PART THREE

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

CHAPTER 6

Knowledge of essences

1213. Essence is that which is thought in the idea of anything (cf. vol. 2, 646). We know as many essences, therefore, as there are things about which we have some idea.
In saying that we know essences in this sense, we are speaking accurately, as the following observation will show.

When we say 'the essence of something', for example, of a tree, human being, colour, size, etc., we use words like tree, human being, colour, size, etc., to indicate the thing whose essence we are seeking. But how are names imposed on things? We have already seen that words are imposed on things in so far as we know things (cf. vol. 2, 679). If words are given a more extensive meaning, they are abused rather than used. They either obscure our vision, or exist as figments of our imagination. When I say tree, human being, colour, size, etc., I name things in so far as they are known to me. If they were not known by me, I could not name them. What do we mean, therefore, when we say that we are looking for the essence of tree, human being, colour, size, etc.? Simply that we are examining the meaning of these words in order to understand the ideas that human beings have applied to the names tree, human being, colour, size, etc. But perhaps I am looking for something that people have not attached to these names? In this case, we are no longer searching for the essence of tree, human being, etc., but the essence of some other unnamed and unknown thing for which we should not even search.

1214. It may be objected that essence described in this way is neither more nor less than what is comprised in the definition of anything. But this is precisely how antiquity understood essence: Essentia, says St. Thomas, comprehendit in se illa tantum, quae cadunt in definitione speciei [Essence includes within itself only that which falls within the definition of a species].(140)
Thus the Lockian school of philosophers were rash in mocking antiquity for maintaining that human beings know the essences of things. Quite possibly Locke's school did not even try to understand their predecessors.

1215. Another possible objection is that essence may not be what is thought in the idea of something, but rather that property which is first thought of in the thing and from which every other property depends. In fact, the essence is indeed the first property, and as such confirms and proves the knowledge of essences, rather than eliminates it. Moreover, careful attention shows that our definition is simpler and at the same time more rigorous.

We are said to have an idea of something as soon as we form some concept of it. We have the idea of a tree, for example, neither before nor after but as soon as we have conceived that quality, whatever it may be, to which human beings have given the name 'tree'. Not before, because we knew nothing of the tree before we had the concept of that property.(141) Not after, because everything added to the notion or property of which tree is the proper name, is something that does not belong to the meaning of the name. The additions are other essences, perhaps accidentals, which although they determine or actuate the essence of tree in a particular tree, are not tree taken simply as such. Every simple idea, therefore, contains an essence, and equally every composite idea contains an essence. And all the elements(142) which make a composite idea what it is, distinguished from everything else, are essential to it.

1216. I have already said that this comes about because they have given the word 'essence' an improper meaning (cf. 1213-1215). Modern philosophers have understood in the word 'essence' not that which we know in something, but also that which could be unknown in it. For example, in bodies there could be present, besides the properties we know, another totally unknown property on which the others depend. We have called this the corporeal principle, not the corporeal essence (cf. vol. 2, 855). Let me explain more clearly.

We know a body through an action it exercises on us. We know therefore an activity determined by its effect, and this activity is the essence of our idea of body. But could it not be that such an activity was a partial potency of some other activity unknown to us? We can neither affirm nor deny this. This totally unknown activity has no name. Nevertheless, because it is not contradictory, it caused some thinkers to maintain that we do not know the essence of bodies, instead of saying that we do not know if the essence we call body depends on and is rooted in some other unknown essence as its special potency. There is a great divide between these two affirmations. In the second, we do not say that body is unknown to us, but that there is something different from body on which the body depends.

1217. Here too we can gain some idea of how, through haste and intemperance, clever people become rash in their research. They skip over and abandon the very things they are looking for. We have already seen in general how some people become sceptics; others seem to be fellow-travellers, as it were, with sceptics. Instead of taking the truth as their terminus and source of satisfaction, they go on, looking for something other than truth which would provide them with greater satisfaction. In our present case, some go beyond the definition of essence. Instead of stopping at it, they go on to form a gratuitous, frivolous concept of essence for the sake of which they struggle with their own imagination to prove that human beings have no knowledge of essence - the only thing which they do in fact know!(143)

1218. Known essences are simply that activity of a thing which is comprehended in the idea of the thing.
But every idea is contained by being, which is truth. Every idea, therefore, is a determinate truth.
Error can be imported only into the judgment which we make about our ideas, that is, we can err in so far as we judge that more is comprehended in our ideas than is in fact comprehended. Let us see, therefore, what is required if there is to be no mistake in our judgment.

