Certainty - PART TWO

APPLICATION OF THE CRITERION TO DEMONSTRATE
THE TRUTH OF PURE KNOWLEDGE

Chapter 1

THE INTUITION OF BEING, THE SOURCE OF ALL CERTAINTY,
IS SHOWN TO BE JUSTIFIED PER SE

1065. Generally speaking (25) at least, sceptics do not deny appearances. Without denying that we feel, they affirm that our perception deceives us and cannot therefore promote and sustain truth. Our first natural intellection, on which all others depend (cf. 1044–1064), is that of being. Sceptical doubts against the veracity and genuineness of being can be reduced to three:

I. How do we know that the understanding of being (the form of any knowledge whatsoever) is not a pure illusion, having only apparent truth as far as we are concerned?

II. How can human beings perceive anything outside themselves? How can they get outside themselves? What forms the passage between human beings and things different from or outside them?

III. Even if what the spirit saw were not an illusion and did in fact possess some reality, would this object not be changed and falsified by the way we see it? Would it not seem natural for the spirit, in seeing things, to clothe them with its own forms as a mirror reflects the images of things, diminishing or enlarging them according to its own convex or concave plane? The mirror never shows things as they are, but as images formed in itself according to the shape it has. The sceptics' arguments can be reduced to these three, to which we must now reply. But first it will be helpful to penetrate the human mind and note the steps leading it to such extreme attitudes of doubt.

1066. From the moment we come into this world our attention is continually occupied with sensible perceptions. If then, as adults, we devote ourselves to study, we can say that all the powers of our spirit are taken up and exhausted by an interminable quantity of evermore subtle, arduous, abstract and prolonged arguments. However, such an immense mass of perceptions and arguments, capable of absorbing and conquering all possible intellectual vigour, attracts by the vivacity and splendour of its composition: our needs, inclinations and noblest thoughts seek and long for their satisfaction in the ocean of things that can be thought and felt.

Withdrawing our minds from all these perceptions, and from the entire sphere of arguments that we love so much, must be extremely difficult. Retreating into a kind of intellectual solitude, where the object of our attention is no longer the knowledge we have acquired but the mere possibility of some kind of knowledge, must inevitably be distasteful and abhorrent to our nature. Nevertheless, if we want to give our attention simply to the idea of being in general, we have to distance and separate ourselves through abstraction from every kind of acquired knowledge and retain only our capacity for directing our attention, which is the outcome of the development we have undergone. If we succeed in concentrating on this idea, nothing indeed remains except the simple possibility of knowledge. This kind of abstinence, if we can call it that, is burdensome even if practised a little; it seems to reduce our thought to nothing, or annihilate us in ste rile contemplation; it appears neither necessary nor helpful. Abstract meditation of this kind is therefore uncommon, and only embarked upon when a person is motivated by the particular necessity and urgent need that springs from a desire to find a foundation for endangered human knowledge.

1067. It is a fact, of course, that research into the veracity of human knowledge is everyone's concern, and that everyone has something to say about it. But the arguments offered to throw doubt upon all that ordinary people take as certain are the result of acquired, deducted knowledge. As I said, the human mind is drawn more forcefully to studies in all their extension with their untold riches. This is the mind's constant preoccupation.

The investigator sees that some of his observations are incorrect, and some of his arguments fallacious; one argument unexpectedly finds a counterpoise in another of equal or greater weight; an opinion held at one time is later discredited; discussion becomes a subtle, ferocious industry. Finally, sophists make their appearance, openly professing and methodically teaching how to test the pros and cons of everything. Their aim is to side-track and prolong argument, to avoid every conclusion and to forestall agreement. And certainly it is impossible to reach any conclusion with someone whose aim, whether he is right or wrong, is to eschew every conclusion and never give way in any argument.

Human experience of the fallibility of reason, the flexibility and continual corrections found in discussions, the constant possibility of causing mental confusion, and the senseless ambition of proving one's intellectual ability through falsehood finally give rise to a doctrine of absolute scepticism amongst superficial or bewildered people.
But we must insist that the sophist's research in these matters draws finally on the normal part of knowledge, to which learned people are usually attracted. It never draws on the entire range of knowledge. The consequence of the sophist's research, however, is not restricted to that part of knowledge in which such difficulties have been found; their conclusion is not limited to the section of knowledge which enfolds their premisses, but extended to universal knowledge which they declare to be invalid and false, or at least doubtful.

1068. The part is taken for the whole without any realisation that research is confined to only one section of deduced knowledge, and does not extend to knowledge as a whole. This part, undoubtedly of splendid breadth, is the continual object of human understanding, but another part, which is never subject to attacks attempting to render it doubtful, is passed over unnoticed.
Like a shadow or a tiny, disregarded seed, it is left abandoned in a corner of the mind, or rather treated as a servant of the lowest order, unworthy of notice. This little element is overlooked, as infinity is in mathematics, or set aside as the poor are by the rich. As a result, arguments against knowledge remain unanswered; the uncertainty of a part of knowledge is predicated and arbitrarily affirmed of knowledge as a whole.

People never imagine that this humble scrap of knowledge, confused with the rest of knowledge in human intelligence, and not deigned worthy of thought, should be exempt from the general law or that it alone could save from condemnation the great, inflated knowledge of which we are so proud and which we think forms the whole of our understanding. But here too the lowly must be exalted; the foundation of all certainty is found in a tiny, unobtrusive point of knowledge which, despite its minuteness and almost imperceptibility, is firm and rock-solid, a suitable resting place for the lever of reason to move human thought to extremely effective operations. This point is the idea of being from which, as we have seen, all the ideas that human beings possess derive their source and their being as ideas.

We maintain, therefore, that the first element of knowledge (which exists, but is normally unobserved) cannot be included in a general argument intended to annihilate all knowledge. The idea of being can be attacked only directly, and then will be seen as unassailable. The reader should not be content with general arguments such as those employed by sceptics, but ask himself if they are valid when applied to individual parts of knowledge. In this way he will, I am sure, see clearly that sceptics' arguments, although they may accord with all other parts of knowledge, can never accord with the idea of being, against which they are not only invalid but totally vain and indeed meaningless.

The reader can only be convinced of this, however, if he pays attention to understanding fully the character and nature proper to the idea of being. When his reflection on this idea has enabled him to experience its intimate nature, there is no doubt that he will understand for himself the irrelevance of sceptics' arguments. I hope to show this by presenting the proper characteristics of the idea of being, replying at the same time to the three sceptical doubts previously set out.

1069. As we have said (cf. 1066–1068), this doubt cannot arise if the intuition of existence in general has been correctly understood according to its own particular nature, without being confused with other intellections. An illusion or deceptive thought indicates something that is not. I deceive myself, for example, if I look and imagine that I see a human being at night in a wood under a new moon when I actually see a shadow, or a tree trunk, or a mass of rock. In taking an appearance for reality, however this may occur, I delude and deceive myself.

The concept of illusion contains two elements, therefore:

1. appearance, and 2. reality. Appearance is that which appears to me, reality is what I judge to lie behind the appearance of what I see. I deceive and delude myself when I judge that something truly is, which only appears to me, and in fact is not.

