Chapter 8

Reason as a resultant potency

1012. The potency of reason arises in the soul, that is, in the common principle of sense and intellect, as a result of both felt and understood terms. The common principle unites these two terms in a perceptive union, and through the union apprehends real being in ideal being as in its essence. The potency of reason is therefore the acting subject itself rather than something subjective; the idea prescribes the law for this subject.

1013. Furthermore, in the logical order reason is a potency posterior to the two potencies of sense and intellect from which it results. In the chronological order the case is different, because reason exists as soon as the human being exists. I prove this in the following way.

The human being is a single subject composed of intellective soul and animal body. But the union of intellective soul with animal body comes about by means of a first, immanent perception (cf. 254-266). This perception is the first act of reason, the act through which reason exists. Hence the existence of the human being and of reason are contemporaneous. If reason exists as soon as the human being exists, but neither corporeal sense nor intelligence exist before the human being, these two primal faculties are not in the human being before the existence of reason, although reason results from them almost as a consequence from its principles.
It is true that feeling, or better the animal, can exist prior to the human being, but I am speaking of sense and intelligence as proper only to the human being.

1014. Priority in the logical order without necessary consequent priority in time is a problem that deserves the consideration of philosophers. There are many examples of it, and I think the one most worthy of attention is the syllogism. In a syllogism, the union of the first two terms, that is, the consequence, is not mentally posterior in time to the terms, although it results from them. In fact, as long as the mind has not seen the connection between the two terms, there is no syllogism; the first term cannot be called 'first', nor the second 'second', and there is no major or minor. But as soon as the mind has seen the consequence, it sees at once that one notion is a first term, and the other, a second term; it has therefore discovered the major and minor. A particular example is the perception of bodies: although it seems to involve some kind of reasoning, this perception is altogether immediate,(81) because it forms its own object.(82)

1015. This important truth, that 'in an ens there are elements which have a relationship of before and after without any temporal before and after', gives rise to the very beautiful, ontological principle that 'deep in an ens there is immanent, continuous action'. By applying this principle, we can reform and correct the popular concept of an ens. People in general always take the example of an ens from matter, and mentally conceive it as something immobile and dead, because they cannot imagine any action other than local movement and transient acts.

1016. But our problem does not concern an action that passes and is done in sections, even though one section has passed and another must follow. In the depth of an ens there is a fully continuous action through which the ens is posited in being and made to persist. The action is such that if it were not done totally, the ens would not be, and if it were not continuous, the ens would not endure. Nevertheless, the action contains within itself its own order analogous to that of the succession of things in time. This succession could be called 'age', as the Scholastics called it.

1017. This helps us to explain memory which supposes that what is successive in itself becomes contemporaneous. The whole of succession, in which time consisted, now remains present. Memory is a faculty of reason because it could not exist unless some feelings signalled successive, particular entities in ideal being. However I will have to return to memory when I discuss the unity of the human being and how his multiple activities emerge from this unity (Bk. 3, c. 1, a. 3).

1018. The end therefore to which the potency of reason is ordered is that of placing the intelligent being in communication with the reality of things.

In fact, human beings, as intelligent, communicate through their nature only with ideality which constitutes the light of intelligence. But while reality is either infinite and necessary or finite and contingent, in pure ideality there is neither infinite nor finite reality. Hence the intelligent being, intuiting pure ideality, does not communicate through its nature with any reality. Reality, therefore, which is not essential to human intelligence, must be bestowed on it. But how? Infinite reality, that is, Almighty God, can come to intelligence only through a gracious communication of God himself. This reality, bestowed on human intelligence, is intelligible per se because it is the very essence of ideal-real being. In order to be understood, infinite reality needs no other potency than that of intellect which intuits ideality. But there is a difference: the intellect is now perfected, elevated and made to perceive absolute reality.

Finite, contingent reality is not per se intelligible because it lacks the essence of being. In order to be communicated to intelligence, it must be rendered intelligible by intelligence. This action constitutes a new potency which differs from intellect and is called 'reason'.

1019. In fact intuiting what is intelligible is one thing; making intelligible what is not intelligible is another. These are two specifically different acts with specifically different formal objects. Because potencies are distinguished (cf. 937-957) according to the distinction between their acts and formal terms, reason is a different potency from intellect.

