Part Two

Origin of all ideas in general through the idea of being

CHAPTER 4

Fourth way of explaining the origin of acquired ideas in general:
by means of a summary classification of the ideas themselves

505. I define intellection as every act of the mind terminating only in an idea, or in an idea joined to something else, or forming a mode of an idea.

506. All our intellections are classified as follows:
I. Intellective perceptions.
II. Ideas properly so-called.
III. Modes of ideas.(36)

Intellective perception is the judgment I make persuading me of the subsistence of something (cf. 491). It springs from two elements, judgment on the subsistence of the thing, and the idea of the thing.

507. It will be helpful if we distinguish modes of ideas from ideas, retaining the word idea for the complete species, as Plato did (cf. 501) [App., no. 11] and the phrase modes of ideas for abstractions and composite ideas.

508. Normally, however, these modes are also called ideas, whether abstract or composite. Thus there would be three classes of ideas: 1. ideas properly so-called; 2. abstract ideas; and 3. composite ideas. In this case, the sources of the three classes are the three faculties already listed: the faculty of universalisation, which produces ideas properly so-called, one of which is the perfect idea (cf. 503); the faculty of abstraction, which produces abstract ideas; and the faculty of synthesis of ideas, which produces composite ideas.

509. However, abstract and composite ideas do not contain more than full ideas (cf. 507). All three kinds of ideas are distinguished only by the different way in which our mental attention focuses upon them. Ideas are full(37) if we think of them as they first show themselves; abstract when we consider any part of them, disregarding other parts (abstraction, analysis); composite when they are considered as joined to other ideas (synthesis). These names indicate three modes of intellectual attention, and hence three modes of ideas which are objects of attention; but strictly speaking, they do not indicate three classes of ideas.

510. Our mind carries out three successive operations: 1. it perceives intellectually; 2. it separates the idea from the perception; 3. it draws abstracts from ideas, that is, the bonds which unite ideas and produce composite ideas.(38) The first operation is carried out by means of universalisation, the second by an abstraction exercised on the perceptions, the third by an abstraction exercised on ideas already formed.

511. No faculty of reflection [App., no. 12] is necessary for universalisation. Universalisation is a direct, natural action of our spirit which, abandoning the judgment on subsistence that forms part of perception, retains the determinate idea, that is, the union between what is felt and the idea of being, brought about by the unity of the sentient subject intuiting the idea of being. The determinable idea of being and the thing felt that determines the idea happen to find themselves together in the same subject and are joined by identity, as it were, of place.

512. Abstraction on the contrary is an operation belonging to the faculty of reflection. It is clear that I cannot abstract anything from my perception unless I turn back on it, just as I cannot abstract anything from my idea until I consider it reflectively.

513. The primal synthesis containing universalisation is not deliberately thought out, although it is bound up with an external element. It is carried out, or at least helped, by an alert understanding inserted in human beings by nature. It is as though the human being, through his essential understanding of being, had an eye open to everything passing before him. In this case, it is not difficult to understand that, given sensations, the primal synthesis is achieved spontaneously by the soul which, relative to the synthesis, is already active by its own power. There is no need for me to explain how the spirit moves towards universalisation once its first, essential activity has been demonstrated and established. It would be like explaining at length how the sun illuminates an object on which it shines when it is already known that the sun radiates light continually on everything around. But it is still necessary for me to describe universalisation accurately, and analyse it into all its parts.

Abstraction, on the contrary, is an act of reflection, which is a faculty dependent on the will and of itself remains motionless until activated by the will. We have to find, therefore, a sufficient reason to explain the will's desire to reflect upon perceptions and ideas, to abstract ideas from perceptions, and to draw abstract ideas from ideas. Lack of a sufficient reason for the movement towards reflection would leave unexplained the acts of the faculties, the origin of abstract ideas, and the composite ideas springing from them.
In attempting the explanation, we suppose that perceptions are already formed. But we shall come back to them later, and show how they can be brought about by means of the primal synthesis.

