one of fact and evidence. Whatever may be proved to take place in souls so highly elevated, philosophy has no objection to offer; for these things are above the sphere of merely human and rational science.
The real matter of difficult and perplexing investigation relates to certain abnormal or preternatural phenomena, which seem to indicate a partial liberation of the soul from the conditions of organic life and union with the body, and to that state of mystic contemplation which is called active or acquired. In these cases there is no liberty allowed us by sound theology or philosophy of resorting to the supernatural in its strict and proper sense. We are restricted to the sphere of the nature of man and the operations which can proceed from it or be terminated to it according to the natural laws of its being. There is one hypothesis, very intelligible and perfectly in accordance with psychology, which will remove all difficulty out of the way, if only it is found adequate to explain all the certain and probable facts and phenomena which have to be considered. Father Baker furnishes this explanation as a probable one, and it no doubt amply suffices for the greatest number of instances. That is to say, we may suppose that whenever the mind seems to act without any species, image, or idea, originally presented through the medium of the senses, and by a pure, spiritual intuition, it is really by a subtile and imperceptible image which it has elaborated by an abstractive and discursive process, and which exists in the imagination, that the intellect receives the object which it contemplates.
But let us suppose that this hypothesis is found insufficient to explain
all the facts to which it must be applied. Can it be admitted, without prejudice to rational psychology, that the soul may, by an abnormal condition of its relations to the body, or as the result of its efforts and habits, whether for evil or good, lawfully or unlawfully, escape from its ordinary limits in knowing and acting, and thus draw nearer to the state of separate spirits?
We must briefly consider what is the mode of knowing proper to separate spirits before we can find any data for answering this question. Here we avail ourselves of the explication of the doctrine of St. Thomas given by Liberatore in his interesting treatise on the nature of man entitled Dell’Uomo.[37]
St. Thomas, following St. Augustine, teaches that in the creation, the divine idea in the Word was communicated in a twofold way, spiritual and corporeal. In the latter mode this light was made to reverberate from the visible universe. In the former it was made to shine in the superior and intellectual beings—that is, the angels—producing in them ideally all that which exists in the universe really. As they approximate in intelligence to God, these ideas or intelligible species by which they know all things have a nearer resemblance to the Idea in the Divine Word—that is, approach to its unity and simplicity of intuition—are fewer and more general. As their grade of intelligence is more remote from its source, they depart to a greater and greater distance from this unity by the increasing multiplicity of their intelligible species. Moreover,
the inferior orders are illuminated by those which are superior; that is, these higher beings present to them a higher ideal universe than their own, and are as if reflectors or mirrors of the divine ideas, by which they see God mediately in his works. The human soul, being the lowest in the order of intelligent spirits, is not capable of seeing objects distinctly, even in the light of the lowest order of angels. It is made with a view to its informing an organized body, and it is aided by the bodily senses and organic operations to come out of the state of a mere capacity of intelligence, in which it has no innate or infused ideas, into actual intelligence. It is naturally turned, as an embodied spirit, to inferior objects, to single, visible things, for the material term of its operation, and from these abstracts the universal ideas which are the principles of knowledge. The necessity of turning to these sensible phantasms is therefore partly the inchoate state of the intelligence of man at the beginning of his existence, partly its essential inferiority, and, in addition, the actual union of the soul with the body. There is, however, in the soul, a power, albeit inferior to that of angels, of direct, intellectual vision and cognition, without the instrumentality of sensation. When the soul leaves the body and goes into the state of a separate spirit, it has the intuition of its own essence, it retains all its acquired ideas, and it has a certain dim and confused perception of higher spiritual beings and the ideas which are in them. It is therefore, in a certain sense, more free and more perfect in its intellectual operation in the separate state than it was while united with the body. All this proceeds without
taking into account in the least that supernatural light of glory which enables a beatified spirit to see the essence of God, and in him to see the whole universe.
We see from the foregoing that the necessity for using sensible images in operations of the intellect does not arise from an intrinsic, essential incapacity of the human mind to act without them. As Father Baker says, and as Liberatore distinctly asserts after St. Thomas, it is “the state of a soul joined to a mortal body” which impedes the exercise of a power inherent and latent in the very nature of the soul, as a form which is in and by itself substantial and capable of self-subsistence and action in a separate state. Remove the impediment of the body, and the spirit starts, like a spring that has been weighted down, into a new and immortal life and activity. The curtain has dropped, and it is at once in the world of spirits. The earth, carrying with it the earthly body, drops down from the ascending soul, as it does from an aeronaut going up in a balloon. “Animæ, secundum illum modum essendi, quo corpori est unita, competit modus intelligendi per conversionem ad phantasmata corporum, quæ in corporeis organis sunt. Cum autem fuerit a corpore separata, competit ei modus intelligendi per conversionem ad ea, quæ sunt intelligibilia simpliciter, sicut et aliis substantiis separatis”—“To the soul, in respect to the mode of being by union with a body, belongs a mode of understanding by turning toward the phantasms of bodies which are in the bodily organs. But when it is separated from the body, a mode of understanding belongs to it in common with other separate substances, by
turning toward things simply intelligible.”[38] “Hujusmodi perfectionem recipiunt animæ separatæ a Deo, mediantibus angelis”—“This kind of perfection the separate souls receive from God through the mediation of angels.”[39] “Quando anima erit a corpore separata plenius percipere poterit influentiam a superioribus substantiis, quantum ad hoc quod per hujusmodi influxum intelligere poterit absque phantasmate quod modo non potest”—“When the soul shall be separated from the body, it will be capable of receiving influence from superior substances more fully, inasmuch as by an influx of this kind it can exercise intellectual perception without a phantasm, which in its present state it cannot do.” This language of St. Thomas and other schoolmen explains the hesitation of Father Baker in respect to certain statements of mystical authors, especially Harphius. He says, as quoted above: “This abstraction and elevation (perhaps) are not to be understood as if the soul in these pure operations had no use at all of the internal senses or sensible images (for the schools resolve that cannot consist with the state of a soul joined to a mortal body).” He says “perhaps,” which shows that he was in doubt on the point. The precise question we have raised is whether there is reason for this doubt in the shape of probable arguments, or conjectures not absolutely excluded by sound philosophy. The point to be considered, namely, is whether the reception of this influx and the action of the intellect without the medium of sensible images is made absolutely impossible, unless by a miracle, by the union of the soul and body.