Life in Human Beings

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have defined life both in basic fact (in actu pritno) and in actual exercise (in actu secundo). We have described the manifestations of life in living bodies. We have seen that life in living bodies comes, in each case, from a substantial principle or source which is the substantial form of the living body; this substantial form is called the life-principle or the soul of the living body. We have discerned an essential difference between a living body and a lifeless body. We have learned that life in living bodies is of three essential kinds, and that these kinds are also essentially different grades; the three grades of life in living bodies are vegetal life, sentient life, and rational or human life. Of vegetal life, we have seen that it is characterized by three vital operations, nutrition, growth, and vital generation. Of sentient life, we have learned that it is essentially different from and essentially superior to vegetal life, and that it has all the operations of vegetal life plus its own proper operations of sensation, appetition, and, usually, locomotion. We have learned that the soul or life-principle in plants and in animals is material, inasmuch as it depends for existence and function upon the organism which it actuates; that it is generated and corrupted accidentally, inasmuch as it emerges and ceases to be with the organism as a whole; that it is educed from the potentiality of matter and reduced thereto as the animal or plant is generated or dies. We have discussed the origin of species and have mentioned various theories which seek to explain it.

a) Man’s Soul

The substantial form of the human living body is called the human soul. As the substantial form of man, it is that substan- tial principle which makes a man an existing being of the human species, and it is the root-source in man of ail his vital activities.

Now, man has the highest grade of life in living bodies. He has all the perfections and operations of plants and of nonhuman animals; he has the operations of nutrition, growth, vital generation, sensation, appetition, locomotion, and, in addition, he has his own proper or specific operations called understand ing and willing. The activities or operations of understanding and willing are called the operations of rational life. And since animal means all that plant means plus the sentient powers and operations, so man means all that animal means plus the rational powers and operations. Man is therefore defined as a rational animal. As each of the three grades of life in living bodies is essentially different from, and essentially superior to the lower grade or grades, it is manifest that man, while possessing all the perfections and operations of plant and animal, is essentially different from these living bodies and essentially superior to them. He is an essentially different kind of living body.

While man has the perfections, powers, and operations of all three grades of life in living bodies, he is none the less a single bodily being. Each human being is one substance, not three. He has one substantial form, not three substantial forms. It is the one individual man who comes into existence by generation, who takes nourishment and grows, who feels and walks about, who thinks and makes free decisions. The human substance is a compound substance, as every bodily substance is, but it is a single substance, not a triple one. Man’s one substantial form is his one life-principle or soul. This one soul is the root-source or principle in man of the material life of plant and animal which he possesses, and of the non-material or spiritual life which he manifests in his rational powers and operations. Since that which is superior can account for what is inferior, but not the other way about, we say that man’s spiritual soul can account for even the material operations of man’s life, but that a non-spiritual soul could not account for the spiritual operations of man. Hence we conclude that man’s one soul is a spiritual soul. Of this we shall speak again in a moment.

The human soul is a substance; it is a simple or uncompounded substance; it is a spiritual substance; it is an immortal or deathless substance. We pause briefly upon each of these truths.

( /) The human soul is the substantial form of the human body. It is therefore a substantial thing, a substance. We shall presently see that it is a spiritual substance, and by that fact it is different from the other types of substantial form which actuate bodies whether living or lifeless; it is in itself a complete sub stance, It is not a complete man, that is, not a complete human being; it is only part of a human being. But it is a complete soul, capable of existence by itself without the body. For a complete substance is one that can exist and exercise its proper operations alone; an incomplete substance is one that requires another substance to be fused with it substantially so that it may exist and operate. That the human life-principle or soul is a substance, and not merely an accidental, is manifest, as we have said, from the fact that it is the substantial formal constituent of substantial man. Further, man’s soul is the principle of man’s vital powers, and these, in themselves, are accidentals, and must have,—as all accidentals in the order of nature must have,—a substantial actuality in which to inhere; man’s vital powers are rooted in a substantial principle, that is, in a substance, which we call man’s substantial form or soul.

(2) The human soul is a simple or uncomposed substance. It is not made of parts. Every substantial form is simple. For a body which exists as a definite kind of body by reason of its substantial form is one body. Even if the form be potentially multiple, it is never actually multiple. The life-principle of a plant, for example, is the substantial form of the plant; and each plant is a unified thing; it is one substance; it has one life. This life is manifested in root and stem and leaf and flower. But it is one life. You do not cut off part of the life when you pluck a flower or trim away a branch, though it may be that you produce, by partition, a completely new plant with its own one life. Thus every body that is truly one body, has truly one substantial form, and the substantial form is itself without component parts, even though the body has component parts. This fact is most obvious in living bodies. But what is true of the lower living bodies is a fortiori true of man who has all the perfections of all types of living bodies. For the rest, as we have seen, it is the one man who grows, who feels, who is moved by sentient appetite, who thinks, who wills. Man, who is a bodily being composed of bodily parts, is nevertheless one and his life is one and indivis ible. In all his bodily parts man lives a human life, although he does not exercise all his human activities in each part We declare, therefore, that the principle of man’s life, his soul, is one and indivisible; that it has no parts of its own; that it is simple.

