... them as existing in their possibility. Therefore, every knowing is a knowing of, at least, possible existence, and every known is known because its possible existence is known. Therefore, ideal or possible existence, or the idea of existence, which is the same thing, is the form of all cognitions. The matter of cognition is the determinations of existence, ideal, real, or moral. Matter here means what is known and does not make known, that which requires something else in order to be known, that in which cognition ends as its term. Hence, although everything, even a determination of existence, is known because its possible existence is known, yet pure existence is not the thing known, but only the form of cognition. Thus the mind finds this distinction, which separates in cognition the pure form of knowing from the matter" (Theosophy, vol. iv. § 123). In answer to the question, How can the same thing, that is, ideal being, be at once the form of cognition and of the power of cognition, that is, of the intellect? Rosmini says, "Ideal being has two relations. . that is, it is at once manifesting and manifested. As manifesting, it is called the form of the mind, because without it the mind would not be mind. . . . As manifested, it is called the form of cognition, because it constitutes the cognized object, what there is of objective and, therefore, of formal in every cognition. Hence . . . ideal being may be called the immediate cause of the form of intellect, as well as that form itself" (Ibid., § 124). Rosmini's system was so much a reaction against Kantianism, and its objective fundamental principle so much the result of a refutation of Kant's twelve subjective categories, that it will be worth while to quote that refutation. Kant's categories are presented in the following table : "TRANSCENDENTAL TABLE OF THE CONCEPTS OF THE UNDERSTANDING. "I. According to Quantity. Unity (Measure), Multiplicity (Magnitude), Totality (Wholeness). "2. According to Quality. Limitation. "3. According to Relation. Substance and accident, Community of passion and action. "4. According to Modality. Possibility-Impossibility, Existence Non-existence, "I do not purpose," says Rosmini, "to enter here into a minute examination of the Kantian forms. Although Kant has promised rigorously to deduce the categories from the various forms of judgment (which is certainly a very happy thought), he has not kept his word; for, as far as I can remember, he nowhere undertakes to demonstrate that from the forms of the judgment there result categories amounting to the exact number of twelve, and assignable in triads, with perfect distributive regularity, to each of the four fundamental forms. Having thus failed to justify the symmetrical deduction of the categories, he left it a matter of doubt, no less than did Aristotle, whom he justly censures, whether or not these are perfectly deduced and enumerated, that is, whether they are the only twelve categories of human knowledge, so that there remains nothing that could not be classed under one or other of them. For this reason it would be tedious and out of place here to enter into a minute criticism of this division of the most universal ideas of the human understanding—a division which is certainly no less arbitrary than those made in ancient times. So much is visible at a first glance, that he sometimes confounds the dress which our ideas receive from the different views taken by the mind and from speech with the ideas themselves, and then he picks up and classifies one idea as several, when he finds it in a variety of garbs. This, to be * See Kritik der rein. Vern. and Prolegomena, pt. ii. § 21. H sure, helps to perfect the symmetrical regularity of his division, as when he finds under the form of quality the subdivision infinite judgments, which are not in any way different from affirmative or negative judgments, except in their garb of expression. In the same way, he seems to omit certain ideas which determine the classes of human knowledge, and which might have been placed among the categories, merely for fear that these might increase beyond the appointed number, and destroy his favourite regularity. Thus, continuous and extensive quantity might have been ranged under the category of quantity, whereas he places under it only discrete quantity, as being the one which supplies him with exactly the three desired classes-unity, multiplicity, and totality. . . . "Let us now examine the twelve categories which Kant calls the forms of our understanding, and the two forms of the inner and outer sense, and let us see whether all these are really primitive and original forms of our intelligence, as the critical philosopher pretends. I observe, in the first place, that Kant's twelve categories cannot all aspire to the same dignity. They are not independent of each other, or confined to distinct genera, in such a way that they cannot be reduced or ranged under each other as smaller classes under greater. Let us take the form of modality. It has the three subordinate categories, possibility, existence, and necessity. Now, let us compare with this form the other three, viz., quantity, quality, and relation. I