1219. We can ask two series of questions about the knowledge of essences. The first concerns my individual knowledge, the second the knowledge possessed by human nature.
About my particular knowledge I can ask whether I know a given thing, and whether I possess all the knowledge that is granted to human nature.

About the second kind of knowledge I can ask: 1. What are the means by which human nature comes to know? 2. How much does each means contribute in providing ideas and conceptions of things? 3. What are the universal impediments which sometimes prevent things knowable in themselves from being known by us? 4. How far are things themselves knowable?

The first series of questions is proper not to philosophy but to the prudence of each individual who wishes to evaluate his knowledge rightly and without presumption. The second is a matter for philosophy, and we shall deal with each of the questions belonging to this series by summarising what we have expounded elsewhere.

1220. First question: What are the means by which human nature knows essences, that is, forms the ideas of things?

Reply: There are four means: 1. perception, 2. analysis and synthesis, 3. the perception of either natural or conventional signs, especially the conventional sign of speech, and 4. integration.

1221. Second question: How much force and strength has each of these means in providing the ideas of things? In other words, which of them provides more perfect ideas of any thing?

Reply: The most perfect ideas that a human being can have are those acquired through perception. In these ideas the specific essence(144) is known positively, that is, the thing itself is known. It is this essence, when present, which is expressed by the names imposed on things, and it this which is unfolded in the definition given to a thing. Later, by means of analysis and synthesis, the specific essence takes three modes, each of which we have indicated respectively with the expressions, perfect specific essence, abstract specific essence, and imperfect specific essence.(145)

Analysis, which pertains to the second means of knowing, dissects specific essences (the foundation of all human knowledge) and thus forms abstract, partial essences such as real and mental generic essences. Synthesis, which also pertains to the second means of knowing, provides only complex essences and adds some kind of union amongst the more simple essences.

The third means of knowing, through signs, presents us with even more imperfect ideas. This means enables us to have more or less positive mental generic ideas.(146)

Finally, the fourth method of knowing, integration, sometimes gives us negative ideas entirely devoid of matter. Such ideas make us know the existence of an ens, but provide no information about it other than that of its existence and a relationship with something else known to us. This is sufficient to determine the ens and prevent its confusion with any other ens.

1222. We then have to consider that perception constitutes the maximum limit of our knowledge of things. It truly constitutes what we call the positive element of any idea which has as its basis the direct, real action of anything on us or, to put it in another way, that part of a thing which is really communicated to us and inexists in us. This perceptive knowledge serves us as a rule with which to recognise the degrees and perfection of the ideas of things. The other means of conceiving (analysis and synthesis, signs and integration) cannot provide us with everything administered to us by perception. If one person himself perceives something, and another only hears the same thing described by the one who has perceived it, there is no doubt that the perceiver has a more perfect, lively and rich idea of the thing than the other who knows the thing only orally or nominally.(147) Consequently, when we compare the essences of things received through the various means we have described, we say that the full knowledge possible to a human being can only be obtained in the case of an idea procured with the first means, perception.

1223. Third question: What are the impediments which prevent things knowable in themselves from being fully known by human beings?

Reply: They can only be summed up as those obstacles which prevent the thing from exercising on a human being the action of which it is capable. Things draw near to us and act in us with the force of which they are capable, independently of us. The proximity and the action depend upon an altogether different cause, totally outside human capacity and the capacity of every other creature. We have to list amongst the essential limitations of human knowing that 'the human mind cannot produce for itself any knowledge unless the objects of that knowledge are presented to the mind by some other ens' (cf. Teodicea, 85-115).

1224. Fourth question: How far are things themselves knowable?

Reply: Only being is known of itself, and constitutes knowability (cf. 1203 ss.). Hence, as our ancestors said, things are knowable in so far as they share in being.(148) If we consider our knowledge carefully, we notice an obvious and infinite distinction between the intuition of being and the perception of real things, the traces of which are finally resolved in feelings caused in us. We see that it is impossible to intuit being and not understand it; to intuit it is precisely to understand it. Feelings, however, are not understood per se. They begin to be understood only when we see them in relationship with being, that is, when we see them as a term of being itself. Hence, there is a difference between the knowability of things of themselves and their knowability in so far as it is participated, just as being is either per se, or participated being. As participated, the nature of the perception that we can have of real things varies. And it is this varying nature of perception that we must now consider somewhat more attentively.