No deception could arise within me, however, if something appeared to me, or I experienced a sensation, or saw something and I did not go beyond it, that is, did not judge that some reality corresponded to that appearance. The very possibility of deception necessarily presupposes a judgment on the part of the person who deceives himself. If there is no judgment, there is no illusion. Deception of this kind requires, therefore, two elements, an appearance and a reality, the second of which does not correspond to the first.

1070. These two conditions are lacking when we think of being in general. This idea is perfectly simple (cf. OT, 542–546). It is a pure intellective intuition, devoid of all judgment, and cannot therefore be the source of illusion.
When I say `existence in general' I neither affirm nor deny anything (ibid.). Thinking of being in general does not even entail thinking that something subsists. If I think that something subsists, I can deceive myself; what I am thinking of can in fact not subsist; and what I consider not to subsist, could subsist. But to think of being in general is not to think of one thing rather than another; it is to think of the possibility (cf. OT, 408, 409) of anything whatsoever, that is, to think, but not to think of anything determinate.

In a word, possibility is simply thinkability (cf. OT, 542–546). Possibility is simply an entity sui generis which serves as a light to the mind without bearing within itself any contradiction or conflict. Contradiction or internal mental conflict is possible only if the elements of the struggle are individually received in my mind. As contradictory elements, they cannot be thought of in union. such a union would be sheer nothing; one element would destroy or remove the other; nothing would remain. But there can be no contradiction in something totally indeterminate; it is something I can conceive mentally, something thinkable, something possible. In the pure and simple intuition of being, therefore, deception and illusion are impossible.

1071. It is a fact(26) that we have the concept of being. In other words, being is thinkable. The sceptic's words are simply senseless if he is satisfied with affirming that this concept of being is an illusion or deception, as I have shown. He applies deceit to what is incapable of deceiving. All he can do now is to uphold his denial of this fact by insisting that being is not conceivable by us. In this case, I reply that to deny being as conceivable is to deny all thought to human beings.

Such a denial affirms that thought is an illusion, and does not, therefore, exist. In fact, nothing is left to be the object of thought; to say that something is the object of thought is to say that the cognition of being is present. The sceptic's insistence annihilates and renders impossible all thought. Scepticism of this nature should reduce the sceptic to total silence; his mind should be completely incapacitated because in speaking or thinking he would give the lie to himself. It is not a question of thinking truly or falsely; it is a question of thinking or not thinking. If you think (well or badly, truly or falsely), you think something, and to say that you think something is to say that you think being. We find ourselves at that precise point where knowledge and certainty become the same (cf. 1059–1060).

1072. The sceptic has no right to assail truth in such an extreme fashion. His first step in this direction becomes an exercise in self-defeat because the possibility of thought lies beyond every assault. To attack the possibility of thought you would have to begin by not thinking. But you do not attack anything by not thinking. Your only achievement is to cut yourself off from mankind and place yourself in an animal, mineral or vegetable world.

1073. The proposition, `possibility of thought', is identical with `the thinkability of being'; thought, as we have said, is a mental operation which has being for its object. Being, conceived under this aspect as the universal object of thought, is secure and beyond the range of any argument for this simple reason: in order to attack being, you must use thought. And because no one can contemporaneously attack and not attack, think and not think, no one can deny the intuition of being in general.

The intuition of being therefore is necessarily admitted by everyone. Being as thinkable is a pure fact, not subject to our will. We contemplate it, and admit it mentally with the same necessity by which we are. It does not seek our consent or our dissent. It is. We either do not think, or we think being; thinking against being is absurd. Anyone imagining that he does think contrary to being simply does not understand what he is about; he believes he is doing what he is not doing. It is impossible for anyone to understand the significance of `conceiving being in general' and deny it. Denying it is to affirm it. It is impossible to doubt it as an illusion because it could not be even an illusion if it were not true and real. It is impossible to affirm as illusory that which is simple in the extreme (27) and ends in itself.

1074. We shall now synthesize our teaching in different words by reducing it to some simple principles already established (cf. OT, 398–470).
We said that:

1. Being is that element which enters into all our ideas.

2. Being is that which remains in our ideas after all possible abstractions have been made on them. The final abstraction leads us to being, pure and simple. If this were removed, every idea would be destroyed (cf. OT, 410, 411).

Therefore, either we decide not to think or, if we think, we think being. We cannot deny the thinkability of being without thinking being in the very denial, and thus establishing it.

1075. The following propositions are corollaries of this teaching:
I. The idea of being, if it is the constitutive element of any idea whatsoever that we have, (28) must be the unchangeable element in every idea. Every other element can cease to be present to the mind.

1076. II. If the conception of being is unchangeable and the other elements in any of our ideas (29) changeable, differences of opinion can never be related to the idea of being. They can refer only to the determinations attributed to being, or to the subsistence of particular beings.

1077. III. For the same reason, when we say that the mass of people form inexact concepts of things, or when we note imprecision or some other defect in anyone's ideas, we never intend, nor can we intend, to criticize the idea of being or entity, which is invariable and essential and the point of convergence for all who think. Our strictures are always concerned with the other elements which form part of the ideas which we are criticizing.

1078. The intuition of being, and even the conception of some indeterminate thing, (30) is a simple, undeniable FACT offering no succour to the illusion and deception feared by sceptics (cf. 1069, 1070). Here we are dealing not with a judgment, but with a factual intuition lacking affirmation or denial — only the possibility of denial or affirmation is seen. But when I think something, without determining further the object of my thought, I conceive two cases in which this `something' is possible: it may be either in me, or outside me. But then sceptics go on to say that it is impossible for me to be aware of something outside me because I can never go outside myself.

1079. Perhaps what the sceptic says is true. At least let us take it momentarily for granted that we cannot verify with certainty whether anything exists outside ourselves. What I am affirming here, however, is limited to this: I can conceive and imagine something outside myself. I am not ascertaining whether what I conceive is truly outside myself or not.

Nevertheless, from the moment I ask: `Does some being exist outside of me', I already conceive the notion of some possible being both outside and inside me. We need to remember the definition of possibility. When I say that a being can be outside myself, I am simply affirming that I can think of an object different from me and outside me even if I am unable to verify whether it is truly outside me. When sceptics, therefore, deny that I can be aware of a being outside myself, their very denial shows that they, too, possess at least the concept of a being outside or inside me, and different from or identical with me. But the perception of being in general contains nothing more than this concept.

When I think an indeterminate being, I neither think nor affirm that something truly exists outside myself. I only conceive that this is possible. In a word, I simply possess the notion of different and equal, of outside and inside, without applying it through the affirmation or denial of anything whatsoever. The sceptics' objection `How can you know something different from yourself or outside yourself?' leaves the idea of being totally undisturbed. It even establishes and presupposes this idea, and by doing so shows that it stands apart from any assault. The sceptics themselves admit it, therefore, as something alien to controversy and outside discussion.

This confirms my previous observation that no one, not even sceptics, can put the idea of being in general under attack in any argument whatsoever. This idea is presupposed and tacitly admitted by everyone as beyond dispute and as prior and superior to discussion because it is simply the possibility of discussion itself, a possibility confirmed when discussion takes place.

