Philosophical Review

St. Thomas Aquinas on the Immaterial Reception of Sensible Forms

Author(s): Sheldon M. Cohen
Source: The Philosophical Review, Vol. 91, No. 2 (Apr., 1982), pp. 193-209
Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2184626
Accessed: 12-12-2018 09:52 UTC

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 The Philosophical Review, XCI, No. 2 (April 1982)

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS ON THE IMMATERIAL

RECEPTION OF SENSIBLE FORMS

Sheldon M. Cohen

A ccording to St. Thomas there are two ways in which a t

It can receive a sensible form (Summa Theologiae, la, 78, A3).1
First, a thing can receive a sensible form "according to a natural
mode of being" (esse naturale), "as heat in the thing heated." In
this case the thing receiving the form acquires the form as a char-
acteristic: the rock, receiving heat naturally, becomes hot. But
sensation requires another mode of reception: otherwise "all
natural bodies would sense when they underwent alteration."
Sensation requires a mode of reception in which a sensible form
is received "according to a spiritual mode of being" (esse spirit-
uale). When a sensible form is received this second way, the thing
that receives the form does not become characterized by the form.
The thing that sees a red rose somehow acquires the rose's red-
ness, but it does not become red. Elsewhere Aquinas expresses
this distinction as the distinction between the reception of forms
materialiter and immaterialiter. Thus at ST, 84, A2 he tells us that
things that receive forms only materially-plants, for example-
are not knowers; material things exist in knowers immaterialiter.2
The received interpretation of this distinction is given by D. W.
Hamlyn in Sensation and Perception:

[Aquinas] views sense-perception primarily as a form of change

in which the sense-organ is altered. But this cannot be all that is
involved, for along with the physical change there goes the reception
of a sensible form without the matter. The latter Aquinas takes to

'My translations are from the Blackfriars' edition of the Latin text (New
York: McGraw-Hill): Vol. 9, QQ 50-64, ed. Kenelm Foster (1968); Vol. 10,
QQ 65-74, ed. Wallace A. Wallace (1967); Vol. 11, QQ 75-83, ed. Timothy
Suttor (1968); and Vol. 12, QQ 84-89, ed. Paul T. Durbin (1968). Since all
my references to the Summa theologiae are to Part I a, I omit the " I a" in subsequent
citations.
2 The terminology derives from De Anima, II, 12, where Aristotle says that
the senses receive forms without matter.

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 SHELDON M. COHEN

be not something that happens to the sense-organ, but something

that happens to the faculty of the soul or mind. It is, in his words, a
spiritual change .... In a similar way, he treats Aristotle's dictum
that in perception the sense and the object become assimilated as
a truth about what happens to the mind in perception, not the sense-
organ.'

The received interpretation (a) takes Aquinas' distinction be-

tween the natural and the spiritual reception of a sensible form
to be a distinction between a physical event taking place in a
sense-organ and a (nonphysical) mental event taking place in
the soul; (b) takes Aquinas to be holding that sensation always
involves an event (the spiritual reception of a sensible form) that
is not a physical event; and (c) takes the phantasmal which is the
end product of the spiritual reception of a sensible form, to be a
mental image: "Aquinas believes, therefore, that corresponding
to the physical change in the sense-organ there is a spiritual
change resulting in a phantasmal which is a particular mental
entity."4 I think that all three of these claims are wrong. I think

