are not called immaterial by St. Thomas, at least not usually. This subject of cognition is well treated of by Gonzales. In another part of this treatise he endeavors to prove the necessity of an intellectus agens as distinguished from the intellectus possibilis, the passive intellect, the faculty of understanding.
In the second part of Psychology, the simplicity of the soul, its spirituality and immateriality, are clearly demonstrated. Its unity also is stoutly maintained, and the opposite errors, both ancient and modern, are stated with admirable terseness and pertinence, and then put aside as wanting in scientific consistency. With the hypothesis of one soul, all vital operations can be accounted for; with that of more than one principle of life, various phenomena could not be explained; therefore the doctrine of one principle is to be admitted.
Appended to the tractate of Psychology is a special chapter on Ideology. The various systems of Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Leibnitz, Bonald, Malebranche, Gioberti, Kant, Schelling, Fichte, and Cousin are set aside one after another as insufficient or absurd. Then we have an exposition of the subject according to the principles of the Angelic Doctor; and this portion of the work is of unusual originality, specially interesting and instructive to many readers. The reality of ideas, as distinct intellectual representations of objects, it first established in opposition to the doctrines of those philosophers who maintain that the understanding perceives objects without the intervention of ideas or the need of an intellectus agens. The doctrine of impressed ideas as distinct from those that are expressed is insisted upon.
The origin of our ideas is thus explained: There are four kinds of ideas, ideæ primariæ abstractionis, ideæ pure intelligibiles, ideæ pure spirituales, and idea entis, and this division is applicable to both impressed and expressed ideas. We must ask pardon for our attempt to Anglicize the scholastic terms. Now, as to expressed ideas, all these have their origin from the passive intellect. The difficulty, therefore, of explaining the origin of ideas regards only those which we call ideæ impressæ, and of these only we have now to speak.
Ideas of primary abstraction, which refer to corporeal or sensible objects—as, for instance, a man, a horse, the sun—come from the active intellect, which draws them out of the species contained in the imagination. Ideas purely intellectual—as those of substance, cause, effect, good, evil—have their origin from both the active and the passive intellect: from the former, because in the ideas of primary abstraction it discovers other more universal relations, as those of good, bad, etc.; from the latter, as far as it works out and develops those germs of higher knowledge imperfectly manifested by the active intellect. As to purely spiritual ideas—those of God, of the angels, of our own souls—these have not all the same origin. If the idea of God is obtained by reasoning from that which is contingent to the conclusion that a necessary being must exist, such an idea is the product of the passive intellect, which has worked it out of impressions previously received. But if the idea of God be conceived as of the first cause of all things, then it is acquired in the same way as the ideas of causes in general, and belongs in reality to that class of ideas which are called
purely intellectual. The idea of an angel is acquired from the analogy of our own soul; hence the idea expressa of our soul may become the idea impressa of an angel. As to our own soul, there is no impressed idea of it, but its operations are sufficient for the acquisition of an expressed idea of it, without any need of an abstraction of the active intellect. As to the idea of being, it is an abstraction of the active intellect, but natural and spontaneous; indeed, it is its first perception, as the expressed idea of being is the first conception of the passive intellect. And the reason of this is, that our intellectual faculties are reflections of the mind of God.
Father Gonzales next proceeds to explain in what sense scholastics understand the axiom of the Stagirite, Nihil est in intellectu, quin prius fuerit in sensu. All ideas depend upon the senses so far forth that sensible cognition must always precede that which is intellectual, and because all intellectual cognition requires an accompanying exercise of the imagination. Ideas of primary abstraction depend upon sensible representations directly and immediately; ideas purely intellectual, remotely and inadequately; ideas purely spiritual, especially of angels and of our own souls, depend upon the senses only indirectly and occasionaliter. Hence the senses are never the efficient causes of our intellectual ideas; the most that can be said is, that they are the material causes of some of them. In this sense only can we accept the maxim of the great pagan philosopher without becoming implicated in the sensism of Locke and Condillac. Gonzales next warns his students not to consider ideas as the object of intellectual knowledge; an idea is not id QUOD cognoscitur,
but id QUO cognoscitur. These are the words of St. Thomas, and it is of the greatest importance to realize the doctrine, if we would avoid the Charybdis of idealism as well as the Scylla of sensism.
In the second volume we have the tractates of Ontology, Cosmology, and Natural Theology. In ontology the real distinction of essence and existence is affirmed and ably advocated, as, indeed, it usually is in works emanating from the Dominican Order. We have known personally more than one professor of that order who have differed from Gonzales and Goudin in this point, and who have taught their doctrines in the lecture rooms without scruple as the veritable teaching of St. Thomas. Our province is not to attempt to decide the question, either on its own independent merits or according to the authority of the Angelic Doctor. There are difficulties in the subject which seem to increase on examination. Father Liberatore, in the later editions of his Institutiones Philosophicæ, has passed from the ranks of those who deny the real distinction to join those who teach it, and he gives weighty reasons for doing so. We do not just now remember a conversion so conspicuous in the reverse direction; but we know of one or two such conversions, which, however, have attracted little notice.
In the treatise of Ontology there is an interesting dissertation on the principles of æsthetics. We are afraid to attempt a synopsis of it, as it would not be appreciated. Gonzales’ definition of beauty is worthy of a disciple of St. Thomas: Splendor harmonicus veri et infiniti.