Chapter 2

The ontological laws followed by the rational principle in its operation
and imposed on speculative reason — the supreme law

1294. The rational principle acts in two ways, speculatively and practically. While its speculative action produces no effect outside the mind; its practical action does. I now intend to consider the ontological laws imposed by the object on both speculative and practical reason.

1295. First, we have to consider the principle of cognition, the supreme and most general law.
All other laws are indeed contained and summed up in the principle of cognition which is formulated as follows: 'The term of thought is an ens,'(146) that is: 'Thought is such that its primal, natural law is to have an ens as its term. In other words, thought either has an ens as its term or ceases to be.' Considered from this point of view an ens is, therefore, the condition under which thought, the speculative operation of reason, exists.

1296. It follows that the qualities and characteristics essential to an ens correspond to conditions of thought. They are laws of thought. Every thought, in order to exist, must have a term furnished with all the qualities and characteristics possessed by an ens.
Note that when we speak in general of laws of thought, I do not mean that such laws must be observed in every act of thought separated by abstraction from all other acts of thought. I am considering the complex, total thought which results from the sum of the single, partial acts which a person carries out in his mind at every moment.

For example, a man thinks of a real line. This is a particular act. But he cannot think of a real line without thinking of the surface of which it is the term. If I said that the need to think of surfaces or solids is a law of thought applied to corporeal extension, it could not be objected that we also think of lines and points which we find through abstraction in the surfaces and solids we perceive. The special act with which we think of the abstract point or line, is not an act that stands alone. It is simultaneous with and conditioned by the thought of the surface or the solid in which we see the line or the point. It follows that the surface or solid is not lacking in the complex thought of corporeal extension. Thus the law of thought is fulfilled.

When we say, therefore, that accepting an ens with the qualities which constitute it as ens is a law of thought, I do not mean in any way that we cannot, through abstraction, think of some quality of an ens separate from some other quality, even though the quality cannot stand alone. Rather, I mean that this abstract element cannot be thought unless we first think of an ens. We know that the element pertains to an ens and is in an ens. It is true therefore that 'we think of an ens together with its essential conditions' in complex, human thought. This is so true that if, through sense, we receive an accident of an ens (for example, a colour and nothing more), the soul can think of this accident only by adding to it the substance which it does not receive. This comes about because the accident would not be an ens without the substance, as I have shown elsewhere.(147)

1297. What has been said is sufficient to overcome the objection against the principle of cognition which could arise from seeing that abstract thought is concerned with accidents which, taken on their own, lack the properties of an ens. Abstract thought is a part of a thought; it is not thought in its entirety. Abstract thought never exists alone in the mind without some kind of presence of thought in its entirety. I must add here another extremely important observation. Thought has many species of acts, not all of which apprehend an ens in the same way and with the same completeness. To show how this comes about, I must explain more distinctly the efficacy with which the principle of cognition gives form to intellections. This efficacy can be set out in the following two propositions:

1298. I. 'Human understanding cannot think anything which has properties contrary to those essential to an ens.'

1299. In virtue of this law, the human spirit cannot think anything which is and is not at the same time because no ens contradicts itself. The principle of contradiction expressed by the Greeks, (*),(148) has its origin here.

1300. It may be objected that we think nothing, we think negation. But nothing is the opposite of an ens, which expresses something. It is not necessary, therefore, that an ens should always be the object of thought.

I answer. 'Nothing' indeed is contrary to an ens, but if we think carefully we see that nothing is not and cannot be thought as nothing. When we think of nothing, we really think of a relationship proper to a contingent ens, a relationship that an ens has with thought and with itself. By means of this relationship, we think that an ens either is, in which case it is thinkable, or is not, in which case it is unthinkable. 'It is not' simply signifies that two acts are combined in the same thought, one of which thinks of an ens, the other of which removes the ens and, by taking it away, abolishes the object of thought. If we consider all the argumentation that mathematicians bring to bear on 'nothing', and the different species of nothing which they set up, we can see that nothing as thought is not properly speaking nothing, but a relationship of an ens. Giuseppe Torelli spoke very subtly about this in his beautiful book, De nihilo geometrico. The same can be seen if we examine the ways in which ascetics express themselves. When they say, for example, that man is nothing, that everything is nothing outside God, they are speaking the exact truth. A spiritual person often used this prayer: 'My God, I am a sinner, a sinful nothing. Make me innocent, an innocent nothing.' There is a marvellous truth and exactness in this prayer where we see that the nothing of which it speaks is not pure nothing, which is incapable of fault or innocence, but a relationship pertaining to human beings who are nothing of themselves without the Creator. Without the Creator, they would cease to be.

