Chapter 7

Third special law: the term of thought is a first act

1350. Because our discussion concerns human thought in its entirety and complexity, the meaning of this third law is 'Thought cannot have second acts alone as its term; these must be accompanied by thought of the first acts from which they arise.' Although we can think of second acts by abstracting them from first acts, abstraction is not complex thought. Indeed abstraction is impossible unless the mind first contains that on which abstraction is exercised. Furthermore, abstraction does not discard the thought from which it originated. If I abstract second acts from first acts, the first acts remain in my mind and enter into the complex thought, even if I do not give them the active attention which I give to the abstract element. Although I restrict my attention to a part of the thought, the thought itself does not cease.

1351. The reason why we cannot think anything without thinking a first act is that the term of thought is an ens, and an ens is always constituted by a first act.

1352. If we observe entia directly to discover their total constitution, we find that some have an essence prior to and distinct from their subsistence, while others have subsistence as their first, original act. The former are multiple and contingent, the latter is only one and necessary. However, when subsistence is the first act, an ens obviously cannot be perceived without the perception and thought of its subsistence. Thus, God cannot be thought solely in an ideal way, nor as possible, in the way that we can think of contingent things. Either we think of him as subsistence or we are not thinking of God. Hence anyone who said that ideal being, which informs our reason, is God, would commit the most serious error and end up in rationalism, pseudo-mysticism and many other monstrous absurdities.

1353. Contingent entia on the other hand have their own essence, which is manifested in the idea. This fact, and the fact that nothing can be thought without its essence, demonstrates once again the often stated and still little understood truth, that our understanding cannot perceive a real, contingent ens except through and in the idea. The idea itself cannot be given by sensation because sensation is precisely the real entity to be perceived and known.
Furthermore, we do not perceive what is real through the idea alone. The idea contains the pure essence of an ens, separate from its reality or subsistence. Consequently, as long as we intuit only the essence in the idea, nothing is understood of the reality. As I said, only feeling, rational apprehension and affirmation apprehend subsistence.

1354. But how do we apply the principle that nothing can be known unless the first act of the thing known is itself known? Strictly speaking the first act is not in the reality because, as we saw, first act pertains to essence. Hence, in perception and universalisation the spirit takes as first act that which it indicates by a word and to which it directs its attention. Second acts are seen as those which happen to the thing indicated by the word and taken as the subject of the definition and the focus of attention. They lie either outside the elements included in the word, definition, or object abstracted by our attention. This is how the spirit forms its knowledge of real things and of their knowable essences: it determines and limits them, as I said, by that which it first perceives through feeling.(179)

1355. Furthermore, the intelligent spirit finds an order in feeling itself because 1. certain sensible qualities cannot be perceived independently of others; for example, colour or shape cannot be perceived independently of extension; 2. some qualities are anterior and, because they are conditions, remain unchanged, while others which are conditioned change; for example, extension, which is anterior, remains unchanged, while colour, which is posterior, can change. Thus, when we see things with this kind of connection and interdependence, we take the first condition or quality logically prior to the others and consider it as first act; when we take it in relationship to other qualities already united to the essence, we call it 'substance'. In bodies this first act, without which the other corporeal qualities cannot be felt, is the sensible and sensiferous force. Hence, even in the sphere of reality there is a kind of first, but hypothetical act because, as I said when discussing perception, it is relative to sensitivity itself. The understanding therefore conceives the essence of an ens capable of being perceived, that is, an ens with all the conditions for being a term of perception (which I have already dealt with). It goes on to break up the ens by abstraction in order to find the first act called substance, without which it cannot perceive the rest. But this order itself, present in reality, is reflected in the ideal essence actuated and determined before the eyes of our spirit by this relationship with what is real. It is in this ideal essence that knowledge is found.

1356. To perceive a contingent, real thing, therefore, the following is necessary:
1. The essence intuited in the idea, because essence is a first act relative to realisation.
2. The first act of reality itself, because without this act reality cannot affect feeling or be named. Note however that the first act of reality to which feeling is conditioned is hypothetical, that is, we consider it such, and it is in fact such, but only in relationship to the felt element, not to the whole of being.

Notes

(179) NE, vol. 3, 1203-1208.