RECAPITULATION AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE DOCTRINE CONCERNING THE IDEA OF BEING.
100. We wish now to recapitulate the doctrine brought out in the preceding chapters, so that it may be seen at a glance in all its bearings and connections.
The idea of being is so fruitful in results, that we must sound it under all its aspects, and never lose sight of it in investigating transcendental philosophy.
101. We have the idea ofens, or of being in general; reason and our inward sense both attest it.
102. This idea is simple, and cannot be resolved into other elements: it expresses a general reason of things, and its nature is in a certain manner destroyed if it be mingled with particular ideas. It is intuitive, but indeterminate to such a degree that, by itself alone, it affords us no idea of a real or possible being. We not only know that every being is, but that it issome thingwhich is its predicate: eventhe Infinite Being is not only a being, but is an intelligent and free being, and formally possesses all perfections which imply no imperfection.
103. The idea of being may express either simple existence, in which case it is substantive, or the relation of a predicate with a subject, and then it is copulative. In the proposition, "the sunis," being is substantive, that is, expresses existence; in the proposition, "the sunis luminous," being is copulative, that is, it denotes the relation of the predicate with a subject.
104. The ideas of identity and distinction originate in the ideas of being and of not-being; and thus the idea of copulative being, which affirms the identity of a predicate with a subject, flows also in a manner from the idea of substantive being.
105. Being, which is the principal object of the understanding, is not the possible inasmuch as possible. We conceive possibility only in order to actuality. Possibility flows from actuality, not actuality from possibility. We could not conceive pure possibility, that is, possibility without existence, did we not conceive finite beings in whose idea being is not of necessity involved, and of whose appearance and disappearance we are incessantly reminded by experience.
106. The understanding perceives being, and this is a condition indispensable to all its perceptions; but the idea of being is not the only one offered to it, since it knows different modes of being, which, by the very fact that they aremodes, add something to the general and absolute idea of existence.
107. When we consider the essences of things, and abstract their reality, our cognitions always involve this condition,—if they exist. There can be only a conditional science of the purely possible, insomuch as it is not; that is,provided the object pass from possibility to reality. We must, in order to establish pure possibility so that it may have necessary relations, subject to the condition of existence, have recourse to a necessary being, origin of all truth.
108. The essences of things in the abstract mean nothing, nor can they become the object of affirmation or negation, unless we suppose a necessary being in which is the reason of the relations of things, and of the possibility of their existence.
109. Pure truth, independent of all understanding, of all being created or uncreated, is an illusion, or rather an absurdity. With pure nothing there is no truth. Truth cannot beatheistic; without God there is no truth.
110. We not only know being, but also not-being. We have an idea of negation, and it always refers to some being. Absolute nothing cannot be the object of intelligence. The idea of not-being has its own peculiar fecundity; combined with that of being, it gives the principle of contradiction, engenders the ideas of distinction and multiplicity, and makes negative judgments possible.
111. The idea of being does not flow from sensations; neither is it innate, in the sense that it pre-exists in our understanding as a type prior to all perceptions. There is no reason why it may not be called innate, if this mean only a conditionsine qua nonof all our intellectual acts, and consequently of the exercise of our innate faculties. The idea of being is mingled in every intellectual perception, but it is not offered to us with perfect clearness and distinctness until we separate it by reflection from the particular ideas which accompany it.
112. Essence is not distinguished from existence even in finite beings. It is a distinction in conceptions, to which there is no real distinction corresponding.
113. The identity of essence with existence does not involve the necessity of finite things. The arguments by which some pretend to establish this consequence are founded upon an ambiguous meaning of words.
114. Kant's opinion, which limits the idea of reality, and that also of negation, to the purely sensible order, would destroy all intelligence, since it overthrows the very principle of contradiction. This doctrine of the German philosopher is also in opposition with what he himself taught concerning purely intellectual conceptions, distinct from sensible representations. When he refers the ideas of reality and negation to that of time, as the primitive form of the inward sense, he leaves out of the idea of reality what no less pertains to it, and presents the idea of time under a point of view wholly equivocal.
115. As sensible representation is based upon the finite intuition of extension, so the perceptive faculties of the pure understanding receive the idea of being as their foundation. In the same manner that extension is presented to sensibility as limitable, and from limitability results figurability, and consequently all the objects of geometrical science; so also does the idea of not-being, combined with that of being, fecundate in a manner the metaphysical sciences. The parallelism of the two ideas, extension and being, is not of such a nature as to render the former independent of the latter. So far as science is concerned, the idea of extension is sterile, if it be not combined with the general idea of being and not-being. This may be shown in many ways; but it will suffice to recollect that geometry cannot take a single step without the principle of contradiction, into which the ideas of being and of not-being enter.[24]
116. All our cognitions flow from the idea of being andnot-being, combined with intuitive ideas. We shall have occasion in the following books to remark this admirable fecundity of an idea, which, although it cannot of itself teach any thing, can yet, when united with others, and modified itself in various ways, so illuminate the intellectual world as to merit to be called the object of understanding.