"When our minds have received through the senses the corporeal elements above described, the understanding completes the perception of them in the following manner :The passion [passio, ú0os] which we undergo in sensation has two aspects-the one turned toward its term, that is, us; the other turned toward its principle. The former is passion, the latter, action. Action and passion are two words which signify the same thing under two diverse and contrary aspects. Now, the sense does not perceive the thing of which we speak except as passion or expectation of new passions. It is the understanding alone that is able to perceive it as action. In so doing, the understanding adds nothing to the thing, but merely considers it in an absolute mode, whereas the sense perceives it only in a particular respect, in a relative mode. The understanding sunders itself from us as particular beings, and, with its vision, regards the things in themselves, whereas the sense never sunders itself from the particular subjects to which it belongs, that is, from us. The conceiving of an action, therefore, belongs exclusively to the understanding. But conceiving an action involves conceiving a principle in act; hence the intellect, in perceiving an action, always perceives an agent as existing in itself, that is, a being in act. The understanding does this by means of the idea of being, which it has in itself. When, therefore, the understanding perceives the agent in question, as a being different from us and furnished with extension, it has the perception of body. From all of which it is clear that the understanding, in order to perceive a body, does no more than consider what the senses supply to it. It does so, however, not in a mode relative to us, as is the case with the sense, but by prescinding and abstracting from us, that is, by adding the universal concept of being. The intellective perception of body, therefore, is the union of the intuition of a being (agent) with sense-perception (passion), or, in other words, a judgment, a primitive synthesis" (New Essay, vol. ii. § 964). "It is true that the sense perceives the passion and not the action, since the former has an existence different from that of the latter; but the understanding perceives the passion with the concept of passion, and the concept of passion cannot exist without including the concept of action, since these concepts are relative, and reciprocally include each other. But what is this concept? How does the understanding form to itself the concept of passion? . . . The principle of cognition is this: The object of the intellect is being, or, in other words, the intellect, if it understands, must understand something. Now, when we, endowed with intellect, are conscious of a modification, we say naturally (ie. instinctively), 'There is something which is not ourselves.' And to say this is reasonable and necessary, since, whatever it is, it must always be something that modifies us. We feel that, sometimes with our consent, sometimes without, in every case force is applied to us, and that what actually produces passion is not a zero; therefore, there is something, an entity, which is perceived. We say, at the same time, 'If there is something here, there must be a substance or a first act which is the basis of that being;' since all that is given is either substance, in this sense, or appurtenance of substance, there being no third alternative. We see, therefore, what it is that is perceived in the passion of the sense. It is an action in us, an agent, therefore an agentbeing, since an agent cannot be conceived except as being. Thus the proposed difficulty vanishes. The sense could not perceive the event that occurred in it, except in its own form, that is, as passion, since it was not an objective faculty; it could not perceive an agent, save in its own passivity, and hence could not perceive it in the relation of action. But the understanding, the faculty which sees things in themselves, necessarily sees the being that acts, because it is exactly in so far as a thing is in itself that it performs its operations, operation being a consequence of being. Being is an essential activity; it is the first act, on which all the others depend. Hence it is the special faculty of the intellect always to see action in passion, the agent in action, and being-in-itself or substance in the agent. One thing is implied in the other, and all are seen with a single act, which is called the act of perception" (New Essay, vol. iii. §§ 1206, 1207; cf. Theosophy, vol. ii. §868). The perception of passion by the sense is senseperception; the perception of action, which is a function of the intellect, is intellective perception. 33. being, as The means, therefore, whereby we cognize Why real beings is the essence of being, which, for this a means Be it ob- tion, is reason, we have called ideal being. of cogni called served, however, that the word ideal does not ideal. apply to the essence of being, but to the property which it has of making known real beings to us. When, therefore, we affirm that a real being exists, we do not affirm ideality of it, we do not affirm that it is ideal, but only that it has the essence of being. It has been a common objection to Rosmini's philosophy that, since all things are known by means of ideal being, and this being constitutes their cognizability, the things known must themselves be ideal.* Such objection. shows a profound misunderstanding of the system. In the phrase ideal being, the word ideal does not express an intrinsic attribute of being, but, like universal, a relation of possibility in which it stands to its real terms. The phrase formal being would express the meaning, perhaps, better. It is plain enough that the terms ideal and possible, which Rosmini employs as synonymous, cannot apply to being itself. It is not being that is possible or ideal; it is merely the ideality or possibility of other things. What is ideal in knowledge is not the things known, but the knowledge itself (cf. under § 35). Ideal being is what the * See Galluppi, Lettere Filosofiche sulle Vicende della Filosofiia intorno ai Principii della Conoscenza umana da Cartesio fino a Kant, xiv.; Mamiani, Compendio e Sintesi della propria Filosofia, pp. 208, sqq.; Confessioni di un Metafisico, vol. i. pp. 239, sqq. Schoolmen called the means of vision sub quo, of which Cardinal Zigliara says, " The means sub quo lies between the true and the intellect, as the principle and form disposing the intellect to see the intelligible, in the same way as material light disposes the bodily eye to see the sensible, and passes between the two. This means . . . is the light of the active intellect, which stands in the same relation to the so-called possible intellect as corporeal light does to the external sense of sight" (Della Luce Intellettuale e dell' Ontologismo, vol. i. p. 11; cf. p. 6, note 1). The essence of being is self-intelligible, and forms the intelligibility of all other things. 34. But if we know real things by means of the essence of being, how do we know the essence of being itself? Observation attests that our notion of the essence of being is given to our minds prior to all other cognition; and if we study the nature of it, we shall see that it must be so that this knowledge does not depend upon any other previous knowledge-in other words, that it is cognizable in and through itself. And, indeed, facts show us that we do not begin to use the faculties of our minds until moved by external sensations, and that we begin to think by observing that bodies exist, that we ourselves exist, that something real exists. Now, this first thought is, as we have said, simply an affirmation, an affirmation of a being, which supposes that we know beforehand the essence of being (§ 14). The essence of being, therefore, is known to us before any act of our thought. It is not, therefore, acquired by any act of thought, but is implanted before all thought by the Author of Nature. If this be not true, let us suppose that we did not know what being was. We should in this case never be able, whatever pains or pleasures we might experience, to say that there was a being. We should never be able to know that sensation presupposed a being, for the simple reason that we should never know what being was. The result would be that we should not know anything, and, not knowing anything, we should not have any element of knowledge whereby we could know the essence of being. It is thus clear that the essence of being cannot be known through any other knowledge but through itself. The essence of being, therefore, is knowable in and through the Light itself, and is the means whereby we know all other is inborn, things. It is, therefore, the Light of Reason. form of inFrom this point of view we say that the idea of being is innate, and that it is the form of intelligence. Rosmini devotes a very large number of pages in his New Essay to showing that, since the idea of being cannot come to us either from bodily sensations, from the feeling of our own existence, from reflection (in Locke's sense), or through the act of perception, it must be innate. That it does not come from our bodily sensations is clear from its characteristics, all of which are utterly opposed to those of sensation. These characteristics are objectivity, possibility or ideality, simplicity, unity or identity, universality and necessity, immutability and eternity, and indeterminateness. That it cannot come from the feeling of our own existence is likewise manifest, partly on account of the same characteristics, and partly because, without first having the idea of being, we should never be able to distinguish the feeling of ourselves. That it cannot come The idea of being is of Reason, and is the telligence. |