Appendix - 1. (13).

The statement 'ideal being is essentially object' excludes all philosophical errors about the starting point of philosophy. Amongst philosophers who hold these errors are:

1. Materialists (extra-subjectivists) who start from matter which they wrongly consider as thinking.

2. Sensists (sensual subjectivists) who start from sensation or from feeling, and suppose that to feel is to think.

3. Subjectivists (intellectual subjectivists) who start from consciousness, and wrongly suppose that known objects are modifications of the spirit and that the act of human knowledge, needing no intellective light to inform it, produces its own light.

4. False objectivists whose conclusion necessarily coincides with the first three errors. These objectivists fail to understand the nature of object, and imagine it as something real. It is not; an object can never be other than ideal because the mind is necessarily illuminated by an idea. What is real, on the other hand, is something that needs illumination if it is to be known. What does 'being known' mean? It means 'being objectivised', being known in the object.

All real things, therefore, are known through ideas, without which nothing is known. In other words, real things need two conditions if they are to be known positively: 1. they operate upon feeling and thus render themselves sensible; 2. after they are rendered sensible, the intelligent subject must apply the idea to this sensible thing and see it in the idea, or in ideal being. In other words, the subject sees the relationship of (formal) identity between the real, sensible thing and the ideal object. The real thing, therefore, remains unknown until it is object; the idea, however, never ceases to be the object of the mind, and would not even exist unless contemplated by some mind. It is, therefore, essentially object. But what is the real thing (that which is sensible) if it is not per se object, and comes to be known in the object (in the idea)? Per se, it will be something subjective if it is real and sentient; it will be extrasubjective if it is real and sensed: such is matter.

Hence, those claiming that the primal object of the mind is something real falsely apply the word, object, to matter, that is, subject. This class of philosophers should, therefore, be called false objectivists. Their mistake, as I said, coincides with the first three errors. It is one or other of them but disguised by the name objectivism. These philosophers misuse words and arbitrarily attribute what they call object to that which is real as though there were some kind of magic in their language enabling what is real to acquire the nature of object. What is real, however, remains exactly what it is: matter or feeling or intellective act. Matter is extrasubjective, as we said, while the other two elements are subjective. Philosophers of this kind propose a system called 'objectivism', a noble name, which contains in its depths either materialism, sensism or subjectivism, according to the way they intend to develop it.

But are we to say that we know Almighty God by way of ideas? Yes, in this life we know him through the way of ideas and affirmation as we know other real things. However, the cognition that we can have of God in this life (prescinding from the supernatural order) is negative, or ideal-negative, as I prefer to call it.

In the supernatural order, Almighty God is perceived supernaturally. This perception of God differs, however, from all other perceptions in the following way. In the perception of contingent things, reality is provided for man by a sense faculty different from the intellect; in the perception of God possessed by the blessed in heaven, the reality of God is perceived by means of intellective feeling. God's reality is in his very own ideality, something not difficult to understand if we keep in mind the principles according to which we see the essences of things in ideas. The essence of God, however, is necessary; it is also subsistent, never merely possible. The divine subsistence must, therefore, be perceived in the idea itself. But for this to take place, God must manifest his essence to the created intellect. Without this no created intellect can perceive Almighty God.