3 D. W. Hamlyn, Sensation and Perception (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,

1961), p. 46. Gilson's account of Aquinas' theory of vision in The Christian Phi-
losophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (New York: Random House, 1956), pp. 203-04,
entails the received interpretation once a few obvious premises are added,
and the interpretation is explicit in Hans Meyer: "This representation, im-
printed in the [sense] organ, is a physical determination, by means of which
the properly mental representation is then brought into existence .... The
material change in the organ and the immaterial configuration ... correspond
to one another" (Thomas von Aquin, 2nd ed. (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schoningh,
1961), pp. 400-01).
The received interpretation goes back at least as far as the great nineteenth-
century scholars, and can be found in Maurice de Wulf, Scholasticism Old and
New, tr. Coffey (Dublin and London: M. H. Gill & Son, n.d. but c. 1908), pp.
130-31, Haureau, Examen critique de la philosophic scholastique, Vol. 2 (Paris:
Pagnerre, 1850), pp. 179-80, and Histoire de la philosophic scholastique, Part 2,
Vol. 1 (Paris: G. Pedonne-Lauriel, 1880), 423-24, and Charles Jourdain: "The
object perceived by the sense deposits, in the soul, an image of itself that is
the condition of memory and imagination" (La Philosophie de Saint Thomas
d'Aquin, Vol. 1 (Paris: Librairie de L. Hachette et cie., 1858), 319).
The influence of the received interpretation is so strong that William Kneale
once translated "immutatio spiritualis" ("spiritual change") as "a change in the
soul." See Kneale's "An Analysis of Perceiving, II," in Perception, ed. F. N. Sibley
(London: Metheun & Co., 1971), p. 67. At II A (viii) below I cite passages
in which Aquinas allows that spiritual changes can take place in stuff that
has no soul.
4Hamlyn, pp. 47-48. I suspect that Aquinas uses "phantasma" only when
he is dealing with the inner senses, but in this paper I will not respect my belief.

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 A QUINAS ON PERCEPTION

that contrary to (a) and (b) Aquinas holds that the reception of
a sensible form, whether natural or spiritual, is always a physical
event, and that contrary to (c) the spiritual reception of a sensible
form results not in a mental image, but in a physical likeness.
If by "a mental event" we mean an awareness,5 then under cer-
tain conditions the spiritual reception of a sensible form is both
a mental event and a physical event, but it is never not a physical
event. (Aquinas allows for acts of awareness that are not physical
events, but only in intellection and volition, not in sensation.)
In Section II, I argue this point on textual and strategic grounds.
In Section III A, I explain how we can account for Aquinas' dis-
tinction within the framework of physical events. In III B, I offer
a tentative account of the conditions under which a spiritual
reception of sensible form would be an act of sensation. In Sec-
tion I, I begin by raising a point that ought to give proponents
of the received interpretation some pause. Hamlyn alludes to
the point in the quotation above when he says that Aquinas
''views sense-perception primarily as a form of change in which
the sense-organ is altered." What is the force of this "primarily"?

St. Thomas lists sensation as a power of the soul, and this may
make him sound as though he holds that the soul sees. But it is
his considered opinion that sensation is not a power of the soul,
but of the body-soul composite:

The subject of an ability to act is that which can act, for every acci-
dent requires a proper subject, and that which can act is the same
as that which does act .... Now it is manifest from what has already
been said that some operations of the soul are exercised without
a corporeal organ, as intellect and will are. Accordingly, the abilities
that are the source (principia) of these acts are in the soul as subject.
Other acts of the soul are exercised through a corporeal organ, as
sight by the eye and hearing by the ear. And similarly for the other
acts of the nutritive and sensitive parts. And the powers that are
the source of these acts are in the conjunction [of soul and body]
as subject, and not in the soul alone (ST, 77, A5).6

'This is not the Aristotelian or the Thomistic usage. The terms we translate
as "mind" are used by them only for intellect.
6 See also Quaestiones de anima, Q 19.
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 SHELDON M. COHEN

The thing that sees is the thing that has the ability to see, and the
thing that sees sees with its eyes, so it is the thing that has eyes
that has the ability to see. The act and power of sensation inhere
in the ensouled animal, not in the soul of the ensouled animal.
The soul no more sees than it eats, though Aquinas lists nourish-
ment, too, as a power of the soul.7
But if Aquinas holds that the composite, and not the soul, is
the subject of sensation-that is, that the composite, and not the
soul, is what possesses and exercises the ability to sense-why does
he list sensation as a power of the soul? He explains his usage in
the replies to the first two objections: nourishment and sensa-
tion "are said to be of the soul not as the subject of the powers,
but as their source, because it is because of the soul that the com-
posite can carry out these activities." Aquinas is distinguishing
here between powers that belong to the composite of body and
substantial form (of which the soul is a particular case) because
they belong to the body as such, and powers that belong to the
composite precisely as having that substantial form. In the former
case, but not in the latter, the matter retains the powers even
when the substantial form is lost.8 Aquinas makes the point in
more detail in his treatise on spiritual creatures: it is not as so
much earth, air, fire, and water that a magnet attracts iron, but
because in a magnet the elements are organized in the specific
way that constitutes them into a magnet. As so organized the
thing has properties that do not belong to the sum of its elements
taken in a heap:

For the form of an element does not have any activity but the one
which takes place through active and passive qualities, which are
the dispositions of corporeal matter. But the form "mineral body"
has an activity that goes beyond active and passive qualities, and
is a consequence of its species by reason of the influence of a
heavenly body; for instance, that a magnet attracts iron, and that
a sapphire cures an abscess. And further, the vegetative soul has

7 Aquinas does talk about the soul forming images within itself (see, e.g.,
De veritate, 10, A6), but only when he is talking about the intellectual soul.
8 The third possibility-that the sensitive powers are in the composite because
they are in the soul as such (and hence would remain in the soul even apart from
the body)-was rejected in the body of the article. Were this third possibility
correct, the sensitive soul would be a substance in its own right-a claim
Aquinas rejects (see below, II B (ii) ).

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 A QUINAS ON PERCEPTION

an activity to which the active and passive organic qualities of

course contribute; but nevertheless, over and above the power of
qualities like these, the soul itself achieves an effect of its own by
nurture and growth up to a definite limit . . ..

A dog is subject to gravity because its body is composed of these

elements in these proportions, and the dog's body will be subject
to gravity even after the dog has died. But the dog is capable of
nourishment and sensation because the dog is a certain sort of
living thing, and in this sense the soul is the source of these abili-
ties: it is because the dog possesses the sort of substantial form it
possesses that the dog can see and eat; still, it is the dog, not its
substantial form, that can see and eat.
So sensation is in this way due to the soul, but the ability to
sense and the act of sensing are in the composite as such as subject,
and this is shown, Aquinas thinks, by the fact that sensation re-
quires a corporeal organ. Now what will Aquinas say, not about
sensation but specifically about the spiritual reception of sensible
form (which on the received interpretation is the component of
sensation that takes place in the soul)? If he holds that it takes
place in the soul, then either he must hold that it does not of itself
require a corporeal organ, or he must abandon the claim that
what requires a corporeal organ is in the composite as subject.
As we will see in II B, both alternatives are unattractive to St.
Thomas. The better course is to take Aquinas to hold that the
spiritual reception of sensible forms takes place in physical en-
tities, and I now turn to the texts that support that reading.

II A

(i) In the very article that gives the distinction between the
natural and spiritual reception of sensible forms (ST, 78, A3)
Aquinas does not say that a sensible form spiritually received
is received in the soul. He says: "For the operation of sense re-
quires a spiritual change, by which an intention of a sensible
form comes to exist in a sense organ." Even more explicitly, in
vision the sensible form spiritually received is received in the
pupil of the eye:

9 On Spiritual Creatures, tr. Mary C. Fitzpatrick (Milwaukee: Marquette

University Press, 1949), A2, p. 36. See also Summa contra gentiles, 2, 8, 8-11.

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 SHELDON M. COHEN

A change is spiritual when the form causing the change is received

in the thing being changed according to a spiritual mode of being,
as the form of color in the pupil, which is not made colored by this
(spiritualis autem secundum quod forma immutantis recipitur in immutato
secundum esse spiritual, ut forma colons in pupilla, quae non fit per hoc
colorata).

(ii) In ST, 75, A3 Aquinas says that "sensation and the con-
sequent acts of the sensitive soul manifestly take place with some
physical change (cum aliqua corporis immutatione)," and in r2 of
the same article he says that "the sense is affected by the sensed
object with a physical change (sensitivum patitur a sensibili cum
corporis immutatione). "10 If, then, he holds that the spiritual recep-
tion of a sensible form is not a physical event, he must hold that
sensation also requires a natural change. But in fact he denies
this. He holds that vision takes place without any natural change
in the sense or the object of the sense, and he holds that hearing
involves a natural change,11 motion, in the thing sounding, but
not in the sense-organ (ST, 78, A3). If he is being consistent he
must think that the spiritual reception of a sensible form is itself
a physical event.

(iii) The passage I just quoted from 75, A3 continues: "sensa-

tion and the consequent acts of the sensitive soul manifestly take
place with some physical change, as in seeing the pupil is affected
by a species of color." It is the same example he gives in 78, A3
(i, above) as an example of the spiritual reception of a sensible
form, but here it is given as an example of a physical change. It
must be the same example, since he denies that vision involves
any natural change.