1080. The teaching developed in the previous number is reassumed in a proposition already established by me: `Being in general is the object of the understanding' (cf. OT, 539–557). When, and in so far as, I consider an entity, it is the object of my consideration. Whatever the thing may be, the fact that it is an object means that it is considered by me in itself, without any relationship with me or others. This is a simple description of the way in which we mentally conceive. When I say that I think an entity, I say that I am thinking the entity in itself (in so far as it is) without relationship with anything else. (31)

There is no doubt, therefore, that in analysing the thought of `something' we discover that what is thought stands before us independently of its relationship with us. When I think of this object I do not think that it may be something in me, or of me, because I am not thinking of myself in any way whatsoever.

If I am not thinking that the thing is in me, but in itself, it follows that I possess the notion of things as they are in themselves. I may indeed err in applying this notion, but this does not detract from my really thinking the possibility of the thing in itself, independently of me. It cannot be objected that I deceive myself with such a notion. It cannot be said that I only imagine I have the notion of something different from myself, or equal to me. If I did not have it, as I said, I could not on the one hand speak of it, nor on the other hand be contradicted. If I did not have it, I could not deceive myself.

Anyone calling such a notion into doubt, therefore, is certainly mistaken about the object of his doubt. If he understood what it was, he would realise that he is attempting to doubt what cannot be doubted. The sceptics' arsenal could perhaps inflict damage on the proposition `I know that an object subsists outside myself', but it cannot harm this next proposition: `I understand and conceive perfectly the meaning of "an object different from, and outside myself".'

But, as we said, the conception of being does not include the first of these two propositions; only the second is present in some way in the conception. Conceiving being means `conceiving something indeterminate in itself', and consequently not in me. Implicit in my conception, therefore, is the notion of something different from me. What I possess is without doubt an object of thought, different by nature from what is purely subject.

1081. The following are corollaries of what has been said:
I. The idea of being in general is that idea through which we think the thing in itself. Thinking something in itself means thinking it as independent of the subject, that is, independent of ourselves. When we think something as independent of ourselves, we think it as having a mode of existence different from our own (subjective). The idea of being, therefore, constitutes our possibility of going outside ourselves, as it were. It establishes the possibility of our thinking things different from ourselves.

1082. II. It is absurd, therefore, to ask how we can go outside ourselves, or what is the bridge enabling us to pass from ourselves to things different from us. Metaphorical expressions such as `going outside' and `communicating bridge' confuse the sense and make the question impossible to resolve. We are searching for a material or mechanical solution to a purely spiritual fact. We cannot go outside ourselves; no `bridge' can be set up between us and that which is not us. We have to reduce the question to its proper terms and see it transformed in them.

The human being thinks of things as they are in themselves. This is the fact. He may or may not deceive himself with these thoughts of his, but his thought itself is such that its objects are present to him in themselves, that is, as objects, and not as subjects. This comes about as follows. The innate idea of being in general forms human intelligence. Possessing this idea is equivalent to possessing the possibility of seeing things in themselves. Human beings, therefore, have in some way innate in themselves this communicating `bridge', if we want to use such a phrase, because they perceive being in itself. Being is the most common and essential quality of all things, which makes them what they are, independent of ourselves and separate from us subjects. (32)

From the first moment of its existence, therefore, our intelligent spirit has an aptitude for thinking things as they are in themselves, and not as they are in us. Our spirit has the concept of this diversity, this exteriority, or better this objectivity of things. We still have to see how the spirit can pass from conceiving a thing merely possible in itself to something really subsisting in itself and not in the spirit; here, it is possible for us to deceive ourselves. But this is another question, which will be answered by seeing whether the human spirit can have any sure sign of something different from itself and outside its body. For the moment we state without doubt that the human spirit can simply think things. The innate idea of being in general, by its own proper nature, makes the human spirit apt for this.

1083. The sceptic will press his point, granting perhaps that the human understanding has the capacity of thinking things objectively and hence as they are in themselves, as we have said. The understanding may indeed prescind from relationships expressing difference or non-difference from the thinking subject, or expressing an inside or outside to the thinking subject, but is not this property itself subjective? If so, it is a pure form imposed on things by the subject itself.

1084. Let us imagine that this sceptical doubt is true, and that things perceived have communicated to them by the subject a form which differs from the form they have in themselves. It follows that our apperception is not genuine and has no power to provide us with certain knowledge of things.
My reply is that this doubt, even if conceivable relative to the sense-perceptions of our body, cannot be applied to the intuition our spirit has of being, or ens. It is true, of course, that our bodily organs are moulded and configured in a specific way, and play their part in any effect produced in them. Such an effect, however, is the result not of one, but of two concomitant causes: the external agent, and the nature, quality and disposition of the organs themselves (cf. OT, 878–905).

But to draw an analogy between what happens in corporeal perception and what could happen in the direct, spiritual intuition of being in general is contrary to correct philosophical method, and leads to the very error that we are opposing. This error would never have occurred if analogies had been set aside completely and attention had been concentrated directly upon the object of the spiritual intuition we are considering, that is, upon being in general.

Anyone examining being in general will notice immediately the contradiction in terms when we say that such being could be a production of our subjective mind, or something informed and determined by the mind itself. Being in general means that which is exempt from any form or mode of being, whatever its genus or nature.

1085. Analysis of the sceptical supposition we have hypothetically granted shows that it includes two forms or modes of being: 1. that of the thing in itself, unknown to us; 2. that of the thing in so far as it is perceived by us, a mode which, according to the sceptics, emanates from us as perceivers, and is known to ourselves alone.

These two modes of anything — the one real, the other apparent, the one necessarily unknown, the other known to us — are both possible, that is, thinkable by us. But note that we say thinkable, not verifiable. Let us grant for the moment that I cannot know if these two modes really exist in the thing. This means that I cannot verify them in nature. But I can know that they could exist, that is, I can think them. The sceptics, in fact, by proposing their doubt, already presuppose that I can think both the apparent and the real mode of anything. If I am to doubt whether the mode that I see in something is not real, but different from what is real, the concept of the possibility of the two modes has to be granted, that is, they have to be thought. But this supposition has no possible application whatsoever to the idea of being.

The idea of being in general contains no judgment on the mode of being and, as completely indeterminate, is receptive, with perfect impartiality and indifference, to any one of all the thinkable modes of being. And because the mode is thinkable but, according to the fears of the sceptics, is necessarily hidden, it too can be received by the unlimited universal nature of being.

It is absurd, therefore, that being in general, intuited by our mind, can possess a mode or form determined by the nature of our mind, to which it presents itself divested of all modes. Such a doubt cannot originate in the mind of anyone considering the proper character of being in general. We repeat: this being has neither mode nor form, but constitutes the possibility of all the modes and forms which we think and imagine.

1086. This property of the idea of being forms our intelligence; it is what I call indetermination and universality (cf. OT, 428, 434). It also forms and proves the perfect immateriality of our intelligence.

1087. Hence the following corollaries:
I. If `myself', that is, the subject, is perfectly determinate (that which subsists in the real mode must be determinate), and if BEING intuited naturally by the subject is perfectly indeterminate, it follows that being, an essentially objective conception, cannot be called a subjective conception. It constitutes the OBJECT of the spirit and differs from the spirit itself (the SUBJECT), which is the contrary of the object [App., no. 3].

Similarly, if `myself' is limited and particular, while BEING, naturally intuited by us, is unlimited and universal, being is not an effect or emanation of the spirit. The spirit, as a nature disparate from being, is incapable of causing and producing it.

