Chapter 31

The psychological laws of speculative reason
which correspond to the cosmological laws —
The law of subjective analysis

1600. Speculative reason, determined in its action by its terms and needs, sometimes concentrates its attention and divides into several parts objects or terms of cognition which in themselves are undivided. Afterwards, wishing to have full information about things, it must re-assemble what it has divided. Finally, speculative reason, if not given the real object of its meditation by means of perception, argues from analogy. Hence three subjective laws: analysis, synthesis and analogy.

1601. Different sensories receive different impressions and stimulations from the same bodies. These stimuli, that is, the resultant stimulated sensations, enable perception of the agent body; they are its representation; relative to the soul they are vicarious signs of the real thing that has produced and occasioned them.(328) Because these sensations are simply modifications of the fundamental feeling, we can say that there is innate in us something which represents the whole external, material world: our internal world represents the external world; the subject represents to itself all that is extrasubjective and connected with it in reality.

1602. Since every corporeal ens is represented by several sensations, the rational principle is led or invited by this seemingly sensory prism to divide bodies into several aspects or natures. This provides the first occasion for subjective analysis.

1603. The rational principle not only uses these natural signs to guide its attention to extrasubjective entities and their activities, but soon invents analogous, man-made signs, that is, languages, as we have seen, which have a marvellously analytical virtue, and result from the needs of the rational principle.
Human needs, which are groups of active and passive feelings, are not always related to entia in their totality, or to their substance, or to the perceptions which divide entia according to their effects in our different sensories. Very often human needs are satisfied by certain determined actions and the accidental aptitudes of entia which, because of our lack of interest in anything else, alone attract our attention. This gives us new occasions for further division of the known objects; we consider them under certain particular relationships which they have with us, not in themselves or in their individual being.

1604. By means of the ontological law of cognition, we transform these accidents and multiple relationships into entia, which is a kind of subjective synthesis. We reduce the appurtenances of entia to abstract entia, contemplate them as essences existing in themselves and give them a name. Properly speaking, these names can only be signs of signs because they indicate sensible signs which are themselves signs of entia.(329)

1605. Speculative reason on the other hand, when it concentrates its attention, spontaneously divides entia according to

1. their particular actions and passions;

2. their relationships.

The various actions and passions we experience and observe in entia are rooted in the intrinsic multiplicity of the activity and passivity of entia, and in the intrinsic multiplicity of the human subject who receives these actions from the entia and, by his action upon the entia, produces these passions in them.

1606. The relationships divide in various ways. Some are essential and constitute entia, for example, the continuum in the case of bodies; others are accidental, for example, a given colour which is a relationship with the optic sensory. Other relationships, called dialectic relationships, are not in entia as accidents but are produced by the mind which compares what is one with what is multiple. These are extrinsic relationships which posit nothing substantial or accidental in an ens, but exist between one ens and another in the mind which unites and compares them. Examples are: the distance between one body and another, likenesses, etc.

1607. This is the origin of mental entia, which must be carefully distinguished from ideal entia, the object of the mind's intuition, the essences of things. Mental entia are partial views by the mind which do not encompass some whole ens or essence. The mind limits itself to some element or to a relationship of an element, and posits this element or relationship as if it were an ens. Guided by the principle of cognition and by what I have called the faculty of invention or intellectual creation, the mind reasons about this element or relationship as if it were an ens.

The mind can even change what is negative into a positive ens. For example, the mind changes limitation and nothingness into entia although, as I said, these are only mental views. In fact, the limitation of an ens is simply the mind's denial that the essence of an ens contains some entity, which the ens does not in fact contain. The act of denial pertains to what I have called the faculty of judgment and of affirmation. The resulting cognition is therefore subjective, not objective. Nothing is simply the negation of an ens; it is an ens with the addition of the mental act which removes the ens, a cognition given to the mind by its own act relative to the object (ens).

