Part Two

Origin of all ideas in general through the idea of being

CHAPTER 5

The innate idea of being resolves the general difficulty
of the problem of the origin of ideas

539. I have reduced the difficulty contained in the problem of the origin of ideas to one, simple question: 'How is the first judgment possible?' (cf. 41-45). In Locke's hypothesis, which derives all ideas from the senses, the difficulty is insuperable. But granted and proved that a totally universal idea naturally exists before we experience sensations, there is no difficulty in understanding how the first judgment is formed.

540. Nevertheless, we have to examine objections to our conclusion.
First: the judgment said to be necessary for the formation of ideas was shown to be the same as the conception of ideas, which must be brought about through judgments.
If this is true, an innate, totally universal idea offers no solution to our difficulty because it too requires a judgment in order to be conceived mentally. To say that this idea is innate resolves nothing; it can only mean that it is conceived mentally by us through our natural powers from the first moment of our existence.
If this is the case, all ideas will be conceived mentally through judgment, and we find ourselves face to face once more with the difficulty: 'How can we make the judgment enabling us to conceive the most universal idea?'

541. The objection depends upon a false supposition: 'A judgment is necessary for the conception of all ideas.'
It is true that a judgment is needed for ideas which we form, such as those of bodies, which unite predicate to subject. Here we find two elements, one of which must be universal. But it is not the case with an idea comprising one element only, which does not require a judgment in order to be possessed and conceived. Judgment, we remember, is always an operation of the mind bringing together two terms. The presence of one term alone would not require any kind of judgment, which would indeed be impossible because pre-empted by an immediate intuition.

Amongst the ideas we possess, only one, the idea of being, has this unique characteristic of utter simplicity. Not composed of predicate and subject, it is the one idea needing no judgment in order to be conceived mentally. It cannot, therefore, be formed by means of some mental operation, but only intuited. Equally, it cannot be intuited unless present to our spirit. Thus we have a new, very clear demonstration that the idea of being is given to human beings by nature.

542. Nevertheless, I accept that it is very difficult to understand how the idea of being can be intuited without admixture of some kind of judgment in the intuition itself. At first sight, it would seem that the idea of being could be expressed in the following proposition: 'Anything can exist.' But this is a judgment. We conceive this proposition by judging: 'Something is possible.' Such a judgment, however, would be included in the idea of being, as our own analysis of it shows (cf. 424). There we found the idea of being to comprise three elements, two of which are: 1. the idea of something; and 2. the possibility of something. In these two elements we seem to have come across the kind of predicate and subject necessarily expressed in the proposition: 'Something is possible.' Possibility is the element providing the predicate, while the indeterminate thing is the element forming the subject. We must now confront this difficulty.

The reply continued

543. The difficulty rests upon the uncertainty presented by the concept of possibility, which requires further analysis.
We first note that we must not confuse this logical possibility of which we are speaking with probability. The two things are quite different.
What is logical possibility? By a possible entity we mean an entity that can subsist, that is, can be thought as subsisting.
Everything not involving contradiction is said to be possible. The mind can always think it exists, and can, whenever it wishes, imagine it to exist.
For a thing to be declared impossible, the mind must possess a necessary reason excluding the possible existence of the thing, so that either the reason must be shown to be false or the thing must be declared impossible. A reason acknowledged as necessary cannot be false, and the thing under discussion must be declared impossible.

The contrary of impossible is possible. When we rightly state that something is impossible, we must possess a necessary concept contradicting the very thing we are considering. On the other hand, the possibility of something requires only the absence of any concept rendering it incoherent and contradictory. If there is no necessary reason to the contrary, everything is per se possible.
It is characteristic of our mind and language that the word possibility takes on a positive meaning. Language expresses both positive and negative beings by words, that is, positive signs. This makes for confusion. For example, when we say 'nothing', we exclude the existence of everything, although we think we have said something because the sign for nothing is a word.

What is said about possibility cannot be said of probability. While possibility indicates only the absence of contradiction, probability adds some positive reason to the mental entity which renders the entity's present or future existence probable. The reason may be the number of times the thing has happened, or the knowledge of a special, subsistent power capable of producing it.

