he has taken the utmost care that his own system shall not lead to it. He admits, indeed, that his ideal being is an appurtenance (appartenenza) of the Absolute Being (Theos., vol. i. § 455, etc., etc.), and that if this being "were to put forth its own activity and so complete and terminate itself, we should see God;" but he adds, "until this happen, and so long as we see as imperfectly as we naturally do this being, this first activity which hides from us its first term, we can only say, in the admirable words of St. Augustine, that in this life, 'certa, quamvis adhuc tenuissima forma cognitionis attingimus Deum'"* (New Essay, vol. iii. § 1178). Rosmini writes a whole article to show that "The self-manifest being, communicated to man, is not God." In another place he says, "Object being, thinkable being, self-intelligible being, are expressions almost synonymous. Hence the SELF-INTELLIGIBLE is merely ideal being; real being is INTELLIGIBLE BY PARTICIPATION [μεθέξει]. Το this principle there is a single exception, and even it is not properly an exception: God, even in his reality, is selfintelligible. Now, this happens because in his ideal essence subsistence is included; whence it cannot happen that subsistence or reality is ever in God disunited from ideality. It is, therefore, a most grave and pernicious error to say that God is an idea or even THE IDEA, a word which, in the language of men, does not mean reality, whereas God is MOST REAL. And why do men use this word idea? Why did they invent this word ideal in opposition to real? Because, not having, by nature, the vision of the most real being, they have no experience of the necessary nexus between ideal being and complete real being, and, therefore, * De libero Arbitrio, ii. 15. Theosophy, vol. iv. ch. vi. art. 1, §§ 26-30. In a note to this article, Rosmini replies, in a very subtle way, to the objections urged against his system, as pantheistic, by Vincenzo Gioberti, and completely disposes of them. In spite of this, a Jesuit has recently repeated, almost in the very same words, the same objections, and drawn from them the desired conclusion, namely, that Rosmini is a pantheist (La Reforma della Filosofia promossa dall' Enciclica Aeterni Patris di SS. Leone Papa XIII., Commentario per Giovanni Maria Cornoldi. Bologna, 1880). If the philosophy of Rosmini must be condemned, would it not be respectable to find at least some charge against it which he has not answered? He cannot now answer any before any earthly tribunal. can only infer the existence of such a nexus by means of reasoning. Hence the invention of the word idea and its constant use suffice to overthrow the error of those who attribute to man the vision of God himself in this present life" (Psychology, vol. ii. § 1343). When Rosmini calls ideal being an "appurtenance of God," or, as he elsewhere does, "something of the Absolute Being," he does not go so far as Albertus Magnus, who says, "The active intellect, which is light, is a certain image and similitude of the first cause, that is, of God, by virtue of which the soul brings intelligibles (intellecta) to the intellectual light, abstracting the intelligible forms from all the obscurity caused by material appendages, and placing them in its own simple being."† The same philosopher says, "So far as the soul stands under the light of the intelligence of the first cause, so far the active intellect flows therefrom."‡ (Cf. under § 182.) 78. of the laws tion and against the But now we must clear up better the laws of Defence perception and reasoning, and arm them effectually of percep against the objections of sceptics. Let us begin reasoning with the perception of external bodies. At the At the objections moment when we become aware of a sensation which we had not before, our intellectual attention turns to the agent, to the force which modifies us, Theosophy, vol. i. § 454; cf. §§ 292 sq., 294 sq. "Intellectus agens, qui est lux, est imago et similitudo quædam primæ causæ, sive Dei, cujus virtute anima intellecta agit ad lumen intellectuale, abstrahens formas intellectas ab omni obumbratione ab appenditiis materialibus causata, et ponens eas in simplici esse suo" (De Natura et Origine Animæ, ii, tr. 15, q. 93, m. 2). The last word here is ambiguous. "Secundum quod anima stat sub luce intelligentiæ causæ primæ, sic fluit ab ea intellectus agens" (Ibid., tr. 13, q. 77, m. 3). In the language of the Arabs there is nothing equivalent to the distinction between intellectus and intelligentia; but in the Latin translations of their works intellectus is used to mean vou dúvaμis or possible intellect, intelligentia, to mean vous TоINTIKós or active intellect. See Brentano, Die Psychologie des Aristoteles, p. 8, n. 20. of sceptics. In external enables us to affirm that a being exists without confound ing it with ourselves. It is very certain that we feel within us a force which is not ourselves, but is, on the contrary. opposed to us. We are passive; it is active. Here be it observed that this force enables us to affirm that there exists a being, without affirming that this being is ourselves. We are still unknown to ourselves. And if we are not prepared to admit this, let us accept it merely as a supposition. I that, even if our intellectual attention does not fix itself at all upon ourselves, but concentrates itself upon the agent which operates in our feeling, we shall affirm that this agent is a real being, and shall not confound it with ourselves, since, even admitting that we have a feeling of ourselves, we