Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
- Mortimer Adler's
- Syntopicon
Essays
Man
WHETHER or not the proper study of mankind is man,
- it is the only study in which the knower and the known are
one, in which the object of the science is the nature of the scientist.
If we consider every effort men have made in response to the ancient injunction
"know thyself," then psychology has perhaps a longer tradition than any other
science. But by a stricter conception of science, more is required than individual insight
or self-consciousness. Definitions, principles, analyses applicable to all men must be
established, and it has been questioned whether the method of introspection suffices for
this purpose. What methods should be used by the psychologist depends in part upon the
precise object and scope of his inquiry. According as different subject matters and
different methods define psychology, there seem to be several disciplines bearing that
name, each with its own tradition in western thought.
In one conception, psychology begins with the dialogues of Plato and with Aristotle's
treatise On the Soul.
- As Aristotle's title indicates, and as the Greek roots of the
word "psychology" connote, the soul rather than man is the
object of the science.
Anthropology, Kant later suggests, would be a more appropriate name for the
science of man. The Greek inquiry into the soul extends, beyond man, to all living things.
It is because "the soul is in some sense the principle of animal life,"
Aristotle writes, that "the knowledge of the soul admittedly contributes greatly to
the advance of truth in general, and, above all, to our understanding of Nature."
Nevertheless, psychology for the Greeks is principally concerned with the study of man.
The analysis of the parts or faculties of the human soul is an analysis of the properties
of human nature--the powers which man has and the characteristically human acts or
functions he can perform. The methods by which this analysis is developed are, for the
most part, the same methods which the Greek philosophers use in physics. "The study
of the soul," Aristotle writes, "falls within the science of Nature." The
definitions of the psychologist, like those of the physicist, give "a certain mode of
movement of such and such a body (or part or faculty of a body) by this or that cause and
for this or that end." In the case of the human soul, however, the psychologist can
employ a method not applicable to other things. The human intellect is able to examine
itself. Mind can thus know things about mind which are not otherwise observable.
- The subject matter of psychology narrows somewhat when, at a
later moment in the tradition, the study of mind tends to replace the study of man. This
narrowing takes place gradually.
Though Descartes identifies soul with mind or intellect, he treats of the passions
and the will as well as thought and knowledge. Differing from Descartes with regard to
body and soul, Hobbes and Spinoza also give as much attention to the emotions as to ideas
and reasoning. But with Locke, Berkeley, and Hume there is an increasing tendency to
analyze the contents of consciousness and the acts of the understanding, treated
exclusively as a faculty of thinking or knowing. Where in the earlier tradition the
observation of human behavior and the behavior of other animals appears to be useful in
psychology, here the main source of psychological knowledge seems to be introspection.
The Principles of Psychology by James and the writings of Freud represent a
return to the broader conception of the science. According to James, "it is better .
. . to let the science be as vague as its subject . . . if by so doing we can throw any
light on the main business in hand."
If psychology "takes into account the fact that minds inhabit environments
which act on them and on which they in turn react" and "takes mind in the midst
of all its concrete relations, it is immensely more fertile than the old-fashioned
'rational psychology,' which treated the soul as a detached existent, sufficient unto
itself, and assumed to consider only its nature and properties. I shall therefore feel
free," James goes on to say, "to make any sallies into zoology or into pure
nerve-physiology which may seem instructive for our purposes."
Though in the hands of James and Freud the scope of psychology extends no further than the
range of topics Aquinas covers in his treatise on man and his treatise on human acts and
passions, their return to the study of man as a whole is accompanied by an interest in or
invention of new methods, experimental and clinical. "As a science," Freud
writes, "psychoanalysis is characterized by the methods with which it works, not by
the subject matter with which it deals." Those who distinguish between science and
philosophy in terms of empirical research date the beginning of psychology from the
inception of these new methods. They regard most psychological writings earlier than James
and Freud as works of speculation or philosophy.
Controversy over the validity of conclusions in psychology sometimes turns on the
conflicting claims of rival methods to be the only way of arriving at the truth;
and sometimes, as with Kant, the issue of method seems to be subordinate to the issue of
subject matter. Kant admits the possibility of an empirical psychology which would confine
its inquiries to the phenomenal processes of thought and feeling, because with respect to
such an object "we could call in aid observations on the play of our thoughts,"
and thence derive "natural laws of the thinking self." But, he goes on to say,
"it could never be available for discovering those properties which do not belong to
possible experience."
