the sensitive nature, the Ego puts forth, in order to satisfy it, all its forces, and among them its intellectual ones. "In this way, the sense, without acting directly on the intelligence, occasions intellectual movement. The sense excites the Ego, which possesses the intelligence, to put in activity this intelligence itself. The unity of the Ego, therefore, in which sense and intelligence come together, is the mediator and path of communication between these two entirely different powers" (New Essay, vol. iii. § 1258, n.). 93. intellec- It is go verned by sentient the prin substance. This necessity which constrains us tively to perceive sensation as in the being, and not as standing by itself, is, when ciple of formulated into a general principle, called the principle of substance, and may be thus expressed: Whenever the feeling is a reality which does not by itself constitute a being capable of forming an object of perception, intellective perception does not stop short at this reality, but affirms the being to which that reality belongs. "When we, intelligent beings, supply being to sensitive perception, we thereby form the idea of substance, that is, of a being conceived by us as existing in itself and not in another. When we supply being to the intellective perception of an action, then we form the idea of cause, that is, of a substance performing an action.* The act of our understanding is the same in the formation of the idea of cause and in the formation of the idea of substance. Both operations consist in supplying being to that which feeling or perception furnishes to us. This is possible In a note the author says, "By this supplying of being, we do not create it or make it emanate from ourselves. On the contrary, it is given to us to intuite from the first moment of our existence." through the identity of the subject (WE) which feels, perceives intellectively, and reflects. . . . Cause is a being performing an action outside of itself (effect).... Sensible quality cannot stand alone without a substance. Action cannot stand alone without a cause. Thus the intellect completes sensation and arrives at substance; completes perception and arrives at cause" (New Essay, vol. ii. §§ 622-625). Substance and accident. 94. The reality which does not by itself constitute a perceivable being is called accident, and the being to which this reality belongs is called its substance, as being the immediate substratum of the accident; in other words, that wherein the accident is known and affirmed as subsisting. Why the child, which has not perceived itself, is compelled by the principle of sub stance to attribute its own sensations to bodies. 95. Before proceeding further, let us reply to an accessory difficulty which may very naturally arise in the mind of the reader. It may be said, You have supposed that, given sensations, we perceive ourselves and our sensations as modifications of ourselves. But this is not the fact. The child, when it receives its first sensations, perceives external bodies rather than itself, and even its own sensations it attributes to bodies, believing these to have colour, taste, sound, etc. This, I reply, is certainly true of the child, and is a fresh proof that, in the child, the perception of bodies, as I have already stated, precedes the perception of itself. But this does not affect the principle of substance. The child, for the very reason that it has not yet arrived at the perception of itself, is compelled by the law of its understanding, which obeys the principle of substance, to attribute to bodies its own sensations, for the plain reason that, in virtue of this principle, it cannot perceive sensations without attributing them to a being. Being unable, therefore, to attribute them to itself, since it has not yet perceived itself, it attributes them to bodies-to the foreign agent which operates in it and whose force and activity it perceives bound up with every one of its own sensations. So closely, indeed, is the agent bound up with the sensation produced by it, that the closest attention and reflection are required in order to separate the two. 96. not follow principle stance is It may now be replied, Then the principle of It does substance is fallacious, causing us to attribute our that the own sensations to bodies and look upon them as of subaccidents of these. But this is not really the case. fallacious. It is not the principle of substance that causes us to attribute our sensations to external bodies rather than to ourselves. This principle obliges us only to affirm a substance when we have a feeling of accidents, not to specify what substance it is. We have, therefore, to be on our guard and see that the substance which we affirm is the substance to which the accidents properly belong. If The errros in this respect we commit errors, we have a faculty mit in re we com ferring accidents to the wrong substance may be corrected. whereby we can correct them. Thus, through careful reflection, we come afterwards to recognize that sensations are accidents of ourselves, and not of bodies, although they are felt by us at the same time and place as the bodies which act upon our feeling. Indeed, in the last analysis, a force acting in us is our only concept of these. Now, if we have a faculty whereby we may correct our errors, nothing more is required in order to confute scepticism and secure to us the possession of the truth. "The principle which ought to enable us accurately to distinguish, within sensation, the subjective element from the extra-subjective is the following:-Whatever enters into sensation considered in itself (and not in the mode in which it is produced) is subjective; and all that enters into the concept of our passivity, as attested to us by consciousness, is extra-subjective" (New Essay, vol. ii. § 881). In other words, sensation, as such, is subjective; whereas sensitive perception, that is, the feeling of passivity, involving as it does, when reflected on, the notion of activity, is extrasubjective (cf. under § 78). The principle of substance is the intuition of the essence of being, the first and universal truth. 97. What, then, is the principle of substance? It is simply the application of the idea of being to those felt realities which are not sufficient of themselves to form a perceivable being; it is the law of perception. But perception is infallible (§§ 64-70); hence also the principle of substance is infallible. We say that a given felt reality sometimes does not by itself constitute a perceivable being. Be fore we can say this, we must know what constitutes a perceivable being, and this is the same thing as knowing what the essence of being, This we know by which we affirm in feeling, is. true. It must not be supposed from this that Rosmini holds to the doctrine of a single substance in the Spinozistic sense. Substance is not mere being, but being applied to feeling. If being be separated from the terms of sense, it is no longer substance. Substance is being, employed to render cognition of realities possible, and, when not so employed, becomes a mere abstraction. (See New Essay, vol. ii. § 659, n.) 98. conditions The condition of perception, therefore, is that One of the in every feeling it must affirm a being, Reflec- of reflection has many other conditions which it tends to principle tion is the of cause. |