In this way knowledge new real forces and phenomena. increases, but does not change. through the two elements, the ideal and the real, given to thought and not produced by it, although thought may seek them with its own activity, in the same way as the eye may seek for the various tints in a picture, without thereby creating them" (Theosophy, vol. ii. §§ 820–826). This passage clearly shows the position of Rosmini's philosophy, and how it steers clear of both sensism and idealism, by according to both what properly belongs to them, without allowing the one to trench upon the domain of the other. Our knowledge is not entirely made up of sensation, as the materialists hold, nor is it entirely made up of ideas, as the idealists assert; but it contains two distinct elements, both of which are absolutely and equally necessary to it. On the insufficiency of sensation to account for the facts of knowledge, see an excellent essay by Professor Luigi Ferri, Sulla Dottrina Psicologica dell' Associazione, Rome, 1878 (Reale Accademia dei Lincei). We have seen above, under § 15, Rosmini's definition of essence. He elsewhere says, "Essence is that which is thought in the idea of the thing. We therefore know as many essences as there are things of which we have any idea. To say that we know essences, in this sense, is a mode of speech, which will be easily understood if we make the following observation. When we say 'the essence of a thing'-for example, of tree, of man, of colour, of size, or the like, we use, in order to indicate the thing whose essence we are looking for, certain words-tree, man, colour, size, etc. Now, what are the words thus applied meant to signify? We have seen that 'words are applied to things in so far as we know these,' and if we add to them a wider signification, we abuse them, pass into darkness, among creations of fancy. When, therefore, I say tree, man, colour, size, etc., I mean things in so far as they are known to me; otherwise I could not name them. What, then, is the meaning of looking for the essence of tree, man, colour, size, etc.? Simply examining what these words mean, what idea men have attached to them respectively. Shall I look for what they have not attached to these words? In that case I shall be looking no longer for the essence of tree, man, etc., but for the essence of something unnamed and unknown, for which I could not even make the search. "But if this is the meaning of essence, some one will say, it is that which is included in the definition of things, neither more nor less. Precisely, and in this and in no other sense the ancients understood the term essence. 'Essentia,' says St. Thomas, 'comprehendit in se illa tantum que cadunt in definitione speciei' (Sum. Th., i. 3, 3)" (New Essay, vol. iii. §§ 1213, 1214). Considerable exception might be taken to this identification of knowing what a thing is with knowing the essence of a thing. The former phrase merely implies power to distinguish by means of the senses, while the latter indicates intellectual comprehension. Many people know what a circle is who do not know its essence. Aristotle very carefully distinguished between rò tí kotɩ and τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι, and identified the latter alone with essence (ovoía). In the case of being, however, which is purely intellectual, the distinction does not hold, so that, in regard to it, Rosmini's language is strictly correct, although hardly felicitous. * 19. affirm a real being, know But if, after knowing the essence of being, When I I affirm to myself, that is, know, that a particular particular real being exists, what do I know more than what do I' before? Before Before answering this question, I must more than meditate on the affirmative act whereby I arrive at this new cognition: I must scrutinize the nature and grounds of it. Why then do I affirm * See Trendelenburg, Aristotelis De Anima, Lib. III. pp. 192 sqq.; Bonitz, Aristotelis Metaphys., pp. 311 sqq., and the authorities and passages there cited. before? The cause of affirmation a feeling. The formula for affirm ative cog. nitions. that a being exists? What causes me to do so? What is this existence? It is clear that, in many cases, if not in all, what induces me to make the affirmation is a feeling. For example, that which causes me to affirm the existence of external bodies is the sensations which they produce in me. I am induced to affirm the existence of my own body by the peculiar feelings which I have of it. Lastly, I am led by an inner sense or feeling to affirm that I myself exist. In all these cases, what makes me affirm that a particular real being exists, is feeling. Hence, in the given cases, every affirmation, every judgment whereby I affirm that a particular real being exists, may be reduced to this form: there is a feeling; therefore there exists a being. In this section the author passes to real being, which, according to him, is presented to us only through the senses, and