instinctively detached by the higher abstractive activity of the mind; and since it is thus given to us unobscured by any subjective affections of sensibility, it is perceived in a very perfect and comprehensive manner. Owing to this fact our simplest intellectual cognitions of spatial relations are enabled to image with distinctness and lucidity the most fundamental laws of the physical world. Finally, by observation, reasoning, and abstraction we come to discern in these primary attributes universal extensional relations conditioning the mutual connexion and interdependence of material objects apart from their perception by the knowing spirit. We are assured that, although the realization of the secondary qualities requires the presence of the sentient faculty, yet the most important part of the meaning of the primary attributes holds in its absence: we see that while perception is essential to the one, it is accidental to the other. Remote and complicated deductions from a few primary luminous intuitions of space and number, together with certain assumptions as to the action of real force, are found to accurately describe the future. conduct of the universe. Astronomy and Physics, the Law of Gravitation as well as the Undulatory Theory of light, imply the extra-mental validity of our notions of space, motion, and real energies, and assume their existence and action apart from observation. The verification which subsequently observed results afford to our reasoned deductions must, consequently, be held to establish that these conceptions are neither "integrations of purely subjective feelings, nor mental "forms," which in no way represent the hypothetical, unknowable, external noumenon, but true cognitions which mirror in a veracious manner the genuine conditions of real or ontological being. Our knowledge, then, of the primary attributes does not relate exclusively to our own mental states, as is asserted in the prevalent creed of relativity. Still in the case of these, as well as of the secondary qualities, we can never know the object unless in so far as it reveals itself directly or indirectly to our faculties, and in the simplest creature there will always remain beyond our ken an indefinite

number of secrets which a higher intelligence might scrutinize, so that the perfection, range, and penetration of knowledge is, in truth, ever relative to the knowing mind.

Readings. For an analysis of sense-perception and a defence of Immediate Perception, cf. Père Chabin's Cours de Philosophie, c. 2; also Dr. Porter, The Human Intellect, Pt. I. cc. iii.-vi.; Balmez, Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. I. pp. 267-324, 339-360. On the localization of sensations, cf. Gutberlet, op. cit. pp. 59-84; On the Primary and Secondary Qualities of Matter, cf. St. Thomas, De Anima, II. 1. 13; Hamilton, Metaph. II. 108-115; Notes on Reid, pp. 825, seq.; On Relativity of Knowledge, St.Thomas, De Anima, III. 1. 2; Martineau, A Study of Religion, Bk. I. c. iv.; M'Cosh, Exam. of Mill, c. x. and Intuitions of Mind, pp. 340, seq. (2nd Edit.); Dr. Mivart, On Truth, c. x.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE INTERNAL SENSES.

In addition to those sensuous faculties by which we are enabled to perceive external objects, the mind is endowed with the capability of apprehending in a sensuous manner, facts of a subjective order. This power or group of powers constitutes those modes of mental life styled by the schoolmen the Internal Senses. The Aristotelian doctrine elaborated by the mediæval thinkers distinguishes four such faculties, the sensus communis, the vis æstimativa or vis cogitativa, the imagination, and the sensuous memory. They were termed senses, or organic powers, because they operate by means of a material organ, and have for their formal objects individual, concrete, sensuous facts. The word internal marks their subjective character, and the interior situation of the physical machinery of their operations.

The sensus communis or common sense has also been styled the internal sense, and the central sense. It has been described by St. Thomas, after Aristotle, as at once the source and the terminus of the special senses. By this faculty we are conscious

of the operations of the external sensuous faculties, and we are made aware of differences between them, though we cannot by its means cognize them as different. Apart then from intellect, by which we formally compare and discriminate between objects, some central sense or internal form of sensibility is required, both in the case of man and of the lower animals, to account for the complete working of sensuous life. In the growth and development of sense-perception described in the previous chapter, the action of this internal form of sensuous consciousness is implied. Antecedent to, and independent of intellectual activity, the revelations of the several senses must be combined by some central faculty of the sensuous order, and it is this interior aptitude which has been called the sensus communis.1

The vis estimativa, or sensuous judicial faculty, was a name attributed to those complex forms of sensuous activity by which an object was apprehended as fit or unfit to satisfy the needs of animal

1 It has been held by St. Augustine, St. Thomas (cf. Sum. i. q. 78. a. 4. ad. 2. and 87. 3. 3), and other philosophers, that no sense can know its own states, and that, not merely for the coordination of the different senses, but for the cognition of any single sensation, an internal faculty in addition to the special sense is requisite. Aristotle (De Anima, III. 1. 2) decides against this view on the intelligible ground that such a doctrine would involve an infinite series of sensuous faculties. Elsewhere however, (De Somno et Vigilia, 1. 2), he appears to adopt the contrary theory. Suarez argues cogently against this multiplication of faculties as unnecessary, and his teaching appears to us sound. No sense can have a reflex knowledge of its own states, but this does not prevent a sense from having concomitantly with the apprehension of something affecting it an implicit consciousness of its own modifications. Ă being endowed with the sense of touch or hearing ought to be conscious, it would seem, of auditory or tactual sensations without the instrumentality of any additional faculty. (Cf. Suarez, De Anima, Lib. III. c. ii. and Lahousse, op. cit. pp. 160-163.)

nature. It thus denotes that capability in the lower animals which is commonly described as instinct. The term vis cogitativa was sometimes employed to designate the aptitude for analogous operations in man, at other times to signify a certain mode of internal sensibility operating concurrently with the intellect in the perception of individual objects.2

1

3

The term sentimento fondamentale, or fundamental feeling, was employed by Rosmini to denote an assumed faculty, or form of sensuous consciousness, by which the soul is continually cognizant of the body in which it is present. The soul, and not the living being composed of both soul and body, is the true principle of this feeling. It is by their modification of the sentimento fondamentale that the impressions of the special senses reveal themselves to the soul. The fundamental feeling, unlike the sensus communis of the scholastics, is held to have been ever in a condition of activity, even antecedent to the exercise of the special senses. "It begins

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1

It was urged that intellect, the formal object of which is the universal, cannot directly apprehend individual substances as such. Nevertheless, we have intellectual knowledge of them, for we form singular judgments, e.g.: "This plant is a rose,' Peter is a negro." Consequently, it was inferred, there is a special form of internal sensibility through which the concrete object is so apprehended that by reflexion upon this sensuous presentation the intellect can cognize the singular nature of the object. St. Thomas thus describes the operation: "Anima conjuncta corpori per intellectum cognoscit singulare, non quidem directe, sed per quandam reflexionem, in quantum scil, ex hoc, quod apprehendit suum intelligibile, revertitur ad considerandum suum actum et speciem intelligibilem, quæ est principium ejus operationis, et ejus speciei originem, et sic venit in considerationem phantasmatum et singularium quorum phantasmata. Sed hæc reflexio compleri non potest, nisi per adjunctionem virtutis cogitativa et imaginativa." (Q. Un. de Anima, a. 20, ad 1.)

sunt

3 By the fundamental feeling of life we feel all the sensitive parts of our body." (The Origin of Ideas, Eng. Trans. § 705.)