(3) a negative part, comprehending all that we can deny of God, when, with such negations, we distinguish Him from all other things. The first of these three parts does not, properly speaking, form a cognition, and cannot receive this name, but only that of affirmation, of assent given to cognition, and hence of persuasion arising in us. Our cognition of God, therefore, properly so called, is drawn from the other two parts, and hence the cognition which, with the natural light, we can have in this life of the Supreme Being, may very properly be called ideal-negative cognition" (La Sapienza, vol. ii. No. 7, pp. 410-417).

In saying that being may be predicated of God and of created things univoce (ovvwvýμwę, as Aristotle would say), Rosmini stands in apparent contradiction with St. Thomas, and, indeed, with the Schoolmen generally. St. Thomas devotes a whole chapter of his Summa contra Gentes to proving that "Nihil de Deo et rebus aliis univoce prædicatur" (i. cap. xxxii.). The contradiction, however, is much more apparent than real. When Rosmini says that being is predicated of God and created things in the same sense, but not in the same mode, he means exactly the same thing as St. Thomas does when he says, “Quod ea quæ dicuntur de Deo et creaturis analogice dicuntur" (Ibid., cap. xxxiv.). The being of God has the same relation to His reality that a man's being has to his. This principle is universal. Being cannot be predicated even of any two created things univoce, but only analogice. The being of a horse is not the being of a dog; nor is the being of one horse the being of another. In the real world there is no universality.

"To predicate existence univocally," says Rosmini, means to predicate existence of different things, using the word in the same signification. Although, however, the word existence is predicated of God and of every created being in the same sense, and hence univocally, it must not be supposed that it is predicated of the two in the same mode, because to predicate means to unite or attribute something to a subject. Now, the mind, which considers created things as beings, does not attribute existence to them in the same mode in which it attributes it to God;

but it attributes existence to God as something essentially belonging to Him; to created things, as something participated to God as essential and necessary; to created things, as accidental. It unites being with God, by identifying it with Him; to created things, by distinguishing it from them. Created things are known to exist by means of the idea of existence, whereas God is not only known to exist by means of this idea, but He is identical with this idea, that is, with the essence whereby He is intuited" (Theosophy, vol. iv. p. 468). In other words, God is esse, ɛiva, Sein, whereas created things are only entia, ovra, Seiende. It is unfortunate that this distinction cannot be brought out in English (or French) by means of inflectional forms. Being, in English, is both the verbal noun expressing the essence of being, the gerund expressing the act of the same, and the participle expressing participation in the same. The Italian "L'essere, essendo ente," is, in English, "Being, being being." On the meaning of the participle (uɛToxń), see Grammar of Dionysios Thrax, in Bekker's Anecdota Græca, vol. ii. pp. 369 sqq. (or my translation of the same, Journal Spec. Philos., vol. viii. [1874] pp. 326 sqq.); Lersch, Die Sprachphilosophie der Alten, vol. ii. pp. 93, 130; Schmidt, Beiträge zur Gesch. der Grammatik des Griech. und des Latein., pp. 449 sqq.; Steinthal, Gesch. der Sprachwissenschaft bei den Griechen und Römern, pp. 659.

183.

in which

rise to the

Being.

This necessity proves to us two things: first, Two ways that the defects and limitations of the beings which our minds we know cannot belong to God; second, that all Absolute the perfections of the beings which we know must belong to God, although not in the way in which they are in the beings known to us, for the reason that in these beings they are either contingent or limited or divided (in a word, essentially subject

Theology must supplement what was said in the Cosmology of the divine operations ad extra.

Of the divine

essence.

to some limitation or division), whereas, in the Supreme Being, they must necessarily exist without division or limit, that is, in a mode altogether different, or rather, without mode. These two ways of knowing the Absolute Being are usually called Via Exclusionis and Via Eminentiæ.

184.

Having discovered the ways in which our thought shapes the doctrine concerning God, we must pass on to set forth that doctrine which contemplates God in Himself, and as the author of the world, in relation to created things, and complete, in this second part, what was said of the divine operations ad extra in the Cosmology.

185.

God, as considered in Himself, is the subject of that part of Natural Theology, which treats of the divine essence. It begins by explaining the attributes of this essence.

Rosmini treats this subject in many parts of his Theosophy, particularly in the second, third, and fourth volumes.

Can the human intelligence, fortified by revelation, know that the divine

186.

It then examines whether the human intelligence, developed and rendered potent by revelation, can know that the divine essence must be in

three Persons. This question it answers in the

must exist

Persons?

affirmative, as, indeed, it was answered by two essence modern theologians, Fathers Ermenegildo Pini and in three Mastrofini. It is, nevertheless, certain that the knowledge of the Trinity accessible to reason is merely negative-ideal.

Ermenegildo Pini was born in 1739, and died in 1825. He was the author of a work called Protologia, in which he sought to discover what in thought was the first per se. He also wrote Dialogues on Architecture. The Abbé Mastrofini was born in 1763 and died in 1845. He wrote a work of much merit entitled De Deo Uno et Trino, published in 1815, and another called Metafisica Sublime.

187.

creative

In treating of God as the author of things, On the Theology deals mainly with the relation in which act. the creative act stands to the act of the divine essence and to the act of created things themselves, as existing.

188.

sition of

tributes

Theodicy,

deals with

the power,

Applying, then, to the Creator of the Universe The expothe attributes of infinite power, knowledge and divine atgoodness already spoken of, we enter upon the leads to very extensive subject of the conservation and which government of the universe, and of its predestined de end and aim. This part of Theology, which con- wisdom, templates the marks of God's attributes in the ness of world that is, the providence which guides events displayed according to an eternal design, the power which world. conducts them to the fulfilment of that design

and good

God as

in the

Deonto

logical Sciences.

without trenching upon the liberty of intelligent creatures, and the goodness, holiness, and blessedness bestowed on these creatures in the greatest possible measure (without prejudice to the divine attributes), which bestowal is the final aim of the whole-is properly denominated Theodicy.

These questions are all treated in Rosmini's Theodicy, the second book of which was published as an Essay as early as 1826, and the first and second together in the Milan edition of his Opuscoli Filosofici (1827-28). The third book was not written until 1844. The work, therefore, shows some unevenness of style. The first book, which "is logical, proposes and prescribes the rules which human thought ought to follow in its judgments regarding the dispensations of divine providence." The second book, which is physical, ❝is a continued meditation on the laws of nature, on the essential limitations of the created, and on the concatenation of causes." The third book is hyperphysical, and treats of "the manner in which the action of God intervenes in nature, and the laws which it follows in acting, in consequence of His divine attributes." The three books combat respectively-(1) errors arising from logical ignorance; (2) errors arising from physical ignorance; and (3) errors arising from teleological ignorance (Preface to Theodicy).

2. Deontological Sciences.

189.

The Deontological Sciences are all those that treat of the perfection of being and the way in which this perfection may be acquired or produced or lost.