1225. Perception is the means providing us with the maximum degree of knowledge of things. It is therefore the rule according to which we judge the quantity of our knowing. We say that we have a perfect conception of anything if we have perceived it, and that our conception is not perfect if we have not perceived it.
But our perception of things differs from one thing to another. Some things we know intimately and fully, others more superficially. This variety in perception depends upon several causes which we must examine carefully. First, we shall speak of the variety of fullness in perception, which depends on the differing knowableness of things themselves and on our essential constitution.

In the first place, therefore, what we conceive through perceiving things is in part objective and in part subjective. We have to note and distinguish carefully these two elements(149) and first show that their necessity depends upon an essential limitation of human nature.
Being is the object itself. Everything that is not being, therefore, is per se unknown, and must be made known by being. But what are we? We are certainly not being. We see being and we conceive it, but at the same time we feel that we conceive it as something that is present to us but is not us. In us as intelligent beings, therefore, we have to distinguish two essentially distinct elements: 1. the being that we see; 2. ourselves who see being.

Being as seen by us is knowledge; we are feeling. Knowledge need not be known through any other means precisely because it is knowledge; feeling needs an act of knowledge in order that it be known. Being is the object, and we are the subject. It is always necessary, therefore, that something subjective (which constitutes the matter of our knowledge) be mingled with something objective (that constitutes the form of knowledge).
In this way we can formulate the principle for discerning the objective from the subjective part of perceptions: 'Everything in our conception of a thing which comes from being is objective; everything placed there by our feeling as such (150) is subjective.'

1226. This principle is equivalent to saying: 'Ourselves and our modifications are the subjective part. If, therefore, something remains in the conception of a thing when we remove the conception of ourselves and the modifications of ourselves, it is here that we must look for the objective part of perception. We can be sure that this has not been posited by us, but is found in the thing perceived. For example, when I perceive something, its existence is not my existence; it is not subjective; its energy is not my energy.' In a word, everything that I am forced to grant in the thing in virtue simply of the idea of being is its objective part.

1227. We can now ask if the subjective part is the misleading part and the objective the truthful part.

First, provided we do not change one for the other, neither the subjective nor the objective part is misleading. If we apply what belongs only to us to things different from us, we deceive ourselves. But we are certainly not constrained by nature to take such a step. Although we possess an inclination towards sense, we also have the means for withstanding its attraction. If, therefore, we take subjective knowledge for subjective, and objective for objective, we shall not mislead ourselves, and even the subjective knowledge will be true and useful for us.

What is the means enabling us to distinguish safely between the subjective and objective parts of knowledge? We have already seen that this is the power essential to being itself which, as object, and objectivity itself, is essentially independent of us. What we conclude about things in virtue of being - in other words, what we do not receive from ourselves - is the objective part of knowledge; the subjective part comes from ourselves, not from being. Those who do not see that being is an essence in itself, absolute and totally different from our own, and that we conceive it as such, confuse the object with the subject, and call all human knowledge subjective.

1228. Secondly, we must note that the subject feels itself as subject, and that if we take this feeling in the place of knowledge, we imagine we have some subjective knowledge. But this is not knowledge. We can have objective knowledge even of the subject. This knowledge does not delude us, although it can indeed be called subjective knowledge in so far as through it we know the subject. In a word, we are the source of the subjective part of knowledge, just as being is the source of objective knowledge. Knowing ourselves for the subjects that we are is to know ourselves truly. The knowledge that can delude us is only that which we have of other things which differ from being and from ourselves as subjects because they are not contained in the subject with their very own entity.

Limited things different from us are subjects if, like us, they have a power of feeling or of understanding; but if they are without the power of feeling, they are neither an object per se nor a subject. We are therefore obliged to indicate them negatively as extrasubjective. This word means simply that their first act, which constitutes them as real entia, remains unknown to us and must be supplied by us if we are to be able to understand it, as we said about bodies. But that which is extrasubjective is not perceived by us except through its sense-arousing action upon us. Nevertheless as we perceive it, we mingle with it something subjective, that is, something of our own feeling which must be separated out if we are to avoid delusion.