What Kant calls "rational psychology" aims at what is for him impossible,
namely, knowledge of the reality or substance of the soul itself.
- It is impossible, he says, to make "any dogmatical
affirmation concerning an object of experience beyond the boundaries of experience."
Kant's critique of rational psychology thus appears to be based on the same
principles which underlie his critique of metaphysical assertions concerning God's
existence and the freedom of the will.
Those principles are in turn based on an elaborate theory of the human faculties, such as
sense, understanding, and reason, and the role they play in the constitution of experience
and knowledge. But Kant does not regard his own theory of the faculties as psychology.
Writers like Locke and Hume, on the other hand, seem to make their psychology--certainly
in its principal concern with how the content of the mind is acquired and formed--the
basis for appraising the validity of all other knowledge. They do not question the
validity of psychology itself. They seem to assume that self-knowledge has unique
advantages over all other inquiries.
THESE ISSUES of the scope and validity of psychology are in one sense more relevant to the
chapters on KNOWLEDGE, MIND, and SOUL than to this one. Their relevance here is limited by
their connection with the main issues about the nature of man.
Not merely the tradition of psychology, but
- the whole tradition of western thought seems to divide on the
question of man's essence.
The question can be put in a number of ways.
- Is man a rational animal, and does that definition imply that
only man has reason? Does it imply that man has free will, and that only man has free
will? Like the question about the distinction between living and non-living things or the
similar question about the difference between plants and animals, this question can also
be asked in terms of the contrast between difference in kind and difference in degree.
Does man differ essentially or in kind from other animals, or do all animals possess the
same fundamental properties? Does man differ from the others only in the degree to which
he possesses some of these shared qualities?
Some, like Darwin, think that
- "the difference in mind between man and the higher
animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.
"We have seen," he writes, "that the senses and intuitions, the
various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation,
reason, etc., of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes in a
well-developed condition, in the lower animals. They are also capable of some inherited
improvement, as we see in the domestic dog compared with the wolf or jackal. If it could
be proved that certain high mental powers, such as the formation of general concepts,
self-consciousness, etc., were absolutely peculiar to man, which seems extremely doubtful,
it is not improbable that these qualities are merely the incidental results of other
highly-advanced intellectual faculties; and these again mainly the result of the continued
use of a perfect language."
- Such a view clearly takes the position that man varies from
other animals in the same way that one species of animal varies from another.
Those who take the opposite position do not always agree on the precise nature of
the difference in kind. For the most part, they attribute rationality to man alone and use
the word "brute" to signify that all other animals totally lack reason, no
matter how acute their intelligence or the apparent sagacity of their instinctive
reactions.
Milton, for example, in common with many others, describes man as
- ... a creature who not prone
And brute as other creatures, but endued
- With sanctity of reason, might erect
- His stature, and upright with front serene
- Govern the rest, self-knowing, and from thence
Magnanimous to correspond with heaven.
Those who find a difference in kind between man and other animals also tend to
think that human society and human language are essentially different from the beehive or
the ant mound, from bird calls, jungle cries, or parroting, because
- they are the work or expression of reason.
Unlike Darwin, some of them find in human speech not the cause of man's apparent
difference in kind from other animals, but the consequence of his real difference
in kind--his distinctive rationality. The fact that man does certain things that no other
animal does at all means to them that man possesses certain powers which no other animal
shares to any degree, even the slightest.
They would therefore interpret Darwin's admission that an anthropoid ape could not
fashion "a stone into a tool" or "follow a train of metaphysical reasoning,
or solve a mathematical problem, or reflect on God, or admire a grand natural scene,"
as an indication that the ape totally lacked human reason or intellect, however acute his
animal intelligence.
But the writers who agree that man is radically different from the brutes do not
all agree in the account they give of human reason; nor do they all affirm free will as
the natural accompaniment of rationality.
Locke, for example, begins his essay on Human Understanding with the remark that
"the understanding . . . sets man above the rest of sensible beings." Men and
other animals alike have the powers of sense, memory, and imagination, but, he says,
"brutes abstract not . . . The power of abstracting is not at all in them."