0 Gilson's interpretation, loc. cit., is incompatible with this passage.

" The term I am rendering as "change" has been "immutatio" until now;
here it becomes "transmutatio. " Normally, when Aquinas uses "immutatio" he is
talking about the acquisition of a form. He seems to be uncomfortable using
"immutatio" to cover both alteration and motion, and here, where he does so,
he immediately switches to "transmutatio."
There seems to be some confusion about these terms. Ludwig Schutz, in
Thomas Lexikon, 2nd ed. (n.d., but c. 1895; reprinted by Fredrick Ungar Pub.,
New York, 1957), lists two meanings for "immutatio": (a) "Nichtveranderung"
("nonalteration"), and (b) "Veriinderung" ("alteration").

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 A QUINAS ON PERCEPTION

(iv) At 85, A2, r3 Aquinas says that the activity of the senses
is fully effected by the sensible object, and at 84, A4, objection
2 he accepts the claim that "sensible objects, which are actually
outside the soul, are the causes of the sensible species that are in
the sense, and by which we sense." But at 84, A6 he says that
nothing corporeal can make an impression on something that is
incorporeal.

(v) At 84, A6 Aquinas uses the principle that nothing corporeal

can affect anything incorporeal to establish the need for an active
intellect to bring about changes in the passive intellect. He
reaches the desired conclusion by first inferring that sense images
(phantasmata) cannot by themselves effect changes in the passive
intellect. The missing premise is that sense images are corporeal. 12

(vi) At 84, Al, rl Aquinas says:

the intellect knows bodies, but not by means of a body, nor through
material and corporeal likenesses, but through immaterial and
intelligible species that can exist in the soul (quae per sui essentiam
in anima esse possunt).

The contrast seems to be between the intellect and the senses,

which know bodies by means of a body (the sense-organ), and
whose species are only potentially intelligible until they are made
actually intelligible by the active intellect. If so, then Aquinas is
saying that sense images are physical likenesses, and implying
that they cannot exist in the soul.

(vii) In the De Anima (II, 12) Aristotle says that the senses re-
ceive forms without matter. Commenting on this passage,
Aquinas asks why this is not true of any alteration, for the stone
receives the warmth of the sun without "receiving the sun." He
answers that while every patient receives a form from the agent
without receiving the agent's matter, the received form need not
have the same mode of existence in the recipient that it has in
the donor. In the normal case the patient's matter, while remain-
ing numerically distinct from the agent's, acquires a material

12 At ST, 85, Al, r3 he says that sense images, because they exist in corpore
organs, "cannot by their own power make an impression on the passive intel-
lect."
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 SHELDON M. COHEN

disposition like the material disposition that exists in the

matter (a disposition to boil water, for example, I suppose). In
other cases, however, "the recipient's material disposition to
receive form does not resemble the material disposition in the
agent," and the form is said to be received without the matter. 13
If whether a thing has received a sensible form materialiter or
immaterialiter depends on whether, in acquiring the form, the
thing acquired a certain material disposition, and if whether a
thing is disposed towards receiving sensible forms immaterialiter
depends on its own material dispositions, then the thing that
receives sensible forms immaterialiter is a material thing.

(viii) In his Commentary on the De Anima Aquinas says, "By a

spiritual change I mean, here, what happens when the likeness
of an object is received in the sense organ, or in the medium between
object and organ."14 The medium for sight, hearing, and smell is
usually air or water, and surely no one wants to argue that ac-
cording to Aquinas air and water possess souls or indulge in men-
tal acts. This spiritual change looks like a purely physical event.
The same claim about the medium lies behind a passage that
from the point of view of the received interpretation is so delight-
fully wacky that, after paraphrasing it, I will give the Latin in
full. At ST, 67, A3 Aquinas says that some people have held that
light in air, unlike color in a wall, does not have esse natural, but
esse intentional, as likenesses15 of color havc in air. But, Aquinas
continues, this cannot be, for light characterizes air, making air
actually luminous, whereas color does not make air colored.
Moreover, light has an effect in nature, for the sun's rays warm
things, while intentions do not cause natural changes.

Dicendum quod quidam dixerunt quod lumen in aere non habet esse natural,
sicut color in pariete, sed esse intentional, sicut similitude colors in aere.

