of them. Nevertheless, despite the contention of
Descartes, this experience is not a direct one, but a reflex one.
First, I know the object pictured or thought, then only the image
or the idea by which I know it. The opinion of subjectivism
does not conform with the facts. I do not have to conclude to
the existence of objects from the starting point of my ideas and
images, as the first things known. Moreover, what would an
image or an idea be, devoid of all objective content? What is
true is that the represented content is not purely identical with
real objects, it is that which I picture or think of real objects,
that which I know' about them. This actually explains w’hy such
tremendous efforts must be made by the mind to arrive at a
thorough knowledge of things.1M
* In scholastic terminology, the expressed species, the image
*♦
(phantasm), or the concept (mental word), is not the "id quod ” which
is primarily known or the " ex quo " through whose medium a thing
is known. It is the formal sign of the thing, a sign in which the thing
itself is known immediately.
It is an intermediar)’ only in the ontological order, but not in the
order of knowledge. It has no other value nor reality than that of a pure
sign. By it. I know only the thing represented, and the sign itself as
representing the thing.
See Ma quart, Elementa Philosophiae, II, p. 382 sq.; Parker and
Veatch, Logic as a Human Instrument (New York: Harper, 1959),
pp. 16-23.

THF. " EXPRESSED SPECIES ”

403

c. The necessity of the expressed species flows from the
relation of the knowing ego to its objects. This relation is a
“ truth, ” an “ identity, ” a unity between the essence and
existence of the ego and that of the object.
Now there is a type of knowledge wherein the object is
necessarily present to the ego in its essence and existence, and
that is sensation. Sensation supposes the present activity of an
object (an “ excitant ”)• This sensation gives precise knowledge
about certain determinations of this excitant, namely, the
sensible qualities it produces when the subject and the object are
joined (particularly is this the case in sensed extension which
is common to both). In this kind of knowledge, there is no
necessity for an expressed species, for the object sensed is
immediately present to the subject.

However, in all knowledge whose object is not necessarily
united to the ego through its existence, or can not be united to
the ego, even according to its essence, it is necessary for the ego,
if it wishes to know, to produce a duplicate of the object, of the
essence and existence to which it will unite itself. The ego will
be united to its existence, since this duplicate will exist by the
activity of the ego ; the ego will be united to its essence, since this
duplicate is constructed according to the very same determi­
nations which have already been acquired from the object by
the ego (species impressa). The first hypothesis is realized in
the imagination which knows the objects of sense, even when
they are not presently acting on the organs. The two united are
realized in thought, which not only attains absent objects, but
also grasps them in their universal characteristics when these
traits have real existence only in an individual way.
To conclude : The image, the idea, are expressed species
— they are representations, which are distinct from sensation.
Thus we must recognize that the notion of representation is
narrower than that of knowledge, and that representation is not
the essence of knowledge, but only a condition of it.

3.
cally.

We can

sum up

the formation of a simple idea schemati­

404

THE NATURE OF MAN

Let us take a colored
object as our example. This
rose-colored carnation (No.l)
which acts on the retina of
my eye produces in my
visual power an impressed
species (2), by reason of
which I see (3) its form, its
movement, its proper shade
of rose. This visual experi­
ence involves another of the
powers of the ego, that of
I------------1
imagination, and a determi-1-—----------- —
Expressed
nation is produced there by Impressed
Species
virtue of the same impressed Sp€C΀$
species (4) by which I can
see again (5), even though it be absent, the rose color of the
carnation which I contemplate as an image, which I have pro­
duced as an expressed species (6). However, the agent intellect (7),
an innate light, has already lighted up this image in its " col­
ored ” aspect, leaving in the dark all that is individual in the
rose color, and by this action it produces a definite orien­
tation in the passive intellect, an impressed species (8); then I
understand (9) the notion “ colored ” by expressing its content
in an idea, expressed species (10), and through it I think or can
think of every colored object, as well as of the image (G), or the
carnation (1).1W

Obviously, the real movement of knowledge is infinitely
more complex than this schema. This movement depends in
part on the subjective association of images which results from
the influence of interests. It also depends on objective associ'•* Our intention with this diagram is neither to suggest a snail,
nor to illustrate a new form of abstract art. It is only a diagram, which
recapitulates the causal links (in the form of arrows) and intentional
links or those of knowledge (under the form of lines without arrows,
whether broken or unbroken). We hope to show by it the fundamental
organization of these links. It will be of help only to the mind which
is still a little bit lost in the morning fog. From the others it can only
hope for the indulgence of a smile!

ACTUATION IX DESIKE

405

ations, which result from experiences which are fortuitously
contiguous, and especially those which are bound up with the
necessary relations of resemblance, contrariety and causality.
Knowledge also depends in part on the direction which free will
impresses on the entire psychological life. It will be sufficient
to indicate here what fundamental condition ought to be satisfied
in the ego, that will guarantee its passage from the capability of
knowing to actual knowledge. The ego must be determined and
directed to such knowledge by an influence which is always
objective, and which is, originally, in sensible things. In respect
to thought and imagination, it must produce in itself a duplicate
of the object which it understands and with which it is united.
Finally, the ego must have an intellectual activity in it which
permits it to abstract the intelligible from the sensible.
We must now turn our attention to see how activity and
affectivity are, in their turn, determined, but we shall concern
ourselves with them only as they play a role in the direction of
knowledge.
D. Actuation in desire. Tendencies do not pass to act
under the form of desire, pleasure or sorrow, except under the
impulses given by the " movers ” which are suited to them. These
“ movers ” are by nature acts of knowledge. They introduce into
a tendency an orientation towards an OBJECT known, which then
fulfills the function of end, and takes on the color of a good.
The end is nothing other than the terminus to which a movement
tends.106 The good is anything which is capable of satisfying
a tendency, anything which can be desired, anything which can
be a factor of interest. Different ways of knowing involve
different ways of desiring. These differing ways of desiring are
called " appetites. ” 107
’•* Summa Theol., I» pars. q. 5, a. 1 " Ratio boni in hoc consistit quod
aliquid sit appetibile. ”
MT Appetitus — a power directed towards action.
Appetitus naturalis = the appetite which passes from potency to
act without a previous knowledge of the end.
Appetitus sensitivus -» that which passes to action by reason of
the determination (or “ form ”) acquired through sensible knowledge.
Appetitus intellectivus = ...acquired through intellectual knowl­
edge.

406

THE NATURE OF MAN

The ’* rational appetite, ” which is directed towards the
intelligible, cannot pass to act in the same way that the “ sensible
appetite ” docs, since the latter is directed towards the sensible.
Just as common sense does, psychology recognizes the " rational
appetite ” as having a certain free play, a certain independence
in relation to its objects. How is this liberty -possible?
It is the job of metaphysics to base this liberty on rational
knowledge, and by this, fully guarantee human liberty and make
it intelligible. Free will exists, and its conditions have been
studied in descriptive psychology, wherein determinist objections
have been resolved; but then the question still remains : How is
free choice possible? If it is a determination which the ego gives
itself, must we not say that liberty is the power of determining
self without sufficient reason? Actually, it seems that if a sufficient
reason exists, it will involve the will necessarily, and leave no
place for the function of freedom.
1. the sensible appetite is a less mysterious affair.
It is understood through analogies with natural finality. It is
actually only natural spontaneity as modified by sensory knowl­
edge. This latter furnishes the sensible appetite with special
excitants, which are known objects, whose action, for that reason,
is not merely mechanical, but psychological. The mover of the
sensible appetite, of impulses and aversions, of physical pleasures
and pains, like that of a falling stone, is a corporeal reality. But
here it is that reality insofar as it is a sensible object, i.e., an
object, and not a thing.
Because of this, there exists in the appetite a complexity
which is very much greater than that involved in the spontaneity
of nature (natural appetite). The reason lies in this, thar within
the same physical environment, a great number of different
objects can be present, or can be represented by sensible knowl­
edge, e.g., to the cat the kitchen may represent the milk, the
roast, a corner by the fire,... or the broom of the cook. Each
of these objects awakens desires, which sometimes are so contrary
that they come to the point of suspending action momentarily,
and give the animal the appearance of deliberation. 10g
101 Fontaine writes : " Miraut, having philosophized on this odor,
concluded that this was his hare....”

THE SENSIBLE APPETITE

407

We can never state, however, that this " deliberation ”
results in the invention of new objects, nor in original actions,
which, by their originality, would show desires to be independent
of the objects known. The sensible appetite is, therefore,
completely subservient to the objects which are presented to it.
Its determination, its direction of the moment, is derived from
them.
It is, undoubtedly, not the objects which create the desire,
but they cause such a desire to be produced by an innate or
pre-acquired tendency. They confine the natural impetus of
desire by their concrete, spatial and temporal limits. Further­
more, in order that a corporeal reality be a mover of sensible
desire, it has to be known under one of the aspects which
correspond to this natural tendency. It is not every sensible
object which causes desire, but that object which is grasped as
being in harmony with a spontaneous tendency. This is the
" good ” in the object, i.e., its capability of satisfying a need,
of terminating a tendency, of completing a being.
How does it happen that this appetite breaks out in desires
of every kind, impulses, revulsions and various emotions?
Because sensible knowledge places the appetite under the
influence of an individual and material object, by grasping in
this object a particular concrete good. This objectively and
subjectively individual good10* is the proper mover of the appetite.
It places the appetite in act and finalizes it, in a determined way.
In man the manifestation of sensible desire is realized in
a more complicated fashion than in animals. Over and above
the forms which are proper to it, it can be dominated by intel­
lectual functions and acquire a kind of liberty; but this liberty
belongs truly only to the will which then commands it. This
liberty never affects the necessity which links a sensible object
to its proper tendency.
a. As an example, take a perception oí cherries, which
automatically involves the gesture of carrying them to the mouth.
This gesture is simply the full realization of a sensible desire.
IM Hoc mihi bonum.
N-Y. 17. — 28

408

THE NATURE OF MAN

b. A simple image, evoked through association, excites the
desire to possess or to construct the object imagined. It seems
that this is the specific mechanism of instinct. The impulses
or drives which are fundamental to instinct are not blind
mechanical forces, but are the fruit of a sense appreciation of
the objects of imagination, perceived as in agreement with
tendencies. This is certainly the law of psychological automatism
in man :110 the sight of a movement provokes the beginnings of
a movement of the same kind in us. The image prepares the
realization of the represented gesture. The ideo-motor action
is explained by an association of images involving the desire and
its accomplishment.
c. Thought is neither the necessary nor the sufficient cause
of sensible appetite : " Universalia non movent. " But it is not
exercised without images, and it is often concretized in individual
objects. It is also natural for thinking man to experience
corporeal desires and emotions which are intimately mixed with
the spiritual. Thought, therefore, moves the appetite through
the medium of images, but by the domination which thought
can exercise over appetite,

d. Liberty becomes capable of governing sensible desire and
consequently able to command a physical action. A free decision
establishes concrete judgment within the very heart of the
subject, which is completely determined and concerned with an
individual object. How could this happen without the collab­
oration of an image, since the image is the normal way of
individualizing an idea, which, taken in itself, is universal?
Here then, we have the image placed freely in the subject, and,
as a natural consequence, the acts of sensible appetition referring
to their object. These acts of appetition can be called free, not
because they need not follow an image, but because the image
with which they are necessarily involved, has, through the
operation of free will, received the rights of a citizen in the
kingdom of personality. Epiphenomenalism, then, makes a
“• Both Baudin in his Psychologie, pp. 559-566 and Eymjeu in his
Le gouvernement de soi-même (Paris : Perrin, 1935). PP- 25-181 give facts
and excellent interpretations.

THE WILL

409

serious mistake by denying the influence of the will on the body,
under the pretext that such an influence is inconceivable. In
order that liberty exist, it does not have to suppress psycho­
physiological determinism. It supposes it and directs it. The
operation of the sensible appetite remains necessary,111 but
because of the possible subordination of its mover, image or
sensation, to the influence of a free will, the acts of the appetite
can be called free in their cause and, since this is so, they can be
considered as objects of morality. Because of this, morality
extends to external actions, even though their bonds with things
are subject to natural determinism.
This elevation of sensible appetite to the level of moral
liberty should not prevent us from recognizing the true nature
of sensible appetite. Motivated essentially by sensible knowl­
edge, it has as its proper object the corporeal individual grasped
as being presently agreeable to the subject and, in this, appetite
cannot fail to follow the direction which its tendency imposes
on it.

2. the will or rational appetite is opposed to the above
appetite both in its object and its operation.
a. In its object. The will, because it is motivated by
thought, has necessarily for its object the good insofar as
it is thought, the good in general. The notion of the good
embraces that which is in accord with any particular tendency,
as well as that which basically satisfies all tendencies, that which
is good for anyone, and is good for me, that which is good at this
moment, as well as that which is good beyond all temporal
duration. Thus the will manifests a capacity for objective
indétermination. Its object can be proposed to it under forms
which are not equally determined.
In the case of the sensible appetite, the object, since it is
an individual material reality, is always completely determined
to the point demanded by concrete action. With the will, the
object can, on the contrary, be presented under purely universal
or incompletely individualized characteristics. As a result,
211 Necessity demands that a thing be realized necessarily.

410

THE NATURE OF MAN

action on such an object becomes impossible, and the incomplete
will seeks to perfect itself. Because of this we understand the
diversity in successive acts of the will. They are striving for
an object which is completely determined in the way that action
demands,112 but that object can be attained only through thought.
Consequently, the movement of the will provokes a correlative
movement in reason, which little by little113 determines the
Universal Good, which was first grasped.
(1) The simplest and the most primitive of the acts of
can thus only be the desire of a desirable known
in a completely vague way. The mover of the will can be the
most obscure consciousness of a need, the seizure of some fragile
pleasure as well as the most penetrating judgment on the
profound misery of man. “ I do not know too much about that
which I wish, ” but I know that I wish it, and I expect some
happiness as a result of it. Yet, if I wish it, what course of action
shall I pursue to find it? (2) My intention can search for it in
an idea which may be -precise, but still remains universal, in an
end, e.g., health, pleasure, virtue or science, which are still
non-real objects, but within which are found the seeds of a
thousand real actions. Thought, which at first was pushed at
random by a vague appetite, is now directed. It takes counsel,
proposes means, judges their appropriateness to the end; but
those which it retains as possible, as more or less useful, are
found to be such only by reason of a will which is agreeable to
them. We now arrive at (3) “ consensus. ” These means have
no value for the intention, except in view of the end. Depending
the will

»« See Baudin. Psychologic, pp. 571-575The will can be completely determined in an instant. This is
most often the case with the decisions made in the little problems of
daily life. It is even the case in unusual contingencies for those who
are strong willed and resolute personalities, who are always masters of
themselves. This can even be the case sometimes with pathological
personalities, who arc impulsive and precipitate. However, the will's
internal functioning can be revealed to us like the stages of movement
in a slow motion film. A methodical study cannot fail to reveal voluntary­
decision forming itself little by little in union with the light of thought.
This study, moreover, is not pure artifice. How many wishes
do not terminate in action, because they never ripen into determination,
like seeds whose first sprouts are scorched by the sun ?

THE WILL

411

then on the idea of an end, a system of objects for action is
constituted, each of which is recognized as a means, and is
desired as such. Nevertheless, the will can not find its fulfillment
here, because it remains inefficacious, concerned simultaneously
with several diverse actions. It becomes efficacious by reason
of choice (4) “ electio, ” accepting one and rejecting the others.
In this choice there is incorporated a practically-practical
judgment : “ Here is an action to be chosen by me right now. ”
The order thus infused by the intelligence and maintained in
force (5) “ usus activus, ” by the will, commands the execution.
A conscious grasp of the end, once it is achieved, will place the
will in a state of enjoyment (6) and will transform active love
into affective love. To sum up, the impetus has been given by
a thought, which reveals a need and awakens in me the innate
love of happiness. In the course of voluntary movement,
thought progresses in the same direction as the will, in the
direction of an increasing determination towards a decision.
This decision involves a practical judgment, which is completely
concrete.
This mixed movement will be understood provided we do
not divide it, provided we consider it as being an indissoluble
union of thinking and willing in the movement of the ego.
Actually, the will is a source of action. It is a cause which puts
deliberation into action. It utilizes all kinds of knowledge and
places them at the disposition of judgment. The intelligence,
on the other hand, is a source of determinations, by reason of
the objects whose characteristics it has assimilated. From it
comes the direction which the will acquires little by little.
Thus we understand the becoming of the will (its exercise),
and its direction (its specification), the will acting, the thought
directing. The will is thus always in conformity with a judgment,
but the judgment is subordinate to the will. This is true also
of sensible desire which conforms to an image, and the image
is evoked with a dependence on the desire which makes the
object “ interesting. ” That which primarily differentiates one
from the other lies in the fact that the pair, will-judgment,
can exist in more or less determined states, because the proper
object of the will is the good in general.

412

THE NATURE OF MAN

b. In its operation. There is a second aspect in which
the rational appetite differs even more profoundly from the
sensor}' appetite : the will is free. In this, the will is unique.
In this its metaphysical possibility is more profoundly hidden.
Where can the sufficient reason of a decision be found, which
is not the necessary consequence of its conditions?
In the conditions themselves? The conditions which would
explain this particular free decision must be the very same
conditions which would explain the contrary decision which was
not made. The conditions explain the equal possibility of
alternatives, not the existence of one to the exclusion of the other.
In the decision itself? It must be; but is it not contradic­
tory that a fact should be its own sufficient reason? Certainly,
if it is taken in itself alone, but not if it is taken conjointly with
its conditions. What then are the essential conditions of a free
choice? How explain these conditions? What remains to be
explained by the choice itself?
1) The essential conditions of free choice are
summarily those which link the choice to its object which is a
completely practical and determined thing. They are found in
the practicall/y-praclical judgment and in its object. What ought
this object to be in order to be the object of free election?
a) This cannot be the proper object of the will taken in itself,
because the link which binds a power to its proper object is
strictly essential and can not be broken. Without it the power
would be nothing. It is, therefore, impossible that a power
function without being united to its proper object. There is no
room for liberty here.
Now the proper object of the human will is the universal
good as known by the intelligence.
Therefore there is no liberty to choose or reject an object
known purely as good. Such an object is presented in several ways :
(1) The universal good can be thought of in its total
extension. It is beatitude, happiness without restriction,
embracing every point of view, and in no way identified with
any determined object, as would be the case in God, riches or

THE CONDITIONS OF LIBERTY

413

pleasure. This good is desired in every act of the will, as the very
reason of desiring whatever the object desired. It is the good
pursued in every desire.
(2) A particular object has only a very limited goodness,
but it now appears to me under the single aspect of its goodness.
In this glass of water I see only the allaying of my thirst. This
is a very frequent case, before any deliberation. The first
movement of the will is not free.
(3) A particular object can furthermore be the only way
of realizing an end about which I have already made up my
mind. I wish to write and I have only one pencil at my disposal.
In order to write, I am not free to choose a pencil.114
In this case, I could undoubtedly not wish the object (my
will is contingent); but then I would wish nothing and that
would necessitate that I do not think of the object. On the
contrary, thinking of it in the afore-mentioned conditions, I can
not stop myself from willing it, I can not be free in willing it
(my will is necessary here with a natural, hypothetical necessity).

b) The object of a free choice must, however, be contained
within the extension of the proper object’ of the will. Actually,
it is impossible that a function attain an object in an}' other way
than under the formality of its proper object, for it can attain
through the latter only what is contained in its extension.
To use an example : a flower is visible only because it is part
of colored things. The object of a free choice, then, must be
known as a good, being part of the notion of The Good, i.e.,
as a particular good. This hypothesis is realized in several ways :
(1) The definite good in which we situate the Sovereign
Good is grasped as a particular good, by reason of our abstract
manner of knowing, and also because of the multiplicity of our
tendencies. Whatever be the object of our will, God, virtue,
1,4 Evidently I can remain free to write, but that is another problem.
Faced with this hypothesis, I am free to write or not to write, according
to the conditions I place in the hypothesis. See Summa Theol., I» pars,
q. 82, a. i : " Necessitas finis non repugnat voluntati, quando ad finem
non potest perveniri nisi uno modo; sicut ex voluntate transeundi mare
fit necessitas in voluntate ut velit navem. ”

414

THE NATURE OF MAN

science, pleasure, racial interest, it does not contain for us all
the kinds of possible goodness. It always appears to us as
particular. God is not visible ; virtue and science demand painful
effort ; pleasure often excludes virtue ; racial interest demands
sacrifice from the individual. These are, for our intellect and
consequently for our will, particular goods.
(2) An infinite variety of objects and actions can appear
to us as means of realizing happiness, that end which we are ever
seeking and never finding, even though no one of these seems
capable of giving us complete happiness. Each gives us only
a part and refuses the rest. The part that is given is given only
for a time, and as it is given to me, deprives me of something
else in which I have an interest.
In these two aspects of a limited good, I see, together with
the good which attracts me, a limit, an absence of a good, which
repels me. In these conditions, in this determined state of
knowledge, the will also can only be determined in the same
ambiguous manner, containing a yes and no simultaneously in
relation to the same object. Following its own natural law, the
will is attracted and repelled at the same time by each particular
good. It desires and does not desire to pursue the particular
good. There is no need of a plurality of objects : one single
object is sufficient to pose, within the will, an alternative whose
separation from that single object has a vital importance and
exercises on the will the attraction of the good. This indecision
would, indeed, put a stop to action, to progress. To live, we
must go beyond it.
2) What remains to be determined by free choice in these
conditions? Simply, the direction which the voluntary act will
follow between two possible directions. How is it that the will
can choose this part in preference to the other?
Psychological determinism 113 thinks that the reasons can be
found only in motives.u* It forgets that these are exactly what
James E. Royck, S. J., Man and His Nature, p. 192.
IM Sully Prud’homme describes this determinism as follows :
" Seul le plus fort motif peut enfin prévaloir;
Fatalement conçu durant qu’on délibère.

THE CONDITIONS OF LIBERTY

415

puts desire in two different directions, where it can not remain
without dying. The yes is desirable and so is the no. It further
forgets that the motives for the yes are not opposed to those
of the no, as in a subtraction. They are different, not homo­
geneous. UT Finally it forgets that the “ better ”118 can not
infallibly determine the choice, for the better is always only
a limited good, and because of that it implies simultaneous
attraction and repulsion, a call to and a refusal of action.
It is not through being subjected to some influence, even
if it is purely intellectual, that the will finds the power to make
a choice. It is in itself, in its activity of the moment. This
activity is primarily by nature a thrust towards action, a means
to happiness. By its previous choices and by acquired habits,
it can already be directed towards a concrete ideal, and be more
desirous of choosing the direction already preferred. Finally,
in any case, it is oriented, through deliberation, to a completely
concrete act and simultaneously to its abstention as well. How,
then, is the indétermination between the yes and the no to be
done away with? It will be sufficient to observe here that in
the will there is an innate thrust towards the good. To will the
good demands choice, since without choice, the will is ineffi­
cacious. By its love of the end, the will abolishes the alternative
between the yes and the no.
Can it not very well be said that there must be a reason for
rejecting one and preferring the other, and that this reason is
Fatalement vainqueur, c'est lui seul qui opère
La fatale option qu'on appelle un vouloir. "
" Only the strongest motive can finally prevail:
Inevitably conceived while we arc deliberating,
Inevitably the conqueror, it alone calls forth
The inevitable option which we call a will. ”
Such is the case in the motives of duty and those which involve
pleasure or pride; or, outside the domain of morals, motives which may
draw me either to take a walk or to read this novel on this beautiful
day of my vacation.
If there is a liberty even when faced with the best, it is not this
choice of the best which constitutes liberty. Let us make a distinction
between psychological liberty (choice) and moral liberty (the ability
to place a morally good action). The sinner is free in the first case, but
in the second case he is not free : he is a slave.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

not in the end, which, in its extension, embraces precisely the
yes and the no about a particular means? The objection seems
to take the will for a thought which goes from the universal to
the particular, or from genus to species. The will is not looking
for a truth, it is looking for a good which is an object of action.
Thus its activity which is turned towards the good, in whatever
form it may be, is a fortiori active (desirous) in relation to
the latter. That which it lacks by nature — a determined object
— is furnished to it by deliberation. It cuts off deliberation by
acting in one of the acquired directions. “• In order to choose,
it does not have to give itself a new and more specific object (this
enrichment would lack a sufficient reason). It has only to accept
one of the contrary objects presented by the intelligence and thus
refuse the other. Choice, being a restriction brought to the
direction of the will, not an increase in direction, requires only
a power of action capable of pursuing the good, even though
it renounces some particular good.1W Thus liberty is not
unintelligible. It is simply a power of action, which is superior to
the obstacle which a perceived contrariety of goods opposes to it.

Thus, it is exercised essentially in the suppression of this
contrariety at exactly the point where it is conscious, i.e., in the
judgment. It is that which is the cause of this practicallypractical judgment. Here is the reason of my present conduct.
Without it my thought accepts the two opposing counsels as
true : this line of conduct is good for me, and it is not good
for me. Drawn towards action by the will and with it, never­
theless reason remains fixed in its first attitude. The last
judgment which closes the deliberation is thus simultaneously
cause and effect of free choice. This judgment is the source of
its direction (its specification), it is the final cause of willing, but
it is articulated only under the active impetus of the will, it is
Deciding is not thinking in order to act. it is acting while
thinking. The agent here is not the " will. " It is the entire ego, the
person, the existent being. “ Actio est suppositi. ”
“• From this point of view, the problem of decision comes close to
that of the individuation of a form. In both cases, there is a limitation
of their virtualities, and even an indispensable limitation in order that
they can exist.

OPERATIVE POWERS ARE DISTINCT

417

the effect of its will. Here, then, is a reciprocal causality, wherein
we can sec the indissoluble union of thought and action, which
alone makes liberty possible. Without thought, action is blind
and fatal : without action, thought is only a reflection of the
necessity of its objects. Through a judgment on the value of the
good which solicits action, action becomes capable of dominating
itself, of being master of itself, it is free to go or to hold itself
back. It is thought which makes liberty possible, but from
within, and that is why thought is moved by liberty.
c. conclusions : 1) The supreme degree of independ­
ence, which the ego has in relation to its objects, is called free will.
Nevertheless, that will remains dependent on objects through the
intermediary of thought. In its becoming, the direction of the
will is partly derived from objects known. The forward push
belongs to the very nature of the will. The actuation of desire is,
therefore, not impossible, nor is its real relation to things. And
man's domination of nature is possible in its turn, despite the
claims of epiphenomenalism.
2) The supreme degree of the unity of the ego, which is the
free will, also supposes a real diversity in it. Thinking and willing
should not be taken for each other, unless we wish to destroy
liberty. Likewise, we must remember that the oppositions and
limits of particular goods, the only objects of free choice, suppose
a real multiplicity of tendencies in man, which constitute among
correlative objects as many particular goods as there are
tendencies, e.g., light is a good only for a being who is capable
of seeing.

E. The distinction between operative powers is therefore :
1. real. — potency and act are correlatives of the same
kind ; one is incomplete being, and the other is the same being,
but complete, fulfilled potency is defined by the act of which
it is the capacity.
— Now psychological acts are made up of a number of
different kinds which arc really distinct, diflerring from one
another by their special relation to objects.121
us See above. Second Thesis, C.

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THE NATURE GF MAN

— Operative potencies, therefore, constitute as many really
distinct kinds as there arc kinds of acts, i.e., as there are objects,
which are " formally ’’ distinct.

St. Thomas recognizes the following :
sensitive powers. Their object is individual matter.
a. Cognitive powers.
1) External senses (of which touch is a specific kind)...
but as present to an organ and modifying it.
2) Internal senses, 122 but only insofar as perceived through
the external senses.
a) The general sense (sensus communis), the perceptive
sense, grasps its object in a synthesis of differing qualities.
b) The imagination grasps its object as represented.
c) The memory grasps its object as past.
d) The “ estimative " sense grasps its object as concretely
useful or harmful.

b. Appetitive powers. The appetite is twofold : the
concupiscible appetite desires a concrete object as agreeable,
whence the emotions of desire, pleasure, fear, hope, impulse;
the irascible appetite combats a concrete object as harmful, hence
the emotions of revulsion and anger.
intellective powers. Their object is being; their proper
object is the universal grasped in the sensible.
1) The powers of knowledge. The two intellects : the
possible intellect which knows by reason of the agent intellect
which illumines the universal in the image.
2) The power of desire: the will with its passions derived
from the love of the good in general.

ia In scholastic terminology, the internal senses are not to be
considered as those whose organs arc situated in the depth of the tissues,
but rather those whose excitation, wc would say today, have a central
origin, those which find their object in a previously sensed object which
they elaborate. See Summa Theol., I* pars, q. 78, a. 4; Skrtillanges,
St. Thomas d’Aquin, t. II, p. 128 tí. ; E. Gilson, The Christian Philosophy
oj St. Thomas Aquinas, pp. 204-206.

OPERATIVE POWERS ARE DISTINCT

419

We must add a locomotive power, a complement to
the appetitive powers and a projecting of their psychological
action into mechanical gestures.
It is quite possible that this list is debatable, but its principle
is uncontestable, and its broad lines have been verified in the
second thesis. To refuse to make a distinction between the
powers after having made a distinction between the kinds of
acts would be to forget that powers are only the passivity of the
ego in relation to its acts, and that its diverse aptitudes are
actively directed towards objects.183
But doesn’t a real distinction between powers break up the
unity of the ego? In no way, for this distinction is only :
2. relative. An absolute distinction is one which
opposes existences, i.e., substances. The relative distinction
links together again that which it separates. With this
distinction we find the operations of the ego differing, but
nevertheless interdependent; the qualities of the ego hetero­
geneous, yet determining one and the same substance. This
is the way in which the powers are distinguished : they
compenétrate each other and are qualities of the same ego.
Sight serves imagination, and it, in turn, serves thought. All
are at the service of the will in which the unity of the ego is most
apparent.
The powers are, therefore, not things. They do not each
have an existence of their own. They are the same ego, which
alone is properly endowed with existence. It is by their relations
to acts that they are distinct and multiple. To recognize them
as such is not to deny the unity of man. We simply assert that
man is complex and rich in varied directions, but nevertheless
he is organized, or at least capable of being organized into a
harmonious synthesis, through the free thought which governs
these powers.124
“* See above. Third Thesis, B.
*• * The task of moral living is precisely the determining of an order
of values, and therefore one of potencies and acts, and then it is one of
realizing that order in an equilibrium that is always more and more
harmonious and stable.

420

the nature of man

But if the problem of psychological becoming has found a
solution in the theory of powers, this solution only gives rise
to a new problem. How understand this man, who, at the same
time, is one in his substance and multiple in his powers?
What ought to be the substantial nature of man?

Chapter

hi

THE SUBSTANTIAL UNITY OF MAN
THE RATIONAL SOUL
Fourth Question :

What is man?

Fourth Thesis :

Man is
1. one substance, with a unity of nature and
Person',
2. yet composed of prime matter and a
substantial form which is an intellective
soul',
3. prime matter is organic in him, by virtue
of an INTELLECTIVE SOul
4. the intellective soul is spiritual in itself
as well as subsistent;
5. yet it is a true substantial form, and
therefore there is only one substantial
form in man, which is strictly individual
in each man. It is essentially and
completely simple, and present in every
part of the body.

A.

The problem of man’s nature.

1. It can be posed in two ways.
a. Man is an object of experience, a phenomenal ego. He
appears to himself as a subject of multiple qualities (First
Chapter). Like every' object of experience, he undeniably
exists, but what is his essence? What must he be in himself,
to be able to experience himself through consciousness as he
does? Is he really such as his consciousness shows him to be?
If he is not, then what is he, and how is he shown to be other than

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THE NATURE OF MAN

what his consciousness indicates? If he is, then how can we
conceive him as uniting in himself the apparently contradictory
attributes which are revealed through the analysis of psychological events : a single subject, with multiple acts; an identical
subject, with constanti}' changing acts; an active subject,
whose acts are dependent on objects? Under this form, the
problem is one which concerns the critique of knowledge and
ontology : what is the being which is attained through the knowledge
of consciousness?
b. On the other hand, man is a becoming, a being realizing
itself in a temporal duration. What is this supple reality, which
constitutes him such as the second chapter has shown him,
potential and mobile, assimilating material things, yet tran­
scending them with a universal idea; active not only in gearing
his movement to the exigencies of his physical environment,
but also in creating his proper direction by a free will? Under
this form, the problem is a metaphysical one : what is the nature
of the subject who, in the reality of man, becomes?
In its two forms, the problem remains one about the
substance of man. From the moment we suppose, as common
sense does, that man is a being endowed with existence in himself,
and because of that, capable of knowing, acting and changing,
the problem is posed. Sometimes philosophers refuse to accept
the problem when it is posed in this fashion because they refuse,
in the first place, to see substance in man.
2. the philosophical SOLUTIONS can not help but reflect
the differing attitudes taken in metaphysics about the
nature of thought and liberty, as well as those taken in the
critique of knowledge on the value of knowledge.
a.