1020. I have explained elsewhere how contingent reality, which is not the essence of being, can be made intelligible, but I will summarise the explanation here:

1. The first condition for making contingent reality intelligible is that reality must be accessible to intellective being.

2. The second condition is that intellective being must add ideality, that is, essence, to reality, and of these two make an ens as object of understanding.

But when and how can contingent reality become accessible to an intellective ens? - The reality accessible to an intellective ens is the reality of the intellective ens itself, because this is something real. It is clear that the reality of the intellective ens must become accessible to itself because the reality is itself, not something else. As a feeling, the reality is not dead but living. To say that an ens intuits ideal being is the same as saying that a feeling is joined to ideal being. Feeling and ideal being are therefore joined by nature and constitute a single, intelligent being. But because ideal being is the very intelligibility of all things, feeling is made intelligible through the intimate union that it has with intelligibility. This union, founded in nature, is such that a single ens, called 'intellective', results from feeling and its intelligibility.

1021. There is a great deal to be considered here.
First of all, I said that the reality of intellective being is feeling. But this does not mean that intellective being can perceive only its own reality. It is true that 'intellective perception does not extend outside its own feeling', but it must obviously include all the modifications of its feeling. Furthermore, we must not forget the ontological observation I have frequently made: the action of one ens manifests itself in another without confusing itself with the action of the ens in which it manifests itself (this is the origin of the distinction between the two concepts of activity and passivity). If therefore the action of another ens is manifested in our feeling, we must perceive this other feeling by perceiving its action, precisely because we perceive our own feeling and all that takes place in it. The objection that perceiving the action of an ens is not to perceive the ens is invalid, granted the immutable law of perception that 'actions of entia are not perceived without conception of the entia to which the action pertains.' Indeed, properly speaking, 'the only thing that is conceived and understood is an ens and what takes place in an ens', because only an ens is the object of intelligence. This is precisely the reason why contingent realities are not intelligible per se; they are not entia but actions of another ens, or if we prefer, terms of its actions. Hence our very own substantial feeling is not an ens per se but, strictly speaking, the term of the action of an ens which remains hidden from us. If we are to understand our feeling therefore as well as all the contingent realities that happen in it, we must supply the ens with an act of our intelligence. In this way we complete realities and render them intelligible. Similarly, the actions performed in us by entia different from us are understood when we add them to an ens, that is, we unite them to an ens of which they are actions.

1022. Secondly, we see how this principle is the origin of the authority which the testimony of our own consciousness provides. This is not the first intellective perception we have of our own feeling; it is a reflection on the first perception and on other reflections. On the one hand, this first, natural perception makes us know our animality; on the other, our perception of this perception, that is, our perception of the perceiver (which is our first reflection) makes us intelligible. Perceiving ourselves as intelligent, we finally form the concept myself in the way I have described (cf. 61-68). But if the first perception were not natural, nor the foundation of the other perceptions which we acquire successively of our modified self, the testimony provided by our awareness would not possess the universal authority it holds among human beings who are persuaded that its witness is infallible and clear. This persuasion arises because the first union between feeling and the idea is a fact of nature itself. In this fact we habitually perceive our own feeling without a shadow of doubt. This persuasion is indeed the natural completion of our perception. This is the witness given by our awareness, which is always a perception of a perception.

1023. In the third place, we can easily see that reflection and its nature have their origin in the activity of the rational subject. We noted that the rational subject is posited in being through the fundamental, intellective perception which unites intelligent ens individually to animal feeling. This union constitutes the human being, and without it the subject or rational principle would not exist. But granted its existence, it has its own activity which, relative to its mode, is independent of the term. As we saw, although the activity of every principle exists through its term, it acts in its own way, which must be deduced from observation (cf. 742-743, 929).

The activity of the rational principle can generically be called 'attention', although this word is not used in this general sense. It usually expresses 'free or chosen intellective activity, normally accompanied by awareness which is applied to and concentrated on a determinate object.' On the other hand, an intellective power that is freely applied to a chosen object does not differ from the power applied instinctively to the object when this is first presented to the spirit. I think it better therefore to use 'intellective attention' to mean generally 'the power of the spirit applied to any object whatsoever, without particular concentration, and even instinctively.'

