"To denominate him one person, one being, and yet to suppose him made up of two minds infinitely different from each other, is to abuse and confound language, and to throw darkness over all our conceptions of intelligent natures."
If our reverend opponent chooses to look with contempt and slight on all distinct and accurate notions of ideology, which he calls, in another place, vain philosophy; if he prefers to form crude and undigested ideas; if he will not sound to the very depth the nature, the faculties of intelligent beings, their acts, the genesis of their acts, their distinctions from other faculties and their acts; but loves rather to argue from ideas common to men who have never thought and thought deeply on these subjects, and distinguished them carefully, and classified them, is it any fault of ours if, when we propound the true philosophical doctrines about these subjects, Dr. Channing's ideas should become confused, and that darkness should spread over that which was never clear?
"According to the common doctrine, each of these two minds in Christ has its own consciousness, its own will, its own perceptions. They have, in fact, no common properties. Can you conceive of two beings in the universe more distinct?"
If by being the doctor meant natures, we cannot conceive any thing in the universe more distinct, for which reason Catholicity teaches that there are two distinct natures in Christ.
If by being the doctor means that those two natures must make two persons, we cannot grant the assertion, and ask again for proofs.
"We have always thought that one person was constituted and distinguished by one consciousness."
This is the only show of reason we can find in the whole passage we have been refuting; and we have no hesitation in affirming that, if our opponent thought that one person is constituted by one consciousness, in the sense that when an intelligent nature is endowed with consciousness it must necessarily possess a personality of its own, so that consciousness and personality may be said to be identical, as the doctor supposes, he was wrong in thinking so, and should study more deeply into the distinctive essence of consciousness and personality. We may make the following suppositions, according to true ideology:
1st. An intelligent nature, having consciousness of itself, may have a personality of its own, as is the common case in human nature.
2d. An intelligent nature, having the consciousness of itself, may be deprived of its own personality and subsist of the personality of another, simply because consciousness and personality are two distinct things, and may either go together or be separated, without one being affected by the other.
Personality is the last complement of an intelligent nature, by which it forms a whole apart from all others, possessing itself, and being solidary of its actions.