80 Chapter V. 



it must compare these concepts one with the other. 

 Thus it is enabled to "think." According to the scho- 

 astic theory of cognition of St. Thomas Aquinas the 

 sensile imagination must continually assist intelligence 

 in its activity by furnishing a "phantasm." Hence the 

 only way of grasping the idea of the "spiritual" is by 

 denying the properties of things perceived by the senses : 

 by eliminating extent and divisibility we conceive its 

 characteristic note of "simplicity," and its "spirituality" 

 by thinking of its interior non-dependence on matter 

 both in existence and action. No representative )i 

 aristotelian philosophy has ever denied that sensitive 

 and spiritual life in man are most intimately connected 

 in their specific activities. However, this close con- 

 nection does not exclude their essential difference. 1 

 Spiritual cognition is not satisfied with what sensile 

 cognition apprehends. It goes a step further. Sensile 

 cognition is confined to an individual object with all 

 its exterior qualities, it is restricted to things present in 

 space and time, the concrete representation of which is 

 reproduced by the sensile memory and combined with 

 new perceptions, according to the laws of association of 

 sense representations. But this is far from constituting 

 a thought. Our intelligence proceeds essentially further 

 in its act of cognition. Let us explain our meaning by 

 the very example chosen by Prof. Emery. 



If the mental process of the savage were restricted 

 to his finding "pretty" whatever has a "red" color, to 

 the pleasure excited by its perception and, consequently, 

 to his search for, and collection of all objects that are 



*) See the excellent work on this matter: P. Bonniot, S. J., "La 

 bete comparee a rhcmme." Paris, 1889. 