(3) Man’s soul is a spiritual substance. Substances are of two possible kinds, material and non-material or spiritual. A material substance is either a substance composed of bodily matter, and hence made up of parts, or it is a substance which is itself simple but which depends for existence and activity upon what is bodily. We have seen that the soul of a plant and the soul of an animal are material. These souls are not made up of bodily matter; they are substantial forms, and hence simple; but they are dependent for their existence and their operations upon the organisms or living bodies which they actuate. Now, man’s soul is neither made up of bodily matter or parts (as we have seen, since it is a substantial form), nor is it dependent upon the body for its own specific operations; hence, since it can operate without the organism, it can exist without the organism. How do we know that the soul of man can operate without the organism? Because it has operations, even while joined with the organism^ which are essentially superior to any organic function and which are in themselves independent of bodily operation. Now, if the soul has operations which are essentially superior to, and inde-

3i i pendent of, bodily structure and function, then the soul itself is superior to and independent of bodily structure and function; it is then not dependent on matter; it is spiritual For “operation follows on essence” ; as a thing is, it acts; and if the soul is supra- organic in activity, it is supra-organic in essence; it is itself above the character of the body and is essentially independent of the body. Now, the soul has activities which are supra-organic. For the soul can (or, more properly, man, by reason of his soul, can) think, and reflect, and decide. The operations of understanding and of free-will are in no wise explicable in terms of the body, of the organism, or of the bodily powers of knowing and appetizing. There is an old and a true saying that “the senses are for individual perceptions, but the intellect is for universal grasps of reality.” The eyes can take in an individual scene, or a series of such scenes; man, for instance, can see a tree, or a multitude of trees, or a succession of trees or of forests. But each visual perception is an individual thing. No number of such experiences amounts to the understanding of what tree means. Yet man has an understanding of what tree means; he can define tree, and the definition fits any and every tree that ever was, or is, or will be, or can be. No bodily knowing power (that is, no sentient faculty) can even begin to lay hold of an essence as the mind or intellect does. Even a little child of four or five knows what “a doll” or “a sled” means; the knowledge is not of this or these individual toys; it is knowledge of any and every possible doll, of any and every possible sled. In its own childish way, the infant has a grasp of an essence, of what would be expressed by a definition of doll or sled. Now, such a grasp of an essence is only possible to a supra-sensible power. For it is of the very nature of sense-kpowledge that it lays hold of the knowable things according to their individual marks, limits, determinants. But the intellect pays no attention to such limiting things; it prescinds from them; it abstracts from them; it lays hold of an essence in universal. Thus in knowing what a doll is, a child does not need to know the size of some particular doll, or the color

HUMAN LIFE 3_3 of its hair, or the material of which it is made, or any of the otter_ individuating marks which make a doll this doll or that doll; the child knows what doll-as-such means, regardless of all individuating marks. It is manifest, we repeat, that no sentient power can thus grasp things in essence, in universal, by abstraction from individuating marks; on the contrary, it is by the individuating marks that a sentient power lays hold of any reality. Man has, therefore, a knowing-power which is superior to the bodily knowing-power called sentiency . In itself, the intellect is a power superior to and independent of sentiency, even though in this life the intellect has an extrinsic and accidental dependency on the senses. But if the intellect, which is the soul’s knowing-power, is superior to and essentially independent of the bodily organs, the soul itself is superior to and independent of bodily limitations ; for the function of the soul shows the essence of the soul; as a thing acts it is; what is superior to bodiliness in operation is superior to bodiliness in essence. The soul of man is, therefore, non-material; it is spiritual . Again, the soul can reflect,can turn the attention of the mind upon the mind; can think of itself thinking. No bodily power is capable of such an activity. The soul is, in consequence, superior to the body in its powers and operations ; hence it is superior in its essence; it is not dependent in essence and operation on the body; it is not material; it is spiritual . Once again, man, by reason of the soul, can choose and decide, can exercise free-will. He can be swayed in his choice by the consideration of things beyond the reach of any bodily power, by thoughts of loyalty, of devotion, of friendship, of love; no sentient power has any means of grasping these things or of appetizing them. Therefore man has operations which are quite above the reach and character of bodiliness and sentiency. It follows that he has a principle of such operations which is itself beyond the character of the body, and is thus essentially independent of the body. In a word, it follows that man has a soul which is independent of matter, and is therefore spiritual. The soul of man is a spiritual substance_.

