PART THREE

APPLICATION OF THE CRITERION
TO DEMONSTRATE THE TRUTH
OF NON-PURE, OR MATERIATED KNOWLEDGE

CHAPTER 2

A further explanation of the principle justifying
materiated knowledge in general. The formal part

1176. We cannot seek a reason for the primary fact of knowledge outside the fact itself. It will help, therefore, if we analyse the fact further in order to grasp its internal reason. This we shall do in the present and following chapters. First we shall consider the formal part of perception and knowledge, and then perception itself.

1177. I have already said that being is present to our spirit in an imperfect manner.(111) Let us analyse this initial, fundamental intuition in order to discover what accounts for this imperfection.
It is not difficult to see that the perfection of the being we intuit by nature depends upon the presence of its terms. We conceive the activity called being, but we see neither where it originates nor where it terminates. It is as though we saw a man working, but without knowing whether his action will produce a statue, a picture or something else.

1178. Because we do not know by nature where this activity, which we conceive and which we call being, terminates, we find that:

1. The intuition of this activity cannot bring us to the knowledge of anything real because each real thing is the term of the activity called being.(112)

2. Being naturally intuited by us is indeterminate, that is, void of its terms; universal, in so far as it is disposed for receiving the terms which it does not have; possible, or in potency, in so far as it has no terminated or absolutised act, but only a principle of act. In a word, by this single observation, we can conclude that 'what we see by nature is the first activity, but devoid of its terms with which alone it takes its place in nature and forms a real subsistence'. We see only those qualities which we have attributed in volume 2 to being in all its universality, the foundation of reason and human knowledge.

3. If being were to reveal itself more clearly to our mind, transmit its own activity from within and thus terminate and complete itself, we would see God. But until this takes place, and as long as we see being so imperfectly by nature - this first activity which conceals its term from us - we can only agree with St. Augustine when he says so impressively that in this life certa, quamvis adhuc tenuissima forma cognitionis, attingimus Deum [we reach God with a sure but very poor form of knowledge](113)

4. Finally, we see that the other activity given us by feeling is essentially separate and distinct from being itself (the form of the intelligence) because it does not come from the interior of being, but from elsewhere.(114) Nevertheless, this activity is judged by means of being, and is known as dependent on it. We know it as a partial, contingent term of being which cannot be confused with being. It is a term whose origin,(115) considered in itself, is inexplicable, although it receives from its relationship with being (the form of reason) a new condition enabling it to enter the class of entia. In other words, we realise that it is a fact which has come to share ineffably in being.

1179. We can therefore say of everything presented to us by feeling, that is, of all the matter of knowledge, 'that it is not an activity emanating from the essence of being, the form of knowledge, in such a way that it is an essential term of being. On the contrary, it is such that, although extraneous to the essence of being (the form of knowledge), it is neither subsistent, nor perceivable as subsistent, except as term of the activity of being itself'.

We necessarily acknowledge being which is the form of knowledge, therefore, as furnished with a twofold activity. Its essential activity, with which it constitutes and absolutises itself, terminates in a way unknown to us; the other activity terminates in other contingent beings outside and distinct from it. These beings are presented as terms to our perception by feeling.(116)

These conclusions are not the result of reasoning, but of simple observation and analysis of our knowledge. In order to understand them well, the reader has no need to follow some long, difficult series of argument. It is sufficient to concentrate and focus one's attention on self to see and note clearly all that is contained in human knowledge.

1180. We see being by nature. This is the primary fact.
Our vision of being is imperfect. This imperfection consists in our seeing the activity called being in its principle, not in the terms in which it fulfils and absolutises itself (cf. 1177 ss.).
Being, unfulfilled and unabsolutised, is most common being and as such can terminate in infinite things either essential or inessential to it. The inessential terms of being perceived by us are all real, finite things.
Our feeling, or any modification we experience of this feeling, is one of the terms of being naturally intuited by us. We know things, therefore, or the terms of being itself, through feeling.

1181. But a given feeling comes, goes and returns. In some cases, therefore, being can repeat the same term an indefinite number of times. When we see being terminated in a feeling, we perceive (by means of sense) a real ens. This is what we have called perception. But when we consider this feeling (the term of being) simply as possibly renewable an indefinite number of times, we have the idea or species of something, and with it we know a given term in which being can terminate, although we do not know if it does in fact terminate there. In this idea we possess the (knowable) essence of any thing.