1088. II. If being is the only idea we have in our spirit by nature, and all other ideas are acquired, it follows that our spirit adds to things only the concept of being. Being, however, is justified of itself because it is without any particular mode or form. Our spirit therefore (in so far as it is intellective) adds no mode or form to the things it perceives. The subject does not falsify the things it perceives because it neither adds anything to them nor changes them; it perceives them exactly as they present (33) themselves. Intelligence, therefore, is not a fallacious, deceitful faculty when it intuits being in general or any other of its perceptions; it is essentially sincere, essentially truthful.

1089. III. This shows the foolishness of the sceptics' unease about reason, and the futility of their search for a critique of reason as though there could be something above reason that were not reason, yet could judge reason. Reason, or better intelligence, cannot be transcended by reasoning. In this sense, a transcendental philosophy is intrinsically absurd and repugnant.

It is a blatant contradiction to affirm that, because reason can be limited to some particular form, doubt about reason's deceptiveness could be above reason. What faculty enables us to think the possibility of some form different from that of reason? Only a superior reason with a more extended form could embrace both the form of reason and some other form. In this case, reason is simultaneously more and less extended than it actually is. But reason is one only. It is, therefore, less and more extended at the same time.

All these things show Kantianism to be founded upon the play of the imagination which first creates for itself a limited reason which it then judges and criticises. It is not reason as complete which judges and causes doubt. Complete reason embraces not only the imaginary, criticised faculty, but also the criticising faculty. Reason embraces the whole possibility of things.

1090. From what has been said it is clear that we should consider the famous question, `How can a being perceive something different from itself?', as alien to the discussion about knowledge and human certainty. We cannot plumb the depths of this question without exceeding the limits of solid knowledge.

The legitimate method of sound philosophy requires attentive observation of facts, which have to be classified and ordered, and reduced, as far as possible, to some primordial fact on which all the rest depend. Anyone who remains unsatisfied after discovering this primordial fact, and imagines that he has to carry on searching for some further explanation, leaves himself open to the danger of endless, vain hypotheses or sterile speculation. As a final step, he will also throw a suffocating blanket of scepticism over every other aspect of knowledge simply because he has not succeeded in finding something which, because it does not exist, he should never have looked for. (34)

1091. In our discussion, the primordial fact is the intuition of being in general. This intuition draws us to an act terminating beyond ourselves as subjects, and ending in an indeterminate object. The way in which we see being in general as something in itself, objectively and independently of ourselves, is another incontrovertible fact. When this has been recognised, the whole difficulty experienced in explaining innumerable, particular facts is lifted. I am speaking about the difficulty arising from the question: `How can we perceive something different from ourselves?'

The intuition of being in general shows the possibility of seeing things in themselves, and actually constitutes the potency and act of this vision precisely because being, when intuited, is intuited in itself. Wanting to explain this primary fact by means of yet another preceding fact in the same logical order is as intemperate as wanting to simplify further a number already reduced to unity, that is, to its first, simple element.

1092. Sceptics abuse this process by reasoning along the following lines: `We cannot understand how a being can perceive something different from itself. When a human being or any other intellective being, seems to perceive something different from itself, we have to say that it only perceives something apparently different from itself. In reality, it does not perceive anything different from itself; it perceives itself and nothing more.' In this kind of reasoning we see theory assailing and destroying fact, ignorance erasing truth.

My reply to the sceptics runs as follows. You say that we conceive being as different from ourselves in appearance only; in reality it is not different from us. But if, as you say, being appears to me as different from myself, I must conceive it as different from me. Appearing to me means being conceived by me.

Note that I am not affirming that this being which I perceive in itself is different from or identical with me. I am simply saying that I conceive it as different from me. I am establishing the fact which you yourselves grant me. There is only one difference between us: the use we make of the fact we both admit. I say that if I conceive being as something different from myself, I have the faculty of conceiving things different from me. I do in fact conceive one thing in this way, and in it and with it conceive all other things. I am not asking whether this faculty of mine is deceptive. It is enough for me to affirm that my mind has an object independent of itself, whatever the truth or falsehood of this object.

You begin by establishing, prior to every fact, that it is impossible for my mind to go outside itself and conceive something as independent of itself. You go on to conclude that being, conceived as different from the mind, cannot be different from the mind which, therefore, deceives itself. But can't you see that you have thus overstepped the limits of the question? The difficulty, and the question itself, consists simply in knowing whether the mind conceives anything different from itself. We are not asking if what it conceives corresponds or not to its conception. In declaring that it does not correspond, you grant that its conception terminates in something outside itself and different from itself. The object, as conceived by the mind, is not the mind itself.

You cannot therefore deny the nature of this conception nor, in this case, distinguish conceiving from appearing; here, appearing is conceiving. Moreover, saying that the object, in so far as it is not conceived by the mind, does not correspond to the concept the mind has of it, is to pass judgment on something not conceived, and consequently totally unknown. You have exceeded the limits of your capacity.

1093. However, let this pass for now. I want to follow you in your imaginings and hypotheses. Let us grant, therefore, that the object conceived by the mind is not different from the mind itself, that is, from the perceiving subject. In this case, doesn't the subject itself, when you think it, become the object of your thought? When something is the object of our thought, therefore, it does not change its nature. Notwithstanding its status as object, it still remains what it was before. It can remain subject, and nevertheless be simultaneously the object of our thought.
If this is so, the phrase, `The mind thinks something different from itself?', can only mean that it thinks things as its objects. But how can these two expressions, `thinking things different from itself' and `things being objects of its thought', be synonymous?

Object of thought means that something is present to us in itself; `something in itself' means `something in its own existence'; and since existing and being present is different from acting, the object of thought is essentially something different from us in so far as we are thinking. This is true even when I think about myself. In that act I, the subject, become the object of my thought, and in thinking about myself I consider myself in so far as I exist in me, and no more.

The essence, therefore, of thought is that it terminate in an object, that is, in something different from the thinking subject as such. Being, as the object of thought, that is, as different from the subject, cannot bring the authority and veracity of thought into question. On the contrary, we are so imbued with conceiving things different from ourselves that we cannot even conceive ourselves intellectually without considering ourselves as objectivised and different from the actually thinking subjects.

1094. The sceptics' arguments would be valid for other beings, if there were any, furnished with a manner of mental conception totally different from our own. These beings would have to conceive things not in their objective existence, but as identical with themselves as conceiving subjects. An intellective being of this nature could affirm on behalf of them all: `We conceive all things as part of ourselves. But that is impossible. Rather, we should be prepared to believe that things conceived in this way are created in the very act by which we conceive them. These conceptions of ours cannot possibly be true.'

Such a doubt, however, could never in fact arise in the minds of one of these beings. It could be prompted only in a being possessing the faculty of seeing things as they are. Sceptics themselves, therefore, must have the faculty to conceive something different from themselves in order to bring the existence of this faculty into doubt. The penalty of admitting a mental conception which does not exit from the subject is the need to accept a concept in conflict with itself. It is at one and the same time a conception and not a conception.

1095. Finally, the legitimacy of thought is evident of itself if its nature is considered attentively. This nature consists in thinking things in themselves, as we do in fact think them. It is identical with thinking things in their own existence which, in turn, is called the truth of our conception.
In brief, according to the sceptics, things have two existences:

1. as perceived by us;
2. as not perceived by us.