It is clear that we take possibility in its absolute, logical sense, not in the approximate sense of ordinary conversation. People say: 'It is impossible for this tree to be in the garden without the presence of a seed from which it grew.' This is a physical impossibility, and as such clashes with the physical law requiring plants to grow from seeds. Again, people say: 'Granted the risks you take, it is impossible for you to escape serious injury.' This so-called impossibility is in fact improbability, because in the ordinary course of events it clashes with the chances of remaining uninjured. But we are not thinking about impossibility that clashes with physical laws, nor about the impossibility of avoiding the natural consequence of actions, nor about the impossibility of breaking moral laws; we are dealing with impossibility that conflicts with the laws of thought in such a way that one term of a given proposition cannot be conceived as existing along with the other term. Everything not involving such a contradiction we call possible [App., no. 16].

544. The possibility of a thing is not, therefore, positive in itself, outside the thing. It is, as they say, a mental entity or an observation made by the mind about some essence in which it cannot find intrinsic repugnance. We express this lack of ideal, intellectual repugnance through the word possibility, giving the impression of something separate from the mental entity, although this is not the case.
All mental entities are in fact the fruit of observation by which we notice some lack, or relationship, or quality, etc. Considered separately and of themselves, they cannot be present to our mind from the beginning of our existence; they can be noted and considered by us only as our understanding develops.

We conclude that the possibility of things, as a mental entity capable of being expressed through a word, is not innate in us, but observed through an act of our mind. Possibility, as simple lack of repugnance, tells us only that the idea of being contains no repugnance. As a consequence, there is no repugnance in anything we behold in this idea; possibility therefore is not something distinct from ideal being itself.
It follows that our only innate element is the idea of being in all its simplicity. Possibility, as a predicate, adds nothing to this idea but excludes something from it (repugnance) and serves to simplify it, allowing it to be recognised in its utter unity and simplicity.

545. Granted these principles, the proposition, 'Something can exist', is inexact if used to point to what is innate. The proposition supposes that we have mentally extracted the idea of possibility, a purely mental entity, from the simple idea of being and given a positive form, such as a thought or a word, to what is negative by nature. In other words we have changed the idea of possibility into an apparently positive predicate.

If we wish to analyse the proposition, 'Something can exist', in order to discover its innate elements, we need to strip it of all that has apparently been added to it by the way we conceive and express something. We first need to change the statement, 'It is innate to us that something is possible' to 'It is innate (that is, it is naturally present to our spirit) that the idea of being is free from repugnance', or to 'The idea of being is innate; reflecting upon it, we see it is without repugnance'. Because the idea of being, as objective form, constitutes our intelligence, intelligence can be defined as the faculty of seeing being. Further reflection shows that if the vision of being were removed, our intelligence would cease. Being therefore cannot be eliminated or removed from the mind. But removing being and leaving being is a contradiction which our intelligence cannot tolerate. Our intelligence can understand only that which does not involve contradiction; this alone is intelligible and thinkable.

546. It is only a posteriori that we observe the many determinations taken by being in the real entia we behold. This leads us to declare that the possibility of things is contained in the essence of being. But this, in turn, simply means 'There is no repugnance between the idea of indeterminate being and its determinations and realisations.' The concept of possibility involves a relationship with the determinations of being, which are initially unknown to our spirit until we apprehend them through experience.

Summing up, we may say that after observing being to be devoid of determinations (this is a negation, not a positive predicate), we conclude (after reflection) that real entia, indeterminate in quantity, are possible and thinkable as determinations and realisations of the essence present to our spirit. In other words, these real entia involve no contradiction with the idea itself, while the idea accepts them in itself without repugnance. The concept of mere possibility is, therefore, acquired as our faculties develop. There is nothing innate except its foundation, that is, the ideality and indetermination of being.

The idea of being, the innate element devoid of any predicate whatsoever, is itself the universal predicate. Deprived of all determination and real action, it unites and applies itself as predicate to determinations and actions which thus become subject. The idea of being includes no judgment, therefore, but constitutes the possibility of all judgments in so far as we can judge anything that we feel by means of the idea of being, the common predicate within us.(54)

547. The previous objection was based upon possibility, one of the two primary elements of the idea of being (cf. 423). Its solution depended upon showing that this element is negative when conceived separate from being, and hence takes nothing from the simplicity of the idea of being which it serves to express.
The second primary element, that is, something, or being, gives rise to another difficulty in understanding how the idea of being can be present to us without the intervention of a judgment. It may be stated as follows: 'Two terms are distinguished in my conception when I intuit being: myself who intuit, and being as intuited. During this act my consciousness tells me: I perceive being. But this is a judgment, and it would seem therefore that judgment must be present in every objective mental conception that is something more than mere subjective modification.'