1024. If the intuition of being is understood in this way, it becomes a first act of attention - perception also involves this act. But later attention is directed and concentrated sometimes according to different laws, sometimes by instinct guided by needs, sometimes by spontaneous choice, and sometimes even by free choice amongst the objects present to the spirit. The power proper to the principle is the ability to concentrate on many objects or on one or on an individual part of an object while withdrawing partly or even totally from the others. The law proper to the activity of the principle or rational subject is, we must remember, to concentrate itself in an object or part of an object among those present to our spirit.

How then is the spirit able to reflect upon its own actions?

Granted that all the passive or active actions of the spirit are feeling, and that every human feeling is the object of a natural perception, we immediately see the origin of reflection. It is, as I said, simply a perception of previous perceptions and acts. Perceptions themselves are feeling and therefore capable of being perceived.

1025. If this is the explanation of how we can reflect on acts of our spirit, we can explain even more easily how we can reflect on the objects of these acts. These objects are united to perceptions and constitute their term; the acts of the spirit are the principles of perceptions. Both term and principle of intellective acts (which do not exist without principle and term as their two extremes) are therefore perceivable, and by force of concentration the spirit can apply its attention to one or the other, to terms or principles exclusively.(83)

1026. In the fourth place, we can explain how the rational principle can act on reality and on matter itself. We say that the rational principle is itself something real, that is, a principle of feeling which makes itself intelligible, granted the natural union between it and ideal being, the intelligibility of all things. When the rational principle perceives itself, it perceives other real things that cause effects in it. Real being, that is, substantial feeling, has an active principle with which it can modify itself and also re-act on what acts in it. But if this real being perceives and consequently knows itself and its different states, it also learns through this condition to know how it must move and use its activity in order to be capable of modifying itself and other things united to it. If therefore the rational principle knows how it must act and is at the same time the operative power, clearly it will act on itself as it wills, and on the real things which by virtue of the action they exercise on it are in continuity with it and it with them.

1027. So far I have spoken of the origin and nature of perception and reflection, the two faculties of reason. It will be helpful to add a short analysis of both faculties.
Perception has three levels which I call 'apprehension', 'affirmation' and 'persuasion'.

1028. Affirmation and persuasion are virtually contained in the (intellective) apprehension of reality. The fundamental perception of our animality comes to a halt at this first level. In fact our animality is expressly affirmed not in the first moments of our existence but only much later when we begin to speak. The doctrine of the fundamental perception is thus reconciled with the other opinion I have expressed, namely, that the human being first perceives external things and much later himself and what is his own. I said this in reference to express affirmation, which is the second level of perception, the level which completes perception and entails distinct persuasion.

1029. I must also say that affirmation alone forms the strongest part of the mind, the part which is present in apprehension in a kind of implicit, virtual mode.

1030. Persuasion is more a habit than an act of the spirit; it is distinct and actual when produced by affirmation. In this case it is affirmation itself habitually present in the spirit.

1031. Perception brings with it the faculty of 'universalisation', that is, of full, specific ideas. I have discussed this faculty sufficiently in A New Essay.(84)

1032. I have already laid down the principle relative to the analysis of reflection. The rational spirit has the power to direct its attention to perceived objects, by limiting its attention to a few or by extending it to many or to all of them or to a part which in reality is indivisible, or by concentrating attention on a single point, increasing its strength, as it were.

But before undertaking this analysis, we need to recall that reflection, which is always a perception of a perception, must compare the object on which it is reflecting with universal being,(85) from which it draws transcendent principles. As a result, the faculty of reflection does not act as simple reflection. If it did, it would not increase the objects of knowledge but simply see and view them again. Merely looking at them again is not what I call reflecting philosophically; it is purely a renewal of the act of attention which has ceased and become habitual. This new act of attention, in the case of things known habitually, is not reflection but reminiscence. A prior, external perception which is repeated later is not reflection but simply repetition of the perception. Reflection therefore must be carefully distinguished from 1. memory, which is the deposit of habitual knowledge, 2. reminiscence, which is actual advertence to knowledge, and 3. repeated perception. The principal distinction is this: neither memory nor reminiscence nor repeated perception increases human knowledge; only reflection does this. As I said, reflection increases knowledge because it always relates and compares a perception already perceived with ideal being, discovering the relationships which are changed into principles.