'3 Aristotle's De Anima in the Version of William of Morebeke and the Commentary
of St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. Kenelm Foster and Silvester Humphries (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1951), II, XII, 551-53, pp. 339-40.
'4 Com. De Anima, II, VII, 418, p. 267; the italics are, of course, my own.
'5 Here, as when he talks about the spiritual reception of color in the pupil,
Aquinas sometimes says that what is unnaturally received is a color, and some-
times says that it is a similitude or intentio of a color. See, e.g., ST, 78, A3. I assume
that this is because he holds that an intentio or similitude of an x is, in some way,
an x. Aquinas' claim that color in air has esse intentionale is recognized by
Anthony Kenny, Aquinas (New York: Hill and Wang, 1980), p. 79, who gives
another citation for the view (ST, 76, A2, r3).
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 A QUINAS ON PERCEPTION

Sed hoc non potest esse propter duo. Primo quidem, quia lumen denominat
arum; fit enim air luminosus in actu. Color vero non denominat ipsum; non
enim dicitur air coloratus. Secundo, quia lumen habet effectum in natura; quia
per radios solis calefiunt corpora. Intentiones autem non causant transmutationes
naturales.

Question Sixty-seven is a discussion of the nature of light, and

the remarks Aquinas makes about colors in air are incidental.
Nonetheless, the structure of the argument is clear: colors exist in
air with esse intentional, and some people have falsely claimed
that light does too. In the Commentary on the De Anima Aquinas
tells us that the reception of colors by air is an immutatio spiritu-
alis; here he says that esse intentionale can be sustained in thin air.
On his view water can entertain intentional entities; a far cry
from Brentano's view. (That the similitude colons in the medium,
as having esse intentional, cannot cause a natural change explains
why vision involves no natural change.)

(ix) Finally, and without comment: the sense images (phan-

tasmata) of bodies "are in corporeal organs" (ST, 89, Al; see, also,
ST, 85, Al, r3).

II B

There are also strategic reasons that should incline Aquinas

to hold that the spiritual reception of a sensible form is a physical
event. These reasons turn on the role his distinction between
intellect and sensation plays in his doctrine of human nature
and in his views on how human nature differs from brute animal
nature.

(i) According to Aquinas the natural condition of the human

intellect is that it can operate only by "turning to" sense images.
Yet there is no intrinsic impossibility to intellectual acts that
take place without any reference to sense images-the thing itself
is possible-and this is how angels think. Now God, according
to Aquinas, is an omnipotent being, and an omnipotent being
can do anything that is possible. So God can, and according to
Aquinas does, cause the disembodied souls of humans to under-
stand, by the divine light, without sense images (ST, 89, Al).

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 SHELDON M. COHEN

Now suppose that the received interpretation were correct.

Then given that Aquinas holds that sensation requires a physical
change taking place in a physical organ, he would have to hold
that sensation requires two events: a mental event that takes
place in the soul, and a physical event that takes place in the
sense organ. And even if the physical event were the cause of the
mental event, these would still be two different events. And God,
who is not bound by natural causation, 16 should be able to effect
the mental event without the physical event. As God can cause
the disembodied human soul to engage in intellectual acts with-
out phantasms, so, in the absence of the event that takes place
in the sense-organ-indeed, in the absence of the sense-organ itself
-God ought to be able to produce the mental entity (phantasmal
that on the received interpretation comes to exist in the soul.
But this is not what Aquinas holds. He holds that although
disembodied human souls will think without phantasmata, phan-
tasmata "will not remain in any way after death."17
In other passages the claim is modal. In ST, 64, A3, for ex-
ample, he says that fear and sorrow cannot exist in fallen angels,
for fear and sorrow are proper to sense appetite, "which is a power
in a corporeal organ." In De veritate, 26, Al, he asks whether im-
material substances could be punished by fire. Since they are
immaterial, they cannot be burned, and merely to think of fire
does not hurt. So they would have to be punished with an ima-
ginational (not intellectual) likeness of fire. But that will not work
either, since imaginational likenesses "can exist only in a bodily
organ."18 And in SCG, 2, 82, (8, 20) he says that no operation of
the brute soul is possible independently of the body.
The point I am after here is not the obvious one that Aquinas
denies that disembodied souls and angels can have sensations.
A proponent of the received interpretation would respond to that
by saying that Aquinas holds that sensation involves a physical
act, and that is why Aquinas holds that immaterial substances
16 See, e.g., SCG, 3, 99.
"7De ver., 19, Al. See also De ver., 8, A12; SCG, 4, 90; ST, 89, Al and A2.
18 The Disputed Questions on Truth, tr. Robert W. Mulligan (Chicago: Henry
Regnery, 1952). In the same article Aquinas says that "the acts of the sensi-
tive soul cannot be had except by means of bodily organs, for otherwise the
sentient souls of the brutes would be incorruptible, as being capable of having
their operations by themselves."

