Part Two

Origin of all ideas in general through the idea of being

CHAPTER 1

Given the idea of being, the origin of other ideas is explained

by analysis of their elements

473. In explaining the origin of acquired ideas through the idea of being which is not acquired but bestowed by nature, I have not been guilty of empty theorising. My first step has enabled me to prove the existence of this one idea, which can now serve to explain all others.(21) Because all ideas are derived from the single idea of being, I now have to show that, granted this idea, all other ideas are readily explained.
Observation itself tends to indicate the idea of being in all its universality as the source of other ideas. Of all ideas it is the simplest and, as we have seen, the least innate element that can be admitted if we wish to explain the origin of ideas (cf. 368 ss.).

474. A careful analysis of our ideas has led us to the following conclusions:

1. All contain essentially the mental conception of being in such a way that we can have no idea of anything without first conceiving possible existence (cf. 408-409), which constitutes the formal, a priori part of our knowledge (cf. 304-309, 325-327).

2. If an idea contains something other than the mental conception of being, this can only be a mode of being. It follows that any idea whatsoever is either ens, conceived regardless of mode, or ens more or less determined by its modes. The determination forms a posteriori knowledge or the matter of knowledge.

475. In order to explain the origin of ideas, two things have to be accounted for: 1. the mental conception of ens; 2. the different determinations of which ens is susceptible.

476. Having shown that the mental conception of being is naturally innate in our spirit, there is no difficulty(22) in indicating sense as the source of the determinations of being.
Let us imagine that we have to explain how we think of a corporeal ens of a given size, form and colour - a football, for instance. When I think of a football, I think two things in my idea: 1. something that can exist, because I could never think a football without thinking at the same time some possibly existing thing; 2. something possessing a given size, weight and shape. Granted I have the idea of possible existence, what have I to do now to explain the way in which I begin to think this football? I have to show how intuited, possible ens is determined by means of weight, shape, size, colour and so on.
This is not difficult; it is clear that such determinations of ens are suggested to my spirit by the exterior senses which perceive them, and that I remember what I have perceived.

477. St. Thomas is far from declaring sense alone as the cause of human cognitions. He too distinguishes between the material and formal cause of ideas. He grants that sense is the matter of their cause but makes the intellect the quality of being truly their formal cause:
We cannot say that sensible knowledge is the perfect and total cause of intellectual knowledge; rather it is in a certain way the MATTER OF THE CAUSE.(23)

478. According to St. Thomas's teaching, therefore (cf. 477), sense provides only the matter of human cognitions; the second element, form, depends upon the intellect. Hence, to interpret the Scholastic dictum, 'There is nothing in the intellect that was not first in sense', as though it meant that sense were the only source of human cognitions, is to misunderstand the saying. This is the error of modern sensists. The authentic meaning of the saying, as it must have been understood by the great Scholastics, could only have been: 'Everything material in human cognitions has its source in sense.'(24) I have already explained what is to be understood by 'everything material' when I said that in all our ideas we think: 1. being, as the formal element of ideas; and 2. a determinate mode of being as their material element. The meaning of the Scholastic dictum, therefore, must be: 'The intellect cannot think a determinate mode of ens unless it is administered to it by sense.'

479. As long as we think indeterminate being alone, we are not thinking anything that subsists or merits to be called 'real thing'. All knowledge of what is real is suggested by the senses; subsistence determines being in such a way that it merits being called real thing.

(21) Newton notes that two conditions are necessary if a hypothesis is to explain facts: 1. the thing assumed to be the cause of the facts really exists, and is not itself a hypothesis; 2. this thing is capable of producing the facts it is intended to explain.In addition to Newton's two conditions, my own way of explaining the origin of ideas fulfils a third condition enabling it to be classed as solid theory rather than hypothesis. Not only do I prove that the idea of being exists with its capacity for generating all other ideas, but I also show that it does in fact generate them. Careful analysis demonstrates that the formal part of ideas consists only in the idea of being. But while I prove that this idea is the (formal) cause of all other ideas, I also show that this cause is a fact. My teaching on the origin of ideas can therefore claim a place amongst the rigorous sciences.

(22) Part One. - St. Thomas also says: 'The intellective soul remains in potency to the DETERMINATE likenesses of knowable things (that is, the natures of sensible things). These determinate natures of sensible things present us with PHANTASMS' (Contra Gentiles, II, 77).According to me, sensations proffer the determinations of things present; images, those of things not present. In St. Thomas, 'phantasms' refer to both.

(23) Non potest dici, quod sensibilis cognitio sit totalis et perfecta causa intellectualis cognitionis, sed magis quodammodo est MATERIA CAUSAE (S.T., I, q. 84, art. 4). In St. Thomas' system, sense is only a secondary agent in the formation of ideas, not the principal agent. His actual words are: In receptione qua intellectus possibilis species rerum (that is, ideas) accipit a phantasmatibus, se habent phantasmata ut agens instrumentale et SECUNDARIUM, intellectus vero agens ut agens PRINCIPALE ET PRIMUM [When the possible intellect receives from the phantasms the species of things (that is, ideas), the phantasms are considered the SECONDARY, instrumental agent, and the acting intellect, the FIRST, PRINCIPALagent] (De verit., q. 10, art. 6, ad 7). Like St. Thomas, the author of the Itinerary of a Soul to God also recognises a double cause of ideas and clearly distinguishes them: Non solum habet (memoria) ab exteriori formari per phantasmata, verum etiam a superiori suspiciendo et IN SE HABENDO simplices formas quae non possunt introire per portas sensuum et sensibilium phantasias [Not only has the memory to be formed from outside by means of phantasms, but also from above by its reception and POSSESSION of simple forms which cannot enter through the doors of the senses and the phantasies of sensible things] (Itin. mentis in Deum, 3).

(24) Nevertheless, 'sense' remains insufficient when understood solely as 'external sense' (the five sense organs). It must also be understood as the internal feeling which the soul has of itself. In fact, how could we form ideas of an intellective being and its operations unless they were supplied by the feeling of ourselves? St. Thomas teaches this expressly in his Contra Gentiles: 'We could not know, either by demonstration or by faith, that separated substances were intellectual substances unless our soul first knew from itself what an intellectual ens is. We must begin from a principle, from knowledge of the understanding in our soul, if we are to arrive at what we know about separated substances' (bk. 3, c. 46). According to St. Thomas, therefore, two sources supply us with the matter of our cognitions in this life: 1. our external senses; 2. the internal feeling of ourselves.For him, sensation and reflection are in no way the source of knowledge (as Locke claimed), but solely the source of the material part of our knowledge. St. Thomas derives his teaching from St. Augustine (cf. St. Thomas, loc. cit.). The teaching is clearly ancient, and assured by a long, respectable tradition.