This power of having "general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction
betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means
attain to." But Locke denies that man has free will in the sense of a free choice
among alternatives. Rousseau, on the other hand, declares that "every animal has
ideas . . . and it is only in degree that man differs, in this respect, from the brute ...
It is not, therefore, so much the understanding that constitutes the specific difference
between the man and the brute, as the human quality of free agency . . . and it is
particularly in his consciousness of this liberty that the spirituality of his soul is
displayed."
James agrees with Locke that "it is probable that brutes neither attend to abstract
characters nor have associations by similarity," but it is the latter fact which
James himself makes the principal distinction between man and brute. "We may,"
he asserts, "consider it proven that the most elementary single difference between
the human mind and that of brutes lies in this deficiency on the brute's part to associate
ideas by similarity." James enumerates "other classical differentiae of
man besides that of being the only reasoning animal." Man has been called, he says,
"the laughing animal" and "the talking animal," but these distinctive
traits, like human reasoning, James regards as "consequences of his unrivalled powers
. . . to associate ideas by similarity."
Reason and speech are for James the effects, where for Adam Smith they are the cause, of
man's peculiarly human attributes. "The propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one
thing for another," Smith writes, is "common to all men, and to be found in no
other race of animals." This seems to him to be a "necessary consequence of the
faculties of reason and speech" which are peculiar to man. Hobbes, as we shall see
presently, takes still another position, since he explains man's reasoning power in terms
of his faculty of speech, a faculty which is possessed by no other animal.
Despite all these variations in theory or explanation, writers like Locke, Rousseau,
James, Smith, and perhaps Hobbes seem to agree that man and brute differ in kind. On that
point they agree even with writers like Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes,
Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel who hold, as they most definitely do not, that man has a special
faculty of mind, reason, or intellect. The contradictory position is, therefore, not to be
found in the denial of some particular theory of reason, but rather in the denial that any
faculty or attribute which man possesses warrants our calling him "rational" and
other animals "brute."
THE ISSUE IS sharply drawn between these contradictory positions. Yet it is avoided by
those who go no further than to see in human civilization certain distinctive features,
such as the arts and sciences, or law, government, and religion. Mill, for example,
discussing the sentiment of justice, finds its root in the natural impulse "to
resent, and to repel or retaliate, any harm done or attempted against ourselves, or
against those with whom we sympathise . . . common to all animal nature." Man differs
from other animals, he writes, "first, in being capable of sympathising, not solely
with their offspring, or, like some of the more noble animals, with some superior animal
who is kind to them, but with all human and even with all sentient beings. Secondly, in
having a more developed intelligence, which gives a wider range to the whole of their
sentiments, whether self-regarding or sympathetic. By virtue of his superior intelligence,
even apart from his superior range of sympathy, a human being is capable of apprehending a
community of interest between himself and the human society of which he forms a
part."
A view of this sort would seem to leave open the question whether such typically human
developments signify the possession by man of special powers which set him apart as different
in kind. While admitting extraordinary differences between the behavior or
accomplishments of men and other animals, this view does not reject the possibility that
such accomplishments may represent merely wide differences in degree of power, which give
the appearance of differences in kind.
As we have already observed, the issue about man and brute cannot be separated from the
controversy about the so-called "higher faculties" of man. Except for the view
that man is a purely spiritual being, who merely inhabits or uses a physical body, no
theory of human nature doubts that man, as a living organism, possesses in common with
plants and animals certain bodily powers or functions. The vegetative functions which
Galen calls "the natural faculties" are indispensable to human as to all other
forms of corporeal life. Similarly, the powers of sensitivity and appetite or desire are
obviously present in man as in other animals. To the observer, who sees only the externals
of human and animal behavior, men and the higher animals appear to react to the physical
stimulation of their sense organs with a similar repertoire of bodily movements, which
vary only as their skeletal structure and their organs of locomotion differ. They also
manifest outward signs of inner emotional disturbance sufficiently similar to warrant
treating emotions like fear and rage as common to men and other animals.
On all this there seems to be little dispute in the tradition of the great books. But
difficult questions arise when the inner significance of these external movements is
considered. Both men and animals have the familiar sense organs and such powers as touch,
taste, smell, hearing, and vision.