(4) Man’s soul is an immortal or deathless substance. Death is the separation of the substantial form of a living body and the material of which the body is made. It is a tearing apart of the life-principle (a substantial form) and the material substance which that life-principle in-formed and made a living body. In plants and animals death means the cessation from being of both organism and life-principle, for both are material, and they are mutually dependent for the constituting of the living body which now dies; and they are mutually dependent for their own existence on their union which is now dissolved. Thus plants and animals are mortal, or destructible by death, in their bodies and in their respective life-principles or souls. The soul of plant or animal has no activity independent of the body; hence it has no existence independent of the body; when the body-structure is no longer capable of supporting or subserving the functions of the life-principle in plant or animal, both the body and the life- principle cease to be the substantial things they were. With man the case is different. Man is mortal; man dies; man suffers the dissolution of his substantial constituting elements; but man’s soul does not die. When a man dies, his soul endures in being. For his soul is a spirit, not a material thing; his soul is a complete substance as a soul, although it is not a complete human being. The human soul cannot conceivably cease to be except by annihilation, and we know from other sources that God does not annihilate. For the soul exists, it is independent of the body for its own existence and its proper functions of understanding and willing. And the soul is spiritual; it has no parts that can be thought of as severed or shattered so as to destroy it. The human soul, being spiritual, is naturally immortal. It is a deathless substance.

The human soul is spiritual, and therefore its only possible origin is in an absolute and entire production, that is, in creation by Almighty God. The human soul cannot be generated from the souls Of parents, for the souls of parents are spiritual and have no parts to give off as seeds or germs of the soul of off-

HUMAN LIFE 315 spring. Each human soul is immediately created by Almighty God, and the moment of its creation is the moment of its substantial union with its body in the bosom of a human mother. The human soul does not pre-exist to the body. God by one and the same indivisible act creates each soul and unites it substantially with its body. The probable moment of the creation of the soul is the moment of conception.

The result of the union of soul and body is a human being, a human substance, a human person. For a person is a complete individual substance, constituted in its own specific nature, and belonging to the rational order. In other words, a person is a complete, individual, autonomous substance, endowed basically (or in actu primo) with understanding and free-will. Man is a complete individual substance; he is not a “soul in a body” ; he is a single composed substance of body-and-soul-substantially- united. While the soul, once separated from the body by death, can and must continue to exist and to exercise its proper operations of understanding and willing; and while, even during bodily life, the soul is the root-principle of activities which are beyond the reach of bodily powers, it is none the less accurate to say that it is the man, the compound of body-and-soul, that is the author of all the operations called human. It is the man that understands and wills, just as it is the man that grows, senses, moves. A person rightly says, “Jsee, I feel, I walk, I thirst, I think, I choose” ; he does not say that his body sees or that his eyes see, that his mind thinks, that his will chooses. For actiones sunt suppositorum, “activities are to be ascribed to the active substance as such, not to its parts or powers.”

The substantial union of soul and body may be shown by a simple instance of their interaction. Suppose that a person of hearty appetite is about to begin upon a splendid dinner. A telegram is handed to him; he reads of the death of a near and dear relative. Immediately his appetite is gone. Now the appetite for food is manifestly of the body; it belongs, strictly speaking, to the vegetal order. But the understanding of marks on paper, that is, of the telegram, is an activity of the intellect, a soul-faculty. Yet the knowledge taken in by the intellect has an instant effect upon the appetizing activity of the body. Here the close interaction of body and soul indicates their substantial union; it is the man who has appetite; it is the man who reads and understands the calamitous news.

The spiritual soul is the one and only soul or life-principle in a man. It is formally spiritual and rational. But it is virtually vegetal and sentient. Just as a five-dollar gold-piece is formally gold, but it is virtually copper or nickel or silver (because it has the virtue or power or force or meaning of many coins of the inferior rrietals), so the human soul is virtually (or in effect or effectiveness) a vegetal soul and an animal or sentient soul, although in itself, as such, formally, it is a spiritual and rational soul.