1229. Being therefore has an absolute and essential knowability. We (the subject) possess knowability through being; things different from us and from being have their knowability by means of us and of being, that is, in so far as they exercise some force on us while we, who know ourselves through being, know also the activities modifying us.
This teaching gives rise to several consequences which throw light on the intimate nature of human knowledge.

1. Because the subject varies, different intelligent subjects have a different perception of their own subject. The variation in subjects must also provide variety in the perceptions of things which, different from being and from the subject, can give, as we said, only a mixed perception made up of what is extrasubjective and objective.

1230. 2. Being which shines in the mind does not present itself as subsistent and complete in itself. It is, as a result, most common. But all other things are knowable only through being. The knowledge we have in our present state is, therefore, essentially universal; our intellect does not attain to any subsistent, individual ens. In fact, there is not a single ens in the world which is knowable of itself; each needs to be made knowable through its relationship with most common being. If being which shines in our minds were complete with its essential terms, it would be an individual essentially perceived by our understanding because being is knowable of its nature and indeed constitutes knowledge [App., no. 8]: it would be God.
Hence, although our feelings are particular, our knowledge of them always contains what is universal. Knowing a feeling simply means perceiving it in its possibility and considering it as an essence which can very often be actuated in an indefinite number of individuals.

1231. 3. As a result, our perceptions of different things can be reduced to an equivalent number of formulae which express their nature.

I. The intuition of being provides this formula: 'Being is intuited of itself, and cannot be intuited in any other way'.

II. The general perception of all other things is covered by the following formula: 'A determinate ens is perceived by means of feeling.' This formula is rendered more particular according to the different ways of perceiving things, and is expressed in the following formulae:

a) In the idea of the soul we know an ens determined by a substantial feeling that constitutes our substance, ourselves.

b) In the idea of our body we know an ens determined by some kind of action on our substantial feeling (on ourselves). This action is considered by us as knowable substance.

1232. 4. Because all things are seen as terms, actuations and effects of being (although we may not see exactly how they are effects), we can say in general that 'the essences we know are the effects of being'. We ourselves are an effect of being because our essence could not be realised in a real subsistence except by our receiving the act of being. And we know other things through their effects upon us.(151)

1233. Although the intuition of being is objective and the same as the intuition of truth, it can vary according to the degrees of light by which being is manifested to the mind and renders it capable of acts of knowledge. These degrees of greater light are the perfection of the very essence of creatures because they are the perfection of the creatures' form. Perhaps this explains one of the causes (the first and greatest?) of differing intellectual capacities.
I do not know, however, if the degrees in the clarity of light which being reveals to minds are something different from the degrees of the quantity of that which being in itself and of itself can reveal to intelligences.

1234. The distinction between positive and negative cognitions draws its origin from the distinction between the objective part of perception and the subjective and extrasubjective part of perception.
But encountering the phrase negative essence or knowledge immediately makes us ask how we can possibly have negative knowledge. We either know or do not know. If we know something, our knowledge is positive of its own nature. It is impossible for any knowledge to be called negative.

This apparent difficulty vanishes if we have learned to understand the nature of the differing cognitions we can have of anything. We must remember that knowledge of any subsistent thing is composed of 1. what issues from the idea of being; 2. what we feel or perceive with our feeling of the real thing. For example, knowledge that a thing subsists issues from the idea of being as a result of the sense experience we have of this thing. We cannot know, however, whether this thing is a tree, or possesses a certain kind of trunk, leaves or fruit or any other sort of essential and accidental qualities unless we have perceived all these things with our senses, either together or a little at a time. If we had never seen or felt anything like these qualities of a tree, we could never in any way imagine or conceive anything about them. It is our sense perception that renders the idea of the subsistent tree full and vivid, that is, positive. The tree in this perception is presented to us in the active form and state it can have relative to us. And although a great deal of what is extrasubjective and subjective (which we can, however, distinguish and separate from what is objective) comes to us through such perception and representation, we experience all the activity that the tree can exert on us as sentient entia. Hence we apprehend and receive the real, effective connection that the nature of the tree has with our own nature.