- But do sensations give rise to knowledge in the same way for
both men and animals?
Do the powers of memory and imagination extend an animal's range of apprehension
as they do man's? Do these powers affect the perception of present objects in the same way
for men and animals?
Such questions are not readily answered by observation of external behavior alone. What
seems to be called for--a comparison of human and animal experience--cannot be obtained.
The difficulty of the problem becomes most intense when a special faculty of knowledge or
thought is attributed to man, for animal and human sense perception, imagination, or even
emotion may be incommensurable if a special factor of understanding or reason enters into
all human experience and is totally absent from that of animals.
In the ancient and mediaeval periods, the sensitive faculty, including the interior
sensitive powers of memory and imagination, is generally distinguished from another
faculty, variously called "intellect," "reason," or "mind."
Writers like Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Lucretius, Augustine, and Aquinas have different
conceptions of intellect or mind, in itself and in its relation to sense and imagination,
but they do not question its existence as a separate faculty. The range of the sensitive
powers does not extend to ideas or intelligible objects, nor is sensitive memory or
imagination for them the same as rational thought.
Not only does it seem unquestionable in the ancient and mediaeval tradition that man has
these two distinct faculties of knowledge, but it is generally assumed that other
- animals have to a greater or less degree, the power of the
senses alone.
Only men can understand as well as perceive; only men can know the universal as
well as the particular; only men can think about objects which are neither sensible nor,
strictly, imaginable--objects such as atoms and God, the infinite and the eternal, or the
intellect itself.
- The affirmation of an essential difference between reason and
sense seems to be inseparable from the affirmation of an essential difference between men
and brutes.
DOUBTS OR DENIALS with regard to both affirmations achieve considerable prevalence
in modern times. But though the two affirmations appear inseparable, they are not always
denied together. Montaigne, for example, does not so much doubt that men have reason as he
does that other animals lack it. He considers the matter in the light of external
evidences, in terms of the comparable performances of men and animals. The light of reason
seems to shine in both.
He repeats many stories from Plutarch and Pliny which supposedly reveal the comparable
mentality of animals and men. One is the story of the hound who, following the scent,
comes to a triple parting of the ways. After sniffing along the first and second paths and
discovering no trace of the scent, the hound, without a moment's hesitation or sniffing,
takes up the pursuit along the third trail. This, Montaigne suggests, is a kind of
syllogizing; as if the dog reasoned thus with himself: "I have followed my master by
foot to this place; he must, of necessity, be gone by one of these three ways; he is not
gone this way nor that; he must then infallibly be gone this other."
It is noteworthy that Aquinas tells exactly the same story in order to make the point that
such appearances of reasoning in animals can be explained as instinctively
determined conduct. "In the works of irrational animals," he writes, "we
notice certain marks of sagacity, in so far as they have a natural inclination to set
about their actions in a most orderly manner through being ordained by the supreme art.
For which reason, too, certain animals are called prudent or sagacious; and not because
they reason or exercise any choice about things."
- That such behavior is not the work of reason, he claims,
"is clear from the fact that all that share in one nature invariably act in the
same way."
Unlike Montaigne, Machiavelli seems to imply that men and brutes are alike not in
having reason, but in lacking it. The passions control behavior. Intelligence exhibits
itself largely as craft or cunning in gaining ends set by the passions. Man is no less the
brute in essence because in the jungle of society he often succeeds by cunning rather than
by force. He may have more cunning than the fox, but without armor he also has less
strength than the lion. The prince, Machiavelli remarks, "being compelled knowingly
to adopt the beast, ought to choose the lion and the fox, because the lion cannot defend
himself against snares and the fox cannot defend himself against wolves."
For the most part, however, the modern dissent from the ancient and mediaeval view takes
the form of denying that reason and sense are distinct powers. In its most characteristic
expression, this denial is accompanied by a denial of abstract ideas as in the writings of
Hobbes, Berkeley, and Hume. Their position, discussed more fully in the chapter on
UNIVERSAL AND PARTICULAR, is that men only give the appearance of having abstract or
general ideas because they employ common names which have general significance.
Language, according to Hobbes, is the root of all other differences between man and brute.