514. Our reasoning faculty has no energy of itself independently of external stimuli. This truth can be shown from experience, and from the nature of human intelligence.
If we were left solely to ourselves and to the internal forces arising from our nature, without our being affected in any way by forces foreign to us, we would be incapable of activating ourselves or carrying out any intellective operation. If the Almighty were to keep us in this state of isolation from other entia for thousands of years, we would remain motionless without a single thought. We would be totally at rest, with inactive minds, because stimuli and terms would be lacking; our life could be compared only to non-existence. This kind of life, may I say in passing, is a worthy object of philosophical consideration, and a key for explaining marvellous secrets in the study of human beings.
Theodicy, no. 90

Summing up, therefore, we have to see what kind of stimulus is needed for: 1. perception; 2. ideas; and 3. abstract ideas. We must also discover how the reason is activated relative to all three.

515. Our spirit cannot perceive anything not present to its perceptive faculty.(39)

Thus the human being can neither feel nor think unless some term is presented to this faculty; without this term, he remains in the first state of immobility described above, bound by one of the limitations of human intelligence.
It follows that the action of our spirit is limited by its term. But although it is the term that draws our intelligent spirit to act and find rest after acting, we also have to say that the presence of a term provides an explanation only for the special activity of the spirit to which it gives rise and offers repose.
A term is incapable of explaining any activity of a different nature or grade higher than that which is carried out in the term.

516. According to these principles, bodily elements experienced by our senses can move the spirit only to perception, not to abstraction or some other act. Although sensations present sensible things to our spirit and give rise to a new activity beyond the innate activity of seeing being, the activity of our spirit is limited and finalised by the terms themselves. The activity of our spirit stimulated by sensible things cannot therefore exceed and surpass sensible things. Thus sensible things cannot provide sufficient explanation for the formation of abstracts, which are insensible objects, by our spirit.

If sense presents me with something corporeal, I have no difficulty in understanding how my intelligence can be attracted and moved to see such a corporeal ens. Because my intelligence is naturally awake and active, the appearance of a term is sufficient to stimulate attention and vision. But what meaning is to be attached to 'the presentation of such a term to the intelligence'? What is it that presents the term to the intelligence? Only feeling; nothing else can do it. As sensitive beings we receive the action of corporeal agents in us by means of our sense organs. Because the agent is in us through its activity on us, it is present where it can be seen by our understanding. It is not difficult to grasp how we see that which is in us. As I have said, we have already opened the seeing eye of our intellect to the vision of all that takes place within us, in so far as it operates through the senses (cf. Theodicy, no. 153).

In a word, we can understand how sensible things are capable of attracting our spirit to themselves, and how what is felt can be grasped by us. Everything needed by our mind for such an operation is present. We have: 1. the faculty, intelligence; 2. the terms presented to us, which stimulate our intelligence to an act terminating in them. Granted sensations, there is no difficulty in understanding that intelligence forms for itself perceptions of corporeal individuals.(40) In other words, what is felt requires nothing more than itself in order to be perceived by us intellectually.

517. We can go a step further. People do not always mistake the corporeal images of what they see for subsisting things themselves; they understand the difference, whatever it may be, between real things and their images. It is at least probable, therefore, that these images stimulate us to form pure ideas, devoid of any persuasion of the actual presence and subsistence of entia. Thus, just as sensations occasion intellectual perceptions, so weaker images occasion ideas of corporeal entia, devoid of persuasion and judgment about their subsistence. This kind of abstraction, which separates ideas from perceptions, seems to find its explanation in phantasms or corporeal images in the same way that perceptions of bodies have their explanation in sensations.

518. Intellective perceptions and full, specific ideas follow sensations and phantasms. Sensible things, therefore, granted their presence, provide sufficient explanation: 1. for all the activity unfolded in human beings through feeling and corporeal imagery; 2. for all the activity manifested in human beings through the laws of animal instinct corresponding to those two faculties; finally 3. for all the activity shown in the formation of perceptions and full, specific ideas of corporeal things.

Let us consider briefly the nature and limitation of this third kind of activity. Intellective perceptions and full, specific ideas of material things are such that they follow and are indivisibly joined to what is felt and what is imagined. Intellective perception contains a judgment that what is felt subsists, but nothing more. It terminates in a particular felt thing, and is therefore an idea joined with sense perception, to which it adds judgment about subsistence. Idea and sensation are bound together in intellective perception and obliged to move in harmony like a pair of human eyes. More accurately, we could say perhaps that the idea is like an impetuous horse yoked to a plodding ox whose lumbering pace it has to tolerate.