1033. Reflection must therefore be divided into partial and total.
I call partial reflection that which uncovers relationships which divide or unite objects under reflection, but not relationships between objects and essential, universal being.
I call total reflection that which uncovers and enunciates relationships between its objects and essential, universal being.

Reflection in fact always has recourse to universal, essential, ideal being; otherwise, it could not discover anything new. But sometimes it compares its objects with being to find their mutual relationships (partial reflection); sometimes it compares them with being to find their relationships with being itself (total reflection). This nomenclature is not based on different means of knowledge, because reflection always uses the same means, that is, ideal being. It is based on different results, which are partial if they stop at the relationships between partial objects; total if they ultimately establish the relationship between being itself, universal being, and objects, even if partial.

1034. Relationships of universal being are always universal, and therefore in some way encompass all that is knowable. Relationships between partial objects are partial and constitute only a part of what is knowable.

1035. The various levels of reflection are rooted in and have their explanation in the nature of partial reflection. After I have reflected on a perception, I can, by a second act of reflection, reflect on my reflection, and with a third reflection I can turn my thought to the second; I can do the same with a fourth reflection, and so on. Every time I raise myself to a higher level of reflection therefore, I always extract some new knowledge. The possibility of these different levels of reflection is founded in partial reflection. Clearly, if my first reflection exhausted what is knowable, I could not know anything new with the second and subsequent reflections; I would be limited to repeating the first reflection.

1036. The great importance of the study of the different levels of reflection is understood only by those who have noted that it is the source of the supreme principle of method,(86) of the principle which must govern the philosophical history of systematic knowledge, and of the principle for a history of humanity, as well as countless other consequences of supreme importance in the moral and political government of mankind.

1037. Multiple levels do not exist in total reflection which, having attained the supreme, most complex truths, cannot be the source of new discoveries. Thus, if my mind has attained the intuition of some supreme principle, I can certainly discover its applications (which means a return to reflection), but cannot proceed higher with total reflection; I can only repeat the act by which I contemplate the principle I have already discovered. This is contemplation.

1038. But whatever the level of reflection, reflection always acts in the same way. Its intention is to find relationships, which as differences, opposites, etc. sometimes divide things, and sometimes as equalities, similarities, co-relationships, analogies, etc. unite and bind things together. The two ways in which partial reflection acts are above all analysis and synthesis.

1039. Analysis divides, synthesis unites, but in both cases the objects involved are known. Partial reflection sometimes finds not only the relationship between known objects but also simultaneously produces with its own activity one of the terms of the relationship. It does this by using and applying the idea of being, but in two different ways: it either deduces the term or invents it. This is what I call respectively 'rational faith' and 'rational creation'.
Analysis, synthesis, rational faith and creation are therefore the four ways in which reflection acts. I will say something about each.

1040. Analysis, which separates and divides known objects, is material or formal.
Material analysis is that in which the parts of the divided object have all the same nature and logical condition. Their similarity derives from the division to which matter (which is taken as uniform) is susceptible. Consequently, the parts do not differ in nature, only in size. Chemical analysis, numeric division, etc., are of this kind.
On the other hand, formal analysis is that in which the parts of the mentally severed object vary in nature. For example, when a genus is divided into many species, the genus has a logical nature different from that of the species, and each species has a nature different from the others. Thus the faculty of abstraction obviously pertains to formal analysis.

1041. Synthesis has a similar classification, because it also can be material or formal. It is material if parts of the same nature are united, as in addition or multiplication or in something whole formed by the adjacency of parts. It is formal if parts of different nature are united, as in a judgment, where the mind unites a predicate with a subject.

1042. The subject therefore of material analysis and synthesis is quantity; the subject of formal analysis and synthesis is quality, modality or relationship.