THE EXISTENCE OF SUBSTANCE

1) Phenomenalism. According to Hume, the problem bom
of the notion "substance" is a false problem. His empiricism
leads him, as a consequence, into phenomenalism (see E. Baudin,
Psych., pp. 126-128). “ All the perceptions of the human mind
can be put into two distinct classes, which I shall call impressions
and ideas.... By the word impressions I understand all
our sensations, passions and emotions, considered as they make

THE EGO AND SUBSTANCE

423

their first appearance in the mind. By ideas I understand the
feeble images which impressions leave (** Treatise on Human
Nature ”)■ To quote Hume again : “ We have no idea of an
ego.... From what impression could it be derived?... For
every idea about the real, there must be a corresponding
particular impression in which it has its origin ; now the ego or
person or mind is not a particular impression at all.... If there
were an impression which would give rise to the idea of an ego,
it would have to continue being invariably the same throughout
the course of life, since it is thus that we suppose the ego to exist.
Yet there exists no constant, invariable impression.... When
I penetrate the deepest part of what I call myself, it is always
to light on one particular perception or another... I can never
reach an understanding of myself without a perception. Thus
only phenomena experienced as so many distinct impressions
are real. Their fusion is the business of memory, i.e., of
association. This fusion is only a psychological appearance,
and in no way the revelation of a substance. There is
no ego-substance : the problem of its nature is a false prob­
lem. 12*

Evaluation. (1) This theory rests on the empiricist postulate
that all knowledge is reducible to sensation. This postulate is a
serious error, because thought, contrary to the empiricist
postulate, by its universality can grasp the data of numerous
sensations at the same time, and observe there the reality of
duration, as well as that of causality and substance. (2) The
arguments invoked show at the most that I do not experience the
ego as being absolutely immutable, no more than I have an
experience of an ego — pure substance (pure subject of existence).
The arguments of the empiricists have some value against the
mechanical theory of substance, for, if substance is a pure
receptacle of movements, it could not be understood by grasping
1,4 See R. J olivet. La Notion de la Substance, pp. 183-186. According
to Hume, “ the idea of substance is... a product of psychological
association, without any objective validity.... The substantiality of
the ego owes its origin to the memory. ” Moreover, " after having reread
the chapter on personal identity, he (Hume) had to confess that this
lively feeling of personal identity remained unexplainable. ’*
N.Y. 17. — 29

424

THE NATURE OF MAN

movements which would be completely foreign to it. 128 These
arguments have no validity against the Thomist doctrine of
substance, for substance, being the very thing which changes, is
grasped in every change. As a matter of fact, it can be grasped
only in its changes, which are determined moments of its
duration. To know it in itself, there must be a reflection, which
directs the attention to the internal unity of phenomena, and to
their reciprocal action, whether these phenomena be simul­
taneous or successive. (3) This identity, this unity, this causality,
are actually data of psychological experience, and they are, at
the least, as evident as the multiplicity, diversity and inertia of
phenomena. As a matter of fact, the former are known before
the latter, since we are aware of ourselves as one object among
other bodies, before we are aware of the specific and individual
distinction between conscious events. (4) Finally, memory can
not be the cause of an ego which is pure illusion, because if the
events in memory have the value of reality, memory must
suppose a real ego, a lived unity of past and present, an identity
in the subject who perceives the two simultaneously, an activity
exercised by " yesterday " on “ today. ”
2) Kant's critique. Kant was very much disturbed by the
empiricism of Hume, but he recognized that there was a problem.
Science and ethics are meaningless without the reality of the
person whom they manifest, yet, according to Kant, the problem
summed up in the question : What is the nature of the ego?
’*• The difficulty " rests in the conception... of a subject which is
immune to change, on which qualities and accidents would happen...
to be fitted tightly as clothes clinging to a body.... In order to admit
a real distinction between substance and accidents and, consequently, the
reality of substance, substance and accident must be related among
themselves as one thing to another thing. This gross use of imagination
actually makes the notion of substance unintelligible ” (ibid., p. rS6).
See pp. 186-191, and particularly " (The opposition) between the
immobile and the mobile is a complete fallacy. There is nothing
immutable in created substance. When the accidents are subjected
to change, and the change is constant, it is the whole substance which
changes, indivisibly with its accidents, yet within the limits of its
essence. ” (P. 190). See also C. V. Salmon — M. A. OXON. The Centra!
Problem of David Hume's Philosophy (Halle : Max Niemeyer Vcrlag, 1929),
pp. 30-33. Sec also L. DE RaEYMAEKER, The Philosophy'of Being, pp. 178194-

THE EGO AND SUBSTANCE

425

cannot be given a theoretical solution. The reason is that we
have no intuition of the ego, yet we cannot fail to think of ourselves
as an ego, as a substance. But this is for another reason than
that alleged by Hume. It is because of the “ a priori " structure
of our minds. The “ a priori ” category of substance allows us
to construct the objects of experience and know them by
representing them as subjects of our judgments. These subjects,
however, are not absolute, and each can become the predicate of
another subject. Our reason is, therefore, led to believe that this
putting back of a subject as predicate to another subject, which
can also be so conditioned, is a process which can not go on
into infinity. Thus we must arrive at a subject which is
unconditioned, i.e., no longer an idea conceived as substance,
but a thing which exists as substance in itself.127 Now,
according to Kant, this is an illusion because the category of
substance, like all the " a priori ” forms, carries a guarantee only
when it is used within the limits of experience, and there is no
experience bearing on existence in itself. Consequently it is
impossible to answer the question : What is the nature of the
ego-substance?
The third antinomy 1,8 shows in a particular way that the
admission of the possibility of a solution leads to the assertion
that two contradictor)' conclusions are equally necessary : ( 1 ) We
must admit, over and above natural causality, the existence of a
free causality, for only liberty can be an absolute cause (first), and
there must be an absolute cause in order that there be natural,
determined causes. (2) Such a free cause can not exist, for
to cause in an absolutely free fashion would be to cause without a
sufficient reason.
1S? Science admits that there are substances, e.g., water, but in a
completely relative sense. It thinks oí water as substance actually,
when it relates the properties of water to it. However, science can think
of water as formed from hydrogen and oxygen, and therefore thinks
of it as an effect or a simple phenomenon. It can even make the notion
of substance disappear at the level of the atom of hydrogen or oxygen
by conceiving it as the result of a certain arrangement of sub-atomic
particles. " Substance ” is thus only a way of conceiving phenomena.
1,8 This antinomy directly concerns God, but it can be made to have
a value in regard to the ego.

426

THE NATURE OF MAN

This antinomy must lead us to the rejection of a theoretical
solution, but the field is left open to a practical answer. Moral
action demands my belief in my liberty and in the immortality
of my person. This belief finds neither proof nor possible
refutation in theoretical knowledge. It is a reasonable belief,
however, because of its necessary connection with moral action.
Evaluation. (1) This position is a logical consequence of the
doctrine on a priori forms. Now this doctrine is meant to
answer the question : Under what conditions is a scientific
explanation possible? To apply this doctrine, even if it were
true, to a metaphysical explanation would demand this conclusion :
theoretical metaphysics is impossible, because both a scientific
and metaphysical explanation are specifically different. That
amounts to saying : A metaphysical problem cannot be solved
by specifically scientific methods and principles. Kant’s mistake
is in believing there are no others. — (2) As far as his denial
of any intuition of the ego, we can only reproach Kant on the
same grounds that we do Hume. It is true that I have no
intuitions which reveal my substance as a completely existing
thing devoid of an accidental determination. Rather this
intuition reveals me as a synthesized reality having a substantial
unity. lt# — (3) The practical solution is a pseudo-solution. It
simply transfers the question from the theoretical order to the
practical order. Is not the categorical imperative an illusion,
if I am not really a liberty? — (4) To resolve this problem,
Kant makes a distinction between two orders of reality : the
phenomenal ego (the ego of experience) lies in the realm of
necessity; it is in the noumenal ego which is not the object
of experience, but of belief, that liberty is realized. What then
happens to the unity of man? If this be true, then moral action
has no foundation for liberty must exist in phenomena under pain
of having no moral order at all. ’*•
Thus the arguments of Hume are impotent to nullify the
existence of substance in man. The Kantian arguments suppose
’** L. de Raeymaekek, The Philosophy of Being, pp. 190-194. See
also R. Jolivet, La Notion de la Substance, pp. 209-225, especially 213-215
and 222.
See E. Baudin, Psychologie, p. 596.

THE EGO AND SUBSTANCE

427

it in affirming the idea as natural to reason. The last word must
be found in

3) The experience of consciousness, as it is revealed to us by
common sense. The ego appears to itself as being a single,
identical, and active subject. This it really is, and not simply
in appearance. It is a substance, a subject of existence, not,
however, fixed and immutable, but existing and becoming at the
same time. There can be no reason to deny the truth of this
affirmation, unless the evidence of consciousness is found to be
faulty, or unless reason proves its content to be involved in
contradiction.
a) The study of “ mental aberrations ” m seems to show
consciousness as a rather untrustworthy witness, and one which
can often enough contradict itself. One and the same subject
can believe himself to be two distinct personalities, whether
simultaneously or alternately; but for every sound observer,
there is only one person.
(1) Admitting by hypothesis that in these cases there is
no fraud or exaggeration on the part of the one who is mentally
ill, but that we are facing a question of delusion, what can we
conclude? That all the testimony of consciousness is without
validity? Strain as we may to see in the night, nevertheless,
wc are often deceived about colors and distances. We have
only then to determine whether the conditions required for
perception are realized in those circumstances by comparing them
with those which are presently realized in reading this page.
(2) These instances show that the consciousness belonging to the
ego is not innate or acquired in all its perfection and in its whole
extent in one fell swoop. It is differentiated little by little and
it can very well ignore real facts. These instances show that
we have no intuition of the ego-substance in a pure state, but
in no way do they prove that all intuition concerning the original
data of the ego is denied to us. (3) These instances even show
intuition as revealing the simple data of the unity, identity and
activity of an existent being, of a substance with all its particular
Ul Ibid., p. 137.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

determinations. Where else do we have as clearly a complete
and simple experience of substance as we have in the experience
of our own psychological life? This idea is present, and with
it the ideas of unity and identity, even in the mentally ill who
think of themselves as two different persons. Actually, they use
these ideas when they attribute to the multiple " ego ” their
acts and gestures. Therefore, not one of them experiences a
pure phenomenon. Each one grasps a phenomenon as
experienced by a subject, and that is why he attributes it to a
subject. The appreciation of the number of subjects is one fact ;
the attributing of a phenomenon to a subject is another, and
a very different one. The first operation is far less primitive
than the second, and the error in the first does not lead inevitably
to error in the second. These mentally ill people are faulty
observers of the frontiers of personality. This may be so, but
they are not, by reason of that, excluded from being valid and
true witnesses of the existence of the person. (4) Finally, every
observer who examines the lives of those afflicted with this type
of mental illness, finds them to be subjects who have a real
unity. The events which are attached to a first personality,
form with the others, which, in the judgment of the subject, are
detached from it, a single real thread of existence.132 For example,
association pays no heed to the errors of personalization of
mentally ill persons; both conscious and unconscious elements
are involved in these associations. Now association presup­
poses an internal unity of phenomena, and the activity of
one on the other from within a “ metaphenomenon, ’’ called
substance.
b) The testimony of consciousness can be denied in a
second way : show that its content is contradictory. This can
be done if the conciliation of all the characteristics of the ego
152 See Maqvart, Elementa Philosophiae. II, pp. 491-494, and
especially note 2 on page 494, where he cites Binet on sicknesses
of personality. " The split-consciousness, such as it exists in hysteria,
is not made up by a sudden demarcation, which cuts off all relation
between the two consciousnesses. Far from it, the psychological
phenomena of each group exercise an incessant influence on the neigh­
boring group, and the split in consciousness docs not even suspend the
operation of association of ideas. “

SUBSTANTIAL UNITY OF MAN

429

into one, especially its being and becoming, proves impossible.
The possibility of this conciliation constitutes the problem of
the substantial nature of man.
b.

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

Monist solutions can be eliminated by a stud}' of psycho­
logical facts : man is neither angel nor beast; neither completely
spiritual, nor completely material. He is simultaneously material
and spiiitual in his fundamental operations. Without matter,
i.e., without extension, he is not a man. This is what idealism
forgets. What materialism forgets is that a being, riveted to
the material, incapable of thought or knowledge of all being
through the universal, stripped of liberty by which it can desire
all good through partial goods, is not a man. Since the nature
of man must be dualistic, how can we conceive this mixture, this
union of matter and spirit?
B. The unity of man is substantial. This is the implicit
belief of common sense, as well as that of all philosophers who
accept the problem of substance as a real problem. Often they
even explicitly affirm this substantial unity. However, the
logical consequences of their doctrine sometimes belie it.
This is the case in some dualist doctrines which misconstrue
the role of sensation in the formation of the idea : the body is a
part of man, but it is of no use to the soul which lives the life of
a pure spirit.
Thus, plato conceived the union of body and soul to
consist in a movement which the soul communicates to the body.
He compares this union with that of the musician in relation to
his instrument, or that of a pilot in relation to his ship. This
union does not belong to the nature of the soul, almost does
violence to it, and curtails it. The union is accidental and
consequently transitory. The cause of this union is not natural
but must be attributed to a wrong use of liberty. This idea
will be accepted by St. Augustine; Duns Scotus delights
in explaining that our thought has its origin in the sensible,
because wc are in a fallen state which must be attributed
to the effects of original sin.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

Descartes sees the union of the soul with the body in
the same way. The soul is united to the body because it acts
on it. He definitely asserts that this is a substantial union, but
his whole doctrine shows that it can not be. The body is only
extension and mobility, and is a complete substance (mechanism).
The soul is only thought, knowledge of immutable truth; it, also,
is a complete substance in which nothing would be lacking, even
if we supposed the body to be suppressed. The union of two
complete substances will never yield the total of one single
substance.
malebranche does not resolve this difficulty by
making God the basis of this union. Undoubtedly God can
move the soul on the occasion of the changes which He effects in
the body. This can be done in such a way that the movements
of the one will always be in accord with those of the other; but
this explains only a correlation in becoming and not a unity of
existence. The body remains pure extension, and the soul pure
thought.
leibniz is not any more successful by having recourse to
God in another way, by making the soul a single monad
dominating the body which is an infinity of dominated monads.
This combination he calls one single substance. Now, it is
true that the harmony ^reestablished by God between each of
these monads in the universe and the states of all the others
explains their movements as a whole, much as the signal of a
leader assures simultaneity and order in the maneuvers of an
army. But the Lcibnizian explanation of man supposes a
plurality of monads and excludes man from having the unity
of a substance. Man is nothing more than a society of monads
" ruled ” by the soul, and this is even saying too much, since
the monad-soul docs not act on the other monads of the body.
Leibniz ended up, moreover, by admitting a new reality, which
he called the "vinculum substantiale”; but this was to take
away from monads the characteristics of substances.
Spinoza also speaks of a substantial union between body
and soul, which is realized by way of knowledge, and no longer
by way of action. The soul is the idea of its body, and it is a

SUBSTANTIAL UNITY OF MAN

431

thought which exactly corresponds with and is parallel to an
extension. The unity of these two is found in God. God is the
unique Substance, infinite and perfectly simple. In Him,
extension and thought are necessarily identified. These two
attributes naturally unfold in an infinity of finite modes which are
bodies and souls. These modes are rigorously parallel, since they
are basically one and the same substance. Man then, according
to Spinoza, is truly one substance, but he has no other substan­
tiality than that of God. If extension and thought are
ultimately united, it is because they are no longer the completely
heterogeneous substances which Descartes made them out to be.
They are simple objects of the Divine Intelligence.
Thus Cartesian dualism is forced to acknowledge its inability
to base the unity of man on his substance. It would like to
assert a unity of substance as a basis for the unity of
consciousness, but it founders when it begins to explain in what
this unity consists. There is nothing amazing about this, since
Cartesianism is above all a mechanism and bears all the
weaknesses of it, particularly its inability to make the individual
unity of beings intelligible.
How can we state this substantial unity? In two ways, since
we can consider substance under two aspects, i.e., as essence or
nature, and as existence in itself or subsistence, nature is
substance, considered as being the first principle of a being’s
operations, subsistence is that aspect of substance, which
considers it as having existence in itself, an existence which
is possessed and exercised in action in an individual and
incommunicable way. Now, under the two aspects man is one
single substance.
1. He is, first of all, one single nature.
For the unity of the first principle is the necessary and
sufficient reason to explain the unity of acts which flow from it.
Now psychological acts possess an organic unity, which
fuses them together in one single movement which is simul­
taneously psychological, physiological, and physical.
Therefore, the first principle of psychological acts (the
nature of the subject of these acts) is one.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

The first proposition is evident to reason. Multiplicity can­
not be the sufficient cause of unity. Undoubtedly, it can happen
that a single effect can have several causes, but no one of them
•can be the sufficient reason, nor can it constitute the first principle
of the effect, except one which unifies the others. Wherever,
then, acts have a real unity, although they be as numerous and
diverse as can be imagined, they must be derived from a principle
which is really one.
The second proposition is a summary of common experience
and of all the analyses we have made up to this point. Man
senses as a man, not as an animal. In him sensation tends to be
completed by the conception of the idea and judgment.
Inversely, he does not think as a pure mind, but as a man. His
ideas find their original content in the sensible. In like manner
his affectivity is mixed. It is simultaneously corporeal, psychic
and spiritual. It is natural that his actions be directed by his
ideas, and free will can make its effects felt even in the physical
and chemical changes of the organism.
It can be objected that psychological acts are of very
different kinds. Knowing, acting, enjoying, can be either
spiritual or material functions. ,M It is exactly this diversity
which brings out so clearly the strength of the link which binds
them in a single movement, in a single duration, in a single life,
and groups them together in a mutual dependence that is both
■causal and final.134 Can we give an instance of such a
compénétration of acts? If we take the most spiritual of ideas,
that of God, we can see that it rests on the most ordinary ideas,
those of cause, of dependence and independence, of mind and
matter, etc... and these ultimately rest on images and sensations.
Here, then, is the idea of God, which must suppose that my
body is in operation at the same time as my soul. The origin
and the understanding of this idea of God is not open to arbitrary
solution, as mysterious as it may be, for all my knowledge is
linked necessarily in a definite and unique fashion to sensation.
The nervous system acts only on the presupposition of all kinds
1,4 See above. Second Thesis, F.
See above. First Thesis. D.

WHAT IS PERSON?

433

of biological, chemical, physical and mechanical activities which,
in turn, presuppose an extension within which they are
incorporated and realize their effects. My nature as man is
therefore not a pure thought principle. It is a principle which
thinks, blended with a principle which imagines and senses,
which lives, and which moves the extension which is my body.
Thus, man is an extended being, endowed with corporeal,
vital, animal, and rational qualities. There is his nature, and
it is one. That which is not one, is our manner of expressing
that nature, because our knowledge, being abstract, can only
express the richness of a unity by multiplying our looks at it.
The greatest light is shed on the basic unity of human activity
at that point where sensation and thought meet : the proper
object of human intelligence is grasped in the sensible. All
that sensation supposes and synthezises, from the movements
of electrons at the interior of cells, all that flows from the vision
of the universal, to the most heroically spiritual free act, is
condensed in this definition : man is a rational animal. Man,
who is both material and spiritual, is one single nature.

2. He is also one single person, and he has existence
in himself, which is incommunicable, indivisible and truly one.
Every subject which exists in this fashion is called an “ agent ” —
individuum subsistens in aliqua natura. — An agent which is
endowed with an intelligent nature is called a “ person, ” —
rationalis naturae individua substantia — according to our
traditional definition. Man is one person, if his existence is his
in an incommunicable, unique and indivisible way, and without
any doubt it is.
In general we may say that existence is revealed through
action. The incommunicability of existence will, therefore, be
seen through that of action. 188
a. Now ordinary experience attributes all psychological
acts, as well as all physiological operations and the actions or
physical states which have the body as their own theater, to a
single subject, the “ I. ’’ The physical ego is one with the
Actio est suppositi.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

psychological ego : I will, I see, 1 walk, I am standing. There is
only one existence and it belongs to me alone.
b. A simple reflection on experience will be sufficient to
justify this observation. The belonging to self is not simply a
privileged characteristic belonging to consciousness, for it is
already a characteristic of physiological life and of the simple
existence of bodies in their physical individuality. Evidently,
this belonging to self appears under different modes : in rational
consciousness under the form of liberty and responsibility; in
the organism under the form of immanence and biological
egoism; in the body under the form of spatial limit and specific
forces. Now in man these are not three existences in himself.
There is only one and the same existence which is the basis of
inseparable activities. To separate them would be to destroy
man. Only death realizes this separation.
All man’s actions are, thus, the manifestation of a unique
existence, which is at the same time incommunicable, i.e., closed
in on itself. Man is one single agent, and, since he is conscious
and free, one single person.
C. Nevertheless, the substance of man is composed.
As far back as we can go in time and even among those who
are least civilized, e.g., pygmies, the judgments of common sense
assert that man is a composed being. For primitives, there is a
kind of invisible man, who ordinarily dwells in the visible man,
yet sometimes gets free from him, as in dreams and in death.
This is the soul, a name drawn from the breath, which indicates
its vivifying role.
The distinction made here between the body and the soul
lacks philosophical precision. The tendency of reason to unify,
the reflex consciousness of the unity of man, have forced
some philosophers to reduce the soul to body — such as the
materialists have done — and others to reduce the body to
soul — such as the idealists have done. However, such a
unification must deny the irreducibility of sensation and thought.
There are also very many philosophers who profess a dualist
spiritualism and endeavor to understand clearly the respective
roles of body and soul in man.

HUMAN HYLOMORPHISM

435

The classic dualism is that of Descartes. It makes of the
body and soul two complete substances. Body is pure extension,
pure receptivity in relation to movement. The soul " by which
I am what I am ” is “ a substance whose entire essence or nature is
thought alone ” (Discourse on Method, 4th Part of the 6th
Meditation). This dualism can not be true, since it makes the
substantial unity of man impossible. Therefore, we must
interpret the dualism of body and soul in another way; we
must mitigate it, in order to respect the distinction between
sensation and thought, and yet retain their functional unity, as
well as the unity of the human nature and the human person.
The Aristotelian dualism, hylomorphism, contains the
essentials of a solution. St. Thomas had only to correct it by
making the doctrine on the spirituality of the soul clearer.
Here, extension is not the substance of the body itself. It is
only a necessary derivative of substance, and moreover, it
is never the sole property of it. Extension is found in the body,
determined statically and dynamically by qualities and forces
which are also derived from the substance of the body. Thus,
concretely, all extension is specified and endowed with a definite
spontaneity and finality. Extension conceals itself as an incor­
porated idea. The corporeal substance, which is the dynamic
center from which spring these properties, can not be simple.
The reason for its extension is a principle of passivity and
indétermination, prime matter. The reason for its qualities and
its specific activities is a principle of determination, analogous
to a plan or a directing idea, substantial form. These two
principles are complementar}' and fuse together in one complete
thing in such a way that what is determinable (e.g., the subject)
and what determines it (an attribute) make only one determined
subject; in such a way that, what could be and what is now, after
having become (potency and its correlative acts), make only one
complete being, one being " in act. ”
In such a doctrine, man is no longer an exception in nature.
He is in conformity with the general structure of corporeal
“• See E. Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, chapters 9
and 10.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

nature. He is a body which has thought as its specific charac­
teristic, just as some other body might have as its specific
characteristic its atomic structure (e.g., H and He), or molecular
structure (e.g., HC1 and NaCl), or its morphological type
(e.g., an oak and a beech). On the other hand, this doctrine is
supple enough to respect the spirituality of the soul, by making it
necessary to man, and by indicating its place in an overall plan.
Such considerations, as we have just made, lead naturally to a
theory' of a hierarchy of forms. This theory supposes that in the
mounting degrees of being there is a gradual triumph of the idea
over the matter in which it is incarnated. The mineral, being the
lowest degree, realizes its type (its idea) by diffusing it throughout
extension wherein differences are minimal. If a mineral has an
existence for itself, it is above all for the universe, or for others,,
because whatever activity it possesses is of a completely transitive
character. The vegetable realizes its form within its proper
extension. The form already belongs to an individual by virtue
of its immanent action. It possesses this type or form, however,
only in extension, and is not aware of this possession. The
animal, on the contrary', comes to know something of what he is
and what others are. Through knowledge he acquires the
determinations (the forms) of others. Nevertheless he remains
rooted in the individual, subservient in his knowledge to the
limits of the extended. Finally, man liberates himself from
spatial and temporal limits, he is conscious of his universal
nature and of his environment, and because of that he has
liberty.137 However, this consciousness and this liberty are
exercised in a world of bodies and through the intermediary’
of sensations. By' this, man remains a citizen of the
universe. Beyond this, we can conceive of a continuation
in the direction of the spiritual : but we must, in such a case,
postulate a thought and liberty which no longer receive their
object from material things, and which will, therefore, be the
attributes of a " form separated ” from all matter, i.e., a pure
spirit.
Read E. Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,
ch. 4, pp. 187-199.

HUMAN HYLOMORPHISM

43T

The proofa of hylomorphism have a general import and are
valid for all corporeal beings. They necessarily include man,,
insofar as he is a corporeal substance. Let us see how they apply
to man as such.
1. The substance of man is a composite of potency
and act. The substance of man is subject to change to its very
core. The birth and death of man are facts, and they are
substantial changes. Plato and Descartes prefer to see in these
facts no more than a hitching and an unhitching of two
substances. We must insist that only one substance begins,
and one substance ceases to be. However, it is likewise evident
that something of that substance existed before birth, and
something of that substance will exist after death. Man is born
of the flesh of his parents. A dead man furnishes us with
something, " what I do not know, something which has no name
in any language. ” Here there is neither total creation nor total
annihilation, but a substantial becoming. Consequently, the
substantial principle capable of becoming this man is called
potency and the substantial principle that makes him this man
is act.
2. The correlative potency and act which constitute the
substance of man are prime matter and subtantial form.
The indetermination and the absolute determinability,
which characterize prime matter, are revealed in every’ corporeal
substance by the indefinite divisibility and passivity which are
the properties of its extension. Now they are not revealed in
man simply under this general aspect; they are here marked
with a characteristic which is specifically human.
a. extension is a requisite in the make-up of those
organs which are most involved in strictly human function, such
as the cerebral cortex and sensory apparatuses which are the
indispensable servants of reason and human liberty. Extension
is supposed in the social life, which educates persons, as a means
of separation and the bond of communication. Extension
shows itself in man under very' precise determinations.
Consciousness depends on these limits to distinguish the ego from
the non-ego, to distinguish the internal from the external. And

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THE NATURE OF MAN

yet extension keeps its indefinitely divisible and determinable
nature. We must, therefore, recognize in human substance a
pure potency, a prime matter, which is the proper principle of this
pure indétermination.

b. passivity is realized in man under specific forms, as
that of thought and of will. Now their passivity is not limited,
in itself, to such and such an object (I am capable of knowing
whatever is, and of willing whatever the object may be), nor is it
limited to such and such an act (no thought nor any decision is
innate to me). This passivity which is completely undeter­
mined in both these specifically human activities imperiously
demands an indefinitely determinable substantial principle, a
pure potency.
Undoubtedly, the clearest evidence of pure power, which is
directly observable, is that of typically human activity, which is
spiritual. Let us, however, pass from the level of powers and
acts to the level of substantial principle. Can we assert that the
principle here involved is pure spirit, pure act? That is
impossible. Will it be sufficient for us to say that this principle
is linked to one which is vaguely potential ? Not at all ! Actually
we are looking for a principle which conceals in itself the absolute
determinability which is introduced into the phenomena which
spring from it. Of course, it is through the intervention of
sensations and images that this prime matter reflects its indefinite
mutability in the spiritual world of minds and wills. But to
think and will in a human fashion is possible only in a man —
substance formed from an authentic prime matter.
c. the irreducibility of extension and the preemi­
nently human qualities (operative powers) is more apparent
than that of extension and corporeal qualities in general.
On the other hand extension here appears more complete­
ly receptive because of the immanent and “ intentional ”
operation of these powers. Extension is not only determinable
by psychological qualities, it is also indirectly the support of
those qualities which are in the objects we know and love.
Human substance must, therefore, be formed of two distinct
principles. One of these is pure potency with regard to not only

SOUL CAUSES CORPOREAL ORGANIZATION

439

all strictly corporeal forms, but also to a type of substantial
form, which is partially incorporeal, and of which certain
operations are spiritual.

3.

This substantial form is an

intellective or rational

soul.

In general, the soul is the form which organizes and makes
prime matter a living thing. It is not a vegetative soul or an
animal one which is the substantial form of man. It is an
intellective soul, i.e., a soul, which is a principle of thought
and liberty.
In fact, the substantial form in a being is the origin of its
specific properties.
Now, the specific properties of man are the intellectual
operations of knowing and willing.
Therefore, the substantial form of man is a soul, a principle
of life, and an intellective soul.
One could object against the minor premise that there are
natural properties of man which are irreducible to thought and
will, e.g., sensations and physiological operations. It is true that
sensations and physiological operations are natural to man, and
while they are not reducible to thought or to will, they are the
preparation for it and are “ a fortiori ” implied in the intellectual
power. The form, which must consider by abstraction and will
objects presented through abstract ideas, demands sensation
and all those organic functions which sensation supposes as
properties. Consequently the biological structure of the body
and its physico-chemical activities must be understood as
functions of a rational form.

D. Would, then, the organization of the body be the result
of a union between an intellective soul and prime matter?
It most certainly would, because :
The nature of an existent being demands all that is required
to make possible the operations which are proper to it.
Now corporeal organization is required to make possible the
operations which arc proper to an intellective soul.
N.Y. 17. — 30

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THE NATURE OF MAN

Therefore, the nature of the intellective soul in its existence
demands corporeal organization. In this sense, it is the soul
which organizes its body.
The major premise is only an explanation of the notion of
“ nature. ”
The minor is a collection of truths drawn from experience.
The proper object of thought, which is the specific operation of
the human soul, is actually a universal, but a universal grasped
originally in the sensible. Neither thought nor human will arc
possible in a soul which does not sense. Moreover, no sensation
is possible at all in a soul which is “ separated ” from matter,
which is without cells, without sensory apparatus, in a word,
without organized matter. Thus the human soul is not capable
of its specific operations, abstract thought, free will, without
corporeal organization. In order to realize the abstraction
of the universal, which is its proper work, the soul absolutely
demands organized matter.
But to demand it is to realize it, otherwise the soul would
not be a real nature, but only a possible one. It would lack
that which is necessary for it to be. It would be only a name
given to a fortuitous result, the result of an organization to
which it would be a complete stranger, and which, being found
there by chance, would allow the abstraction of ideas as a casual
game suggested by the circumstances, in a word, as an
amusement. This is not so. The organization of man’s body
has its source, its reason, in the proper finality of the soul, since
it is natural for the human soul to abstract the idea from the
image.
Consequently, wc can say that the empirical formula of the
union of the soul and the body’’ lacks precision. The body about
which we are thinking is naturally our physiological organism,
that which different sensations, the kinesthetic among others,
reveal, which biology studies and medicine is obliged to heal.
This body is not prime matter. Properly speaking, this body
is the substantial composite such as wc find it among animals
and which Descartes identified with extension. But the union of
a soul to such a body would only be accidental. To safeguard

SCOTUS ON HUMAN FORM

441

the substantial unity of man, we must here understand “ body ”
as synonymous with prime matter, and see in the intellective
soul the principle of all the corporeal determinations of man.

Difficulty : Scotus, however, and his disciples, the majority
Franciscans like himself, give the empirical formula a completely
literal interpretation. The organization of living bodies is not
derived from the soul, but from a special form called “ forma
corporeitatis. ” The principal argument is an empirical one
based on the permanence of the organization for some time
after death. At this moment, they maintain, there must be a
“ cadaverous ” substantial form of one kind or another, which
maintains the organs in their structure, if not in their function.
Now this structure existed in life, and even existed before life,
being the very condition of it. It, therefore, does not have a
reasonable soul as a principle, nor any soul at all, but only
a simple substantial form which gives to physiochemical
elements the structure required for life.

The probative force of the above argument seems to rest on
our forgetting that substantial changes, which are instantaneous
in themselves, are only single moments in the course of local
movements and alterations, and they can not be isolated from
those continuous movements which precede and follow' them.
Before the existence of a newly constituted substance, certain
qualities, certain structures ought already to exist, which are
the specific properties of the future substance. They arc
necessary by reason of the “ dispositions ” which are natural
to prime matter, from whose potentiality in nature a definite
”• E. Gn.soN, Jean Duns Scot, p. 490-497, makes clear the position
of Scotus. The penetrating Doctor requires " the presence of a * forma
corporeitatis ’ in the case where no higher form is any longer present. ”
What are these cases ? “ When an animal dies, his body remains. After
the departure of the vegetative soul, a form of corporeity remains. The
form, by virtue of which a body is a body, is other than that by which
it is living ” (p. 495)- But where is it during life? " The intellective soul
truly animates and informs the body even in its least parts " (p. 496),
containing in itself the perfection of the lower forms, which, nevertheless,
remain formally distinct from it. Sec also C. R. S. Harkis, Duns Scotus,
(Humanities Press : N. ¥., 1959). Vol. I. pp. 158-159. See also E. Bkttoni.
Duns Scotus, pp. 67-76.