Each human being has his own soul. It is the soul which speci fies man, that is, makes him a being of this complete essence or species which we call the human species. But it is the material, the bodiliness which the soul in-forms and makes an existing human person, that is the principle of individuation in man. The soul makes a person an existing human being; but it is not the determinant of the figure, the sex, the nationality, and so on that mark the individual human being. In discussing The Ontological Question and The Cosmological Question we have learned that the principle of specification is the substantial form, and that the principle of individuation is matter as marked by quantity. How then is individuality preserved among separated souls, that is, among the souls that have left their bodies by death? St. Thomas holds that each soul is somehow extrinsically marked by a real relation to the body which it informed in earthly life, and thus each separated soul is equivalently “individuated” even in the absence of bodily matter.

The spiritual soul in a living man is in the entire body and in each part of the body. For the soul has no parts, it is not part here and part there; wherever it is it exists in its entirety. The

HUMAN FACULTIES 3i7 soul does not exercise all the operations of which it is the principle in each part of the living body or organism. But it exists, and in entirety, in each living part. If a part of the living body is severed, the soul, the life-principle, is no longer in such a part. The soul cannot be mutilated as the body is mutilated; it cannot be cut down in size, for it has no size. Even a material soul or life-principle (like every substantial form) manifests this complete presence in the whole body which it in-forms. You may trim down a rose-bush to half its size, but the rose-bush is the same living substance after the trimming; its life is the same life; its life-principle has not been cut down.

b) Man’s Lower Faculties

A faculty is a capacity or power for vital operation. We have already learned that man is in possession of all the faculties of living bodies. Man has nutrition, growth, and vital generation, like the plants. He has sensation, appetition, and locomotion, like the non-human animals. And he has understanding and will (at least in actu primo) like pure spirits. Because man has all these faculties, in addition to the bodily character of his being which he holds in common with non-living bodies, he has been called “a microcosm” or “a world in little.”

Man’s vegetal and sentient faculties are called his lower faculties. His understanding (that is, his mind, intellect, intelligence, reason) and his will are his higher faculties.

Faculties are powers or capacities, distinct from the substance which possesses and uses them, for the immediate exercise of vital operations.

Faculties are said to inhere in a subject. That which has faculties is the subject of these faculties. Man is, of course, the subject of all his faculties. But man is a composite being, and his faculties are to be more precisely assigned than they are in a general ascribing of them to man as a whole. Some of his faculties belong to the living body, some belong to the soul. In other words, some of man’s faculties are proper to the composite of body-and-soul, while some are proper to the soul alone. We discern this fact even as we declare that man in his whole being is the possessor and user of faculties, and that man’s soul (that is, his substantial form) is the root-principle of off his activities. The lower faculties have their proper subject in the composite of man’s body-and-soul; the higher faculties have their proper subject in man’s soul.

We need not pause upon man’s vegetal faculties, for we have considered these in our study of vegetal life in general It is manifest that man has the faculties of nutrition, growth, and generation. Man has, in a word, true plant-life.

( j) Man has also the sentient faculties, first of which is sen sation. This word is used here in the meaning of “sensing- power” and “sensing-activity.” In the common speech of every day, the word “sensation” suggests something startling or exciting; it has not that meaning in our present use of it Here it means the power to know things by the use of special faculties called senses, and it is sometimes employed to indicate the ac tivity of actually exercising this power.

Things sensed (or known by sensation) are said to be perceived. Each item sensed is a percept, and a man’s sense- knowledge of anything is often a collection of percepts,—as, for example, his sense-knowledge of a rose may be a combination of percepts gathered by sight, smell, and touch.

Each sense, as we have seen in our discussion of The Critical Question, has its own proper object. The proper object of a sense is that which can be perceived by this sense alone. Objects that can be directly perceived by two or more senses are called common objects. Objects that are not directly sensed, but are known by experience to be associated with what is sensed, are called accidental objects. Thus, a man sees an apple; as a colored object, it is perceived by sight alone; as a round object, it can be known by sight and by touch; as an object of sweet flavor it can be known directly t>y the sense of taste alone, but the man who knows apples can see that it is a sweet apple, for he knows

HUMAN FACULTIES 3X9 by experience that apples of that type are sweet; this “seeing” that the apple is sweet is accidental perception.

The system of bodily parts or organs by which man exercises sentiency is the cerebro-spinal system, which consists of the brain and the spinal cord, the cerebro-spinal nerves, and the external (or peripheral) sense-organs. The external senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch) have their organs in the outer body, but their findings are conveyed to the brain by the nerves. The internal senses (sentient consciousness, imagination, sentient memory, and instinct) have their organs in the brain itself. External sensation is normally, and during man’s waking hours, immediately recorded in imagination and consciousness. Imagination also retains and, under stimulus, evokes the recorded images of external sensations. Sentient memory has the single task of recognizing an evoked imagination-image as something experienced in the past Instinct is an awareness of usefulness or harmfulness (of desirability or undesirability) in a sensed object

(2) The second sentient operation is appetition or appetency. This operation is the tendency, the striving, towards what is sensed as desirable and away from what is sensed as undesirable or harmful. The tendency of any body (living or lifeless) to an activity is called natural appetency; such, for instance, is the tendency of a body to fall towards the center of the earth, or the tendency of a tree to grow to maturity and fruitfulness. The tendency born of sense-knowledge which inclines the sentient creature towards or away from an object, is called sentient appetency. We shall presently learn that the tendency bom of intellectual knowledge of the desirability or undesirability of an object is called intellectual appetency or the will.

