第41章

And this is but reasonable, for every judgment formed is an act of the person who judges, and therefore each man must of necessity perform Page 156his own action from his own capability and not the capability of any other.'In days of old the Porch at Athens 1 gave us men, seeing dimly as in old age, who could believe that the feelings of the senses and the imagination were but impressions on the mind from bodies without them, just as the old custom was to impress with swift-running pens letters upon the surface of a waxen tablet which bore no marks before.But if the mind with its own force can bring forth naught by its own exertions; if it does but lie passive and subject to the marks of other bodies; if it reflects, as does, forsooth, a mirror, the vain reflections of other things;whence thrives there in the soul an all-seeing power of knowledge? What is the force that sees the single parts, or which distinguishes the facts it knows? What is the force that gathers up the parts it has distinguished, that takes its course in order due, now rises to mingle with the things on high, and now sinks down among the things below, and then to itself brings back itself, and, so examining, refutes the false with truth? This is a cause of greater power, of more effective force by far than that which only receives the impressions of material bodies.Yet does the passive reception come first, rousing and stirring 156:1 -- Zeno, of Citium (342-270 B.C), the founder of the Stoic school, taught in the Stoa Poekile, whence the name of the school.The following lines refer to their doctrine of presentations and impressions.Page 157all the strength of the mind in the living body When the eyes are smitten with a light, or the ears are struck with a voice's sound, then is the spirit's energy aroused, and, thus moved, calls upon like forms, such as it holds within itself, fits them to signs without and mingles the forms of its imagination with those which it has stored within.

'With regard to feeling the effects of bodies, natures which are brought into contact from without may affect the organs of the senses, and the body's passive affection may precede the active energy of the spirit, and call forth to itself the activity of the mind; if then, when the effects of bodies are felt, the mind is not marked in any way by its passive reception thereof, but declares that reception subject to the body of its own force, how much less do those subjects, which are free from all affections of bodies, follow external objects in their perceptions, and how much more do they make clear the way for the action of their mind?

By this argument many different manners of understanding have fallen to widely different natures of things.For the senses are incapable of any knowledge but their own, and they alone fall to those living beings which are incapable of motion, as are sea shell-fish, and other low forms of life which live by clinging to rocks; while imagination is granted to animals with the power of motion, who seem to be affected by some desire to seek or avoid certain things.Page 158But reason belongs to the human race alone, just as the true intelligence is God's alone.Wherefore that manner of knowledge is better than others, for it can comprehend of its own nature not only the subject peculiar to itself, but also the subjects of the other kinds of knowledge.Suppose that the senses and imagination thus oppose reasoning, saying, " The universal natural kinds, which reason believes that it can perceive, are nothing;for what is comprehensible to the senses and the imagina-tion cannot be universal: therefore either the judgment of reason is true, and that which can be perceived by the senses is nothing ?or, since reason knows well that there are many subjects comprehensible to the senses and imagina-tion, the conception of reason is vain, for it holds to be universal what is an individual matter comprehensible to the senses." To this reason might answer, that " it sees from a general point of view what is comprehensible to the senses and the imagination, but they cannot aspire to a knowledge of universals, since their manner of knowledge cannot go further than material or bodily appearances; and in the matter of knowledge it is better to trust to the stronger and more nearly perfcct judgment." If such a trial of argument occurred, should not we, who have within us the force of reasoning as well as the powers of the senses and imagination, approve of the cause of reason rather than that of the others? It is in like manner that human reason thinks that Page 159the divine intelligence cannot perceive the things of the future except as it conceives them itself.For you argue thus: " If there are events which do not appear to have sure or necessary results, their results cannot be known for certain beforehand: therefore there can be no foreknowledge of these events; for if we believe that there is any foreknowledge thereof, there can exist nothing but such as is brought forth of necessity." If therefore we, who have our share in possession of reason, could go further and possess the judgment of the mind of God, we should then think it most just that human reason should yield itself to the mind of God, just as we have determined that the senses and imagination ought to yield to reason.

'Let us therefore raise ourselves, if so be that we can, to that height of the loftiest intelligence.For there reason will see what it cannot of itself perceive, and that is to know how even such things as have uncertain results are perceived definitely and for certain by foreknowledge;and such foreknowledge will not be mere opinion, but rather the single and direct form of the highest knowledge unlimited by any finite bounds.