84 Chapter V. 



is meant by material and formal conclusions will at once 

 elucidate our meaning. A material conclusion (infer- 

 ence), a indicium materiale, 1 as scholastic philosophy 

 called it, is a complex sense representation which can 

 be resolved into a formal ratiocination by the human 

 mind. The very use of the term "material conclu- 

 sion" is an acknowledgment of the conviction that an- 

 imals do not "think." It is a proof of the intelligence 

 of man, who can form the material conclusions of 

 animals into proper syllogisms, and not of an intelli- 

 gence of the brute. 2 



But in saying this we do not wish to assert, that the 

 power of making conclusions is essential to intelligence 

 as such. On the contrary, the very necessity of deduc- 

 tive thought is a proof of imperfection in the human 

 understanding. 3 The divine intellect which beholds 

 all truth in one single, eternal intuition, does not require 

 the beggarly means of a cognition which advances 

 gradually and only step by step. Nor is the faculty of 

 the human intellect exclusively confined to deduction, 

 but necessarily presupposes the intuitive cognition of 

 the first fundamental principles. Moreover, it often 

 follows an abbreviated method in its process of reason- 

 ing ; it uses the enthymeme instead of the syllogism ; 

 and, in general, the quicker the power of perception, and 

 the more active the mind, the shorter and terser all 

 mental deductions will evidently become. But, there 

 is a difference between these abbreviated intellectual 



1 ) About iudicium materiale, virtuale or implicitum see also 

 Urraburru, Psychol. P. L, p. 848. 



2 ) See also Reimarus, pp. 39 and 40, and ff. 



3 ) See above p. 37, note 2. 