1301. II. 'Human understanding, although it always has an ens as its object, is not forced to think in the same way of all the properties of this ens. It has to think of some properties actually, and others virtually. It is obliged not to deny those properties of which it thinks virtually, but be prepared to examine them. Human understanding must think actually, however, of the ideal essence. It is not obliged by any law of thought to consider actually the properties and relationships which, although pertaining to an ens as real, are virtually comprised in the ideal. This is so, even if such properties and relationships are necessary for the constitution of the ens of which we think. It is simply obliged not to deny them and to leave them as matter for successive investigation.'

1302. This extremely important law makes possible the different kinds of intellections proper to the human being, and assigns its special laws to each of them. Let us examine the ontological laws obeyed by each kind of intellection. The principal kinds are: 1. intuition; 2. perception; 3. reflection exercised through abstraction and integration, and consequently divided into a) reflection as abstraction and b) reflection as integration.

1303. Intuition has ideal ens as its object. This act of thought, while extending to ens in its ideal form, totally prescinds from reality and morality, the other two forms.

1304. Here we have to consider an important ontological principle, that is, 'an ens, although it may be in three modes, is complete in each of them because each in its own way embraces the whole ens.' Intuition, therefore, embraces all that an ens is, and can only be predicated of an act which, referring to all that an ens is, lacks nothing required by thought which, in turn, only requires an ens as its object.

1305. Moreover, because an ens is simple and indivisible in its ideal form, it can only be given to the understanding as whole or nothing. Under its real form, however, an ens can be given in part to the understanding because it is divisible and multipliable although in this case it cannot be thought of on its own since it lacks one of its parts (it is not a complete ens).(149) But the human understanding, granted that it already has the whole of an ens in the ideal form, can no longer lack the full, entire object which it requires. Granted this object, the parts of what is real can also be thought because their presence simply adds some other term to thought without removing the ideal ens. Thought is possible as soon as it receives the ens in its entirety under the ideal form. As I said, it is ideal being which forms thought and constitutes the potency of thought.

1306. Prior intuition of ideal being, the light, the means of knowing everything real, is needed if we are to explain perception, the operation of the rational principle by which a real ens is apprehended.
This truth is seen only by those who meditate profoundly on the nature of perception. Many are persuaded that the object of our perception when we perceive something real (for example, a body), is a particular and nothing more. They never succeed in resolving the perceived object into its two elements, possibility and reality, that is, into the idea in which the knowable essence of a body is seen and the contemporaneous apprehension with which reality is affirmed.

Our mind does not in fact perceive a body without calling upon both elements in its act. This truth will be seen by answering the following question: do I know what I have perceived? Yes, I do. It was a round body, the size of a pomegranate, yellow, clear, hard, a ball of ivory. This is the concept of the body that I have perceived. — But does this concept include the subsistence of the body? This is an important question, and the answer is 'No'. As long as I think only of the concept of the body, which is expressed in the definition I have given, I still do not know whether the body subsists. — I conclude that knowing the subsistence of a body is different from having its concept.

As a result of perception therefore, we acquire two cognitions of a body, that of its concept and that of its real subsistence. Hence every perception is twofold, and results from two contemporaneous acts of the spirit, the intuition of a concept, and the persuasion that something subsists. Obviously, we cannot be persuaded that something exists unless we first have its concept. In the logical order, the concept precedes the persuasion that what is in the concept and known through the concept actually exists.