An idea joined to a sensation cannot extend beyond the limits of the sensation; by this kind of idea, human beings are confined to the sphere of movements and actions common to animal sense and instinct. This explains why people separated as infants from society and left without human companionship or language are in a pitiable state when found later after years in which their only stimulus has been natural sensations. They have been unable to rise above the sensible things comprising animal life, and their only guide has been instinctive behaviour. They are not without reason which, however, follows instinct instead of guiding it. Their way of life could not be called human in the sense used of life amongst people born and reared in society. The same is true, more or less, of the uneducated deaf and dumb, and is what we would expect on the basis of the principle established above: 'The action of our spirit is limited by its term' (cf. 515).

As long as the term of the spirit is limited to corporeal elements (which in this case we presume not to have reached the status of signs), the human being, whose activity is limited to and completed by them, can think only of bodily, individual things. His ideas are always tied to sensations and images, from which they cannot be separated. The spirit can go no further; sensations and instincts are its sole guide.

519. Abstraction is carried out in two ways on what is present in our intelligence. Broadly speaking, it is exercised on our perceptions by separating ideas from them; strictly speaking, it is exercised on ideas from which it produces abstract ideas (cf. 494-498). Both operations may be carried out by reflection, which is however indispensable for the second.

Abstraction exercised on perceptions consists in fixing one's attention solely on the apprehension of a thing (idea), to the exclusion of judgment on the thing's subsistence. Exercised on ideas, abstraction consists in reflecting upon them while fixing attention on a single part of what is contained and thought in the idea. The part reflected upon may be an essential or an accidental element of the whole ens considered in the idea. The first type of abstraction leaves the idea whole and entire, still a complete object with all its parts; only persuasion about the object's subsistence is lacking.

520. Persuasion about the subsistence of anything can be disregarded not only through reflection, but naturally, as we have indicated, by means of the corporeal images remaining in us and reactivated according to certain animal laws governing our internal sensibility. Such images are not always sufficiently vivid, complete, consistent and coherent to prevent human beings from knowing them as different from the real, present things actively impressing themselves on our external sensory organs.

521. How then is reason activated to form abstracts? If sensations and images are incapable of activating it for this purpose, what other stimulus will draw it to the growth and development implied in its possession of abstracts?

First, in order to remove possible objections, we must note that 'the natural act of the intelligent spirit in focusing on being is totally insufficient to turn the mind to abstractions.' Being is the ever-present object, holding our spirit in a first act constituting human intelligence. But the spirit's activity ends and comes to rest in its object, not outside it (cf. 515). The object, being in all its universality, instigates in the spirit only the activity of terminating and resting in it. This primal activity of our spirit, therefore, is an immanent act, unmoved by any accidental disturbance; it is a firm, uniform, continuous vision of being, and nothing more. As an immobile, direct act, it provides no explanation of the spirit's activity in applying itself to particular entia and their (abstract) modes.

As we shall see immediately, our mind is moved to make abstractions by signs. An abstract idea is only part of an idea. Hence, our spirit's activity in forming abstract ideas will be explained if we can show what motivates it to suspend its attention from the idea as a whole and concentrate exclusively on a part of it. It is this discriminatory activity which needs causal explanation.

Let us take as an example the abstract idea of humanity. Sense offers our understanding the matter with which to perceive real human beings. The general notion of humanity, however, deprived of all the accidents proper to single individuals, does not fall under our senses nor possess any sensible elements. Images of human beings already perceived will be activated in us (with varying degrees of vividness) by similar sensations either accidentally or through some internal movement in the nerves. They will provide some impetus for my intelligence, but only enough for me to form a full idea of one or more human types. The idea of humanity is altogether different: it is not a sensation, not a corporeal image, not an object of perception, nor an idea detached from perception. How then can it be explained?

The law we have discovered and established about forces that move our attention may be stated thus: 'Our spirit is drawn to the act of perception by the terms presented to it' (cf. 515). But can humanity which is not real and does not exist be presented to us in person? Obviously some vicarious sign of it is needed. Humanity has no existence outside the mind and cannot draw the mind's attention to itself except through a sensible sign which, existing outside the mind, can take the place of that idea and in some sense cause it to subsist. The mind cannot be stimulated to think abstract ideas which have no corresponding realities, unless sensible signs replace, represent or activate such realities in our minds. But how can signs perform this task?