Essence is always the ideal thing. It is an incomplete actuation and determination of being because essence can itself terminate in one or sometimes in infinite, real individuals. These realities actuate and complete the essence, and thus even being, determined by the essence. They are presented to us by feeling alone in the case of real, finite and contingent entia.

Logically considered, the first step taken by being with its activity is towards the full specific essence which determines it. It then arrives at subsistence, its final term. This is the completed act of the essence: being, most common being, is simply the thing in remote potency, the initial being of things; determinate essence is the thing in proximate potency.

1182. If we find the torso of an ancient statue, and later dig up a head, two arms and two legs, we need only compare the other parts with the torso to see if they belong to it. The same is true relative to that initial being we possess by nature. When we experience a feeling, that is, any action whatsoever, we acknowledge this action as the completion and term of that being which we already have naturally. The nature of knowledge consists in this confrontation and awareness.

The idea of anything is the thing itself devoid of the act which makes it subsist. But just as we know the hands and feet when we know the torso of the statue, so we know real, subsistent things through their ideas when these things are felt as acting on us. They are recognised as subsistent entia, that is, as actuations of that being which is already known by nature. What is known first in potency (in the mind), is then recognised in act (outside the mind) as really subsisting in itself. And this comes about through feeling which, in its passivity, implies and contains that which differs. This twofold mode of being which things possess (in the mind and in themselves) is the source of the concept of likeness, as I mentioned elsewhere, and provides the explanation of the ancient dictum: 'Every act of knowledge arises as a result of likeness.'

1183. The likeness through which we know things is, according to antiquity, that which exists between an essence in potency and an essence in act. We are dealing with one and the same thing, but in different modes. This is the clear teaching of the ancient sages, which they prove by their exquisite analysis of the nature of likeness. St. Bonaventure, one of our greatest Italian thinkers, whose words I have used in volume 2 to illustrate so many noble truths, says: 'A thing is not so identified with its likeness that it is numerically one with it; nor is it so different that it differs in number. - Hence, it remains that the likeness of anything belongs in the same genus as the thing. Leaving the thing, it differs from the thing, but it does not pass into another genus. Here I am speaking of likeness as likeness, not according to the intent of the one using it. I am speaking, that is, of likeness in so far as it comes from the subject and at the same time does not leave it, as brightness coming from light does not abandon light.'(117)

In this passage from St. Bonaventure, likeness (in the mind) does not differ numerically (this must be noted carefully) from the thing (subsisting outside the mind). It is nevertheless different. This is explained by considering it as an actuation, completion and term of the possible essence existing in the mind

1184. St. Thomas' teaching is the same. According to him, 'the intelligible likeness, by means of which something is understood in its substance, must be of the same species as the thing understood, or rather the species itself'.(118)
These last words are very illuminating. The idea with which we know some thing is the species itself; it is determinate being, but as yet devoid of its term,(119) that is, the real, subsistent thing outside the act of the mind. Considered in itself, therefore, the idea is not the real individual, but the species in so far as its act can be renewed and repeated in an indefinite number of individuals.

1185. This explains the perfect unity between the one who understands and the thing understood, of which St. Thomas speaks so often. It is the unity between the idea and the subsistent thing which joins itself to us through feeling. Once joined to us through its action in our feeling, it can be seen by us internally as joined with its likeness or potency, that is, with innate being. 'That which is understood,' says St. Thomas, 'must be in the one who understands.'(120) And again: 'That which is actually intelligible must form a single thing with the intellect which actually understands,(121) just as that which is actually feelable is feeling itself in act.(122) In so far as what is intelligible is distinguished from the intellect, however, both' (that is, the intellect and the thing) 'are in potency, as we find in sense. The sense proper to the eye does not actually see nor is what is visible actually seen, until the sense is informed by the visible species in such a way that one single thing results from what is visible and from the act of sight itself.'(123) All this flows from the analysis of the act by which the mind knows and sense feels.

1186. These outstanding men whom we quote deduced all this from an extremely perspicacious analysis of the act of knowledge, whose nature they examined with great care. They concluded that the likenesses described above are intellectual lights, and that universal likeness, being in all its universality, is - to use the words of the author of the Itinerarium, - 'the light of truth which shines so brilliantly before the face of the mind'.(124)

1187. But what is the effect of this analysis of the manner in which we come to know? Basically, it simplifies the difficulty of understanding the unique fact of knowledge. The analysis reduces all the species and varieties of knowledge to a single, ultimate fact which explains all the others although itself remains mysterious and obscure for us to the end.
The first question, 'How can the mind know subsistent entia through ideas?', presents no further difficulty when two things are granted and held firmly: 1. we see being naturally; 2. the being we see is one with entia themselves when they are considered in potency. Consequently these entia, in so far as they subsist, are simply the terms and completions of that being which we already see.