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 A QUINA S ON PERCEPTION

cannot sense. My point is that Aquinas does not seem to grant

sensation any component based in the soul. Aquinas does not
say that the production, by divine light, of a phantasm (which
on the received interpretation is a mental entity) in a disem-
bodied soul would not count as an act of sensation. Aquinas says
that it is impossible for disembodied souls to support phantasms.
And this implies that he holds that the entertaining of a phan-
tasm is identical with some bodily event.

(ii) St. Thomas holds that the sensitive soul has no proper act
of its own (has no per se act). The received interpretation takes
him to mean that although the sensitive soul engages in acts that
are not physical, certain bodily events constitute a necessary
condition for the occurrence of these nonphysical events. But
if this were what he meant, he could not conclude that the com-
posite (for example, the dog) has sensation as a per se act, for he
holds that sensation is causally dependent on the object of per-
ception. Perception would not be a per se act of the dog, but of
the dog-bone composite. And why stop there? Why not hold that
only the unmoved mover has a per se act?
The claim that a thing has a per se act is not the claim that the
thing has an act that is not caused by some other act, but is the
claim that the thing has the independence of a substance: at
ST, 75, A2 Aquinas says that nothing has a per se act unless it
subsists, and at 75, A3 he says that since the souls of brutes have
no per se acts, the souls of brutes do not subsist. (And the depen-
dence a dog has on exterior objects of sensation in order to sense
does not show that the dog is not a subsisting thing-ST, 75, A2,
r3.) The sensitive soul has no act of its own apart from the body
in just the way that heat has no act of its own apart from the thing
that is hot: the dog sees and the fire warms, and there is no warm-
ing apart from fires and stones-heat has no per se act (ST, 75, A2).
The claim that the sensitive soul has no act of its own apart
from the body is not the claim that the sensitive soul is a substance
that cannot act apart from the body, but is rather the claim that
the sensitive soul, unlike the intellectual soul, is not a subsistent
form-that is, that the sensitive soul, unlike the intellectual soul,
is not both a substantial form and a substance (a hoc aliquid), but
is merely a substantial form. Thus Aquinas denies that the

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 SHELDON M. COHEN

(merely sensitive) souls of brutes are immaterial substances, but

he does not hold that the souls of brutes are material substances
either. No substantial form-no form at all-is a material sub-
stance (SCG, 2, 65). The souls of brutes are not substances, period
(ST, 75, A3). This is proven, Aquinas says, by the fact that the
brute soul has no act of its own, which itself follows from the fact
that the sensitive soul has no acts apart from a corporeal organ.
The sensitive soul cannot exist apart from a body in just the way
that the substantial form of a magnet cannot exist in a disem-
bodied state: for the substantial form of the magnet to exist is
for a certain type of stuff to enter into a certain sort of composi-
tion, and the magnetic composition cannot exist apart from the
stuff because it is stuff of that sort as so composed-not the composi-
tion-that attracts iron."' What has no act of its own exists in
another as subject, and its act is the act of the composite: "the
sensitive soul does not have a proper act of its own, but all the
acts of the sensitive soul are of the composite" (ST, 75, A3). There
is no substantive sensitive soul in which immaterial forms could
inhere or be received; conversely, if forms were received in the
sensitive soul, rather than in the (substantive) composite, the
sensitive soul would have a per se act and would be a substance.

(iii) According to Aquinas the Platonists falsely believe that

the sensitive soul is an immaterial substance capable of existing
apart from the body. On the received interpretation Aquinas
holds that the sensitive soul is an immaterial substance incapable
of existing apart from the body. But this is not the difference that
is suggested by Aquinas' discussion of the difference (ST, 84,
A6).
The Platonists, Aquinas says, hold that the senses possess a
per se operation. And therefore, since the incorporeal cannot be
affected by the corporeal, they hold that the senses are not af-
fected by the sensible object. On their view the sensible object
affects the sense-organ, "and by this change the soul is somehow
aroused so that it forms in itself a sensible species."
If the received interpretation were correct, Aquinas should
be driven into the same sort of occasionalism. For on the received

19 At ST, 65, A4 Aquinas says that the forms of corruptible things do not
have existence-the composite has existence through them.