Another way of convincing ourselves of the same truth is to consider that we know immediately the possibility of every contingent thing that we perceive. If I am asked: 'Is something possible?', I reply without hesitation: 'It must be; if it exists it is possible.' But how do I know that what exists is possible? Where do I get the concept of possibility? I get it, this is quite certain, from the concept I have of some thing. The concept, as we know, gives me information about the knowable essence of a thing, but does not tell me that it subsists. I conclude, therefore, that the thing contemplated in its concept may or may not subsist. To know if it subsists, I need some further indication which, in the perception, is the feeling I have of the thing. The possibility is contained in the pure concept of the thing in so far as this concept does not necessarily show the thing as subsisting. Now, this concept is the ideal being of the thing. If, in perception, I did not think the ideal being of the thing, I would not know its possibility. The origin of the thought of possibility supposes, therefore, that in every perception I intuit the ideal concept, in addition to perceiving the reality of the perceived thing.(150)

1307. But what is the ideal concept of an ens? It is simply the universal concept of being, limited and determined by the action of a thing in us, that is, by the feeling produced in us by the thing. When I say: 'The concept of an ivory ball', I simply say: 'The concept of a being determined by the sensible qualities of this ball.' Every perception of an ens includes the intuition of its ideal being, and every ideal being supposes the intuition of indetermined and universal ideal being. Perception cannot be explained, therefore, unless we suppose that the soul first intuits ideal being per se.

1308. Thus the object of perception, although a limited, real thing is nevertheless an ens. It lacks nothing essential; it accords with the principle of cognition. If the limited, real ens were separated from ideal being, it would no longer have all the conditions and qualities of an ens. It cannot exist of itself alone, nor does it have in itself the explanation of its own existence. Separated from what is ideal, it is divided from its own essence. But united with what is ideal, what is real has received its essence; it is a complete ens. It can, therefore, be perceived.

1309. But we still have to explain how perception is limited in this way. Why do we not perceive the whole of reality? Why does understanding apprehend in perception one part of reality of an ens and exclude every other? — This portion of what is real and perceived is not chosen abitrarily by the understanding, but furnished for it by feeling. Individual feelings are separated in such a way that what is in one is not in another. Moreover, they are mutually incommunicable. In perception, the rational principle, therefore, remains limited by feeling. This we posit as an undeniable fact. Its explanation will be given in Theosophy.

1310. But if real ens is per se unlimited, will it not always lack some essential or necessary quality when it is perceived as limited? If limited, real ens has no explanation for its subsistence, can we conceive it as subsisting? — Everything lacking to a real ens is already supposed and admitted virtually and indistinctly in ideal being which joins itself to the real ens, and in which the real ens finds its essence. Reality, without which the real ens cannot be complete in the thought we have of it, is not excluded but, as it were, left behind. One example of this is the way mathematicians express an indefinite series. After having written some of the terms, they add: 'and so on'. In doing this, they indicate and suppose what is lacking, but without expressing it. Thus, in the perception of a limited, real ens, the conditions indispensable for its subsistence are not denied but left vague. These conditions are its essential or at least necessary relationships with other limited entia or with the unlimited ens. All this later becomes the subject of ontological and theosophical reflection.

1311. An argument of this kind confutes the error of the panidealist philosophers who claim that man must, in his first intellection, perceive everything which he will afterwards find through reflection. They do not distinguish sufficiently between ideal and real being. Confusing them, they claim that THE WHOLE OF REALITY also enters the first natural intellection and, therefore, every perception. The truth is that only THE WHOLE OF IDEALITY enters the first natural intellection. When what is real but limited and partial is compared with the whole of ideality, reflection finds what is lacking to what is real.(151) We now move on to explain the law of reflection.

1312. Reflection is the faculty which, turning back on a perception or its object, abstracts or integrates.

1313. Relative to reflection as abstraction, we have to distinguish three accidents:

1. Simulated abstraction. This is properly speaking nothing more than imperfect perception. Its foundation lies in the imperfection of sense. This accident deceived the Aristotelians who were led to attribute the universal to sense as though it were an accident of sense.

2. Abstraction which simply divides the ideal part from the real part of the object of perception. This is called 'universalisation', and is sometimes carried out naturally without any positive act. The act of affirmation ceases and is forgotten.(152)

3. Finally, abstraction exercised on the idea of a thing and only consequently on the real thing, in so far as it corresponds with the idea (realised form). In this abstraction, attention is limited to one part of a conceived and perceived ens without abolishing in the mind other parts to which we simply pay no attention.