442

THE NATURE OF MAN

kind of form must emerge. Moreover, when the substance has
ceased to be, all the qualities which found the reason of their
specific stability in it, do not immediately cease to exist. Some,
like physiochemical activities, which have found a specific
principle in the new substance, will continue to exist (chemical
combinations follow their same general laws in a cadaver);
others, like physiological activities, cellular multiplication and
reflex movement, which do not have in the new substance a
living center to which to attach themselves, pushed on by
a natural finality, will pursue that movement of descent of
which death is only one of the moments, and will finally stop,
unless by chance or the artificial care of science, this movement
of descent is arrested (growth of nails after death — cultivation
of tissues). m To summarize then : if we consider (1) the relation
of the existence of a substance with the accidental changes which
precede life and follow it, (2) and the natural links which bind
the substance to all other substances or at least to very many
among them, we are no longer astonished that there already was
an organization of matter before the existence of an individual
human being (in the gametes whose fusion will constitute his
first cell), nor that there subsists after death for a certain time,
an organized cadaver, conserving some of its biological properties.
However, we must not fail to indicate the difference between
these two organizations, which arc anterior and posterior to
human life, and the organization of the body during life. The
two former are manifestly pure natural changes. There is no
tendency in any of the gametes to conserve its rudimentary
life in isolation, any more than there is in the cadaver to conserve
its organization, deprived as it is of all combined operation,
of all natural unity. The organization of the body throughout
“• In relation to cultivating life in organs, which have been separated
from their living source, a great deal has been accomplished since the
experiment of Carrel in xçio. when he succeeded in keeping a fragment
of a chicken heart alive during a number of months. In 1947 science
succeeded in maintaining functions already acquired by organs, even
after they had been separated from their vital source. Recently,
Professor Wolff was able to sustain embryonic development in a
completely specific direction in vitro, over an allotted time. See article
on above experiments in Science el Vie, February, 1955.

SCOTUS ON HUMAN FORM

443

life, however, manifests a natural unity: (1) it builds itself up
progressively according to a definite type; (2) it perpetuates
itself, it mends itself. This unity is simultaneously one of
structure and one of activity. Such organization demands as
its sufficient reason the substantial unity of an organized body.
It is this unity which is lacking in gametes and in a cadaver. It is,
therefore, impossible to explain the organization of a living
thing by an organizing principle which is a stranger to life.
On the other hand, all is explained if we attach the
preparatory and consecutive organizations to life, to the causality
of a soul organizing the body which it vivifies. This soul is an
intention of nature, one of the terms of its finality. Is there
anything astonishing if there are ways which lead us to it, and
others which take us away from it?
The Scotist position is, therefore, not at all necessary to
explain the organizations preliminary or posterior to the existence
of man. It is even false, because, in order to explain vital
organization, it offers only an insufficient principle, completely
and expressly invented to explain the properties... of cadavers.
It is, moreover, dangerous, because it prepares the way for the
Cartesian error and makes of man an incomprehensible amalgam
of two complete substances, body and soul.
A new difficulty : Should we, then, admit that human
thought is the architect of the body which it animates? — No.
This would be to forget that thought is not the soul itself, but
only one of its acts. It is by its essence that the soul constructs
its body. It is, united to prime matter, a principle of existence
as well as of life. It brings to extension all the properties
necessary for the exercise of its most specific functions, among
which is to be found structural differentiation.
How can this be? Because the soul is not an isolated being.
Its dynamic unity is a part of a system of beings and movements
which constitute nature. The soul docs not have to reflect on
the construction plan of its body in order to realize it. That
plan is inscribed in thought and realized by the will, and is
revealed to us in the idea of nature.,M> When this plan is realized
,u See Cosmology. Eleventh Thesis.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

with the causal collaboration of nature, it is essentially because
of the soul ; it is to serve the soul and because the soul has already
vivified a determined part of matter. The organization
of the body is thus the effect of the union of the intellective soul
with prime matter. In no way is that organization derived from
a special " forma corporeitatis. "
By reason of this, the intellective soul fulfills the general
definition of the soul given by Aristotle : It is “ the first act which
constitutes in matter an organized natural body capable of vital
operations — Actus primus corporis physici organici potentia
vitam habentis. "

E. Is not the spirituality of the soul compromised by this
substantial union with matter?
1. IFe must recognize the spirituality of the soul as a fact.
This fact is inscribed clearly in the strictly spiritual operations
which are the natural endowment of man. 141 The intellective
soul is actually the source of them. If this principle depended
essentially on matter, then thought and will would “ a fortiori ”
depend on it. The dependence of the soul in relation to matter
can, therefore, be only extrinsic.
A capital consequence results from the above distinction.
Since, in certain of its operations, the soul is essentially
independent of matter, it must also be so in its existence. It is,
therefore, “ subsistent in itself, ” a subject having that
which is sufficient for substantial existence, capable of existing
in itself, once its union with matter is broken. “ Operatio
sequitur esse. ” Acting is only a way of being, and dependence
in being involves dependence in operation. The soul is spiritual
in its operations. It is, therefore, “ a fortiori, ” spiritual in its
existence.
2. Can this fact be understood?, i.e., can it be reconciled
with the role of form which is natural to the soul?
a. This seems impossible. (1) The substantial form is,
generally, exactly and reciprocally adapted to the matter, in
Sec above. Second Thesis, F.

THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE SOUL

445

such a way that it is individuated by it, while this same form
communicates its specific determinations to matter. Thus the
form seems to be always dependent on matter and incapable of
existing alone. Substantial existence appears to be reserved to
the composite. (2) Usually the substantial form demands
properties. Nevertheless, these properties are not its onto, but
belong to the composite. It is the composite which acts and
undergoes influences. But, if the soul is spiritual, it itself must
act without depending on the body. Then it would be the soul
which thinks and wills and not man.
This difficulty is the reason why Averroes insisted on the
separation of the agent intellect from all matter. A form which
is united to matter can not be spiritual. This is also the reason
which led Descartes to define the substance of the soul as thought
alone. The same difficulty, exploited in a different direction,
is the most serious for materialism : a soul which is so closely
linked to a body must necessarily be material.

b. Let us remark, in the first place, that all these reasonings
are guilty of the same fault of transforming an obscurity into an
impossibility, an error into a negation. I do not see how the
two facts are united, so I conclude that they are not united, or
that I must reject one of them, either the soul-form or the
soul-spirit.
This obscurity, however, can be diminished by taking a
look at the ensemble of corporeal beings and at the theory of
the hierarchy of natural forms which such a look will demand.
This hierarchy is symbolized in the “ natural ” biological
classification, which is based on a progress of organic differ­
entiation at the same time as on the chronological succession of
species.
This hierarchy »s expressed in most metaphysics under the
form of a law of continuity. Thus Leibniz makes the law of
continuity a hierarchy of monads, i.e., a hierarchy of degrees
of consciousness, as Plato made of it a hierarchy of ideas.
The general law of forms is that the higher form demands the
properties of the lower forms and adds its own to theirs, not by
an extrinsic numerical addition, but from within by an organic

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THE NATURE OF MAN

continuation and as if by a vital evolution. Thus the animal
does not add the power of sensing to a power of " vegetating ”
which would be totally foreign to it. The animal differentiates
vital power beyond the nutritive reaction responding to an
excitation of the environment; it perceives an excitation and, by
anticipation, it imagines the motor response. Similarly, through
abstraction, man infinitely prolongs sensation and image into
thought. Thus it is clear that the powers of the soul may be of
two orders, without the soul being divided in two, since these
two orders are ultimately one, because of the subordination
of one to the other. The powers of sensible life are proper to the
soul, as it is the form of the body; the intellectual powers are
proper to the soul, as it is spiritual and subsistent. However, it
is not one without the other; it is form only in order to
be spiritual, as it is true that it senses, imagines and desires
because these are necessary for thinking, knowing and willing.
To sum up : the difficulty arises from our general application
to all forms of what is true only of forms which are completely
“ informing. ” The natural hierarchy of forms, however, invites
us to believe that there is a possible summit where a queen-form,
without abdicating her royal power over matter, but rather
because of it, begins to rule over the empire-of-self through
consciousness and liberty. This notion of the natural hierarchy
of forms pushes us even farther by forcing us to ask ourselves
whether corporeal nature would have a sufficient reason for
existence, a why, without this crowning event which takes place
in it and through it, the incarnate spirituality of man !
3.

AS A CONSEQUENCE,

a. all the operations and all the essential deter­
minations of man have their principle in the intellective soul.
For some operations, however, this soul is an impotent principle
without matter. These are the operations and determinations
of the composite, as is the case with nutrition, vegetative
functions, sensible life and all its manifestations. Others have
the soul alone as a principle, even though they find their natural
condition of exercise in sensations. These are the spiritual
operations of knowledge and will.

man’s soul, a substantial form

447

The materiality of sensation and the spirituality of thought
have thus two correlative aspects, one objective and the other
subjective. For a material object, there must exist a corre­
sponding knowing principle, a material subject (the composite) ;
for an immaterial object an immaterial subject (the soul).
b. Man exists with the same existence which is proper
to his soul. (The soul confers existence on the body). In other
hylomorphic composites, it is the composite which exists in
itself, the form only having existence through the composite,
since form in these cases is not subsistent. However, in man,
the soul can not depend on the composite for its existence.
Now, this composite can not have an existence in itself, distinct
from that of its soul, for then this duality of substantial existences
would make them two complete substances. Thus, the
substantial unity of man joined to the spirituality of his soul
involves the following consequence : the only existence of man
is the existence which he has from his soul.

F. The role of the rational soul is certainly that of a
SUBSTANTIAL FORM.

Since this role is reconcilable with its spirituality, there is
no other consideration standing in the way to oppose this
assertion. This point, however, has fruitful consequences, which
it might be useful to dwell on.
1. The rational soul is a substantial form in the true sense
of the word and should not be looked on as having only a
metaphorical sense.
In the 13th century, a Franciscan, Peter John Olieu, held
that the same reality could not simultaneously be a principle of
spiritual operation (thought) and a principle of organic operation
(sensation, nutrition). It was necessary, therefore, to distin­
guish three principles in the soul : one rational, which is free of
all corporeal contamination; another which is sensitive; and a
third which is vegetative. The last two were in themselves
145 Summa Contra Gentiles, 1. II. ch. 87: “Anima— humana hoc
habet proprium, inter alias iormas, quod est in suo esse subsistens, et esse
quod est sibi proprium corpori communicat. ” See Summa Theol.. I-TI»,
q. 4. a. 5, ad 2.

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THE NATURE OF MAN

the form of the body; but the first, the rational soul, was not
truly the form of the body. It was a form related to the sensitive
and vegetative principles, and, strictly speaking, the form of
man but not of the body. After his death, the Council
of Vienna (1312) condemned as heretical the denial of the
truly formal role exercised by the rational soul in relation to
the body IU
The reasoning of Olieu forgets that the soul is not the
proximate principle of operations, but their first principle. He,
furthermore, did not recognize the existence of distinct operative
powers. Nevertheless, the solution of his difficulty is there.
All the powers are undoubtedly derived from the soul, but
certain ones require extension for their exercise. These powers,
then, obviously are not derived from the soul alone, but also
from the matter which it animates. There are other spiritual
powers, which are derived from the soul alone. Thus the same
soul can be the form of the body and still of itself exercise
intellectual operations.

2. The rational soul is the only substantial form in each
individual man. The substantial unity of man demands this.
Actually, no substance can admit of more than one
substantial form. Substantial form, together with prime matter,
constitutes an essence capable of existing by itself, a complete
substance. Every determination which is added to an already
“* " Quisquis deinceps asserere, defendere seu tenere pertinaciter
praesumpserit quod anima rationalis seu intellectiva non sit forma corporis
humani per se et essentialiter, tamquam haereticus sit censendus ”
{Decree of the 6th of May, 1312).
’** The following translated quotation is found originally in
Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, art. Olieu, col. 985. " Scotus was
inspired by Olieu's theory on matter, as act in itself and separable from
form. ” Whatever it was in the thought of Olieu, for Scotus “ the powers
of the soul are neither distinct among themselves nor distinct from its
essence, ” as Gilson writes in Jean Duns Scot. p. 502. However, " there
is always unity of actual existence and a plurality of formal beings in
any given substance ” (ibid., p. 507). " This principle allows us to
understand that the soul contains unitivcly, i.e., in the real unity of a
single being, powers which are formally distinct as are intellect and will "
(ibid., p. 508). See also E. Bettoni, Duns Scotus, Eng. trans. Bernardine
Bonansea (Washington, D. C. : Catholic U. of Am. Pr., 1957) pp. 76-81.

man's soul, a substantial form

449

constituted and existing substance can be related to that
substance only as an accidental form. *«
This general argument takes on a particular force when it is
applied to man. Outside of man, we often hesitate about the
limits of substances. With him there can be no doubt. Man
has an internal experience of a nature which is truly one,
an existence which is completely personal. Now, it is the form
which is the reason of substantial unity. Multiple forms indicate
the multiplication of different reasons for unity and constitute as
many substantial unities as there are forms.

The partisans of the doctrine of plurality of forms
(St. Bonaventure, Scotus and Father Descoqs, S.J.) must
logically also uphold a plurality of souls. Their 'principal
mistake is to place forms at the level of experience, to make
things of them, whereas they are principles of things. We can
concede that experience shows us a mounting complexity in
physiochemical actions and vital operations, but they place a
substantial form behind each type of manifestation. By that
they leave themselves open to a second criticism : they seem
to make abstractions real. Though we speak through abstrac­
tions about the physiochemical phenomena of man, in much
the same way as we speak of them in plant and mineral,
nevertheless the reality of these phenomena in man is not
for example some reality distinct from sensation. Chemical
“» Summa Theol., I» pars, q. 76, a. 4 : " Forma substantialis in hoc
a forma accidentali differt, quod forma accidentalis non dat esse
simpliciter, sed esse tale.... Forma autem substantialis dat esse sim­
pliciter....
Si igitur ita esset, quod praeter animam intellectivam
praeexisteret quaecumque alia forma substantialis in materia, per quam
subjectum animae esset ens actu, sequeretur quod anima non daret esse
simpliciter et per consequens, quod non esset forma substantialis....
Unde dicendum est quod nulla alia forma substantialis est in homine,
nisi sola anima intellectiva, et quod ipsa, sicut virtute continet animam
sensitivam et nutritivam, ita virtute continet omnes inferiores formas
(the forms of elements and compounds, contained in the nutritive soul) ;
et facit ipsa sola quidquid imperfectiores formae in aliis faciunt. ”
Here we have a formula, which is more precise, even if the doctrine
is not : Summa Theol., I» pars. q. 76, a. 6, ad 1. " Una enim et eadem
forma est per essentiam, per quam homo est ens actu, et per quam est
corpus, et per quam est vivum. et per quam est animal, et per quam est
homo. ”

450

THE NATURE OF MAN

combinations and sensations are man. But there is a strong
temptation to cut up things according to the pattern of ideas,
which we abstract from them and apply to them. The partisans
of a plurality of forms seem to have yielded to this temptation.
Their multiple forms are not the real substantial forms which
constitute things. They are the distinct forms by which our
thought conceives each real unity and through which it is
compelled to express the intimate riches of this unity of being.
3. The individuality of the soul is assured by its role of
form. This is not directly challenged today. However, the
idealism of Brunschvicg seems very much to lead in the
direction of a challenge. To what extent does it admit, and,
above all, how does it make a distinction possible between
individual and universal mind? It is difficult to understand it.
Sociologism likewise compromises the individuality of the soul
by making individual thoughts participations in collective
consciousness.
The most obvious and specific protestation against the
individuality of the soul is found in Averroes, an Aristotelian
of the 12th century, whose major preoccupation is guaranteeing
the spirituality of the soul. Only one agent intellect can exist,
one spiritual soul for all men of all times, because only corporeal
forms can be multiplied in the same species and be distinguished
in an individual way.
Averroes is not completely mistaken. The principle which
he invokes is true, since the multiplication of a form supposes its
limitation, and therefore its incorporation. St. Thomas will
broaden this line of reasoning and use it to explain the plurality
of beings and the infinity of pure act : “ Actus non limitatur nisi
per potentiam. ” Only by virtue of this principle can we prevail
“* Nevertheless, this seems to be what Scotus wishes to say when
he makes a formal distinction between the souls or forms in man, but
denies any real or actual distinction between them. " We must guard
ourselves against two opposite errors, one which denies that Duns Scotus
taught the plurality of forms, and the other which understands this
plurality as one of actual distinct existences in the heart of the
composite. ” E. Gilson, Jean Duns Scot (Paris : Vrin, 1952), p. 475,
note 3; see also pp. 492-497.

man’s soul, a substantial form

451

against Averroes, since, despite him, the rational soul is truly
substantial form.
Actually, in its union with prime matter, the soul finds a
principle which limits the specific perfection of which it is the
source. The incorporation of a form places a limitation on it,
not only by restricting it to a determined spatio-temporal
dimension, but also by restricting it in its spiritual functions,
since the origin and, to a certain extent, the development of its
ideas and will acts are associated with images and material
things. By reason of the “ incarnation ” of the soul, we can
speak of the similarity and the opposition between souls, which
are conditioned by physical heredity, education, social or
geographical environment, or historical moment. However, in
order to be precise, we must restrain the individuating role of
matter to that single moment wherein the soul acquires its
substantial individuality, i.e., to the moment at which it begins
to exist in union with the body (see the origin of man,
which follows). Once this individuality is acquired, it can not be
lost, at least as long as the soul exists.
Whether we explain it or not, the individuality of the soul
is a fact. The constitutive principle of the individual, the root
of the personality of man, the soul is necessarily individual in
each man. 147
>«’ Wc must guard against interpreting the individuation of the soul
as being due exclusively to its reception into matter. Is the human soul
really and completely measured by its role of form? Certainly not,
since it is spiritual and subsistent in itself. We have already seen
St. Thomas correcting Aristotle with an Augustinian idea, which is also
Platonic and Christian, when he treats of the soul’s knowledge of itself
or its intellectual activity. Wc will see him work in the same way in
regard to the creation of the soul, its immortality, and the quasi-angelic
functioning of the separated soul. The case of the individuation of the
human soul is reserved for special delineation.
*' Nulla forma, in quantum hujus modi, est haec ex soipsa. Dico
autem ' in quantum hujus modi ’ propter animam rationalem quae
quodammodo ex scipsa est hoc aliquid, sed non in quantum forma. ”
(De Trinitate, q. 4, a. 2.)
Can we not, actually, make a distinction between individual human
souls because of their proper and personal destiny, which, being ever­
lasting, is authentic being and distinct from every other by its own degree
of participation in the Divine Being?

452

THE NATURE OF MAN

4. The simplicity of the soul is also implied by reason of its
nature as form.
If we make the soul, as Descartes did, a complete substance,
we can still ask ourselves whether this soul is simple or a
composite. However, if we call the soul a substantial form, it is
equivalent to saying that it is :
a. simple in its essence (simplex essentialiter) : a corporeal
substance, the body, is a being which is composed in its essence.
The soul, being form, i.e., a first principle of a composite, cannot
itself be composed.
b. also simple by reason of its opposition to extension
(simplex integralitcr), or not demanding integral parts, which
are external one to another. Actually extension is not substance,
it is only an attribute derived from substance. Thus, the
constitutive parts of a substance, and especially the form,
cannot be composed of parts which are external one to
another.
Moreover, the soul is simple, this time in opposition to
prime matter, in the role it plays relative to extension. Prime
matter is the principle of extension, the root of its indefinite
multiplicity, the source of spatial composition. The substantial
form, on the contrary, is the first principle of all the
determinations of extension, the source of its specific unity and
of its undividedness.
Nevertheless, the simplicity of the soul is not absolute.
From the point of view of powers, the human soul is the most
complex of all forms. Its operations and its movements clearly
show that its simplicity is not that of an element, nor of an
abstract unity, but the extraordinarily rich simplicity of a
principle, of a being, of a life.
Simple in its essence and its completeness, the soul is
multiple in its powers.
5. Finally, the presence of the soul in the body is made
intelligible.
According to Descartes, the privileged point for the dwelling
of the soul in the body is the pineal gland. When he states,

THE SOUL IS SIMPLE

453-

“ The soul is truly joined to the entire body, ” the above assertion
becomes even more mysterious, since his doctrine on the pure
spirituality of the soul will not permit any union between it and.
the complete materiality of extension.
If, on the contrary, we see the soul-form constituting a
complete being only by reason of its union with matter, then the
soul is everywhere its matter is and only there. 148
It is in each part of the body in its essential totality, since it
is simple in its essence.
However, it is not present in each of the parts of the
composite in its potential totality. Actually, it exercises its
vegetative and sensible powers in differentiated organisms, which
are distinct from one another, so that one power is in this organ,
and another in that assemblage of organs. As for the intellectual
powers, it exercises them without any essential dependence on
the body, but not without a special link with the organs of
sensation and imagination, since these functions serve it in
abstraction : thus we can say that it is especially present in the
brain.
The possibility of a consciousness of a physical ego having
an exteriority and inferiority relative to the proper surface of a
body is based on this omnipresence of the soul in the body.
The soul-form thus unites the ego and the non-ego, idea
and sensation, spirit and matter, without mixing them up. It
allows them to be differentiated without leading ultimately to
the rejection of one for the sake of the other. It excludes
idealism which safeguards only the first term of the above pairs,,
and it also excludes materialism which respects only the second
of the above pairs. In a word, the soul-form expresses and
sums up without any clash the different data of psychological
consciousness. It guarantees their truth by uniting them.
“• At least inasmuch as it is form. Inasmuch as it is spiritual,
it could be present elsewhere than in its body without any contradiction
being involved. It would have to be there in a spiritual way, not
in a local or quantitative way. It could be present elsewhere by thought
or by love. Could it be there in a substantial wax ? With a directly
acting presence? These arc problems which the lives of the saints might
clarify perhaps....

454

THE NATURE OF MAN

Thus the testimony of consciousness on human substance
need not be rejected as blighted by an internal contradiction.
Man is thinkable as a substantial unity. The experience of the
“ I ” is, therefore, only the pure and simple expression of its
reality. 1 am truly such as I appear to myself.
But here again trouble confronts me, if I turn my attention
from my substantial structure to my temporal function, to my
becoming as such, to my fugitive and successive mode of being,
if I attempt to grasp the scope of my life before the first moment
of my conscious life, or beyond the present moment, or beyond
every moment, in a mysterious but foreseeable term which is
death. Whence have I come into existence? Where is my
destiny drawing me?

BOOK TWO

THE ORIGIN OF MAN:
GOD AS CREATOR

AND PROVIDENCE

N.Y. 17. — 31

Fifth Question :
Fifth Thesis:

1.

2.
3.

What is the cause of man.3

Man begins, lives and dies, by the action of
natural causes, but ultimately by the free
election of a Provident and Creating God.
However, the human soul has an immediate
Creative Cause.
Therefore, the origin of the human species
cannot be explained by a completely mechan­
ical evolution.

A. The problem here is twofold.
1. The human individual begins to exist. Ordinary
experience is sufficient to testify to that. Birth is the proof of it.
Another proof can be found in the fact that psychological life
has a beginning and that memory goes back in the person only
to a certain moment, which is considerably after the time of
birth, although the individual begins before birth. Science
furnishes us with some precisions on this subject. The individual
begins at the moment the egg is formed as a result of the fusion
of a spermatozoon with an ovule.

2. The human species also began to exist. This is the
empirical data of very many, if not all religions. It is also a
scientific certitude. The most fundamental reason is drawn
from cosmogony. The earth was at first a planet in formation,
where all organic life was impossible. It has been estimated that
the first living creatures made their appearance on our planet
some 500,000 million years ago in the Pre-Cambrian period.
To pin-point the epoch at which the human species began
is impossible. We can speak of humans only from the period in
which they began to leave traces of their existence. These traces
are of two kinds : (1) fossils, which are whole or fragmentary

458

THE ORIGIN OF MAN

skeletal remains, dated by their relative positions in the geological
layers of the earth ; (2) utensils, traces of fire, products of art or
industry, burial places, in a word, any object that would suppose
intellectual activity.
The oldest fossils, which are certainly human, date from the
beginning of the quaternary period, between the third and fourth
glacial invasions of the earth. The age of the human species
could be around 500,000 years. The principal human fossils are
made up of two races, that of the Neanderthal and that of the
Cro-Magnon.1
The Neanderthal man has an elongated skull with a receding
forehead, very pronounced brow ridges, a very large nose, strong
and prominent jaws which are in contrast to a weak chin.
The Cro-Magnon man has the same elongated skull, but has a
high forehead, his brow ridges are not very pronounced, the nose
is small, and the chin prominent. He differs little from the
contemporary European, whereas the Neanderthal type can
scarcely be found, except among certain Australian tribes.
The mark of the human on these remains is in the objects of
civilization which accompany them. The two types of which we
have been speaking belong to the Old Stone Age or the paleolithic
period. The characteristic utensils are made of chipped flint.
The differing forms and the degrees of perfection in the chipping
have led to distinguishing six periods which embrace three
periods in the history of the Neanderthal, and three periods in
that of the Cro-Magnon. From the beginning the skeletons
testify to the fact that the bodies were buried (as at La-Chapelleaux-Saints), which is proof of thought and even of belief in
a hereafter. The arts (sculpture and afterwards painting) are
very well represented among the Cro-Magnons, and they seem
to have been employed for magical or even religious purposes.
The neolithic period or polished stone age witnesses the
sedentary life of farmers succeeding the nomadic life of hunters.
It is the time of pile-dwellings, the domestication of some kinds
of animals, and the cultivation of edible plants. It is the epoch
1 See William Howells, Mankind in the Making (Garden City, N. Y. :
Doubleday, 1959). PP- 189-213.

THE ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES

459

of the megaliths, whether religious (menhirs) or funereal
(dolmens).
After this there is the bronze age, then the iron age, and
finally history which replaces prehistory.
But other fossils, which are at least allied to man, dating
from the lower paleolithic period, have been discovered, mostly
in three regions :3
a. In the Far East : the Pithecanthropus was uncovered in
Java (1891 and 1936-1939), and the Java man (in 1931) at
Ngandong on the Solo; at Chou-Kou-Ticn, near Peking, the
Sinanthropus. Their respective cranial capacities were found
to be : 900 cm.’ (Pith.), 1100 cm.’ (Sin.), 1200 cm.3 (Jav.).

b. In Africa : A type very much resembling Pithecanthro­
pus was discovered in Oran. In Rhodesia, the Africanthropus,
a type similar to the Sinanthropus, was unearthed. Near the
Cape of Good Hope, at Saldanha, a type more or less resembling
the Neanderthal was brought to light and judged akin to the
Java man.
c. In Europe and the Levant, various fossils have been
discovered. Near Heidelberg, the mandible of a man was found,
which is now referred to as the Heidelberg Man (or the man
of Mauer). Other finds have been made near Rome, at Saccopastore; in Palestine (Mt. Carmel and Nazareth); in England,
at Swanscombe; in France, at Fontéchevade (Charente).
The man of Mauer seems to be an intermediary type between
Sinanthropus and the Neanderthal man. The others, which are
of a more recent origin, resemble both the Neanderthal and
Cro-Magnon types at the same time. A jaw bone of the same
mixed type, taken from the caves explored recently at Arcy-surCurc (Yonne)3 reinforces the hypothesis of a co-existence of the
two races and perhaps even a chronological priority of the
Cro-Magnons over the Neanderthals.
* Ibid., pp. 151-186: pp. 215-223: see also M. Grison, Problèmes
d’Origine, p. 187; see pp. 183-237, for the actual data of science.
’ Ibid., pp. 234-241 : note especially the diagram on page 236.
See also Science el Avenir. Nr. 100, pp. 244-249.

460

THE ORIGIN OF MAN

The best available chronology seems to place the fossils
we have just mentioned in the early paleolithic period. The
Neanderthals belong to the middle paleolithic period : they
have been found scattered throughout Europe; while the races
of the Grimaldi. Cro-Magnon and the Chancelade belong to the
late paleolithic period. The earliest seem to be negroid and
related to the present Hottentots. The Neanderthal seems to
be Asiatic in origin, while the last three are properly European.

If the Neanderthal race and the three races which follow
them are considered as humans by reason of their utensils, their
burials, or even their artistic designs, the same is not true of the
evaluation made of the fossils which date from the early
paleolithic period. Men certainly existed at this date, but we
are not always sure that the chipped flints and the traces of
fire originated with the beings whose remains make up these
fossils. Thus, the truly human character of the Sinanthropus
remains debatable, despite the fact that it was discovered in
a cave filled with a mass of ashes measuring seven meters
in depth.
Whatever may be the case, no scientist thinks that
humanity began before the end of the Tertiary period
(see Dictionnaire Apologétique de la Foi Catholique, article
“ L’Homme ”).

Thus two problems emerge : (1) What is the origin of the
individual man, or what is his cause? (2) What is the origin of
the species man?

B. The individual man has as an immediate

cause

1. A group of natural causes. Each human individual
begins to exist at a definite moment of time, and in a determined
region in space. He is a limited portion of extension, and forms
a real part of the material universe. By reason of that he is
subject to its general laws. Being corporeal, he begins to exist
through the union of a substantial form with a disposed prime
matter. Being a living thing, the essential cause of these dispo­
sitions are living creatures of the same species who are his

THE ORIGIN OF THE INDIVIDUAL

461

parents.4 By reason of these two facts, his existence is attached
to the general causality of nature.
The generative activity of parents is not actually a pure
spontaneity. It needs the collaboration of nature : nourishment,
warmth, atmosphere.... It even depends on the stellar masses,
if it is true that cosmic rays originate in the nebulae by way of
condensation ; * because these rays seem to be a natural factor
in hereditary mutation.
Thus the natural laws of human physiology and those of the
whole universe govern man’s coming into existence. These laws
manifest the inner workings of natural beings. It is plainly
nature which is the immediate cause of man.
2. However, nature is not the first and sufficient
cause of man, because : a. it is the cause of his beginning in
existence, of his becoming, of his duration; but it is also the
cause of his death. Man, whom it constructs, it also demolishes.
It has wished him to be, but now it wishes something else, and
it allows him to be undone for the profit of the lower substances
which will succeed him. Briefly, nature is a moving cause, not
a cause of existence.
b. It would be impossible that nature be a cause of
existence, for it does not sufficiently explain existence since it is
basically contingent and demands an intelligent and completely
free cause.
The existence of the individual man is definitely caused by
the Almighty Creator of the material world, by a Thought which
has conceived the plan incorporated into natures, and by a
Liberty which, having chosen these natures, realizes them in the
course of time. In a word, what sums up the three ideas is :
Divine Providence. Through nature, it is this Divine Providence
* See Cosmology, Seventh Thesis.
» Do the planets exercise an influence on human generation?
Do they influence men's temperament and destiny? Astrology believes
that they do, and today astrologers arc attempting to prove this according
to scientific method (see Les Rythmes et la Vie. by Dr. Duprat). Whether
this method be fruitful or not, planetary influence could not establish
the necessity of pagan Destiny nor suppress liberty.

462

THE ORIGIN OF MAN

which is responsible for man’s beginning, which conserves him
in duration, and permits him to die. And if man someday finds
the elixir of long life and the remedy against mortality, it will
still be this Providence which frees him from death, for man can
only work with the laws of nature.
However, is there not a misunderstanding of the spiritual
soul of man, when we make the existence of man depend on a
material nature, and look at its existence and operation much
as we do that of the mineral forms and the vegetative and animal
souls which are drawn from " the potency of matter? ”
C. The human soul can not be drawn from the potency of
matter. Every form drawn from matter, actually has an essential
dependence on matter for its existence. Now the human soul
is spiritual and subsistent of itself. It is, therefore, not drawn
from matter.