We must, therefore, distinguish judgment about the subsistence of the tree from the representation of the tree. The former is entirely objective because it reaches out to judge something of the tree's subsistence (and apply the idea of being); the latter is made up of three elements: that which is objective, that which is extrasubjective, and that which is subjective.

Let us imagine now that we have never perceived this thing we call tree. Could we know if a tree subsisted? We certainly could if someone told us. But how can we know whether that which subsists is a tree? I cannot know this for certain, but I do know that something called tree subsists. My knowledge is simply that a thing exists (this is completely objective knowledge because the idea of thing is universal and indeterminate), and that this thing is called tree by human beings. The name determines the thing exactly without however providing me with any representation of it marked by a relationship that has something real in itself: the relationship is created simply by the human mind which gives the thing its name.

1235. However, the relationship of which we are speaking could possess something real instead of being merely nominal, without its providing me with any representation of the thing. I may know some fruit without knowing more than that it has been produced by something in this world. This ens, the cause of the fruit, is known by me through its effect, that is, through a real relationship suitable for determining the thing perfectly for me, but without providing me with any representation of it. This representation consists solely in the connection between the inherent activity of the thing and my feeling, that is, in the experience I have of that activity when I feel its effect as it causes a modification of my feeling.

1236. In these two cases, therefore, I know the thing only through an arbitrary or natural relationship, not by any perception of the thing. We must notice here that the relationship is always constituted by the idea of being and as such belongs to the objective part of knowledge. Not only the relationship of cause, but that of sign, and any other relationship suitable for determining for me something unknown of itself, appertains to the objective part of knowledge.

Knowing that a thing is, knowing a relationship that determines it, does not mean that we possess some representation of it, as we said. Such knowledge, therefore, does not provide a positive idea of a thing. This is constituted, I must repeat, 'by the immediate action of the thing on us as sentient entia, and our consciousness of this action which provides knowledge of the representation itself'.
The idea as we have described it, void of representation, is rightly called negative because, in all that it makes known, it contains no representation of the thing. This idea appertains completely to the idea of being and its applications. It is per se extraneous to the nature of the thing which, when it becomes known, participates in the idea.

1237. Although a long tradition tells us that our idea of God is negative, there are several difficulties connected with this which can usefully be discussed here.

The first difficulty. Objectors say that we form the idea of the supreme, infinite spirit by starting from the idea of the soul, stripping it of all its limitations, and adding to it all possible worth. But if the idea of the soul is positive, and we add so much to it, the resulting idea must be much more positive.

Reply. It is not true that we form the idea of God by starting from the soul in the way indicated.
In ideas we have to distinguish the two parts mentioned in the preceding article. 1. The part which contains a subsistence, and some determination by means of a relationship. This part provides only a negative idea and presents us with nothing about the thing itself (which is not offered to our perception). 2. The part which represents the thing. This part makes us feel the force that the thing has to act in us, and hence to produce a perception of itself. This second part is positive. It is the vital part, if I may call it that. In comparison with this, the first part is only a sketch of an idea, or fundamental outline within which the idea must be found. It is not the idea itself.
In the idea we have of God in this life, we possess the first part through the relationships of cause and effect, of limited and unlimited, of imperfect and perfect, and so on. But however many these relationships may be, they can provide us only with the first of the parts we have described.

1238. Nature, however, does not allow us to be truly satisfied with such an idea of a non-sensible thing. We have an essential, profound need within us, the first need of human nature, which continually prompts us to desire a full, positive idea of God. We want to perceive him, to have a direct vision of him. But such longings of nature cannot be entirely satisfied here on earth. Incapable of perceiving God himself by natural means, we have recourse to analogies of him, the best of which we find in intelligent spirits such as the human soul. We bring these analogies together, and from them compose the concept as well as we can. This explains why religions themselves have recourse to symbols, a necessary supplement for the positive, beatifying idea of God which we lack here on earth, but to which we aspire unendingly without knowing it, stimulated by means of a wonderful instinct of our human nature [App., no. 9].