1188. The second question, 'How can these terms and completions of being which are seen as independent of us be known by us?', also receives considerable light when we consider that each of us is a subsistent ens and one of those terms and completions of being which we see. We are in ourselves in such a way that we who see being also feel ourselves. As sensitive, subsistent entia, we are subjects joined to and communicating with all other entia which, exercising their action upon us, modify our feeling. As a result we know things acting in us as entia foreign to ourselves.

1189. All this is clear, granted our intuition of being in all its universality, the first fact whose explanation must not be sought in any other preceding fact. We have to conclude, therefore, relative to this fact, that being is knowable of itself. In other words, its marvellous prerogative consists in being able to exist in minds and constitute them. St. Thomas had already arrived at this conclusion which, when well understood, provides the final, tranquil goal for those seeking the nature of human knowledge.

'The intelligible species in which our intellect shares are reduced as it were to their first cause in some principle which is INTELLIGIBLE OF ITS VERY OWN ESSENCE.'(125) The essential intelligibility of this principle of understanding is precisely the ultimate fact of which we are speaking where every search ends in final satisfaction. St. Thomas' words can be explained in these equivalent terms: 'On examining and analysing the nature of knowledge, we find that every difficulty is finally reduced to seeking how we can perceive being. But there is no other reason except the fact that we understand being and all other things through being because they are being. We have to say therefore that being has a nature capable of existing in our minds. In other words, being alone must be intelligible of its very own essence.'

1190. The fundamental error of the German school is found at three levels: the absolute identification of things 1. with ideas; 2. then with intellect, and finally 3. with human beings. Our concern must be with the first level, the root of the other two.

1191. Kant, the originator of this school, initiated(126) the error of which we are speaking as a result of a difficulty he saw but could not resolve. I shall express this difficulty once more with all the force of which I am capable.

When Kant examined the way in which our spirit perceives intellectually, he thought he noted that the predicate which we give to the object when we perceive it is already contained in the object. For example, when we think of a sizeable house, size, which is the predicate, is, according to Kant, already inherent in the house itself. It is not we who add something to it with our thought. On the other hand, the concept, size, which is applicable to different subjects, must of itself be found in those subjects although we do not think of them without the use of the senses which present them to us. When we do perceive those subjects through the use of the senses, we see that they are so bound to the concept of size that this concept would be empty and have no meaning without them.

As result of these observations, Kant concluded that there is a perfect identity between the concept in the mind and the attribute of the thing outside the mind. It is as though he reasoned in this way: 'When I discover an attribute, for example, size, in a given object, I do this through a judgment, that is, I apply my mental concept of size to the sensible object. When I apply this concept, I come to consider this concept of size as adhering essentially to the object itself. For example, when I say this object is large, I attribute to it the same size that I first thought as separate from it. But if the size that I attribute to a sensible object is that which I was thinking previously, this attribute of the object must be identical with my idea, and my idea, or concept - which is the same - must be a necessary ingredient in forming the objects which I perceive and which I then think as different from me. Indeed if the size that I see in the object is not that which I think, how could I use my concept of size to know that object? How could I be aided in knowing the object by means of a concept which has nothing to do with what is in the object?

There is nothing to be gained by my applying to the object a predicate that is not its own. Such a predicate cannot help me to know the object's own predicate. In other words there cannot be a passage from what is in the mind to what is outside it in the object. I have to conclude, therefore, that my concepts, the qualities in my mind, form part of external objects as an element necessary to them.'

1192. Anyone who understands the teaching we have developed above will not be dissuaded by this difficulty which at first sight is undeniably ingenious. But what we have explained becomes perfectly clear when we have carefully understood the following facts which are provided by an analysis of human knowledge.

1. Every contingent thing has two modes of being, in the mind and outside the mind.

2. The mode of being in the mind is in potency, and outside the mind is the act of the same identical essence which is seen by the mind.

3. Hence there is in the mind a complete likeness with the thing outside the mind, and although this likeness is not identical with the thing relative to its act of reality, it does not differ in number from the thing to which that act belongs. It is the very beginning of the thing, and constitutes its species or intelligibility.