1. Could it be, then, that the soul exists before its union
with the body? Plato thought so, and taught that the soul was
eternal. Origen and Leibniz took up this idea of preexistence
in their teachings in order to safeguard the spirituality of the
soul, but they attached the human soul to God the Creator.
Such an hypothesis is inadmissible. As a matter of fact :
a. The soul would exist without being able to exercise any
of its operations : because it does not find its proper object except
in the sensible, and sensation is impossible without corporeal
organs. But an existence which is stripped of every actual
possibility of action is a contradiction. Therefore, the soul can
not exist before being united to its body.
it may be objected that the same reasoning would also
logically exclude the possibility of a soul’s survival after being
separated from the body. We must answer that it is a mistake
to draw a parallel between the two cases. As a matter of fact,
at death, the soul is no longer, as it was in its origin, in a state
of pure potentiality in relation to its specific operations. It has
acquired “ intelligible impressed species, ” and even though
separated from matter, it keeps them for its own use. Above
all, it has acquired the consciousness of its existence and of its
spiritual nature. There is no reason to lose this in losing its

THE CAUSE OF THE SOUL

463

union with the body. Although this union served in the acquiring
of knowledge, we must point out that spiritual knowledge is not
riveted to its mode of acquisition.6 The two cases are, therefore,
completely opposite, since a soul surviving the union can think,
whereas a preexistent soul can not.

b. This hypo thesis of preexistence misconstrues the nature
of the soul. The soul is the natural form of the body.
Therefore, it is caused naturally as the form of the body, i.e.,
united to it.7
Spiritual, it certainly is, and because it is precisely that,
it can not come into existence through the effect of purely
material causes. Still it is also a substantial form, and that by
its nature. Therefore, it must be caused in union with the body,
in order to be caused according to its proper nature. As a matter
of fact, all the partisans for the preexistence of the soul profess
that the soul is a pure spirit, which is lodged in a body, contrary
to its nature and its good.
c. This hypothesis makes unintelligible the individual
differences of souls, which are all endowed with the same specific
perfection. Take a particular perfection, a certain degree of heat,
for example. How can it be realized in several different
instances? We must necessarily appeal to a principle which is
different from the perfection itself. We must appeal to the
recipients of that perfection. Each of them, possessing it
according to its proper limit, will make it individual without
making it lose its specific nature. “ Actus non limitatur nisi
per potentiam. ” Thus, the substantial form is capable of being
individualized only by its union with its correlative potency,
prime matter. B
• See above, Second Thesis, F.
’ Summa Theol., I*
* pars, q. 90, a. 4 : " Si anima unitur corpori ut
iorma et est naturaliter pars humanae naturae, hoc omnino esse non
potest. ” (Hoc, i.e., the hypothesis of preexistence).
* It behooves us to bring a nuance to this argument in the light
of what was said above. The spiritual soul, as such {let us say, insofar
as it has a destiny which is everlasting personal life) is individual.
However, it would only have this mark of individuality, when it would
take its place among pure spirits. It would not be individuated by a

464

THE ORIGIN OF MAN

d. For the same reason, the diversification of souls by
heredity would be as accidental as that which arises from educa­
tion, whereas it is very much deeper. Heredity directly modifies
only the organism, but if the soul is the substantial form of that
organism, it will be correctively modified with it. The hereditary
transmission of psychological dispositions could not be under­
stood if the soul were completely formed before its union with the
body. The influence of the body on it would be purely accidental.
The essential mistake in the theory of preexistence is that
it forgets that the rational soul is a substantial form.

2. Would the parents, then, be the cause of the soul,
as they are of the body?
a. They could not be the cause of the soul through their
transmission of the portions of organized matter which form the
initial egg, because the soul can not be intrinsically dependent
on matter as if it were produced by it. ’
The corporeal traducianism of Tertullian is, therefore, inad­
missible as an explanation of the origin of the human soul.
This doctrine must be limited to that which is simply and
exclusively organic life. If it is applied to man, it is equivalent
to denying the spirituality of his soul.
b. Yet could the soul of the new man perhaps be like a
spark springing from the souls of his parents, and spiritual like
theirs? — The image has a poetic flare... but if we attempt
to put the thought into a more scientific expression, the error
becomes evident, because the souls of the parents are not
extended things, which can be divided like a flame. What real
role can we assign here to the parents, if we wish to translate
this imagery accurately?
.4 creative power, delegated by God, such as Frohschammer
and Klee spoke of in the 19th century? No. Creative power
is not delegated. To create is to produce in total independence.
relation to space and concrete time, which its nature as a form of matter
demands. Its limitation would not appear to be linked, as it is now.
to a " situation “ in the world.
• Sec Summa Contra Gentiles. J. II, ch. 86.

SOUL MUST BE CREATED

465

A delegated power is always subordinate and therefore
dependent.
Or shall we say, with Rosmini, that the parents furnish the
new individual with a soul which is simply a sensitive one, which
God will make intellective by giving Himself to be contemplated
by it under the form of the idea of being? This would be a
satisfactory' explanation of the role of the parents, but it admits
a becoming between sensation and intellection, which certainly
miscontrues their irreducibility. The same soul can not become
intellective after being completely sensitive. Either it was
already intellective at the moment when it could do no more
than sense, then the parents would be the cause of an intellective
soul; or it was not capable of thinking and became so, then
thinking is only a higher degree of sensing.10
Therefore, no form of spiritual traducianism resolves the
problem. Parents can not be the productive cause of a child’s
soul.
The productive cause of the soul must be
11 Evidently, the soul begins, since it does not
exist before the body. Therefore, it is caused. Now, its existence
is not completely stated as being a component of man, because,
as we have seen, it is subsistent and intrinsically independent
of matter in its existence, capable of transcending matter in its
operation. Thus, as it is caused, it is caused by right of substantial
existence, existence for itself. But this can not be by way of

3.

creative.

’• We can formulate a third hypothesis. First of all the parents
produce a vegetative soul in the embryo, which develops into a sensitive
soul; then God, when the organism is sufficiently developed, infuses an
intellective soul. This is the hypothesis of St. Thomas, but this is not
the hypothesis of Rosmini. There is a succession of distinct souls, the
sensitive soul disappears when the rational soul is produced in the embryo
which it informs. It is not transformed into a spiritual soul.
11 We ought to bring a nuance to the idea of creation, as it is used
here, in order to leave a place for the role of the parents and nature.
There is a creation, in the strict sense of the word, if we consider the
soul abstractly in its spiritual character. The idea of creation is specified,
if wc sec the soul as a substantial form, called into existence by the matter
disposed to receive it. Actually the parents and nature must collaborate
in the “ creation " of a soul by virtue of that necessity which the Divine
Will itself confers on the order of existent beings.

466

GOD AS CREATOR AND PROVIDENCE

composition, as is the case with corporeal substances, because
it is, in essence, simple. It is necessary then, that it be caused
without any part of it having preexisted in the guise of matter,
caused all at once in its entire reality, i.e., created.
The soul in its spiritual nature is thus the witness of God’s
creative act.
corollaries, a. God, in the production of man, can
be looked at as a cause in several ways : (1) as the Free Author
of nature ; (2) as particularly the Author of human nature and
of the laws for the transmission of life; (3) as the immediate and
only Creator of the human soul.
b. The parents are causes of the child : (1) after the manner
of natural causes : they dispose the matter for a substantial
transformation which will result in a new human individual;
(2) in a specifically human way : their causal power docs not
extend to the production of a rational soul, as the causality of
an animal extends to the soul of its young. Human causality
here is in association with the creative power of God, who has so
constituted human nature that the human preparation of the
matter should be the sufficient and necessary condition for His
creation of the soul.
at what moment docs God create the soul?
1) At the very moment that it is united to the body,
without any doubt.
2) But what is that moment? The moment of conception?
Or is it after conception ? The answers to these questions show
some divergence of opinion.
a) With Aristotle, St. Thomas and the Scholastics of the
Middle Ages, many moderns think that the human embryo
begins with only a vegetative soul — that it acquires through
a substantial change an animal soul, when organic differentiation
is sufficient to permit sensation — and finally a last substantial
change introduces a human soul, when the embryo is sufficiently
organized to make it capable of specifically human operations. ’•

scholion.

” St. Thomas expresses this opinion in S. C. Gentiles, 1. II, ch. 89.

TIME OF SOUL’S INFUSION

467

b) Some modern Scholastics (Farges, F. X. Maquart) begin
the above progression at the second stage. Their reason is that
the differentiation present in the egg goes in a completely different
direction from that which characterizes vegetative life, and
manifestly is a preparation for sensation. This reasoning is
difficult to contest.13
c) St. Albert the Great and very many contemporary
philosophers think that the rational soul is created at the moment
of conception. The reason lies in this, that the evolution of the
egg is not directed towards any animal structure whatsoever,
but towards a specifically human structure, and that this
evolution is potentially in the initial structure of the egg. Briefly,
the egg is specifically human in its structure and in its evolutional
potential.14 This third opinion could be objected to by the
others : What proof can you furnish of the presence of thought
in a human embryo? The manifest proofs of thought in man
are found only in his life after birth. Why not defer the creation
of the rational soul until then? To these questions we can only
pose the question : What proof can you furnish that the egg in
its initial state does not have thought? There is no direct
experience that can answer the questions of cither side.
We must, therefore, attempt to reason from a general
principle. However, there are a number of them and the
conclusions drawn from them are not in agreement. The best
approach seems to be based on the role of the rational soul as
substantial form, a role which it plays by its very nature. This
soul ought to exist, therefore, from the beginning of the undivided
organic movement which is established in the evolution of the
egg and the whole of individual life. Without it, how can one
“ See Maquart, Elementa Philosophiae, I, p. 542.
“ Thonnard’s Précis de Philosophie seems rather favorable to this
solution whose principle he states in the following fashion : " An anatomi­
cal structure or a characteristic functional differentiation of the human
species will be sufficient to demand the presence of a spiritual soul in
a human embryo. It is the job of the biological sciences to determine
the precise moment at which these properties are present " (p. 846).
A specifically human vital property exists, without any doubt, from the
moment of the fecundation of the ovule. Could the human egg then
be developed in any other direction than a typically human one?

468

GOD AS CREATOR AND PROVIDENCE

give a basis for the unity of this organism? Instead of one man,
we would have two or three substances, which are specifically
different, only the last of which is man. Moreover, even in the
second opinion (beginning with a sensitive soul), one would be
admitting the possibility of an infinity of specifically different
substances, since the stages of differentiation correspond to
highly varied degrees in animal life, in the sense of gradually
acquiring more and more complicated animal structures which
are similar to biological entities that are specifically different.
This opinion would admit what we object to in evolutionism,
the supposition that the generation of a more perfect substance
from one that is less perfect is possible.
The third position, then, would offer a solution to the
question by saying that the intellective soul is created and united
to matter at the moment when the spermatozoon unites with
the ovule. As a matter of fact, it is precisely from that moment
that cellular multiplication begins its operation, and it will not
be arrested until the human organism is achieved. What
difference does it make if all the human powers are not in
operation from that time? Beginning with the actuation of the
simplest power (multiplication, before all growth and nutrition
properly so called) there will be a whole order of powers which will
begin to be realized according to a properly human finality. It is
a truly human soul which vivifies and directs the entire process.

D. The beginning of the species, man, could not be
identical with the beginning of an individual man, as we know it.
The first instance of man lacked a parent or parents of the same
species. The question then arises : Could the species man have
had parents belonging to another species? Is the human species
descended from another species? If so, how must such an
evolution be conceived?
1. Biological evolution in the limited sense of the word is
an observed phenomenon. Mutation diversifies the specific type
into sub-species, varieties and races, which are as stable as the
large species. But no biologist stops there. All admit that
the families, with their kinds and their species, have been
constituted by mutation and by differentiation in the kind of

EVOLUTION?

469-

organization which characterizes their particular orders. This
is limited evolution which is admitted by L. Vialleton, for example
(L'Origine des Êtres vivants). Very many admit that all the
species are constituted in this way from a single living thing
which is as little differentiated as possible. This is generalized
evolution held, for example, by L. Cuenot (La Genèse des Espèces
Animales).
This generalized evolutionism involves no absurdity. The
idea of “ equivocal generation ” is not contradictory, neither is
it a demonstrated fact, nor, at the present stage of science, can
it be explained by any known scientific principles. If it is to be
explained at all, it must necessarily be explained by a finality,,
and, from there, by a Creative and Provident Liberty.
2. But could the human species be genealogically derived
from another purely animal species? No. For man, by reason
of his spiritual soul, has need of a Creator who can produce it
without using an intermediary. God, simply as the Creator of
material nature, can not be a sufficient explanation, because
of the spirituality of the soul. The soul, being spiritual and
superior to corporeal nature, could not be produced by it.16
3. Could not the body of man, at least, have been prepared
for a union with a soul by animal progenitors, as he is now by
human parents? This absurd hypothesis is sometimes found
amongst us. It is no more than postulating an hereditary
mutation, wherein there abruptly appears a characteristic which
is lacking in the progenitors. But can this hypothesis be
transformed into an affirmation of fact?
no !
None of the varied scientific arguments demonstrategeneral evolution as a fact. K When these arguments are applied

u See above. Fifth Thesis, C, and Dictionnaire Apologétique de la
Foi Catholique, art. " Transformisme. "
’• R. Coixin, Mesure de l’Homme, p. 113, “ (Generalized) trans*
formism is not a fact but an interpretation of an incomplete collection
of historic facts, which we can bind together by lines, of which only
a few points are determined, and where we must frequently have recourse
to interpolations.... In these conditions, transformism, despite its
plausibility and even probability, remains, from a logical point of view,
a scientific theory subject to more weaknesses perhaps than are involved
in the theories about the inorganic world. ”

470

GOD AS CREATOR AND PROVIDENCE

to the evolution of man they are even less solid. They draw
their principal force from the general idea of evolution which has
already been taken as a principle. However, they also draw
from it their weakness, because rnan requires, by reason of his
soul, an immediate Creative Cause, which puts his case apart
from the general theory of evolution.
a. paleontology furnishes no orthogenetic series which
links man to a previous species. It is possible to imagine
a rudimentary and successive orthogenesis : Pithecanthropus,
Sinanthropus, Africanthropus, the man of Mauer, the men of
Swanscombe and Saccopastore, Neanderthals, and the races of
Cro-Magnon, Grimaldi and Chancelade. Yet we can, with more
of an indication, consider several of these types — which are
considered progressive or intermediary morphologically — as
coexisting, instead of following one another. Moreover, we have
no link which ties the most ancient of these to a clearly animal
type. In the majority of cases which concern fossils of the
early paleolithic period, we do not even know if they are truly
human. If there is an evolution in this series, that evolution
could just as easily have been within the same species. The
different races of dogs, for example, are more different among
themselves than the more or less human fossils are among
themselves. No certain orthogenesis leads from animal to man.
An essential proof for evolution is lacking here. The hypothesis
has not been proven false, but it still remains pure hypothesis.
b. the ontogenesis of man is no better proof of his
descendencc from the animal kingdom. The similarity between
the stages of the human embryo and certain animal structures
can be very well explained without any such heredity. These
stages are only rough shapes, which do not resemble the
structures of adult animals, but only their embryonic shapes.
There need be no more to this similarity than acknowledging
that the development goes through similar stages in species,
whose adult structures present a certain generic resemblance.
c. comparative anatomy stresses some one hundred
rudimentary organs found in man. They are, according to the
men of this science, the atrophied remains of once useful organs,

EVOLUTION?

471

which testify to an animal ancestry which once exercised them.
There seems to be a slight supposition lurking behind this
particular reasoning. It would seem to take for granted that
it is easier to know every possible utility of an organ than to
admit that our science might be more rudimentary than the
aforesaid organs. Such a line of reasoning seems to suppose
that an organ, which is useless in an adult, is also useless in an
embryo. Now, embryology tells us that this is not always true.
It also seems to suppose that every rudimentary organ in present
day man has not always been rudimentary in the human species.
Is it not possible that the motor muscle controlling the
auricle of the ear was functionless even in the Neanderthal man?
An evolution within the species appears sufficient to explain
organs which are certainly rudimentary.
The alleged animal origin of the human body is, therefore,
not a certain fact. It has a certain likelihood which arises from
man’s late appearance in the series of mammals, and from the
existence of structures quite similar to his own, especially those
of the anthropoid monkeys, the gorilla, the orangoutang and
chimpanzee.17 That likelihood, however, is sometimes not a
little subjective. What happens to this type of reasoning, when
one is confronted with the many profound and objective differ­
ences which separate human organisms from simian ones? 18
1) Js to structure : the gorilla's brain weighs from 400500 grams, with a volume of 530 cm.3; that of a man weighs
1360 grams, varying in volume from 1300 cm.3 (Negro) to
1550 cm.3 (European), or even 1600 cm.’ in the Neanderthal man.
These differences involve a striking superiority of sensory powers
in man, when compared to monkeys. This is especially so, if we
take into consideration the surface of the cerebral cortex, as
it is augmented in man by folds and circumvolutions (see
R. Collin, Mesure de l’homme, p. 170), and the relation of
cephalization which is expressed between the weight of the brain
and the total weight of the body. This index is 2.73 for man,
” W. Howells, Mankind in the Making, pp. 74-87.
»» Ibid., pp. S7-95.
O’Toole, The Case Against
pp. 269-307.
N.Y. 17. — 32

Evolution,

472

GOD AS CREATOR AND PROVIDENCE

whereas it attains only around 0.7 for the anthropoids (see
M. Grison, Problèmes d’Orig., p. 178).
The human skeleton as a whole is quite different from that
of a monkey. It is a vertical skeleton ; the head rests at the top
of the vertebral column. The curves of the latter are adapted
to vertical posture. The thorax is flattened from front to back
and not from left to right. This particular disposition dominates
the structures of waists and the disposition of members which
are attached to the trunk. ” In monkeys these dispositions are
completely contrary to man’s.
2) The biological functioning of man would have a hard
time doing without the -power of invention, which is reason. His
organism is deprived of those natural defenses which are most
essential to an animal with a constant temperature, viz., hair
or feathers. It seems that he can maintain himself only through
thought which creates clothes and dwelling, and makes use of fire.

3) Finally, the development of man is very specific. The
anthropomorph lead an independent life and can reproduce in
from three to eight years. They are completely adult at ten
years. Man reaches puberty only between twelve and sixteen
years, and is scarcely adult in twenty years (the cells in the
nervous system are not adult until around thirty years). From
this, important consequences follow : the necessity of a stable
family, the possibility of a social education, the possibility of
acquiring a great number of images. ** To argue by an appeal to
a mutation in those regulators of growth, the endocrine glands,
will certainly point up a difference between man and his imme­
diate ancestor, but it does not explain it. It is inconceivable that
man is only an enlarged monkey, retarded in its growth. He is
another type of living thing.
The passage from a supposed ancestor to man could not,
in any case, have been accomplished by a slow and continuous
variation. There would have had to be a complete break-off
from the primitive type, a “ mutation, ” if you wish, to indicate
** Ibid., p. 76.
20 See L. Guénot, La Genèse des Espèces Animales, p. 548.

EVOLUTION

473

that the limits of the former species had been completely passed.
Yet it would have had to be a vastly complex and profound
mutation, and not one of those experimental mutations which
change colors, or produce spots, or remove the wing of a fruit fly,
or double the size of petunia leaves.
The hypothesis of the animal origin of the body of man
is only a hypothesis, alluring for the scientific imagination, but
quite gratuitous according to the standards of pure reason.
4. Within the context of this hypothesis, how can we arrive
at the possibility of a sufficient cause for such an evolution ?
a. There is no answer in a complete mechanism of efficient
causes. For :
1) The bare notion of efficient causality always leaves us
without an explanation of the direction it impresses on its results.
From the time we suppose a mechanism of efficient causes, i.e.,
a cascade of causes and effects in a determined order, we are
supposing a direction, a final destination in causes. Conse­
quently, pure mechanism in nature is an impossibility. We
would have a determined order of causes stripped of that which
would determine them from within, stripped of that which would
direct them. Thus, all natural determinism is a mechanism
which demands finality.11
2) Therefore, “ a fortiori, ” biological evolution demands
a finality, because it constructs organs and types of organization,
i.e., it creates finality. It shows in its work a spontaneity which
is determined in a contingent and yet directed way. Ortho­
genesis is unthinkable without a " preordination ” (Cuénot).
3) The applying of the evolutionary theory to man would be
only biological finality in its highest degree of clarity. It would
be folly to make human thought the fortuitous consequence of
the immense work of differentiation, which, through the vast
geological ages, would have constructed the human brain and
with it the particular organism correlative to such a brain. We
would have to suppose that thought is only a transformation of
n See Cosmology, Tenth Thesis, D.

474

GOD AS CREATOR AND PROVIDENCE

mechanical energies, and with that admit all the confusions of
empiricism and materialism. One would have to say that the
“ fortuitous ” has been reproduced by heredity since the origin
of life. To place a thought in a brain, which has been differenti­
ated up to the point that it can use it, and explain it by a cause
which is purely mechanical is as worthless as would be a gram
of powder to blow up New York from the moon without cannon
or shell. —
b. The only sufficient cause of such an evolution must be
God, the free Author of Nature and the Creator of the human soul.

His role as Creator is no less necessary at the beginning of
a species, than it is at the beginning of each individual of the
species, for the soul of the first man was spiritual and subsistent.
His role as Author of Nature is that of a Providence which
realizes His freely chosen plan. This Providence concerns itself
evidently with all the details of the plan as well as with the plan
as a whole, i.e., it specializes according to what each of these
species contains, and it brings it to its place in existence. If each
biological species introduced into the world by way of evolution
is already the effect of a special action of Divine Providence, how
much more reason is there for this being true about the human
species. Why? Because a productive action ought to correspond
to the dignity of its effect. Now the human species is the most
elevated of all corporeal species, because of the spiritual functions
which belong to it exclusively. The last step of the evolution,
which, in the hypothesis being considered, constructed the first
human body and harmonized it with an incarnate rational soul,
must have as a cause, not only natural, biological and cosmic
causalities, but a very special influence of Free Divine Providence.

Was it only a finalizing motion directing previously existing
natural causes and making them develop into a specifically
human type? Was it a productive action coming as a new act
of the Creator? Only God can tell us.
But He has not done so. The theology of revelation admits
that God did not create the body of Adam piece by piece, but
that He transformed preexisting matter, “ the slime of the

EVOLUTION?

475

earth, ” and gave to it a spiritual soul. It says nothing about
the manner of this transformation, nor of the nature of this very
special intervention of Divine Providence.
The mystery of the origin of human organism, therefore,
remains a mystery. One single point is certain for both the
philosopher and the believer : God has willed this organism and
has realized it. The rest is hypothesis. Has there been an
evolution? Perhaps. Was it purely mechanical? Assuredly
not.

BOOK THREE

THE DESTINY OF MAN
Beatitude, Immortality, Resurrection.

Sixth Question :

What is the final end of man?

Sixth Thesis :

1. The final natural end of man is the
personal possession of all natural truth, i.e.,
the loving knowledge of a God who
creates and rides man and nature. This
constitutes at the same time the glory of
God and the beatitude of man.
2. Therefore, the human soul is,
(a) by its nature, immortal ; (b) and it will
“ de facto ’’ never cease to be.
3. The human soul by a natural right
demands the resurrection of its body.

A. This problem is the most tngic and the most personal
of all the problems of philosophy. We have been launched on the
sea of life. Where is the port? Without this problem there
wouldn’t be any others. All of the practical problems of
philosophy are only aspects of this one : What direction ought
1 give to my life? All theoretical problems are bom of this
essential one : Where is my life going? It was by reducing
the answer to a theoretical and practical “ know thyself, ” that
Socrates saved philosophy from the complete dilettantism of the
Sophists for whom there were no longer any problems.
Empirical knowledge gives as many answers to this question
as there are conceptions of human life. From those “ whose god
is their belly, ” to those who wish to love God for Himself, all men
in whom some moral conscience has been quickened, attempt
some sort of answer to the question. The moral philosophies
have taken stock of nearly all of these answers. My life is
where my Good is. Everyone agrees with this. Besides, this is
no more than the recognition that man has a will whose object,
in general, is human good, a will which can direct man’s whole
life in aspirations which correspond with or go beyond all or any
of his particular tendencies.

480

THE DESTINY OF MAN

but what is this good? Needless to say, there are
many differing answers to this question. Will it be worthwhile
to enumerate the goods which, for one reason or another, can
solicit the activity and desire of man? I think not, for in
this case an appeal to our own personal experience ought to
suffice. Yet, it is precisely this personal experience which
makes a man irresolute, hesitant, before the diversity of these
goods and before the conflict of desires which arise in their
presence. Personal experience drives us to reflection on the
direction which we will give our life, so that we can give it
a direction which is more than apparently true, for we
seek certitude in these decisions. Therefore, it is a question of
finding the Good which is truly and certainly the Sovereign
Good for man, even if it does not appear directly as such. 1

From the point of view of psychological awareness, the
Sovereign Good is identical with complete happiness or
" beatitude. ” Joy is simply the feeling which results from a
satisfied tendency. Where joy is perfect, all tendencies have
been satisfied, all the goods possible for a subject are possessed.
Thus, beatitude is not possible except in the possession of the
Sovereign Good. But from this single point of view, the problem
posed is insoluble. It can be resolved only by an experience
of complete happiness, which would then be the indication of the
presence of a Sovereign Good.1 Nevertheless, experience allows
* See E. Gilson, St. Thomas d'Aquin, pp. 32-64; Summa Theol.,
I-II®, q. I, 2 and 3; S.C.G., 1. Ill, ch. 25 to 64.
* Such an experience is not possible in this mortal life. See S.C.G.,
1. Ill, ch. 48. Granted that there is happiness in this life, but it passes
as quickly as a lightning-flash in the night sky. It is something which
is always precariously held, something always threatened. Yet complete
happiness. '** Status omnium bonorum congregatione perfectus ” (Boethius),
demands assured duration and secure possession. Human joy is always
a mixed affair; the slightest inattention is sufficient to diminish it, passion
clouds it over, error upon which it is sometimes based makes it illusory,
yet happiness demands that these things be no part of it. A child may
be happy but he doesn’t realize it. The adult never finishes learning and
his appetite grows in the measure that he satisfies it. This is not all :
the simple awareness of death makes man incapable of joy, and death's
very presence suppresses man himself. In short, man, on this earth,
is always perfectible but never perfect. In his knowledge, in his moral
life, in his social life, there is always something wanting. How could

WHAT IS THE FINAL END OF MAN?

481

us to draw a conclusion, but only a negative one. It shows us
that no happiness achieved in the succession and instability
of time, or in the limitation of space is capable of completely
satisfying man. Those who have placed their beatitude in
temporal goods, riches, honor, fame, power, health, bodily
advantage, or pleasure, have recognized at some time or another
that they have mistaken the shadow for the prize. This illusion
furnishes the poetic drama of Ecclesiastes, which draws from
this universal experience the occasion to exhort creatures to
turn to their Creator. 3
From an ontological point of view, the Sovereign Good is a
Good capable of fulfilling all the aspirations of human nature,
capable of terminating its restless movement, by making it
“ perfect. ” In an objective sense it is the final end, the
end which gives to all other ends their power of attraction,
the end beyond which there is nothing more to be desired, and
in relation to which all other ends are called good or bad. Thus,
for him who places his end in pleasure, all effort becomes detest­
able; for him who places his end in duty, effort is a means, and,
because of that, it is good. This ontological point of view will
permit us to proceed with a positive solution. Let us examine the
nature of man and his specifically human direction. The
terminus of this specific direction is necessarily the ultimate end
of nature. It is not that which the individual " de facto ”
pursues, but that which nature pursues in him, despite the
obscurities of his thought and the deviations of his liberty : * it
is his natural Final End.
he be fully happy, unless by being completely ignorant or by a complete
disregard of morality, and what could this be but supreme misery?
■ See Summa Theol., I-II», q. 2; S.C.G., 1. Ill, ch. 27.
• Man's nature is capable of being realized naturally only in part.
It is achieved only by reason of free will. This choice is not free in every
sense. It is subject to the direction of nature which is formulated in the
moral law, which limits choice in relation to reason and shows certain
actions to be obligatory’, even though they can not be forced. In this
sense man gives himself his nature, “ he becomes that which he is. ”
In this sense also, he can destroy his nature and ruin his existence. The
delicate task, here, is to separate, at the source of the things willed, such
as they are, complex, divergent, and even contradictory’, the will willing,
whose power they use, the natural impulse towards man's Final End.

482

THE DESTINY OF MAN

One could ask here : Must we admit a Final End? Ought
not psychological movement be pursued indefinitely without ever
reaching a final state of achievement?

These questions suppose that the very idea of a Final End
demands the suppression of change, and thus the end of change
is the cessation of change. This supposition is only partially
true. The possession of the Final End makes all seeking or
searching movement impossible, but certainly not the movement
of enjoyment. On the contrary’, the Final End alone places
psychological life in the state of its fullest exercise, in the state
of perfection.
Now, wherever change occurs, there must be, by a rational
necessity, a Final End. As we know, every change tends towards
at least a relative end, towards a state of determination which
will soon belong to it. But there can be no relative end, unless
it is directed towards another, unless it is an intermediary for
attaining this other, and is finalized by this other. If there is
no end which is completely and totally end, no intermediary
end is possible, since there is no sufficient reason for intermediary
finality. Every change, then, must be directed definitively
towards and by a final end. Thus, the Final End is that which
finalizes means and intermediary ends, an end which is neither
actually nor potentially finalized by any other. In movement,
it plays the role of a first principle in demonstration, of a first
cause in productive action, and it is the sufficient reason for all
the stages of movement. *
Our problem, then, has this metaphysical sense : What is
the direction in the changes of an existing human nature? In
what does the sufficient reason of its movement consist? What
is its Final End?
• Summa Theol., I-II", I, q. 4. " In omnibus enim quae per se
habent ordinem ad invicem, oportet quod, remoto primo, removeantur
ea «piae sunt ad primum.... Id... quod est primum in ordine inten­
tionis est quasi principium movens appetitum ; unde, subtracto principio,
appetitus a nullo moveretur... ; principium autem intentionis est ultimus
finis.... Si non esset ultimus finis, nihil appeteretur, nec aliqua actio
terminaretur, nec etiam quiesceret intentio agentis. ”

WHAT IS THE FINAL END OF MAN?

483

B. The final end of man 8 is the personal possession
of a specifically human Good.
The manner of tending towards and of satisfying a tendency,
the manner of seeking and possessing, the manner of moving
and resting, must reveal to us one and the same being. We
must, therefore, find, in the way in which man desires, the
indication of the way in which he will be fulfilled.
Now man has a way of tending, of seeking, of moving
himself, which is specifically personal.
It is, then, in a personal way, that he will satisfy his tendency,
possess his good, and rest in that possession.
In what does this personality consist in human life? Is it
the simple incommunicability which belongs to every substance,
or the immanence which characterizes the living substance?
No, it is the incommunicability of rational thought and free will
and of the consciousness which conditions it. By knowing
what he desires and lacks, man seeks to possess his good through
his intelligence and will in an intimate, inalienable and conscious
possession; when he possesses it, he will then know it and will
enjoy it. This consciously realized possession of the good is
the Final End of man. Thus the possession of the Sovereign
Good is personal in each man. It is realized because of intellectual
operation and by means of free will.
Is it possible that man could possess his Good without
knowing it, and so continue to seek it? Would such a one be
in the state of a Final Good, of human perfection? Supposing
that a man knows the Good which he possesses, but he is
• The question of Final End can be presented in two senses :
1) an objective sense. What is the Good which, possessed by a
being, endows it with its supreme perfection ?
2) a subjective sense. What is the act of possession which brings
to a being its supreme good ?
In the first sense, God is the supreme end of all that exists. If we
presuppose that the problem in regard to the first sense is settled, we
will have very evident reasons for excluding from the role of man's final
end all temporal values, and all the goods eliminated by St. Thomas
in S.C.G., 1. Ill, ch. 27 to 36. However, there would still remain the
question of how God is man’s last end, and wc arrive at the second sense
of the question. In psychology, we ought to begin with man. and,
therefore, with this second sense.

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THE DESTINY OF MAN

indifferent to it, or even rejects it with hatred, could this man be
said to be in a state of beatitude? This Good which is in him,
can it truly be his Good, his End?
The Final End of a free being must be possessed through a
conscious knowledge and a consenting will, in a vision inspired
by love.
1. ÍFArtí kind of knowledge is this? (1) It can not have as
its aim the directing of action, as if action still had some
usefulness, since all its possible aims are attained in the Final
End.
It is, therefore, not pratical knowledge, but
contemplation. ’ (2) However, this is not an abstract or objective
consideration, because every abstract notion is incomplete and
must be completed in a movement of research, discourse or
judgment. Now all research ceases when the Final End is
attained. 9 Nor is this knowledge merely a subjective
consideration, for man in possession of his End knows that it is
found there, and this awareness of an intimately present Good
is a most concrete knowledge, in fact the most singular that
can exist. To be this concrete, it is necessary that the contem­
plation in which man finds his ultimate end should be linked to
1 S.C.G., 1. III. ch. 25 : “ Omnes... scientiae et artes et potentiae
practicae sunt tantum propter aliud diligibiles; nam in cis finis non est
scire sed operari"; ch. 30: "Operationum artis fines sunt artificiata;
quae non possunt esse ultimus finis humanae vitae : omnia enim propter
hominis usum fiunt. Non potest igitur in operatione artis esse ultima
felicitas. " Here we have techniques, production, the arts put in their
place. They are means whose end is man.
See Blondel. La Pensée. II, pp. 171-186, on the human function
of art : " Its very life and grandeur is to accompany man. and be, at the
same time, a diversion, a support, a joy, a sorrow, a viaticum, in man’s
ascent towards those realities which cannot be completely contained
within or possessed by any human masterpiece, but which, nevertheless,
need the vehicle of art to penetrate the human soul.... The works
of art arc. therefore, instruments of culture, knowledge, stimulation and
anticipation. " (pp. 184-185).
• The possession of the end through knowledge cannot be any type
of present knowledge, since all present knowledge is basically and
necessarily abstract. Is not the universal the proper object of our human
knowledge ? Neither the reflection on eternal principles, nor an empirical
knowledge of God, nor a science of God obtained through demonstration
can be sufficient to constitute our possession of beatitude. (S.C.G.,
HI, 37-39).

WHAT IS THE FINAL END OF MAN?