can conceive, with the utmost ease, a possible or existent being, without being obliged to know what quantity, quality, or relation it has. My understanding, in this case, is conditioned by the law that it is obliged to think such a being either as possible, or as existent, or as necessary; but it is not obliged, after that, to clothe this being with the forms of quantity, quality, and relation. If, therefore, there can be an act of the intelligence which does not require the three forms, quantity, quality, and relation, this means that these are not essential or necessary forms; they are not those forms which inform and constitute the peculiar nature of the intellectual operation, and hence they are not the forms we are looking for, inasmuch as we are looking for those through which the understanding is understanding, and by which the intellectual operation exists-in a word, the forms that constitute the immediate, essential, and necessary term of the intellectual act. For this reason, the form of modality is independent of quantity, quality, and relation, so that the understanding, with merely the form of modality, can, without these others, perform certain of its acts. On the contrary, we cannot think the quantity, the quality, or the relations of a being, without first having thought it either as possible or as existent. Hence the three forms, quantity, quality, and relation, depend upon the form of modality, which is superior to these, and is the necessary prior condition of their having a place in thought. We may, therefore, without hesitation, conclude that Kant's three primitive forms, quantity, quality, and relation, cannot be considered as original and essential forms of the understanding, inasmuch as its existence and operation can be conceived without them. The same may be seen from another point of view. Is it necessary that every being should have a determinate quantity and quality? To affirm this absolutely, as Kant does, is at least to commit an act of audacity and temerity, more than dogmatic, on the critical reason, and to attribute to it a power of deciding in this way a question which it is impossible to settle à priori. If Kant had said to us, 'To say that every possible being must be furnished. with a determinate quantity and quality, is to go beyond the powers of reason, because, in order to say this, we should have to examine all possible beings, and even enter into investigations concerning the Infinite Being, whereof we have no positive or adequate idea,' he would, at least, have shown a little philosophic modesty, real, or, at all events, apparent; he would have shown some consistency, since there is nothing that gives him greater satisfaction or pleasure than to be able to criticize reason, and to inveigh against those philosophers whom he contemptuously calls dogmatists, that is, against all those who, in their simplicity, admit something as certain. By pronouncing a decided judgment in the matter in question, by placing quantity and quality among the primitive forms of the human understanding, just as if it could not think anything without these, he has plainly laid himself open to the charge of rashness. . . . We may conclude, therefore, that, if among the forms of Kant there is to be found any one that deserves the title of an original form of the human understanding, as informing it and informing the cognition that proceeds from the intellect, it must be looked for under modality. Let us see, therefore, whether there is under it anything like what we are looking for. "In the first place, I observe that, when I think and judge that something exists, I do not necessarily, in that act, complete my idea of the existing thing. And, indeed, I may have an idea, as perfect and determinate as can be desired, although the being which corresponds to it do not really exist. Hence, to judge that the thing of which I have the idea exists, is an act essentially different from that whereby my intellect has and contemplates the idea. This judgment adds nothing new to my idea, no new notion informs my mind through that idea. Hence real or external existence, the term of my judgment, cannot be any original form of my understanding, since in my understanding there is nothing but the idea of the thing, and this neither increases, diminishes, nor undergoes any alteration on account of the subsistence or non-subsistence of the thing in question. The form of the intellect must, therefore, be an idea, and not the subsistence of the thing; hence, of the three categories of possibility, existence, and necessity, that of existence, considered as a thing apart from the other two, cannot in any way be an original and essential form of our understanding. Let us see, then, whether the other two forms, possibility and necessity, have the character of original and essential forms. "The idea of anything (in so far as it is not self-contradictory) is what is called the logical possibility of it. Now, it is clearly impossible to perform any act of the understanding without the form of possibility. But when I think the possibility of a thing, am I also obliged to think explicitly the absolute necessity of the same? No, |