Chapter Seven — That Between Acts and Faculties There Is a Connection

There is an interconnection among acts, and likewise among the faculties; and it divides into natural and habitual; and the human settled dispositions are matched to the perfection of the animal and vegetative faculties with which he is interconnected, on the two sides of good and evil.

As for the interconnection among the acts of the faculties, and likewise among the faculties themselves — its explanation has already passed; and by that very account our faculties are affected, each by its companion, and likewise in their acts. Hardly is there found in us an act of any one of the faculties while the faculty stands in its pure state — rather, it is colored with many colors; and this friction and collision runs out to distant ends. Thus a faculty is colored by the act of its companion, and its act arises likewise; then the other is affected by what has been colored, and something new and different arises; and thus the acts keep turning about in their coloring, color begotten of color. In sum, the plain act is rare, or nonexistent; it comes nearest to being found in animals at the first beginnings of their growth.

Then we say: this interconnection is of two kinds, habitual and natural — and the coincidental. As for the natural: since the totality of the faculties is subjugated under one thing — namely, that which perceives in us by nature — there is among them a certain natural interconnection. And every numbered group of the faculties is bound, besides, by further interconnections, which make the interconnection between the act of one of them and the second more complete than that between it and the third. That is why, in the treatment of the vices, singling out one of them for treatment — apart from another of its own class — hits the mark, as the scholars of ethics have mentioned in their books. And the First Teacher, Aristotle, likened this in his book to pigeons: one pigeon draws in a flock.

As for the habitual: it obtains when habit and the concurrence of causes both run upon one thing. And that necessitates that the soul turn toward it and be heedless of its contrary. From here the sciences come to differ in their attainment. For we have shown in the Book of Demonstration that multiplication in the sciences comes about only by a first alerting — the summary intuition (ḥads) that precedes assent and the running of habit. And the accumulation of similar and confusable instances arriving upon the soul necessitates that it be turned and directed to what arrives, and be heedless of the contrary. Hence the difference we see among human beings in their views and assents as ages pass and generations elapse. Many a matter is settled beyond doubt, in its establishment, in one age; then that very matter is settled beyond doubt, in its falsity, in another. And the transition from the one state to the other came about only through some coincidental factor that occasioned one man’s turning to it, after which the rest gradually came to his position. And that is why attaining the true objects of inquiry is rare and difficult — hard indeed — and achieved only by withdrawal and purification. That, too, is why standing upon the intellectual objects — for all their nobility and the firmness of their foundation, as we have explained in the Book of Demonstration — is rare and hard: none arrives at them, and none sets out from them, but one after another, because of the hindrance of sensible things. So much so, indeed, that people — even the advanced among them — have sometimes called them illusions and imaginings.

Then we say: the human perfections — namely, the apprehensions — are matched to the perfection of the two other faculties, I mean the irascible and the appetitive, on the two sides of good and evil. That is because you have learned that among the faculties there is a ruling thing which orders their acts and their settled dispositions, preserves them from contradiction and divergence, and has power over all the dispersed acts and the varieties of apprehensions; and this meaning must be that by which the species-nature of the human being subsists, since the reality of the human being is removed with its removal. And since the species-nature is completed only by this meaning, and since it is established that this meaning admits of perfection and imperfection, the perfection of the species rests upon the perfection of this meaning. And since that is so — and it has acts in itself, and, in relation to the ordering of the faculties and the repelling of contradiction and divergence from among them, further acts — the human perfection in these subordinate faculties is equilibrium in their acts, according to the apportionment of this perfectional meaning: that is, that the faculty’s act not be such as to injure and repel the perfection of this meaning in it by going out toward excess or deficiency.

Once you know that, you know that if these two faculties pass from potentiality to actuality in the direction of good — that is, equilibrium — the ruling meaning goes out to its perfection in the direction of good. So let it take delight in all its perfections in itself; and all of that has been made ready for it. And suppose it to subsist in itself, without the accompaniment of these two material faculties or in a solitude from them — settled dispositions having been made ready for it answering to the two faculties, and settled dispositions answering to its own acts. Then it takes delight in all the bodily acts, by way of the forms, and the acts of apprehension. But if the two faculties have gone out to act on the two sides of evil — that is, excess or deficiency — that impedes the ruling meaning from its perfections, and all the contradictories and divergents become lodged therein. And if one supposes it to subsist in itself, or in a solitude apart from the two, it is strong in apprehension yet empty of its perfections. So it suffers the most intense pain, feels desolation, and sees, according to the acts of the two faculties, all that it loathes from them — since the pain is all-encompassing, and the aspect is not multiple such that it could turn from one thing to another.