We have thus to study the noëtic function according to the manifestations of it that we find in man, and to a certain extent in some other privileged animals. Bees, for example, partake in the divine gift to a certain extent; being distinguished in this respect from their analogues — wasps and hornets.[158]
[158] Aristot. De Gen. Animal. III. x. p. 760, a. 4: ὄντος δὲ περιττοῦ τοῦ γένους καὶ ἰδίου τοῦ τῶν μελιττῶν. — p. 761, a. 4: οὐ γὰρ ἔχουσιν (wasps and hornets) οὐδὲν θεῖον, ὥσπερ τὸ γένος τῶν μελιττῶν. It is remarkable that περιττός, the epithet here applied by Aristotle to bees, is the epithet that he also applies to men of theoretical and speculative activity, as contrasted with men prudent and judicious in action (see Metaphys. A. ii. p. 983, a. 2; also Ethic. Nikom. VI. vii. p. 1141, b. 6). Elsewhere he calls bees φρόνιμα (Metaphys. A. i. p. 980, b. 22). See a good note of Torstrick (on Aristot. De Animâ, III. p. 428, a. 10), p. 172 of his Commentary. Aristotle may possibly have been one among the philosophers that Virgil had in his mind, in Georgics, iv. 219:—
| “His quidam signis, atque hæc exempla secuti, Esse apibus partem divinæ mentis, et haustus Æthereos dixere: Deum namque ire per omnes Terrasque, tractusque maris, cœlumque profundum,� &c. |
In these and other animals, and in man to a still greater degree, the theorizing activity exists; but it is either starved, or at least has to deal with materials obscure, puzzling, conflicting; while, on the other hand, the practical intellect becomes largely developed, through the pressure of wants and desires, combined with the teaching of experience. In Aristotle’s view, sensible perception is a separate source of knowledge, accompanied with judgment and discrimination, independent of the noëtic function. Occasionally, he refers the intellectual superiority of man to the properly attempered combination and antagonism of heat in the heart with cold in the brain, each strong and pure;[159] all the highly endowed animals (he says) have greater animal heat, which is the essential condition of a better soul;[160] he reckons the finer sense of touch possessed by man as an essential condition of the same intellectual result.[161] Sensible perception in its five diverse manifestations, together with its secondary psychical effects — phantasy and memory, accumulates in the human mind (and in some animals) a greater or less experience of particular facts; from some of which inferences are drawn as to others unknown, directing conduct as well as enlarging knowledge.[162]
[159] Aristot. De Generat. Animal. II. vi. p. 744, a. 11-31: δηλοῖ δὲ τὴν εὐκρασίαν ἡ διάνοια· φρονιμώτατον γάρ ἐστι τῶν ζῷων ἄνθρωπος. We may remark that Aristotle considers cold as in some cases a positive property, not simply as the absence or privation of heat (De Partibus Animal. II. ii. p. 649, a. 18). The heart is the part wherein the psychical fire (as it were) is kept burning: τῆς ψυχῆς ὥσπερ ἐμπεπυρευμένης ἐν τοῖς μορίοις τούτοις (Aristot. De Vitâ et Morte, iv. p. 469, b. 16). Virgil, in the beautiful lines of his Second Georgic (483), laments that he is disqualified for deep philosophical studies by the want of heat round his heart:—
| “Sin, has ne possim naturæ accedere partes, Frigidus obstiterit circum præcordia sanguis,� &c. |
[160] Aristot. De Respirat. xiii. p. 477, a. 16.
[161] Aristot. De Animâ, II. ix. p. 421, a. 21.
[162] Aristot. Metaphys. A. i. pp. 980-1.
All this process — a perpetual movement of sense and memory — begins from infancy, and goes on independently of Noûs or the noëtic function properly so called; which grows up gradually at a later age, aided by the acquisition of language and by instruction conveyed through language. The supervening Noûs presupposes and depends upon what has been thus treasured up by experience. Though, in the celestial body. Noûs exists separately from human beings, and though it there operates proprio motu apart from sense, such is not the case with the human Noûs; which depends upon the co-operation, and is subject to the restrictions, of the complicated soul and body wherewith it is domiciled — restrictions differing in each individual case. Though the noëtic process is distinct from sense, yet without sense it cannot take place in man. Aristotle expressly says: “You cannot cogitate without a phantasm or without a continuous image.� Now the phantasm has been already explained as a relic of movements of sense — or as those movements themselves, looked at in another point of view.[163] “When we cogitate� (he says), “our mental affection is the same as when we draw a triangle for geometrical study; for there, though we do not make use of the fact that the triangle is determinate in its magnitude, we still draw it of a determinate magnitude. So in cogitation, even when we are not cogitating a determinate quantum, we nevertheless set before our eyes a determinate quantum, but we do not cogitate it quatenus determinate.�[164] We cannot even (he goes on to say) remember the cogitabilia without “a phantasm or sensible image; so that our memory of them is only by way of concomitance� (indirect and secondary).[165] Phantasy is thus absolutely indispensable to cogitation: first to carrying on the process at all; next to remembering it after it is past. Without either the visible phantasm of objects seen and touched, or the audible phantasm of words heard and remembered, the Noûs in human beings would be a nullity.[166]