4. If we consider things (limited, contingent) as separate from the mind, they are unknown, or rather unknowable per se. Their relationship with the mind is not in them, but in the mind. Their likeness, found in the mind, is however only their ideal being, that is, some determination of being in all its universality which, as knowable per se, is the fount of all ideas and all knowability.(127)

5. Limited, contingent things, because they are only acts and terms of most common being intuited by the mind, can be considered apart from this being. As separate, they are said to subsist outside the mind, and are called real things.

6. Finally, even if the reality and ideality of a thing were to be identified, which is not the case (only the thing is identical, not the mode of being), the thing would never be confused with the act of the mind or the subject which possesses it because the idea as such is per se an object distinct from the thinking subject and contrary to it.

1193. Real things cannot therefore be confused in any way with ideas without doing violence to language. Still less can they be confused with the mind perceiving them because the separation and real distinction of these three entities is contained in their very definition.

(111) Being cannot, of course, find itself in an imperfect state relative to itself. I mean that it is present to us in such a way that we cannot absorb and see it perfectly with the eye of our mind, but must perceive it imperfectly. The limitation and imperfection is entirely ours.

(112) Hence, if we knew being perfectly, that is, with all its terms, we would know everything, says St. Thomas. Quicumque cognoscit perfecte aliquam naturam universalem, cognoscit modum quo natura illa potest haberi [Anyone who knows some universal nature perfectly, knows how that nature is able to present itself],- and ex diverso modo existendi constituuntur diversi gradus entium [that the different grades of entia are constituted from their different ways of existing] (C. G., I, q. 50).

(113) De Lib. Arbitr., bk. 2, c. 15.

(114) This shows clearly that pantheism is absurd.

(115) Creation is essentially inexplicable to the human being, as I shall show elsewhere.

(116) Creation, therefore, is not necessary, despite recent teaching in France.

(117) Res non habet tantam identitatem cum sua similitudine, ut sint unum numero: nec tantam diversitatem ut differant numero.- Et ideo similitudo rei in eodem genere est per reductionem cum eo cuius est similitudo. Quia enim egreditur, ideo differt; sed non transit in aliud genus. Et loquor de similitudine secundum rationem similitudinis, non intentionis, id est prout a subiecto exit et non recedit, ut splendor a luce (I Sent., dist. 3, part. 2, art. 1, q. 1).

(118) Similitudo intelligibilis, per quam intelligitur aliquid secundum suam substantiam, oportet quod sit eiusdem speciei, VEL MAGIS SPECIES EIUS (C. G., III, q. 49).

(119) We are speaking of contingent things.

(120) Intellectum oportet esse in intelligente (C. G., I, q. 51).

(121) That is, with the idea proper to the intellect, with the essence seen by the intellect.

(122) There is a foreign entity in the experience undergone by sense. The understanding perceives this element as distinct, which it is, from the act of feeling and of knowing.

(123) Intelligibile in actu, est intellectus in actu sicut et sensibile in actu est sensus in actu; secundum vero quod intelligibile ab intellectu distinguitur, est utrumque in potentia, sicut et in sensu patet: neque enim visus est videns actu, neque visibile videtur actu, nisi cum visus informatur visibili specie, ut sic ex visibili et visu unum fiat (C. G., I, q. 51).

(124) ...ubi (in intelligentia) ad modum candelabri relucet lux veritatis in facie nostrae mentis (Itin. mentis in Deum, c. 3). St. Bonaventure goes on to confirm what had already been said by the author of De Coelesti Hierarchia, namely that 'intellectual substances are such because they are lights' (that is, they possess light in themselves); that 'the perfection and completion of the intellectual substance is spiritual light'; that 'that potency which, in the intellect, is a consequence of the nature of the soul, is a kind of light in the soul'. By means of this light St. Bonaventure explains the famous acting intellect, and states that such teaching is super verba philosophica et catholica fundatus [founded upon philosophical and catholic expressions] (II Sent., dist. 24, p. 2, art. 1, q. 1).

(125) S.T., I, q. 84, art. 4.

(126) I say 'initiated' because he identified only the formal part of things with ideas, leaving their matter doubtfully distinct from them. Fichte completed the identification by making matter arise from the nature of ideas or of the spirit.

(127) Because limited things of themselves are not, they have no knowability of themselves.