172.

categories

genera

The categories are classes more extensive than The genera. They are not genera, and much less are differ from they species, since the same being which divides and itself into genera and species belongs to all the three categories.

Since it is the same identical being that appears in all the three categories, these categories, of course, cannot be genera or species, which do not distinguish aspects of the same thing, but include different things under one aspect. The categories are principles of plurality, whereas genera and species are principles of unity. The three categories, in a certain way, correspond to the three elements of the concept which forms the ground of the judgment. When I say, "Man is rational," the subject is real; the predicate, ideal; and the copula, moral. In other words, in making this affirmation, I set a reality, man, and an idea, rational, both at once against the background of being, which, therefore, at once measures both of them absolutely and relatively to each other. This measure expresses their absolute and relative moral worth.

species.

173.

synthesism

When we examine being in its full extent, we Law of the discover that it has an internal order, wonderful of being. and unchangeable, supplying rich material to ontology. From this order we gather, among other laws, the law of the synthesis of being, which manifests itself in a thousand ways, but chiefly in the form of the truth:-Being cannot exist under one of its three forms without existing under the other two, although, to human thought, being,

even under a single form, appears as standing alone and is perceivable in a distinct mode.

The section explains what may, at first sight, seem an obscurity, or even a paradox, in Rosmini's system. In the act of perception, we unite the essence of being, as intuited by us, to the feeling which constitutes the reality of the thing perceived, and yet no sooner have we done so than we see that the two are and were united independently of us. In other words, our consciousness consists in doing for ourselves, or with relation to ourselves, what is already done absolutely. In a certain sense, therefore, each man creates his own world; but every sane man knows perfectly that he does not create the world. The same strange phenomenon occurs in the case of the different senses. A table, as I know it, is made up of sensations that come through at least three senses and an unknown number of nerves. Yet, when these sensations are put together by the activity of my organism, I immediately recognize the result as something that was put together quite independently of them. Though, therefore, my senses (with the aid, of course, of intelligence) created the table for me, yet the table was created absolutely, perhaps, long before I was born.

Ontology examines the recesses

of being to find the reason for the distribution of

being into genera and species.

174.

Ontology not only gives us the theory of the three primordial forms of being and of the identity of being in all the three, but it also distributes the same identical being, in all its three forms, into genera, species, and individuals, and searches for the ground of this distribution in the recesses of being itself. It thus gradually comes to discover how being is susceptible of limitation, and paves the way for a doctrine of the origin of limited and contingent being-a doctrine which belongs to Cosmology.

175.

seeks the

properties

by the

light of

In like manner, it treats of the essential pro- It also perties of being, deducing them from the principle essential of cognition, Being is the object of thought, which of being it applies to reasoning, by means of this other principle: If a being, when deprived of a given cognition. property, ceases to be thinkable, that property is essential to it. This is the principle of cognition. itself, expressed in ontological form. Hence it deduces the ontological properties which limited beings must necessarily share, in order to be possible. This doctrine is also necessary to Cosmology.

For example, since matter cannot be thought except as extended, extension is essential to it. Rosmini would also say that since God cannot be thought except as real, reality is one of His essential attributes, and, therefore, He is not a mere ideal postulate of the reason, but a subsistent reality.

B. Natural Theology.

176.

Theology.

But human thought does not totally compre- Natural hend being as it is in itself. This is the subject of Theology. Theology, therefore, is the science which treats of being as it is in itself, that is, in so far as our minds discover that being extends far beyond that part which is manifested to us; in a word, it treats of Absolute Being, of God.

Natural Theology, called by the Greeks codoyía, is the third of the sciences included under Theosophy, Cosmology and Ontology being the other two.

The idea

we have of God is not positive, but negative.

177.

The being which falls naturally under the intuition of the human mind, because it is the very essence of being, is unlimited; nevertheless it is not absolute being, since intuition catches the essence of being under only one of its three forms, the ideal. The being which falls under our perception is only a partial realization of being, a realization distinct from the essence of being; while feeling, which is the material of perception, is only the real form of being; so that the understanding, if it wishes to perceive it, has to compound it with the essence of being, although this essence, being eternal, does not properly belong to contingent feeling. Hence the materials at our disposal for reasoning out a complete science of being are imperfect and defective. Being, therefore, in its totality and fulness, is not granted to human experience. We cannot know how it is, although we may know that it is in a mode going beyond the reach of human intelligence. This sort of cognition is called negative,* and is the only sort possible in Natural Theology, which treats of being in its absoluteness, of being, not as it is known to man, but as it is in itself.

* See below under § 182.

178.

Natural Theology, in the first place, demonstrates the existence of God. Of the many arguments by which it does this, the principal may be reduced to four.

Now, it

of the ex

God.

The first it derives from the essence of being First proof which we intuite, proving that it is not nothing, istence of but something eternal and necessary. could not have these attributes, if it did not subsist identical under the other two forms of reality and morality. But the essence of being is infinite, and, existing under all three forms, it is being in every way infinite and absolute; it is God.

It is plain enough that the ideal being which we intuite, being essentially objective, involves subjective, that is, real being, as well as a relation between itself and such real being. This relation is moral being.

179.

proof.

The second proof of God's existence is derived Second from the ideal form of being. This ideal form is the light which creates intelligence; it is eternal light and eternal object, hence there must be an eternal mind, an eternal subject. This light is unlimited hence this subject must have infinite wisdom, and its knowledge must not be a transient act; in it everything must be known. through itself. A subject which, at the same time,