Since a sentient creature rather undergoes than elicits the tendency called appetition, the several classes of appetitive striving towards or away from an object are called passions, from the Latin pati “to undergo; to suffer.” Passion in this present use means any manifestation of the sentient appetency. There are two main types of passions, called in an older day the concupisci- ble passions and the irascible passions; we may call these, respectively, “the appetites of simple tendency” and “the appetites of tendency in the face of some obstacle,” The first class includes these appetites or passions: love-hatred; desire-aversion; joy- sadness. The second class comprises these passions: hope- despair; courage-fear; anger. The passions are all tendencies, positively or negatively, towards good, and they are all, in some sense, variants of love. The passions are good in themselves, although in fallen man they tend to be inordinate and thus productive of both physical and moral evil in a person who is not alert and decisive in holding them, at least in their effects, under the control of a well-disposed will.

(5) The sentient faculty of locomotion is the power of spontaneous movement from place to place. It is a power exercised in the light of sentient knowledge. Certain plants, like the tumbleweed, move about, but these have no faculty of locomotion, for their movements are not the result of knowledge. Locomotion is a faculty which, in many cases, makes possible the attaining of the object of appetition. Man’s organ of locomotion (like that of all animals possessing this faculty) is the organism or living body, especially in its elements of muscles and the skeletal framework.

c) Man’s Higher Faculties

Man’s higher faculties are those that belong to the human spiritual soul as their proper subject. These faculties are two, the intellect and the will. The intellect is man’s higher cognitive or knowing faculty. The will is man’s higher appetitive faculty. And, since the will is “appetition bom of intellectual knowledge,” and since intellectual knowledge is frequently knowledge of possible action that is not necessitated, the will is the faculty of free- choice. ( i) The intellect is the knowing-power or faculty rooted in the spiritual soul. Man alone, of all bodily creatures, possesses intellect

The intellect is a power for knowing things in an abstract and universal way. It is the power for knowing essences. Further, it is the power of judging, and the power of thinking things out. It is also the power of retaining or remembering meanings (that is, essences, judgments, conclusions, processes of thinking) ; the power of being understanding^ aware (either instantly or by process of thought) of such meanings, and of the human self; the power of recognizing the agreement or disagreement of human conduct with the rule of what such conduct ought to be. In all its services, the intellect is a faculty or power for essential knowing, that is for the understanding grasp of truth. Truth is the object of the faculty of intellect. It seeks truth as the eye seeks light. It is a power connaturally formed to reach after truth and attain it and possess it. Its object is, therefore, the truth of thought (the truth about things, not the truth of things) ; in a word, its object is logical truth. The pupil will recall from our sketch of The Critical Question the various types of truth, and the definition of logical truth.

The name intellect is a general name for this spiritual knowing-faculty ; so is the name mind, although many modern writers use the word mind to indicate any form of conscious life, even sentient life; we make intellect and mind synonymous. In its various services, the intellect is variously named: (a) Inasmuch as the intellect instantly recognizes truths that are self-evident, it is called intelligence, (b) Inasmuch as the intellect can think out, by connected steps, many truths that are not self-evident, it is called reason, (c) Inasmuch as the intellect is an understanding awareness of the self and of the mental and bodily activities, and of the world of things knowable, it is called intellectual con sciousness (which is essentially different from sentient con sciousness, an inner sense), (d) Inasmuch as the intellect (or more precisely the intellect as reason) thinks out the moral im- plications of a situation and judges on a point of duty, it is called conscience, (e) Inasmuch as the intellect retains its knowledge, it is called intellectual memory.