do not, according to the supposition, fix our attention upon it. Hence it is not neces say sary to suppose the contrary. Rosmini divides the objects of knowledge as follows:(1) those which we perceive; (2) those which we represent to ourselves by intellective imagination. "The beings dif ferent from ourselves which we perceive are-(1) our subjective body; (2) extra-subjective body; (3) an entity made up of corporeality and spirituality." This is not the place to speak of Rosmini's theory respecting the manner in which we cognize the third class of objects, which, if not altogether bodies, are, at all events, extra-subjective; but it will be well here to make clear what he means by this last term. We have seen that the only object of intelligence is ideal being-that this is the very essence of objectivity, and the means by which all other things are objectified. All other beings are, therefore, subjects. They are not, however, all one subject. On the contrary, they are numerous, and each is external, that is, extra-subjective, to the other. All contingent reality is, therefore, either sub jective or extra-subjective. One subject can never directly become the object of another. In order to do so, it must be combined with ideal being and appear in the form of a concept. Nevertheless, one subject may communicate with another through feeling, that is, make itself felt within the sphere of the other's activity. "We, as subsistent, sensitive beings, are subjects united with, and in communication with, other beings, so that the other real beings exercise their action upon us, modifying our feeling, and hence the agents in us are those which we know as beings foreign to us" (New Essay, vol. iii. § 1188). It is thus clear that Rosmini means by extra-subjective what is usually termed objective, viz., the external world. Extra-subjective is, of course, a negative term, and this for the reason that, until the extrasubjective is rendered objective by union with being, it is a mere negation, a non-being.* The advantage to philosophic thought from the clear distinction between the extra-subjective and the objective is very great. 79. is the between external and the of idealism Now, this peculiarity of perception, that it is Perception always limited to a single being, which therefore bridge can never be confounded with others, enables us us and the to explain how we know the corporeal world. world, The difficulties advanced by the idealists all arose difficulties from considering bodies apart from perception, from not knowing the nature of perception, and from neglecting to analyze it. Of course, if the world world be looked at apart from all relation to per- percep ception, we shall never know that it exists, because (to use a famous phrase) the bridge between it and us is broken down. This bridge is perception. Non-being is not nothing, but the simple reality regarded as separate from being, which is its cognizability. Nothing is neither capable of being united with being, nor, as a consequence, of being cognized. Nothing is the unthinkable. consider ing the apart from tion. P The bridge between subject and object Rosmini accounts for in this way. "The idea of universal being is the one whereby we think the thing in itself. To think a thing in itself is to think it independently of the subject, of ourselves. To think a thing as independent of ourselves is to think it as having a mode of existence different from ours (which is subjective). The idea of being, therefore, is the one which constitutes the possibility which we have of going out of ourselves, so to speak; that is, of thinking of things different from ourselves. It is, therefore, absurd to inquire, How can we go out of ourselves? or, What is the bridge which forms the connection between me and things different from me? Of course, with these metaphorical expressions, going out and bridge of communication, the question presents no clear meaning and cannot be answered, because it asks for a material or mechanical explanation of a purely spiritual fact. No one can go out of himself; between us and that which is not in us, no bridge will ever be found. We must, therefore, reduce the question to proper terms. If we do so, it will assume the following shape:-Man thinks of things as they are in themselves: this is a fact. Whether he deceive himself in so thinking or not, he does think that he has present the objects in themselves, that is, as objects, and not as subjects. Now, how can this be explained? We reply, By means of the idea of universal being, which is what forms man's intelligence. To have this idea means to have the power of seeing things in themselves. Man has, therefore, in a certain way, innate in himself this bridge of communication, if such metaphors be desired, because le perceives being in itself, and being is the common and most essential quality of all things, the quality which causes. them to be what they are, independent of us and divided from us, who are subjects. The intelligent spirit, therefore, In a note the author says, "Outside of us . . expresses a relation of exterior things to our bodies, and means the same thing as different from our bodies. The question, How can we be sure of what is outside of us? was propounded by the philosophy of the senses. It was soon transferred to spiritual things, and, through a habit, introduced by the sensists, of applying to spiritual things metaphorical expressions derived from material things, such statements were made as, All our thoughts go out from us, etc." |