THE FOUNDATION OF PURE POSSIBILITY, AND THE CONDITION OF ITS EXISTENCE.
53. We have said that the foundation of the pure possibility of things, and of their properties and relations, is founded in the essence of God, wherein is the reason of every thing.[22]And it may at first sight seem that science needs only this foundation, and does not require to rest upon the condition of the existence of things; because, if essences are represented in God, the object of science is found in the Divine essence; and consequently, the argumentfounded upon the impossibility of asserting any thing of nothing, is not conclusive. Supposing there to be such a representation, science is not occupied with a pure nothing, but with a real thing; and it has consequently in view a positive object, even when it abstracts the reality of the thing considered.
Let us see how we can solve this difficulty.
54. The necessary relations of things, independently of their existence, must have a sufficient reason; and this can only be in necessary being. The condition, therefore, of existence, presupposes the representation of the essence of the contingent being in necessary being; the condition, therefore, "if it exist," cannot be brought in unless it presupposes the foundation of possibility.
55. This remark shows that there are two questions:—1st: What is the foundation of the intrinsic possibility of things? 2d: Supposing possibility, what condition is involved in so much as it is affirmed or denied of the possible object? The foundation of the possibility is God; and the condition is the existence of the objects considered.
Both are requisite to science; if the foundation of intrinsic possibility be wanting, the condition of existence cannot come in; and if, admitting the possibility, we omit the condition, science has no object.
56. We would remark, for the better understanding of this whole subject, that we do not, in affirming or denying the relations of beings represented in God, treat of what these beings are in God, but of what they would be in themselves were they to exist. In God, all are the same God; for all that is in God, is identical with God. If, then, we consider things only as they are in him, we shall have God, not the things, for object. Certain it is, that in God is the foundation, or the sufficient reason, of geometrical truths: but geometry does not consider them such as they are inGod, but such as they are or may be realized. In God, there are neither lines nor dimensions of any kind; he, therefore, is not the object of geometry properly so called. Geometrical truths have in him an objective value or representative value, but not subjective; we should otherwise be obliged to say that God is extensive.
57. Here, then, is seen that what we said above in the place cited, does not conflict with what we have here established; and that to make God the foundation of all possibility, does not exclude the scientific necessity of the condition of existence.
58. We will, in order to place this beyond all doubt, present the question under another aspect, by showing that when God knows finite truths, he sees in them this condition likewise: "If they exist." God knows the truth of this proposition: "Triangles of equal base and altitude are of equal superfices:" this is true as well in the eyes of infinite intelligence, as in ours; were it not thus the proposition would not be true in itself, and we should be in error. This being so, there are in God, who is most simple being, no true figures, although he has the intellectual perception of them. The cognition, then, of God, in what relates to finite things, refers to their possible existence, and consequently involves the condition that they exist.
The cognition of God does not refer to their purely ideal representation, but to their actual or possible reality; when God knows a truth of finite beings, he does not know it from the sole representation of those truths which he has in himself, but from that which they would be were they to exist.
59. Every object may be considered either in the real or in the ideal order. The ideal is their representation in an understanding, which has a value only inasmuch as it refers to possible or actual reality. In this manner alone can the idea have objectiveness, since otherwise it couldonly be a purely subjective fact, of which, excepting the purely subjective, nothing could be either affirmed or denied. The idea which we have of the triangle aids us, in so far as it has a real or possible object, to know and combine: we refer what we affirm or deny of it to its object: if this disappear, the idea is converted into a purely subjective fact, to which we cannot apply the properties of a triangular figure without an open contradiction.