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 A QUINAS ON PERCEPTION

interpretation Aquinas holds that sensation involves two events:

a physical change taking place in the sense-organ, and caused by
the sensible object, and a mental event taking place in the soul.
And by the principle that the corporeal cannot affect the incor-
poreal, the mental event cannot be caused by the physical event.
But Aquinas does not see himself being driven into that sort
of position. For he, following Aristotle, holds that sensation is
not a per se act of the soul, but an act of the composite, and this
view of sensation does not run afoul of the principle that the cor-
poreal cannot affect the incorporeal: there is no difficulty, he
says, in holding that the sensible object causes a change in the
composite.20 But there would be a difficulty if he held the two-
event theory.2"

III A

It seems, then, to be Aquinas' view that the reception of a sen-

sible form immaterialiter is a physical event taking place in a sense-
organ, and that it results in a sensory image that is to be found
somewhere in the dog, and not in the dog's soul. But if the recep-
tion of a sensible form immaterialiter is a physical event, how does
it differ from a natural reception of sensible form? What class
of physical events meets Aquinas' criteria for being the class of
spiritual receptions of sensible forms?
The phantasm, Aquinas says, is a likeness or similitude (ST,
84, A8, r2), and a likeness is a likeness because it shares a form
with the thing of which it is a likeness (ST, 4, A3). Thus, in On
Being and Essence, III, Aquinas suggests that it is because the statue
has the same shape as that man that it is a likeness of that man
and a statue of that man. And I think he would say that it is in part
because the artist has captured the color of the flowers that she
has painted a likeness of the flowers. These sorts of likenesses,
though, do not fit our bill. For in these sorts of likenesses the rel-
evant forms exist in the matter of the likeness-the shape in the

20 "Colors have the same mode of existence in individual corporeal matter

that they have in the power of sight. But sense images (phantasmata), since
they are likenesses of individuals and exist in corporeal organs, do not have the
same mode of existence that the human intellect has" (ST, 85, Al, r3).
21 The difficulty arises for Aquinas at the next level: what effect does the
phantasm produce in the intellect?

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 SHELDON M. COHEN

stone, the color in the paint. And these sorts of likenesses are not
caused by the things of which they are likenesses, but by the sculp-
tor or painter. And these sorts of likenesses cannot serve as the
means by which we sense the things we sense (we do not see the
man by means of his portrait-we see the portrait), while Aquinas
says that the phantasm is not what (quod) we see, but that by
which (quo) we see what we see (ST, 85, A2).
The images we are seeking are not pictures or statues, but there
is a reasonable case for saying that another type of image-a re-
flection-meets our requirements. A mirror does not actually
become red when you hold a rose in front of it, and it would be
a perfectly natural Aristotelian usage to put this by saying that
the color is not received into the mirror's matter. And we can
explain this the way Aquinas explains the reception of sensible
forms immaterialiter: in virtue of certain material dispositions
the mirror has (which it has because it is smooth, polished, etc.),
the mirror has the ability to "receive a color" without acquiring
the material dispositions the color normally bestows on the re-
cipient-if you look in the mirror you will see the rose's redness,
but the portion of the mirror in which you see that redness has
not acquired a disposition to reflect the red wavelengths and
absorb the others. The mirror continues to reflect all the wave-
lengths of the visible spectrum.
Second, the thing that causes the reflection in the mirror is the
thing that is reflected in the mirror.
And third, Aquinas is a direct realist on mirrors: sight "is
brought through a likeness received from a mirror directly to a
knowledge of the thing reflected."22 He holds, quite plausibly,
I think, that when you look in a mirror you see yourself, not an
image of yourself.
This interpretation is also suggested by Aquinas' own example:

a change is spiritual when the form causing the change is received

in the thing being changed according to a spiritual mode of being,
as the form of color in the pupil, which is not made colored by this.

The pupil is a sort of mirror: the word "pupil" comes from a Latin
word meaning "little doll"-the thing the little girl sees when

22 The Disputed Questions on Truth, Vol. 1, Q 2, A6. At ST, 84, A5 he says th

in a mirror one sees the things whose images are produced in the mirror.