The symbols we have of God do not, therefore, give us any perception of the divine essence. These likenesses and symbols possess nothing more than distant analogy with God.
It is true that the idea we have of an ens is greater and fuller if we consider this ens with all its known perfections united in it. Nevertheless, it is still totally inadequate, defective and nothing in comparison with the representation of God. This will become more clear if we consider that, having accumulated all possible perfections in an ens, we have still not found the single act through which they all subsist. This act related to God must be such that each of these perfections, and all of them taken together, are contained and made one in it. No example of such perfect simplicity and unity is to be found in nature. This unity and simplicity of being form the divine essence, and until we see the subsistent being which is one in this way we have no positive idea of God (cf. Teodicea, 55-60).

1239. Second difficulty. If our knowledge of God is negative, it is not knowledge. God will never be found when we turn our attention and affection towards him; we shall never know to whom we are directing our attention. In such a situation, it is as though God did not exist for us.

Reply. This difficulty also vanishes when the negative idea we have been describing is understood. But we need to explain it in other words.
Let us imagine something that we have never known either through perception, or by likeness, analogy of nature, or relationship with any other thing we have perceived.
What we are imagining is altogether unknown to us. But its existence is then revealed to us. We begin to know something about it, without however knowing anything of its essence. In a word, we know that something unknown to us exists.

What else could we know about this thing without at the same time knowing its essence?
We could know all the infinite relationships it can have with things known to us.
When we speak of God, we are talking of one who has relationships with real things, with feelings and with ideas, the three activities we have previously distinguished.

With real things, he has the relationship of cause. We know this because we know the effects of God, as we call this thing unknown to us. It is true that the effects do not reveal the cause itself, which remains veiled, as it were. But it is also true that these effects are so proper to this cause that they are impossible to any other. Consequently, through them, as through a sure sign, we have delineated the cause in such a way that we cannot mistake or confuse it with any other. We have some sure datum which involves the positive concept, although our limitation prevents our drawing it out. In fact, the notion 'creatures' implicitly contains the notion of God which we would find if we were able to understand fully what is expressed by the word 'creation'. The divine origin of this word becomes obvious when we consider its hidden meaning. Such a word, whose meaning cannot be fully understood by reason, would require for its understanding the prior positive idea of God which it implies.

With feelings, God has the relationship of supreme good. We continually desire happiness, of which we have only a universal notion. In the same way, we desire the hidden being, whose possession forms happiness.

With ideas, God has the relationship of being which is per se intelligible.
We have the idea of being in which is comprised something infinite in potency. As a result, in any series of things we never come to a term beyond which we can pass to attain the infinite number. This capacity for taking yet another step, however many we have already taken, makes us comprehend that all the things of which these series are composed are essentially limited. But the concept of limited things is relative to something unlimited and absolute. Therefore, although we do not know this unlimited and absolute being, we do understand its possibility. We understand that it is the opposite of what we know (that is, what is limited). In contradistinction to what is limited, we think what is real and unlimited, but only negatively.

When we accumulate in an ens all the degrees and qualities of perfection that we know, we have no doubt that we are still engaged with a limited ens. But we mentally reach out from this to its contrary, and maintain that an ens is possible contrary to this limited ens in which my imagination is confined.(152) But if someone asks us what this ens is, we have to say that we do not know it. We only know that it is the opposite of all that one can think, that is, the opposite of all that is limited. Through this opposition, therefore, and through this negation of limited ens, what is unknown is contradistinguished and established in such a way that it cannot be confused at all with any other ens. As the mind progresses, it sets aside all limited entia apart from which only the unlimited can exist. God therefore is formed through the exclusion of every other possible being distinct from him, and consequently by means of negations.

1240. The mind, however, has a more proximate knowledge of God, although this, too, is negative. It knows separately 1. possible being, 2. some specific essences, and 3. the act by which these essences exist, that is, some limited substances. But essence, in so far as it is distinct from being, is a limitation of being. Limits, however, are impossible in God. By such an observation we draw up a formula with which we express only God: 'Being thought as complete in act is God.' This formula is true, but unintelligible to human beings in so far as they cannot think being itself in its perfect, complete act.

This is the ineffable name of God, that is, a formula that can express only God. Although we cannot understand this formula in its unity, it can be understood in its elements. This is sufficient to enable us to use it in marking and naming God separately from all other things, in none of which we find these elements bound together in the way they are expressed in our formula.