1314. Let us consider the first accident. — Aristotelians noticed that the notions of children and uneducated people are very general. They also noticed that an object presented at a distance from the sensory organ conceals some of its differences. For example, a stationary person seen at a distance is not distinguished from a column because our sense does not apprehend the smaller parts which differentiate the human being. They concluded that sense presents first the most common qualities, and then proper qualities. They also concluded that the intellect, following sense, first conceives what is universal and then what is particular. This is an illusion of sensists. But it was at least a much more subtle illusion than many of those proper to modern philosophers. It was also characteristic of the Aristotelian spirit. Here I think it worthwhile explaining the matter in the words of Zimara, a 16th century Italian philosopher and professor at the University of Padua. He discussed the question; 'What do we first know?' and answered:

This sensistic illusion arises because sensists always speak of things as felt-known, never merely of things as felt. Consequently, they find what is common and proper in what falls under the senses, and have no hesitation in saying that sensible entia possess universal and more or less common accidents. To avoid mistakes, we need to take the felt element and despoil it of everything added to it by the act of knowledge and of perception. Nothing universal and common now remains. 'Universal' and 'common' express only the relationship between the felt element and ideas. All that remains is particulars. In sense, the whole, the part, the animal, man, are all equally particular.

Moreover, the eye has only a particular sensation whether it sees a confused object at a distance without distinct parts, or sees it nearby with distinct parts. A distance sensation is different from a nearby sensation, but they remain sensations; the comparison between the two felt elements is made by reason after it has grasped them and they have become known, contained and measured in the idea. There is no doubt that we find common and proper parts in these known-felt things. But, at the same time, we see that what is common corresponds to the first sensation, and what is common and proper corresponds to the second sensation. Various arguments can be used to prove this besides the principal argument drawn from observation and contemplation of the thing in itself.

I add here several arguments in addition to those I have given elsewhere.(156)

I. Argument. — Sense does not first perceive the whole and then the parts in a nearby object; at one and the same time it perceives the whole with its parts. All parts of a human being are contained in the sight and image that we have of him. Nevertheless, the rational principle first attends to the whole rather than the parts, and needs to pay special attention to perceive clearly the parts from which the whole results. It is characteristic of rational attention to embrace first the whole and then the parts. Babies, for example, initially call every man 'Father' and every woman 'Mother', although through sense they perceive distinct images of people whom they have seen. Their sense-perception is in fact perfect, and better than that of adults. Nevertheless, their rational attention first grasps what people have in common. They leave aside whatever else they may have perceived through sense. It seems as though they have not felt anything else; in fact, they have simply not considered it mentally.

II. Argument. — Babies first fix their attention on more common sensible qualities (without however ignoring other qualities) with the help of words, which are the instrument of reason, not of sense. Without such instruments of thought, through which they can concentrate on the common element and forget the rest, they would never arrive at such abstraction. This is so true that Aristotelians themselves noticed with great acumen that the child does not turn his attention to common, universal characteristics not indicated by a word, even if these are present in sensible things. Unnamed universals are not more known than particulars nor prior to particulars. But these philosophers did not profit from the light of this beautiful observation as they should have done, although it focuses exactly on the point at issue.

The Aristotelians say that this depends on the weaker impression made in the sense by such genera. They give no proof of this, however, and often it is not the case. On the other hand, it is clear that these genera remain unnamed because they are less necessary to human life and, if not signalled by words, apprehended only with difficulty by the intellect.

III. Argument. — It is not true that the baby possesses the abstraction which all Aristotelians and sensists suppose him to have; abstraction, which is posterior to the child's first operations, comes with reflection. Abstraction means dividing what is common, what we call abstract, from what is proper. The baby does not divide and abstract with his first operation, but unites and synthesises, that is, unites what is most universal (the idea of being) to the concrete fact that falls under the senses. The words 'paternity', 'maternity', 'humanity', which express abstracts, remain unintelligible to the baby for a long time. Nor do the words 'father' and 'mother' first indicate what is common, what is abstract, to the baby, but the real individuals (perceived by him) who have been indicated by these words. It is incorrect to imagine that they have the same meaning for the baby as they do for us.