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 A QUINAS ON PERCEPTION

she looks into her mother's eyes. Why not take Aquinas to mean
just what he seems to be saying: the species sensibilis spiritually
received is the reflection of a color in the pupil of the eye?
There is even a historical precedent. In The Book of Knowledge
Avicenna defended just such a theory of vision.23 And even if
Aquinas did not know The Book of Knowledge, the theory might
have been in the air.
Or the idea could have come directly from Aristotle, who in
the De Sensu, criticizing the atomists, says that Democritus was
wrong "to explain seeing as mere mirroring" (438a5-7). Aristotle
may have meant that seeing is not mirroring at all, but he can
also be taken to mean that seeing is a special case of mirroring.
Aquinas seems to have had a similar account in mind for
hearing, where echoes play the role reflections play in sight, for
as Aristotle says in the De Anima:

It seems that there is always some echo, but not always a clear one.
For the same occurs with sound as with light; which also is always
reflected ....24

Aquinas claims that there is air on both sides of the eardrum,

and that when we hear the inner air echoes the outer sound.25
Echoes, Aquinas may have thought, are like reflections in that
(a) when you hear a whistle echo off a canyon wall the rock is not
sounding (as the mirror does not become red)-it is the whistle
that is making the noise; (b) the whistle causes the echo; and (c)
when you hear the echo you are hearing the whistle.

III B

But a reflection is not ipso facto a sensation: the mirror on the

wall is not a perceiver. Under what conditions will the reception
of a sensible form immaterialiter be an act of sensation? Aquinas
never, to my knowledge, addresses this question directly, but I
believe we can find a suggested answer in the texts.

23David C. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1976), pp. 49-50.
24 Com. De Anima, II, VIII, text 450, p. 278.
25 Com. De Anima, II, VIII, 453-54, pp. 288-89. Aquinas does not have much
to say about the ways in which the other senses are spiritually impressed.

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 SHELDON M. COHEN

First, he follows Aristotle in holding that what possesses the

sensitive soul also possesses the nutritive (vegetative) soul. 26 Since
to possess the nutritive soul is to be alive, this rules out the mirror
on the wall.
This may be a necessary condition for sensation, but it is clearly
not a sufficient condition: Avicenna was wrong when he said
that "if a mirror should possess a soul, it would see the image
that is formed on it."27 An apple might be reflected in a bald
man's head, but the man would not thereby see the apple. We
can take another of Aquinas' (and Aristotle's) claims to be in-
tended to rule out this sort of case: 28 sensation is the act of a sense-
organ. The bald man's head is not a sense-organ, or even if it is,
it is not a sense-organ for receiving visual images.
But this answer is not very enlightening. Why is the bald man's
head not a visual sense-organ? Under what conditions is a part
that is a part of a living thing, and that reflects apples, an organ
for receiving visual sense images?
Aquinas' discussion of appetite in ST, 80, Al contains an im-
plied answer to this question. There he talks about the natural
reception of sensible forms as opposed to their cognitive reception-
that is, as opposed to those cases in which the reception of a form
is an act of awareness. Every reception of form, he says, involves
the acquisition of an inclination, "as fire, by its form, is inclined
to a high place"-that is, has a natural disposition to rise to its
proper place. When a form is received cognitively, however, it
inclines by desire. He seems to hold that this is always the case,
for he holds that sensation is always attended by pleasure and
pain, and that we naturally desire the pleasant (and shun the
painful). 29
There may be a way of arguing the case that makes this plau-
sible just as it stands, but I will take him to be making a weaker
claim: only the cognitive reception of a form is apt to produce a

26 See, e.g., Com. De Anima, II, III, 288-90, pp. 200-01; De Anima, 415a1-3,
414a29-41462, and 413 a30-413'3.
27 Quoted by Lindberg, p. 49.
28 I do not claim that they so intended it.
29 Com. De Anima, II, III, 289, p. 201.

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 A QUINAS ON PERCEPTION

desire for (or an aversion to) the thing reflected. What distin-
guishes the bald man's head from his eye, then, is that the reflec-
tion of an apple in a hungry bald man's head will not incline
the man to pick the apple, while the reflection in his eye will. 30

University of Tennessee

30 William Charlton, in "Aristotle's Definition of the Soul," Phronesis, 25

(1980), 181, may attribute to Aristotle the view I attribute to Aquinas in III B.
I would like to thank an anonymous referee and an anonymous editor for
their comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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