Sense and imagination are "common to man and beast." Reasoning, or the
"train of thoughts," can take place in any animal which has memory and
imagination. But that type of understanding which Hobbes describes as "conception
caused by speech" is peculiar to man. His statement that "by the help of speech
and method, the same faculties" which belong to both men and beasts "may be
improved to such a height as to distinguish men from all other living creatures,"
would seem to imply that Hobbes regards man as superior to other animals only in degree.
Yet, on the other hand, he enumerates a variety of institutions peculiar to human life,
such as religion, law, and science, which imply a difference in kind.
Like Hobbes, Berkeley thinks that men use general names but do not have general or
abstract ideas. But he seems much less willing than Hobbes to assert man's clear
superiority, even on the basis of man's attainments through the power of speech. If the
fact that "brutes abstract not," he says in reply to Locke, "be made the
distinguishing property of that sort of animals, I fear a great many of those that pass
for men must be reckoned into their number." Hume goes further than either Berkeley
or Hobbes. Agreeing with them that man has no faculty above sense and imagination, and
hence no faculty which animals do not also possess, he alone explicitly draws the
conclusion which that implies.
"Animals as well as men," he writes, "learn many things from experience and
infer that the same events will always follow from the same causes." Such inferences,
in animals or men, are not "founded on any process of argument or reasoning."
They are the result of the operation of custom and instinct. "Were this doubtful with
regard to men, it seems to admit of no question with regard to the brute creation; and the
conclusion being once firmly established in the one, we have a strong presumption, from
all the rules of analogy, that it ought to be universally admitted, without any exception
or reserve."
But if custom and instinct underlie the appearance of reasoning in both men and animals,
it may be asked, says Hume, "how it happens that men so much surpass animals in
reasoning, and one man so much surpasses another?" His answer seems to be entirely in
terms of degree of the same factors. The same sort of difference which obtains between a
superior and an inferior intelligence among men obtains between men and other animals.
All the evidence which Darwin later assembles on the characteristics of human mentality is
offered by him in proof of the same point. But to those who think that man alone has an
intellect or a rational faculty, over and above all his sensitive powers, such evidence
remains inconclusive. As in the case of the dog, whose behavior Aquinas and Montaigne
interpret differently, the same observed facts seem to be capable of quite opposite
explanation by those who hold opposite theories of human and animal intelligence.
IS THERE INTERNAL evidence, obtained from man's introspective experience of his own.
thought, which can resolve the controversy? As Descartes sees it, the interpretation of
such evidence also seems to depend on the prior assumption one makes about the sameness or
difference of men and brutes.
"We cannot help at every moment experiencing within us that we think," he
writes; "nor can anyone infer from the fact that it has been shown that the animate
brutes can discharge all these operations entirely without thought, that he therefore does
not think; unless it be that having previously persuaded himself that his actions are
entirely like those of the brutes, just because he has ascribed thought to them, he were
to adhere so pertinaciously to these very words, 'men and brutes operate in the same
way,' that when it was shown to him that the brutes did not think, he preferred to
divest himself of that thought of his of which he could not fail to have an inner
consciousness, rather than to alter his opinion that he acted in the same way as the
brutes."
On the other hand, Descartes continues, those who hold "that thought is not to be
distinguished from bodily motion, will with much better reason conclude that it is
the same thing in us and in them, since they notice in them all corporeal movements as in
us; they will add that a difference merely of greater and less makes no difference to
the essence, and will infer that, though perchance they think that there is less
reason in the beasts than in us, our minds are of exactly the same species."
THE ISSUE concerning the senses and the reason is more fully discussed in the chapters on
MIND and SENSE, and also in the chapters on IDEA and UNIVERSAL AND PARTICULAR, where the
problem of abstract ideas or universal notions is considered. The issue concerning soul in
general and the human soul in particular belongs primarily to the chapter on Soul, and so
to the chapter on MIND. But like the issue about sense and intellect, its bearing on the
problem of man's nature deserves brief comment here.
The question is not whether man has a soul, but whether only man has a soul; a rational
soul; a soul which is, in whole or in part, immaterial; a soul capable of separate
existence from the body; an immortal soul. If soul is conceived as the principle of life
in all living organisms--as Aristotle conceives it--then having a soul does not
distinguish man from plants or animals. If, furthermore, the rational soul is
distinguished from the sensitive and vegetative soul in the same way that men are
distinguished from brute animals and plants, namely, by reference to certain powers, such
as intellect and will, then the statement that men alone have rational souls would seem to
add nothing to the statement that men alone are rational.