The intellect is not an organic faculty, that is, it is not exercised by the use of a special bodily sensory or organ. It is a supra- organic faculty, a spiritual faculty. It is not a spiritual substance, for in itself the intellect, like every faculty, is a quality of the substance it marks and serves. It is called spiritual because it is the faculty of the spiritual substance called the human soul. Since the intellect can exercise the activity of knowing in a manner wholly impossible to an organic faculty (for it can know in universal ; it can grasp abstract essences; it can lay hold of things that are utterly beyond the power of senses to apprehend) we are forced to call it a supra-organic faculty. For agere sequitur esse; “function follows upon essence” ; as a thing is it acts, and, conversely, as a thing acts it is. The intellect has supra-organic activities; therefore, necessarily, the intellect is itself supra- organic or spiritual. Hence a man does not think, reason, judge, with his brain; he does these things with the supra-organic faculty of mind or intellect, a soul-faculty. The brain is indeed the seat and center of sensation (that is, of sense-knowing). And in this life of union of soul and body, the soul-faculty of intellect cannot come directly at its object (the truth about things; the understood essences of things) but must find that object by working upon the findings of the senses. Hence, since we localize sensation essentially in the brain, we localize, by analogy, the activity of the intellect in the brain; but this is not a literally true localization, and, above all, it is not the attributing to the bodily member called the brain the spiritual operations of the intellect There is, in other words, an extrinsic dependence of intellect on brain in this life; but it is distinctly not an intrinsic dependence. If the brain is diseased, a man’s thinking usually goes wrong; the man is not sane; he cannot think and reason, judge and decide, as he could if his brain were healthy and normal. But this fact does not mean that the brain is the essential organ of thought, but only that it is extrinsically essential during man’s earthly life.

The object of the intellect is truth. It is truth about things. And, since, in this life, there is an extrinsic dependence of the intellect upon the senses (especially as these have their findings focussed in the inner-senses of the brain) we say that the proper object of the intellect in this life is the essences of material things, the essences of things that can be sensed. The adequate object of the intellect is truth about all knowable reality.

The operations of the intellect are apprehending, fudging, reasoning. Of these we have spoken in sufficient detail in our account of Aristotle’s Logic in the First Part of this manual, and again in our study of The Logical Question and of The Critical Question in the Second Part. (Cf. Part I, Chap. II, Art. 2, b; Part II, Chap. I, Art. 1, b; Part II, Chap. II, Art. 3, c.)

The intellect, inasmuch as it actively abstracts essences, and so renders things understandable, or graspable in universal, is called the agent intellect or intellectus agens. The intellect inasmuch as it understanding^ reacts to the impression of abstracted essences and expresses these within itself as ideas or concepts, is called the intellectus possibUis or the actual understanding.

The idea or the concept which is the first fruit of the intellect’s first operation called apprehending, is drawn by the intellect from the findings of the senses as these are recorded in conscious imagination. Hence, the origin of ideas is to be found in the abstractive power of the intellect working on the findings of the senses. Ideas are not born in us, as innatism teaches. Ideas are not mere collections of sensations, as sensism teaches. Ideas are not revealed elements of knowledge handed down from generation to generation among men, as traditionalism teaches. Ideas are the legitimate fruitage of the abstractive activity of the intellect working upon the findings of the senses. And once possessed of ideas, the intellect is equipped for judging and reasoning, that is, for exercising all of its operations in its connatural drive or tendency to possess truth.

(2) The intellect is the knowing-power of the human soul. The will is the appetitive power or faculty of the human soul. It is the power of intellectual appetition. It is the faculty for going after, or away from, what the intellect presents as desirable (or good) or undesirable (or bad). Will therefore is rightly described by St. Thomas as rational appetency.

The will, like the intellect, is a supra-organic faculty. It is not intrinsically dependent upon any bodily member or organ, or upon the whole body itself. It is a spiritual faculty, for it is a faculty which inheres in the spiritual souL

The will is a faculty for appetising understood good. Thus, the object of the will is good. By the same token, it is a faculty for tending away from understood evil. Good is that which is ap- petizable, desirable. Evil is that which is unappetizable, undesirable, for it is a negative thing, and consists in the absence of good. Evil cannot be appetized for its own sake, but only under the aspect of good, that is, under the appearance of what is desirable.

We have noticed in an earlier stage of our study that “the intellect is capable of objective judgments which are morally indifferent” That is, the mind or intellect can let its light shine upon anything thinkable, and can discern in it elements of positive being which is always good, and elements of defect or absence of being which are bad. No matter what the mind lights upon may be seen in the aspect of what is factually there, or what fails to be there. The intellect can therefore judge as desirable what is truly not so, because it clothes, so to speak, the lack or absence of being with the appearance of being. And the intellect can judge as undesirable or evil what is actually good, because it can focus upon some point or detail of the good as deficient. Thus a murderer can envision the death of an enemy as good, as desirable, as satisfying, although it is really not so. Thus again, a lazy Christian can envision the Christian ideals as undesirable, unsatisfying, because his intellect can dwell upon the effort and delay exacted in their attainment. Hence, the in-

HUMAN FACULTIES 3^5 tellect may set before the will (its appetency) an object which is evil, but only by clothing that object in the attractive features of good, that is, of what satisfies. This makes the choice of evil a possibility. For the will, be it repeated, cannot choose evil as such, but only when it appears sub specie boni, that is, only when it is masked as good.