To perceive such individuals, however, the baby first has to unite to them the universal which he has in himself. As a result, the object signified by such words, although particular, is associated with the universal, in which it is seen by the mind.

When other people make an impression on his senses, the baby does not halt to note mentally the differences which do indeed exist in the sensation; he either takes them as though there was no change and uses the same word, the one which comes easiest to his lips, or he uses the same words because he has united to them the thought of certain more obvious qualities which have attracted his attention in the first men and women he has known. For example, his attention may have been attracted by beards worn by the first men he had known and by the head-covering of the first women. When he sees a man, he calls him 'father' but means 'the being with a beard;' when he sees a woman he calls her 'mother', but means 'the woman with the head-covering.' The same thing happens if the baby's attention is fixed on some general, total configuration of male or female body, rather than on some special characteristic. In this case, he calls 'father' the ens with a total, masculine configuration, but takes no notice of minute differences; he calls 'mother' the ens with a total, feminine configuration, and again takes no notice of minute differences. He is still ignorant of the true meaning of 'father' or 'mother'.

Although this seems to be abstraction, it is in fact synthesis because 1. an ideal ens is united with the sensible configuration, or with a more apparent, sensible mark; 2. an individual, an ens, is determined by means of the configuration or mark which serves to distinguish it from other individuals. - But, you may say, this configuration, or sensible mark, is common. — No. Initially, the child does not see it as common. It is a felt particular, taken as a sign and connotation of an ens; it draws attention to the universal, which it determines but does not form. A similar mark indicates several individuals successively through particular acts of the spirit. Only later, through reflection, when the mind is stimulated by some need, does the baby note more specific differences. He then discovers that the mark which initially served to restrict and particularise the universal, and to name individuals, is itself common and universal, considered in relationship with those differences which, after perceiving them, he re-uses to restrict and particularise all the entia possessing that mark, which is thus seen as common to many individuals.

The sensists are wrong, therefore, when they attribute this false, apparently primal abstraction to sense, as though sense first perceived what is common and reason then took it ready-made from sense.

1315. We come now to abstraction's second accident, universalisation. This kind of abstraction, rightly called universalisation, simply analyses intellectual perception by placing ideal being on one side, and the felt element, what is real, on the other.

1316. There is a difficulty here: 'If what is real is considered in its fullness as infinitely real, it cannot, of itself, be divided from what is ideal; both are simply a single being. If, however, we are speaking of what is finitely and contingently real, what is real divided from what is ideal is not a complete ens, and is consequently unthinkable. How then can abstraction divide them?'

Note first, that what is infinitely real is not given to the human being. When by means of a judgment we abstract what is ideal and separate it from what is infinitely real, as we imagine we do, we actually divide nothing. The object of our reflection as abstraction is not what is truly infinite and real, but a negative, analogical concept which takes the place in the human mind of what is infinitely real. A person who has the vision of heavenly glory and apprehends what is infinitely real would never try to separate the ideal from the real by means of an abstractive judgement, just as we would not try to do something mentally absurd if we knew it were absurd.

This serves to refute the teaching of pseudo-mystics who claim that the object of natural, human intuition is God himself, who contains infinite reality. According to them, we then draw ideal being, through abstraction, from what is infinitely real. Such a system, besides contradicting common sense, involves many other absurdities and consequences harmful to Christianity.

However, I want to continue with this direct confutation of the sect of pseudo-mystics. First, we have to consider that either through abstraction or in some other way, the human being does in fact intuit what is ideal without what is real (even our adversaries do not deny this). Now if we were to see God the Almighty, the absolute and infinite reality by nature, we would have to see two things together: 1. that what is ideal is in the depths of what is real; 2. that it is absurd to consider it as separated from what is real by way of judgment. But it is clear that, because we do not see this absurdity in the present life, we think what is ideal without thinking what is real. We find no difficulty in this. This shows that we do not apprehend what is absolutely real by nature, as the pseudo-mystics maintain. It is true that what is ideal is conceivable per se because it includes the whole of being, although under a single form. But the reason why we intuit what is ideal is different from the reason why we think and judge, without absurdity, that ideal being is alone and separated from what is real. The reason we conceive ideal being is that it has everything needed to be conceivable; the reason why it can be thought and judged alone, without our realising how absurd it is to admit such a state, is our lack of apprehension of what is infinitely real and hence of its necessary nexus and identity with what is ideal. Consequently the absurdity remains hidden.