Both natural and conventional signs, especially words, express everything added to them by tacit or express agreement. They are equally suitable for indicating a subsistent thing, a sensation, an image, a complete idea or part of an idea, or a single quality common to several objects and isolated from them, even though this quality does not subsist outside the mind in which it has its existence as an ideal object. If words can do all this, as we see they can, it is obvious that in the same way as they draw our attention to what subsists by indicating and expressing it, so they can draw our attention to any other meaning they may have. When they are used to indicate abstract ideas, they can draw us to them in such a way that our attention is limited to and concentrated upon the abstract qualities signified by the words; anyone listening wants to understand what the word says, and nothing more.

522. Note that I do not intend to deal with questions of fact about the divine or human origin of language, nor with the philosophical question of the possibility of language [App., No. 13]. I take language as it is transmitted by the society in which we are born, and proceed to affirm that it is suitable for stimulating the attention of the child, who hears language from the moment of its birth, to discover the meaning of the sounds, and to find amongst the different meanings the ideas of qualities and relationships continually named and expressed by the words.

Nor is it my intention to describe in detail the fact I have in mind, or to show how natural language is the child's first key to its understanding of artificial and conventional language. Daily experience is sufficient to show clearly that children first understand words expressing subsistent, real things related to their needs, instincts and affections, and then come to understand and speak the whole language. This is enough to remove any doubt about language's capacity for drawing attention to abstract ideas, that is, to forming them, because in every language and reasoning and judgment, the most noble and important part is formed by abstractions.

If language can achieve what is impossible to sensations, images, and the idea of being, it follows that the child's development towards the use of abstractions is totally dependent upon the assistance provided by language. A good negative example of what I mean is found in human beings lost as children, and later rediscovered as adults incapable of speech. They give no sign whatsoever of having conceived abstractions mentally, nor of being raised in any way above the level of material, individual objects. The same can be said about uneducated deaf-mutes.

523. It may be objected that free, human activity, which renders human beings master of their own powers, can direct attention where it wills, and specifically to ideas in their entirety, or to parts of ideas. This intrinsic activity, by which human beings deliberately restrict their attention to part of an idea and to a single common quality, could enable them to form abstract ideas without need of signs determining and fixing these qualities and parts by removing and separating them from the whole.

524. Careful observation of the laws and conditions according to which our free activity is employed is sufficient to overcome this objection.
First, we certainly know that human activity is stimulated in two ways, instinctively and deliberately.
So far we have spoken of the instinctive stimulation of activity: the act is drawn out physically, as it were, by its term when the impression made by an agent draws the sense to feel, and the sensation stimulates the imaginative faculty. All this depends upon sense instinct. But there is also rational instinct,(41) drawn naturally by sensation to the perception of the corporeal agent, and by the phantasm to the idea, that is, to the object, without added persuasion of its subsistence.

I grant that instinct also leads human beings to express outwardly, by words, gestures and even sounds, what they feel and understand inwardly. Moreover this instinct, in so far as it is sense instinct, generates inarticulate noises and exclamations, expressive of feeling; in so far as it is rational instinct, it will proffer a few articulate words, signs of perceptions and ideas. But such instincts will never bring human beings to express what they have not yet mentally conceived, such as abstractions. Sense instinct and rational instinct have these limits beyond which they cannot progress. Can free will make these instincts go further, without the stimuli and assistance human beings receive from the society of their fellows?
Free will is conditioned by a law requiring it to have an end as sufficient reason for its acts.

Free, intelligent will cannot therefore do anything without having an end in view that enables it to be active and mobile. The aim bringing me to restrict my intellectual vision to a quality common to many objects, whilst ignoring all other qualities, is my natural desire to produce abstract ideas.

But can I propose to form abstract ideas for myself if I do not have or know any, and am unable to see how they can help me, or what value they have for me? It is certain that no one can propose for himself an aim of which he is ignorant, and in which he sees no advantage or need. In our case the necessary condition enabling the free will to impel itself to discover abstract ideas is lacking. The sufficient reason, the end from which it gains its motivation, is unknown, as is the good obtainable from this end. Thus there is no knowledge to interest and move the will to abstract ideas.
My free will cannot urge and direct my intelligence to abstract mental concepts without its first possessing some abstract mental conceptions.

It cannot move the intelligence to an abstract idea if it is ignorant of all abstract ideas: voluntas non fertur in incognitum [the will is not borne towards the unknown]; it lacks all stimulus. Nor can the free will direct the intelligence because it lacks any notion of the proposed object to serve as a rule with which to guide the intelligence. But if our free will needs abstract ideas before it can form abstract ideas, we have to conclude that it is impossible to explain the formation of these ideas by free, human activity without language.