But if the human soul, through being rational, confers a mode of immaterial, or spiritual,
being upon man, then man's possession of such a soul sets him apart from all other
physical things, even further than the special power of reason separates him from the
brutes. The position of Lucretius illustrates this distinction in reverse. He does not
deny that man has a soul. Unlike other living things which also have souls, man's soul
includes a special part which Lucretius calls "mind." He describes it as the
part "which we often call the understanding, in which dwells the directing and
governing principle of life, [and] is no less part of the man than hand and foot and eyes
are parts of the whole living creature."
So far as his having this special faculty is concerned, man is set apart. But for
Lucretius nothing exists except atoms and void. Consequently, "the nature of the mind
and soul is bodily," consisting of "seeds exceedingly round and exceedingly
minute, in order to be stirred and set in motion by a small moving power." In his
physical constitution man dots not differ in any fundamental respect from any other
composite thing. The materiality of his soul, furthermore, means that it is as perishable
as any composite body.
At the other extreme from Lucretius, Descartes conceives man as a union of two substances.
"I possess a body," he writes, "with which I am very intimately conjoined,
yet because, on the one side, I have a clear and distinct idea of myself inasmuch as I am
only a thinking and unextended thing, and as, on the other, I possess a distinct idea of
body as it is only an extended and unthinking thing, it is certain that this I (that is to
say, my soul by which I am what I am), is entirely and absolutely distinct from my body
and can exist without it." Nevertheless, "sensations of pain, hunger, thirst,
etc." lead Descartes to add: "I am not only lodged in my body as a pilot in a
vessel, but . . . I am very closely united to it, and so to speak so intermingled with it
that I seem to compose with it one whole."
Only man has a dual nature, thus compounded. Other living things, Descartes seems to hold,
are merely bodies, having the structure and operation of complex machines. If, like the
"automata or moving machines . . . made by the industry of man," there
were "such machines, possessing the organs and outward form of a monkey, or some
other animal without reason, we should not have . . . any means of ascertaining that they
were not of the same nature as those animals."
It is indifferent to Descartes whether other animals are conceived as automata or whether,
because they have life, sensation, and imagination, they are granted souls. "I have
neither denied to the brutes," he writes, "what is vulgarly called life, nor a
corporeal soul, or organic sense." What he has denied is thought, and it is this one
factor which makes it impossible for a machine to imitate human speech and action. It is
this one factor which also requires man's soul, unlike that of the brute, to be an
incorporeal substance.
Unlike sensations and passions, acts of thought and will, according to Descartes, cannot
be functions of bodily organs. "Even though I were to grant," he says,
"that thought existed" in dogs and apes, "it would in nowise follow that
the human mind was not to be distinguished from the body, but on the contrary rather that
in other animals also there was a mind distinct from their body." When Descartes
affirms man's uniqueness, he is therefore affirming more than that man alone has reason
and free will. He is affirming that of all things man alone is "formed of body and
soul"--not a corporeal soul, but a spiritual substance. The angels, in contrast, are
simply spirits.
The remark of Plotinus, that "humanity is poised midway between the gods and the
beasts," applies with somewhat altered significance to the Cartesian view. But there
are other conceptions of the human constitution which, though they preserve the sense of
man's dual nature, do not make him a union of two separate substances.
Spinoza, for example, gives man special status in the order of nature by conferring on him
alone participation in the divine mind. "The human mind," he writes, "is a
part of the infinite intellect of God." The human body, on the other hand, is "a
mode which expresses in a certain and determinate manner the essence of God in so far as
He is considered as the thing extended." Man is thus "composed of mind and
body," but for Spinoza this duality in human nature is a duality of aspects, not a
duality of substances.
There is still another way in which a certain immateriality is attributed to man. In
Aristotle's theory, the soul is not a substance in its own right, but the substantial form
of an organic body. This is true of all kinds of souls--whether of plants, animals, or
men. But when Aristotle enumerates the various powers which living things possess--such as
"the nutritive, the appetitive, the sensory, the locomotive, and the power of
thinking"--he assigns to man alone, or "possibly another order like man or
superior to him, the power of thinking, i.e., mind." Furthermore, of all the parts or
powers of the soul, thinking seems to Aristotle to afford "the most probable
exception" to the rule that "all the affections of soul involve body."