1317. We come now to what is real but finite, to universalisation exercised on the finite object of perception. Here we must note that dividing this object into its two elements (what is ideal, and what is real but finite), means that only the ideal element remains conceivable as an ens. The second element remains solely as felt, and outside mental conception. In other words, this kind of division dissolves the real object. What is real remains, but without its condition as object. It is an illusion to imagine that what is real may be conceived on its own. If we do make an effort to conceive it on its own, our very conception shows that we have mingled and bound it up with the idea that completes it as an ens. It is false, therefore, that we conceive it as separate.

1318. How, then, do we come to speak about it? How do we speak about it as united and separate? — We speak about it as united to the idea, while seeing that it is separable. In other words, real, finite ens is annulled as the object of cognition because we understand that it is not the idea. This negative cognition is sufficient for us to be able to speak about it without our having to conceive it as an actually separate object of knowledge.

We can also understand that as separate, what is real is not a complete-ens. This, too, is a negative cognition independent of perception or positive conception. We come to such negative cognitions by contemplating what is real in the idea, and by comparing it with the idea. The separability of what we consider united is itself thinkable, just as the annihilation of a thought object is thinkable.

1319. Abstraction's third accident: abstraction properly speaking.
Finally, we come to the third accident of reflection as abstraction. This is abstraction in the strict sense, and is present when, by reflecting upon some concept, we separate different elements or relationships, for example, when we abstract (from the concept of a finite ens) substance from accident, or accident from substance, and so on. The products of this abstraction (for instance, substance or accident taken separately) are not entia and cannot, therefore, be objects of thought. They are parts of entia, or imperfect entia (entities). They are thought not with all-embracing, but partial thought, which is the kind of abstraction that we exercise on ideas.

These parts or elements of thought are not completely separate from the concept, but are contemplated in the concept itself. Attention of the spirit is specifically restricted to each of them. However, the whole concept on which we reflect, and whose unity and simplicity makes it possible for us to consider each part, remains in the spirit. If the whole concept were removed from the spirit, its parts would also be removed, and the spirit would be unable to focus its attention on any of them.
The act proper to this kind of abstraction cannot be found on its own in the spirit. It is not a whole, complete thought, as we have already seen, but part of a thought, and has to be seen in the whole thought. An ens is the object of an all-embracing thought; it is not a part of thought, nor of one specific act necessarily joined to another because such a specific act does not stand on its own. It is not, of itself, a thought.

1320. It is true that, in fixing our attention on certain elementary parts of the ens which we see in the idea and to which we have given a name, we often change it into a true ens. This is another illusion, an error that we make because we add unconsciously something to an element which is not an ens. Hume did this when, in claiming that the universe could be composed of accidents, he was forced unwilling and unwittingly to change accidents into substances.(159) This is a very frequent illusion. Through it people change abstractions into entia, they personify them, and so on.
We have another class of errors when, by applying such abstracts to real entia, we imagine that what has been divided and separated in abstraction is divided in these entia as well.

1321. I have shown that this kind of abstraction has its own laws springing from the idea of being. Consequently, this idea necessarily precedes all abstractions because it directs them.(160) It cannot, therefore, be formed through abstraction. This is a new argument to destroy the error of sensists, as well as that of their comrades-in-arms, the pseudo-mystics. Sensists believe that the idea of being can be drawn by abstraction from real-felt things; pseudo-mystics claim even more absurdly that it can be drawn from real-absolute being, intuited naturally by the human spirit. The second group do not realise that the abstraction under discussion is exercised only on the idea and that the idea, therefore, must be first in the logical order. Nor do they realise that the idea of being directs abstraction in its operations. Without this direction, abstraction would operate haphazardly, which is not the case. The pseudo-mystics might perhaps have recourse to the second kind of abstraction, but I have excluded this previously.