485

action, because it is the contemplation of a good, and the good
is defined by its relation to desire, to action. This is especially
true of the contemplation of a " personal good, ” whose presence
can enter the awareness of humans only by their acts, especially
by their free and moral action. Therefore, this “ contemplation
— end ” of human nature is not the cold reflection of a reality
which is outside of man. It is the perception of the good as
it has been obtained at the end of an action. To use the
expression of Hamelin, • it is “ the appreciation by the subject
himself and from the subject's point of view of a state, in which
the satisfaction of a tendency has placed him, ” and we might
add here, of all his tendencies or of his nature. It is a
contemplation which begets love in all its plenitude, a beatifying
contemplation which is primarily merited, a knowledge converted
entirely into love, a joy in knowing, the “ Gaudium de Veritate "
of St. Augustine.
2. But what is the specifically human good or object
of this beatifying contemplation? The answer is contained
in the idea of human nature, explained above.
Man is one nature. His tendencies are not simply multiple
and diverse. They form a natural hierarchy of powers which are
specifically human. By this we do not necessarily mean that
from the beginning their functioning is completely harmonized,
or that there is no possible discord among them, but rather that
there is among these powers, one which is by its nature capable of
governing the others, and which must govern them, reason.
As a matter of fact, it is capable of evaluating the relations
between actions and their objects, i.e., between particular ends
and the universal one, the Absolute Good, which creates Liberty
and shows it its duty. That which unifies human tendencies is
reason. Take away their subordination to thought, and unity
is no longer realizable in man, for thought can not be subordinate
to sensation which it infinitely surpasses. 10
* Translation of quotation taken from Hamelin’s, Essai sur les
Éléments Principaux de la Représentation, p. 477.
10 See T. Higgins, S. J., Man as Man (The Science and Art of Ethics)
(Milwaukee : Bruce. 3rd pnnting, 1950). PP- 15-16.

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THE DESTINY OF MAN

Reason perceives the unity required by the very existence
of man, but it is also aware, at the same time, of the multiple and
divergent desires in man's tendencies. Therefore, it conceives
the perfect man, which is man’s final end, to be the unity of a
whole, of a harmony, of an order. Thus, faced by tendencies
each seeking and clamoring for its own particular good, it
proclaims the profound will of every man, his moral law : Do
good; realize yourself in perfection. Yes, but what is this
Good, this beatifying and regulating order? Here a problem of
knowledge must be resolved. To know ourselves, we must know
the beings with whom we come into relation, and, in order to do
that, we must know God, the Creator of all. The problem
evoked by these relations, being completely resolved, the true
good of man will be clear to him, and the moral law of his liberty
completely known. In the present life, these problems are
illuminated by only partial lights which are often obscured by
shadows. They are the general abstract principles which reason
formulates, even though their universality is always in opposition
to the immediate experiences of sensible pleasures and of social
and spiritual activities. The complete good of man is thought
of only under its universal characteristics, it is not experienced
in the concrete. This imperfect knowledge of what is the
complete or supreme Good in the concrete makes free choice,
as well as risk, possible for man. It is the very condition of the
march towards perfection, the pursuing of the end. As long as
this imperfect knowledge endures, no end can be attained or
possessed as final. A man who would be objectively perfect,
fully virtuous, would still be a man on the way, capable of
defecting by fault. Even if he were supposed to be confirmed in
good, he would continue to experience the struggle, or at least
he would desire to see and taste that complete Good which is
present, but is not experienced and is as if absent. In short,
the Truth, which today is divined by reason’s unveiling the moral
unity of man’s tendencies only in abstract principles, must be
clearly manifested in a concrete experience. This must be
done in order to confer upon this unified order which we suppose
now realized, on this Law which we now suppose fulfilled, the
conscious characteristics of a Supreme, Complete and Absolute

WHAT IS THE FINAL END OF MAN?

487

Good, so that the wise and virtuous man may be given the
personal possession of his End.
Thus the general and last end of man is possible only in
the order achieved by reason in differing tendencies. This final
end could not be realized except in a knowledge of this harmony,
as it has organized man completely. A partial knowledge of
this order would not suffice. It would leave the intelligence in
quest of a completion. It is complete truth which the mind
seeks, and of which it has need, so that it can savor its Good,
since it aspires to knowing all, and since man knows himself
only in relation with all of being. This must be a truth without
gaps of ignorance, unmixed with error, without the obscurities
and uncertainties of doubt or of opinion — the unlimited,
unadulterated, and certain truth.
However, we must here qualify our conclusion. The
breadth of human intelligence is not equal to that of God, nor
to that of a pure spirit. We arrive at all being only by beginning
with limited beings, which are the data of our external and
internal experience. It is only these data which we understand
positively, and them alone. We know higher Wings by negation
and analogy, without understanding them. Therefore it is not
truth absolutely understood which our nature desires as its
Final End. It is the truth and all of the truth attainable by
the natural light of our reason. This light is of a higher order
in the separated soul, but, in any case, nature can never have
in itself the capability of the vision of the divine essence. Never
will created reason have God Himself as its proportionate object."
11 St. Thomas seems to place in man a natural demand for the vision
of God. According to him. the beatitude of man can be realized only
in a vision of the Divine Essence, because man, when faced by an effect,
wishes to penetrate deeply into the cause of it and his intelligence always
seeks to know the essence of its object. “ Ad perfectam igitur beatitudinem requiritur quod intellectus pertingat ad ipsam essentiam primae
causae. ” {Summa Thcol., I-II®, q. 3, a. 8). One can find the same
line of reasoning in regard to pure spirits. S.C.G., Ill, ch. 50 :
“Desiderium... praedictum (i.e. intelligendac veritatis) non quiescit,
nisi ad summum rerum cardinem et factorem pervenerit. ” The other
types of knowledge only excite the desire that much more " ad divinam
substantiam videndam. "
However, although this desire to sec the Divine Essence may be
natural for every intelligence, its realization is not within the power of
N.Y. 17. — 33

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THE DESTINY OF MAN

3. NOW THE COMPLETE NATURAL TRUTH, whose possession
constitutes the natural beatitude of man, is the knowledge
of himself, as he is in himself and in relation to all
the real, as well as the knowledge of those beings of experience
as they are derived from their First Cause, the Divine Love
who has freely made them exist. This knowledge is of a
metaphysical kind. Metaphysics then is simply the appren­
ticeship of our destiny.
As a matter of fact, experimental science, if it
satisfies certain rational tendencies, is, by its method, a perpetual
movement of going back from the conditioned to a conditioned
condition. Therefore, scientific knowledge can not be the end
of man. To maintain the contrary, as scientism does, would
be “ to foster the illusion which confuses the race with its end,
and to place our final end in action ” (E. Gilson, St. Thomas
Aquinas), because this science is, above all, an action which
reconstructs things, a “ work ” of reason, mathematical
science is likewise a " rational action " in its demonstrations.
any created substance {S.C.G., III, ch. 52); it is a completely gratuitous
gift from God.
How can we reconcile these two theses? How can a desire be natural
and at the same time unrealizable by any natural powers? Would it not
be like matter disposed to the reception of a human soul and not being
able to produce it, like a separated soul summoning its body to live
again and not being able to resurrect it? No, because this desire would
then be a veritable exigency for the intuitive vision, and it would then,
although produced by God, be the object of a right for every intelligence.
This would be equivalent to denying the existence of the supernatural
by denying that which is proper to it. On this problem, read Dictionnaire
de Théologie Catholique, art. by A. Michel : “ Intuitive (Vision). ”
cols. 2356-2359: R. Garrigou-Lagrange, De Revelatione. 2nd cd..
PP- 37<>-398By this " natural desire of intelligence, ’’ St. Thomas means, at least,
the unlimited scope of the object of the intellect, which excludes
absolutely nothing, and consequently the disposition of intelligence
to a completely supernatural illumination which shows it the very essence
of God. This is what is called, in short, "obediential potency” to the
intuitive Vision of God. See J. Maritain. Approaches to God (New York :
Harper. 1954). PP- 109-114, who sees nothing more here than the desire
to see God.
Could reason alone recognize in this desire its possibility? It could
think of it as an hypothesis, but reason would much more easily find
this hypothesis unlikely, because it is not built on any sound foundation.
See Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, art. " Désir, ” cols. 932-940.

WHAT IS THE FINAL END OF MAN?

489

This is also true of its axiomatic beginnings whose definitions
give rise to the mathematical object. Yet it is undoubtedly
contemplative in its terminal conclusions, which perhaps may
excuse the Platonizing tendency of Brunschvicg who sees in
mathematics the highest ideal of the human mind. Nevertheless,
mathematics contemplates only an abstract and purely possible
object, which remains largely indifferent to the immediacies and
exigencies of human life, since it is far from furnishing man with
any information about his first mover or last end.
Neither experimental science nor mathematics is capable of
furnishing us with a vital, i.e., a moral truth, because they
consider only fragments of the universe of beings and, therefore,
they have nothing to say about an absolute Good. Now, in
order that reason unify all human tendencies, it must put them
in an order of relation to their Supreme End, the Absolute Good.
This Absolute Good must be known as a concrete reality. The
discovery of this Good is the proper task of metaphysics, which
is only reason pursuing to the very end its own exigencies.
When reason has grasped God, it has grasped that which is the
First Being, the First Good, the Absolute Good. 12
Then it knows that the rational good is not a phantom,
but Being itself, that the moral law is not an illusion, but the
perfect adaptation of human liberty to the divine liberty, which
alone constitutes the vivifying union between God and man.
Because the mind knows this, it has the certitude that all the
tendencies, even those which chafe at the moral law, will find
their fulfillment in the perfect triumph of the Good over them.
Thus, through metaphysical knowledge, man attaches his
desire, his action, his movement, to his Final End. When the
movement is accomplished, he will possess this Final End. This
could not come to pass unless he would know what he aspires to
know. His end, then, is the perfect affective and contemplative
“ Let it be well understood, that it is not man’s mode of meta­
physical research which constitutes terminal knowledge. Conceptual
thought is only the organ for coming to the light, as a chrysalid cocoon
is for the cicada. " Never again will this Hying and chirping creature
return to this envelope to renew its vital force or protect its wings. ”
(M. Blondhl, La Pensée, II, pp. 439-440).

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THE DESTINY OF MAN

knowledge of God, the First Cause of human becoming. This
particular knowledge of human becoming carries with it a
knowledge of cosmic becoming with which it is closely linked.
Briefly, then, man’s final end is a knowledge of God, as the
Provident Creator of man and the world.
C. THE immortality of man would seem to be the natural
consequence of his destiny, because this destiny is not of the
temporal order. On the one hand, the intellectual knowledge
which constitutes it is essentially independent of extension, and
therefore of the succession of time. On the other hand, the
object of this contemplation is not changing and ephemeral. It is
the eternal and immutable God. What reason could there be
for man ever ceasing to exist?
The fact of death, however, is indisputable. But this fact
is an enigma for reason, as well as a great distress to sensibility.
1.

The mystery of death is multiple.

a. Its possibility and its cosmological necessity are evident
to him who knows that man is a composite substance, a temporal
being incorporated into the world, engendered and destroyed
according to the most universal cosmic law, that of change.
Prime matter, which lies at the base of his substance, is
capable of very many other specific perfections. It even aspires
to them, if we consider it concretely at the core of the nature
which surrounds it and influences it. The death of man is a
simple event of nature, a single moment of universal time. Will
man ever come to the day when he can dominate the universe
which involves him in death? Will he be able, then, to cure his
mortality by some " oft-dreamed of ” alchemy? Reason docs
not force us to the conclusion that this is impossible. That
which can die, can also not die. Take away the causes of death
and death need not happen. However, this hypothesis is
without a scientific basis. Science supposes man to be mortal
by nature, yet this hypothesis supposes that it is possible that
he would never die. The grafting of endocrine glands to
avoid the aging of organs, which might have given some hope
of realizing rejuvenation, had to be abandoned.

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH

491

The fact of not dying, however, would not be a solution,
since the natural possibility of dying would remain, and this
would always have to be reconciled with the eternal natural end
of man. The problem would still exist in regard to those who
arc dead ; how are they able, nevertheless, to realize their destiny?
b. Ontological enigma. On the one hand, if we look at
man as another being-in-thc-world, his death seems so utterly
natural, that it ought to be intelligible, that it ought to have its
finality and make its contribution to the greatest good of nature
and of man himself.
On the other hand, if we look at man transcending nature by
his completely spiritual life, how can we consent to the judgment
that he should die, and be reduced by his death to the dimensions
of a material being?
“ The intellectual act is indifferent to time. That which is
true is characterized by universality and timelessness, therefore,
the mind which thinks belongs to a world which is higher than
the one of simple duration, of becoming, of gradual loss.
Consequently, between the life of thought and the disappearance
of a thinking being, there is a kind of incompatibility. Hence
the scandal to reason, the instinctive revolt of our consciousness,
the strange facility with which we, who are certain of our
impending mortality, look upon it willingly as something
hypothetical, unreal, uncertain and strange to our concrete
preoccupations.
" If it is true that the best is the strongest, we must here
say : Major pars trahit ad se minorem. Now, does not our
intellectual timelessness lift up with it and carry within it
our material infirmity? How is this possible? 11

c. Death appears to the existentialism of J.P. Sartre as
being a psychological absurdity. *1164 Here, he is not in accord
” This entire paragraph is taken from the section of M. Blondel’s.
La Pensée, wherein he treats of the metaphysics of death, p. 245.
14 Ibid., p. 246.
*» J. P. Sartre, Being and Nothingness (New York : Philosophical
Library, 1956), pp. 531-548. The numbers preceded by the initials B.Ñ.
refer to this work.

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THE DESTINY OF MAN

with Heidegger for whom man is a “ being-for-death, ” who, in
accepting resolutely this absurd destiny, must await death
stoically and freely make it his. 10
Sartre, on the contrary, sees death from any aspect as
being inhuman. For man’s consciousness it can neither be a
means nor an end.
It seems to be an end. " Death is a human phenomenon;
it is the final phenomenon of life, and the act of dying remains
life. As such it influences the entire life by a counter-current;
life is limited by life.... Death becomes the meaning of life, as
the resolved chord is the meaning of the melody.... But this
healing of death becomes mine... it is the phenomenon of my
personal life which makes this life a unique life, that is, a life
which does not begin again, a life in which one never again finds
his stroke. Hence, I become responsible for my death as for
my life ” (B.N., p. 532).
But no : death is not an end that I can conceive, choose and
await : “ the unique quality of death is that it can always
suddenly surprise those who wait for it at such and such a
date (B.N., p. 536).... By determining it for me, chance
removes from it any character as an harmonious end
(B.N., p. 537). Thus, “ death is not my possibility of no
longer realizing a presence in the world, but rather an always
possible nihilation of my possibles, which is beyond my
possibilities ” (B.N., p. 537), i.e., outside the field of my liberty,
outside my personal ends.
Would death at least be a means, an awaited signal of
the future? In this it could have meaning. It would be under­
standable by that characteristic which is the very same as life
itself, for “ our life is only a long waiting : first a waiting for
the realization of our ends (to be engaged in an undertaking is to
wait for its outcome), and especially a waiting for ourselves
(even if this undertaking is realized... it remains for me to
determine the place, the meaning and the value of this very
enterprise in my life).... To be one's self is to come to one’s
*• See Christianity and the Existentialists, ed. by Carl Michalson
(New York : Scribner, 1956), pp. 102-115.

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH

493

self. These waitings evidently all include a reference to a final
terin which would be waited for without waiting for anything
more. A repose which would be being and no longer a waiting
for being.... By means of this final term... we should know
forever whether a particular youthful experience had been
fruitful or disastrous..., the curve of our life would be fixed
forever. In short, the account would be closed ’’ (B.N.,
pp. 537-538). One would be, finally, what one has been. Death
would thus be the means of unveiling that which I am, and
would confer its definitive meaning on my whole life.
But no. In order that death terminate my life, it must
happen with the consent of my liberty : for “ if one minute more
or less may perhaps change everything, and if this minute is
added to or removed from my account, then even admitting
that I am free to use my life, the meaning of my life escapes me.
Now the Christian death comes from God. He chooses our
hour... the minute of my death is not fixed by me — the
sequences of the universe determine it.... Since death does
not appear to be based on our liberty, it can only remove all
meaning from life ” (B.N., pp. 538-539). Hence, its absurdity.

Would we be able to restore liberty in the phenomenon of
death by suicide? This is impossible : " Since it (suicide) is an
act of my life, it actually requires a meaning which only the
future can give to it, but as it is the last act of my life, it is
denied this future. Thus it remains totally undetermined....
Suicide is an absurdity which causes my life to be submerged in
the absurd ” (B.N., p. 540).
worse still.
Death not only deprives me of my
personality, it delivers me to others. It is the Other who keeps
my life dead, who reconstitutes it or forgets it, who confers an
importance on it and modifies it by memory and appreciation.
“ To be dead is to be a prey to the living.... To die is to be
condemned... to existing only through the Other, and to owing
one’s meaning to him ” (B.N., p. 544).
“ Thus... far from being my proper possibility, death is a
contingent fact which, as such, escapes me by principle (B.N.,
p. 545).... There is no place for death in being-for-itsclf; it

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THE DESTINY OF MAN

can neither wait for death, nor realize it, nor project itself
towards it.... What then is death? ... nothing other than
the given. It is absurd that we should be born, it is absurd that
we should die.... We always die in the bargain” (B.N.,
pp. 547-548).

All this can be summed up as follows : dying does not
concern me, since death does not enter into the projects of my
liberty. As long as death is there, I no longer am. This position
which was that of Epicurus contains this acknowledgement
that death goes beyond the experience of man. It could not
be accepted as a sufficient explanation, if the only access to
reality is experience. Sartre assures us of his position : " These
remarks... are not derived from the consideration of death
but, on the contrary, from the consideration of life; this is because
the for-itself is the being which always lays claim to an after,
and there is no place for death in a being which is for-itself ”
(B.N., p. 540). One can not dismiss the absurdity of death by
enclosing himself in a pure description of temporal life, and by
demanding the perpetuation of its before-after rhythm. He
must, on the contrary, rely on the eternal which is already
germinally present in living man.

We agree that death could not, in any case, be the final end
of man. This would be a radical absurdity. But is there any
reason that death could not have the reserved meaning of a
partial unveiling of the life beyond? Could it not be looked at
as a means of stabilizing a being who, up till now, has been
groping? Thus, it would contribute to giving the present life a
more precise meaning, a more determined and more urgent
responsibility for the self, without leaving all definitive value to
self, without attempting to draw values from the fact or the
hour of death, but from the nature of life itself. The idea of my
death remains vague. It is insufficient to indicate to me what
my destiny will be, nor is it precise enough to reveal to me
whether or not I shall definitely realize or lose my happiness.
It is for me the forceful reminder of the urgency' of a good life,
since dying well is the final act of a good life, and living well
will lead me to dying well.

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH

495

d. A life beyond death is, therefore, indispensable for
taking away the seeming absurdity of death, and for solving the
enigma it contains. If we do not put out the light of reason, we
must affirm that man, in dying, passes to another form of life,
where he is no longer man-in-the-world, object of temporal and
spatial experience, but where he is still the same subject,
conscious of his personal identity. Moreover, this is the almost
unanimous conviction of religions, which is expressed in burial
rites and in the cult of the dead, whether by traditions,
imaginative myths or precise dogmas.
How can we conceive the possibility of a life beyond this
one?
2.

The meaning of death

a. Death is necessary for the completion of man.
It is incontestable that the present mode of our spiritual
life must cease in order that we possess beatitude. Our present
manner of thinking and willing is actually and essentially an
advance towards a term. It must cease when we reach that
term. As it is now, it foretells and prepares, but by the same
token excludes the state of beatitude.
The proof of this is the central truth of psychology. I know
myself, the world, others, and God, only through the medium of
universal and essentially incomplete ideas. This constitutes a
spiritual apéritif, but not a substantial meal.
Man must, then, be destroyed and rebuilt to enter into his
beatitude. If it is not by death, it must be in some equivalent
way.
" Can we not say that the worst possible fate for a man
would be to be condemned to live indefinitely in the insecurity
and in the physical and moral miseries of this world, where
nothing is terminated except in expectations which deceive us,
which are constantly being rolled up and are constantly falling
down again like the rock of Sisyphus, where we find no single
prevision realized, nor any single end completely attained? ” 17
” La PcHsJe of M. Blondel, II, pp. 233-240.

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THE DESTINY OF MAN

Let us consider these two hypotheses : (1) man continuing to
live on this terrestrial planet without ever dying; (2) man
ceasing to live on this terrestrial planet, either by death or by
some equivalent transformation. The first hypothesis is
absurdity itself, for it implies an advance which never gets
anywhere, a search, forever illusory, for an always awaited
happiness, a mirage which arises again and again without end,
a thirst which nothing can slake, in a word, a man condemned
to be only an embryo and never an adult — a pure abortion.
Death, therefore, must mean, in opposition to corporeal
life, the access to another form of personal life.
b. The human soul is, actually, not destroyed by the death
of man.
Immortal by nature, it survives the ruin of the hylomorphic
composite. It acquires a new manner of knowing itself, which
manifests its proper essence, its value as person, and its concrete
relation with God. Through this new mode of knowledge it
possesses its good, in the measure it has chosen so to do. The
soul is stabilized at this level of being, and, knowing it, it knows
itself at rest, in its term.
Nevertheless, it knows itself as being still partially
unsatisfied, since it knows itself as a substantial form of matter,
and, therefore, the soul demands that it take up again its function
of form, but in a renovated body, reconstructed according to
the order of perfection, completely penetrated with the radiance
of the perfect soul with which it is now united. These are the
principal points which remain to be explained and justified.
D. The immortality of the soul, which is the foundation of
this solution, evidently can not be justified by direct experience.
Communication with the “ spirits ” of the dead up until now
has not obtained scientific verification. “There is room to
wonder whether we have here a nascent science, or rather the
embryo of a science which is dissolving. ” 18
Must wc then postulate an affirmation incapable of
verification? No, but we must build a rigorous metaphysical
*• Le Merveilleux Spirite of L. Roure, p. 344.

THE SOUL IS IMMORTAL

497

proposition on the solid basis of experience. This foundation
has been verified by our study of the spirituality of man.

1. The human soul is immortal by nature, because it is
spiritual.
Death is realized in two ways, in the living thing and in its
constitutive principles. In the living thing, it is the rupture of
the substantial unity of prime matter and the soul, which ends
the existence of the composite. /Is to the principles, prime matter
dies in the sense that it ceases to be able to exercise the vital
operations, but it continues to exist under a new form. The soul
dies in this sense that it ceases to exist when it loses the operative
power which it held in conjunction with the prime matter
which it determined. Souls which are not human die in that
manner, because of the nature which is proper to them, when
the living thing which they animate dies.
The human soul, on the contrary, can not die, because it
has a proper existence. It subsists by itself. Man himself dies by
the withdrawal of this existence which was communicated by his
soul to his prime matter. But this existence is preserved, since
it does not essentially depend on matter. w
It may be objected that the soul can not continue to exist
without continuing to act, and, since matter is indispensable to
its operations, even the spiritual ones, the soul, after death,
ceases to exist.
Certainly the survival of the soul supposes the permanence
of its operations. There can be no doubt, moreover, that
organic and sensible operations arc impossible for the soul after
death. However, spiritual operations are possible because their
dependence on matter is purely extrinsic. The soul had need of
sensations in order that intelligence might put itself in act, in
order that it might grasp the intelligible, in order that it might
become aware of its existence and spiritual nature. Now,
however, the soul knows in act its proper object, the universal,
and its most immediate concrete and immaterial object, i.e., its
own spiritual life and nature. Sensation can disappear, but the
»• S.C.G., 1. II, ch. 80-81.

498

THE DESTINY OF MAN

soul keeps its spiritual acquisitions. Moreover, it is natural for
the separated soul to think in a completely new way, which
corresponds to its new manner of existence, “ and this
consideration is more than an answer to the objection posed,
since it clarifies the problem of the why of death.
As long as the soul existed as form, its intellectual operation
would have a vital reference to sensation. Now that it exists as a
“ separated ” substance, it must find in itself the proper object of
its thought, since, being pure spirituality, it is intelligible in act.
It knows itself in its very essence. There is nothing opposed to
this, for that which, at the time of its union with the body,
made it unknowable in itself and obliged it to know itself through
its acts, was prime matter, which was the source of its potenti­
ality and indetermination. Its acts were therefore necessary' in
order to determine itself, in order to present itself with something
of itself to know. Now the soul is only itself : act, and therefore
knowable; intellectual act, and therefore knowing. It knows
itself, and as this knowledge is direct and intuitive in the fullest
sense of the word, the soul knows itself to its very depths.... This
is the first sendee which death renders it.
The soul knows itself by its own nature, and as it remembers
itself, it also recognizes itself as being identical with its past.
Therefore, it sees all its lived time in a simple act by which it
does not cease contemplating itself — this might be considered
analogous to a present psychological moment, when one sees
his whole life pass by. Its appreciation of itself is as perfect as
possible. Thus, the soul judges its degree of life, which either
fills it with joy or sadness. Moral sanction operates fully and
with perfect justice, because of the complete truth of this
judgment. This is the second service which death renders to
the soul.
10 On the mode of knowledge proper to separated souls, see Summa
Theol., 1» pars, q. 89; S.C.G., I. II, ch. 96 to 90 and 1. Ill, ch. 49. God
is not known in His essence, but as He is the cause of the soul. However,
this knowledge is in no way a reasoning from the nature of the soul to its
creative cause, but rather” an intuitive grasp of the essence of the soul,
penetrated to its depths by the action which created it. a little like a
mirror endowed with consciousness which knows the characteristics of
the face it reflects.

THE SOUL IS IMMORTAL

499

Finally, the soul, knowing itself perfectly, grasps within
itself all the links which bind it to its Creator, to its Spiritual
Guide. This is not an abstract grasp, but a concrete one. It is
an experiencing of an individual relation between its being and
the creative and regulating action which produces it and rules it.
Furthermore, the soul grasps, through a form of analogy very
much superior to our own, how all corporeal nature is only an
effect, manifesting the Thought and Will of God. In this
knowledge the soul finds its ultimate end. It remains eternally
fixed in this knowledge, and since this knowledge is natural
to it, it can never be lost. This is the third service which death
renders to the soul. This new manner of knowledge, which
belongs to the separated soul, gives it a concrete knowledge of God,
as -perfect as is possible in a created nature.
Therefore, at the time of man’s death, there is no reason
for the human soul to die, and this death seems very useful for
the possession of its end.

2. The human soul naturally requires that it survive forever.
The survival which is proper to it is not a simple respite, it is a
life pure and simple, a life without any possible death, and in
this sense an “ eternal ” life. As a matter of fact :
a. Its natural end, truth, perfection, happiness, is of
itself, i.c., by reason of its object, eternal. It would be a contra­
diction if a being were not in proportion to its final end. The
perpetuity of the object corresponds then with the perpetuity
of the soul’s contemplation of the object. A soul destined to
contemplate Eternal Truth must exist always. 21

b. The natural desire to live forever furnishes us with a
proof, having a different aspect from the one we have just
« S.C.G., II, ch. 84. Could we not just as logically draw from this
principle the eternal existence of the soul, an existence which is previous
to its union with the body? St. Thomas answers : " Ex fine argumentum
accipere possumus de rci duration©, sicut et de initio rei argumentari
possumus per causam agentem. ” The destiny of a b ing actually
supposes that the being already exists. It does not allow s to reason
on its arrival in existence. On the contrary, it reveals only an aspect
of its duration which is to come.

500

THE DESTINY OF MAN

developed, but basically identical with it. It is one which is
quite difficult to be presented convincingly.
In the Sumina Contra Gentiles wc find it given in this form :
“ It is impossible that a natural appetite should be in vain. But
man has a natural desire to exist always, which is clear in this,
that being is what is desired by all living things. Man, however,
by his intellect apprehends being, not only as a ' now ’ as
brutes do, but he apprehends it simply. Therefore it follows
that man, who by his soul apprehends being simply with no
reference to any particular time, has perpetuity through this
same power. ” “
The fact shows us a specifically human property, which
therefore indicates the nature, the finality of the human soul.
Man is the only being whose nature expresses simultaneously
both the necessity of dying and the desire of never dying. To be
aware of this desire, it is necessary both to experience time in its
proper duration, and to think of time; in order to oppose a future
different from the present, or life to the absence of life, there
must be an intelligence. However, it must be an intelligence
linked to time, thinking in time and having a relation to spatial
movements which are measured by time, in short, an intelligence
in the world, a human intelligence. Does a pure spirit think of
time? Yes, but a pure spirit docs not think of it as measuring
its own life. On the contrary, he who desires to survive the
flow of time desires to survive that moment of time which is
death.
Moreover, this desire concerns a life which is held
individually and consciously, i.e., personally. There would be
no satisfaction for this desire, if the soul were absorbed into the
God of the pantheists, any more than if its permanence were
only in the memories of men, or in the progress of humanity,
where Renan claimed to find true immortality.
Nevertheless, a doubt arises in our minds. Does a suicide
have the desire to live forever. Seemingly not, and consequently
the desire of which we speak does not seem to be universal.
» S.C.G., 1. II, ch. 79.

THE SOUL IS IMMORTAL

501

How, then, can wc dare assert that this desire is natural? The
doubt can be taken care of easily. There are natural desires,,
which man can contradict by voluntary desires. This is the very
warp and woof of the moral life, in which free decisions are
identified with or opposed to the natural law. Natural desire
is truly manifested in man only through acquiescence to his
being, his good, and his end. If the moral conscience
energetically reproves suicide, we have here a new indication
that nature wishes life purely and simply for man.
Now, does the fact that man by nature desires an eternal
personal life, reveal anything to us about the reality of such a life?

The principle of finality demands an affirmative answer to
this question. A natural tendency can not be in vain. a As
a matter of fact, the nature of a being is made up of the whole
of its real possibilities. Every natural tendency is, therefore,,
capable of being fulfilled.
Since the desire of living forever expresses the very nature
of man, it must be because an endless life is really possible to
him. Now, if the soul ceased to exist, nothing that is personal
or individualized in man would subsist, for the matter of the
body falls back through death into the common and undiffer­
entiated patrimony of the universe. Thus, the human soul must
not only survive the dissolution of death, but it must survive
forever.
Summarily, in the instinctive desire for life, happiness and
perpetuity, which colors so many of our efforts at knowing and
loving, we experience the character of the soul. It is thischaracter
of the soul which we also experience in the disillusion that comes
with every satisfaction which passes away. In this sense we
experience ourselves as eternal. Tn the above, there is no
finality, no purposiveness to these experiences, unless there is a
final end orienting intermediary ends. Man feels that he is made
to exist forever in experiencing the flight of his thought and will,
which nothing finite can satisfy, because he knows himself to be
made for eternity.
See S.C.G., 1. IT, ch. 55 and 79; I. Ill, ch. 48.

502

THE DESTINY OF MAN

3. The soul will never cease to exist. This assertion would
seem to be superfluous, since the nature of the soul is to live
forever. If we recall that the soul is not sufficient of itself to
exist, but has its being from a Creative Cause, God, the statement
is not so superfluous as it seems. Since God has created it freely,
can He not as freely annihilate it by a mere cessation of His
creative love?
If we consider the creative power of God, abstracting from
His other divine attributes (" de potentia Dei absoluta
and if
we consider the wholly created and contingent existence of the
soul, abstracting from its immortal nature and its acquired
merits, the annihilation of the soul does not seem to be a contra­
diction. If, however, we consider God such as He is in all His
attributes which are really identical to His Power {" de potentia
Dei ordinata ”), and if we consider the soul as it is in itself, the
annihilation of the soul would be a completely monstrous event.
Thus the hypothesis of annihilation is impossible.
a. ON the part of god, because His real Will, His
free choice, is manifested in the natures which He has created, in
their natural destination. He has willed mortal natures to be
mortal, and immortal ones to be immortal. Therefore, He wills
that the human soul should never perish, since He has made it
naturally imperishable and capable of existing eternally.
To pretend the contrary would be to suppose that God is
not wise, not having foreseen that which would result from His
action, and desiring now to change it; or that He is not almighty,
since He is obliged to create an immortal soul which He wished
to be mortal ; or He is not good, for He gives only to take back.
b. on the part of the soul, because moral sanction
would not be possible, and God would lack justice if
survival did not exist or would be limited by annihilation of the
soul. As a matter of fact, if there were no survival after death,
there could be no other sanctions than terrestrial ones. Now,
these obviously are not in proportion to moral merits. Without
survival in eternity, there would not be a just nor perfect sanction
for human and moral activity. Moral activity is intrinsically
concerned with an eternal value, that of its agreement or

THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY

503

disagreement with an absolute and immutable Good and final end.
All merit and demerit in the moral order exact in justice an
eternal joy or an eternal pain. Therefore, the soul must continue
to exist forever in order that Divine Justice be fulfilled.
The annihilation of the soul is, therefore, an impossible
event. But this would be the only way in which the soul could
cease to exist, for the soul has its existence from God alone. No
created cause can destroy it, as no created cause can construct it.
The soul, being spiritual, can neither be produced nor
decomposed. Created causes are limited to transforming and
rebuilding by their destructive action.
A free gift of God, the life of the soul is an everlasting gift.
However, the problem posed by death is not entirely
resolved. Man has not possessed his end before death, and
though the soul be immortal, the end of man must be the end of a
human nature.

