It is a hindrance, and ordinarily a complete preventive of this kind of influx from the spiritual world into the soul, and this kind of activity properly belonging to a separate spirit. But we propose the conjectural hypothesis that there may be, in the first place, some kind of extraordinary and abnormal condition of the soul, in which the natural effect of the union with a body is diminished, or at times partially suspended. In this condition the soul would come in a partial and imperfect manner, and quite involuntarily, into immediate contact with the world of spirits, receive influences from it, and perceive things imperceptible to the senses and the intellect acting by their aid as its instruments. In the second place, that it is possible to bring about this condition unlawfully, to the great damage and danger of the soul by voluntarily yielding to or courting preternatural influences, and thus coming into immediate commerce with demons. In the third place, that it is possible, lawfully, for a good end and to the soul’s great benefit, to approximate to the angelical state by abstractive contemplation, according to the description given by Harphius and quoted by Father Baker. As for passive, supernatural contemplation, it is not possible for the soul to do more than prepare itself for the visitation of the divine Spirit with his lights and graces. In this supernatural condition it is more consonant to the doctrine of St. John of the Cross, who was well versed in scholastic metaphysics and theology; of St. Teresa, whose
wisdom is called by the church in her solemn office “celestial”; and to what we know of the exalted experience of the most extraordinary saints, to suppose that God acts on the soul through the intermediate agency of angels, and also immediately by himself, without any concurrence of the imagination or the active intellect and its naturally-acquired forms. The quotation from St. John of the Cross at the head of this article, if carefully reperused and reflected on, will make this statement plain, and intelligible at least to all those who have some tincture of scholastic metaphysics.
There are many facts reported on more or less probable evidence, and extraordinary phenomena, belonging to diabolical and natural mysticism, which receive at least a plausible explanation on the same hypothesis. To refer all these to subjective affections of the external or internal senses and the imagination does not seem to be quite sufficient for their full explanation. It appears like bending and straining the facts of experience too violently, for the sake of a theory which, perhaps, is conceived in too exclusive and literal a sense. At all events it is worth investigation and discussion whether the dictum of St. Thomas, intelligere absque phantasmate modo non potest, does not admit of and require some modification, by which it is restricted to those intellectual perceptions which belong to the normal, ordinary condition of man within the limits of the purely natural order.
[35] Complete works, vol. iii. p. 208.
[36] Sancta Sophia, treatise iii. sec. iv. chap. i. par. 5-12.
[37] Dell’Uomo. Trattato del P. Matteo Liberatore, D.C.D.G. Vol. ii. Dell’Anima Humana, seconda ed. corretta ed accresciuta. Roma. Befani: Via delle Stimate 23, 1875. Capo x. Dell’Anima separata dal Corpo.
[38] Summ. Theol., i. p. qu. 89, art i.
[39] Qq. disp. ii. de Anima, art. 19 ad 13.