It would appear then, at first sight, that the intellect (by its capacity for “objectively indifferent judgments” ) is the source of choice and the root of responsibility in man. But while the will always and inevitably follows upon the ultimate practical judgment of the intellect, it is nevertheless the will which allows the intellect to dwell upon an object and reach ultimate judgment on its desirability or undesirability, its good or evil. The intellect is like a spot-light which illumines an object, and may show up in that object points desirable and points unattractive, and may dwell on either, or may transfer, so to speak, the mask of desirability to what is unattractive in the object The intellect is like such a spot-light. But the will is like the hand which controls the direction of the spotlight. To vary the illustration: A motorist driving his car at night, inevitably follows the headlights. But we do not say that the headlights choose the road for him. It is the motorist who chooses to turn the headlights on this road or that road. The intellect is like the headlights; the will is like the motorist. So, upon consideration, we discern the truth that though will follows intellect (as the motorist the headlights) it is the will that is the master-faculty in any deliberate choice of man. It is the will that is the root of responsible action.

The will is indeed influenced by the intellect, for a man cannot will what he does not in some measure know: nil volitum quin praecognitum. So we may say that the headlights of a car influence the motorist by suddenly revealing a fine stretch of smooth roadway leading off to left or right. Thus the intellect, acting in the manner of a final cause, attracts or invites the will. But the will influences and moves the intellect after the manner of an effecting cause, just as the motorist moves the headlights to il- lumine the “attractiveness” which comes of the fact that a rough road is the right road, and away from the suddenly revealed and illuminated attractiveness of the smooth side-road which will not carry him to his destination.

There was once much academic to-do about the ranking or the dignity of intellect over will or will over intellect The question was about which faculty is superior. There are arguments for both sides. To know, regarded simply, is more perfect than to tend; under this consideration, intellect is superior to will But to be able to achieve is better than to merely know how to achieve; and in view of this fact, will is superior to intellect Yet when the struggle of life is done, the truly successful man who has attained his last end and has no longer to be concerned about choosing the way home, stands forever possessed of the Beatific Vision, which he beholds by intellect fortified by the light of glory. Thus, in the long run, intellect seems more noble than wilL And still, even in beholding God, the will perfectly and endlessly cleaves to Him in loving joy.

The will is free by the freedom of choice of means. Man, made for happiness in the possession of Supreme Good, is not free to change that ultimate goal. Saint or sinner, a man goes after, inevitably, what he regards, rightly or perversely, as ultimately fully satisfying. Man is made for the City of Eternal Happiness (the City of God). And whether he goes north, south, east, west, he is striving towards that city. Even when his efforts are carrying him away from it, it is that city which he is after. So, even in the perverse (and not merely mistaken) conduct of the sinner there is manifest the tendency which man is not free to change or to reject,—the tendency towards what will completely and permanently satisfy. So the will is free to choose means to the ultimate end, and it may choose blindly, perversely, ruinously; but the will is not free to choose the ultimate end itself; towards that, all creation is inevitably set If man does not choose the right means to the ultimate end, he will miss the ultimate end. The point we make is that it is the ultimate end he is necessarily after, whether he goes towards it or directly away from it In the ultimate end, therefore, of human conduct, there is no choice, no freedom. Freedom is in the choice of means to the ultimate end.

The human will is truly free by this freedom of choice, or more accurately, by this freedom of the choice of means. Now since the Supreme Good is God, and since God is the fixed and necessary Goal of all creatures, there is no freedom in the quest of God. Saint and sinner, the devout man and the professed atheist, all alike are seeking God, although the sinner and the atheist are looking for Him where He cannot be found, and theirs will be the agony of endless defeat and pain. But it is God they are all after. This being fully understood, all responsible conduct (all human acts, as the ethician says), that is, every deliberate thought, word, deed, omission, effort, desire of man, is a matter of means. The human will is consequently free in all its human acts.