E. The resurrection of the body of each human being
must be asserted as the solution to this last problem. Without
this condition, nature would be frustrated in its end, it would be
a tendency without direction, a movement without any rational
basis.

Actually :
1. This final end which exacts perpetuity is not that
of the soul alone, but that of man. u Undoubtedly, that end is
realized essentially in the soul in purely spiritual knowledge,
but it is not realized there integrally, i.e., in the satisfaction of
all human powers.
Now integrity is required in the possession of the final
end, for to possess it incompletely is not to possess a truly
final end.
11 See S.C.G.. 1. IV, ch. 79 to 82. ** Cuicumquc... deest aliquid
ad perfectionem, nondum habet felicitatem perfectam, quia nondum
ejus desiderium totaliter quietatur.... Anima autem a corpore separata
est aliquo modo imperfecta, sicut omnis pars extra suum totum existons
(anima enim naturaliter est pars humanae naturae). Non igitur homo
potest ultimam felicitatem consequi, nisi anima iterato corpori conjun­
gatur '• (IV, 79).
N.Y. 17. — 34

504

THE DESTINY OF MAN

The soul, then, must be reunited to its prime matter to
reconstitute an eternal man, in order that human nature arrive
at its final end.
THE SOUL ITSELF demands this reincorporation, 24*
because every nature demands that which is required to exercise
all its powers.
Now a union of the soul with the body is required, so that
the soul can exercise all its powers. Separated, it is an incomplete
nature which craves its natural completion.
The union of the soul with the body is, therefore, a natural
exigency of the soul. Because the soul is naturally substantial
form, it demands the exercise of its definitive life as substantial
form.
3. the natural moral order leads us to the necessity
of resurrection, for the subject of sanction is naturally
the very subject of merit.28
Now the subject of moral merit is not the soul alone, but
man. It is the whole man who makes a free decision, and, even
though the soul plays a preponderant role in deliberation and
choice, yet the organism with its tendencies and operations is
also the hidden artisan of such deliberation and choice, and the
consequent agent of its execution.
Naturally, then, it must be man and not the soul alone, who
enjoys or suffers as a consequence of his free acts.
Because man is only one person, one single responsibility, he
will be restored for either everlasting joy or everlasting sorrow.
a. What will be the cause of the body’s resurrection?
St. Thomas thinks that nature cannot be the cause, but that it
“"Anima corpori naturaliter unitur; est enim secundum suam
essentiam corporis forma; est igitur contra naturam animae absque
corpore esse. Nihil autem quod est contra naturam potest esse perpe­
tuum; non igitur perpetuo erit anima absque corpore ” (ibid.).
*•" In hac vita, homines, ex anima et corpore compositi, peccant
vel recte agunt. Debetur igitur hominibus, et secundum animam et
secundum corpus, praemium vel poena.... In hac vita (autem) praemium
ultimae felicitatis consequi non possunt...; multoties etiam peccata in
hac vita non puniuntur.... Necessarium igitur est ponere iteratam
animae ad corpus conjunctionem, ut homo in corpore et anima praemiari
et puniri possit ” (ibid.).

THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY

505

must be God, considered as the author of miracles.87 Who
knows, however, whether or not God has given the soul the power
to reanimate its own body in certain conditions?
Here we can not appeal to experience. All that can be
offered is completely negative. Nothing we know of nature
shows it capable of reviving the dead. However, we can not
dispel all likelihood from the hypothesis of a spontaneous
generation of life. Again, the human soul, in its state of union
with matter, had the power of vitalizing and humanizing inert
nutriments — through nutrition and differentiation. Can we
not imagine, in the Providential plan, a moment of maturation
for beings who would produce, by their own combined effort, the
resurrection of humanity? The material universe actively
aspires to its own end, and it will not realize it fully, except in
resuscitated humanity. As to the universe of separated souls,
each and all of them aspire to their completely realized end,
their reincarnation.
b. Will the state of resurrected man be identical with that
of his earthly state? Undoubtedly not. 18
1) It will be that of a being in possession of his end, arrived
at the end of his voyage, no longer that of a destitute being or
a traveler in search of his good. As man, body and soul, he
will possess immortality, and thus be incapable of ever dying.
The metempsychosis *• professed by the Pythagoreans, by
Plato, by Buddhism and some modern theosophists, sees in death
only an event without any profound importance, which does
not touch the substance of man. Its basic error lies in its
supposition that man is defined by his soul alone, which travels
from body to body. Is there anything astonishing about its
refusal to accept man’s being placed in a final state by reason of
death?80*
**
” Summa Theol., Supp., q. 75, a. 3.
•» See S.C.G.. 1. IV, ch. 83 to 85.
** See Maquart, Elementa Philosophiae, II, pp. 509-511.
E. J. Thomas. The History of Buddhist Thought (London :
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959), pp. 92-106; 119-132.

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THE DESTINY OF MAN

Why, no, the human soul is substantial form. Having
arrived at its term by death, it is completed in this term by the
resurrection of the body. The hypothesis of a further possible
death would be absurd. A body, resurrected for the purpose of
completing the perfection of the soul, must be henceforth
incorruptible.
2) Resurrected man will evidently possess all the
specifically human functions, corporeal as well as spiritual, but
he will have the exercise of them only in the degree in which
this exercise will be compatible with the state of end. Thus,
there will be no need to use the functions of nutrition, of differ­
entiation and of generation, which concern the construction and
repairing of the body and the multiplication of the species.
On the other hand, sensations and images will reconstitute man
as a microcosm, summing up the world, and these will furnish
the matter for his ideas. Let us be careful, however, not to
attribute to resurrected man the discursive or reasoning process
which now operates in his intellectual function. From the time
of death, a higher light illumines the soul, a light which springs
from its very essence. This light penetrates the images and
makes them understood intuitively, in the same way that an
intuition of genius gives a common event a meaning, a value, a
savor, or, inversely, as a perverted will discovers, in an indifferent
word or gesture, a malice which reflects itself. Moreover, the
soul possesses this light constantly in relation to all its sensations
and all its images. Everything is clearly intelligible through
this light which is constantly shed on sensations and images.
To sum up : beatifying knowledge will be communicated in
some way to the whole material organism, and, in this sense,
the latter will be spiritualized. It is precisely towards this end
that earthly man tends, if he knows how to evaluate and satisfy
his own conscience, by dominating his passions and resisting
temptations.

c. The individuality of the resurrected body ought to be the
same as that of the earthly body. It would be impossible to
blend in one same substance a soul whose individual existence
remained the same and a body which would have some other

THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY

507

individuality. As a matter of fact, matter and form have one and
the same existence in a substance.
Yet how can a sonl be restored to a body which is exactly
the one it had before death?
Some of the difficulties which arise here are : (1) the thorough
decomposition of cadavers; (2) the ashes of remains scattered to
the four winds; (3) the replacing in cosmic, biological, and...
human circulation, of that which was this man; (4) and even
worse, cannibalism, which gives the same material elements
as a body to a number of individuals. There are so many
difficulties here which appear insurmountable, that they seem to
make the idea of resurrection ridiculous. How can each soul be
reunited to its own proper body?
Moreover, man's material organism is completely renewed
many times in the course of his life. Now precisely what
renewal among these is to be united to his soul? Are we going to
say that all matter will, on one day or an other, be vivified by a
soul? What an extra vagent volume that would be ! Only a
part of that matter? What part then?
The more problems are multiplied by the imagination
concerning the resurrection of the body, the more we must be
convinced that the solution of these problems is beyond the
reach of imagination. This problem can be answered only in
the highest reaches of metaphysics.
Individuality 31 is known in two ways : (1) it is fdi and
imagined. Thus, there is the individuality of a contour, of
S.C.G., IV, Si, 2nd obj. " Corporeitas... dupliciter accipi potest.
Uno modo secundum quod est forma substantialis corporis.... Oportet
igitur quod corporeitas, prout est forma substantialis in homine, non
sit aliud quam anima rationalis, quae in sua materia hoc requirit quod
habeat tres dimensiones : est enim actus corporis alicujus. Alio modo
accipitur corporcitas prout est forma accidentalis, secundum quam dicitur
corpus esse in genere quantitatis.... Etsi igitur haec corporeitas in
nihilum cedit, corpore humano corrupto, tamen impediri non potest quin
idem numero resurgat, eo quod corporeitas primo modo dicta non in
nihilum cedit, sed camdem manet. ’’
This answer seems very much more acceptable than the ones which
St. Thomas adds to it, wherein he accepts the viewpoint of the objector
and attempts to find again, in the immense universe, at least one material
particle which belonged to a single human being.
We cannot see the

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THE DESTINY OF MAN

a local and temporal situation. It is “ this thing here at this
moment, ” which is an accidental individuality. We are not
concerned with this type of individuality at the moment. In this
sense, a cadaver is the same “ individual " as the body which was
just now living. (2) Individuality is thought of. Here it is on the
level of a substantial existence, identical with itself and distinct
from every other. It is this individuality which concerns us in
this question, and with this distinction in mind, we are in a fair
way to solving the problem.
Here we have a soul which has kept its individual existence.
At a time and in a manner, which God knows, this soul reanimates
prime matter, i.e., communicates to it its proper existence, its
proper life. This existence, this life, is the same as that of the
man who died and is now resurrected. This matter, whatever
may be its sensible individuality and its substantial individuality
at the previous moment, is now changed substantially and
acquires a new individual existence, that of the soul which
takes possession of it as its substantial form. Here again the
soul-form is the indispensable key. If the body is of itself
substance, it is also an individual. How can we guarantee or
recover the individuality of that body such as it possessed it
before death? But the soul is form and subsistent. Its indi­
viduality, guaranteed by its subsistence, has only to be
communicated to a matter, which will be changed substantially,
losing its previously existing individuality, to become the soul’s
own body and endowed with the soul’s own individual existence.
What is the source of the dispositions which adapt this
reanimated matter to a particular soul? Without any doubt, it
is God. Does He avail Himself of the services of nature for
this task? Nothing seems to indicate it, nor does anything
oblige us to exclude it as a possibility. Does He use the soul?
Very probably. For if, at the moment in which man was first
formed, natural causes and parents molded the matter, and if
the dispositions of these latter called forth the creative action
advantage of this quantitative identification, especially as it is reduced
to such a minimum. The most valuable of these answers is certainly
summed up in the formula : " Quod defuerit, supplebitur omnipotentia
Creatoris. '

THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY

509

and were responsible for individualizing the created soul, this
was done by reason of the particular type of substantial form
which the human soul is. Because of this particular charac­
teristic it has as form, the soul calls its body to life again.
It restores to the body the individuation which the soul had first
received in its creative union with the body, by communicating
to it its preserved existence.
" In its first generation, the creation of the soul follows the
generation of a body;... in the resurrection, however, the body
shall be joined to the preexisting soul. ” 32
The substantial compénétration of any prime matter by the
soul-form will introduce into the living being individuating
determinations exactly proportioned to the individuality of the
soul “ informing ” it. Thus the body will be the same as before,
because the soul to which it will be substantially united has
remained individually the same.
Thus, immortality will be personal in the fullest sense of the
word. Human nature will be reconstituted, and the human
person restored. The Final End will be possessed by man in his
complete nature.
Beatitude will thus be perfect. The happiness of perfected
man will consist in this, at least if men have willed it so, that the
Creator will be clearly manifest in His most perfect corporeal
work : man, the Glory of God realized.
CONCLUSION

Man is a movement, but of what kind? Whence did he
come? Where is he going? These are very practical questions
because of their moral extension, but they are in themselves
theoretical ones. Moral action must adapt us to reality such
as it is.
The only philosophical method which will allow us to
resolve these problems must have, as its starting point, the data
of internal and external experience. This method consists in
« S.C.G., 1. IV, ch. 82.

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THE DESTINY OF MAN

analyzing the data without distorting them, in considering the
aspects of the ego one by one without isolating them, and with
a careful regard to keeping them linked to each other.
Man is unveiled as a movement made up of a multitude of
partial movements, of acts reducible to a small number of types
or kinds. The fundamental kind of acts is that of the acts of
knowledge, which are the basis of man's activity and affectivity.
Knowledge and love are realized in him in two irreducible ways,
one sensible, the other intelligible. That which is the distinctive
mark of man among the other beings of nature is his intelligence.
The nature of intelligence in man reveals what man is.
The formal and essential object of human thought is the
universal grasped in the sensible. Through it is discovered the
spirituality as well as the materiality of man.
The soul which makes man a living thing is spiritual and
subsistent. It can not be produced by natural causes, but only
by the Almighty Power of the Creator. It is immortal and will
never cease to exist. Its natural destiny is eternal beatitude found
in its contemplative and loving possession of God.
This soul, however, is not a pure spirit. It is the subtantial form of a body which it organizes, vivifies, sensitizes, and
subjects to ideas which arc freely chosen.
Soul and matter make of man only one substance, one single
nature. Together they have but one definitive destiny, one same
Final End. It is a personal and moral end, i.e., an end acquired
by free operation. Man is a moral person.
Thus, morality is founded on the basis of an obligatory law
(closed morality), and on the basis of a good which tends towards
an ever increasing amplification up to the Sovereign Good
(open morality).
The following problems are ones for which psychology has
prepared the solution.
1) The moral problem : What is obligatory’? What is
the good? — The answer is to be drawn from the nature of man
and his destiny.
2) The problem of God: He exists as the Author of Nature
and the Creator of the soul, but what is He in Himself? Psychol­

SUMMATION

511

ogy helps us to conceive the life of a pure spirit, who is Pure Act,
and perfectly free in His creative love.
3) The -problem of critique: Man, through his knowledge,
his action and his joy, is united to objects and, at first, to
things. How is that unity possible? Psychology gives the key
to the problem by demonstrating an essential intuition in
knowledge.
4) Finally, a problem of ontology : What is the final, definite
reason for this union between man and things? Psychology sees
the proximate reason in the substantial forms constituting men
and things. Ontology will achieve the explanation by showing
that these forms are participations in the Divine Ideas, and
ultimately in the Divine Essence.

APPENDIX

TWO ATHEISTIC HUMANISMS

I.

MARXISM

A. Marxist psychology?
1. “ Marxism is not a philosophy... it is not reducible to
a philosophical humanism.... Marxism is a scientific sociology
implying a history, an economical theory and a science of
politics. ” Undoubtedly, " there is a Marxist philosophy, " but
" this philosophical work is incorporated into science. ” 1
We must add that " it implies an action, " because it is a
conception of the world, i.e., " a view of the whole of nature and
man, a complete doctrine. ” 2
2. This philosophy, however, is dialectical. Its concern
is not with discovering the universal essence of man, but with
analyzing the intimate contradictions of man, which move
history. "According to the Marxist dialectic... man always
appears differently to himself and to others in different times
and places. ”3 “ For us, natures and eternal essences are
nothing more than a series of relations. The relation which
appears fundamental to us in the question which concerns us
is the relation between man and the universe, ” a practical and
collective relation.4
" From this it follows that the fundamental relation is
the social mode of production. "
1 H. Lefebvre, Pour Connaître la Pens¿e de Karl Marx, p. 46.
There is an added nuance to this evaluation which appears in
G. Wetter, S. J. Dialectical Materialism, pp. 249-256.
• H. Lefebvre. Le Marxisme, p. 7.
See also G.Wetter, S. J.,
Dialectical Materialism, pp. 256-267.
’P. Hervé, Les Grands Appels de I’Homme Contemporain, p. 82.
Wetter, in his Dialectical Materialism, shows how this idea is rooted
in what Stalin calls the second principal feature of the Marxist dialectical
method, (pp. 314-3x9).
* P. Hervé, Les Grands Appels de l'Homme Contemporain, pp. 87-88.

516

APPENDIX

Thus the essence of man is revealed by a study of the modes
of productivity. This, then, will be an essence which varies
according to social structures. Thus man must be considered
successively in a slave society, a feudal one, a capitalistic one
and a socialist one.

3. There is no psychology in Marx and Engels, according
to the opinion of P. Naville. Nevertheless, there is room in
Marxism for a psychological science. *
* However, " in our society
and at this present epoch of human evolution, it is social analysis
with a Marxist interpretation which almost always projects
essential lights on psychology.... The delicate problem is the
" mechanism ” behind that projection. ” •
The preferred scientific method will, of course, be that of
“ comportment or behaviorism. ”
The content of psychological science is used as a con­
firmation of the dialectic. The principle of quantity being
transformed into quality, for example, is confirmed by the
different psychic thresholds. The principle of the union of
contraries is illustrated by the fruitful conflict of the organism
with nature, but especially in the instances when technical
conditions modify nature. The same is true when we consider
the internal tension which exists between the affective and
intellectual poles in the individual. ’
4. In order to recognize the metaphysics which inspires
Marxism, it is not sufficient to read the explicit theses which are
materialistic. We must look for the implicit ideal which has
dictated these theses, which is a humanism closed to all divine
influence.

B. The alienated man is the real man in the eyes of the
Marxist.
* P. Naville, Psychologie, Marxisme, Matérialisme, pp. 308-310.
• Ibid., p. 41. The extreme delicacy of this problem is clearly
brought out in Wetter's Dialectical Materialism, pp. 473-487.
’ H. Wallon, ¡Matérialisme Dialectique et Psychologie, pp. 21-22.
This position is evaluated and criticised by Wetter in Dialectical
Materialism, pp. 469-487, and especially pp. 486-487.

MARXISM AND MAN

517

1. Man is specifically distinct from nature.

a. This thesis is not held in order that materialism be
denied to the advantage of spiritualism, for, as Lenin says :
" The materialist elimination of the * dualism of spirit and body ’
(i.e., materialist monism) consists in the assertion that the spirit
does not exist independently of the body, that the spirit is
secondary, a function of the brain, a reflection of the external
world. " *
Nor is this denied by Engels, who writes : “ Matter is not the
product of mind, but mind itself is merely the highest product
of matter. ” •
b. However, the Marxist materialism is dialectic and
admits a qualitative progress. Man, the last product of the
evolution of matter, is its highest product. In what does his
superiority consist? In two productive functions :
1) " Men themselves begin to distinguish themselves from
animals as soon as they begin to produce the means of life, a step
which is conditioned by their bodily organization. In producing
their means of life, men indirectly produce their material life
itself. ” 10
2) " The same men who establish the social relations which
conform to their material productivity are also responsible for
the principles, ideas and categories which conform to their social
relations. ’’11
Here material production dominates the world of ideas. The
first is the under-structure of society and the second is the super­
structure of it. “ The ideas of the ruling class are the dominant
• See E. Baas, Introduction Critique au Marxisme (Colmar, Paris :
Editions Alsatia, 1953). This work contains a great number of pertinent
and important quotations from Russian thinkers on the philosophical
foundations of Communism. The quoted passage of Lenin is found in
his Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, p. 86.
» F. Engels, Ludwig Fuerbach and the End of German Classical
Philosophy (Moscow : Foreign Languages Publishing House, 195°). P- 3<>.
,0 K. Marx, “ The German Ideology, '* as found on page 8 of
Capital and Other Writings (New York : Carlton House, 1932).
“ Ibid., p. 8. See also Political Economy and the quotations taken
from the work cited in the previous footnote.

■618

APPENDIX

ideas in every age. In other words, the class which represents
the material power dominating society is at the same time the
spiritual power which is uppermost in that society. ’’ “

c. The dialectic asserts also the reciprocal action of
economic structures and ideas. “ And it seems to me obvious
that this inversion, which, so long as it remains unrecognized,
forms what we call ideological conception, reacts in its turn upon
the economic basis, and may, within certain limits, modify it. ” 13
d. To be a little more precise, the idea determines a change
of form in the matter, and is realized there especially as
a conscious and willed end. “ .. .a bee puts to shame many an
architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes
the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the
architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it
in reality. At the end of every labor process, we get a result
that already existed in the imagination of the laborer at its
commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the
material on which he works, but he also realizes a purpose of his
own that gives law to his modus operandi, and to which he must
subordinate his will. ” 14*
Thus, there seems to be in man something which is incom­
mensurate with nature and animal.

e. However, “ the mode of production of material life
conditions the social, political and intellectual processes in
general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their
being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines
their consciousness. "18
Although man is superior to the rest of nature, he, never­
theless, remains within the limits of matter.
M Sec " Idéologie Allemande, " Œuvres Complètes de Marx, I, 5,
P- 35u F. Engels, “ Letter to C. Schmidt, Oct. 27, 1890, ” found in
Marx-Engels, Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 494.
14 K. Marx, Capital, cd. by F. Engels, Great Books Series, Vol. L,
Marx (Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 1955), Part III, ch. 7, p. 85.
M K. Marx, " Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy, ” as found in Marx-Engels, Selected Works, Vol. I, pp. 362-363.

MARXISM AND MAN

519

f. That which characterizes man is not thought, but his
work. Men are different from the others in nature by their
manner of working. Human work dominates nature. By
developing the worker, it even progressively creates man.
" The use and fabrication of instruments of labor, although
existing in germ among certain species of animals, are specifically
characteristic of the human labor process.... It is not the
articles made, but how they are made, and by what instruments,
that enables us to distinguish different economic epochs. ” 16
" By work, man becomes himself. Work is the ‘ becoming
of self ’ for man, whether at the interior of alienation, or as an
alienated being. " *’
" Relative to nature man himself plays the role of a natural
power. The forces with which his body is endowed are set in
operation by him to assimilate material things by giving them
a form useful for his life. ” 19
“ At the same time that he acts on external nature and
modifies it, he modifies his own nature and develops the faculties
which are dormant there. ” 19

g. Finally, human work on nature can be realized only by
cooperation and division of tasks. In doing this, it makes and
shows man to be a social being, a member of humanity.
“ By their very activity, human individuals enter... into
determined relations which are social relations. They can not
be separated from these relations. Their existence even depends
on them to the extent that they constitute the very nature of
their activity, its limits and its possibilities. This is only to say
that their consciousness does not create these relations, but that
it is on the contrary involved in them, and therefore determined
by them.... It is social existence which determines conscious­
ness and not consciousness which determines social existence.
Thus a peasant has the consciousness and ideas of a peasant. "
’• K. Marx, Capital, Part III, ch. 7, p. 86.
,T K. Marx, Manuscrit, 1844, Œuvres Complètes de Marx, Vol. I, 3,
p. T56.
’* K. Marx, Capital, Part III, ch. 7, p. 85.
’• Ibid., p. 85.
N-Y. 17. — 35

520

APPENDIX

The fundamental relations of all human society, then, are
the relations of production.20
In short, man emerges from nature by his manner of
working, which makes him a social and conscious being.
“ Thus, ” writes E. Baas, “ a new image of man emerges,
which tends to take the place of the wise man of antiquity as well
as that of the Christian saint, the image of a Promethean man who
is truly man only because he has the power to make himself
a man through work. ’’21

2. Actually, however, man is alienated, i.e., dispossessed of
himself, has become inhuman :
“ This is an essential and outstanding philosophical aspect
of Marxism, although it is little understood. ” “ It is at the
heart of the Marxian political economy, which “ appears as a
becoming aware of this alienation and the conditions which will
permit us to surmount it. ’’23

Alienation is realized at three levels :
a. Fundamentally, at the economic level. Its origin, here,
is the opposition which exists between man and nature in work.
The product of work, the something which man has worked on,
retains something of nature, a nature which is hostile to man.
It “ is going to be opposed to work, as if we had a case here of
some foreign being, as if the product were a power independent
of the producer. ” “ The laborer places his life in the object,
and then his life no longer belongs to him, it is an object.
This dehumanized product is, first of all, merchandise, then
money, then capital. Work is no longer joyful, but tedious.
Work no longer possesses, it is enslaved and forced.

b. At the social and political level. At the same time,
humanity is broken up into classes, and the social existence of
10 H. Lefebvre, Le Marxisme, pp. 61 and 63.
“ E. Baas. Introduction Critique au Marxisme, p. I2I.
” H. Lefebvre, Le Marxisme, p. 37.
" P. Bigo, Marxisme et Humanisme, p. 27.
M Ibid., pp. 27-34.

MARXISM AND MAN

521

the individual is not only diminished, but it is turned into
a hostility, wherein the class of “ haves ” seeks to further enrich
itself and extend its domination, while the dispossessed class
(the " have-nots ”) seeks to regain its indispensable means of
living.
The state installs itself as the promoter of peace and justice,
but it is only a new means of domination for the class of possessors
over the men who have been dispossessed of the product of
their work.
“ The state is the product and the manifestation of the
irreconcilable antagonism of the classes. The state appears where
the antagonisms of the classes can not be objectively reconciled,
and in the measure that they can not be. Inversely, the existence
of the state proves that the contradictions of the classes are not
reconcilable. ” 28
c. At the ideological and, especially, the religious level.
Here, Marx and Engels depend on Feuerbach and correct him.
According to Feuerbach, man, by reason of his desire for
happiness, creates God as the perfect personification of that of
which he feels himself deprived, being, knowledge, holiness,
power. Then he alienates himself in the adoration and love of
this God. These acts lead him to renounce himself and the love
of others. Finally, he retrieves his losses by imagining that God
gratuitously sanctifies him and fills up what is wanting in him
in an afterlife.24
According to Marx, Feuerbach did not have the correct
view on the source of religion. This ideology of alienation is
founded on private property, for which God becomes the policeman
in the mind of the possessor, and the compensation in the here­
after for the heart of the dispossessed worker.
“ V. I. Lenin, " The State and Revolution, " taken from Lenin’s,
Selected Works, Vol. VII, (New York : International Publishers, 1943), p. 8.
’• L. Fuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, Eng. tr. George Eliot
(New York : Harper, 1957). Read pp. 1-32. See also De Lubac,
Drame de L’Humanisme Athée, pp. 23-29. and F. Grégoire, Aux
Sources de la Pensée de Karl Marx : Hegel et Feuerbach, Louvain,
pp.148 fl.

522

APPENDIX

In this sense, “ religion is the groaning of the creature struck
down by misery, the soul of a world without a heart, as well as
the spirit of an age without spirit. It is the opium of the
people. ” ”
Religion, then, simply reveals the alienation of man. It
would fade away if this alienation would disappear. So Lenin
will write :
" To forget that the religious oppression of humanity is only
the product and reflection of economic oppression in the bosom
of society, is simply a proof of bourgeois mediocrity. Neither
books nor speeches will enlighten the proletariat, if it is not
enlightened by the struggle which sustains it against the occult
forces of capitalism. " And again : “ We must combat religion.
This is the A, B, C of all materialism and consequently of
Marxism.... We cannot coniine the struggle against religion
to speeches..., we must link this struggle to the concrete
practicing of class movement to wipe out the social roots of
religion. " “
“ The evaluation of heaven will thus be turned into an
evaluation of earth, the evaluation of religion into an evaluation of
law, the evaluation of theology into an evaluation of politics. ” M
Thus, " all past history, with the exception of its beginnings,
is the history of class struggle.... These antagonistic classes
of society are always the results of the modes of production and
exchange, in a word, of the economic conditions of their times. "30
Thus, " the alienation of man is not defined religiously,
metaphysically or morally... it is not theoretical, but eminently
practical, and is discovered in all domains of life.... On the
real plane, alienation manifests itself by the fact that human
beings are delivered to hostile forces, which are nevertheless only
*’ De Lvbac, Le Drame de ¡‘Humanisme Athée, quoting Marx on p. 36.
*• V. I. Lenin, Religion, (London : Lawrence Publishers, n.d.), p. 5.
See also pp. 11-12. Read also C. Hollis, Lenin, pp. 100-125. See also
N. Berdyaev, The Origin of Russian Communism, ch. vn, pp. 191-229.
” K. Marx, " Critique de la Philosophic du Droit do Hegel, ” as
found in Œuvres Completes de Marx, Vol. I, 1, p. 614.
•• K. Marx, Üeber Historischen Materialismos, II, p. 185.

MARXISM AND MAN

523

the products of their own activity, but they are turned against
them and carry them to inhuman destinies — crises, wars, and
upheavals of every kind. ”11 This is equivalent to saying that
alienation is viewed predominantly from the historical angle and
not the moral one, as a moment in the becoming of mankind,
and not as an injustice.
C. The liberated man is the man who attempts to make
himself in the dialectical march of history. There are three
stages to this march.
1. The revolution of the -proletariat characterizes the present
stage, which is at the same time a becoming aware of the
alienation and action tending to suppress it. “ Communism is
not, for us, a state which ought to be created, an ideal destined
to give direction to reality. We call communism the effective
movement which will suppress the present situation. " 32
" While waiting, the antagonism between the proletariat
and the bourgeoisie is a struggle of class against class, which,
carried to its highest expression, is a complete revolution. ’’ **
" The bourgeois system of production is the last antag­
onistic form of the social process of production.... The
productive forces, developing in the womb of bourgeois society,
are creating at the same time, the material conditions for
resolving this antagonism. ” 3<
As a matter of fact : " The proletariat, having arrived at the
bottom, is stripped of all its humanity, indeed of even the
appearance of humanity...; having lost everything in losing
himself, the proletarian man... is directly forced... to become
absolutely imperious by reason of this distress... to revolt
against this inhumanity. ” “
»> H. Lefebvre, Le Marxisme, pp. 39-41.
»» K. Marx, " Idéologie Allemande. ’’ Œuvres Complètes, Vol. I. 5,
P- 25M As found in Morceaux Choisis oí Marx (Paris : Gallimard), p. 168.
K. Marx, " Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy, ” Selected Works of Marx-Engels. Vol. I. pp. 363-364.
” K. Marx, " La Sainte Famille, ” Œuvres Complètes, Vol. I, 3,
pp, 206 tí.

521

APPENDIX

" The possessor class and the proletarian class, each represent
the same state of human alienation. The first, however, is
complacent with the situation.... The second (the proletariat),
feels itself, on the contrary, annihilated by this alienation,
and sees there its impotency and the reality of an inhuman
existence. There are..., in a downtrodden state, the seeds of
revolt against it. ” M
The fruit which ripens is, therefore, revolution. " The
overthrow of the bourgeoisie can be achieved only by the prole­
tariat becoming transformed into the ruling class, capable of
crushing the inevitable and desperate resistance of the bour­
geoisie, and capable of organizing all the toiling and exploited
masses through a new economic order. ” 37
From this point of view, communism is a moment in human
history, when “ man, having consciously found again his link
with material nature, bursts forth in his natural vitality, yet with
an unlimited power over this nature. This is a moment, where
reason definitely emerges, organizes the human whole and goes
beyond it.... The long natural process with its contradictions...
which the formation of man was..., the moment when the
multiple alienation... of humanity will diminish bit by bit, be
absorbed and wiped out. ” — “ The cessation of alienation
implies the progressive cessation and suppression of merchandise,
capital and money.... It implies the cessation of private
property... and private ownership of the means of production...
Private property and private ownership of the means of
production are actually in conflict with the social man’s appro­
priation of nature. ” 38

2. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the next stage of the
movement of liberation, the antithesis of the bourgeois state,
pushing to the absolute — by its dictatorial character — the
principle of statism, in order to arrive at the final synthesis,
’* I bid., p. 206.
17 V. I. Lenin, “ The State and Revolution, Selected Works, ” Vol. VII,
p. 26.
“ H. Lefebvre, Le Marxisme, p. 47.

MARXISM AND MAN

525

e., society without a state. (This is the situation which is now
i.
being realized in Russia).
It is, says Marx, “ the necessary transit point to the abolition
of class distinctions generally, to the abolition of all the relations
of production on which they rest, to abolition of all the social
relations that correspond to these relations of production, to the
revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social
relations. ”39
Lenin will insist on the necessity of this stage to achieve
the ideal communist society : in order to prepare for the
suppression of the state through an unlimited statism, to
overcome the resistance of the bourgeoisie, and to educate the
masses with a view to the coming classless society.40
Work will have a maximum socialization : " no one will any
longer, by claim to private property, be able to retain possession
of the means of production of tools or of machines. ” 41
Religion will be as free as anti-religious propaganda. It will
decline in the measure that alienation will be reduced and man
liberated.
Ewge/s justified this dictatorship in these words : " So long
as the proletariat still uses the state, it does not use it in the
interests of freedom, but in order to hold down its adversaries. ”42
How long will this dictatorship last? The conflict between
Trotsky and Stalin concerned the answer to this question.
Stalin, faithful to the thought of Lenin, wanted it to endure as
long as the union of bourgeois countries constituted a threat
to Russian socialism, which would seem to be indefinitely.
3. The new humanity, the third stage, is not a Marxist
promise, it is a prediction.
»» K. Marx, “ Class Struggles in France, ” Selected Works of MarxEngels. Vol. I. p. 223.
40 See V. I. Lexis, “ The State and Revolution, ” Selected Works.
Vol. VII. p. 34. P- 24. PP- 78-8341 Ibid., p. 85.
u Ibid., p. 60. Here Lenin quotes a whole segment of F.ngcls,
Leiter to Bebel, from which the above quotation is taken.