The perceived existence is existence in se, objective existence, and hence concerns the way in which things appear to us objectively. According to the sceptics, this perceived existence is false and illusory. The real existence, that is, as not perceived by us, must therefore be existence identical with ourselves precisely because we perceive only subjectively.

But these propositions are obviously contradictory. If existence in itself is that perceived by us, and existence imagined as subjective is that which is not perceived by us, is not the true existence that which we perceive? And the false or rather null existence, that is, the chimera brought to birth by the sceptics themselves, is it not the existence we do not perceive? (35)

1096. We have resolved the three fundamental doubts of the sceptics through the analysis of truth, or idea of being, which provides three characteristics, each of which is suitable for refuting one of the doubts. These three characteristics of being intuited by us are: 1. its simplicity (it represents itself alone); 2. its objectivity, and 3. its perfect indetermination. In its simplicity, it neither represents anything outside itself, nor contains any judgment; its presence to us is a fact. In other words, it cannot be the source of illusion or deceit. The first doubt is resolved.

In its objectivity, it is different from and contrary to the subject which perceives it. It constitutes the subject's intellect, that is, a power without subjective reference which sees things outside place and time. The second doubt, about the intellect's capacity for getting outside itself, is resolved. This doubt is founded upon a metaphor taken from bodily images which, when translated into appropriate expressions, is proved senseless. The doubt then collapses of its own accord without need of further reflection.

In its indeterminateness, (36) it cannot determine anything, although it can receive the determinations furnished by the things presented to it. It is impossible, therefore, and contrary to fact, to assert that our knowledge of things can receive from our intellect a subjective mode or particular form different from that which things have in themselves.
Finally, I showed that these doubts could not have arisen in the mind of any philosopher who had followed the path of facts and rejected a false method of vain hypotheses and vague, confused creations of the imagination.

1097. But, I am happy to say, my confutation of modern sceptics is not original. It is contained in the deposit of ancient Christian tradition, together with the method which starts from primordial, secure facts, and reasons about them. Abandoning that method, sophists (37) have all unawares plunged us into ignorance, doubt and every kind of mental unease. Proof of this will be found in a brief exposition of Christian philosophy about the nature of the knowledge of truth, and of the truth's relationship with the spirit.

1098. According to this philosophy, the method to be followed in coming to understand the soul requires us: 1. to start from the fact of knowledge; and 2. to proceed from the examination of this fact to establish what the soul can or cannot do, that is, to decide its properties, faculties, and so on.(38) In this way the philosophy we are examining moves from the same point as ourselves, that is, from the fact of the existence of knowledge which, on analysis, is reduced to perfect simplicity, that is, to the fact of being in general which cannot contain any illusion in itself. Analysing this fact of intellective knowledge, antiquity found, as we have, that it was primarily objective: `The act of cognition,' says St. Thomas, `extends to things outside the knower.' (39)

This is the primordial fact. St. Thomas and those like him did not say, as the moderns do: `This fact is impossible and is, therefore, only an appearance.' They said: `This fact exists and is, therefore, true and real.' They did not ask: `How can the knower go outside himself?' but: `We have found that the knower goes outside himself. This is, therefore, possible.'

1099. They carried on reasoning in the following way. Knowledge, if it is objective, is not confined to the subject, but considers things in their own existence, not in the existence of the subject as though they were modifications of the subject. Knowledge, therefore, must be universal; it is able to extend to all things which have or can have their own proper existence, and hence to every possible thing. They then concluded that bodies cannot know because they are determined to a sole, particular form; the intelligent subject, on the other hand, must be immaterial, that is, void of every bodily determination and restrictive form.

St. Thomas affirms: `Through matter, the form of any thing is determined and restricted to a particular being. It is clear, therefore, that the concept of knowledge is precisely the opposite of the concept of materiality. It is equally impossible also for things which receive their form only materially, such as plants, to be intelligent.' (40) Moreover, if we examine the nature of intellective knowledge, we see that the characteristic of universality, which is comprised in that of objectivity and revealed as a result of the analysis of objectivity, is also seen directly. We know not only different, but contrary things. This led antiquity to affirm that the mind was capable of perceiving all things (intellectus omnia cognoscit). And indeed whoever can perceive the `Yes' and `No' of any thing is not determined towards nothing.

There is no middle case between two contraries to determine anyone who perceives. This was a fact noted even in classical philosophy. Empedocles, who had considered it only imperfectly, thought he could explain it by supposing the soul to be composed of the elements of all things. I say that he had observed it imperfectly because he had restricted himself to noting that `the soul knows different things'. He overlooked the fact that the soul 1. knows not only the elements of things, but things themselves; 2. knows not only different but contrary things, and consequently is disposed to know equally well both the yes and no of anything whatsoever.

1100. Empedocles' error (I am speaking of his teaching as Aristotle seems to have understood it) is common to all materialists who imagine that ideas are similar in substance to things. The idea of light, for example, would be formed of some kind of phosphorus (as the Englishman, Hook, maintained), and so on for other ideas. As far as I know antiquity did not dispute this aspect of the matter with Empedocles. But it did rebuke him for imperfect observation of the universality of knowledge, and especially for the first of his two imperfect observations by which he overlooked the fact that knowledge enables us to know not only the principles of things, but things themselves.

Philosophers of antiquity maintained, in reply to Empedocles, that if the soul were to be composed of all the (physical) principles which make up things (this would indeed be the case if everything had to be known by means of its own likeness), the soul itself would have to result from as many tiny bodies or entities as there are knowable bodies and things, as well as from the principles of bodies. Consequently Anaxagoras, followed by Aristotle, maintained against Empedocles that the soul had to be immaterial, unmixed with anything else, and totally free from corporeal determinations if it were to be capable of knowing all things.

We are dealing, therefore, with a single fact, admitted by all: the universality of knowledge. Some later Greek authors explained this fact differently from their predecessors. All agreed, however, that the universality of knowledge required a universal power in the soul, that is, a power which could extend to all possible things. The earlier philosophers conceived the universal power only in a material way, and hence imagined it as made up of all the elements; the later philosophers, realising the futility of this explanation, saw that the opposite must be true. According to them, this power of the soul was universal in so far as it was not composed of anything coming from determinate things. These philosophers affirmed this universality of the soul, therefore, as a power determined in itself to nothing, and hence capable of being determined in its effects. It thus gave rise to the knowledge of all possible things indifferently. This accounts for Aristotle's tabula rasa.

1101. In modern times, the opposite has taken place. The fact of universal knowledge has been declared impossible not because it could be denied (it could not), but because it is considered a deception. The presupposition of modern times requires a determinate soul determining its own acts of knowledge. Such a process of reasoning is the effective annihilation of all good sense. Universal knowledge is first granted; then it is affirmed that the soul determines and limits its own knowledge, stamping it with the seal of universality. Such reasoning disregards the fact that predicating universality of knowledge is the opposite of determining and limiting it, and of rendering it subjective.

1102. `Our intellect,' says St. Thomas, `is ordered to the understanding of all things feelable and corporeal. Hence, it must be devoid of every corporal nature, just as the sense of sight is void of all colour precisely because it is made to perceive colours. If it had some kind of colour, it would be prevented from seeing other colours. In the same way, if the intellect possessed some determinate nature, the congenital nature would prevent its knowing other natures.' (41)
According to St. Thomas, the universality of knowledge is a fact rendering absurd Kant's restrictive forms. As we said, it is a clear contradiction to maintain that the universality of knowledge is the work of restrictive forms. The forms that produce universality do not restrict knowledge in any way; rather they remove every restriction and determination.

