INTELLECT
67
INTELLECT
conflict to be reconciled? or, Which is the true repre-
sentation? forced itself on the speculative mind.
Heraclitus insists on the reality of the changeable.
All things are in a perpetual flux. Parmenides, Zeno,
and the Eleatics argued that only the unchangeable
being truly is. Atadriffn^ "sense", is the faculty by
which changing phenomena are apprehended; mOs,
"thought", "reason", "intellect", presents to us
permanent, abiding being. The Sophists, with a
skill unsurpassed by modern Agnosticism, urged the
sceptical consequences of the apparent contradiction
between the one and the many, the permanent and
the changing, and emphasized the part contributed by
the mind in knowledge. For Protagoras, " Man is the
measure of all things", whilst with Gorgias the con-
clusion is: " Nothing is; nothing can be known; noth-
ing can be expressed in speech". Socrates held that
truth was innate in the mind antecedent to sensuous
experience, but his chief contribution to the theory
of knowledge was his insistence on the importance
of the general concept or definition.
It was Plato, however, who first realized the full significance of the problem and the necessity for co- ordinating the data of sense with the data of the intellect; he also first explained the origin of the problem. The universe of being, as reported by reason, is one, eternal, immutable; as revealed by sense, it is a series of multiple changing phenomena. Which is the truly real? For Plato there are in a sense two worlds, that of the intellect (>'07)t6>'), and that of sense (oparSii). Sense can give only an im- perfect knowledge of its object, which he calls belief (jriffTis) or conjecture (e^Kao-Za) . The faculties by which we apprehend the voriTdv, "the intelligible world", are two: "oOs, "intuitive reason", which reaches the ideas (.see Idea); and Xtryos, "discursive reason", which by its proper process, viz. ^ttio-tiJ/xi;, "demon- .stration", attains only to Sii^/oia, "conception". Plato thus sets up two distinct intellectual faculties attain- ing to different sets of objects. But the world of ideas is for Plato the real world ; that of sense is only a poor shadowy imitation. Aristotle's doctrine on the intellect in its main outline is clear. The soul is possessed of two orders of cognitive faculty, t6 ala0t]Ti.Kl>v, "sensuous cognition", and t6 SiavoTjTiKSv^ "rational cognition". The sensuous faculty in- cludes at(T0T]<ni, "sensuous perception", (papraaia, " imagination ", and A""?/"?, "memory". The faculty of rational cognition includes "ovs and Sidfoia. These, however, are not so much two faculties as two func- tions of the same power. They roughly correspond to intellect and ratiocinative reason. For intellect to operate, previous sense perception is required. The function of the intellect is to divest the object presented by sense of its material and individualizing conditions, and apprehend the universal and intelli- gible form embodied in the concrete physical reality. The outcome of the process is the generalization in the intellect of an intellectual form or representation of the intelligil)le Iseing of the object (flSos, mr)T6v). This act constitutes the intellect cognizant of the object in its universal nature. In this process intel- lect appears in a double character. On the one hand it exhibits itself as an active agent, in that it operates on the object presented by the sensuous faculty, rendering it intelligible. On the other hand, as sub- ject of the intellectual representation evolved, it mani- fests passivity, modifiability, and susceptibility to the reception of different forms. There is thus revealed in Aristotle's theory of intellectual cognition an active intellect (raCs ironiTixis) and a passive intellect ("ovs ■ira$riTiK6s). But how these are to be conceived, and what precisely is the nature of the distinction and relation between them, is one of the most irritatingly obscure points in the whole of Aristotle's works. The locus classicus is his " De .\nima", III, v, where the subject is briefly dealt with. As the active intellect
actuates the passive, it bears to it a relation similar
to that of form to matter in physical bodies. The
active intellect "illuminates" the object of .sense,
rendering it intelligil)le somewhat as light renders
colours visible. It is pure energy without any po-
tentiality, and its activity is continuous. It is sep-
arate, immortal, and eternal. The passive intellect,
on the other hand, receives the forms abstracted by
the active intellect and ideally becomes the oliject.
The whole passage is so obscure that commentators
from the beginning are hopelessly divided as to .\ris-
totle's own view on the nature of the toCs Troij/ruis
(see Hammond). Theophrastus, who succeeded Aris-
totle as scholiarch of the Lyceum, accepted the two-
fold intellect, but was unable to explain it. The
great commentator, Alexander of Aphrodisias, inter-
prets the voOs TToiriTiKbi as the activity of the Divine
intelligence. This view was adopted by many of the
Arabian philosophers of the Middle Ages, who con-
ceived it in a pantheistic sense. For many of them
the active intellect is one universal reason illuminating
all men. With Avicenna the passive intellect alone
is individual. Averrhoes conceives both intellectus
agens and intellectus possibilis as separate from the
individual soul and as one in all men.
The Schoolmen generally controverted the Arabian theories. Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas interpret intellectus ageiis and possibilis as merely distinct fac- ulties or powers of the individual soul. St. Thomas understands "separate" (xwpiffT6s) and "pure" or "unmixed" (djiii7i}s) to signify that the intellect is distinct from matter and incorporeal. Interpreting Aristotle thus benevolently, and developing his doc- trine, Aquinas teaches that the function of the active intellect is an abstractive operation on the data sup- plied by the sensuous faculties to form tlie species intelligibiles in the intellectus possibilis. The intellectus possibilis thus actuated cognizes what is intelligible in the object. The act of cognition is the con- cept, or verbum mentale, by wiiich is apprehended the universal nature or essence of the object prescinded from its individualizing conditions. The main fea- tures of the Aristotelean doctrine of intellect, and of its essential distinction from the faculty of sensuous cognition, were adhered to by the general body of the Schoolmen.
By the time we reach modern pliilosophy, es- pecially in England, the radical distinction between the two orders of faculties begins to be lost sight of. Descartes, defending the spirituality of the soul, naturally supposes the intellect to be a spiritual faculty. Ijcibniz insists on both the spirituality and innate efiiciency of the intellect. Whilst admitting the axiom, "Nil est in intellectu quod non jiriiis iiicrit in sensu ", he adds with much force, "nisi intellectus ipse", and urges spontaneity and iiniatc :icij\ily as characteristics of the monad. From the lin:ik with Scholasticism, however, English philos(>[iliy drifleil towards Sensationism and Materialism, sulisequently influencing France and other countries in the same direction; as a consequence, the old conception of intellect as a spiritual faculty of the soul, and as a cognitive activity by which the universal, necessary, and immutable elements in knowledge are appre- hended, was almost entirely lost. For Hobbes the mind is material, and all knowledge is ultimately sensuous. Locke's attack on innate ideas and intui- tive knowledge, his reduction of various forms of intellectual cognition to complex amalgams of so- called simple ideas originating in sense perception, and his representation of the mind as a passive tabula rasa, in spite of his allotting certain work to reflection and the discursive reason, paved the way for all modern Sensationism and Phenomenalism. Con- dillac, omitting Locke's "reflection", resolved all intellectual knowledge into Sen.sationism pure and simple. Hume, analysing all mental products into
