Casara's little work, La Luce dell' Occhio Corporeo e quella dell' Intelletto, pp. 17 sq.

16.

This consideration shows me that it is one thing to know what being in general is, and another to know that there is a particular real being. To know that there exists a particular real being, I must make an affirmation; while to know simply what being is, I require no such affirmation, but another act of the mind, which I shall call intuition. These two modes of knowing are clearly and fundamentally different, and are so related that intuition must precede affirmation. Human cognitions, therefore, are divisible into the two great classes, those arising from affirmation and those arising from intuition.

"Being alone is cognizable per se, and constitutes cognizability itself. Hence, as our fathers said, things are cognizable in so far as they participate in being.* When we attentively consider our cognition, we discover a manifest and infinite distinction between the intuition of being and the perception of real things, the traces of which all resolve themselves into the feelings caused in us; we see that it is impossible to intuite being without understanding it, since to intuite it is to understand it: on the contrary, we see that our feelings cannot be understood by themselves—indeed, that they begin to be understood only when we regard them in relation to being, that is, as terms of being itself" (New Essay, vol. iii. § 1224). The affirmation alluded to is the affirmation of being, which Rosmini distinguishes from the apprehension of the being affirmed

"Unumquodque cognoscibile est in quantum est ens" (St. Thomas, Comment. in Aristot. Physica, i. 1).

(Logic, § 1072). Every such affirmation must, of course, be a self-evident judgment. Among such judgments Rosmini classes "those in which being is directly applied to feeling, in which feeling is apprehended and affirmed, and which are called perceptions" (Logic, § 197). Thus perception involves apprehension and affirmation.

17.

the two

The order of these two classes of cognitions Order of is directly manifest from what has been said. classes. Affirmative cognitions all presuppose an intuitive cognition. The latter, therefore, must precede the former. I repeat, therefore, that before we can know a particular, real being, we must know being in general (in universale).

"Being in general," or "being in universale," is perhaps hardly what the author here means; for it is not necessary that we should know being as general or universal, before we can know a real being. Indeed, it is only in its application to real beings that the universality of ideal being or of any idea manifests itself. Rosmini is by no means ignorant of this. Indeed, on more than one occasion he states the true doctrine admirably. "I take a universal idea,” he says, "and submit it to analysis. This analysis gives me two elements from which my idea results: first, the quality thought; second, the universality of the same, which St. Thomas distinguishes by the name of intentio universalitatis. To the quality thought I say there corresponds a reality in the individual thing; to the universality of the quality thought I say that there is no corresponding reality in the thing, the universality being solely in the mind. The universality is not properly the quality thought, but is a mode which it assumes in the mind. This distinction must be carefully marked.

"Now, how does it happen that the quality thought is

in me universal? When my mind (spirito) has perceived any quality, it has the power of repeating this quality in an indefinite number of individuals, by means of so many acts of its own thought, whereby it thinks that quality successively or contemporaneously in an indefinite number of individuals. And this power results from two principles, viz., first, from the intuition which my mind has of the possible; and second, from the reiterability of the acts of the mind. This power of repeating the acts of thought, and hence of imagining a quality repeated indefinitely, is a property and faculty peculiar to the mind. It is, therefore, the mind that, by means of this faculty, adds to the qualities which it thinks the character of universality. This universality means nothing more than the possibility which any quality has of being thought by us in an indefinite number of individuals" (New Essay, vol. i. § 196 n.; cf. § 381).

It is a fundamental doctrine with Rosmini that all universality belongs to the mind or intelligence-that there is no universality in sensations or things. He consequently denies that any universal can be derived from things or through sensation. "It is absurd," he says, " to say that a sensation transforms itself, because a sensation is essentially particular, and would, in order to transform itself, be obliged to destroy itself. Thought, on the contrary, has an object, or idea, furnished with both universal and particular elements. In so far as this idea is universal, it may be determined and particularized variously, and this may be called taking another form" (New Essay, vol. i. § 197, n. 1). This doctrine is treated at great length in the criticism of Stewart. In this, Rosmini shows that all proper names are originally common, and not vice versa, as Smith and Stewart had supposed. "That a name be proper," he says, "does not depend upon its designating one individual or more, but on the manner in which it designates them. If it designates them by marking them with a common quality, as the word man does, which marks all men with humanity, it is a common name. If, on the other hand, it names them without marking them

with a common quality, but directly as individuals, and without any other relation between the name and them than the caprice of the inventor of the name, it is a proper name" (New Essay, vol. i. § 146). This is the distinction that Bain and others now make between connotative and non-connotative names (cf. Hamilton, Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic, vol. ii. pp. 319 sqq.; and Max Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language, First Series, pp. 356 sqq.). The truth is, that all ideas, in so far as their content (Inhalt) is concerned, are singulars; it is merely their application that is universal. To speak of a universal idea is to utter an absurdity. Even if the notion of white were inborn, I might have it to all eternity without its becoming universal, unless I could find or imagine a number of objects whereof to predicate it. It is the failure to observe this obvious distinction that has caused all the aberrations. in the treatment of logic from Aristotle's day to our own, when they have reached a maximum in the logic of the English school. It is strange that it should still be necessary to utter such a truism as this. Since formal logic deals with the necessary relations between ideas, and all ideas are singulars, quantity or quantification cannot appear in that science. All and some are words absolutely forbidden in deductive logic, and, indeed, in all sciences, in so far as they are deductive. When I say, “All equilateral triangles are equiangular," I am putting what expresses the necessary relation between two singular ideas in the form of the result of an exhaustive induction, such as, in this case at least, never could be made. What I really mean is: The equilateral triangle is necessarily equiangular, equilateral triangle expressing a singular idea. The Greek form of expression is much superior to the English : τῷ ἰσοπλεύρῳ τριγώνῳ ὑπάρχει τὸ ἰσογώνιον ; and, indeed, this form of expression is frequent, though by no means universal, in Greek Geometry. The universality of the truths of mathematics is entirely due to the fact that these truths express relations between singulars, which no more cease to be singulars when applied to particular real objects than a knife ceases to be singular when it

is used to cut a dozen sticks. The Greeks quantified the subjects of their propositions, and that was bad enough; what shall we say to those who quantify the predicates also? Simply that the entire doctrine of the quantification of the predicate is one huge blunder. If modern logicians had adhered to the Aristotelian mode of expression, incorrect as that was, they never could have fallen into such a snare. It is, indeed, possible, without talking evident nonsense, to say, All equilateral triangles are all equiangular ones; but it is plainly absurd, using the Aristotelian every (maç) instead of all, to say, Every equilateral triangle is every equiangular one. If the doubly quantified. proposition means anything more than the entirely unquantified one, it is this: The sum of equilateral triangles is equal to the sum of equiangular ones, which again is an unquantified singular proposition. It is, moreover, both meaningless and useless; for there is no such thing as a sum of equilateral triangles, and, even if there were, the fact would be of no value, so long as I did not know that each particular equilateral triangle is necessarily equiangular; in other words, that the equilateral triangle is equiangular (see Jevons, Elementary Lessons in Logic, pp. 184 sq.).

Being in general and particular being.

By intui

tion we know the essence of being.

18.

Let us now examine the difference between particular real being and being in general. So long as I know only what being is, I do not know that there exists any particular or real being, and yet I understand what being is. The phrase "to understand what being is," expressed in philosophical language, means, to understand the essence of being. By intuition, therefore, we know the essence of being.

The next section deals more particularly with real being. In regard to the essence of being, otherwise ideal being