1103. Every error, however, is a camouflaged or mistaken truth, and in this case it is not difficult to see that Kant abused the truth of St. Thomas' principle: `The intellect makes the species and ideas like itself because every agent produces what is similar to itself.' (42) But how did subjective forms take their origin from this badly understood truth? It was first supposed and then affirmed that in communicating its own nature to ideas and giving them its form, the intellect furnished ideas with a particular, restrictive and subjective form. This supposition, the result of our modern materialism, resulted from taking the concept of form from corporeal forms, which are indeed restrictive and particular.

For St. Thomas, however, the opposite is true. The form of which he speaks, with which the intellect informs its own perceptions and makes them like itself, is of a nature directly opposed to that of bodily form. It is a universal, not a particular form; it does not impose, but removes restrictions. The act by which the intellect communicates its own form to our perceptions is the very act by which its universalises them (cf. OT, 490). In this way, the intellect considers things in their own proper, objective (not subjective) being. Hence St. Thomas affirms that the immateriality of this form constitutes the power of understanding. (43)

This form is not, therefore, a form according to present-day understanding, as our moderns obviously consider it, but in the sense used by antiquity, which consists in the privation of every form understood in the modern sense. If the form of the intellect is universal, that is, perfectly indeterminate, and hence perfectly indifferent to the perception of all possible beings, and such that this form is only the intuition of possibility itself, (44) then (and this is the conclusion of the writers of antiquity whom we have in mind) the intellect receives an unrestricted, infinite power.

St. Thomas says: `The infinite is found in potency in our intellect' (the form of the intellect, because it is indeterminate, has per se no actual knowledge of anything real, although it can have such knowledge). `Hence, our intellect can never understand so many things that it cannot understand more again.' Again: `The intellect knows the infinite in so far as the intellect is infinite according to the power it possesses' (its form). `The intellect's power is infinite because . . . it is cognitive in relationship to what is universal . . .; consequently the intellect does not terminate in some individual, but relative to itself (45) extends to infinite individuals.'(46)

1104. Having taken careful note of the fact that intellective knowledge is universal and infinite because limitlessly extended to everything, they also realised that it is and must be necessary: `The form of what is understood is furnished at the level of intellect with universality, immateriality and unchangeableness. This becomes clear when we observe the activity itself of the intellect which understands universally and necessarily.' (47)

1105. Provided we note carefully that universality is only the possibility of any thing, it is easy to see that the two qualities, necessity and universality, spring from one another. What is necessary has its origin in what is possible: we call necessary that which unites in itself every possibility in such a way that anything contrary to it is impossible.

We can see this in the following proposition: `My friend Maurice is either alive or not alive.' This is a necessary proposition because the two contrary cases, alive or not alive, permit no middle case. Necessity, therefore, is that which includes within itself every possibility in such a way that nothing contrary is possible. But the form of the intellect is precisely total possibility. The intellect, therefore, understands necessarily, that is, it sees the relationship between possibility and everything understood, and its intellection becomes necessary by means of the relationship.

1106. This explains the insistence of the Fathers of the Church, who maintain that the intelligent spirit is furnished with an uncircumscribed light (one without any particular, restrictive form) or, equivalently, furnished with a form which is 1. universal, indeterminate, immaterial, infinite (words which have more or less the same meaning); and 2. necessary (hence, unchangeable, and per se everlasting).

Moreover, the Fathers saw and noted unity in the universality and necessity of knowledge. Universality is founded upon the knowledge provided by a single species of some thing or quality multiplied infinitely in an infinite number of individuals. Consequently, the unity of the species brings together and unites the multiplicity of things. Similarly, necessity is formed only by the one supreme species of form which represents the most common quality (if we may call it that) of things. In other words, it is formed by being, which unites and reduces to unity all particular possibilities. As a result of their analysis of human knowledge, Church writers discovered that in its final form (48) knowledge was perfectly one, universal or uncircumscribed, immaterial, infinite, necessary, unchangeable, eternal.

1107. Having established this fact, (49) they concluded that it could not come from the feelings nor from our spirit, that is, from the subject.(50) It does not come from the senses because sensations have neither unity, universality, necessity, unchangeableness, nor any of the characteristics listed above. It does not come from ourselves as knowing subjects because we are limited, contingent and changeable, and cannot therefore give to others what we do not possess. The attributes of our knowledge are contrary to our own subjective attributes, and surpass in dignity not only our own power, but that of any finite being whatsoever.

1108. St. Augustine, having analysed intellective knowledge and found that it consists essentially in judging, (51) soon realised as he proceeded with the analysis that knowledge contains a fundamental unity, because no judgment can be made without unity. He concludes, therefore, that such knowledge cannot come from the senses because, as he says, `no one, on examining a body, can . . . ever find it truly and simply one. All bodies change their appearance or their location, and are made up of parts, each in its own place, and divided and scattered in different spaces by means of these places. It is certain . . . that a true, first unity is understood and seen only with the mind, never with the eyes of the body or any other sense.' (52)

1109. The great masters of whom we have been speaking go on to show that the formal element of our intellective knowledge cannot be an emanation of our limited nature. The author of the Itinerarium argues from the unchangeableness of knowledge and the changeableness of our nature as follows: `Because our mind is changeable, it cannot see truth, which shines unchangeably, except by means of another altogether unchangeable light. This light cannot be a changeable creature.' (53)

St. Thomas uses the perfect indetermination and universality of formal knowledge to show that it cannot be the essence of some limited nature, that is, it cannot be any finite, determinate being. Neither the essence of angels nor that of human beings can emit from itself the indeterminate, universal knowledge of which we are speaking. `That by which we know anything must be like what is known. If, then, the angel's power were such that it could know all things of itself, this power would indeed be the likeness and act of all things' — which cannot, of course, be granted.

‘It is, therefore, necessary for other intelligible species to be added in the role of likenesses to the intellective power of angels. By means of these likenesses angels can know what they come to understand.' (54) St. Thomas goes on to conclude it is impossible to make formal knowledge emanate from the essence itself of the spirit. This can be predicated only of God whose essence is infinite and the universal principle of all things.(55)

This passage enables us to understand how St. Thomas' perspicacity foresaw the conclusion we have already reproved in modern critical philosophy which, by drawing the form of knowledge from the human spirit, `makes a god of the human being'. This impotent, but always foolhardy human spirit will be the new god of the universe, like the king tragically sought from Jove by Aesop's frogs.

1110. St. Augustine, on the basis of his observation (this is another point from which we must begin) that the form of knowledge is the rule with which we judge not only all other things, but even ourselves as subjects, deduces that formal knowledge cannot emanate from the essence of the subject. Subjects cannot be the cause or judge of such a rule, which in any case does not depend upon them. They have to receive it just as it is, and they must submit to it. This form, or supreme rule of judgment, is properly named truth. `Since this law governing all that can be done is totally unchangeable, and the human mind, granted the vision of this law, is capable of the change wrought by error, it is clear that there is a law superior to our mind, a law called `TRUTH.' He goes on: `When the soul feels that it cannot judge the beauty and movement of bodies of itself . . . it must realise that the nature according to which it judges, and about which it can form no judgment, is far superior to itself.

