Chapter 4

PURE A PRIORI REASONING
DOES NOT LEAD US TO KNOW ANYTHING
IN THE ORDER OF
SUBSISTENT, FINITE BEINGS

1438. Our previous arguments have established the possibility of a priori reasoning. They prove the presence in our mind of a luminous point, anterior to all feelable experience and posited in us as an element, as it were, of our nature. This luminous point is being, always intimately present to us.
Having illustrated the possibility of a priori reasoning, we can use the following principle to establish its limits: `Everything included in the idea of being, or capable of being drawn by reason from this idea alone, without help from any other datum of experience, appertains to pure a priori reasoning’; and everything that needs, apart from the idea of being, some other datum of external or internal experience in order to be known by us, does not appertain to pure a priori reasoning.

1439. With this as our basis, the analysis of the idea of being in general will show the forces present in a priori of reasoning by enabling us to reply to the following questions: 1. What does this idea contain in itself? 2. What does it presuppose as its condition? 3. What does it not contain? 4. What cannot be deduced by reasoning from its content? Let us begin with the last two questions so that through exclusion we may restrict the field of our enquiry.

I. What does being itself as present to the mind not contain?
We saw that being, as it stands essentially before the spirit, is incomplete. This lack of completion consists in lack of its terms, and explains why it is called initial being, and consequently common being. Lacking terms, it is naturally capable of being terminated and completed in infinitely different ways. A consequence of such a limitation is that this being manifests existence only in the mind — as object and nothing more.

1440. Very careful attention has to be paid here to avoid confusion between two totally different things. It is one thing to say `a being present to the mind’ and another to say `a modification of the mind’ as though the being that we see is nothing more than ourselves as modified. If this were the case, this being would be a subjective entity.

Such a distinction is almost unknown in our days, but it is nonetheless true and very relevant. I repeat what I have said so many times: philosophers must not flee before facts, but admit them all, and gratefully accept the results obtained from their analysis. I can indeed say on occasion `I don’t understand’, and I may marvel at what lies before me, but I must accept facts, and not presume that something is only what I have imagined it to be. If I do make this presumption, I shall never attain true knowledge, but grasp today at what will elude me tomorrow; today’s knowledge will be tomorrow’s mistake. But, as I have said, careful analysis of the first fact concerning our mind, that is, the analysis of the intuition of being, provides us with these two truths: 1. that the being present to our mind is objective and not subsistent in itself; 2. that it is not a simple modification of our mind.

1441. 1. It is truly present to our mind, but it is still not a subsistent being in itself outside the mind. What is meant by `a being present to the mind?’ It means a being that has its existence in the mind in such a way that if we were to suppose that no mind existed to which it were present, this being would not be. In other words, its mode of being is intelligibility itself, outside the mind, but in the mind. Through it we know not the act of existing in itself, but the act of existing in the mind.
When this definition has been well understood, it is obvious of itself that initial, most common being presents to our spirit a simple possibility, not subsistence of any kind. It presents what I would call a project of being, but no being truly complete and actuated in itself.

To know, therefore, that innate being is a simple, logical principle, a governing rule of our spirit, an idea and still not a reality, it is sufficient to examine and analyse impartially this being that we see naturally. Precisely because it renders itself most common to all subsistent beings, it is not any of them, nor can it be. It is simply the foundation and knowability of them all.
This truth is enough to confute philosophers, ancient and modern, who confuse the order of ideas with the order of real things, and either make a God of ideal being or fabricate separate intelligences for essences or ideas of things. They do not understand the nature of ideal being which, although present to the mind, is not a modification of the limited, finite subject which sees it.(321)

1442. 2. In the second place, I maintain that it is neither a simple modification of the mind, nor of the subject which intuits it. This truth is also shown through a careful consideration of being itself in general. As we think of being, we see that being thought by us is the object of our mind, or rather is the objectivity of all the terms of our mind, as we have said on so many occasions.

It is, therefore, of its essence distinct from the subject and from all that appertains to the subject; its light is superior to the subject; the subject, relative to being in general is that which receives, while being is of its essence received in a way altogether proper to it: the subject must see it, even more than the open eye is forced to sense the bright rays of the sun shining upon it and impressing themselves on its retina: being is immutable, it is what it is; the subject is mutable: being imposes the law, and actuates the subject by rendering it intelligent. We must note, however, that the subject cannot be said, properly speaking, to experience the object, because the presence of the object simply provides a mode for the subject and obliges it to arouse in itself a new activity. We must say, therefore, that an increase of act, rather than an experience, is effected in the subject.

All these observations are valuable for refuting the contrary error of the philosophers previously mentioned, and of all those who, finding the idea of being void of any real being subsisting outside the mind, go on to deny that it has any real objectivity and maintain that it is purely subjective, that is, a pure modification of the subject.(322)
Careful observation, focused on this being which naturally shines before our minds, brings us therefore to establish that `although it is an object essentially different from the subject that intuits it, nevertheless being is not thought by us as furnished with any other existence than that which shines before our mind. Consequently, if every mind were removed, being would no longer be conceived. In this sense one speaks of this being as ideal being’.

1443. Those dedicated to systematisation will now stand up and object: `If such being does not subsist in itself, independently of the mind, it cannot be other than a modification of the subject. There is no middle way here.’ This kind of statement, which is a continual imposition of laws on nature, and an endeavour to reduce nature to one’s own point of view, leads us along a very slippery path. Is a middle way impossible? I am not investigating, I am not even interested in knowing whether a middle way is possible. It is enough to have pointed out that being seen by the human mind is neither real and subsistent (in so far as it is seen by us) nor a modification of our mind. If fact tells me that neither the one or the other of these extremes is actual, I conclude without hesitation that there is a middle term. Every wise and intelligent person must be content with fact: it follows that if a thing is, it must be possible.

Having come to know the nature of being that shines in our minds, we can say with confidence that it neither contains in itself nor shows us any real being subsisting outside the mind. Intuiting that being, therefore, cannot provide us with any knowledge whatsoever of things which subsist in a contingent mode.

1444. II. What cannot be deduced from being in general?

The subsistence of any limited being cannot be deduced. In fact, being in general does not require any limited entity. Consequently every limited entity is only contingent, not necessary. We say that an entity is necessary when it is the condition without which the being in our minds would not be; in other words, the possible being shining in our minds would have to be conditional on this necessary being.
The solution of these two questions, therefore, proves the truth of what I indicated in the title of this chapter, that is, `the forces present in pure a priori reasoning are not powerful enough to enable us to attain through them to knowledge of the subsistence of a limited being’.

1445. We can, therefore, state the rule for correct philosophical method in the following way: `To attain to knowledge of subsistent things we must always travel without deviation the road of experience on pain of losing ourselves in vague, abstract reasoning which in the face of facts is valueless.’

Notes

(321) Hardouin's Athei detecti, contains an underlying, dominant and true concept, that is, to divinise logical truth is a kind of atheism. Read from this point of view, the book is not without interest.

(322) Even Galuppi did not avoid this slip.