Appendix 7. - (177)

Following Reid's comments, Galluppi and Degerando tried to combat the way the ancients viewed ideas, that is, as representations of objects. They said that if this definition of ideas were accepted, there would be no means of knowing whether the representations were true. In other words, it would be impossible to tell whether the idea and the object represented conformed to one another. As a result, scepticism was inevitable. Galluppi writes:

The Scholastics (I have already referred to this, 106) had seen the difficulty and said that the idea was not the object of our thought but merely the means whereby our spirit thought an object. This solution, however, when taken in its most obvious sense, shifted the difficulty a stage further back without solving it. The same may be said about the theory of Galluppi and of others I have mentioned.
The sentence: Ideas grasp and invest external objects is bizarre and poetic; it is unnecessary and moreover false and absurd.
Note simply that it is not enough to know whether ideas seize and grasp objects themselves, as our philosophers put it. We also need to know whether this is merely accidental in the case of some ideas, or whether it constitutes the very nature of ideas.
If investing and grasping really existing objects is essential to ideas, it ought to be true of all ideas. Granted something, what is essential to it can never be lacking because it is this which forms the thing.

If, then, investing and grasping really existing objects by the idea is merely accidental, the first difficulty reappears. It is still necessary to show 1. what an idea is; and 2. how it manages to grasp and envelop an existing object (upon which it is not dependent for its being because the object is accidental to it).
I maintain that ideas cannot all be such as to envelop and grasp the object, which exists for them, and that their association with the object is not essential to them.
To prove this, I use all the arguments which show the diversity and independence of our idea relative to the actual thing. For example, the white in my thoughts is different from and independent of the real white of a wall. This is true not only of the idea of whiteness in general, but also of the idea of whiteness as applied to an individual wall. The idea is different from the real, subsistent wall.

Saint Augustine establishes in similar vein the distinction between the idea and the real thing thought in my idea. He notes that if my idea invested and grasped the object, it would inevitably follow that the thing could not change unless the idea I have of it also changed. Thus, I love Paul because I think he is honest; he might change, unknown to me, and become dishonest while I go on loving him as before. I love Paul, therefore, as my spirit thinks him, and not as he really exists. In other words, I love Paul in the way that he is in my idea, not as he is in himself. It follows that I do not grasp and take him in himself. If he were always in my spirit as he is in himself, I would no longer love him for his uprightness after he had become evil. On the other hand, I may alter my view of someone without his having changed at all; I may wrongly think him wicked after considering him good. In this case, in illo homine nihil mutatum est; - in mente autem mea mutata est utique ipsa existimatio, quae de illo aliter se habebat, et aliter habet [nothing is changed in him - in my mind, however, my past and present opinions of him have changed] (De Trinitate, bk. 9, c. 6). In short, our ideas, if they invested and grasped fully the really existing object, would necessarily be in conformity with it: we would then be infallible. In avoiding the danger of scepticism, we would swing to the other extreme and bestow infallibility on the human spirit.

We cannot say, therefore, that our ideas, per se, invest fully and grasp the really existing object. But we believe that, by means of them, we invest the object and grasp it fully when we refer such ideas to really existing entia experienced by us. To be certain that we are not mistaken in such a belief, we now need some demonstration or argument which I shall endeavour to expound later.
For the present, I merely add another comment to throw light on the difficulty under discussion. I would ask: 'When we refer ideas to really existing things, or rather believe that our idea or, more accurately, our thought invests and grasps something that really exists, does this depend upon the idea? Is it an element which goes to form the idea itself?'

By no means: the idea is completely different from the belief in the existence of a real ens corresponding to the idea (cf. 60, 64, 90, 98). Our idea is perfect and entire even without this belief. Moreover, the belief adds nothing to the idea. It merely imparts to our spirit a belief which is not an idea. Our spirit then comes to know of the real existence of an object through an act entirely different from that by means of which it has the idea. In this way, the operations of the intelligent spirit are two essentially different acts: 1. that with which it has the idea of a thing; 2. that with which it believes that a real thing, existing in se, corresponds to the idea. This distinction of the two main operations of the intellect is of the highest importance.