1043. Note however that formal synthesis, whose general form is judgment, undergoes marked modification when the levels of reflection proceed higher. Thus, if at the first level of reflection I make various judgments by a synthesis, and then raise my thought to another synthesis at a higher level and see the nexus between the two judgments, I soon have the form of a syllogism. We see in this form how reflection can produce new knowledge; I unite two judgments, but the resulting syllogism contains three. In other words, reflection has enabled me to gain an extra judgment, the conclusion itself of the syllogism. Clearly therefore, if by synthesis I proceed higher to other levels of reflection, I can, by comparing syllogisms with judgments, and syllogisms with each other, draw other conclusions. This is the origin of reasoning.

1044. Here, I must point out that some kind of synthesis is present in every analysis. In order to find differences and oppositions, which enable us to separate one thing from another, we must first collate and compare the things before going on to distinguish and separate them. This comparison is a kind of synthesis, a first degree of synthesis. Consequently, the distinction between analysis and synthesis lies in the result rather than in the action of reflection, whose proper form is always synthetical.

1045. This explains why I classified judgment and reasoning as synthesis rather than analysis, although the result can sometimes be analytical rather than synthetical. In fact, whenever judgments or the conclusion of a syllogism are negative, the result is normally analytical and divisive, but the form always synthetical. This will be clear to those who know that the human mind conceives what is negative under a positive form, conceives nothing as something, and that negation is, in its form, an affirmation. Thus a negative predicate is synthesised with a subject when we want to separate and distinguish. This law of thought led algebraists to add up positive and negative quantities by the same process, which they called precisely 'sum', equivalent to union or synthesis.

1046. Let us now consider the actions of reflection in which the faculty discovers or imagines one of the two terms of its analysis or synthesis. I said there were two such actions, rational faith and rational creation.
Sometimes the human mind reflects upon a perceived object, and by comparing it with the essence of being, finds that its existence is conditional on another ens which has never been perceived by the mind. In other words the notion that the perceived object should exist by itself contradicts the essence of being. This gives rise to 'rational faith', that is, 'a reasonable persuasion that the other term exists, although the mind has never perceived or known in any way whatsoever its mode of being.' I call this function 'integration'.

For example, when Leibniz compares real created beings with the essence of being he finds that the law of continuity lies in the order of being itself. He then sees a link missing from the chain of natural things known at his time. But he believes in the existence of this unknown link and thus predicts the discovery of zoophytes, which were discovered later.
Le-Verrier discovered the existence of his planet in a similar way, a priori, we could say. As Arago fittingly commented, Le-Verrier did not see the planet in the lens of his telescope but on the point of his pen. The two principles of cause and analogy, which produced the discovery, were already known from the comparison of real entia with the essence of being. Le-Verrier argued that some irregularities in the movement of the known planets had to have a cause because of the principle of cause. He noted that other irregularities and disturbances could be explained by the mutual attraction of an unknown planet. He calculated its position and the planet was discovered in the indicated spot.

A similar argument moves from contingent to unperceived, necessary being; it is a contradiction to say that contingent being can exist alone without necessary being. The following syllogism expresses this truth: 'The contingent exists, that is, is an ens. But ens is never solely contingent. Therefore, for the contingent to be an ens, as it is, what is necessary must exist.' Thus the whole human race, by means of spontaneous integration, ascends to the reasonable belief that the supreme Ens exists.

1047. Positive faith in divine things is also reduced to rational faith, if rational faith in the existence of God already exists. The reasoning is as follows: 'If this man were not sent by God to announce the truth, he would not do things which presuppose the intervention of God. But this extraordinary individual does exist and proclaims these divine things which must therefore be true because their truth is a necessary condition for the existence and preaching of this man.' In other words: 'The truth of the divine things which this man is proclaiming is the necessary reason for explaining how and why he does these things.' What he proclaims remains unseen but the above-mentioned form of reasoning, which I call integration, makes us believe it simply because what is perceived could not be unless the unperceived proclamation existed. This kind of reasoning makes a blind person believe in the existence of colours. He says: 'These colours, which I do not perceive, exist because there is someone worthy of belief whom I do perceive. If the colours did not exist, this person worthy of faith could not exist. But such a person does exist, therefore the colours exist also.'

