Part Two

Origin of all ideas in general through the idea of being

CHAPTER 2

Another way of explaining the origin of acquired ideas:
through the formation of human reason

481. We have defined intellect as the faculty of seeing indeterminate being, and reason as the faculty of reasoning and hence primarily of applying being to sensations. Reason sees ens determined to a mode offered by the sensations, and unites form to the matter of cognitions. But if being is the essential object of both intellect and reason, these two faculties (intellect and reason) can exist in us only through our permanent vision of being.

482. Being as object, therefore, draws our spirit to that essential act we call intellect, making it capable of beholding being itself in relationship to the particular modes provided by sensations. We call this capability, reason. In a word, the idea of being joined to our spirit is that which forms our intellect and our reason; it makes us intelligent entia, rational animals.

483. I believe that the teachings which St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure derived from ancient tradition agree with what I have said so far.
St. Thomas, it seems to me, clearly knew that intelligence was simply the power to see being. In other words, he knew that being forms intelligence, for he states expressly that the proper object of the intellect is ens or common truth: objectum intellectus est ens, vel verum commune.(25)
St. Thomas teaches that the object determines the faculty. Ens therefore must be the constitutive element of the intellective faculty.
Again we note that St. Thomas did not neglect in any way the analysis of ideas, an analysis which showed him how the first thing we conceive in any idea whatsoever is ens which, therefore, he calls the first intelligible thing.

484. Here, we must look at my argument, based on the teaching of the great doctor.
St. Thomas describes the form of a thing as the element which can be mentally discerned in the thing. By means of this element the thing is in act at its first moment.(26)
If ens is the first thing our intellect understands in any of its intellections, we have to say that we understand nothing prior to seeing ens in a thing; intellection does not yet exist for us. On the other hand, as soon as we have understood ens in anything whatsoever, intellection is in act; we have already understood something. Ens is therefore the form of intellective knowledge because from the first moment it posits knowledge in act, that is, makes it exist.
Now, if the intellect is the faculty of positing the form of cognitions, and this form can only be ens (as St. Thomas teaches), the first thing seen by the intellect, the first thing that puts it into act, must be the idea of ens which forms human intelligence.(27)

485. The author of the Itinerary came to the same truth. He teaches that 'being is that which first occurs in the mind; this being is pure act',(28) because it posits the mind in act, that is, informs it.
Because being, present in the mind, is truth, he says with St. Augustine: 'The mind is formed by truth.'(29)

486. All philosophers agree that ideas belong to our faculty of knowledge. But this faculty receives its existence from the union of the idea of being with our spirit (cf. 470-485).(30) Therefore, the idea of being, the principle of the faculty of knowledge, is also the principle of all the ideas acquired by this faculty - which is what we had to prove.

(25) S.T., q. 55, art. 1. - He says 'ens', I say 'being'. I do not think it necessary to explain the difference between these two words. It is sufficient to note that the ancients often used one for the other.

(26) The Scholastics define form as: Quod in unaquaque re primo agit [that which acts first in anything whatsoever].

(27) Aristotle calls the intellect species specierum [the species of species]. The commentators who were keen to remove all suspicion of innate things from the minds of Aristotle's readers, readily interpret the Aristotelian expression as meaning the kind of intellect which is a habit of principles and acquired. I do not wish to become involved in a philological question, but will simply observe that the phrase, 'the species of species', would be very suitable to describe the idea of being in all its universality. This most universal idea itself presents all others to our spirit.

(28) ESSE igitur est quod primo cadit in intellectum, et illud esse est quod est purus actus. The explanation, according to Bonaventure, is the clear fact of the matter: Si non ens non potest intelligi nisi per ens (Itin. mentis etc., c. 5).

(29) Cum ipsa mens nostra IMMEDIATE AB IPSA VERITATE FORMETUR etc. (Itin. mentis etc., c. 5). This teaching is repeated almost word for word from Christian antiquity. St. Augustine says precisely that the human mind nulla substantia interposita, ab IPSA FORMATUR VERITATE [IS FORMED by TRUTH, without the mediation of any substance] (cf. the Book of 83 Questions, q. 61). In Section Six I will show that the idea of being in all its universality is precisely that which everyone calls truth; human intelligence is created by union with it.

(30) The way in which the idea of being in all its universality adheres to our spirit will be explained later (cf. 534-535).