Nature and Kinds of Faculties

Chapter II — Human Sentiency

Article 1. Nature and Kinds of Faculties

This Chapter discusses the sentient powers or faculties of man and the operations which proceed from these faculties as from proximate principles. While our chief concern in major psychology is the rational life of man with its faculties of intellect and will, we recognize the fact that man’s soul and body form one substantial compound and that the rational life of man in this earthly existence is, so to speak, rooted in sense and sentiency. We must therefore make a study of the human sentient faculties and operations before we take up those of the rational order. The present Chapter is divided into four Articles:

Article 1. Nature and Kinds of Faculties
Article 2. Sensation
Article 3. Appetition
Article 4. Locomotion

c) Classification of Faculties

a) Nature of Faculties

There is a Latin word facultas (“ability” or “power”) which derives from the verb facere “to make, to do.” The English word faculty has its ancestry in these Latin words. A faculty is a capacity or power for making or doing. It is also a capacity or power for receiving, but not for receiving in a life-

less and passive way like that in which mouldingclay receives the shape impressed upon it. A faculty, inasmuch as it is a capacity for receiving, is a capacity for actively receiving; perhaps we had better say it is a capacity for vitally reacting to what it receives. For a faculty, strictly understood, is a vital capacity or power; it belongs always to a living substance.

A faculty may be defined as the immediate and proximate principle of vital operation. A man, for example, sees. Seeing is a vital operation. Now, the principle of that operation is that from which the operation proceeds. And in the operation of seeing we distinguish three principles. The man sees, and the man is therefore a principle of the operation of seeing. The man has a nature which equips him for seeing, and this nature is therefore a principle of the operation. Finally, by reason of his nature, properly complete in all integral equipment, the man has a power, capacity, or faculty for seeing, and this faculty is a principle of the operation. In a word, the three principles of the man’s operation of seeing are: the man, his nature, his seeing-faculty. Now, the man is called the principium quod (the principle which) of the seeing; he is that which or the one who exercises the operation. But the man is not the immediate and proximate principle of the seeing; he does not exercise the operation of seeing by the very fact of his being a man; for he would still be a man if he were blind. Hence, while the man is a principle of his seeing, he is a remote principle of the operation, not the immediate and proximate principle which gives rise to the operation directly, nothing else intervening. Man’s nature is the principium quo (the principle by which or whereby) of the operation of seeing; but it is not the immediate and proximate principle; it is still remote. For were the man in question blind, he would still have human nature, granted a human nature lacking in one of its connatural functions and, in so far, an imperfect nature. Hence, the man’s nature is the principium quo remotum (the remote principle whereby) of the operation of seeing. Finally, the faculty or power of sight is a principle of the operation of seeing. It is the principium quo (the principle whereby) of seeing, and it is the principle which immediately operates in the function of seeing, no other principle intervening. Hence the faculty of sight or of vision is the principium quo proximum (the immediate or proximate principle whereby) of the seeing-operation. A man can be a man and not be able to see; he can have human nature and not be able to see; but he cannot have the faculty of sight and not be able to see. The faculty of sight or of vision is the immediate and proximate principle of the operation of seeing. And so it is with all the faculties of man. Each is the immediate and proximate principle of a special vital operation.

We have seen that, in every living body, the soul or life-principle is the substantial constituting form. It is this form which is the root-source of all vital activity in the living body. Therefore, the soul of a man is the root-source or radical principle of all human activities, vegetal, sentient and rational. Now, there have been psychologists who declared that the soul itself is the only human faculty; that our distinction of vegetal, sentient, and rational faculties in man is a distinction based on appearances merely and lacks reality. These psychologists maintain that there is no real distinction between the soul and its faculties. This view is wholly inadmissible. The soul and its faculties are really distinct. The soul has faculties; it is not correct to say that the soul is its faculties. The soul is a substance, and faculties are not substances, but are to be classed with accidents. Further, if the soul and its faculties were one, the faculties would be one, each would be identified with every other. And surely there is a real distinction between an organic faculty like the power to see or to hear and an inorganic faculty like the power to reason. We conclude, perforce, that between the soul and the sentient faculties there is a real distinction. And it is no less clear that there is a real distinction between the soul and its proper or rational faculties. The soul is not its understanding; the soul understands by reason of its understanding. The soul is that which wills; it is not its willing. Therefore, the soul is not to be identified with its faculties; between soul and faculties there is not merely an apparent but a real distinction.