526

APPENDIX

" It has never entered the head of any socialist * to promise ’
that the higher phase of communism will arrive; and the great
socialists, in foreseeing its arrival, presupposed both a produc­
tivity of labor unlike the present and a person unlike the present
man in the street, who is capable of damaging the stores of social
wealth ‘ just for fun ’ and of demanding the impossible. ” °
Future man will actually be one whom the machine and
technique have freed from brutalizing tasks, — who has the
leisure to alternate manual work with work of the mind, a man
who, in the social body outside of which he is nothing, dominates
nature by his work, and creates himself. In a word, a man who
has become human again.
In the future society there will be no more classes, no more
state. Dictatorship will have reduced the bourgeois class to
nothing, and, because of that, suppressed the proletariat as an
opposing class. The proletariat, having suppressed the old
conditions of production by violence, will have “ swept away
the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of
classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own
supremacy as a class. ’’*
44
For the same reason so will the state be suppressed :
" political power, properly so called, is merely the organized
power of one class for oppressing another. ” 45*
“ In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and
class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the
free development of each is the condition for the free development
of all. ”44
" The government of persons is replaced by the administra­
tion of things and the direction of the process of production.
The state is not ‘ abolished, ’ it withers away. ”47
“ V. I. Lenin, " The State and Revolution, ” Selected Works,
Vol. VII, pp. 88-89.
44 K. Marx and F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, Great Books
Scries, Vol. L, Marx (Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 1955), ch. it, p. 429.
44 Ibid., p. 429.
44 Ibid., p. 429.
4’ V. I. Lenin, " The State and Revolution, ” Selected Works, p. 17
Here Lenin quotes Engel’s A nti-Dühring, Part HI. ch. 2, from which
the above quotation is taken.

MARXISM AND MAN

527

And so that no one will object to the laborer’s being deprived
of liberty, and to his being guided by the community :
“ When all have learned the art of administration and will
indeed independently administer social production..., the
necessity of observing the simple and fundamental rules of all
human intercourse will very soon become a habit. ”48* Work
will be done by spontaneous need, with joy, and with a completely
new mentality.
“ Hence, the need for violence against people in general,
the need for the subjection of one man to another, and of one
section of the population to another, will vanish, since people
will become accustomed to observing the elementary conditions
of social life without force and without subordination. ” 48
Two new factors make this new humanity possible, an extra­
ordinary productivity in work and the suppression of classes :
a. " Work will become so productive that everyone will
voluntarily work to his capacities.... The distribution of
products will no longer demand that society assign to each the
part of the products coming from him. Each one will be free
to take according to his needs. ” 50 A little like being free to
take the air we breathe, or being free to draw water at its source.
b. “ Abolish classés, and human nature will be able to
better itself quickly, and be able to raise itself to a higher
conception of life. Man will feel himself becoming a social
individual, capable of developing fully, because he is in profound
communion with all of society. ” “
If these are not promises, they certainly have a resemblance
to prophecies.

D.

Discussion

1. The realism which Marx claims against Hegelian
idealism, if considered apart from the materialism with which
«• Ibid., pp. 93’94«• Ibid., p. 75.
•• Ibid., p. 88.
41 H. Wallon. L'Individu et la Société (Paris : Bureau d’Editions, n.d.).

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APPENDIX

he confuses it, gives Marxism an air of good solid common sense.
Unfortunately, however, the reign of common sense is only too
brief.
Communism, in reaction to the extreme idealism of Hegel,
accepts an external and material world whose essence and
existence do not depend on human thought. Man is a bod}'
linked to a mind, which influences and conditions all human life.
A material productivity and a sociability flow from it, and their
importance can not be ignored in the development of human
beings. The Marxian criticism of capitalism is founded on the
incontestable bases of man's subordination to nature and to the
economic and social conditions of production. Man cannot
fully become man, if material conditions, instead of helping him,
paralyze his development.
However, we must insist that there is a morality of work,
of property, of society, of the state, based on the hylomorphic
structure of man, which is as realistic as Marxism, because it
admits the dependence of man on matter. It is even more
realistic than Marxism in that it recognizes in man a spiritual
direction, and the attraction of an eternal life. Marxism sees
nothing but the temporal and the material.
2. Nevertheless, it seems that the spiritual plays an indis­
pensable role in Marxism :
" Communism, being an achieved naturalism, coincides with
humanism.... It solves the mystery of history, and it knows
that it does, ” writes Marx. 44
a. The human ideal. Actually, all Marxism, whatever its
formulas say of it, contains an idea of man which serves as a
criterion of value for appreciating the stages of history, for
judging its meaning and for foreseeing its development. “ How
can one speak of alienation, i.e., of the dehumanization of man,
except by comparison with an idea of man which ought to be
realized ?
“ This quotation taken from Marx appears in P. Bigo, Marxisme
et Humanisme, p. 141.
“ See G. Wetter, Dialectical Materialism, p. 27.

CRITIQUE OF MARXIAN HUMANISM

529

“ This humanism is so essential to the Marxian political
economy that it cannot be removed without destroying the whole
framework of the economic doctrine. ” *** As a matter of fact :
1) It is not work which is glorified, but the growth of man
through his work.
2) It is man who acquires through it his qualities as man :
intelligence, will, society.
3) It is not the misery of work which is described, but that
of man, who, instead of being ennobled by work, is lowered and
degraded by it.
"It is not the adventure of production which interests
Marx, nor the accumulation of material riches, it is the human
adventure that is implied in it. ” w
b. The progress of history. Only Marxian humanism
— by reason of its decided materialism — avoids speaking of
the moral or religious dignity of man. This dignity is expressed
in biological and sociological terms. From a first point of view,
capitalism is an “ inversion ” : man is crushed by the economic
world which, although produced by him, nevertheless dominates
him; from a second point of view, “capitalism conceals a
' perversion ’... it is at the same time an abolition of the liberty
and equality of men among themselves. ” M
One can see that, even if spiritual formulas are avoided, the
thought expressed remains ultra-experimental and metaphysical.
Sense experience will never reveal man as the subject of rights.
How, then, is man to be viewed as alienated, if his product is not
recognized as belonging to him before some law? Human history
shows itself as a tissue of contradictions only to him who thinks
in a logical sequence, who has a sense of direction, who possesses
a finality. " By themselves, facts arc not contradictory. They
simply exist, and that is all. ” ”
This is true of alienation and of the prediction of the future,
which is an essential vision for communism. " For the pure
M Ibid., p. 27.
“ P. Bigo, Marxisme et Humanisme, p. 135.
** G. Wetter, Dialectical Materialism, pp. 35-37.
P. Bigo, Marxisme et Humanisme, p. 139.

530

APPENDIX

empiricist, history reveals no meaning, only successions.... The
pure scientist acts with reserve. Marx does not hesitate. He
clearly states that history is in a progressive march to a final
objective. ” M How does he know this? “ He simply affirms
that there is a certain dignity in which history itself tends to
establish man. ”40 Definitley, this is an optimistic view, since it
supposes that the new man will be very superior to the alienated
man.
However, without any idea of human morality and spirit­
uality, all the superiority of man over nature would be abolished,
and Marxism would be destroyed. If it lives, it is by its
unavowed and even rejected spiritualism. This is even an
absolute spiritualism, to which Marx refers, when, after rejecting
the existence of God, he supplants Him with a new god, humanity
of the future, which will be the most excellent being. This is the
supreme value to which the individual must subordinate himself,
if he does not wish to be annihilated himself. " For its service, he
liberates the most potent energy that exists, that of adoration. ”
The Marxian humanism, making man arise completely from
matter, also elevates him to the summit of history, and places
him at such a point in that which is real, that nothing is beyond
him. Is this not making man the absolute?
c. Man, the end in himself. We can say with all sincerity,
" What a poor absolute I ” for materialism explicitly and
obstinately destroys that possibility.
1) To pose man as the absolute, as sufficient unto himself,
is to offer the atheist as an ideal, a man who cannot be completed,
a failure. Actually, reality contradicts the fundamental Marxian
claim that religion alienates man by preventing him from being
himself. God is the supreme end to which every human
consciousness tends, and to fail to attain Him is to lose all in
losing oneself.
2) It is only the future which would complete man. The
man of the past and the present man would be only rough
“ Ibid., p. 139.
•• Ibid., p. 139.
•° Ibid., p. 142.

CRITIQUE OF MARXIAN HUMANISM

531

outlines. “ The communist society will inaugurate the truly
human period, in which, dominating his destiny, man will finally
attempt to solve his specifically human problems, the problems
of happiness, love and death. Man will be liberated from the
conditions which make these problems insoluble. ” 01 Even for
this far-off future, then, there remains only possibility.
3) What men would then have fulfillment? None of those
who died before the suppression of class distinction would be in
a position of understanding his own life. He would not even
know that he was used as fertilizer for the flowering of future
humanity, to use the expression of one of Dostoevsky ’s characters.
And the privileged ones in this Golden Age? If they are
happy, it will be only at the cost of the renunciation of their
personality, because of their integration into the bosom of
collective humanity. Marxism denounces every personalist
conception as mystification. “ The existential center is... no
longer personality, but collectivity. ” n
Will the man of the future be more personal? " There is
no such thing in the Marxian concept. The individual must
remain entirely stripped of protections before the collectivity.
Final communism is not a community regime, it is an interiorized
collectivism, ” wherein the individual agrees to be no longer
reckoned as a person.63
4) Finally, what probability is there of realizing this final
communism? It would appear to be nil for two reasons : w
a) The final society is supposed to unite all individuals in
an immediate way, but how is an individual capable of feeling
himself identified with all humanity, capable of knowing it and
loving it?
b) Such a society supposes a psychological transformation
so profound that the history of man would say to us that it is
41 R. Vancourt, Marxisme et Pensée Chrétienne (Paris : Bloud et
Gay, 1948), p. 93 (note): H. Lefebvre, Le Matérialisme Dialectique.
p. 148.
43 E. Baas, Introduction Critique au Marxisme, p. 129.
43 P. Bic.o, Marxisme et Humanisme, p. 157.
44 Ibid., pp. 157-160.

532

APPENDIX

impossible. Without any doubt, men have succeeded in living
a life completely in common, but their groups were freely formed,
and they have always been rare. That all of humanity freely
accept such a manner of life can only be a hoped-for Utopia.
This total collectivism could be produced only by force, and then
man would fall once more into the state of alienation....
d. The loss of the person. Thus Marxism professes its
historical dialectic only by virtue of an implicit spiritualism;
but it destroys it by the materialistic play of that dialectic.
It is, undoubtedly, the presence of that spiritualism in it, which
makes it attractive to both the elite and the masses. Is not the
sense of the dignity of man innate in ever}'’ consciousness?
It is most regrettable that spirit remains carefully masked
in Marxism, and that, in the end, it is employed to effect its own
destruction. This may be to the profit of humanism, but a
humanism which destroys human personality and all true
liberty.88
To finish, Marxism " foresees a leap from the realm of
necessity into that of liberty but, even supposing this prevision
to have a basis, and ignoring the innumerable and definitively
alienated generations which have disappeared, what, in the final
stage, is this liberated man? “ It is not the individual man,
it is the collective man who enjoys this liberation. ” 88 The
person remains alienated, lost forever.
Recourse to any personal survival is definitely and absolutely
excluded. Marx did not have to invent the denial of the soul’s
immortality. His master, Hegel, idealist though he was, accepts
consciousness only in opposition to nature. Death suppresses
that relation with nature, and by that fact, wipes out con­
sciousness. 87••
•* N. Berdyaev, Le Communisme et les Chrétiens, pp. 178 ff.
•• Ibid., p. 193.
*’ R. Vancourt, Marxisme et Pensée Chrétienne, pp. 52-97: sec
footnotes on page 74 and page 97. where Kojève’s exposition of Hegel
is quoted : " Dialectical anthropology allows no room for man's survival
outside this natural world. ” Why? Because consciousness can constitute
itself only as the negation of nature (its antithesis). Sartre says the
same thing, when he states that the for-itsclf can constitute itself only
as a nothing thrown on the in-itsclf.

CRITIQUE OF MARXIAN HUMANISM

53S

3. Materialism is certainly the principal error of Marxism.
It falsifies its realistic basis, and perverts its humanist
inspiration. It discourages the optimistic perspectives in it.
We must say this again. As dependent as man may be on
matter, he has thought which does not find its source in matter,,
and which makes him capable of dominating matter. He has
liberty, by which he can choose, i.e., accept or refuse his material
conditions, and consequently work to modify them in the
direction of this choice. As dependent as he may be on others,
he has a personal value which, far from putting him at the
service of society, puts society at the service of his individual
fulfillment. As dependent as man is on time and on the flow and
counter-flow of events, he is not limited by a temporal and
terrestrial horizon. His destiny' is not completely shut up in
this life.
Finally, this threefold form of his incarnated spirituality has
its foundation, wellspring, and fulfillment only in God who is
the Creator, Provider and ultimate End of Humanity. It is
Creation which makes man the king of the material world. It is
Providence that endows him with his personal tendencies and,
in particular, makes him capable of education by society. It is
science and perfection, the life and happiness of God, which will
fulfill human persons. This is not only the destiny of the late­
comers to existence, to be enjoyed only for a time, but it is the
destiny of all those who have the will to be good, a destiny that
will endure for all eternity.

II. THE EXISTENTIALISM OF SARTRE

By reason of the phenomenological method, as opposed to
the “ scientific ” or objective method professed by Marxism, the
existentialist investigation seems to promise a more exact
deciphering of human reality. J. P. Sartre attempts to realize
this promise in the following organization of human existence :
Nothingness, at the very interior of being-foritself, and constituting it.
2nd Part. Being-for-itsdf is positively present to itself in
a temporal situation, linked by knowledge to a
transcendent in-itself.
3rd Part. Being for-the-other, and, in particular, my body,
is a fundamental structure of mj' being-formyself.
4th Part. Doing and liberty are the very being of the foritself, modifying the in-itself and tending to
constitute itself as an in-itself-for-itself.

1st Part.

This general outline allows a description of the larger aspects
of human consciousness and of the world which is correlative to
it.
.each type of human conduct, can reveal for us simul­
taneously man, the world and the relation which unites
them...” (B. N., 4).68
A. " Nothingness haunts being " (B. N., 16). Beginning
with the Cogito as does Descartes, i.e., with doubt :
1. Interrogation supposes two objective possibilities, a yes
and a no; two subjective possibilities, knowing and not knowing;
and two relative possibilities, a present or an absent truth.
•• The initials B.N. and the numbers which follow refer to the
English translation of Sartre’s. Being and Nothingness.

SARTRE AND MAN

535

“ The permanent possibility of non-being, outside us and within
us, conditions our questions about being ” (B. N., 5).

2. Negative judgments are directly in reference to an
objective non-being. The break down of a machine, the
destruction of a city, the absence of Peter for whom I am
searching at this restaurant, are so many objective non-beings.
Consciousness is necessary for their existence, but it recognizes
in them something which is present in being. Non-being is
actually based on being. “ Non-being exists only on the surface
of being ” (B. N., 16); “ Nothingness can be nihilated only on the
foundation of being. ” It can be given only as it “.. .lies coiled
in the heart of being — like a worm ” (B. zV., 21).
Positive realities themselves “ retain negation as the
condition of the sharpness of their outlines ” (B.
21), as
distinguishing them from what they are not.40

3. The origin of nothingness can not be the In-itself, because
the latter is by definition fully positive, pure being. Therefore,
" The being by which Nothingness comes to the world must be
its own Nothingness ” (B.iV., 23). In fact, it is the questioner
who “ annihilates the thing questioned in relation to himself by
placing it in a neutral state, between being and non-being,
and... he an nihilates himself in relation to the thing questioned
by wrenching himself from being in order to be able to bring
out of himself the possibility of a non-being ”... “ Man presents
himself, at least in this instance, as a being who causes Nothing­
ness to arise in the world, inasmuch as he himself is affected by
non-being to this end ” (B. xV., 23-24).
4. Liberty. “ Descartes following the Stoics has given a
name to this possibility, which human reality has, to secrete
a nothingness which isolates it — it is liberty ” (B. N., 24).
Briefly, then, discursive knowledge, liberty (they are com­
pletely one), is the source of nothingness. Man breaks away
from the world, when he suspends his judgment. He engenders
“ The clarity of au idea, obtained by definition and classification,
comes not only from the dements it posits, but also and especially from
that which it excludes : thus, as a whole, it signifies being and non-being.
N.Y. 17. — 36

536

APPENDIX

nothingness by thinking and choosing NO, particularly in regard
to his own past. " Consciousness continually experiences itself
as the annihilation of its past being ” (B. N., 29).
5. A nxiety * springs from our awareness of liberty as liberty,
from our recognition that liberty is the creator of values.
a. “ But I am anxious precisely because all my conduct
is always in the realm of the possible. This means that while
constituting a totality of motives for pushing away that situation,
I, at the same time, apprehend these motives as not sufficiently
effective. ”... “ I am aware that nothing can compel me to
adopt that conduct. ... Anxiety is precisely my consciousness
of being my future in the mode of non-being ” (B.N., 31-32).
There is likewise anxiety over the past. It is I who " make
myself not to be the past of good resolutions which I am "
(B.N., p. 33). “ This freedom, which reveals itself to us in
anxiety, can be characterized by the existence of that nothing
which insinuates itself between motives and act ” (B.N., 34).
b. Ethical anxiety is bom of my original relation to values.
Value does not itself exist : “ On the contrary, it can be revealed
only to an active freedom which makes it exist as value by the
sole fact of recognizing it as such. It follows that my freedom
is the unique foundation of values, and that nothing ... justifies
me in adopting this or that particular value, this or that
particular scale of values, ” and placing them by that fact in
question, " I make my decision concerning them without justifi­
cation and without excuse ” (B.N., 38-39).
6. Bad faith attempts to remedy anxiety which still
constitutes my consciousness. It would like to annihilate
anxiety, but it only succeeds in not thinking about it. “ This
nihilating power annihilates anxiety insofar as 1 flee it and
annihilates itself insofar as I am anxious in order to flee it ”
(B.N., 44). Thus is encountered " in the same consciousness, the
unity of being and non-being — the being-in-order-not-to-be "
• The translator has preferred to translate angoisse by anxiety,
instead of anguish as appears in H. Barnes’ translation of Being and
Nothingness.

SARTRE AND MAN

537

(B.N., 45). How is bad faith possible? One can find the answer
by admitting “ that human reality, in its most immediate being,
in the inner-structure of the pre-reflective cogito, must be what
it is not, and not be what it is ” (B.N., 67). “ The first act of
bad faith is to flee what it cannot flee, to flee what it is ”
(B.N., 70).
B. Being-for-itself. In the cogito, Descartes saw the
substance of the ego. Husserl ventures to see there only a
phenomenon. Sartre says of this " That the being of conscious­
ness does not coincide with itself in a full equivalence ” (B.N., 74).
The opposite of in-itself, which is full of itself, consciousness
" is a decompression of being. Impossible ... to define as
coincidence with itself " (B.N., 74).
In the first place, there is revealed to consciousness, over
and above the in-itself which is the being of the phenomenon,
nothingness which, produced by consciousness and constitutive
of it as such, is distinct from the in-itself and is the negation of
the in-itself. Liberty is thus consciousness itself, revealed in
anxiety, and hiding itself in bad faith.

1. The immediate structures of the for-itself are : a. the
presence to self; b. facticity; c. value; d. the possibles;
e. ipseity.
a. Presence to self. “ The law of being for the for-itself,
as the ontological foundation of consciousness, is to be itself in
the form of presence to itself. ” Presence to self indicates a
duality, a negation. “ The being of consciousness qua conscious­
ness is to exist at a distance from itself as a presence to itself,
and this empty distance which being carries in its being is
Nothingness ” (B.N., 77-78).
b. The facticity of the for-itself is that it is; “ It is insofar
as there is in it something of which it is not the foundation — its
presence to the world. ” Descartes stated the dependence of the
ego by looking for the cause of the idea of the Perfect,
which he found in the ego and which he explained by asserting
the existence of God. Sartre explains it by beginning with the
constitutive nothingness of the for-itself. This nothingness can

538

APPENDIX

not be the foundation of the being of the for-itself, its in-itself.
The being of the for-itself, not being able to be based on its
liberty, is, therefore, a pure contingent fact. " This peppetually
evanescent contingency of the in-itself which, without ever
allowing itself to be apprehended, haunts the for-itself and
reattaches it to being in-itself — this contingency is what we
shall call the facticity of the for-itself ” (B.N., 79-83). I am,
I am in such a situation, my role is real and not that of a player,
and I have chosen no part of this. "... the for-itself is conscious
of its facticity. It has the feeling of its complete gratuity. It
apprehends itself as being there for nothing, as being ‘ de trop
(B.N., 84).
c. Value occurs in the world through the for-itself : “ The
being of the for-itself is value. ”... " Value is the self insofar
as the self haunts the heart of the for-itself as that for which the
for-itself is ” (B.N., 93).
Actually the for-itself supposes a lack. What is missing
gives it its meaning by totalizing it ; the totality of the existent
and of the missing is the for towards which the desire of an
existent calls. What is this for of man? “ .. .the self as beingin-itself is what human reality lacks.... It is for the for-itself
as such that the for-itself lays claim to being-in-itself. ... It is
the impossible synthesis of the for-itself and the in-itself. ”
This synthesis, hypostasized beyond the world, is called God.
Hence the origin of suffering and unhappy consciousness,
because human reality “ rises in being as perpetually haunted
by a totality which it is without being able to be it, precisely
because it could not attain the in-itself without losing itself as
for-itself ” (B.N., 88-90).
Value is then characterized " as the meaning and the beyond
all surpassing; as the absent in-itself which haunts being-initself, ” insofar as it is founded on and is freedom, “ as it makes
itself be as having to be this being ” (B.N., 94).
The for-itself docs not create values. In a sense it is these
values and they are necessary and contingent as it is. Moral
consciousness only forces the unveiling of them. Conscious or
not, values are (B.N., 95).

SARTRE AND MAN

539

d. The possible " is what the for-itself lacks in order to be
self. ” It is not simply an idea. It is a real lack of being, which,
as lack, is outside of being. ... The in-itself ... cannot have
possibles. ... The possible is a new aspect of the annihilization
of the in-itself into the for-itself (B.N., 95-102).
a. The ipseity or personality is formed from two nihilating
reflections : one grasps “ the fact that the being exists for itself
as a presence to itself, ” the other, " the free necessity of
being-down there — what one is in the form of lacking, ” what
one is as his possible (B.N., 103-104).
But if the for-itself thus transcends itself in the direction
of value and possibles, “ it is in time that the for-itself is its own
possibilities in the mode of * not-being, * it is in time that my
possibilities appear on the horizon of the world, that they are
made mine ” (B.N., 104-105). In what does this temporal
character of the for-itself consist?

2. Temporality
a. Temporalizcd phenomena
My past reduces me to the in-itself. " Actually, the past,
like Facticity, is the invulnerable contingency of the in-itself
which I have to be without any possibility of not being it "
(B.N., 118).
The present is not the instant : “ for the instant would be
the moment when the present is. But the present is not, it makes
itself present in the form of flight.... It is a flight outside of
co-present being, from the being it was to the being it will be "
(B.N., 123).
My future is not an always present and impersonal repre­
sentation. It is the fact of " being which makes itself exist as
having its being outside itself in the future. ” The future is
that which I have to be in so far as I can not be it ” (B.N., 125).
It is not. It makes itself possible by reason of liberty.
b. The being of time is succession and becoming.
Succession. Sartre asserts, against Hume and associa
*
tionism, that succession of two states which would be in-itself
is inconceivable, that the before-after relation can exist only as

540

APPENDIX

a witness. What witness? It can not be a witness which
transcends time, such as God is for Descartes, or as the transcend­
ental ego is for Kant. Psychological duration would no longer
be any more " than the confused perception of a logical and
eternal order. ” As Bergson has said, it is within duration that
its unity lies. That which permits duration, according to Sartre,
is conscious nihilization : “ Indeed, it is only because the self in
its being is there outside itself, that it can be before or after
itself, that there can be in general any before and after.
Temporality exists only as the intra-structure of a being which
has to be its own being, ’’ i.e., of the for-itself. ... " For-itself
temporalizes itself by existing ” (B.N., 136).
“ Conversely ... the for-itself can not be except in temporal
form, the For-itself rising into being as the nihilation of the Initself constitutes itself simultaneously in all the possible dimen­
sions of annihilation. . . .reflection, transcendence, being-in-theworld and being-for-others. .. . Thus nothingness introduces
quasi-multiplicity into the heart of being, ” and thus temporality.
These dimensions can not be separated from the for-itself :
" temporality is the mode of being proper to being-for-itself ”
(B.N., 136, 137, 142).
Becoming. Does it imply permanence (as Leibniz and Kant
believed)? There must at least be a “ permanent in the sense
of the thing which changes. " This does not fulfill the definition
of in-itself. An absolute permanence is not required, a link with
the past is all that is demanded : either nothing changes or all
changes, as the Gestalt theory has shown.
As to the mover in temporal becoming, there exists a problem
only for those who open the problem of change in the in-itself,
but " change belongs naturally to the for-itself inasmuch as the
for-itself is spontaneity. ” Indefinable spontaneity : to define
it would be to congeal it into the in-itself. Spontaneity unceas­
ingly evades itself. Here the for-itself is incapable of being
achieved. It is a totality which is never totalized : “ it is
nothingness slipping into a totality as a detotalizing ferment, ”
never being able " to exist within the limits of an instant. There
is never an instant at which we can assert that the for-itself is,

SARTRE AND MAN

541

precisely because the for-itself never is, ’* it is making itself
(B.N., 148, 149).
c. Reflection, the recovery of time, is still an annihilization
which the for itself has to be. It is “ a permanent possibility of
the for-itself as an attempt to go back over being, ” in the flight
of self which is time. It “ is recognition rather than knowledge.
It implies as the original motivation of the recovery a prereflective comprehension of what it wishes to recover. ” It
supposes, briefly, a kind of previous, lived, unknown possession
of his own time by each one. The solidity of the Cogito comes
from the fact that it is not limited to the instant, but extends
to the past and the future. ’•
Reflection can be impure : it objectifies the for-itself, by
making it an ego, a psyche, with only an ideal existence; but
“ this phantom world exists as a real situation of the for-itself, "
interfering with my liberty (B.N., 160-170).
3. Transcendence. Here Sartre takes up again the problem
concerning relations with the in-itself. He wants to get beyond
realism which supposes an action of the in-itself on consciousness,
and idealism, which supposes the in-itself constructed by
consciousness. The two systems make of the in-itself and the
for-itself two isolated substances. Isolated, they are only
abstractions : “ it is in the for-itself alone that we must look for
the key to that relation to being which we call ... knowledge ”
(B.N., 172).
a. Knowledge is always intuition : not a presence of the
thing to consciousness, but “ the presence of consciousness to
the thing. ” Presence is essential to consciousness : “ In fact
it is by means of that of which it is conscious, that consciousness
distinguishes itself in its own eyes and that it can be self­
consciousness. ” “ The thing is ... that which is present to
consciousness as not being consciousness. ’’ Presence which is
only a way of existing : “ knowledge appears then as a mode of
’• We can see, in this prc-rcflective Cogito, something which is
eouivalent to Bergsonian “ intuition " or that " habitual " knowledge
which the soul has of itself, which, St. Thomas asserts, is the foundation
of the knowledge of the soul through its acts.

542

APPENDIX

being. ... It is the very being oí the for-itself insofar as this
is presence to — i.e., insofar as the for-itself has to be its being
by making itself not to be a certain being which is present. ”
Here, there is a question of internal negation, i.e., of “ a
relation between two beings which is such that the one which
is denied to the other qualifies the other at the heart of its
essence — by absence
this relation is possible only in the
for-itself. Transcendence is “ that inner and realizing negation
which reveals the in-itself while determining the being of the
for-itself ” (B.N., 172-180).
b. Consequences
1) To idealism we concede “ the identity of the being of
the for-itself with that of knowledge
but this identity " does
not come from the fact that knowledge is the measure of being
it comes “ from the fact that in its being it is a relation to being. ”
2) To realism we grant “ that it is being which is present
to consciousness in knowledge, and that the for-itself adds
nothing to the In-itself, except the very fact that there is an
In-itself. ”
3) But we concede nothing to either skepticism or relativism,
for “ knowledge puts us is in the presence of the absolute, and
there is a truth of knowledge. But this truth, although releasing
to us nothing more and nothing less than the absolute, remains
strictly human ” (B.N., 21-218).

C. Bcing-for-others is “ another mode of existence as
fundamental as the being for-itself. ” It is discovered, for
example, in shame, which is “ in its primary structure shame
before somebody”; “I am ashamed of myself as I appear to
others. ”
1. The existence of others. Anxious to avoid a solipsism,
Sartre attempts to set up a basis for the communication between
consciousnesses. Heidegger offers him the intuition of a team, of
a we, of a communal existence, a " Mit-scin, ” which becomes
conscious through events and the pursued end, up to " the abrupt
revelation of my being-unto-death, ” which makes me stand
alone. Sartre sees there very clearly “ a being which implies the

SARTRE AND MAN

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being of another in its own very being, ” but he finds that
Heidegger’s solution is not basic enough. The opposition to
others is more evident than co-existence, and the “ mit-sein ”
tends to suppress the other by confusing it with the ego. “ The
Other must appear to the Cogito as not being me, ” but linked
to me by an internal negation (B.N., 223-252).
Now the other is “ that which looks at me. ” “ To perceive
is to look at, and to apprehend a look ... is to be conscious of
being looked at. ” Thus I know that I have a body, that I am
seen, and consequenti}' I see myself because someone sees me.
“ The person is present to consciousness insofar as the person
is an object for the Other. This means that all of a sudden I am
conscious of myself as escaping myself ... in that I have my
foundation outside of myself. I am for myself only as I am
a pure reference to the Other. ”
“ The alienation of myself, which is the act of being looked
at, involves the alienation of the world which I organize. ” 71
" With the Other's look the * situation ’ escapes me. I am an
object, which is localized and temporalized. Through the Other’s
look I live myself as fixed in the midst of the world, as being in
danger, as being something irremediable ” (B.N., 258-268).
Thus I experience the other as a free subject.
What then is the fundamental relation between the ego and
the other? It is still an internal negation, but reciprocal this
time : “ The being which consciousness has to not be (the Other)
is defined as a being which has not to be this consciousness ”
(B.N., 284). “ Shame, fear and pride are my original reactions;
they are only various ways by which I recognize the Other as
a subject beyond reach, ” and constitute it as object. But
correlatively, “ they include within them a comprehension of my
selfness which can and must serve as my motivation for
constituting the Other as object. ...” “ .. .my relations with
the Other-as-object are essentially made up of ruses designed
to make him remain an object. However, one look on the part
of the Other is sufficient to make all these schemes collapse and
’> P. Foulquié, L'Existentialisme, p. 77.

M4

APPENDIX

to make me experience once more the transfiguration of the
Other ” into subject, degrading me to the level of an object
(B.N., 291-297).
In short, I experience the other as an existing thing and
subject, by sensing myself as the object of his look. I react
against this alienation of myself which profits him, by appre­
hending the other, in my turn, as object. That, which is revealed
to me by this, is my body and his.
2. The body “ is completely psychic ” (B.N., 305) ; therefore,
the problem of the union of the soul and body need not be posed.
“ Being-for-itself must be wholly body and it must be wholly
conscious; it can not be united with a body. Similarly, beingfor-others is wholly body; there are no * psychic phenomena ’
there to be united to the body. There is nothing behind the
body ” (B.N., 305).
a. The body as being-for-itself is described as taking its
origin “ from our first relation to the in-itself of our being-in-theworld. ” This relation is exclusively mine. I certainly have
not chosen it, but it is imposed on me, and it is a fact : “ we
would define the body as the contingent form which is assumed
by the necessity of my contingency. ... It is the fact that the
for-itself is not its own foundation. It is a part of the situation
of the for-itself ” (B.N., 306-309). “ The soul is the body
inasmuch as the for-itself is its own individuation ” (B.N., 310).
The body is mine, inasmuch as it is the for-itsclf’s viewpoint
of the world : “ it is the total center of reference which things
indicate, ” sensing and acting at the same time. It is the key
to all the instruments which constitute the world, the key which
gives them their meaning, but remains unknown : " present in
every action although invisible ..., it is lived and not known. ”
It is “ perpetually the surpassed ... that beyond, which lam”
(B.N., 320-326), the starting point as well as the point of view.
In short, “ Birth, the past, contingency, the necessity of a point
of view, the factual condition for all possible action on the world
— such is the body, such it is for me. ” " But this inapprehen­
sible body is precisely the necessity that there be a choice, that I do
not exist all at once ” (B.N., 327-323).