1241. Our negative knowledge of God, therefore, is such that through it, we know, without admixture of error, the one to whom we have to turn. We can without hesitation adore our cause, know in practice the source of goodness, and in the light proper to minds terminate our desire for knowledge. How stupid and vain is the effort of this world's sages who, simply because they misuse the phrase 'incomprehensible being', would want to restrain and turn away mankind from approaching this inexhaustible spring of all good!

1242. I shall conclude this chapter on our knowledge of essences with three observations.

1. The same names are applied to every kind of idea that we have, whether these ideas are positive or negative. Ideas therefore, relative to language, are indicated identically and all seem to express equally full, positive essences. This, however, is not the case. We need to note this carefully in order not to change a mental or purely nominal ens into a real ens [App., no. 10].

1243. 2. With the simple idea of anything, according to which we think its essence, we affirm nothing about the subsistence of entia; we are still in the world of possibilities. From the moment essences are conceived by us, they show themselves to us as possible by their nature because being possible is equivalent to being thinkable. This explains why antiquity maintained that there could be no error in the simple apprehension of things (ideas). And St. Thomas approves Aristotle's dictum which defines intelligence as the faculty of what is indivisible, in which (faculty) falsity cannot be found.(153)

1244. 3. We have seen that only essences, the objects of various branches of knowledge, can be the particular principles of the branches of knowledge (cf. vol. 2, 570 ss.). Sciences, or branches of knowledge, therefore, have principles about which error is impossible.

(140) S.T., I, q. 3, art. 3. -Species is only the idea.

(141) Hence, essences are simple and, as antiquity reminds us, there is no middle state between knowing them and not knowing them. St Thomas says: 'Anyone not grasping the essence of some simple thing' (such as things in the first apprehension we have of them) 'is altogether ignorant of it. He cannot know a part of the essence and not know some other part of it. It is not made up of parts' (In Metaph. Arist., bk. 9, less. 11).

(142) Even those which, considered apart, would be accidental. For example, 'the essence of a red piece of cloth' is not only that it be cloth, but red as well. Otherwise it would not be red cloth any longer, but something else, which would have to be defined differently.

(143) If a new, previously unknown principle, unable to be discerned by the senses, were somehow to be discovered in an object, and all the other properties were to originate from this, we would know a new essence, but it would not be that which we designate with the word 'body'. If we were to call the new principle body, this word would have changed its meaning. Nevertheless, because of the radical act of being, it would seem in such a case that we had come to know better the nature of body. This would indeed be true. We should not wonder, therefore, that the infinite mind knows all things in a single essence.

(144) The reader should recall the classification of the different essences intuited by human beings (cf. vol. 2, 646 ss.).

(145) We must note that the only truly simple mode amongst these three is that of abstract specific essence. The others are a composite of many accidental and substantial essences.

(146) When we have the idea of the species, we possess in it also the characteristics that form the genera. If someone told us, therefore, that a new species had been found belonging to a genus known to us, the idea of that species in its positive part would be generic only because we would not know the characteristics that distinguish this species from others. It would, however, be specific in its negative part. We see from this that nominal and negative essences can be specific, generic and universal.

(147) We are speaking of a thing specifically different from the other things which have fallen under the perception of this second person.

(148) Unumquodque cognoscibile est in quantum est ens (St. Thomas, In I Phys., c. 1).

(149) If we neglect the subjective element, as some classes of dogmatists do, we become overbearing and pretentious, which certainly does not become us. If we neglect the objective element, as the critical school of sceptics did, we find ourselves debased and despoiled of true and real knowledge. Our investigation is very important, therefore, if we are to avoid this twofold danger in philosophy.

(150) I say 'by our feeling as such' because being is already added in the intellective perception, that is, we recognise in this perception an act or term of being. Hence (cf. vol. 2, 880 ss.) I distinguished and separated the extrasubjective from the subjective part in the perception of bodies by means of a principle which is only a particular application of the general principle given here. By means of that principle I found three extrasubjective elements in the perception of external bodies: 1. the existence of a force; 2. multiplicity; and 3. continuous extension. These elements are things essentially different from us (subject).

(151) God, however, knows the particulars in all things, because his knowledge is not produced by things different from being, by effects, but by being itself, the cause of things, as St. Thomas states so well (C.G., I, q. 65).

(152) Here we are speaking of the concept of God, not of his existence.

(153) Arist., De Anima, bk. 3.