' Again: `We ourselves, and all rational souls, judge rightly when we judge according to truth; and truth alone judges us when we adhere to it.' (56) Note that this truth, so superior to ourselves, according to which we judge things and by which we are judged, has nothing superior to itself by which it can be judged, and is the very form in which, according to St. Augustine, we know all things. This form in turn is the idea of being in general, which we have discovered through our analysis of human acts of knowledge: `If both of us see that what you say is true and what I say is true, where do we see this? I certainly do not see it in you, nor you in me. We both see it in the same immutable truth which is above our minds.' (57)

1111. Reasons of this kind stimulated the ancient sages to make it their first concern to show that human nature cannot be the cause of truth, and to rid the human race of the profound absurdity finally embraced by modern philosophy which has despoiled truth of its attributes and surrendered them to the human spirit. Making the changeable unchangeable and the unchangeable changeable is to set up mankind as a hideous idol. This is the work that the cunning ruler of darkness has been able to renew in the current light of Christian history. But those are safe from this error who listen attentively and lovingly to the great tradition of the Church which proclaims unceasingly and unanimously to human beings: `Do not think that you yourself are the light.' (58)

Notes

(25) According to Sextus Empiricus (Hypotypos, bk. 1, c. 8), even Pyrrho admitted sensible appearances; he simply denied that their reality could be proved.

(26) Antiquity was aware that the whole of philosophy began with the fact of the intuition of being in general, that is, with the fact of the existence of intellective cognition. Antiquity was also aware that a fact cannot be known without the help of experience. It saw, too, that the fundamental fact of philosophy was a matter of internal experience, attested by consciousness. This experience was neglected by sensists who systematically abandoned it, as I have often noted. Evidence of antiquity's awareness of this primary source of philosophy can be found in a witness from the 13th century, the subtle philosopher and theologian from Duns. `We EXPERIENCE in ourselves what we know by our UNIVERSAL act' (he starts with experience of the universal); `for we EXPERIENCE that we know BEING, or quality, in a way more common than that in which we know the first feelable object, however sensitive it may be. We also experience, etc., the i mpossibility of attributing knowledge of anything of this kind to any sensitive power' (it is a fact that intellective knowledge is essentially different from sense knowledge). `But if anyone contumaciously denies that these acts are present in human beings, there is no question of further argument with him' (denying the first fact destroys all possibility of argument). `We can only say what we would say to someone affirming that he is unable to see colour: "You are blind, you are sense-deficient". If anyone denies that we experience these acts in ourselves with a certain sense, that is, with interior perception' (this is the interior experience of consciousness) `we have to declare that he is not human; he lacks that interior vision which others experience in themselves' (John Duns Scotus, in bk. 4 of the Sentences, dis. 43, q. 2).

(27) The Pyrrhonists who, according to Sextus, admitted appearances would have been in contradiction with themselves if it were true, as Aenesidemus says, that they doubted about everything, including being: `Indeed nothing is true or false, nothing is BEING or NOT BEING. All is the same so that nothing is true rather than false, or probable rather than improbable, or being rather than not being, or something at one moment and something else at another, or something relative to one thing which it is not to another.' This teaching, expounded by Aenesidemus in bk. 1 of the eight books he wrote on the system of Pyrrho, is quoted by Photius in Biblioth., c. 212.

(28) I have shown that the idea of being can exist in us on its own (cf. OT, 412).

(29) Even in those of sceptics.

(30) This phrase is perfectly synonymous with some indeterminate being.

(31) We must make no mistake about this fact. It is indeed certain that what we positively know in things depends upon an action exercised over us by these things. Our act of understanding, however, is such that we conceive the thing itself, the being itself that does the action, as a result of the action we experience. This is what I mean by conceiving the thing in itself, not in relationship with ourselves.

(32) The phrase `outside ourselves' expresses some relationship with things exterior to our bodies, as we have said (cf. OT, 834 ss.). It is equivalent to the other expression, `different from our body'. The question: `How can we be sure of what is outside ourselves?' was engendered by sensistic philosophy and soon applied to spiritual matters. This application to spiritual things of metaphors taken from sense experience, a habit introduced by the sensists, accustomed us to phrases such as: `All our thought went outside ourselves.' At this point transcendentalism appeared. Kant no longer asked: `How can we be sure of what is outside ourselves?' (that is, outside our bodies), but generalised by applying the question to the spirit. He asked: `How can we be sure of the objects of our spirit?', that is, `How can we be sure of what is different from ourselves?' This final question gave rise to critical scepticism, which we are refuting here.

(33) As I said, the intelligence perceives things just as they present themselves without changing or falsifying them. I did not say, however, that things present themselves just as they are. Things are presented to our intelligence by the internal and external feeling in the first place, and we are entitled to ask if feeling presents them without altering, falsifying, restricting and limiting them according to its own form and nature. But these are questions that I shall deal with later when I speak about the certainty of our materiated knowledge, that is, of knowledge as a mixture of matter and form. At the moment, I am speaking simply of pure, merely intellective, formal knowledge. Relative to this kind of knowledge, I think I have shown quite clearly against the critical school that the intelligent spirit possesses no restrictive form with which it may alter and falsify the things it perceives. It has only one, unlimited form. This is the form of all possible forms, totally indeterminate and indifferent, and hence perfectly apt to receive all forms. It is impartial, without fraud or deceit, if I may put it that way. This utterly universal and genuine form is TRUTH itself, as I have shown (cf. 1062–1064).

(34) I refer to the ultimate logical reason presented to us by the fact of our first intuition. In the logical order, there can be no reason beyond this, although there can be other kinds of reasons (final, ontological reasons) in whose series we never attain the vision of the final reason. But we do see the ultimate, logical reasons because this is essential to reason. St. Augustine's celebrated phrase, `Whatever is superior to that (the rational creature) is ipso facto the Creator', has to be understood of this rational order.

(35) The sceptics' error arises also because they confuse existence with the specific essence of anything. When I say that I affirm something as it exists in itself, I do not mean that I perceive it in its real specific essence. Perfect objectivity consists only in perceiving the first of these two things, that is, existence. In other words, it consists in applying the idea of being in general to things. This idea is the source of objectivity and indeed that which properly speaking constitutes objectivity itself. On the other hand, our perception of the essence of things could be mixed with something subjective. This is true especially of our perception of bodies, as we have seen in The Origin of Thought. We repeat, therefore, that the known essence of anything is not always the intact, pure, real, specific essence of that thing. Something can be lacking to known essences, as in the case of generic essences (cf. OT, 646 ss.) or nominal essences especially. Some known essences can also contain subjective elements which, however, it is always possible for us to discern and separate from the objective element, thanks to our faculty of objective perception.

(36) Here, I am consistently referring to ideal being, that is, to the idea of being, not of subsistent being.

(37) I have said elsewhere that the great merit of modern times, which began with Leonardo and Galileo, is to have publicised and popularised the method dependent upon facts. The defect of modern times lies in not practising this method. Many authors are clearly intent on following it and are to be commended for their resolution, although unwittingly they often abandon it. The majority, however, make fools of themselves with their endless boasting about following a method which they practise in appearance only. Their tasteless pride will certainly be mocked in the near future, if not altogether forgotten, by those who come after them. For myself, I am content to note that we do not always carry out what we believe we want and believe we do; much less do we actually carry out what we say we want. As far as arguing according to this method is concerned, I am prepared to affirm that knowing the method in principle is one thing; understanding how to use it in fact is another. We should not give credence too easily to those who insist they know how to follow it; we should first check their ability to do so before entrusting ourselves to beautiful, but possibly empty words.