525. We have seen that signs are needed if human free will is to motivate itself to form abstract ideas. We must now add that abstract ideas are always necessary to our will if it is to be able deliberately to move the other powers.
The will does not, in fact, decide to move its powers, the attention, for example, except for some good which it understands.
But activating oneself for some good presupposes an abstraction, that is, some relationship of end to means, which of its nature is an abstract idea.

526. Moreover, how can I deliberately move my attention from one idea to another except through a relationship binding together in some way the ideas to which I successively move my attention? Every relationship between two things or ideas is an abstract, that is, neither the one idea nor the other, but a connection that each has with my mind as it thinks them; every relationship, therefore, is an abstraction.

Let us imagine that I decide to go to a spa for health reasons. As I deliberate, I think of the suitability of the spa for a cure; I think of the journey in front of me, and the means I shall need to reach my destination. This suitability and these means are both abstract ideas.
I could also imagine myself thinking through all the new knowledge I have gained from conversation with some cultured person. What binds together the series of thoughts running through my mind? I cannot distinguish them from all other thoughts, and look upon them as a class in themselves except through an abstract idea, a relationship common to all the knowledge acquired through my conversation. This common quality or relationship enables me to review on its own the knowledge acquired in this conversation.
If I make up my mind to think, and decide to choose one argument from the many which could presently exercise my intelligence, I must be acting for an end, for a reason, for some idea bound up with that argument; and this bond is an abstract.

Without abstracts, therefore, I cannot use my free will, nor can I direct my intelligence in one way rather than another. Abstracts bind together my particular ideas, and provide a passage from one to another. Without abstracts, ideas would remain totally divided and separate from one another. My attention would be fixed upon each of them individually without its being able to turn towards them as a group and embrace them collectively in a general view. There would be no reasoning because the whole operation of understanding would end where feeling itself ends. Abstractions are of the utmost importance.

527. We have seen that abstracts are obtained with the help of language coming to us through human society.
The proposition I set out to demonstrate is, therefore, true and irrefutable: 'Language is necessary to make us masters of our own powers'; and every great advance made by mankind is due to this immense benefit which we receive from the society of our peers.

528. At our birth, nature endows us with the intellective perception of ourselves and of bodies.
In fact the only way we can perceive(42) the subsistence of an ens, is when we feel its action in us.
Feeling therefore is necessary for the intellective perception of some subsistent thing.
Now the only feeling we have is: 1. of ourselves; 2. of bodies.
Therefore we have intellective perception only of ourselves [App., no. 14] and of bodies.

529. If one of the two kinds of perception is explained, the explanation of the other will follow. Let us take the explanation of the perception of bodies.
We recall that we are 1. affected by sensations which 2. immediately tell us that something exists (judgment) and 3. is determined by the way it affects us (idea of bodies).
There is no need to explain sensations (the first part) in this sequence because we start with it as a simple, basic fact.
Nor do we need to explain the nature of the idea of bodies (the third part), that is, the way something judged to exist is limited and determined by sensations. I shall try to do this in a later chapter when I examine our idea of bodies.

What must be done here is give a satisfactory explanation of the judgment we make as a result of sensations: 'Something different from us exists.' This judgment gives rise to the perception of bodies, that is, the persuasion of their actual particular existence (subsistence).

530. The idea of being in us does not by itself make us know any particular ens but only the possible existence of any ens.
Existence means actuality, because the concept of existence is only the concept of a first action (cf. 350-352). So it is impossible for me to conceive existence mentally without conceiving an act of existing, since both these expressions mean exactly the same. The act of existing can be thought in two ways, either by not applying it to anything real or by applying it to something real.

If I think the actuality of existence without applying it to anything real, I think the possibility of entia and nothing more, which is the idea given us by nature. If I think the actuality of existence in something real, I think of what I call subsistence or real ens. This is the judgment that produces intellective perception and is what I want to explain.

