General Sense Images and the Power of Abstraction. 79 



or interior, but merely a formal, an unessential and ex- 

 terior difference. Therefore the power of cognition in 

 animals is not essentially different from that of man. 



3. The so called general sense images of sensile 

 perception and the general concepts of mental cognition 

 are essentially the same; they represent different degrees 

 of one and the same power of abstraction. Therefore 

 they cannot be wholly denied to animals. 



Let us carefully examine these three difficulties. We 

 begin with the first. 



Man possesses instinct and intelligence, a sensitive 

 and a spiritual life. While the sensitive life of animals 

 only purposes to subserve the gratification of corporal 

 wants and thereby tends to preserve the individual as 

 well as the species, it has a higher purpose in man. It 

 serves as a foundation for the natural activity of his 

 spiritual powers. 1 The spiritual powers of cognition 

 and volition, and not the sensitive powers, as in animal 

 life, are the highest and the primary principles of man's 

 end and aim. His sensitive life is not complete in 

 itself; it is a part of something that is higher. This 

 explains the intimate connection that exists between the 

 sensitive and the spiritual life of man. 



Because man has a sensitive-spiritual life, and spirit- 

 ual knowledge must first receive its object from sensitive 

 perception nihil est in intellectu, quod non antea fuerit 

 in sensu it is self-evident that sensitive representations 

 are most intimately blended and interwoven with 

 spiritual cognitions, and their subsequent abstractions 

 and conclusions. Intelligence must form its general 

 concepts from what is offered by sense representation, 



') See St. Thorn., "Summ. Theol.," 2, 2, q. 167, a. 2. 



