Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/98

 INTELLECT

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INTELLECT

sensuous impressions, vivid or faint, plus association due to custom, developed the sceptical consetjuences involved in Locke's defective treatment of the intel- lectual facidty, and carried philosophy hack to the old conclusions of the Greek Sensationists ami Sophists, but reinforced by a more subtile and acute psychology. All the main features of Hume's psy- chology have been adopted by the whole Associa- tionist school in England, by Positivists abroad, and by materialistic scientists in so far as they have any philosophy or psychology at all. The essential dis- tinction between intellect, or rational activity, and sense has in fact been completely lost sight of, and Scepticism and Agnosticism liave logically followed. Kant recognized a distinction between sensation and the higher mental element, but, conceiving the latter in a different way from the old Aristotelean view, and looking on it as purely subjective, his system was developed into an idealism and scepticism differing in kind from that of Hume, but not very much more satisfactory. Still, the neo-Kantian and He- gelian movement, which developed in Great Britain during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, has contributed much towards the reawakening of the recognition of the intellectual, or rational, element in all knowledge.

The CoiniON Doctrine. — The teaching of Aris- totle on intellect, as developed by Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas, has become, as we have said, in its main features the common doctrine of Catholic phi- losophers. We shall state it in brief outline. (1) Intellect is a cognitive faculty essentially different from sense and of a supra-organic order; that is, it is not exerted by, or intrinsically dependent on, a bod- ily organ, as sensation is. This proposition is proved by psychological analysis and study of the chief functions of intellect. These are conception, judg- ment, reasoning, reflection, and self-consciousness. All these activities involve elements essentially dif- ferent from sensuous consciousness. In conception the mind forms universal ideas. These are different in kind from sensations and sensuous images. These latter are concrete and individual, truly representa- tive of only one object, whilst the universal idea will apply with equal truth to any object of the class. The universal idea possesses a fixity and invariable- ness of nature, whilst the sensuous image changes from moment to moment. Thus the concept or uni- versal idea of "gold", or "triangle", will with equal jus- tice stand for any specimen, but the image represents truly only one individual. The sensuous faculty can be awakened to activity only by a stimulus which, whatever it be, exists in a concrete, individualized form. In judgment the mind perceives the identity or discordance of two concepts. In reasoning it apprehends the logical nexus tetween conclusion and premises. In reflection and self-consciousness it turns back on itself in such a manner that there is perfect identity lietween the knowing subject and the object known. But all the.se forms of consciousness are incompatible with the notion of a sensuous faculty, or one exerted by means of a liodily <irgan. The Sen- sationist psych(jl(igists, from Berkeley onwards, were unanimous in maintaining that the mind cannot form imiveisal or abstract ideas. This would be true were the intellect not a spiritual faculty essentially dis- tinct from .sense. The simple fact is that they in- variably confounded the image of the imagination, which is individualized, with the concept, or idea, of the intellect. When we employ \miver.si»l terms in any intelligilile proposition the terms have a meaning. The thought by which that meaning is apprehended in the mind is a universal idea.

(2) In eiignitirjii we start from sensuous experience. Theiiitcllcet presu|i|iscss<>iisation and operates on the niaterialssupplicd by the sensuous faculties. Thebegin- ninu of ciin.sciousness with tlu' infant is in sen.sation.

This is at first felt, most probably, in a vague and indefinite form. But repetition of particular sensa- tions and experience of other sensations contrasted with them render their apprehension more and more definite as time goes on. (iroups of sensations of different senses are aroused by particular objects and become united by the force of contiguous association. The awakening of any one of the group calls up the images of the others. Sense perception is thus being perfected. At a certain stage in the process of de- velopment the higher power of intellect begins to be evoked into activity, at first feebly and dimly. In the beginning the intellectual apprehension, like the sensations which preceded, is extremely vague. Its first acts are probably the cognition of objects re- vealed through sensations under wide and indefinite ideas, such as "extended-thing", "moving-thing", " pressing-thing ", and the like. It takes in objects as wholes, before discriminating their parts. Repetition and variation of sense-impressions stimulates and sharpens attention. Pleasure or pain evokes interest, and the intellect concentrates on part of the sensuous experience, and the process of abstraction begins. Cer- tain attributes are laid hold of, to the omission of others. Comparison and discrimination are also called into action, and the more accurate and perfect elaboration of concepts now proceeds rapidly. The notions of sub- stance and accidents, of whole and parts, of permanent and changing, are evolved with increasing distinct- ness. GeneraUzation follows quickly upon abstraction. When an attribute or an object has been singled out and recognized as a thing distinct from its surround- ings, an act of reflection renders the mind aware of the object as capable of indefinite realization and multi- plication in other circumstances, and we have now the formally reflex universal idea.

The further activity of the intellect is fundamen- tally the same in kind, comparing, identifying, or dis- criminating. The activity of ratiocination is merely reiteration of the judicial activity. The final stage in the elaboration of a concept is reached when it is em- bodied for further use in a general name. Words pre- suppose intellectual ideas, but register them and render them permanent. The intellect is also dis- tinguished, acconling to its functions, as speculative or practical. When pronouncing simply on the ra- tional relations of ideas, it is called speculative; when considering harmony with action, it is termed prac- tical. The faculty, however, is the same in both cases. The faculty of conscience is in fact merely the practical intellect, or the intellect passing judgment on the moral quality of actions. The intellect is essen- tially the faculty of truth and falsity, and in its ju- dicial acts it at the same time affirms the union of subject and predicate and the agreement between its own representation and the objective reality. Intel- lect also exhibits itself in the higher form of memory when there is conscious recognition of identity be- tween the present and the past. To the intellect is due also the conception of self and personal identity. The fimdamental difficulty with the whole Sensa- tionist school, from Hume to Mill, in regard to the recognition of personality, is due to their ignoring the true nature of the faculty of intellect. Were there no such higher rational faculty in the mind, then the mind could never be known as anything more than a series of mental states. It is the intellect which en- ables the mind to apprehend itself as a unity, or unitary being. The ideas of the infinite, of space, time, and causality are all similarly the product of intellectual activity, starting from the data presented by .sense, and exercising a power of intuition, ab- straction, identification, and discrimination. It is, accordingly, the absence of an adequate conception of intellect which has rendered the treatment of all these mental functions so defective in the English psychology of the last century.