Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2)

by Jaime Luciano Balmes

The same thing happens with the body: there are functions which it exercises independently of our freewill, such as the circulation of the blood, respiration, digestion, assimilation of food, transpiration, and others; but there are others which are only performed at the command of the will, as eating, walking, and in general whatever relates to the motion and position of the members. Why may not a similar thing happen in the soul? Why may not the soul have active faculties which are developed, and produce various phenomena, without the concurrence of the will?

I do not believe any reply to this solution possible. Still I propose to strengthen it by some remarks on the character of the phenomena in which it is pretended that the soul is purely passive.

170. The objection speaks of painful sensations, in which apparently the soul has no activity. Who will say that a man to whom I apply a burning iron, and who suffers horrid pain, exercises in this the activity of his soul? Is it not more reasonable to say that the soul is here purely passive, and in a state very like that of the body when pressed down by the weight of another body? If any activity is exercised in such a case it is rather that of reaction against a painful sensation. Reflect well upon these observations, and you will find that they contain no difficulty whose solution cannot be found in the preceding paragraph. I admit that the painful sensation does not depend on the freewill of the sufferer, and that his free action is opposed to this sensation; but despite all this, the soul may have a true activity in the mere fact of perceiving: it only shows that the exercise of this activity is subject to necessary conditions which when they exist are more powerful for its development than is our will to prevent it. Nothing is more certain than the development of certain active faculties independently of our freewill. What more active than violent passions? And yet it is often impossible for us not to feel them; and it requires all the command of our freewill to restrain them within the bounds of reason.

171. Sensation in itself cannot be all passive; and those who maintain that it is, show that they have meditated but little on the facts of consciousness. These facts are essentially individual, and inasmuch as they are facts of consciousness, absolutely incommunicable. Another may feel a pain very like, and even equal to, that which I suffer; but he cannot experience the same numerically considered; for my pain is so essentially mine, that if it is not mine it does not exist. Therefore pain cannot be communicated as an individual entity to me, and all that can be done to produce it in me, is to excite my sensitive power so as to experience it.

This observation shows that sensations cannot be merely passive facts. A passive modification is all received; the subject suffering does nothing. From the moment that the subject has in itself some principle of its modification, it is not purely passive. Sensation cannot be all received; it must be born in the subject under some influence or other, on this or that occasion; but the being which experiences it must contain a principle of its own experience; otherwise it would be a lifeless being, and could not perceive.

172. The objection speaks of painful sensations as though their necessity were an exception from the general rule; whereas all sensations, pleasant or unpleasant, are equally necessary, provided the sensitive faculties are placed in the conditions necessary for their exercise. There is the same necessity in the pain which I feel if a burning coal is placed in my hand, as in the sight of a beautiful painting placed before my eyes.

173. The spontaneousness of internal phenomena, in the pure intellectual order, or in that of imagination or sentiment, confirms the existence of an activity independent of our freewill, and by no means indicates that these phenomena are purely passive.

There is an important circumstance to be observed here. The exercise of the functions of the soul is connected with the phenomena of the organization. Experience teaches that the soul perceives with more or less activity, according to the disposition of the body; and it is a fact known from all antiquity that certain liquors have an inspiring power. The state of the digestion causes heavy dreams and torments the fancy with horrible forms; fever raises or depresses the imagination; sometimes it increases the strength of the understanding, and sometimes it produces a stupor in which intelligence is extinguished. These phenomena offer a greater field to observation when they reach a very high degree, as happens when the organic functions are greatly disturbed; but this shows that there is an immense scale passed over before arriving at the extremity; so that some phenomena, whose spontaneous appearance seems inexplicable, perhaps depend on certain unknown conditions to which our organization is subject. Whatever opinion be adopted as to the equality or inequality of human souls, no one has any doubt but that the differences of organization may have an influence on the talent or character, and that certain minds of extraordinary faculties owe a part of their endowments to a privileged organization.

Hence it may be inferred that what is called the spontaneity of the soul, and which has attracted so much attention from some modern philosophers, is a phenomenon very generally known, and one which neither destroys internal activity nor tells us any thing new as to its character.

It is certain that there are certain phenomena in our soul which are independent of our freewill; but there is no doubt that their presence is sometimes sudden and unexpected, because the conditions of our organization with which they are connected are unknown. But this is only extending to a greater number of cases what we have frequently remarked in psychological facts, the effects of disease, and what we constantly experience in sensations. What is a sensation but a sudden appearance of a phenomenon in our soul, produced by a change in the state of the organs?