Nature and Kinds of Faculties

a) Nature of Faculties — b) Subject of Faculties — c) Classification of Faculties

a) Nature of Faculties

There is a Latin word facultas (“ability” or “power”) which derives from the verb facere “to make, to do.” The English word faculty has its ancestry in these Latin words. A faculty is a capacity or power for making or doing. It is also a capacity or power for receiving, but not for receiving in a lifeless way; a faculty receives in a vital way, that is, in a way that involves a vital reaction to what is received.

A faculty, as we use the term in psychology, is the proximate or immediate principle of vital operation. Not the living body as a whole, not the soul itself, but a specific power or capacity rooted in the living substance — this is what we call a faculty. The faculty is the specific equipment for a specific vital task.

Faculties are really distinct from the soul — that is, distinct not merely in our way of thinking about them, but in reality. The proof: if faculties were identical with the soul, then the soul would always be actually exercising all its operations (since it is always actually what it is); but this is manifestly not the case — man does not always actually see, or actually digest, or actually think. Hence the faculties are not the soul itself, but powers which the soul possesses.

Faculties are distinct from one another, each being the proper and specific principle of its own proper and specific operation. Distinct operations demand distinct proximate principles.

b) Subject of Faculties

The subject of a faculty is the being which possesses and exercises that faculty. Now, some human faculties belong to the entire composite of soul-and-body (i.e., to man as such), while others belong to the soul alone.

The vegetal and sentient faculties belong to the composite being — to man as a soul-body composite. They are exercised through and with the body and its organs.

The rational faculties — intellect and will — are inorganic faculties; they require no bodily organ for their exercise. Hence they are faculties proper to the soul alone, not to the soul-body composite. They can, and do, continue to exercise after the death of the body. We are, therefore, here concerned with the sentient and rational human faculties and operations. We may notice in passing that the term faculty is very often restricted to the sentient and rational orders, and that the term power is more usually employed to indicate the faculties of the vegetal order. Thus, to follow this fashion of speech, we should talk of vegetal powers, of sentient faculties, and of rational faculties.

c) Classification of Faculties

1. An active faculty lays hold of an object and transforms it. Thus the faculty of nutrition is an active faculty; it takes food and transforms it into the living substance of the organism. A passive faculty receives an impression from its object and reacts to it. Thus sight or hearing receives the impression of visible or audible objects, and, by reacting to the impression, lays hold of the objects cognitively or knowingly. The passive faculties do not work upon their objects to transform or change them, but to grasp them cognitively as they are, leaving the objects in their otherness, and possessing them in knowledge. The term “passive” is not to mislead us here; the passive faculties are not purely and supinely passive; they are not active in the sense described above, but they are re-active; they are rightly called operative.

2. An organic faculty operates by means of the body or a special part (i.e., an organ) of the body. All vegetal and sentient faculties are organic. An inorganic faculty has no organ, no special bodily part designed to serve its operation. Hence an inorganic faculty is not a bodily faculty but a spiritual faculty. Intellect and will are the inorganic faculties of man; their subject is the spiritual soul.

Summary of the Article

In this brief Article we have learned the meaning of faculty in its psychological implication. We have defined the term and have discussed faculties in general. We have noticed that a real distinction lies between the life-principle or soul and the faculties of the living creature animated by that soul. We have discerned the proper subject of human faculties, assigning the rational faculties to the soul alone, and the vegetal and sentient faculties to the compound human substance of soul-and-body. We have classified faculties and have set out the schema or schedule of human faculties.