Reply to the second objection

548. Our answer lies in an observation that cannot be overlooked, despite its subtlety [App., no. 17].
The act of intuiting being is entirely different from the act by which I say: 'I intuit being.'
Note that I am not asking whether this act follows or must necessarily follow from the other. It is only necessary, at the moment, to know if intuiting an idea and judging that an idea is intuited are different acts of the spirit.
Intuition is the act by which I fix my attention on an idea. Weak and inconsistent attention, dispersed over many objects, does not change the nature of the act which, it is important to note, is essentially one in so far as its object is one. Wandering attention, although it may associate other unique, entirely different acts with it, does not destroy the uniqueness of the act; each act considered in itself remains unique. Our task is to examine the simple, unique act of attention to an idea, independently of all other acts which may be found mingled with it. Of itself, the act with which I fix my attention on an idea is essentially restricted to the object in which it terminates.

549. First, let us try to find some state in which our spirit concentrates all its force of attention on a single point. This will help us to consider one act of attention separated from every other. Let us imagine that the object of our attention is something we love so much that all our powers of concentration are totally focused on it. As our contemplation grows and reaches a certain point of intensity something strange occurs. Enthralled by the desired object, we have no energy for anything else. Absorbed by this one object, we are in a state of ecstasy where we forget ourselves and everything else; external things no longer exist for us. All our thinking and loving energy is captivated and exhausted by what we behold. Such alienation, experienced probably by all human beings although at different levels of intensity, is a fact, and lesser degrees of alienation in our own lives enable us to form some notion of the total experience.

The question we have to put to ourselves is this: if a person finds himself in such a state, will he pay attention to himself? Will he be capable of reflecting upon his own state? We say that this capacity for reflecting upon himself will be no more than that of a baby totally absorbed in its feed. He cannot carry out this kind of reflection on himself and his own state of self-forgetfulness unless he has come to himself and woken, as it were, from his absorption. His energies, previously occupied and almost lost for his own purposes, are now available for selfreflection. However, if his heart and mind are fully and completely immersed in the ecstasy, there is no immediate connection with any following act. All his energies have been exhausted in the ecstasy itself, forcing him to rest before acting once more. There is no connection with his previous intense action, which he cannot even remember. Dante noted this peculiar state when he wrote:

550. What we have said helps us to realise that reflection on the operations of our spirit is an act entirely different from the operations themselves.
We can state, therefore, that human beings can think an object, such as being for example, without reflecting upon themselves or realising that they are thinking.

Now it is clear that no one can make the judgment 'I intuit being' without reflecting upon himself, paying attention to his state of mind, and making it the object of his attention. My state, however, is not the same object as being, and I need to perceive my own state by means of an act different from that by which I intuit being. I intuit being through an act of attention directed at being; I perceive myself with an act of attention directed towards myself. When I intuit being, my attention is fixed simply on a mere object very different from myself. Perceiving myself, my attention has as its object the very subject which intuits. Finally, the first act is an intuition, the second a perception relative to myself, a reflection relative to being. The act, therefore, by which I intuit being is simple, primary and spontaneous; the act by which I judge myself to be intuiting being is complex (it is a judgment) and subsequent. The intuition of being can be innate; the reflective judgment cannot be innate although the second act may follow more or less closely upon the first. The first is intrinsic and necessary; the second can simply be acquired and voluntary.

551. Distinguishing these two acts, I referred to the state of a person totally occupied by a single object. I did this in order to assist comprehension of the fact at issue, not to prove the distinction made between the two acts. In a state of mental concentration, the energies of our intelligence are all reduced to a single point of focus,(56) and it is easy to see how one act, normally accompanied by another, can stand on its own. My purpose here, however, does not require me to show one act of attention as temporally distinct from the other. It is enough to indicate that one is not the other in order to prove that one can be innate, and the other not.