Apart from thinking, "there seems to be no case," he says, "in which the
soul can act or be acted upon without involving body." Whereas the sensitive powers
are seated in bodily organs and cannot act except as bodily functions, the intellect is
immaterial. It has no bodily organ which is comparable to the eye as the organ of vision
and the brain as the organ of memory and imagination. The act of understanding is not a
function of physical matter.
According to this theory, man as a whole is a single substance, composite of correlative
principles of being--matter and form, or body and soul. But man differs from all other
physical substances which are similarly composite in that he has a faculty and mode of
activity separate from matter. In the later development of this theory by Aquinas, the
immateriality of the intellect becomes the basis for arguing that the rational soul of man
can exist apart from matter when the composite human substance is disintegrated by, death.
As indicated in the chapters on IMMORTALITY and SOUL, this is not the only argument for
the immortality of the soul. We are not here concerned, however, with the various
arguments and their merits, but only with the fact that certain conceptions of man's
constitution attribute to man something more than the power of rationality, namely, the
distinction of having a spiritual and immortal life.
HIS FUTURE AND his past color the present life of man and alter the aspect under which he
conceives his place in the general scheme of things. Immortality promises release from
mutability as well as salvation from death. With an immortal soul, man belongs to eternity
as well as to time. He is not merely a transient character in the universe. His stature
and his dignity are not the same when man regards himself as completely dissolvable into
dust.
The question of man's past or origin is, perhaps, even more critical in its bearing on
man's present status. Ancient poetry and history contain many myths of man's kinship with
the gods. The heroes trace their lineage back to the gods. Through them or through the
progenitors of the race, man conceives himself as of divine descent or, at least, as
having more affinity with the immortal gods than with all other earthbound things.
In the Descent of Man, Darwin paints a different picture of human origin. Two
propositions determine its general outlines. The first, already stated, is that man
belongs to the animal kingdom without any differentiation except in degree. Not only in
anatomy, physiology, and embryology are there marks of man's affinity with the mammals;
man's behavior and mentality also show, according to Darwin, that man possesses no
attribute so peculiarly human 'that some trace of it cannot be found in the higher forms
of animal life.
The second proposition is that man's origin on earth has come about by a process of
natural variation from an ancestral type, exactly as other new species of plants or
animals have originated by descent with variation from a common ancestor. This theory of
the origin of species is discussed in the chapter on EVOLUTION. Its special application to
the human species involves the notion of a common ancestor for both man and the anthropoid
apes, and the disappearance not only of the ancestral form, but of the intermediate
varieties-the so-called "missing links" in the chain of variation.
These two propositions are logically interdependent. If the proposition is false that man
differs from other animals only in degree, the proposition cannot be true that man
originated along with the anthropoid apes by descent from a common ancestor. Conversely,
if the Darwinian theory of man's origin is true, it cannot be true that men and brutes
differ in kind. But though the truth of each of these two propositions implies the truth
of the other, the problem of the difference between man and other animals has a certain
logical priority over the problem of man's origin, simply because more evidence is
available to solve it. That question calls for an examination of man as he is today in
comparison with other extant species; whereas the other question necessarily requires the
collection and interpretation of historical evidence, which may have some bearing on
hypothetical missing links.
It should be added that if, in regard to the first question, the evidence favored the
affirmation of a difference in kind, that would not entail the denial of biological
evolution, though it would necessarily challenge the Darwinian theory of how such
evolution took place. One alternative to the Darwinian hypothesis is the theory of
emergent evolution, according to which lower forms of life may give rise to new organic
forms which are not only higher but are distinct in kind.
- Whether or not Christian theology and some theory of
biological evolution can be reconciled, there seems to be an inescapable contradiction
between Darwin's view of man's origin and the Judaeo-Christian conception of man as a
special creation, special above all in the sense that "God created man in his own
image."
As God is in essence a perfect intelligence and a spiritual being, man, according
to Aquinas, "is said to be to the image of God by reason of his intellectual
nature." In all creatures "there is some kind of likeness to God," but it
is only in man that that likeness is an image. Man's finitude, imperfection, and corporeal
existence make the image a remote resemblance; yet, according to the theologians, it is
precisely that likeness which separates man from all other earthly creatures and places
him in the company of the angels.