Man does not exercise freedom, and indeed he cannot exercise it, except in deliberate acts, that is, in acts of which he is fully aware, and over which he has controL That there are acts that man can know and over which he can exercise control is proved by daily experience. Many of our acts are more or less mechanical, even during our hours of full consciousness; perhaps most of our acts are of this type. But there is seldom a day when most of us have not some decision or other to make which calls upon some deliberation, some thought, before we “make up our minds.” Often during life, at least, we have all had the experience of determining upon a course of action. Before we acted, we thought the matter over; perhaps we asked advice; perhaps we prayed for guidance. All the while we were clearly aware that the decision was “up to us,” in our hands, so to speak, and dependent upon our own choice. Then, having decided, we took up the action in the full knowledge that it was our doing, and that we might act otherwise. Finally, after acting, we were satisfied or regretful, because we realized that the action was wholly of our choice. Thus, before, during, and after many of our will- choices, we have had the experience of a full conviction of our freedom in the matter. If this self-evident and universal human experience be deceiving, then what can we know for certain?’ And if we question all certitude, we are in the insanely impossible position of the skeptic.

The whole world recognizes human freedom of choice. It is factually recognized by the determinists who deny it in theory by the fatalists who make our choice dependent upon some nonhuman thing like a star or a position of the planets at the time of our birth, or upon dreams, or upon a coincidence of numbers. Even the determinist and the fatalist recognize the need of the State, that is, of government and of laws. Now government and laws are controls suitable only to beings of free choice. We do not solemnly legislate for grass or for cows. We do not set up- senates for stones, or build prisons for offending weeds. A human (that is, in this case, a civil) law is an admission that a man requires direction, that he might choose amiss without it, that he may choose amiss even with it, and therefore penalties are enacted. In every case, law is a recognition of the fact of human choice_, that is of human free-will.

Indeed, every circumstance of life is an open profession of the inevitable doctrine of free-will. Even the determinists, seeking converts to their doctrine that free-will is a myth, are eager to offer argument, are anxious to have people freely decide to listen to these arguments. The advertising man in newspaper or on radio begs the housewife to exercise her free-choice, and to buy only the super-superlative brand of soap. The politician seeking votes is keenly aware that his constituency is free to vote for the other candidate. The sergeant drilling his awkward squad is more annoyed when they appear stubbornly perverse than when they appear naturally clumsy. The waitress handing a menu to a customer, awaits his free decision as he lets his eye wander through the columns of ostensible French. Freedom of the human will is a fact so obvious that not even the most determined determinist can evade it. One supposes that the determinist or the fatalist would not be serenely philosophic if a thief took all his property; he would have the law on the thief; he would recognize the fact that the thief is responsible, or, in other words, free.

Those who say that man’s choice is only apparent, that what he thinks he chooses is merely the result of chance, are in conflict with experience and with reason- They stand condemned with the determinist on the score of experience- And they are in conflict with reason in assigning chance as a cause. For chance means what is unpredictable in an effect. Chance cannot be assigned as a cause. If the chance-theorists answer that they merely contend that all human choice is a chance effect, we inquire what is the cause of this effect ? Is it some blind drive ? Is it a star ? Is it a constellation under which the human agent was born? All this throws us back to the position of the determinist which we have already discussed and disproved.

We conclude: The human will is endowed with true freedom of the choice of means to its ultimate end. The human will exercises its freedom of choice in every perfectly deliberate human act. The denial of human freedom of choice is a flat contradiction of reason, of all experience, of the exigencies of daily existence, and, if logically followed, it would turn the mind to the insanity of skepticism, and human society into a chaos of lawless disorder.

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have defined man’s soul as the spiritual substantial form of the living body. We have seen that its proper faculties are those of intellect and will. We have noticed that man has three types of life,—vegetal, sentient, rational,—but we have learned that he can have but one life-principle, since he can have but one substantial form, and the life-principle or soul is this substantial form. We have seen that the human soul is a complete substance, although not a complete human being. We have learned that it is a substance that is spiritual, simple, deathless or immortal. We have learned that the su b sta n tia l union of body and soul constitutes a human person who is the true author of his human acts. The one human soul is formally spiritual and rational; virtually, it is also vegetal and sentient. We have seen that the human spiritual soul exists in entirety in the whole body, and in each living part of the body, although it does not exercise all its operations in each part of the body. We have discussed the faculties of man, that is, his powers or capacities for vital operations. These we classed as lower and higher, calling lower those that are properly resident in the body-and-soul composite, and higher those that are properly resident in the soul alone. The lower faculties of man are those of nutrition, growth, vital gen eration, sensation, sentient appetition, locomotion. The higher faculties of man are his soul-faculties of intellect and will. We have seen that man’s higher faculties are supra-organic; they are spiritual faculties. The object of the intellect is truth; the object of the will is good. We have seen that the will is the master- faculty during man’s earthly life, even though it infallibly follows upon the ultimate practical judgment of the intellect. We have dwelt upon the great truth that the will of man is free by a true freedom of the choice of means to man’s ultimate end.