1608. If ancient thinkers had carefully noted this distinction between objective knowledge, given by the object, and subjective knowledge, given by an act of the subject himself, they would not have disputed so hotly whether the human spirit can think of a non-ens.(330) Parmenides, who denied this possibility,(331) spoke of non-ens in an objective sense; a non-ens understood absolutely and simply is certainly not an object of the mind. Plato and Aristotle, who showed that even a non-ens is known in some way, spoke as people applying dialectic (which they did). In other words, they spoke subjectively: 'nothing' is known, not because it is an object, but because the mind imagines for itself an object which is solely a negative relationship that it finds among entia, an ens that is denied by the mind.

1609. These thinkers therefore disputed whether generable things (as they called things and forms which begin to be — I would call them transient acts) arose from an ens or non-ens. The principal systems are four.

Some thinkers could not conceive how anything could come from a non-ens, or how an ens could produce anything outside itself which was not already present. They denied that anything began, and admitted only an eternal, immutable ens.(332)

Others could not deny that some things begin nor could they conceive how an ens, if it already existed, could generate, that is, produce what is not. Consequently they said that everything came from non-ens and that all things were corruptible and unstable.(333)

Others again considered that some entity lay midway between ens simply understood and non-ens (nothing), and that the principles of things had to be found in this middle entity. Aristotle's system distinguished between an ens as simply ens and as ens according to power or else as ens in act and ens in potency.(334) In this way he flattered himself that he had defeated the Eleatics and solved the difficult question they had proposed.

Finally the Platonists did not appeal, like Aristotle, to something between ens and non-ens in order to explain the beginning of entia. Instead, they tried to show that the beginning, even of all contingent things, can be found in ens by distinguishing between ens as such and perfect ens in which lay the complex of all entia. This, I think, is Plato's own view. Otherwise he would not have censured Parmenides for having divided the all from the all.(335)

1610. The difference of opinion between these thinkers was in part due to their confusing object ens with abstract ens, mental ens and absolute ens. In other words they relied on a false distinction between different kinds of human knowledge.

1611. The first group of thinkers fixed their attention on abstract ens which is not totally object ens. Abstract ens is that concept of an ens, which positively excludes every possible determination and completion in an ens; ideal ens is that to which every real ens and therefore every entity is conformed. The formation of an abstract ens is a subjective action of the mind; an ideal ens is the result of natural intuition, although reflection discovers it afterwards by abstraction, that is, by removing the particular modes and determinations which limit the ens.

1612. The second group began from a mental ens, which is non-ens, because the negation of ens is a purely subjective action of the mind. Although the mind is not mistaken per se, the negation occasions error when these philosophers, and ourselves, convert non-ens into a true ens which can be the beginning or efficient cause of things.

1613. The third group (Aristotle and his followers) began with ens in potency as a kind of matter for ens in act. Thus they began purely from a mind-ens. The concept was suggested by Aristotle's experience which showed that certain things developed, as it were, from a seed and acquired a more explicit existence. Generally speaking, the concept was suggested to him when he saw that perceptible things were limited. This concept of limited-entia is composed of an objective and subjective element. As entia (knowledge of object), they are objects but, as limited, are known as a result of a mental vision which, as I said, denies them certain entities (knowledge of affirmation). Aristotle took this concept composed of ens and limitation and increased the limitation to such an extent that he failed to see its inevitable consequence, the disappearance of ens. He therefore retained ens by giving it an infinite limitation, and thus made it his ens in potency or first matter. In fact it was nothing more than the non-ens of Xeniades but Aristotle, always striving for novelty, denied this and called it 'ens in potency'.

1614. If he had not left this pure potency on its own but seen it in God, he would have come to the fourth system, that of the Platonists, whose sole mistake lay in the accessories and development of their system.