When I make this judgment I add nothing to the idea of existence (cf. 402-407); all I do is concentrate on the existence I have thought of in something real. Such an action of my spirit takes place when I think of actual existence in all its universality. To think of actual existence means to think a first action (cf. 530). Sensations are actions in us of which we are not the authors. As actions, sensations suppose a first action, an existence. Sensations are also determinate actions and therefore suppose a determinate first action. A determinate first action is an ens existing in a determinate way. If we compare the experience we have (through sensations) with the idea of actual existence, we find that this experience is a particular case of what we were thinking previously with the idea of existence. We were thinking an action with this idea but not affirming or determining it. In the sensation, or more correctly in what is felt, we know a determinate ens, a definite body.(43) But because we naturally think of the action in itself (existence), so in experiencing an action (a sensation) our spirit notes the action itself in its limitations. We recognise it precisely through what we were previously thinking by saying to ourselves: 'This is one of the actions (or a grade and mode of action) that I was thinking with my spirit.' The act of noting this particular case, of recognising what is happening in us as part of what we were previously thinking, forms the perception of the real thing, that is, the judgment we are examining.

In this judgment we focus our spirit (which previously had nothing to concentrate on but rested immobile in empty and uniform possible being) on a particular, limited ens in which it finds being realised. It notices what it already knows, it finds, we may say, what it was seeking. This explains how we make a comparison and judgment between what is felt and the idea of being. It also explains how what is felt becomes the subject in so far as it is contained in the idea of being, the predicate.

To understand this more clearly, let sensation and indeterminate existence, the two things we wish to compare, be reduced to the same terms. Both are actions, but indeterminate existence is action void of real conditions; sensation is action limited by real conditions and determinations. There is nothing extraordinary then in my noticing and recognising a particular action when I already possess the notion of universal action. From action it is easy to come to ens, which, as I have said, is nothing but first action. If there is an action there must be a first action, for no second action can exist without first action.

531. This description of perception can, it seems to me, throw light on the meaning of the word of the mind, mentioned by the ancients. When we have the idea of a thing, we do not know whether it subsists.(44) Granted that we make a judgment with which we affirm the subsistent thing, this act is the word of the mind.(45)

532. This word is produced by means of the efficacy of the will which fixes and determines what I am thinking of by assent to the belief that the thing subsists. Hence, it is not a simple idea or species but the affirmation of something determinate which corresponds to an idea as its type or exemplar.(46)

533. If my mind possessed only pure ideas or species, it would intuit only pure possibility without affirming anything or saying anything.
External language, as well as the internal language of the mind, begins only when the mind notes some subsistent ens. As long as the mind does not think of an ens as subsistent, it says nothing and pronounces no word; it contemplates in perfect silence, still totally dumb.
Only the impulse of internal and external sensations draws the mind out of its silence to say that something subsists. Sensations are therefore the starting point of every discourse and word of the mind.(47)

534. That which is conceived only as possible by the idea is pronounced as subsistent by the word.(48)
The thing as thought (idea) stands in relationship to the real as thing (expressed by the word) as potency to act.
This is why I said that the ideal object and the real agent are reduced to one, single nature (cf. 530). The subsistent ens is the first action conceived by us (with the idea). This action, however, needs to pronounce it in its real mode.(49)

535. Must our spirit immediately perceive some ens when it has sensations?
This question of fact is not relative to my purpose at the moment; I am concerned with a different kind of necessity relative to perception. I maintain that if our spirit understands something, it must understand in the way I have described, that is, by the primal judgment through which it recognises that the being it is thinking has a subsistence in the way determined and limited by the sensations it has received.

What I have said so far demonstrates this necessity. I have shown that the essence of understanding subsistent things is nothing other than giving such assent or forming the judgment I have described.
In fact, granted that our spirit has the idea of being and necessarily always sees it; granted that this idea is what forms our intellect and reason (cf. 480-485); and granted therefore that the nature of intelligent spirit consists in intuiting being, then the law of intelligence is: 'To conceive nothing except as an ens, a thing.'(50)

536. This law of intelligence is neither subjective nor arbitrary; it is necessary in that its contrary cannot be thought.
Indeed, it would be a contradiction in terms to say our spirit knows things presented to it without its conceiving anything. But to conceive something is the same as conceiving an ens.
The general formula therefore that expresses the necessary nature of intellectual perception is: 'Judging, affirming, being persuaded that an ens subsists with its determinations.'

