Examina tion of the ing. 22. Other difficulties arise in regard to our statement that the real existence of being lies in feeling: first, because we see that many feelings change, while the subject of them remains identical; second, because external bodies have no feeling, and yet they are affirmed and believed to exist. In regard to the former of these difficulties, we must observe that the subject of the feelings which change is itself a feeling, otherwise it would not be known; or, to avoid all discussion on this point, let us say, at least, that it is a sentient principle, having an essential relation to feeling, and that, therefore, it cannot be entirely sundered from feeling. In regard to external bodies, they are perceived only in so far as they act in the feeling we have of ourselves; hence they are known only through their relation to feeling, as active principles modifying feeling. They, therefore, fall under feeling as agents in it. Every real being, therefore, known to us by experience, reduces itself in the last analysis to feeling, to the principle of feeling, or to certain virtues that act in feeling. To include the whole in one phrase and avoid discussion, let us say that what is affirmed, in the perception of a real being, to be a being, is always a felt activity. Let us now continue our analysis of the affirmation of real beings. Rosmini defines reality of being as "being in so far as it is feeling, or in so far as it has the power to produce or modify feeling," and concludes that "perception is a communication between two realities, the one of which is sentient, the other sensiferous (sensifera)" (Psychology, vol. i. § 54). Rosmini is well aware that this doctrine is both novel and startling, and he is, therefore, at considerable pains to justify it. In answer to the question whether real being is always reducible to a feeling, he says, "In the first place, if we pay attention to experience, we see that it gives us no real beings except those that are of the nature either of a term or a principle. Now, principles are subjects, all endowed with feeling, and terms are what is felt; but this again has reference to the sentient subject, and is therefore in feeling. But, if we apply to these data of experience analytic reasoning, we find : "First, that the word feeling signifies properly the completed act of the sentient subject. "Second, that the felt term is either proper or foreign. If it is proper, it is the sentient principle itself as felt, because a proper term is one whose being is identical with that of its principle. Thus, in the feeling expressed by the word I, the sentient and the felt are identified. In such cases, therefore, the feeling belongs to the term as much as to the principle. "Third, that if, on the contrary, the term is foreign, it has indeed an essential relation' to the foreign principle with which it is united, but the proper act of the foreign principle does not belong to it, and, therefore, neither does its feeling. Hence it presents itself to our view simply as matter of feeling, matter which, though felt, might equally well not be felt. This is the reason why we are wont to think that entities, themselves devoid of feeling, but capable of being felt or not felt, have matter. Thus, the common mode of thinking is justified, and this fact does not, in the smallest degree, interfere with the philosophical truths which we have set forth, since the ordinary thought does not reach them, having no reason to occupy itself with them. Among these truths there is this, that every foreign term must necessarily have a principle of its own, which is beyond our experience. Now, the feeling of this principle belongs to that entity which to us is a foreign term, and, therefore, that too comes within the domain of feeling. But that entity which to us is a foreign term is not felt by its own principle as it is felt by us,* because by us it is felt as foreign and devoid of all principle of its own, is felt solely in so far as it acts by exciting a feeling in the principle foreign to it, which feeling is entirely different from the feeling felt by its own principle. Indeed, the two sentient principles in question are altogether different. Hence, in the term of our feeling three things must be distinguished: first, the term actually felt, and this is what receives a name and is talked about—for example, the name body; second, the supposed matter, which is not felt an abstract entity formed by the removal from the felt of the quality of being felt, after which there remains an unknown something, which is known only as capable of being felt; third, the matter felt, not by us, but by its own principle, with a feeling totally different from ours. This matter, accordingly, which lies between the two feelings, is considered as matter identical in the two. But, properly speaking, it has no existence apart from the two sentients. It is merely a sort of figment of our limited mode of conceiving, and, therefore, is not even identical in the two feelings. On the contrary, the feeling felt by its own principle has no matter, since the felt is the feeling itself. Nevertheless, the concept of this matter formed by our limited minds, or constituting, at least, the negation of them, is not entirely useless, inasmuch as, in connection with our own feeling, it points to a truth, namely, that our feeling presupposes and demands an entity beyond what it feels, an entity which remains entirely unknown to experience, and which is called the matter of feeling, because its relation to feeling is the only thing we know about it. However, we should fall into error, were we to suppose that this something lying beyond what we feel bore any *This completely disposes of Mamiani's objection to the sensivity of matter. Rosmini, of course, does not mean that a fruit feels its own sweetness, or a stone its own weight. See Confessioni di un Metafisico, vol. i. pp. 44 sq. resemblance to that feeling. Hence, the concept of this matter does not help us to know what that matter is in itself, but merely to know that there is a real entity (of unknown nature) standing in sensible contact with our sentient principle, which contact is the origin of what we feel. Now, this negative concept is the concept of a pure, abstract reality, which is something anterior to feeling, and for that reason denominated pure, as being that whereby we begin to know reality. Such knowledge is, of course, relative and imperfect. Fourth, that in every feeling, as well as in every felt, there is an activity. Now, abstraction is wont to separate even the activity of feeling from feeling itself, and to give to this activity the name of pure reality, that is, reality separated from the feeling which completes it. But here, too, we must beware of taking the products of abstraction for self-existent entities, for real beings. The truth in regard to feeling is, that, when we set aside the foreign terms, its activity itself is feeling" (Theosophy, vol. v. p. 145, sq., cap. xxxviii.). On the meaning of principle and term, see under §§ 15, 18. 23. between of being activity When we affirm that the essence of being is Identity realized in a felt activity, we affirm that a real the essence being exists. Hence to know the existence of and the a real being is to affirm a kind of identity between manifested the essence of being and the activity manifested in feeling. This is one of the cardinal points of the system. All that we mean when we assert a thing to be real, is that what we feel on any particular occasion is. By thus placing a feeling in being, we separate it from our subjective self, and regard it as having an existence of its own (see under § 32). In this way it becomes to us a in feeling. reality, whereof the being which we impart is the substance (see §§ 88, sq.), and the feeling the attribute or determination. The phrase "manifested in feeling" is not, strictly speaking, correct. Feeling, as such, has no power of manifestation. "Although ideal being can never be confounded with real being, yet the connection between the two is wonderful. It is such that, if the two are taken together, they form but one and the same identical being, having two modes, or, as we might say, two original and primitive forms. Hence it is more correct to say the ideal mode or the real mode of being, than to say ideal being and real being, as if they were two. And even common sense shows that it knows perfectly this conjunction, this basis of identity, between the ideal and the real, by the way in which it imposes and uses terms; for it does not impose on each thing two names, but one, and with this one it is wont to express both the ideal being of a thing and its real being. For example, the word house was invented to signify both the house which the architect imagines and builds in his mind and the house which adorns the public square of a city" (La Sapienza, ii. 7, p. 401, sqq.). This identity is imperfect. 24. This identity, indeed, is not complete, inasmuch as no activity, whether felt or feeling (sentient), ever exhausts the essence of being; hence the innumerable feelings which make us affirm the existence of so many real beings different from each other. In regard to each we affirm that it exists. Of each we affirm the same thing: in each we recognize the essence of being. This recognizing of the essence of being in each is the same thing as saying that the essence of each of these beings. which we affirm is identical with the essence of |