1615. The function of philosophy (and hence, strictly speaking, of dialectics) is to distinguish mental ens (an action of the mind) from true, objective or objectivisable ens. Reasoning about the former as if it were the latter is the sole cause of error, into which it is easy to fall. The mind, influenced by the words or signs to which it attaches its concepts (positive acts), not only changes its negations into positive entia, but sometimes does the opposite by giving a negative form to what is positive. Furthermore, the positive and negative elements are changed at will by the forms with which they are clothed. Thus, through its forms, what was negative is now made positive. Then it takes once more a negative form, then another positive form. In this way, it makes a composite of its mental concepts, one within another, by means of the innumerable forms with which it wishes to clothe them. We see this procedure clearly in algebra where any negative or positive sign is used for any negative or positive quantity. We deny the negation and then we deny the denied negation and so on. For example, a positive quantity can be indicated with two negative signs, -(-A), and a negative quantity with a positive sign, +(-A). Again, any signs can be used about any quantity without its ceasing to be what it was, without the quantity ever ceasing to be either positive or negative. The same is true of speech: if I say, 'Nothing is lacking to God', I express the greatest affirmation under the form of a double negation because this proposition equals the other proposition of positive form, 'God has everything'.

1616. The first function of dialectics, if it wishes to conclude a discussion, is to remove, one by one, all the layers with which the mind, principally by speech, has enveloped the proposition under discussion. When the proposition has been reduced to its pristine state, we must note whether its primitive form is a negative or affirmative. In this way, we simplify our reasoning and sweep away the sophisms that have been constructed by the subjective action of our understanding.

1617. This process also allows us to see very clearly whether what is predicated of anything is an accident of the thing itself or simply a mental relationship. For example, Plato and Aristotle accused Parmenides of contradiction for saying that ens, although one, is eternal, and thus placing in ens a plurality of substance and accident.(336) Parmenides could have replied: 'Yes, the form of my predication, "ens is eternal", splits ens in two, ens-being and eternal being. The division however lies solely in the form of the subjective conception and expression of the thing; eternity is simply an external relationship, conceived by the mind, which negates time, that is, cessation. The division places nothing more in objective ens than ens itself. In fact, the true value of the predicate is to prevent the prediction of multiplicity about ens; the predicate is nothing more than a negation of multiplicity and accident.'

1618. Such is the task therefore to which dialects must apply itself. It must distinguish the different forms with which the mind continually clothes a concept or opinion, and in this way restore the concept to its simple, primal state.

Notes

(328) In this sense we can truly say that 'the form of the intellect is the likeness of the thing understood' (St. Thomas, S.T. , I, q. 95, art. 1, ad 1). These sensible likenesses of bodies need to be conceived by the mind through the idea. On the other hand, the idea is the direct intuition of the essence of some thing. This ideal essence is not the likeness of the thing, but its essence. Cf. NE, vol. 2.

(329) I have already noted that names can have three functions:1.They can stimulate the mind to think of a real thing without stopping at its abstract quality. This is the case of proper nouns applied to several individual things. They indicate nominal abstracts . They do not represent any ideal essence to the soul but lead the mind from one individual to another through the relationship of nominal identity.2.They can stimulate the mind to think of a specific or generic essence. This is the function of abstract nouns, for example, whiteness, etc.3.They can stimulate the mind to think of a real thing or an ideal essence through which the real thing is thought. This is the function of common nouns.

(330) Plato, Soph ., pp. 243-244 (Bipont. edition).

(331) vv. 39-40, Karsten.

(332) Xenophanes' argument is well-known: cf. Arist., De Xenophane, Zenone et Gorgia ; Phys., 1: 8; De Coelo , 3: 1. Chalcideus reports the same argument: 'If something becomes, it must become either out of what already was, or out of what is not; both are impossible' (In Tim ., p. 283).

(333) Sext. Empiricus says that Xeniades of Corinth considered all things to be in flux and generated from non-ens (Adv. Math ., 8: 53, 388, 399; Pyrrhon. Hypot ., 2.:18). Cf. Aristotle, Phys ., 1: 9.

(334) Phys ., 1: 8; De Coelo , 3: 1.

(335) Soph ., p. 259.

(336) Plato, Soph ; Aristotle, Phys .