The Intellective Human Faculties

The intellective faculties of man are powers of the soul. They are the intellect and its appetency called the will.

The intellect (or mind, or understanding) is, first of all, a passive power; that is, it receives its knowledge and does not make it up. But the intellect is not passive in a lifeless fashion as marble is passive under the chisel of the sculptor. It does not act to make knowledge, but it re-acts to the impression of knowledge. It receives knowledge and expresses it within itself in its own way.

Now, in this life all human knowledge begins with the senses. Man’s intellect must therefore receive knowledge fromthe senses. But the sense order is the order of material and singular reality, whereas the intellect is a spiritual power to grasp things in universal. Hence there must be a power, belonging to the order of intellective faculties, which prepares sense-finding for the intellect proper; there must be an intellectual agency which renders sense-findings intelligible. Thisis the special intellectual faculty called the intellectusagens or active intellect. Therefore, man has these intellectual or intellective faculties: the active intellect, the intellect proper or passive intellect(called intellectus possibilis), and the will.

The active intellect is a faculty of the soul. It belongs to the intellective order, not the sentient order.

It is not true (as some have taught) that there is onlyone active intellect for all men, which renders things intelligiblefor everyone even as one sun renders things visible for everyone. The active intellect is a faculty of each soul.

The intellect proper, the intellectuspossibilis, is the intellect which actually understands. Now,it retains what it understands, and in this function it is called the intellectual memory. Hence memory (in the intellective order)is not a faculty distinct from intellect; it is the intellect in a definite service or function. The recalling of things experienced in the past is rather the work of the sense-memory (one of the interior senses) than of the intellect.

Therefore the intellective memory is an act or operation of the intellect, and not a special faculty. It belongs to understanding to retain as well as to receive.

And the intellect often grasps or understands by a connected series of points or steps. It can think things out. Inthis operation the intellect (that is, the knowing intellect, the passive intellect) is called reason. The work of reasoning, of moving in connected steps of thought to reach a conclusion, is called discursive thought. The human reason is not,therefore, a special faculty; it is the act or operation of the faculty called intellect. {-Sometimes the term reason is used to signify man’s rational nature,including both intellect and will. Thus we speak of a person’s”coming to the use of reason,” and of keeping the passions “subject to reason.”-}

St. Augustine draws a distinction between the higher reason which contemplates eternal truths, and the lower reason which thinks on temporal things. This is an accidental distinction of reason, not a multiplication of faculties. Reason itself is nota faculty really distinct from intellect; hence no types or varieties of reason can be distinct faculties.

In its actual operation of knowing, of understanding,of pronouncing true judgment, the intellect is called intelligence. Whether the judgment expresses as elf-evident truth, or a truth known by immediate inference, or a truth reasoned out by discursive thinking, the very act of judging is called an act of intelligence. Hence intelligence is not a faculty distinct from intellect; it is intellect in a precise operation or action.

The intellect is called speculative inasmuchas it knows what is so; it is called practical inasmuch asis it knows what to do. Hence the speculative intellect and the practical intellect are not two faculties, but two functions of one faculty.

By his rational nature (that is, by his human essence equipped with understanding and will), a person comes early in life into possession of certain items of knowledge that enlighten and guide him in thinking and acting. These items of knowledge amount to first truths and first laws; we call them first principles. (a) First intellectual principles are: aperson’s direct awareness that he exists; that he can think straight; that what he thinks about cannot be what it is and, atthe same time, something else. (b) First moral principles,or will-principles (that is, laws of conduct), are drawn from the direct awareness that there is such a thing as right and good, sucha thing as wrong and evil, such a thing as obligation or duty. And thus first moral principles are, “Do good,” “Avoid evil.” And, since the knowledge of good and evil is not wholly abstract, it involves certain manifest objective instances of whatis good and what is bad. This fundamental moral equipment of a human being, achieved as a person emerges from infancy to an age of responsible conduct, is called synderesis. Now, first principles, intellectual or moral, are habits, that is, enduring qualities, of intellect and will. Knowledge of first truths (thatis, intellectual principles) is an intellectual habit; so issynderesis in so far as it is knowledge; synderesis in so far as itis a habitual guide and influence upon the will is a moral habit.

When a person reaches a reasoned conclusion about his own duty, the conclusion is a practical judgment. This judgment is called conscience. Hence conscience is not a special faculty; it is an act of the faculty of intellect as reason. Sometimes people confuse conscience with synderesis, and callsynderesis itself by the name conscience. This is an inaccurate use of terms. Synderesis is a habit; conscience is an act; neither is a faculty. Reason draws upon synderesis informing the conscience-judgment.