But man is no more an angel than he is a brute. He is separated from the one by his body
as from the other by his reason. Nor does he in the present life have the spiritual
existence of a disembodied and immortal soul. To these three negatives in the definition
of man--not an angel, not a brute, not a soul--the Christian
theologian adds a fourth, drawn from man's past. Man is of the race begotten by Adam, but
he does not have the attributes which Adam possessed before the fall.
The dogma of man's fall from grace is discussed in the chapter on SIN. Here we are
concerned only with its implications for the understanding of man's present nature, as not
only being deprived of the extraordinary gifts of life and knowledge which Adam lost
through disobedience, but as also being wounded in perpetuity by Adam's sin. Weakness,
ignorance, malice, and concupiscence, Aquinas declares, "are the four wounds
inflicted on the whole of human nature as a result of our first parent's sin." Man in
the world is not only disinherited from Adam's gifts, but with the loss of grace, he also
suffers, according to Aquinas, a diminution in "his natural inclination to
virtue."
THERE ARE OTHER divisions in the realm of man, but none so radical as that between Eden
and the world thereafter. As retold by Plato, the ancient myths of a golden age when men
lived under the immediate benevolence of the gods also imply a condition of mankind quite
different from the observable reality, but they do not imply a decline in human nature
itself with the transition from the golden age to the present. The modern distinction
between man living in a state of nature and man living in civil society considers only the
external circumstances of human life and does not divide man according to two conditions
of his soul. Other dichotomies--such as that between prehistoric and historic man, or
between primitive and civilized man--are even less radical, for they deal even more in
gradations or degrees of the same external conditions.
These considerations lead us to another phase of man's thinking about man. Where the
previous problem was how man differs from everything else in the universe, here
- the question is how man is divided from man.
If men are not equal as individuals, to what extent are their individual
differences the result of the unequal endowment of the natures with which they are born,
and to what extent are they the result of individual acquirement in the course of life?
The range of human differences, whether innate or acquired, may itself become the basis
for a division of men into the normal and the abnormal, a division which separates the
feebleminded and the insane from the competent and sane. From a moral and political point
of view, this is perhaps the most fundamental of all classifications. It must be admitted,
however, that traditionally the problem of the difference between men and women and the
problem of the difference between the ages of man from the extreme of infancy to the
extreme of senility seem to have exercised more influence on the determination of
political status and moral responsibility.
One other differentiation of man from man seems to have significance for the theory of
human society and the history of civilization. That is the division of men into groups,
sometimes by reference to physical and mental traits which separate one race from
another-whether these traits are supposed to be determined biologically as inheritable
racial characteristics or are attributed to environmental influences; sometimes by
reference to the customs and ideals of a culture. Both sets of criteria appear to be used
in the traditional discussion of the opposition between Greek and barbarian, Jew and
gentile, European and Asiatic.
THE ULTIMATE questions which man asks about himself are partly answered by the very fact
of their being asked.
- The answer may be that man is the measure of all things; that
he is sufficient unto himself or at least sufficient for the station he occupies and the
part he plays in the structure of the universe. The answer may be that man is not a god
overlooking the rest of nature, or even at home in the environment of time and space, but
rather that he is a finite and dependent creature aware of his insufficiency, a lonely
wanderer seeking something greater than himself and this whole world.
Whatever answer is given, man's asking what sort of thing he is, whence he comes,
and whither he is destined symbolizes the two strains in human nature--man's knowledge and
his ignorance, man's greatness and his misery.
Man, writes Pascal, is
"a nothing in comparison with the Infinite, an All in comparison with the
Nothing, a mean between nothing and everything. Since he is infinitely removed from
comprehending the extremes, the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden
from him in an impenetrable secret; he is equally incapable of seeing the Nothing from
which he was made, and the Infinite in which he is swallowed up. Man," Pascal goes
on, "must not think that he is on a level either with the brutes or with the angels,
nor must he be ignorant of both sides of his nature; but he must know both."
- In recognizing both lies his wretchedness and grandeur.
"Man knows that he is wretched. He is therefore wretched, because he is so; but he is
really greater because he knows it."
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