My argument would be considerably strengthened were I to insist upon a truth known to the ancient philosophers, that is, that the understanding can perform only one act at a time, and that being (or anything conceived mentally) and myself intuiting are two objects requiring two acts of understanding in order to be grasped. In this case, it would be absurd to think they could be grasped simultaneously, or to imagine that in understanding one object I also know that I understand it. The argument would be strengthened still further were I to prove the evident truth that the second act, having as object the first act, could not begin to exist without presupposing the first as already complete. This would clearly indicate the contradiction inherent in claiming as simultaneous the act by which we know something, and know that we know it.

552. From what we have said, it follows that a first, natural intuition within us precedes any judgment whatsoever. This intuition makes us intelligent beings, and forms our faculty of knowledge. The object of the intuition is ideal being, the idea.

553. Being, therefore, is intuited by our spirit without mediation, just as sense receives a direct impression of what is sensible. The immediate presence of being to the spirit enables us to speak of an intellectual sense possessed by human beings.
Our intelligence can be called a sense (different in kind from the corporeal senses, however) in so far as it intuits being. But in so far as it judges, or notices the relationship between what is felt and being in all its universality it carries out a mental operation very different from that of sense.
It no longer receives sensations but, pronouncing and synthesising, produces cognitions and persuasions.(57)

554. The difference between corporeal and intellectual sense lies in the diversity of their terms. Corporeal sense has determinate, real, corporeal terms; intellectual sense has a purely spiritual and perfectly indeterminate term.
The difference between these terms gives rise to another distinction between the two senses. Although the nature of sense in general requires an action done in a subject, or a modification undergone by the subject, in corporeal sense the object is not communicated as object, but as an acting force. In intellectual sense, the object is manifested as object, not as agent, because an object is characterised properly speaking by presence and manifestation, not by action. Consequently, intellective sense does not first sense itself, but immediately understands ens. Only afterwards does it experience joy from its understanding of ens (intelligence). We can say, therefore, that intellective sense follows intelligence.
Being in all its universality is idea; but the subject intuiting it, produces for itself intellectual sensations from this idea [App., no. 18].

555. From what we have said, it can easily be seen that besides the form of being possessed by subsisting things (REAL being, as I have called it) there is another, entirely distinct form, constituting the foundation of the possibility of things (the IDEAL form). IDEAL BEING is an entity of such a nature that it cannot be confused with either our spirit, or with bodies, or with anything belonging to REAL BEING.

556. It is a serious error to believe that IDEAL BEING or THE IDEA is nothing because it does not belong to the category of things common to our feelings. On the contrary, ideal being, the idea, is an authentic, sublime entity, as we saw when we examined the noble characteristics with which it is endowed. It is true that it cannot be defined, but it can be analysed, or rather we can express our experience of it and call it the light of our spirit. What could be clearer than light? Extinguish it, and only darkness remains.

557. Finally, from what has been said we can form a concept of the manner in which the idea of being adheres to our spirit. We realise that it neither asks nor demands our assent or dissent, but presents itself to us as pure fact (cf. 398), because such an idea neither affirms nor denies; it simply constitutes our possibility of affirming and denying (cf. 546).

(54) According to St. Thomas, knowledge supposes a measure, a rule, for he says: Intellectus accipit cognitionem de rebus MENSURANDO eas quasi ad sua principia (De Verit., q. 10, art. 1).

(55) Par. 1.

(56) Human absorption in the contemplation of an object gives me an opportunity of commenting on a very common false judgment. When a person has difficulty in remembering something, or experiences a sensation without noticing it, or pays only little attention to it, it is often said that the impression or sensation made upon him must be rather weak. But the explanation could be exactly the opposite. The sensation, and we can say the same about the act of contemplation, could have been intense without its being noticed or reflected upon. It seems to me that when sensation or contemplation is intensified to the maximum, the person experiencing it knows, notices and remembers nothing of his experience: he is no longer present to himself, but constrained by the experience itself. The relevance of this remark for understanding what takes place deep within the human spirit will best be seen by those accustomed to serious reflection on matters of this kind.

(57) This enables us to understand St. Thomas' opinion that intellectus est vis passiva (receptive, strictly speaking), respectu totius entis universalis [the intellect is a passive (receptive, strictly speaking) power, relative to total, universal ens] (S.T., I, q. 74, art. 2). Aristotle says: 'In the case of anything separate from matter' (in other words, in the case of what is purely form, precisely like the idea of being) 'that which is understood is the same as that with which it is understood' (De Anima, bk. 3, com. 15). I think that this opinion can also be applied to the innate idea of being, which makes us know everything, including ourselves.