To clarify the matter further, let us suppose that we have received sensations from bodies but do not have the interior power to see an ens and therefore could not consider the sensations in relationship with being. In this case our spirit would have been modified by corporeal sensations without their appearing as determinations of being; we would not perceive a determinate ens, a subsisting thing, a body. To perceive a body is to perceive a determinate ens. The sensations would not be perceived by our understanding; they would remain only in our feeling, and therefore we would know nothing. To be able to know a body (the name 'body' itself was invented as a result of intellective perception) as well as feel it, we must have the power to see a determinate ens where the sensation is.
The intelligent spirit therefore does not know except by means of the idea of being. To know is only to conceive a determination of possible or common being, a determination that makes possible being an individual ens.

537. What has been said answers the Cartesian question, 'Is the soul always thinking?'
The soul is intelligent because it has continually the vision of being (cf. 535).
Intelligence, therefore, is an essentially active,(51) thinking faculty, not because it has present to it all ideas, but solely the first idea, being. With this idea, which is its light,(52) it sees and distinguishes what the senses provide (in the way I have explained), and understands when other reasoning entia speak.
I have also explained (cf. 469-470) why we remain for a long time unaware of the idea of being, even though it is joined inseparably with us from the first moment of our existence.

538. We can now see clearly why I used the ancient likeness of the tabula rasa(53) to describe the state of our intelligence at the first moment of our existence.
This likeness, understood in the following way, fits the argument well.
The tabula rasa is indeterminate being, present to our spirit.

Because this being has no determination at all, it is like a perfectly uniform board devoid of all writing. As a result, it receives any kind of sign and impression made upon it. This means that the idea (totally indeterminate being) is determinate and equally applied to anything felt, to any form or mode presented to us through the external or internal senses. From our birth, therefore, we do not see characters but a clean sheet of paper devoid of any writing; there is nothing at all on this paper for us to read; it is a sheet which has only susceptibility (potency) to receive any writing, that is, any determination of particular existence [App., no. 15].

(36) Memory and imagination form part of these intellections. Memory is concerned with past intellections, the imagination with intellections formed in the likeness of others already experienced. But examining them here would complicate matters.

(37) When first generated, the ideas of things are full species (that is, they possess all the substantial and accidental constitutives of things), but they are not perfect species because they are not produced by perfect things. Species are perfected by another operation of the spirit which I call integration.

(38) Composite ideas are brought about by reflection after the formation of abstract ideas. After explaining reflection and abstract ideas, it is not difficult to understand how composite ideas come about, and hence unnecessary to explain them further at this point.

(39) Not as bodies are present to one another, but as the terms of acts are present to the spirit that carries them out.

(40) I am speaking of external sensations. The same can be said about internal feeling.

(41) The active faculty of rational instinct corresponds to the receptive faculty of being (intellect). Spontaneity properly speaking means the mode of operation of sense instinct, rational instinct or moral instinct.

(42) We can believe and be persuaded that other beings subsist but this must not be confused with perception, which takes place directly through our external and internal senses.

(43) Thus it is very easy for a child to pass from sensations to making a judgment on subsisting entia. This judgment is only an intellective perception carried out by the very nature of the child's intelligence. In many theories the judgments made by children in their early years on the existence of substances and causes are inexplicable.

(44) When I speak about the idea of a thing, it seems I am positing two elements: 1. idea, and 2. thing. But this is not so. There is a single object, but with two relationships, in the thought of something possible. If I consider in itself the object I am thinking about, I say it is something or essence; if I consider it relative to the mind, I call it idea. Hence the simple idea (species) does not contain the word, which is the the subsistent thing as pronounced, that is, affirmed as subsistent. The thing I am thinking about can be considered in itself, not because it exists without reference to a mind but because it acts as exemplar with which an intelligent ens can imagine or even produce. Idea of a thing therefore means simply possible thing, exemplar, according to which the intelligent ens thinks and acts.

(45) The word of the mind exists when I fix my mind on something subsistent and assent to its subsistence. Hence I can think 1. about an actually subsistent thing (perception); 2. about a thing that was subsistent and perceived by me (memory of the perception); 3. about a thing which I did not perceive as subsistent but believe on another's authority (faith about subsistence) - in all these three operations, whether I err or not, I always form a word of the mind, that is, I say and pronounce a subsistent thing; and 4. I pronounce a word even when I consider subsistent that which in itself is not subsistent, either mistakenly or in my imagination or because my reasoning is aided by suppositions.

