Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 5.23

 

“With regard to feeling the effects of bodies, natures which are brought into contact from without may affect the organs of the senses, and the body's passive affection may precede the active energy of the spirit, and call forth to itself the activity of the mind; if then, when the effects of bodies are felt, the mind is not marked in any way by its passive reception thereof, but declares that reception subject to the body of its own force, how much less do those subjects, which are free from all affections of bodies, follow external objects in their perceptions, and how much more do they make clear the way for the action of their mind? 

 

“By this argument many different manners of understanding have fallen to widely different natures of things. For the senses are incapable of any knowledge but their own, and they alone fall to those living beings which are incapable of motion, as are sea shellfish, and other low forms of life which live by clinging to rocks; while imagination is granted to animals with the power of motion, who seem to be affected by some desire to seek or avoid certain things. But reason belongs to the human race alone, just as the true intelligence is God's alone.”

 

—from Book 5, Prose 5

 

Though sensation and understanding are related operations, they are not one and the same type of awareness, differing fundamentally in how they apprehend the nature of things. 

 

At the risk of sounding too much like Immanuel Kant, all human consciousness begins with sensing, but it goes above and beyond sensing by actively adding a whole new layer of depth, the grasping of an identity free from the particular limitations of matter. When I “think” of something, I consider it abstractly and universally. 

 

No profound or complex philosophy is necessary to come to terms with this concept, since any one of us can demonstrate the distinction in our own daily experience. 

 

First, I can gaze at a tree, or run my hands over its bark, or listen to the wind rustle its leaves, or even breath in its distinct smell. I would not advise tasting it, though I’m sure someone must have tried it at some time. I then possess an image of this or that individual tree, and I can turn my attention from one to the other, and then back again. 

 

I can further take these particular pictures, and I can remember them after the fact, or I can rearrange the specific pieces in my imagination. Still, I am bound to one instance of a tree, and my awareness is limited to its physical impressions. 

 

This is an ability I share, though by different degrees, with other animals, and yet what makes me unique as a human being, as a homo sapiens, is precisely my ability to reflect upon the meaning behind those impressions. 

 

It may sound silly, but I have often suggested to my students that while I am much like a dog when I sense or feel, I am also quite different, because the dog does not write romantic poetry, or work through mathematical proofs, or ponder his place in the Universe. He is quite content to just be a dog, while I am drawn to something more, to knowing who I am. 

 

People will sometimes say that an animal doesn’t have emotions, for example, but my long fascination with them tells me that they feel just as strongly as I do. They are, however, not given to existential reflection, whether that be a blessing or a burden. 

 

When I am understanding something, the action of the mind does not merely receive a sense impression, but engages that impression on its own terms, penetrating into the form as above and beyond all of its instances. I am not looking at this tree, or imagining that dog; I am, for lack of a better term pondering “treeness” or “dogness”. 

 

There is a good reason, I suggest, that the Greeks were so fascinated by geometry, since it offers a wonderful example of what it means to think abstractly and universally, and thereby get to the core of what things are. Yes, I would say that we can even speak of this mode of our awareness on a “spiritual” level of being. 

 

This pizza is shaped like a circle, and the wedding ring on my finger is shaped like a circle, and the sun over my head is shaped like a circle. What is it that all these circles share in common, considered as perfect ideas? What can I say about how they all exist, and how they all have the same properties? 

 

It works on any level. How is my pain essentially the same as yours, even as they are accidentally different? How is my life parallel to yours, even as I have done things very differently? 

 

Don’t try discussing this with a tree or a dog. The tree doesn’t seem to notice your pondering at all, and the dog may pant and wag his tail in response, but only because he likes the soothing sound of your voice. 

Written in 1/2016