SARTRE AND MAN

545

What is it then for inc?
“ The relation between the body-as-point-of-view and
things is an objective relation, and the relation of consciousness
to the body is an existential relation. ” For reflection, “ my body
is the conscious structure of my consciousness, ” but in existence,
it is “ that which it (my consciousness) surmounts and annihi­
lates by making itself consciousness ... ; the body is the neglected,
the passed by in silence, and yet the body is what this conscious­
ness is; it is not even anything except body. The rest is
nothingness and silence ” (B.N., 329-330).
Thus, in physical pain, before reflection, the pain is the body.
It is reflection which makes them distinct. It is affectivity, in
general, which reveals the psychic body as “ a pure apprehension
of the self as a factual existence. This perpetual apprehension
on the part of my for-itself of an insipid taste which I can not
place, which accompanies me even in my efforts to get away
from it, and which is my taste — this is what we have described
elsewhere under the name of Nausea ” (B.N., 335-338).
b. The body-for-others is, first of all, “ the facticity of the
other’s body as an instrument, and as a synthesis of sense organs
as it is revealed to my facticity ” (B.N., 342). It is a body in
“ situation, ” i.e., linked to the world by meaningful relations,
and it is flesh or life as a summation of all its organs. “ Thus
since the body is the facticity of transcendcd-transcendence, it is
always the body-which-points-beyond-itself; it s at once in
space (it is the situation) and in time (it is freedom-as-object) ”
(B.N., 351).
c. My body-for-others, i.e., “ I exist for myself as a body
known by the Other ’’ (B.N., 351). Here is a facticity that can
be joined to so many others : “ 1 apprehend my own facticity ...
in its flight towards a bcing-in-the-midst-of-thc-world. ... My
body is there not only as the point of view that I am, but again
as a point of view on which are actually brought to bear the
points of view which I could never take; my body escapes me
on every side ” (BaV., 352).
I have the experience of being alienated, dispossessed of
myself, in timidity, in the so-called objective knowledge of the

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APPENDIX

body : thus, the perception of my body is placed chronologically
after the perception of the body of the other (B.N., 358).

3. The concrete relations with the Other are not reduced to
a bcing-with (the “ mit-sein ” of Heidegger), but to a conflict,
inspired by egoism, aiming at the recovery of my being, which
the Other degrades by turning the for-itself into an in-itself by
his look (which makes of me a body-object), in order to bring
me into being as my “ God. "
This conflict has two forms : the first would wish to recover
myself as in-itself. Therefore, I make myself object for the
Other in order to fascinate him and capture him in his liberty by
submitting myself to him. Such attempts are seen in love,
language and masochism. The second would wish to recover
myself as for-itself, by making of the Other my thing. Such
attempts are seen in sexual desire, sadism and hate.
These two offensives fail and each turns into the other,
because the first makes me lose myself as a for-itself, and the
second delivers me over to conquering the Other only in the state
of a pure in-itself, when it had aimed at capturing him in his
liberty as a for-itself. 7a

D. Having, doing and being. Sartre begins here " the study
of action in general (‘ the for-itself is being which is defined by
action’) and the essential relations of doing, of being and of
having. ” “ Is the supreme value of human activity a doing or
a being .... and what is to become of having? ” (B.N., 431).
1.

Being and doing : freedom.

a. Freedom, the first condition of action. “ To act is to
modify the shape of the world, " in an intentional manner,
however, and not mechanically. Intention supposes a lack,
a possible, a desirable : “ No factual state ... is capable by itself
of motivating any act whatsoever ..., nor can it determine
consciousness to apprehend it as a negatite, or as a lack. ” "It is
7‘ See R. Verneaux, Leçons sur l’Existentialisme, pp. 129-136;
E. Mouniek, Introduction aux Existentialismes, pp. 93-99; P. Foulquié.
L'Existentialisme, pp. 77-81.

SARTRE AND MAN

547

the act which decides its ends and motives and the act is the
expression of freedom ” (B.N., 433-438).
is freedom? “ It is not a quality added to my nature
or a property thereof. It is very exactly the stuff of my being ”
(B.N., 439). “ To say that the for-itself has to be what it is ...,
to say that in it existence precedes and conditions essence ...
all this is to say one and the same thing : to be aware that man
is free ” (B.N., 439).
This is a jact which is absolute. “ I am condemned to be
free. This means that no limits to my freedom can be found
except freedom itself, or, if you prefer, that we are not free to
cease being free " (B.N., 439).
“...for human reality to be is to choose oneself; nothing
comes to it either from the outside or from within which it can
receive or accept. Without any help whatsoever, it is entirely
abandoned to the intolerable necessity of making itself be
— down to the slightest detail. Thus freedom is not a being,
it is the very being of man — i.e., his nothingness of being. ...
Man can not be sometimes slave and sometimes free; he is wholly
and forever free, or he is not free at all " (B.N., 439-441).
Every where in man : " All my modes of being manifest
freedom equally, since they are all ways of being my own
nothingness” (B.N., 445); Sartre, in particular, asserts the
freedom of the passions, against Descartes and the Stoics
(B.N., 441).
It is constitutive of man : “ it is a freedom which is beyond
motives, means and ends. ... When I deliberate, the chips arc
down. ” If I choose to deliberate, it is to become aware of my
choice : " when the will intervenes the decision is taken, and it
has no other value than that of making an announcement ”
(B.N., 450-451).
Its initial project is translated into each particular act. This
project concerns " my being in the world insofar as this being
is choice ”
457). “ A gesture refers to a Weltanschauung
and we sense it ” (B.N., 457).
" The fundamental act of freedom ... which gives meaning
to the particular action ..., constantly renewed, is not distinct

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APPENDIX

from my being; it is a choice of myself in the world, and by the
same token, a discovery of the world ”. ... “ The profound
choice ... is simply one with the consciousness which we have
of ourselves ... Choice and consciousness are one and the
same thing ” (B.N., 462). Choice is anterior to all deliberation,
choice is that which deliberation and decision only express.
Its expression is not of the conceptual order : this initial
project implies a solution to the problem of being, but “ we are
this solution. We make it exist by means of our very commit­
ment, and therefore we shall be able to apprehend it only by
living it. ” It is expressed " by the twofold feeling of anxiety
and responsibility
anxiety to feel our modifiable and feeble
choice, unable to be justified by the past and committing us to the
future (B.N., 464). *' To choose ourselves is to annihilate
ourselves; that is, to cause a future to come and make known to us
what we are by conferring a meaning on our past ” (B.N., 465).
Freedom and essence. Here there is a difference with Leibniz,
for whom Adam’s free choice constitutes a part of the essence of
Adam, such as God has created it, “ for us, indeed, the problem
of freedom is placed on the level of Adam’s choice of himself
— that is, on the determination of essence by existence ’’
{B.N., 469).
Freedom and datum. “If consciousness exists in terms of
the given, this does not mean that the given conditions
consciousness; consciousness is a pure and simple negation of the
given, and it exists as the disengagement from a certain existing
given, and as an engagement towards a certain not yet existing
end. ... We shall never apprehend ourselves except as a choice
in the making. But freedom is simply the fact that this choice
is always unconditioned ” (B.N., 478-479).
The absurdity of choice. " This choice is absurd, not because
it is without reason, but because there never has been any
possibility of not choosing oneself. ” Not absurd as would be
a phenomenon unrelated to others through causes, but “ in tins
sense, that the choice is that by which all foundations and all
reasons come into being, that by which the very notion of the
absurd receives a meaning ’’ (B.N., 479).

SARTRE AND MAN

549

But " freedom ... is the perpetual escape from contingency;
it is the interiorization, the annihilation and the subjectivizing of
contingency, which thus modified, passes wholly into the gratuity
of choice ” (B.N., 479).
As to particular choices, which are contingent in themselves,
unforeseeable and absurd, they are understood as integrated into
the total project.
b. Freedom and facticity : the situation. To choose is not
yet realization : the résistants to the free project, far from
destroying it, are useful to it, and it is because of the free project
that these resistances arise.
" The resistance which freedom reveals in the existent, far
from being a danger to freedom, results only in enabling it to
arise as freedom. There can be a free for-itself only as engaged
in a resisting world ” (B.N., 483).
What are the sources of this resistance?
1) From the facticity of freedom : “ we are a freedom which
chooses, but we do not choose to be free. We are condemned
to freedom. ”
2) From the contingency of the world looked at from the
point of view of the body (B.N., 485-486). The situation is" the
contingency of freedom in the plenum of being in the world
inasmuch as this datum ... is revealed to this freedom only as
already illuminated by the end which freedom chooses — ”
“ Situation and motivation are really one ... there is
freedom only in a situation, and there is a situation only
through freedom ” (B..N, 487-489).
" The facticity of freedom is the given which has to be, and
which it illuminates by its project ’’ (B.N., 489). This given,
this situation, has several forms :
a) Jlfy -place in the world, place of birth, etc.
b) My past. Freedom " has to be its owi past, and this
past is irremediable, ” although it is always in a state of reprieve
and transformable by the future and by history (B.N., 496).
c) My environment, i.e., " the instrumental things which
surround me, including their particular coefficients of adversity
and utility ”
504).

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APPENDIX

d) My fellowman.
e) My death.
c. Freedom and responsibility. " The responsibility of the
for-itself is overwhelming, since the for-itself is the one by whom
it happens that there is a world, since he is also the one who
makes himself to be ” (B.N., 553).
Nevertheless there is no reason to complain. Nothing
foreign to me has decided what will happen. “ If I am mobilized
in a war, this war is my war. It is in my image and I deserve
it. ... For lack of getting out of it, I have chosen it. ”
Still more : “ To live this war is to choose myself through
it and to choose it through my choice of myself. ’’
But " I am responsible for everything ... except for my
very responsibility, for I am not the foundation of my being ”
(B.N., 554-555). I am only the foundation of the for-itself of
my being.
Nevertheless, “ in a certain sense I choose being bom, ”
I take an attitude towards my birth and my parents. Thus,
" I am the being which is in such a way that in its being its being
is in question ” (B..V., 556).
Therefore, since all is an occasion or opportunity for my
project, " the responsibility of the for-itself extends to the entire
world as a peopled world. ”
“ It is precisely thus that the for-itself apprehends itself in
anxiety, that is, as a being which is neither the foundation of its
own being, nor of the Other's being, nor of the in-itselfs which
form the world, but a being which is compelled to decide the
meaning of being — within it and everywhere outside of it ”
{B.N., 556). The attitude which results is neither remorse, nor
regret, nor excuse. It is too often bad faith, but the authentic
attitude is that of “ a freedom which reveals itself perfectly, and
whose being resides in this very revelation ” (B.N., 556).

2. Doing and having.
a. Existential psychoanalysis is the “ method destined to
bring to light, in a strictly objective form, the subjective choice
by which each living person makes himself a person, that is,

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551

makes known to himself what he is. ” It awaits its Freud, and
it must analyze not only dreams and failures, but also, and
especially, the thoughts of wakefulness and successfully executed
acts as well (B.N., 575). Lacking a Freud, Sartre attempts to
mark out the fundamental human project. We can see in his
effort, although he disavows it, a search for the essence of man.
" The original project of a for-itself can aim only at its
being ” (it can be neither death, nor life, nor any particular
characteristic) : " Fundamentally man is the desire to be
the original project ... is then, the project of being. ... The
being which the for-itself lacks is the in-itself ” (B.N., 564-565).
“ In addition, the for-itself, being negation of the in-itself,
could not desire the pure and simple return to the in-itself. ...
It is as consciousness that it wishes to have the impermeability
and infinite density of the in-itself. ... This is why the possible
is projected in general as what the for-itself lacks in order to
become in-itsclf-for-itself, that is, the ideal of a consciousness
which would be the foundation of its own bcing-in-itself by the
pure consciousness which it would have of itself. It is this ideal
which can be called God. ... To be man means to reach towards
being God. ... Man is fundamentally the desire to be God ”
(B.N., 566).
Would this be the essence of man? No, Sartre answers, for
if the desire has this meaning of a project to become God, the
desire is not constituted by this meaning, but always by a
particularized intention. “ Freedom can arise only as being
which makes itself a desire of being : that is, as the project
for-itself of being in-itsclf-for-itself. ... The structure under
consideration can be called the truth of freedom : that is, it is the
human meaning of freedom ” (B.N., 567-568).

b. Possession : having. " The desire to have aims at the
for-itself on, in, and through the world ” (B.N.,598). Inseparable
from the desire of being, it aims at the same goal, but it interposes
the world between the for-itself and its being in order to be.
" Every for-itself is a free choice ... : it is a choice of being,
either directly or by the appropriation of the world. ... Thus
my freedom is a choice of being God, and all my acts, all my
N.Y. 17. — 37

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APPENDIX

projects translate this choice and reflect it in a thousand and one
ways ” (ways of being and ways of having) (B.N., 599).
Doing is a means of having. So is knowing and even
gambling, although the latter does not readily appear so.
Gambling is at least the desire to possess.
Having is an internal relation between the possessor and the
possessed, wherein only the possessed can be substance, since the
possessor is not sufficient : " the internal relation of the for-itself
to the in-itself, which is ownership, derives its origin from the
insufficiency of being in the for-itself ” (B.N., 588). The desire
of having is reduced, then, to the desire of being, as has already
been done with doing.
But notice here the revenge of the for-itself : " the possessor
is the raison d’être oí the possessed object, ’’ he is the creator of it.
However, “ that which I create ... is me. The tragedy of the
absolute Creator, if he existed, would be the impossibility of
getting out of himself, for whatever he created could be only
himself. ... The panorama is myself dilated to the horizon,
for it exists only through me and for me. ... Creation is an
evanescent concept which can exist only through its move­
ment. ... As the object rises up in my world, it must be
simultaneously wholly me and wholly independent of me. ...
Thus the relation of continuous creation encloses within it as its
implicit contradiction the absolute, in-itself independence of the
objects created ” (B.N., 590-591).
Therefore, “ we see that appropriation is nothing save the
symbol of ideal of the for-itself or value. The dyad for-itself
possessing and in-itself possessed is the same as that being
which is, in order to possess itself, and whose possession is in its
ora creation — God ” (B.N., 592). However, this relation is
completely ideal and symbolic.
“ The relation of possession appears to us clearly : to possess
is to wish to possess the world across a particular object, ” and
" to-be-in-the-world is to form the project of possessing the
world; that is, to apprehend the total world as that which is
lacking to the for-itself in order that it may become in-itsclffor-itself ” (B.N., 597).

SARTRE AND MAN

553

c. Quality as a revelation of being. The meaning which
man gives to things is discovered in the qualities which man
knowns or remarks, whether he likes them or detests them.
“ Take for example that particular quality which wc call
* slimy. ’ Certainly for the European adult it signifies a host of
human and moral characteristics which can easily be reduced to
relations of being ” (B.N., 604). The study of qualities would
allow the beginning of existential psychoanalysis through the
phenomenological method. “ There is no irreducible taste or
inclination. They all represent a certain appropriaiive choice
of being. ”
“ Ontology abandons us here; it has merely enabled us to
determine the ultimate ends of human reality, its fundamental
possibilities, and the value which haunts it. Each human reality
is at the same time a direct project to metamorphose its own
for-itself into an in-itsclf-for-itself, and a project of the appro­
priation of the world as a totality of being-in-itself, in the form
of a fundamental quality. Every human reality is a passion
in that it projects losing itself so as to found being, and by the
same stroke to constitute the In-itself which escapes contingency
by being its own foundation, the Ens causa sui, which religions
call God. Thus the passion of man is the reverse of that of
Christ, for man loses himself as man in order that God may be
born. The idea of God, however, is contradictory and we lose
ourselves in vain. Man is a useless passion " (B.N., 615).

E. Sartre’s humanism can thus be summed up as follows :
1. It is an atheism and even an antitheism. God is only
an idea, a contradictory idea, which, nevertheless, serves as a
magnetic pole for liberty. To postulate a creating God would
be to destroy freedom, i.e., man. Belief in God is a channel of
bad faith.
2. Existence precedes essence, in man, and in him alone.
To exist is to be free, to choose oneself to be such or such. Man
would not be man if his essence preceded him in the exemplary
idea of God.
3. Freedom is without limit, without condition. It is
creative of the values which it reveals by projecting itself towards

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APPENDIX

the possibles, towards that which it lacks, by the very fact that
in choosing itself it chooses that which is not yet in being.
Freedom is that fundamental project of making the in-itselffor-itsclf. It is freedom that gives its meaning to every particular
choice. This project is a contradiction.
Freedom and responsibility are complete. They concern
me, others and the world.
However, to be free is a fact which I am not free to annul,
of which I am not the foundation. I am condemned to be free.
Anxiety arises from my freedom which is simultaneously
complete and contingent. I could avoid it only by ceasing to be
man through bad faith, by falling back toward reassuring behavior,
such as might be supplied by moral rules and religious hopes
4. Society is essentially conflict and irreducible antagonism.

5. The absurd can not be eliminated from man. It is found
everywhere that freedom cannot be fundamental, in the given
in-itself, in birth, in the very fact that I am a freedom, and in my
death.
6. Nothingness is the great originality of consciousness or
of freedom (they are both one). It is the negation in act which
constitutes the for-itself in all its attitudes, and especially in its
freedom which temporalices itself, and in its opposition to the
in-itself and to others. ”

F. Observations. The question posed by being and
nothingness is not : “ What is man? ” " Our present investiga­
tion does not aim at constituting an anthropology " (B.N., 282).
Yet Sartre asserts that existentialism is a humanism and that
it has its own idea of man. We can say that it is the privileged
center from which he studies the relation of being to nothingness.
To subtle psychological descriptions, he joins dangerous omissions
and erroneous negations, which are attributable to the phenom­
enological method and to a certain idea of man which, perhaps,
is more representative of the fundamental individual project
of Sartre than it is of man in general.
n P. Foulquié, L'Existentialisme, pp. 86-89.

CRITIQUE OF THE SARTREAN MAN

555

1. Does existence create essence? My freedom does not
create me as man, nor even as this man. It takes this man here
and transforms him. Could I, by chance, plant myself either as
God or as man in the thirteenth century? My freedom takes its
place from my “ situation, ” at least in part, and gives it a
meaning. The war of 1939 enters into my essence, through
my freedom, in a new way, certainly; but it is already there
without my choice, and no matter what anyone says, it conditions
my choice. 71
" I choose myself — not in my being, but in my manner of
being ” (B.N., 546) is a formula which is already excessive. It
should rather be expressed by the phrasing “ in certain of my
manners of being. ” But then, to say that existence creates
essence would appear as an error obscuring a truth and would
scarcely be a help to determinists who would deny recognizing it.
2. My essence? Sartre denies exemplarism. My essence
is not the form of my existence, first present in the divine idea,
according to which I am molded little by little, and which is
forced as a law or duty on my freedom. The reason ? God is not,
and such an essence would exclude all freedom from me.
Sartre denies that I am a substance. How could I be one,
since, " nothingness is this whole of being, this fall of the in-itself
toward the self, the fall by which the for-itself is constituted ”
(B.N., 79)? Would at least the in-itself which is interior to
consciousness be a substance? No, “ Facticity is not then
a substance of which the for-itself would be the attribute and
which produce thought without exhausting itself in that very
production. It simply resides in the for-itself as a memory of
being, as its unjustifiable presence in the world ” (B.N., 84).
“ Human reality is the pure effort to become God without
there being any given substratum for that effort, without there
being anything which so endeavors. Desire expresses this
endeavor ” (B.N., 576).
“ For the for-itself, to be, is to nihilate the in-itself which
it is. Under these conditions freedom can be nothing other than
this annihilation ” (B.N., 439).
n Ibid., pp. 59-63.

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APPENDIX

3. My freedom, then, is what I am. But what is it? Where
is it?
It is not in deliberation, nor in decision, nor in action. It
" is beyond causes, motives and ends. ... When I deliberate,
the chips are down ..., and the choice of deliberation (I choose
to deliberate by an internal spontaneity) is organized with the
ensemble motives-causes, and end by a free spontaneity. When
the will intervenes, the decision has already been taken, and it
has no other value than that of making an announcement ”
(B.N., 450-451).
That which constitutes the voluntary is the reflection
manifesting movers and motives, whereas spontaneity lives them
and chooses without knowing them. This spontaneity is the
most profound freedom : "... the will is not a privileged
manifestation of freedom ..., it is a psychic event of a peculiar
structure which is constituted on the same plane as other psychic
events, and which is supported, neither more nor less, by an
original, ontological freedom ” (B.N., 452).
My freedom is choice : “ The fundamental act of freedom is
discovered ... ; this constantly renewed act is not distinct from
my being; it is choice of myself in the world ”.... " It is simply
one with the consciousness we have of ourselves, ” since
consciousness is " selection ’’ (B.N., 461-462).
And here we arc brought back to a pure unfolding of
historical events. " To choose ourselves is to annihilate ourselves;
that is, to cause a future to come and make known to us what
we are by conferring a meaning on our past ” (B.N., 465). We
can clearly see here the affirmation of an internal sequence
between the moments of time, a sequence wherein the future
determines the past. However, we no longer sec any indication
of freedom.
The shell, however, is still kept. Only one of the possibles
will happen which will confer a meaning on the series which has
flowed by and which up to now is undetermined. This possible
will annihilate the others, and, by reason of that, the other modes
which the for-itself could have become. The shell of freedom
is there; the passage from the undetermined to the determined,

CRITIQUE OF THE SARTREAN MAN

557

the choice among the possibles. But where would be its strength,
since no substantial principle governs the choice? Since the
choice is as free as if it had never been reflected upon and willed?
Since to choose is simply to annihilate a particular in-itself which
was able to appear in time?
So well does this radical affirmation of complete, unlimited
and unconditioned freedom do its job, that it emerges only as
a negation of all authentic freedom.

4. The consequences o/ such a freedom collapse with it.
a. Anxiety no longer has any basis. We can understand
that a believer might be filled with anxiety at his sins in the sight
of the Holy Trinity, that an honest man might be filled with
dismay at the sight of so many objective moral values so often
violated by himself and his fellow men, that a man conscious
of reflective choice and consent could be anxious about the
possible unfortunate consequences of his acts, and that an
attention fixed on the eternal significance of free acts might be
condensed into extreme anguish.
But, according to Sartre, nothing subsists. God is absent.
Values come into the world through myself alone. My choice
is reduced to a spontaneous selection among possibles. Above
all, I am beset from every side by death which destroys my
for-itself. What is there to fear? This nothingness which
we are? This in-itself which is inactive and indifferent?
Truly, is there a better prospect for avoiding anxiety than
Sartre's system? Or rather, is not the presence of anxiety the
best proof that his system is false?
b. Values. Their solidity is that of essences. Actually,
value appears either in an act or in an event undergone, which
is compared to a fully realized essence. Thus, error, health, can
only be thought of in reference to an optimum of knowing or
living. The possibility of the presence or the absence of a useful
part of the total perfection of a being, i.e., of its essence, suffices
to make the value appear. A fortiori freedom would be sufficient
here : in this sense it creates value, but it creates it only in
reference to the essence of a free being, defined elsewhere.

558

APPENDIX

Suppress the essence, leaving only freedom (an impossible hypo­
thesis), there remains only a sequence of events without value.
If man is nothing other than what he makes himself, if he is
not already in some way (by his essence) that which he is not
yet in a realized way (by his liberty or otherwise), that which
he must be, there is no longer a rule of value, nor an objective
moral law. We can understand that, with such an ontology,
“ we can not derive imperatives from ontology’s indications ”
(B.N., 625). “ Ontology and existential psychoanalysis ...
must reveal to the moral agent that he is the being by whom values
exist. ... His freedom ... will reveal itself in anxiety as the
unique source of value ” (B.N., 627).
We can understand why Sartre, in order to finish, poses the
question : “ Will freedom by the very fact that it apprehends
itself as a freedom in relation to itself, be able to put an end to
the reign of value? In particular is it possible for freedom to
take itself for a value as the source of all value, or must
it necessarily be defined in relation to a transcendent value which
haunts it? " (B.N., 627). The bent of the system would lead
Sartre towards the affirmation of the first hypothesis : “ Nothing
could make value exist, if there was not this liberty which at the
same stroke makes me exist myself ’’ (B.N., 84-95).
Nevertheless, he is sometimes aware of the excess in such
formulas and compensates for them by others : “ Value ... is
not at all -posited by the for-itself, it is consubstantial wnth it. ...
Value is everywhere and nowhere ..., simply lived as the concrete
meaning of that lack which makes my present being " (B.N.,
94-95). Could we not see here an implicit admission that value
is my essence in the sense of a being which is capable of achie­
vement by the exercise of freedom? Sartre would not consent
to this : " The initial project of being God, which * defines ' man,
comes close to being the same as human * nature ’ or an
‘essence’" (B.N., 566). But no; this project is not human
essence, it is simply the meaning of human choices w'hich are
always particular. How’ever, isn’t this only bringing the concept
nature from the abstract plane of man in se to the concrete plane
of this man here? This may be a constrained avowal we get

CRITIQUE OF THE SARTREAN MAN

559

from Sartre, but it shows how difficult it is to get away from
essence and substance.
Now, either value has only one source, freedom, and then
it is destroyed in indifference; or it supposes my freedom. If so,
then my freedom rises from a lack of being which exists whether
perceived or not, a lack which separates what I am now from my
essence completely realized in both an ideal and real perspective.
Thus, value rests on a true absolute : my essence such as God
thinks it and wills it, such as my consciousness lives it and
discovers it bit by bit. This essence that I am actually shows
itself as an absolute only under two conditions : that I attach
it to my immortal existence, and that I see it emanating from
a creative and provident God. Sartre has denied substantial
essence, immortality, and God. Upon what can he establish
a firm basis for values?
c. Being for others appears to Sartre as being in irreducible
conflict with the for-itself. Is this not fatal, since the latter is
defined as pure freedom, a completely individual spontaneity?
We here rediscover the excesses of La Rochefoucauld and
Rousseau : man is completely egoistic. The perfect man is the
asocial man.
We can certainly recognize the truth of Sartre's descriptions
of this conflict, but we must also remark in them a unilateral
and falsified character. Sartre works here with a “ choice ”
between egoistic feelings and altruistic attitudes, and he gives
an overwhelming preponderance to the first. Is this the result
of a completely experimental study? Are the phenomena of
consciousness truly reduced to this " I have said it and that is
enough? ” No, for we must see here a completely different
method at work, a deduction from an a -priori idea, a deduction
from a theory : it is that which defines the for-itself as a
completely spontaneous freedom, as a project which suffices unto
itself, in short, a project to make itself God.
Gabriel Marcel, on the contrary, has been able to describe
a look, which can be experienced, which calls and offers itself
with a generosity which does not precisely indicate that " prefer­
ence towards appropriation by destruction ” that Sartre sees

560

APPENDIX

there (B.N., 594) ; a look of admiration which rises towards the
other, stimulating personal freedom and not smothering it as
does envy; a creative look which stirs up the effort of others
towards the good and the true, e.g., the look of a leader, a teacher,
the look of mothers and fathers. Even a hostile look does not
inevitably create conflict. Could it not invite me to develop my
personal value to the point of “ gaining ” a true friend in him
who was my enemy?
Individualism will not succeed in putting out this light which
is in the heart of man. The other is indispensable for the
development of the person. This light becomes a tendency and
finally the law of free will : love thy neighbor as thyself. The
for-itself, if it is truly this fundamental project of making itself
the in-itself-for-itself, by exceeding itself indefinitely, can not
fail to wish to advance itself through a society where the differing
for-itselfs communicate their own riches by abolishing the
impermeability of their individual frontiers, so that my for-itself
is made available to all, while the for-itself of others is opened
to fill my own needs.

5. Is there any appreciable positive gain in the work of
Sartre? Here are some suggestions.
a. This work, by its structure and success, reveals certain
aspects of our current generation : an acute curiosity about the
why of human existence (existentialism) ; the rejection of
anything beyond experience, such as the immortality of the soul
and the existence of God (phenomenalism) : a reclaiming of
freedom in every sense of the word, and, in particular, a violent
hostility against every check on pure spontaneity, against moral
law, social exigencies, and esthetic or religious traditions (indiv­
idualism).
b. Sartre’s philosophy appears to be a strongly probable
proof of the impotence of phenomenalism to explain man and
a kind of argument “ ad absurdum ” in favor of substance and
cause, of substances and a Creator.
We must, however, be more precise. We can understand
essence and substance in such a sense that man, who is explained
in these terms, becomes monstruous and unrecognizable. It is

CRITIQUE OF THE SARTREAN MAN

561

sufficient only to think of that inert and passive extension, in
which Descartes believed he saw the essence of the body, or of
that immutable ego, which Hume thought must l>e encountered
in order to have the right to affirm human substance.
Sartre has rightly observed : “ It is necessary that the
permanent (in becoming, that is), should be that which changes. ”
Yet it is precisely because there is something there that changes,
that this something is substance : the essence of a being is really
identical with its nature, i.e., it is the principle of its own
modifications. Now, in not a few passages of Sartre, the freedom
claimed as the very being of the for-itself is no other than that
spontaneity designated by the terms essence and nature. So
that an exegesis — which might often be labored — would arrive
at the recognition of a part of the traditional philosophy, clad
in the current style, even though that part be purely descriptive.
Nevertheless, that part occupies a big place in being and
nothingness.
But the phenomenological method has no way of going
beyond phenomena. To do this there must be metaphysical
principles, which are put " between parentheses ” by this method.
Hence, the problems posed at the heart of the existent, and a
method offering nothing to resolve them, can present only a
skeptical solution at first. Discouraged and discouraging, this
solution is irreconcilable with freedom, which is not free to be
freedom, and which chooses without having the power to abstain
from choosing. There remains then a solution which builds the
world, possibles, values and human destiny completely on
freedom alone. This is Sartre’s solution, and it forces man to
assert the absurdity of his own existence, the impossibility of
giving a free foundation to his liberty, the impossibility of
being God.
It remains then to turn to another method, to think meta­
physically, to make at least an hypothesis of a being for-itself
which is not yet experienced, and to search in experience for the
traces of its obscure germination.7i
’* E. Rideau, Paganisme ou Christianisme, has several pages on the
work of Sartre, which are at the same time both lucid and charitable,
pp. 113-123.

562

APPENDIX

Man, then, is discovered as a substance, changing and
perfectible through the operation of his free will. In the sight
of his Creator he knows himself to be responsible for the fulfill­
ment of his own being and that of others. If you wish, he is
polarized by the fundamental project of making himself in-itselffor-itself, i.e., God. Thus would St. Thomas, perhaps, ’• today
express his idea of the natural desire to see the divine essence,
which haunts the heart of man. To see the divine essence is
also to be united to it by love and to all the others who are
similarity united to it. However, St. Thomas would add,
which is absolutely imposed, that this desire remains inefficacious
as long as human liberty is not raised higher by the gratuitous
gift of grace granted to man by the intervention of the Incarnate
Word.
The concrete problem of human existence has a real solution
only in the Catholic Faith.

’* We can only say perhaps, for, if St. Thomas asserts that there
exists in human intelligence, as in every created spirit, a desire which
is natural but inefficacious to see the divine essence, yet he never
considered such a desire as being able to define the nature of man.
Could such a desire to see God be used to define created intelligence,
in general, i.e., to define it by its deepest aptitude? For more on this
Question, sec G. de Broglie, Pour une Théorie Rationelle de I’Acte de
oi, p. 29.
Assuredly the project of making one’s self an in-itself-for-itself
would be characteristic of Lucifer's freedom, expressed in his “ Non
serviam. " In an opposite sense, it could also characterize the sure
Christian hope for divine grace. But it docs not express the very nature
of man.

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Beck, William S., Modem Science and the Nature of Life (Anchor).
Bertalanffy, Ludwig von. Modern Theories of Development .*
An Introduction to Theoretical Biology (Torchbooks).

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Blbich, Alan R., The Story of X-Rays : from Rbntgen to Isotopes
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Bondi, H., Cosmology (Cambridge U. P., 1961).
— Universe at Large (Anchor, i960).
Bridgman, P. W., Nature of Thermodynamics (Torchbooks, 1961).
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Broglie, Louis de. The Revolution in Physics (Noonday).
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1954)Cain, A. J., Animal Species and Their Evolution (Toorchbooks, i960).
Clark, W. E. LeGros, History of the Primates (Phoenix, 1957).
Coleman, James A., Relativity for the Layman (Signet).
Dantzig, Tobias, Number : The Language of Science (Anchor, 1956).
Dobzhansky, T., Biological Basis of Human Freedom (Columbia,
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Eddington, Sir A., New Pathways in Science (Ann Arbor Paper
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Eliade, Mircea, Cosmos and History : The Myth of the Eternal
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Fermi, Enrico, Elementary Particles (Yale University Press, 1951).
Fisher, Ronald, Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (Dover, 1958).
Fromm, Erich, Marx's Concept of Man (Frederick Ungar
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Gamow, George, Gravity (Anchor, 1962).
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Hecht, Selig, Explaining the Atom, revised by E. Rabonowitch
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Heinsenberg, Werner, Physics and Philosophy : The Revolution
in Modem Science (Torchbooks, 1958).
Herzberg, G. and Spinks, J.W.T., Atomic Spectra and Atomic
Structure (Dover, 1944).
Hoffman, Banesh, Strange Story of the Quantum (Dover, 1959).
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1959) .
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Munitz, Milton K., Space, Time and Creation (Collier).
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Rank, Otto, Beyond Psychology (Dover, 1959)— Psychology and the Soul (Perpetua, 1961).
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— Philosophy of Space and Time (Dover).
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KEY TO THE EDITORS OF PAPERBACKS
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22, New York.
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New York.

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4. (Citadel) Citadel Press, 222 Park Avenue South, New York 3,
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580

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