(46) St. Thomas says, 'The species, and the word generated by the species, are accidents because the soul is their subject. Nevertheless, the word rather than the species takes on the likeness of substance' (this must be the case because the word is an assent to a determinate subsistence). In fact, 'the word, which is precisely what can be formed interiorly by means of the species, comes closer to representing the (subsistent) thing than the bare species itself because 1. the intellect strives to arrive at the quiddity of the thing, and 2. the quiddity of the substance' (the subsistence of the thing) 'is virtually in the species in a spiritual mode' (that is, as possible) 'in such a way that it' (the thought of subsistence) 'can be accurately formed from the species' (Opusc. 14). Clearly, nothing more is required to form the word than the species and idea of a thing. We can in fact imagine a thing corresponding to the idea we have. For example, the sculptor imagines the statue in the block of marble before him, so that even the human imagination has in some way its own word. This is the sum total of the creative power in our sense-powers.

(47) Aquinas, following St. Augustine, defines word as 'a kind of emanation of the intellect' (S.T., I, q. 34, art. 2). Elsewhere he says, 'Strictly speaking, a word is that which the intelligent being forms by understanding' (Opusc. 13). This is the definition, or any enunciation whatsoever about something.

(48) This observation is expressed in scientific, Scholastic language as follows: 'Universal knowledge' (that is, the species, which is always universal) 'makes us know a thing in potency rather than in act' (St. Thomas, Contra Gent., I, 50). To say that we know a thing in potency means simply thinking the thing as possible. As a result, many Scholastic expressions which are now obscure and even awkward and clumsy, contain clear, excellent matter when divested of their antiquated form.

(49) Anyone who notes this distinction between idea and word will in my opinion understand Plato's distinction between true opinion and knowledge. The latter was about ideas, possibles; the former, about existent particular things (word). When we affirm something as true or false, we are using attributes of opinion, not of knowledge which, according to Plato and St. Augustine, is always true (De Trin., bk. 50). In the Timaeus, Plato distinguishes knowledge from true opinion when he says that 'the first is insinuated by teaching, the second by the persuasion we form'. In fact, when we judge something as subsistent, we do not acquire a new teaching; we already knew the thing, of which we had the idea. But we do acquire a new persuasion of its subsistence by assenting to its subsistence. An acception must be made however in the case of necessarily subsistent being, that is, essential being, in the perception of which word and idea are identified.

(50) The famous statement of the Schools, is in harmony with this teaching: intellectus habet operationem circa ens in universali [the intellect has an action relative to ens in all its universality] (cf. St. Thomas, S.T., I, q. 79, art. 2); St Thomas, too, is of the same mind: intellectus respicit rationem entis [intellect beholds the nature of ens] (S.T., I, q. 79, art. 9). We see again the Scholastics' teaching that quod non est, non intelligitur, nisi per id quod est [that which is not, is understood only through that which is].

(51) St. Thomas, following in the footsteps of Aristotle, solves the question in the same way. As I have said, he applies to the intelligent spirit the famous principle: nihil agit, nisi secundum quod est actu [nothing acts except in so far as it is in act] (S.T., I, q. 76, art. 1). From this he deduces the necessity that the spirit is essentially in act, and that we would have no power to understand if it were not in act. When Aristotle says, 'This kind of intellect is not such that sometimes it understands and sometimes does not understand', he means that it always understands (De Anima, 3). I do not see why this cannot apply to the acting intellect rather than the acquired intellect (intellectus adeptus). St. Thomas does not deny that the statement can be understood of the acting intellect. He says: 'In every act of our understanding, the action of the acting intellect goes hand in hand with that of the possible intellect. -Now, the acting intellect, relative to our ability to think, has everything necessary for continual understanding on our part. This is not the case with the possible intellect, whose content is only the intelligible species extracted from phantasms'(De Verit., q. 10, art. 8). The reason why we continually understand, relative to the acting intellect, is that the acting intellect 'receives nothing from outside' but draws everything from itself, that is, the form of knowledge, being in all its universality.

(52) Norris, in England, developed Malebranche's system. In his work Essay towards the Theory of the ideal or intellectual World, he tries to defend the following proposition, among others: 'If material things were perceived through themselves, they would be a real light to the mind because they would take on the intelligible form of our intellect, which they would perfect and to which they would be superior.' Norris rightly finds the proposition erroneous and absurd.

(53) Aristotle made this likeness famous when he used it in the third book of De Anima.