17. The Physics were expanded with a prodigality of learning upon every province of nature. Gassendi is full of quotation, and his systematic method manifests the comprehensiveness of his researches. In the third book of the second part of the third section of the Physics, he treats of the immateriality, and, in the fourteenth, of the immortality of the soul, and maintains the affirmative of both propositions. This may not be what those who judge of Gassendi merely from his objections to the Meditations of Descartes have supposed. But a clearer insight into his metaphysical theory will be obtained from the ninth book of the same part of the Physics, entitled, De Intellectu, on the Human Understanding.
And of the nature of the soul. 18. In this book, after much display of erudition on the tenets of philosophers, he determines the soul to be an incorporeal substance, created by God, and infused into the body, so that it resides in it as an informing and not merely a present nature, forma informans, et non simpliciter assistens.[769] He next distinguishes intellection or understanding from imagination or perception; which is worthy of particular notice, because in his controversy with Descartes he had thrown out doubts as to any distinction between them. We have in ourselves a kind of faculty which enables us, by means of reasoning, to understand that which by no endeavours we can imagine or represent to the mind.[770] Of this the size of the sun, or innumerable other examples might be given; the mind having no idea suggested by the imagination of the sun’s magnitude, but knowing it by a peculiar process of reasoning. And hence we infer that the intellectual soul is immaterial, because it understands that which no material image presents to it, as we infer also that the imaginative faculty is material, because it employs the images supplied by sense. It is true that the intellect makes use of these sensible images, as steps towards its reasoning upon things which cannot be imagined; but the proof of its immateriality is given by this, that it passes beyond all material images, and attains a true knowledge of that whereof it has no image.
[769] P. 440.
[770] Itaque est in nobis intellectûs species, qua ratiocinando eo provehimur, ut aliquid intelligamus, quod imaginari, vel cujus habere obversantem imaginem, quantumcunque animi vires contenderimus, non possimus.... After instancing the size of the sun, possunt consimilia sexcenta afferri.... Verum quidem istud sufficiat, ut constet quinpiam nos intelligere quod imaginari non liceat, et intellectum ita esse distinctum a phantasia, ut cum phantasia habeat materiales species, sub quibus res imaginatur, non habeat tamen intellectus, sub quibus res intelligat: neque enim ullam, v. g. habet illius magnitudinis quam in sole intelligit; sed tantum vi propria, seu ratiocinando, eam esse in sole magnitudinem comprehendit, ac pari modo cætera. Nempe ex hoc efficitur, ut rem sine specie materiali intelligens, esse immaterialis debeat; sicuti phantasia ex eo materialis arguitur, quod materiali specie utatur. Ac utitur quidem etiam intellectus speciebus phantasia perceptis, tanquam gradibus, ut ratiocinando assequatur ea, quæ deinceps sine speciebus phantasmatisve intelligit: sed hoc ipsum est quod illius immaterialitatem arguit, quod ultra omnem speciem materialem se provehat, quidpiamque cujus nullam habeat phantasma revera agnoscat.
19. Buhle observes that in what Gassendi has said on the power of the mind to understand what it cannot conceive, there is a forgetfulness of his principle, that nothing is in the understanding which has not been in the sense. But, unless we impute repeated contradictions to this philosopher, he must have meant that axiom in a less extended sense than it has been taken by some who have since employed it. By that which is “in the understanding,” he could only intend definite images derived from sense, which must be present before the mind can exercise any faculty, or proceed to reason up to unimaginable things. The fallacy of the sensualist school, English and French, was to conclude that we can have no knowledge of that which is not “in the understanding;” an inference true in the popular sense of words, but false in the metaphysical.
Distinguishes ideas of reflection. 20. There is, moreover, Gassendi proceeds, a class of reflex operations, whereby the mind understands itself and its own faculties, and is conscious that it is exercising such acts. And this faculty is superior to any that a material substance possesses; for no body can act reflexly on itself, but must move from one place to another.[771] Our observation, therefore, of our own imaginings must be by a power superior to imagination itself; for imagination is employed on the image, not on the perception of the image, since there is no image of the act of perception.
[771] Alterum est genus reflexarum actionum, quibus intellectus seipsum, suasque functioneo intelligit, ac speciatim se intelligere animadvertit. Videlicet hoc munus est omni facultate corporea superius; quoniam quicquid corporeum est, ita certo loco, sive permanenter, sive succedenter alligatum est, ut non versus se, sed solum versus aliud diversum a se procedere possit.
21. The intellect also not only forms universal ideas, but perceives the nature of universality. And this seems peculiar to mankind; for brutes do not show anything more than a power of association by resemblance. In our own conception of an universal, it may be urged, there is always some admixture of singularity, as of a particular form, magnitude, or colour; yet we are able, Gassendi thinks, to strip the image successively of all these particular adjuncts.[772] He seems, therefore, as has been remarked above, to have held the conceptualist theory in the strictest manner, admitting the reality of universal ideas even as images present to the mind.
[772] Et ne instes in nobis quoque, dum universale concipimus, admisceri semper aliquid singularitatis, ut certæ magnitudinis, certæ figuræ, certi coloris, &c., experimur tamen, nisi [sic] simul, saltem successivè spoliari à nobis naturam qualibet speciali magnitudine, qualibet speciali figura, quolibet speciali colore; atque ita de cæteris.
Also intellect from imagination. 22. Intellection being the proper operation, of the soul, it is needless to inquire whether it does this by its own nature, or by a peculiar faculty called understanding, nor should we trouble ourselves about the Aristotelian distinction of the active and passive intellect.[773] We have only to distinguish this intellection from mere conception derived from the phantasy, which is necessarily associated with it. We cannot conceive God in this life, except under some image thus supplied; and it is the same with all other incorporeal things. Nor do we comprehend infinite quantities, but have a sort of confused image of indefinite extension. This is surely a right account of the matter; and if Stewart had paid any attention to these and several other passages, he could not have so much misconceived the philosophy of Gassendi.