Page:Theory of Mind of Roger Bacon.djvu/36

 whole. So, the Species itself, as part of the whole, is in one sense not incomplete; it is the Effect which is incomplete, or complete. Here, then, again appears the double conception of Species as reproduction and as part of the whole.

And, finally, if the Species of body is corporeal, and the Species of spirit is spiritual, it must remain always in essence that which its Agent is. As an intermediary, therefore, between two wholly different and separate worlds, it can never serve to change the one into the other. Hence there can never be an assimilation of the one world to the other through the Species. And so, this character of the Species is consistent with neither the eduction theory nor the emission theory; strictly, it represents a fixed parallelism. And we may expect its abandonment when any interaction between the two realms is involved.

The foregoing serves well to make obvious the ambiguities to which our Author was liable, and also wherein these ambiguities lie. To ask now whether he presented his meaning clear of all ambiguities is therefore idle. It is plain that he could not do so. For he is seeking to combine, in full detail, the Aristotelian theory of eduction with the emission theory received through Arabian influence. One may ask: What theory did he succeed in presenting with clearness and force? And the reply can be given in a few words. In the first part of his treatise he presents an eduction theory of Species, and with admirable success, all things considered. But for most of the rest of his work it is a modified emission theory which is before his mind’s eye. And he was led to entertain extravagant hopes for his much-prized theory through a very serious shortcoming. He failed to sufficiently clarify for himself certain architectonic concepts. And the better to see compactly the inconsistency of his presentation, we may pass to these at once.

Most important of all, we may note that he makes use of two very different notions of “incomplete.” In the one sense it means wanting in the total number of parts, as a part of a whole; and in this sense it is strictly applicable only to the Effect as such. In the other sense, it means wanting in the full character of that which produces it, as a representative of its principal; in this sense it is strictly applicable only to the Species. But because Bacon thought of the Species as identical with the Effect, he was enabled to pass from the one sense to the other, as best suited the convenience of exposition. This allowed him to think of the Effect, on the one hand, as the whole whose parts were the Species. In which case the raison d’etre of the Species was to indicate the gradual character of the production of the change. And this forms the essence of