We will set aside as impossible the mixture of two incommensurables, such as a line and the color called white. A mixture of the soul and body, which must imply their commensurability, would demand explanation. Even if the soul interpenetrate the body, the soul need not share the body's passions, for the interpenetrating medium may remain impassible; as light, which remains such in spite of its diffusion.[288] Thus the soul might remain a stranger to the body's passions, though diffused through it, and need not necessarily undergo its passions.
ARISTOTELIAN HYPOTHESIS CONSIDERED.
Should we say that the soul is in the body, as form in matter? In this case, she is "being," and she would be a separable form. If then[289] she be in the body as, in the case of the axe, the schematic figure is in the iron, so as by her own proper virtue, to form the power of doing what iron thus formed accomplishes, we will have all the more reason to attribute the common passions to the body, which is[290] an organized physical tool possessing potential life. For if as (Plato) says[291] it be absurd to suppose that it is the soul that weaves, it is not any more reasonable to attribute the desires and griefs to the soul; rather, by far, to the living organism.
THE LIVING ORGANISM.
5. The "living organism" must mean either the thus organized body, or the common mixture of soul and body, or some third thing which proceeds from the two first. In either of these three cases the soul will have to be considered impassible, while the power of experiencing passions will inhere in something else; or the soul will have to share the body's passions, in which case the soul will have to experience passions either identical or analogous to those of the body, so that to a desire of the animal there will correspond an act or a passion of the concupiscible appetite.
REFUTATION OF THE (JAMES-LANGE) THEORY OF EMOTIONS.
We shall later on consider the organized body; here we must find how the conjunction of soul and body could experience suffering. The theory that the affection of the body modifies it so as to produce a sensation which itself would end in the soul, leaves unexplained the origin of sensation. To the theory that suffering has its principle in this opinion or judgment, that a misfortune is happening to ourselves or some one related to us, whence results disagreeable emotion first in the body, and then in the whole living organism,[292] there is this objection, that it is yet uncertain to which opinion belongs; to the soul, or to the conjunction of soul and body. Besides, the opinion of the presence of an evil does not always entail suffering; it is possible that, in spite of such an opinion, one feels no affliction; as, for instance, one may not become irritated at believing oneself scorned; or in experiencing no desire even in the expectation of some good.