(38) St. Thomas establishes this method in De Verit., 10, 8. The sceptical followers of transcendental philosophy do the opposite. Instead of saying: `The mind does this; therefore it has the power to do it,' they say: `The mind does not have the power to do this; therefore it can do it only apparently.' They arbitrarily and hypothetically restrict the power of the mind, and on the basis of these arbitrary assumptions declare the facts connected with the mind to be appearances. What they dare not deny plainly and clearly, they deny by equivocation. If the fact exists, it is real and valid; to grant a fact of this kind, and declare it worthless, is a contradiction, as we have said over and over again.

(39) S.T., I, q. 84, art. 2.

(40) S.T., I, q. 84, art. 2.

(41) De An., III, bk. 8. See also S.T., I, q. 75, art. 2: `For it (the intellect) to be able to know something, it must have nothing of what it knows in its nature. Anything naturally present to it would block its knowledge of other things. As we see, the tongue of a sick person, covered with bitter saliva of cholic, cannot taste anything sweet. Everything is bitter for it.'

(42) C. Gentes, II, q. 76.

(43) `The substance of the human soul possesses its own immateriality and therefore an intellectual nature, as we have made clear. Every immaterial substance' (that is, devoid of restrictive and particular form) `is of this kind.' (C. Gent., II, q. 7).

(44) `The intellect, as the possible intellect by which all things come to be, regards its object according to the common notion of being' (S.T., I, q. 79, a. 7).

(45) He says `relative to itself', because the intellect never attains to the knowledge of infinite individuals — individuals themselves never exist in an infinite number. Moreover, the intellect, although not limited per se, is limited by sensation, which presents the intellect with the signs of beings the intellect then comes to know, as I have indicated in my Saggio sui confini dell'umana ragione (Teodicea, 150 ss.). This truth, that sense presents the intellect with the real terms of its activity, also forms part of St. Thomas' teaching. He notes that the universality of form and of the intellect, which consists in a lack of particular forms, is insufficient to allow us to know real things. `Hence' (that is, because the form of the intellect is universal or immaterial), `(the intellect) is still void of what assimilates it to one determinate thing or another. But this is needed if our soul is to know in a determinate way one thing or another . . . The intellective soul, therefore, remains in potency to determinate likenesses of things we can know, that is, to the natures of feelable things. It is the phantasms which PRESENT us with the determinate natures of feelable things, etc.' (C. Gentes, II, q. 77).

(46) S.T., I, q. 86, art. 2.

(47) Itin. mentis in Deum.

(48) This explains St. Thomas' affirmation: `If we consider the universal notions of feelable things, all knowledge is about what is necessary; but if we consider the things themselves, some knowledge is about what is necessary, some about what is contingent' (S.T., I, q. 86, art. 3). This shows that for St. Thomas the necessity of our cognitions comes from their universality. However, this necessity is not total, but relative only to the formal part of our cognitions. He explains this at greater length as follows: `Necessity results from the notion which governs the form, because things which follow as a result of the form are necessarily contained therein . . . A universal notion arises when a form is abstracted from some particular matter. But, as we said above, understanding is per se and directly about universals . . . Contingent things as such are known directly therefore by feeling, but indirectly by the inte llect' (ibid.).

(49) Aristotle ridicules the method used by Plato in establishing his theory of ideas. It seemed to Aristotle that Plato, instead of starting from obvious facts and from what we know in order to explain what we do not know, began from what we do not know to explain what we do know. St. Thomas repeats the admonition, against which Plato would have had no difficulty in defending himself: `It is ridiculous to bring in other entities as middle terms in order to know things which are evident, etc.' (S.T., I, q. 84, art. 1). But St. Thomas' words could be applied more reasonably against Kant who hypothetically introduces unknown forms which are not only incapable of explaining the obvious fact of knowledge, but are contrary to it. Kant describes them as characteristically subjective and restrictive, although knowledge is characterised essentially by its objectivity and absoluteness.

(50) See the moving passage from the Itinerarium quoted in the footnote to 1087 [App., no. 3] where both senses and spirit are excluded as sources of formal knowledge.

(51) In his De Vera Religione St. Augustine establishes this important proposition: the specific difference between the senses and intellect is the power of judgment possessed by the intellect, but not by the senses: `Judgment about bodies requires a being that reasons as well as feels' (c.29). From this principle he deduces that a judgment is hidden in all intellective knowledge, and discovers along with this truth that not all those who judge, judge equally well. Good judgment depends upon the art of judgment which he then undertakes to examine: `It is clear that judging is carried out by a changeable nature which sometimes possesses and sometimes lacks skill in judgment. The greater the skill, the better the judgment. The level of skill, however, depends on the level of the art of judgment . . . in the one who judges. What is the nature of this art, therefore?' (c.30). Having analysed the art of judgment, he discovers t hat it depends upon a rule superior to human beings, that is, on truth, which is essentially united with all intellects. Having thus purified and separated from the rest of knowledge the formal element (this rule, this first form, this truth) by which we judge, St. Augustine demonstrates its superiority to human beings. As independent of them, it is not subjective, but essentially objective and divine.

(52) Shortly after Locke, the problem arose: `How does the soul unite several sensations in a single subject? (NS, 66)'. We explained this fact by means of 1. the identity of space relative to the senses (OT, 941 ss.) and 2. the unity of being relative to the spirit (OT, 961 ss). Relative to the spirit, however, appropriate simplicity and unity are essential. This seems to have been recognised by all modern philosophers who also seem to accept without doubt that unity of perception does not spring from the external senses, but from the internal nature of our spirit. C. Vittore Bonstetten has this to say about the perception of a tree in his paper, Saggio analitico sul fenomeno della sensazione in the Biblioth. universelle etc., rédigée à Genève (March 1830): `The action of the interior sense when modified by the organisation produces the feeling which th en gives rise to the idea of the tree. It is the feeling which, on the canvas prepared by the external organ, chooses the rays designating the tree, and gives to the image of the tree that totally spiritual unity, entirely immaterial, which forms a single whole of the tree. By means of speech we can then move the whole tree around mentally, and from it form thoughts, relationships, abstractions and principles — in a word, everything that the spirit can produce through sensation.'

(53) Itin. ment. etc., 3.

(54) S.T., I-II, q. 51, art. 1, ad 2.

(55) `Any creature whatsoever has only finite, determinate being. The essence of a higher creature, therefore, has some kind of likeness to that of a lower creature because they communicate in some genus, but not a complete likeness. The higher creature is determined to some species beyond that of the lower creature' (hence, the essence of a creature cannot furnish knowledge of things). `But God's essence, as the universal principle of all things, is the perfect likeness of all elements found in things' (so that God alone can understand all things through his essence) (S.T., I, q. 84, art. 2).

(56) De V. Relig., cc. 30, 31.

(57) Conf., bk. 12, c. 25.

(58) St. Augustine, In Ps. `Do not think that you are your own light' (St. Aug., Serm. 8, De verbis Domini).