Faculties, therefore, are powers or capacities, really distinct from the substance which exercises them, for the immediate discharge of vital operations.

b) The Subject of Faculties

The subject of a faculty is that in which the faculty immediately resides. It is that which operates by means of the faculty. Man is, of course, the subject of all human faculties. But, looking into the question a bit more closely, we find that some faculties are inherent in the soul alone, while others are inherent in the composite of soul-and-body. The body alone is not the subject of any faculty; for the body alone is lifeless and incapable of vital operation. The body is alive by reason of its substantial union with the soul. And there are human operations which require, for their performing, the vivified body, that is, the living union of body-and-soul. Such are the vegetal and sentient operations. The soul alone could not exercise these operations. The soul is a spirit, and hence cannot of itself grow, or digest a dinner, or go for a walk. The soul is, indeed, the radical first principle of growth and digestion and movement in a living body, but it requires the body for the exercise of these operations. Hence the subject of the vegetal and sentient faculties is the composite of body-and-soul.

There are other operations which the soul can exercise of itself, without the body. These are the rational operations of understanding and willing, which are exercised by a spiritual being and of themselves require no bodily function to supply them occasion for action or to subserve their exercise. However, since man is, in this earthly existence, one single substantial compound of soul-and-body, the soul has no way of getting at the objects of rational activity except through the mediation of sentient experience. The soul must come at purely intelligible objects by somehow working them out from the data of sense. Hence all our knowledge, even the most abstract, begins with the cognitive action of the senses. It does not end there indeed. The soul, by exercising its faculty of intellect or understanding, rises from the concrete and individual data supplied by sentient experience to abstract and universal concepts and to the function of abstract reasoning. As for willing, this soul-function follows upon the operation of intellect and presupposes it. So we say that the soul,—even though in this earthly life it requires the organic body and its operations before it can lay hold of the objects of the intellect and will,—is itself the subject of these two rational faculties.

Summing up, we find that in man the soul alone is the subject of the faculties called intellect and will. The soul-and-body, the human organism, the single human compound substance, is the subject of the faculties of the vegetal and sentient orders.

From the foregoing it follows that when the soul leaves the body at a man’s death, it retains its own proper faculties of intellect and will, and can, without the body, exercise the rational or spiritual operations of understanding and willing.

c) Classification of Faculties

1. An active faculty lays hold of an object and transforms it. Thus the faculty of nutrition is an active faculty; it takes food and transforms it into the living substance of the organism. A passive faculty receives an impression from its object and reacts to it. Thus sight or hearing receives the impression of visible or audible objects, and, by reacting to the impression, lays hold of the objects cognitively or knowingly. The passive faculties do not work upon their objects to transform or change them, but to grasp them cognitively as they are, leaving the objects in their otherness, and possessing them in knowledge. The term “passive” is not to mislead us here; the passive faculties are not purely and supinely passive; they are not active in the sense described above, but they are re-active; they are rightly called operative.

2. An organic faculty operates by means of the body or a special part (i. e., an organ) of the body. All vegetal and sentient faculties are organic. An inorganic faculty has no organ, no special bodily part designed to serve its operation. Hence an inorganic faculty is not a bodily faculty but a spiritual faculty. Intellect and will are the inorganic faculties of man; their subject is the spiritual soul.

5. A vegetal faculty is an organic capacity for taking nourishment, growing, or reproducing. A sentient faculty is an organic capacity for knowing objects which fall under the range of senses (external or internal), for appetizing what is so known, or for moving from place to place. A rational faculty is a faculty for understanding or willing.

4. A cognitive faculty is a faculty for knowing. An appetitive faculty is a faculty for tending to act upon knowledge. The senses are sentient cognitive faculties; the intellect is the rational cognitive faculty. The faculty for acting upon what is known by the senses and in a sentient manner is called sentient appetency. The will is the rational appetency.—The faculty of a living body to move about is called the locomotive faculty.

Human faculties may be classified as follows:

nutritive faculty

Vegetah augmentative or growing faculty

reproductive or generative faculty

cognitive faculties (i. e., the senses)

Sentient- appetitive faculty

locomotive faculty

cognitive faculty (i. e., the intellect)

Rational

appetitive faculty (i. e., the will)

We have already studied the vegetal faculties and operations, even as these belong to man, in Minor Psychology (Cf. Part First, Chap. II, Art. 2). We are, therefore, here concerned with the sentient and rational human faculties and operations. We may notice in passing that the term faculty is very often restricted to the sentient and rational orders, and that the term power is more usually employed to indicate the faculties of the vegetal order. Thus, to follow this fashion of speech, we should talk of vegetal powers, of sentient faculties, and of rational faculties.

Summary of the Article

In this brief Article we have learned the meaning of faculty in its psychological implication. We have defined the term and have discussed faculties in general. We have noticed that a real distinction lies between the life-principle or soul and the faculties of the living creature animated by that soul. We have discerned the proper subject of human faculties, assigning the rational faculties to the soul alone, and the vegetal and sentient faculties to the compound human substance of soul-and-body. We have classified faculties and have set out the schema or schedule of human faculties.