Chapter 3

The Origin Of The Idea Of Being

467. That the idea of being is innate follows from what has been said already. For:

then the only possibility left is that the idea of being is innate in our soul; we are born with the vision of possible being but we advert to it only much later.

468. This proof by exclusion is final if no other case is possible. That there is none, is shown by the following:

The list of possible cases therefore is complete because it has been reduced to alternatives with a middle term excluded as absurd. But if all the cases which consider the idea of being as given to us after we come into existence are impossible, it remains that the idea of being is innate and not produced. This is what we had to prove.

469. People unused to reflecting on themselves, usually make the following objection: 'How can we have the intuition of the idea of being without being aware of it, without knowing we have it or without stating it?' [...]
Such an objector should first ask himself what happens when he thinks about something that absorbs his attention; does he simultaneously reflect on all the other ideas acquired during life and stored in his memory? Is he actually aware of having them? He would say, I believe, that he can think or talk only of one thing at a time. Yet all kinds of topics and arguments are stored in his mind, ready to be taken out when needed. This fact implies two things: 1. many ideas can be in our mind without our giving them a thought or actually being aware of them, as if they were not there at all; 2. we cannot turn from one idea to another without some act on our part by which we disregard what we are now thinking of in order to attend to what was indeed stored in our mind but lay neglected and unnoticed.

I do not need to explain here how this is possible; observation tells us it is, and this is sufficient for the present. Nor do we need to discover the nature of facts or ideas lying unnoticed in the memory --- this is irrelevant. Nothing more is required than ordinary observation which attests to the two points we have noted.

But if we need a new act of attention in order to be aware of and enuntiate new ideas, it follows that some ideas must remain unobserved and unnoticed in our spirit until some stimulus directs our attention to them. It is neither absurd nor strange, therefore, that the idea of being itself, lies in our soul unobserved and unenuntiated in the first moments of our existence. It cannot be otherwise, for what in fact do we observe about ourselves when we are born? So even the idea of being remains unnoticed until our reflection is stimulated to find it and contemplate it. But after reflection has sufficiently distinguished it, the idea can be enuntiated and stated without hesitation.

470. This is what happens in fact. In the first moments of our existence, our spirit has nothing to excite and direct it to reflect on itself; it has no interest nor stimulus in turning inward. In fact everything that affects a human being draws him away from himself by directing his attention to external, feelable things. From the beginning his sense-organs are struck from all directions by countless new impressions; the baby's eyes are enchanted by light, his palate and stomach cry out for nourishment; he has no interest in his spirit; he is totally unaware of his thoughts and ignorant of his nobler part. Philosophy and profound self-knowledge do not begin in the cradle, where even the body remains in great part unknown. Yet the baby has an intellect and heart as well as a body.

As the child grows, and reflection is stimulated, he begins to philosophise (philosophy is nothing but a kind of inner reflection). The philosopher's very effort to discover what takes place within him is sufficient to confirm that feelings and ideas take place unnoticed in our soul and intellect where they do indeed exist, although we pay no attention to them nor mention them to others.

In fact, to be aware of an idea in our mind, we must not only note it attentively but be drawn to do so by some special need or curiosity, although even when stimulated in this way we do not find and determine the idea quickly, always or effortlessly. If ideas and events in our spirit were continually present to us, human philosophy would be a waste of time; everybody would be a philosopher or, rather, would be intimately informed about the spirit without the accurate, philosophical meditations required to ascertain what is in us. No philosopher would know more than another, nor correct another's observations, nor affirm about our spirit what a colleague had denied. To sum up, no matter how strange it may seem, observation forces us to conclude that an idea may exist in our mind without conscious advertence, awareness, affirmation or declaration on our part; we could be unaware of it and unable to affirm it to ourselves or others.

This objection, therefore, does not dissuade us from positing the idea of being as innate. It is certain that in the first moments of our existence, and for a long time after, we are unable to observe this idea because: 1. our attention lacks a reason or stimulus for concentrating interiorly on our spirit rather than on external matters, or for focusing on what is happening within when everything draws it outside; 2. even when our attention is sufficiently stimulated in early adulthood to search for what is present and taking place in our spirit, it cannot easily discover this idea of pure being. If we wish to see the idea directly as it is, there is nothing to draw our attention to it; if we want to find pure being in the ideas we already have, which are ideas of bodies, a very difficult abstraction is required to isolate it from the other elements composing these ideas. We reach this idea only through a final abstraction, after all the accidents, forms and modes of being of an object have been distinguished and separated from it (cf. 408-411).

The spirit needs much practice to be sufficiently capable of prolonging a series of abstractions to the final point where it discovers the idea of being. Very few people have the ability and time to do this. Many give up, abandoning the path that would lead to the discovery of the reflex idea, if only they had the courage to follow it. [...]