1048. These examples show that:
1. The argument for integration is founded in the intrinsic, necessary order of being which is normally expressed in forms proper to ontological principles. This order is found in the natural contemplation of being and means that a given, perceived part of being would not be what it is unless there were some other, unperceived part.

2. The rational faith under discussion concerns unperceived entities, that is, entities whose realisation was never communicated and whose nature is therefore positively unknown. This nature is made known to us solely by means of perception or of similarity with what is perceived [App., no. 4].

1049. What is to be said about the faith we have in a person who asserts the existence of something whose realised essence we have perceived at other times? Does this kind of belief pertain to rational faith? For example, if we believe travellers who tell us they have discovered a new river in Africa, is this the activity I call 'rational faith'?

Note that human knowledge is divided into two great classes, the essences of things and subsistences, which are the realisation of the essences. Now, when travellers deserving our faith tell us they have discovered a new river, they tell us nothing new about the essence of the river because we already know, through sense-perception, what a river is. They are not witnesses to the essence but simply advisers or stimulators of our attention which immediately thinks about a river, that is, the essence of something we already know. But relative to the subsistence of the river in Africa, they are true witnesses in whom we have rational faith. Integration however has no place in this rational faith which is concerned with the subsistence, not the essence of the things narrated. The activity of integration is directed to completing the essence of being; it does not deal with subsistence. The examples I gave of the discoveries of Leibniz and Le-Verrier concern subsistence. But the mode of reasoning is the same, and this is why I gave these examples.

Integration therefore is a kind of rational faith, but not the only one.

1050. Rational creation differs from rational faith. Just as faith in something perceived and conditioned is an argument for the condition, so creation assumes or imagines something whose essence has been perceived at other times, but in whose subsistence there is no real belief. This assumption or fiction is brought about by the activity of the human intelligence for various reasons which are not always rational. Hence it takes on three forms; it can be a faculty of hypothesis, of personification, or of error.

1051. A sound hypothesis contains a rational element and comes very close to integration, but differs from it in the following way:
1. In integration a term is present whose essence we have not perceived. But that which is assumed by hypothesis is always something whose essence has been perceived.

2. In integration argument induces necessity; in hypothesis it is conjectural.

3. In integration the non-perceived term is single and excludes all others; in hypothesis the term which is assumed to explain the facts does not exclude other terms, because the facts to be explained can usually be explained by many hypotheses.

1052. Personification is not rational. It has a instinctive origin, and is used by human beings almost as a symbol to stimulate feeling in themselves rather than increase their knowledge.

1053. Finally, the faculty of error is an arbitrary affirmation which denies the truth and is certainly not rational; on the contrary, it has a relationship of opposition to reason.

1054. Clearly, the soul's activity in rational creation pertains to the superabundant activity which the principle (subject, soul) manifests when posited in being by the term, although the activity itself does not come precisely from the term.

1055. We still need to discuss total reflection which, as we saw, searches for the relationships proper to universal being without attending to the relationship proper to particular entia. This reflection embraces a group of four faculties which I call 1. the faculty of principles, 2. the faculty of archetypes, 3. the faculty of method, and 4. the faculty of absolute or transcendental knowledge.

1056. Principles understood in an absolute sense, which is how I understand them, are propositions with a universal value and no other explanations higher than themselves. They are the idea of being considered in its application to reasoning, where it exercises its greatest power.(87)

1057. Just as being illuminates the mind, so it governs human activity. It equally directs theoretical reason and practical reason, providing both with their directive principles.

1058. If being were not essentially ordered and, as it were, organated, it could not of itself produce the principles of human reason which express its order. If we consider carefully the service rendered by these principles to the mind, we see 'that every principle shows the mind how an ens must be if it is to be an ens.' For example, the principle of cognition states: 'There is no thought unless it has an ens for its object.' This means that the entity called thought would not be an entity or simply would not be, unless it had an ens as its object. It describes therefore how thought must be an entity, that is, it describes the order of this entity.

The principle of substance states: 'There is no accident without a substance.' This describes the mode or order necessary for an 'accident' to be an entity.