known to us only through a perception, involving a judgment. "Being has two modes, the ideal and the real. Ideal being is the form of cognition, real being its material" (New Essay, vol. iii. § 1166). “In the state in which nature places us here below at our birth, we have no intellectual perception of anything but of ourselves and bodies. In truth, we cannot perceive the subsistence of a being unless it operate upon us, unless we feel its action. Feeling, therefore, is necessary to the intellective perception of a subsistent entity" (Ibid., § 528). "In order that our minds may perceive a thing, they must have that thing present to their perceptive powers" (Ibid., § 515). “Intellective perception is a judgment, whereby the mind affirms the subsistence of something perceived by the senses. Analyzing this act of the mind, we find that it requires three conditions: first, that the body which we are to perceive should act on our senses and hence produce sensations in us, since this sensible body is what is to be judged to exist; second, that we should have the idea of existence, that universal which we apply to said body when we say 'exist'-a universal which does not come from the senses; third and last, that we should perform an act in which we consider the action of the body upon us from the side of the operating principle, and that we should regard this principle as existing in itself, and different from ourselves. By so doing we place it in the class of existing things and close the judgment: That which strikes my senses exists. Now, from this analysis of perception it is plain that three distinct faculties concur and cooperate in it: first, the faculty of feeling the sensible; second, the faculty which possesses the idea of existence, or which intuites being, which again supplies the predicate of the judgment; and, lastly, the faculty which unites the predicate to the subject and thus puts into the judgment the copula, or the form of the judgment itself. By whatever terms we choose to designate these faculties, they must always be kept distinct and never confounded” (Ibid., vol. i. § 338; cf. Psychology, vol. ii. §§ 1306 sqq.). 20. formula presup This formula must be well studied and ana- What this lyzed. It presupposes that between feeling and real existence there is a necessary bond, such that poses. there cannot be any feeling without a real being; in other words, that in some way or other the essence of being, which we previously knew only universally, is found realized in feeling. When, therefore, a mind at first cognizant only of the essence of being, without knowing that a being exists, receives, experiences, observes a feeling, it immediately affirms that the being of which it previously knew only the essence, also exists. Feeling, therefore, is that which constitutes the It is feel ing that constitutes the reality of beings. reality of beings. But here springs up a crowd of objections. This section brings out, in a most distinct manner, the point in which Rosmini's system differs from all other systems, viz., in making the matter of thought (the real) subjective, and its form (the ideal) objective. In this it exactly reverses the common view of the position of subject and object. By so doing, it avoids Kant's difficulty, and cuts off the possibility of scepticism. If the matter of thought is purely subjective, and its form absolutely intelligible, not in spite of, but by reason of, its objectivity, then, of course, all question as to the reality of an external world, and how the gulf between the mind and it is to be bridged over, ceases. Externality itself becomes a mere mode of presentation—the mode wherein the subject, by means of its ideal object, re-presents its extra-subjective sensations to itself, or, in other words, objectifies them. In regard to the ancient, as compared with the modern, use of the terms subject and object, the following note is of some importance :-" Subject and object, two terms so frequently employed by philosophers, may both be traced back to Aristotle. According to him, ÚTOKεluεvov has two principal meanings: first, that of which something is predicated in a proposition (grammatical subject); second, the substance which in nature lies, so to speak, at the bottom of actions. In both senses vπоKEίμEVOν was translated subjectum by the Latins (cf. Boethius in Categor. cap. 5). Object is almost the Greek avTIKEίμEVOV, although the latter, as being more general, is usually rendered into Latin-for instance, by Boethius-by oppositum (cf. Categor. 10; 11 b, 16: De Animâ, i. 1, 7 ; 402 b, 15: ii. 4, 1; 415 a, 20: ii. 11, 12; 424 a, 11). Thus, throughout the Middle Age, as well as in the works of Descartes and Spinoza, subject has the meaning of substrate substance. Spinoza, in his Principia Philosophia Cartesianæ, p. 11, edit. Paul [vol. i. p. 29, edit. Bruder], says, 'Omnis res cui inest immediate, ut in subjecto . . aliqua proprietas . . . cujus realis idea in nobis est, vocatur |