Chapter 2.—Man Alone of Animate Creatures Perceives the Eternal Reasons of Things Pertaining to the Body.

2. And the beasts, too, are able both to perceive things corporeal from without, through the senses of the body, and to fix them in the memory, and remember them, and in them to seek after things suitable, and shun things inconvenient. But to note these things, and to retain them not only as caught up naturally but also as deliberately committed to memory, and to imprint them again by recollection and conception when now just slipping away into forgetfulness; in order that as conception is formed from that which the memory contains, so also the contents themselves of the memory may be fixed firmly by thought: to combine again imaginary objects of sight, by taking this or that of what the memory remembers, and, as it were, tacking them to one another: to examine after what manner it is that in this kind things like the true are to be distinguished from the true, and this not in things spiritual, but in corporeal things themselves;—these acts, and the like, although performed in reference to things sensible, and those which the mind has deduced through the bodily senses, yet, as they are combined with reason, so are not common to men and beasts. But it is the part of the higher reason to judge of these corporeal things according to incorporeal and eternal reasons; which, unless they were above the human mind, would certainly not be unchangeable; and yet, unless something of our own were subjoined to them, we should not be able to employ them as our measures by which to judge of corporeal things. But we judge of corporeal things from the rule of dimensions and figures, which the mind knows to remain unchangeably.736    [The inward production of a thought in the finite essence of the human spirit which is expressed outwardly in a spoken word, is analogous to the eternal generation of the Eternal Wisdom in the infinite essence of God expressed in the Eternal Word. Both are alike, in that something spiritual issues from something spiritual, without division or diminution of substance. But a thought of the human mind is not an objective thing or substance; while the Eternal Word is.—W.G.T.S.]    [The distinction drawn here is between that low form of intelligence which exists in the brute, and that high form characteristic of man. In the Kantian nomenclature, the brute has understanding, but unenlightened by reason; either theoretical or practical. He has intelligence, but not as modified by the forms of space and time and the categories of quantity, quality, relation etc.; and still less as modified and exalted by the ideas of reason—namely, the mathematical ideas, and the moral ideas of God, freedom, and immortality. The animal has no rational intelligence. He has mere understanding without reason.—W.G.T.S.]

CAPUT II.

2. Aeternas rationes in corporalibus homo solus animantium percipit. Possunt autem et pecora et sentire per corporis sensus extrinsecus corporalia, et ea memoriae fixa reminisci, atque in eis appetere conducibilia, fugere incommoda: verum ea notare, ac non solum naturaliter rapta, sed etiam de industria memoriae commendata retinere, et in oblivionem jamjamque labentia recordando atque cogitando rursus imprimere; ut quemadmodum ex eo quod gerit memoria cogitatio formatur, sic et hoc ipsum quod in memoria est cogitatione firmetur: fictas etiam visiones, hinc atque inde recordata quaelibet sumendo et quasi assuendo, componere, inspicere, quemadmodum in hoc rerum genere quae verisimilia sunt discernantur a veris, non spiritualibus, sed ipsis corporalibus: haec atque hujusmodi quamvis in sensibilibus, atque in eis quae inde animus per sensum corporis traxit agantur atque versentur, non sunt tamen rationis expertia, nec hominibus pecoribusque communia. Sed sublimioris rationis est judicare de istis corporalibus secundum rationes incorporales et sempiternas: quae nisi supra mentem humanam essent, incommutabiles profecto non essent; atque his nisi subjungeretur aliquid nostrum, non secundum eas possemus judicare de corporalibus. Judicamus autem de corporalibus ex ratione dimensionum atque figurarum, quam incommutabiliter manere mens novit.