The principle of cause states: 'Every event must have a cause.' It describes how an event can be, that is, the necessary order of the entity indicated by 'event'. We can proceed in the same way with other principles: each expresses how an ens must be, if it is to be, that is, it expresses its intrinsic, necessary order.

1059. Order always supposes a unified multiplicity. Unity can therefore be considered in multiplicity, and multiplicity in unity. From these two standpoints two series of principles of theoretical reason can be deduced. The first indicates how unity can be multiplied, the second how multiplicity can be unified.

1060. In addition to the three principles of cognition, substance and cause, already discussed, the following also can be reduced to first principles: the principle of substantial individual, of subject, of person and of the absolute. They state: 'There would be no ens without substantial individuals, no ens without subjects, no ens without persons and no ens without the absolute.' These principles can also be expressed by the following formulas: 'There is no multiplicity of entia, without substantial individuals'; I call this 'the principle of substantial individuals'. 'If there are substantial individuals, there are subject individuals (sentient)'; I call this principle 'the principle of subject'. 'If there are subjects, there are persons'; I call this 'the principle of persons'. 'If there is an ens, there is absolute ens'; I call this 'the principle of the absolute', from which we also extract transcendental, absolute knowledge.

1061. The relationships between multiplicity and unity result in other principles of theoretical reason, for example: 'The whole is greater than its parts', 'Two things equal to a third are equal to each other', etc.

1062. Let me say one word about the principles governing and directing practical reason. Practical reason has the two acts: contemplation and action. Contemplation is governed by the principle of beauty; action, by the principle of moral law.

1063. The faculty of archetypes is that in which thought carries any known essence to its ultimate, possible perfection, determining what is necessary for the essence to be fully perfect. It is the origin of the deontological sciences,(88) and a most noble task of reflection. By comparing the imperfect species of things given us by perception with being, the faculty discovers how much of the order of being can be received by their essences. This faculty supremely ennobles minds and was extraordinary in Plato, procuring for him the title 'divine'. No one can be a great human being who does not possess this faculty to a high degree. The magnanimous actions of great people are realised always through imitation of the sublime ideal they vividly contemplate in their minds.

1064. The faculty of method originates from reflection when it rises above all particular levels of reflection to arrange them in suitable order. It is a kind of universal reflection which encompasses in a single glance all possible reflections, that is, an indefinite number of reflections.

1065. Finally the faculty of absolute or transcendental knowledge is another product of total reflection. It takes all the knowledge it wants and compares it to the essence of being. It first distinguishes what is subjective and phenomenal from things known in themselves, independently of any contribution made by our act of knowledge, and then shows that in making the distinction nothing more has been introduced relative to the subject. An example can be seen in my dialogue entitled Moschini.
But to summarise what has been said, it will be helpful to set out the various actions of human reason in the following synoptic schema [pp. 146-147].

Notes

(81) Sistema filosofico , 89-93.

(82) NE , vol. 1, 121-129.

(83) Philosophy begins from reflection. It is not surprising therefore to see that Maine de Biran tried to base the classification of potencies on reflection alone. The philosophical distinction of potencies is in fact the task of reflection, but reflection uses previous data.

(84) NE , vol. 2, 487-504, 400-412. - I do not recall having ever found among philosophers an accurate description of universalisation . In the following passage of Leibniz we see that this great man, when reflecting on the application of names, noted that the smallest accidents could be common qualities. This was an indirect acknowledgement that in order to obtain what is common or universal, it was not necessary to abstract accidents or something else from a thing, but simply to prescind from individual subsistence: 'General terms which certainly help to perfect languages are also necessary to constitute them. If by particular things we mean individual things, it would be impossible to speak whenever there were only proper but not common names, that is, if there were only names of individuals. New individuals, accidents and actions, which we especially wish to indicate, are presented to us all the time. However if by particular things we meant the lowest species (species infimas ), very often it would not only be difficult to determine them, but clearly they would already be universals founded on similitudes' (Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement humain, bk. 3, c. 1 §3).

(85) Sistema filosofica , 98-104.

(86) Cf. The Prefazione to the Catechismo [disposto secondo l'ordine delle idee ].

(87) NE , vol. 2, 558-573.

(88) Sistema filosofica , 151-173.