1322. We have to maintain therefore:

1. that the understanding perceives finite realities, which of themselves alone are not complete entia, in ideal being, which does complete them;

2. that the understanding does not nevertheless apprehend actually their essential or necessary relationships with complete real being. Without denying them, it leaves them aside as an appendix to be developed later.

This development is precisely the work open to reflection which, turning back on the perceived, real thing, confronts it with ideal being, the type of every reality. Reflection then discovers what is lacking to the real being, known through perception. For example, it realises that this being is contingent and has a relationship with what is necessary; it finds that this real being is limited, and could not be, unless there were some unlimited being, and so on.(161)

1323. Reflection as abstraction, therefore, compares the ideas of entia with one another in order to establish what is most common by applying the results of this comparison to the entia themselves. In the same way, reflection as integration compares the idea of entia with the idea of being in general and discovers the ontological relationships, that is, the relationships that finite entia have with the essence of being itself.

1324. This integrating work of reflection is abolished in the pseudo-mystic system. They claim that reflection never discovers anything new because human beings are given the fullness of real being by their natural intuition. Consequently, the only reflection open to pseudo-mystics is reflection as abstraction. This, however, is contrary to common sense and to what we know of ourselves. We all know very well that new truths are discovered through reflection. This is the way sciences develop. There is no need, as these philosophers falsely claim, that such truths should already be present in the object of intuition. It is sufficient that the object of intuition be ideal being which, by containing, according to its own mode, the whole of being, is the universal rule used for judging what is real, knowing its order and relationships, and finding what is lacking to its completion. Acquired cognitions and all the sciences arise from these judgments about what is real.

1325. This arbitrary, exaggerated system, which I hope will always be rejected by Italian good sense, arises from two equally false suppositions: 1. The object of the mind cannot be an ens under its ideal form alone. This is obviously contra factum. The mind which thinks of a possible ens does not need in any way to think simultaneously of its reality; 2. Unless the mind could apprehend what is absolutely real, reflection would be unable to discover scientific truths about determined, real beings. This, too, is false because, as I have shown, ideal being already contains the supreme rule for understanding felt, real things, all of which are contained virtually (and therefore in the ideal mode) in what is ideal. The pseudo-mystics are also unaware that what is real is present in feeling, and that we do not perceive it unless we relate it to the idea. They add certain theological arguments in their favour, but these only show that they are as ignorant of theology as they are of philosophy.(162)

Notes

(146) NE, vol. 2, 559-566.

(147) NE, vol. 2, 567-569.

(148) Aristotle, Metaph ., 3, c. 6, 7.

(149) But if the whole of what is real were given to an intelligence, would intelligence be able to understand it? — Note, what is ideal resides in the depths of what is absolutely real. Hence the whole of what is real cannot be given to the intelligence without its being given at the same time what is ideal. The same has to be said, and even more forcefully, of what is moral, which requires union between the ideal and the real.

(150) Another proof that in perception the idea of a thing is intuited simultaneously with feeling or affirming what is real can be drawn from the undeniable fact that the pure idea of a thing remains in our mind even when we have forgotten that it has been really perceived. No other operation is needed for us to have the idea as I showed in NE , vol. 2, 519-520.

(151) Sistema filosofico , 75-81.

(152) NE, vol. 2, 519-520.

(153) Prolog. I Phys ., nn. 4-5.

(154) In I Phys ., text. comm. 4.

(155) M. A. Zimara, Quaestio de primo cognito in Gymnasio Patavino publice examinata .

(156) Rinnovamento , bk. 2, ch. 31, 33.

(157) Metaph ., 7, text. comm. 28.

(158) Quaestio de primo cognito, etc .

(159) NE , vol. 2, 598-614.

(160) NE, vol. 3, 1454-1455.

(161) Systema filosofico , 82-104.

(162) The theological arguments used by a recent Italian author against me can be seen reduced to syllogisms in the Impartiale of Faenza (15 July 1845), with their answers. They would make profitable reading.