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OBRA ÉDITA · FACSIMILE · INFO
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THE INTERNAL NATURE OF THE FACULTIES

THE INTERNAL NATURE OF THE FACULTIES

Every faculty of the mind contains in itself, in a peculiar manner, thought, feeling and volition. Feeling is the desire inherent to the faculty, as, for instance, the desire for sex inherent to amativeness, as the phrenologists call it. Volition is the impulse contained in the faculty whereby we pass to action according to that faculty. Thought is the peculiar consciousness or reflection underlying each feeling and each volition of the faculty. When I feel the desire to love, I do not for instance suppose that I feel the desire to gain applause or approbration. I, and not only I, but also the animal must understand to what the faculty impels. Otherwise all faculties are one. For volition and desire (or feeling) are common to all faculties and manifested in the same way in all; it is then by neither of these that the faculty is determined as such as it is. In other words the faculty to have a name must be capable of understanding itself, so to speak, to determine itself as such a faculty.

(Hence instinct is but the possession of the faculty, of the internal thought).

ALEXANDER SEARCH

1906

Textos Filosóficos . Vol. I. Fernando Pessoa. (Estabelecidos e prefaciados por António de Pina Coelho.) Lisboa: Ática, 1968 (imp. 1993).

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